The women that I coach are often living a reality of “I can’t stick to a diet.” Or if they do, it is typically only for a few months. And they feel like a failure, because they have lost and gained weight so many times, that they just don’t have the strength, to try again.

I HAVE BEEN THERE SO MANY TIMES

I have been a yo-yo dieter for most of my life. I was always looking for the next best thing, the next hack, or the next trick, which never worked. It just left me feeling depressed about my life and really ashamed about all of my failures.

My first diet ever was when my mother took me to weight watchers when I was like 11 years old. When they gave me that little card with my weight on it I cringed, 165 lbs…WHAAAT! This was kick off to many years of yo-yo dieting and exercising just to lose weight. So I would diet, exercise like crazy, lose weight, buy new clothes, feel great, gain the weight back, pull out my old ‘fat’ clothes, then feel like a loser.

I thought I finally found the answer…when I turned 40 (I was at my highest weight eveeeer, over 230 lbs). I launched a new plan where I ditched the diets, threw out my scale, and just focused on eating whole foods. And then I found an exercise that I loved and the weight literally fell off.

Then in my early 50’s so much stuff happened in my life and my stress level became unbearable at times.  So I started exercising even harder. It did give me momentary stress relief but I was also beating my body down so bad until one day I hit a brick wall.

My energy level dropped to the point that I could barely function and then I started gaining weight again.  My cholesterol went up and for the first time in my life my blood test indicated that I had prediabetes.  And that terrified me!

So over the last several years I have been on a mission of transformation.  Which began with digging deep into my mindset and challenging my inner critic, you know that voice in your mind that tells you “you can’t do this, “you are to old,” “you are to tired.”

Every morning I sat quietly with myself  where I would create a vision of the health and the strong body that I desired. I put all of my focus on the person that I saw in that vision. What did she believe and what did she need to do, in order to be in that place.

I would then go through my day challenging any self limiting thoughts that would come up and embrace more empowering beliefs.

What really made the difference for me, was when I put food and exercise on the shelf for a little while, and focused on mindset first. And once my mind was

clear, I was able to eat, move and restore my body without effort. I lost the weight and have been able to keep it off for over 17 years now.

WHAT BRINGS ME TO THIS PLACE?

After working with patients for 26 years, I have watched them struggle with making lifestyle changes stick.

And what this meant for them is that they would have higher blood pressure, higher cholesterol, higher blood sugar, and won’t nobody wants…more medications. I would watch them go from no pills to a bag of pills. It killed me to keep writing prescriptions because I knew what I was really doing was treating poor lifestyle habits.

Everytime I wrote a prescription for blood pressure pills, I was treating the chips and the pizza. And when I wrote prescriptions for cholesterol, I was treating the butter, the ice cream, and the fried chicken.

But don’t get me wrong, medications are lifesaving and if you have been prescribed medications you should never stop taking them without your doctor’s advice. I just want you to ask yourself these questions…Am I taking these pills to treat my food?, and What can I do to solve my problems instead? This is the focus of what I help patients work through in my office.

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Outside of the office, I coach women who have prediabetes and want to reduce their risk of becoming a type 2 diabetic, which ultimately reduces their risk of having heart attacks, strokes, and many other chronic conditions that go along with diabetes.

I have seen so many women not address their prediabetes and then go down that dark path to eventually getting type 2 diabetes, and it was driving me crazy.

Then when they try to change, they struggle with what to do because of all of the mixed messages out there.

They struggle because being told what to eat doesn’t solve their problem.

They struggle because they are following conventional, one size fits all advice…which doesn’t work because the advice doesn’t address their unique challenges.

My approach is to know thy self first, then the food and exercise part will come easier and will be more sustainable in the long run.