In October of 2020, I was a speaker at the Clean Eating Summit along with 15 other experts. I shared the Whole Life Approach that I use to help people reclaim their health and lives. In my interview, I share my story, my Whole Life Approach, and the benefits, and actionable steps you can take right now. Regardless of if you are working to eat cleaner or struggling with chronic illness/autoimmunity, you will find information that you can use starting today to transform your health and life. I also shared two FREE EXERCISES along with printouts that can be used to implement change in your life starting today.
Below is the transcript from my interview. If you would rather watch the videos you can find them HERE.
1.Tell Us About Yourself
First I just want to say THANK YOU for having me. I’m excited to be here and excited to learn from all the speakers. I also want each of you to take a moment and honor yourself for being here. You were led here for a reason and accepting the invitation is something to celebrate.
Nutrition has always been an interest of mine. However, when I was younger my focus was always centered around calories. The lower the calories the more nutritious I thought a food was. I never really looked at the ingredients or truly understood what was in the so-called healthy food I was eating. For me, at that point in my life, it was all about weight control. That was my only focus and back then a diet coke, for example, was considered a health food in my mind.
During my childhood, I had a lot of issues with my stomach. I was diagnosed with IBS early on and was on elimination diet after elimination diet. Even though I was learning that certain foods can cause certain reactions in my body I never really put two and two together until 2006 when I started to have issues with my neck and joints.
My story is a long one and can be found HERE if you are interested in reading it but I will share a condensed version now and what brought me to this moment. In 2006 I started to have an issue with my neck and many of my joints. I had a lot of pain which lead me to go to doctor after doctor in search of what was wrong. After a few years and many doctors later I was told more than likely I had an autoimmune disease called Ankylosing Spondylitis which can affect the spine as well as other areas of the body. I then had issues with my eyes which I found out I had Iritis or Uveitis which is another autoimmune disease. Both of these conditions have a genetic marker that I tested positive for. Once I had a name for what I was experiencing I started to research like crazy. I have tried and continue to practice many healing modalities but nutrition is where I started.
Back when my health struggle started I could not find one single story about someone living with or healing from AS or Iritis. This is what inspired me to start my blog with the mission to share my story and help whomever I could. Over a few years, I learned about autoimmunity and how different foods or lack of nutrients can be triggers of disease.
I started playing around with my diet and trying different ways of eating while listening closely to my body and following my intuition. I began to better understand how food truly can impact our health. I also began turning away from mainstream information about diet and nutrition. All meat is bad, Don’t eat fat, Only focus on caloric intake, Eat lots of whole grains and the list goes on. This was around the time that the Paleo and Autoimmune Protocol diet was gaining attention and when I started to learn about it so much made sense. I began to understand the quality of what you eat matters. For example, there is a massive nutrient profile difference between conventionally raised meat and pasture-raised meat. I also realized there is not a one size fits all approach to diet. We are all unique. While one way of eating may work for one person that exact way of eating may not work for another. You need to listen to your body and trust your intuition throughout the process.
I jumped into paleo and the autoimmune protocol by focusing on nutrient-dense foods and on what I was adding to my diet first vs. focusing on what I had to give up. I also got creative in the kitchen and started to make the foods that I loved in new ways.
After a surprisingly short time, my AS symptoms and daily pain started to improve. I realized how incredibly powerful food can be. However, I continued to have issues with my eyes so this lead me to look further. I found a coach through Instagram whose focus was on the mind-body connection. I worked with him and in 3 short months, my iritis improved drastically. Working with him changed my life and inspired me and that is when I enrolled at the Institute of Transformational Nutrition and received both my transformational nutrition and autoimmune disease.
I had been emailing and talking to people on the phone for a few years sharing my story and hearing theirs but I had never really thought about coaching until I worked with one myself.
Originally I went to school for Product Design and Development and had a long career at two companies working on apparel and home product. Even though I had a great job my heart slowly kept pushing me to be brave and step away from the corporate world. During the summer of 2019, I took a leap of faith and left my 20+ year career to follow my calling to help people heal. Besides the education I received at the Institute of Transformational Nutrition I am constantly reading, researching, and learning. There is always something new to learn and share.
2. Please introduce the Whole Life Approach that you use, how you learned about it and the benefits.
This summit is focused on clean eating but to share about the approach I used on myself as well as with those I coach I need to go slightly outside of nutrition. I use what I call a Whole Life Approach. This approach not only improves your health but it transforms your life at the same time. As humans, we are a whole body but modern society has taught us to look at ourselves in parts. If you are struggling to eat clean you have to dig deeper to understand why you are struggling to stick to a healthy diet. I will tell you a secret. It has nothing to do with the food! There are a million different things that may be part of why we are struggling to stick to a clean diet or to do the work necessary to improve our health. We are all unique and that needs to be taken into consideration. Very few of us will have lasting success if we are not looking deep into what got us here in the first place. If I could go back in time when all of my health issues started I wish I would have known how the mind is so inner connected to our bodies.
There is so much to go into but given the time I have today I want to talk about the one thing I feel can have the greatest impact on helping you achieve your health goals. It is one of the top things I use in my Whole Life Approach.
Our belief systems. The beliefs we have about ourselves and the world around us start forming when we are very young. They continue to grow as we get older based on the environment around us and our experiences. As time goes on they can become more and more solidified which makes the belief even harder to change. And, it can be just one tiny experience that can form a belief that hinders us for most of our lives. The good news is we can change our beliefs it just takes a little work.
Many times when we are working to get healthier whether it’s healing from chronic illness, trying to lose weight, or working to eat cleaner many of us tend to only focus on one thing. For example, you want to lose 10lbs so you follow a specific diet. You may or may not reach your goal. Many can lose weight on a standard diet but most struggle like crazy. They may lose weight initially but then regain it over time. We need to look at more than just nutrition. Understanding the layers of what got us overweight in the first place is critical to lasting results. Same with chronic illness. We don’t get sick overnight. It is a long process. When I say whole life I mean looking as far back as childhood. We have so many repressed memories and emotions stored in our bodies. Things we may not want to think about so we just continue to bury them. However, the more we bury them the more they sabotage us silently.
I’m going to share a quick story with you about my struggle with body image, weight, and my beliefs about these things. It was not until I got sick and started doing the internal work that I was set free and found my body settling into a healthy weight. When we fight our bodies and the process they fight back. But, when we surrender and accept they follow.
I am a twin and my twin sister and I have different body types. I am shorter, more muscular, and heavier on the top. She is taller and much lankier. Growing up people in my extended family would compare the two of us. I heard many times from family members that I was chubby and bigger. From an early age, I was very hyper-focused on my weight. I still remember when I went to the doctor for my yearly appointment at 13 and tried on numerous outfits to find one that made me look the thinnest. I had an established belief that I was fat and that belief has followed me into my adult life and is still something I struggle with from time to time. When I acknowledged this belief I was able to accept what happened, forgive my extended family members because I know they never meant to hurt me, and move on. Surfacing and acknowledging our beliefs can help us succeed at whatever it is we are struggling with.
Using a whole life approach means looking at every nook and cranny of your life and thinking of the person as a whole vs. individual parts. If you are struggling with sticking to a clean diet understanding your beliefs around food can help you to take baby steps towards success. My approach is also about looking at each person as unique. We all have a different story that brought us to this moment and those stories are critical in understanding what may be causing us to struggle with our health. So, while I believe nutrition to be a huge part of the puzzle to wellness I believe the mind-body connection, as well as spirituality to play an equal role. Understanding our whole and addressing our health from 3 angles is the greatest benefit of this approach and is what leads to lasting transformation.
3. Please share one or two actionable steps that can be taken right away to implement change in your life.
I’m going to bring things back to why you are all here today. You are all here for a different reason. Some of you are here because you are struggling to lose weight or stick to a healthy eating plan. Some of you are here because you want to learn more about nutrition. Some of you are here because you are struggling with a chronic illness and the list goes on.
All of the information presented today can play a role for us in taking steps to get healthier however if we only focus on the eating part it is likely we won’t see lasting results. So, how do you truly make changes that last? The best way I have found is to take some time to ask ourselves a few questions, reflect, and do a little inner work.
In the other section, I am providing more details on this exercise as well as printouts to help you work through it. I’m also sharing 2 bonus exercises that you don’t want to miss.
The first and most important question to ask yourself is “WHY”. Understanding the why behind what you are doing and coming back to the why consistently can make all the difference in success. Ask yourself why do you want to eat cleaner? Is it to have more energy, to lose weight, or to improve a chronic condition? After you ask yourself why connect a positive feeling and visualization with your why. How will you feel when you stick to clean eating consistently. How will you feel if you lose weight? How will you feel when your symptoms from chronic illness improve? Identify you’re why, attach a feeling to it, keep coming back to it and I promise it will be a game-changer.
The second thing I want to share with you that I feel will make an impact is shifting your mindset on clean eating. Stop thinking of clean eating as a lack. Lack of foods that you love, lack of getting to go out and be social with your friends, lack of fun, and again the list goes on. I have found most approaches to clean eating to be centered on WHAT YOU CAN’T HAVE. Instead, I work to shift people’s mindsets from what you can’t have to what you can have. And, to focus on adding nutrient-dense foods into the diet. The more you focus on what you can have the more your mind moves away from the idea of lack and what you can’t have. One thing I recommend is to have one nutrient-dense low sugar smoothie every day. A healthy smoothie floods our body with nutrients and the more nourished we are the less we crave the processed stuff. And, if you happen to go out and have a few things that may not be the best at least you had a smoothie that day. I think so many have an all-or-nothing approach to health but success is found when we let go of that mindset. Focus on adding more and more clean foods to your diet and over time the not-so-great foods will get pushed out. And, life is about balance. If you are going to have a cookie balance it with a nutrient-dense meal.
4. Please share an actual real life example and results of someone using your Whole Life Approach and the success they have had with it.
Today I was asked to share an example of someone who has used my whole life approach and saw results. The example I am going to share is me! I have learned throughout my 15-year journey to healing from autoimmunity that we are our best health advocates. We know ourselves better than anyone and listening to our intuition, taking the time to dig deep and do the inner work and truly understanding who we are at the core is our key to success with clean eating or anything we want to accomplish in life. Nutrition plays a huge role in this but it is only one part of the whole. I like to say all it takes to heal is you and I believe so strongly this to be true. Our bodies have an innate intelligence we just need to give them what they need. Clean, healthy food the way nature intended is one of those things.
Nutrition has been a huge part of my healing puzzle. Mayo Clinic told me I may be in a wheelchair by the time I was 40 if I did not go on a biologic immunosuppressant drug but I am now 42 and the happiest and healthiest I have ever been. The road to health and healing can be a long one but don’t give up. Keep moving forward.
There are two things I want to leave you with today. Number One: Your struggles in life whether sticking to eating clean or chronic illness is your opportunity to learn. Our struggles are our greatest gifts. When we shift our mindset that our struggles are happening for us instead of too us we can finally take the steps needed to stick to clean eating and a healthy lifestyle. And, Number Two: Accept yourself where you are at this very moment. Like I said at the beginning honor yourself for being here today. You are taking steps toward learning about clean eating and making changes in your life that will impact more than just your health. They will impact your entire life.
Thank you all so much and trust this moment and where it will lead you.
Supplemental Info Video + Free Exercise Links
To grab the FREE EXERCISES watch this VIDEO first or click the image below. Once you watch the video click HERE for the exercises. These exercises + resources will help you do the inner work needed to achieve your clean eating goals.
I hope you found this interview helpful! If you are seeking change in your life and are ready to dig deep into why you are suffering with chronic health issues or are simply ready to make improvements to your daily habits consider reaching out or take a look at my coaching offering HERE.
In Love, Health + Gratitude,
Katie