“You’re So Much Happier Than You Used to Be”

“I can tell you’re getting healthier because you’re so much happier than you used to be.” My client’s son

When my client – let’s call her Nancy – started working with me, she came in like most other nutrition clients. She wanted to lose some weight. She wanted to be strong. She wanted to be a healthy example for her kids. She wanted to feel confident again. She wanted to feel the way she used to several years ago before so many other events overtook her life. And none of these goals that she walked in with were too lofty or unattainable. I knew that every single one was reachable and so we immediately started working together.

We started tackling things like not relying on alcohol too much during the week for relaxation, and we started looking at how much water she was taking in throughout the day, even how many steps she was getting during the work week. We talked about nutrition in general, but we never actually set an a habit around specific food goals.

When she walked out of my office after our first meeting, we had a plan to reduce her alcohol intake first – that’s it. Step one. And as she worked on that new task, she also watched the daily educational videos I programmed for her in her app, and soon – if not immediately – she started making food changes all on her own. While tackling her reduction of alcohol, “Nancy” actually went from eating out every day of the week to not only cooking at home, but planning her meals, trying new foods and new recipes every single week, and even started cooking gourmet meals that look more like a chef made them than someone who’s never cooked before.

After only a few short weeks, she started walking into my office with smiles. And after four months of working together, she came into my office one day and just started chatting about everything in her life that was going right. RIGHT!

Because she had come from a place of so many wrongs. So many failures in so many heartbreaks. There were always tears in our first few meetings, but as time had moved forward, her tears started transforming into happy ones. And yesterday she reached out and told me that her son said “I can tell you’re getting healthier because you’re so much happier than you’ve ever been before.” As a mom myself- that brought me to tears.

And not only that, but healing her self-confidence is healing her relationships with her family and her friends. She’s working through past trauma and abuse because she’s learning how to take care of herself and put herself first for the first time in her life. I told her today – we “originally” were just going to shed some pounds and gain some muscle but it looks like we are shedding so much more than fat, and gaining so much more than muscle. And for the record, while her body is transforming, her mind, her stress levels, her emotional ability and regulation is also improving tremendously. She’s taking her life back, and that is so much more than we both ever imagined. I knew it was possible to lose some weight. I knew we’d boost her confidence. I knew we’d put on strength. I even knew she’d end up happier, of course. But her life is literally transforming.

And don’t think for a second I’m taking any credit for this – it is she who has made the decision to put down the bottle, go to the store and buy food she’s never bought before, make meals she’s never cooked, come to the gym even when she’s tired, and go for walks during lunch instead of taking naps. It’s she who meal prepped freezer meals to pull out on busy days when her kids have soccer practice and it’s she who listened to herself and her own intuition when she needed a mental reset. I gave her my ear, some suggestions, and mostly I gave her accountability. Someone to check in with, give her some guidance, and make sure she gave herself the opportunity to work on HER. She did it all.

But I wanted to write about it because a) I just want to honor her transformation and b) you might be out there feeling lonely or lost. You might be her. You might need an ear. You might have the same desire to change, lose a past that doesn’t serve you and gain confidence that will propel you into the life you know you deserve to live. So if you’re out there and you want to talk, send me a message (those who know me personally) or take a look at my nutrition coaching page, and we will schedule a phone, zoom, FaceTime, or in person chat. (I have a whole team of coaches – myself included- ready to help make a difference!)