5 Tips To Get You Started on Your Optimal Health Journey

So you're ready to make a meaningful, permanent change to your health and lifestyle, but you have no idea where to start. I'm here to help.

Nowadays, there’s clickbait everywhere with sexy headlines like “Drop 10 lbs in 10 days!” or “Fit back into your skinny jeans!”. But what if you’ve been struggling with your weight for a while now? What if you’ve been losing and gaining the same weight for years?


You’ve tried keto, IF, detoxes, low-carb, pills, you name it.


Actually, you might be pretty good at losing the weight – the problem is you can’t keep it off.


If this sounds like you, keep reading.


One of the biggest mistake people make when starting a weight loss journey is to tackle nutrition or diet first, in isolation.


You might be thinking…. what?! How is that a mistake?!


We’re all told that weight loss is 80% diet, 20% exercise , right? Put those together and you should be successful. Simple math?


Unfortunately, that formula is severely outdated and misleading.


The truth is that the real formula to successful SUSTAINABLE weight loss is actually : 20 % fitness & nutrition , 80% mindset.


So, if you’re ready to make a meaningful and sustainable change in your health, but don’t know where to start, I’ve got a few tips for you.

1. Embrace the long game


If you want to achieve your optimal health, both mental & physical, you have to set realistic expectations. If your goal is weight loss, a safe, sustainable amount of weight to lose is about 0.5-2 lbs per week. In reality, that might look more like 2-3 pounds per week at the beginning, then perhaps 0.5 pound down the next week, then up a pound the next week, then maintaining for a few weeks before dropping a pound again. Your weight loss graph will look more like a staircase or a squiggly line than a perfect, linear trend. There are 52 weeks in a year so be ready to commit to at least one year of changing your habits.

2. Rely on a professional to help


This is not the time to try another detox, free App or strict meal plan that an Instagram influencer is promoting. These are diets in disguise—they work for the short-term but not for the long-term. Long-term health & weight maintenance is about small habit changes you can keep up with over time. Those who are successful at losing weight usually work with support.


You can crash diet and lose 100 lbs. You may feel physically thinner but not at all mentally healthier. Patience, persistence and accountability , and the ability to fall down and get up over and over again are key.


This journey is hard alone. And it's hard with close friends and family. Professional provide two important things: science-based weight loss recommendations and accountability from someone who isn't a close friend.


Weekly, or even daily, check-ins are key to help you stay on track. The key to sustainable weight loss is perfecting the art of moving on and avoiding self-sabotage, being guided through your all-or-nothing mentality, instead of spiralling and leading to “falling off the wagon”.

3. Forget the diets

Think of all the food you restrict when you’re dieting but eventually end up bingeing on. Sustainable optimal health is first addressing your mindset : ditching the all or nothing mentality, letting go of the idea that one meal can make or break your efforts and embracing balance. Balance can be tough and a lot of work on healing your relationship with food is required to get you to a place of food neutrality.


If you’re thinking “oh my gosh, dieting is my only way to be controlled around fool! I can’t make good food choices if I’m not dieting!” , fear not.


Possibly shockingly , it is the opposite – the prohibitions and rules – that contribute to the problem of loss of control in the first place.


Ditching diets will give you control & freedom around food so that you can achieve your happy weight- and maintain it in the long term. This is about how to make a shift in your thinking about food that will last, and once you’ve made that shift there will be no need to diet again.

4. Understand set point theory


The body likes balance. Body temperature stays in a narrow range of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The pH of blood is around 7.4. Your body has a weight range it likes to stay within too: It's called your set point. Unfortunately, it's easier for this range to move up than it is to move down.


However, it certain is not impossible to get it down. After all, there are numerous success stories, like those in the National Weight Control Registry who have lost 30 pounds or more and kept it off for at least one year.


So how do you do it? According to many, MANY, studies, crash dieting is not the answer. Instead, aim to lose 5-10% of your body weight at one time. That's the amount of weight you can lose before your body starts to fight back.


Then, and here's the hard part, work to maintain that loss for six months before trying to lose another 5-10%. This is the time during which people throw in the towel or opt for the crash diet their friend is doing, further damaging your metabolism and increasing your set point weight.


Instead, learn how to make small, gradual changes in your daily habits, and you'll be able to stay at that new, happy weight for the rest of your life. (That’s where the support and accountability comes in because let’s be real, we are all victims of instant gratification and giving up on ourselves before the real magic happens).


Having an effective and strategic method is vital to outsmarting the body's natural tendencies to regain weight.


You may also have to reassess your initial weight loss goal. If you reach a point where you feel great, are healthy and have habits you can sustain for months but the number on the scale is higher than you'd like, it may be time to embrace a new number.

5. Stop it with the cookie-cutter advice


We’ve all come across these names at one point or another –– the Atkins Diet, Keto Diet, Intermittent Fasting (Yes, intentional time restriction is a diet), Weight Watchers, South Beach, and more. Each of these weight-loss solutions promises a variety of benefits, such as burning fat, equalizing the body’s glycemic index, balancing PH levels, and much more.


They even employ the help of celebrities in an attempt to convince you of their credibility.


While these cookie-cutter diets may talk the talk, it’s extremely rare that they ever actually walk the walk. Most fail to deliver their promises, leaving women dejected and back where they started.


If you take a step back and look at the big picture, cookie-cutter diets make little sense. When we follow a pre-designed diet plan, we are essentially taking a generic set of recommendations and assuming that they will safely and successfully correspond with the uniqueness of our needs. Human bodies are incredibly complex and vary in their biological and chemical processes. No single set of nutrition guidelines can effectively encompass each and every one.


For anyone hoping to build an effective and sustainable lifestyle and habits to suit their individual issues….specific contextual questions such as age, weight, height, activity level, dieting history, drug consumption, and medical conditions need to be addressed from the start!


They simply cannot be bypassed. So, any time you are tempted to follow someone’s advice before they even ask ANY questions about you…RUN.


Even I cannot and will not give you specific advice without getting a better sense of your specific circumstances. These kinds of inquiries are crucial to sharpen the extent of your metabolic capacity and therefore intake needs in terms of protein, fats, and carbs.


In contrast, cookie-cutter diets tend to draw stark and mistakenly universal divisions between food that is “good” and “bad”.


People can and will metabolism the EXACT same foods in very DIFFERENT ways!!


Cookie-cutter diets demonize certain nutrients such as fat and carbohydrates while praising others, but they never consider the personal biochemistry of your body. Any meal plan or weight loss program that is not formulated on the basis of your body type and history is going to be ineffective, inappropriate for YOU and result in a lack of consistency because:


A) You’re not seeing results

B) It doesn’t fit into your lifestyle

C) You don’t enjoy it



Get a plan that's individualized and specific to you and to you ONLY. Everybody's bodies are different and you need something specifically tailored rather than following the shiny objects and new fad diets (keto, cabbage soup diets, Atkins, juice cleanses.)



The bottom line



Achieving your happy weight (a way at which you look and FEEL your best) , maintaining it and creating sustainable lifestyle changes do not require an entire overhaul of your life. In fact, looking at it like this giant mountain to climb will just set you up for overwhelm, confusion and procrastination.




Don't try to tackle everything at once. In order to lose weight and keep it off, you need to embrace a long-term mentality and focus on small habit changes. Get professional help so you have accountability and can focus on the habits that move the needle most. Don’t spend another 10 years of wasted money, time, clothes and mental space jumping from one fad diet to another that only leaves you feeling like a failure.




We beat ourselves up for failing to accomplish our goals and improving our health…




But if you just changed these 5 things and learned how to do it the right way…




This could change EVERYTHING for your body and your life.




Are you ready to stop relying on unreliable willpower, fads and diets and instead develop the skill you absolutely need to make the changes you’ve always wanted?




My 1-on-1 Healthy By Habit coaching program will support you with the research backed tools and the personal guidance to create lasting positive change to your health and ultimately, your life.




The truth is there is no quick fix. Being healthy is about all playing the long game.


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When you work with me, I won't send you on a 12-week challenge or a juice cleanse, because while you might be able to sustain it for the short term, you won't be able to live that way forever (it's hell, right?). And once it's over, all your hard work comes undone. So why waste your time and money in the first place?


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I meet you where you're at. I work with your current lifestyle, job, preferences, capabilities, budget and family commitments and everything else that makes you, you. And I help you take change your habits one step at a time, to help you achieve real, long term health.




From feeling strong to having a good relationship with food, health is about more than a number on the scale.




Maybe you're looking for more energy to play with your kids? Or being able to eat out with friends without tummy troubles, be fit enough to do that hike on your holiday or perform optimally in your career.




Through private 1:1 online coaching through Zoom, 100% personalized coaching, ongoing text/email support and educational content and a private members-only community of women on the same journey as you to support you every step of the way, I empower you to make real, sustainable, long-term changes in your health—and your life.




This program is for you if :




-You want to genuinely improve your health - This goes beyond the scale. You want to take an integrated mind-body approach that considers all areas of your life to support long-term health , happiness and freedom


-You're done with fads and diets & want to eat with freedom and enjoyment again- You want to achieve your goals sustainably. You've tried the quick fixes that worked in the short term but left you miserable and worse off than when you started.


-You want 100% personalized guidance - you want advice that takes into account your history, preferences, goals, genetics and lifestyle, unlike the gym challenges, influencer cleanses, PDF meal plans and run-of-the-mill fitness programs.


-You don't know where to start - You're overwhelmed with information, unsolicited advice and marketing promises. I meet you where you're at and together we'll carve a path that's realistic and impactful for you.


-You're ready to change - You're motivated and ready to live your best life. You're done with calorie counting, regimes and self-loathing, and want to learn the tools and strategies to commit to building a healthier lifestyle for the long-haul.


-You're looking for an evidence-based way of creating lasting healthy habits - One that's kinder, more empowering and more fun than anything you've tried before




If that sounds like you, book a FREE strategy call with me to find out if this is the right fit for you and your needs, and be set up with immediate action steps to start moving on your goals.