Transcript
Speaker: How you respond has everything to do with how healthy you are. How balanced you are in feeling like you are living a purpose-driven life has to do with how healthy you are. Loving yourself, like literally understanding that you were here for a purpose in order to serve that purpose for as long as possible. you have to be the healthiest version of yourself.
Speaker: So what does the healthiest version of you do, say, think, and believe?
Speaker: This is the Home of Healthspan podcast, where we profile health and wellness role models, sharing their stories and the tools, practices, and routines they use to live a lively life.
Speaker: Kerry, welcome to the Home of Healthspan podcast. Thanks for having me. I am super excited about being here. I am as well. And you don't know why I'm particularly excited today and that will come up later.
Speaker: But before we jump in to everything you've done and your story and what you're doing now, how would you describe yourself? I'm what you would call an Eminem.
Speaker: hard on the outside, but soft on the inside. i can be your best friend that tells you what you need to hear, not necessarily what you want to hear, but because it's out of deep love.
Speaker: Oh, I like that. Yeah. it's ah i don't There's a book, um Leadership in the Art of Self-Deception. Ooh, i don't know that. It's one of the best books I've ever I've probably read it four or five times. And it's supposed to be a business book, but it's 100% a relationship book.
Speaker: It is all about interpersonal relations. And so whatever applies at work applies just as much with your spouse, with your children. And this whole concept of you can say... express the same ideas, but if it comes from a place of love and sincere caring, it's just a totally different thing. So. hundred percent. I'm big on on our why. We can see 20 people all at the gym, but why they are there can determine whether they are healthy or not. So I love that.
Speaker: Yeah. the My why is a big part of the Alively F as well. But enough about that. I want to talk about you and your journey. You have an upcoming book from Corset to Crown.
Speaker: right Yep. yeah Yep. From corset to crown. There's a a nice story behind that title. Yeah. And I mean, now you're you're in the world of nutrition. And I think in some pretty non-traditional ways, things that in the world of intermittent fasting, et cetera, not as common, your approach to it,
Speaker: But what got you here from high performance athlete to parent to, whoa, I need to rethink some of this. Can you just kind of give us a little bit of that background story?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I call myself an untraditional nutritionist. And if you had told me 15 years ago that I would have been a nutritionist, I would have been like, well, there is not a worse person out there to teach people how to actually be healthy because I was far from the healthiest version of myself. I don't think I knew it then. i think I just believed that I was doing everything that I was you know conditioned to do. It was normal.
Speaker: i was I was a Division one college athlete. I was a cheerleader, which when it comes to when I look back on my sport and where some of my mindsets came in that one sport in particular is one that is filled with mindsets.
Speaker: But it really didn't come from there. I mean, I had a mom who her whole goal was for my hair to be brushed out when I was younger because curly hair was not acceptable. She still to this day straightens her hair. And I remember hearing Carrie, beauty hurts. And it was just an acceptable form of how I was supposed to function in this world.
Speaker: And when I had just finished my college career in sports, I ended up with an eating disorder, believing that I couldn't eat the pizza that the work my college job was ordering, because if I ate the pizza, I would be fat. And if I was fat, I would have no value.
Speaker: And I just struggled with that for years and years. I, you know, I got help, but I don't, it didn't help if I'm really being honest. And it really came to fruition when my two girls at five and six during a family Friday pizza night where I didn't eat the pizza, but I had salad with dressing on the side. I ordered from the pizza place, but eat the pizza. My five-year-old said to my six-year-old, why does mommy never eat pizza?
Speaker: And my six-year-old little girl said to her sister, because it has too many calories. And it wasn't with judgment. It was just fact. And it was right there. I realized I am putting to them, giving to them the gift that was given to me, which I believe is this corset, maybe around seven, eight years old, where girls are really taught. And I have learned men to In order to have value, you have to be smaller.
Speaker: You have to conform and recognize that beauty hurts. And that is the norm. And as we continue to grow up, we continue to pull this corset tighter and tighter. Let's be honest, when someone says, you look great, it's code for you look smaller.
Speaker: And it was a realization that I had in my journey of self-discovery after really, truly determining my obsession with not giving my kids my obsession with food in my body.
Speaker: Can I ask on that? Because you had a... similar to where we started this with the M&M and coming from a place of love. Yeah. Is it different if you don't need the pizza? You say, I don't need the pizza because I don't like the way it makes me feel versus because there's, there's certain things caloric caloric or not, right? Like, cause you you could say, hey I'm still targeting 2000 calories, whatever that is in the day. And I just, I'm going to use these foods to get that as opposed to this, cause I feel better.
Speaker: And does that make a difference? That's exactly what makes a difference. I joke that I'm now a conspiracy theorist. The diet industry, the weight loss industry, the food industry, the pharmaceutical industry, our healthcare care system, they are not out for our best interest. and it's really a whole lot of BS. But the BS that actually matters that we really need is first and foremost, our belief systems.
Speaker: and understanding why we do what we do, as well as behavioral science. I was a behavior specialist for more than 20 years before I became a nutritionist. And then blood sugar and understanding really what our body needs. So when you look at belief systems, why I didn't eat the pizza is what mattered. I can't teach what I don't believe. And i could have told you up and down, I never talked to my kids about calories, but somehow they knew.
Speaker: And I knew that the reason I wasn't eating the pizza had nothing to do with health. had everything to do with how I look like and how I measured my value in this world. Yeah.
Speaker: Okay. That, that makes a lot of sense. That's, you know as a father of a 10 year old daughter, it's a big thing that I try to talk to her about is look, this is all fuel. Like there's not good, bad, just in, and it's the same for ideas.
Speaker: So just like what you're consuming in your brain, the same when you consume your body, see how it makes you feel. And is this a thing I want to consume more of or less? And this other thing is what I want to consume more of.
Speaker: I love that you said that because i I'm just not the kind of person that sits and binge watches a show very often. But I do love a good show to like kind of just clear my mind. you know, as an entrepreneur, it's like I've got 500 tabs open all the time. And so my husband and I, you know, we're right now it's shrinking and we'll watch one or two episodes together intentionally. And this is the way that I talk about food, especially for women.
Speaker: It's no longer about food being good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, because whenever I ate something that I considered bad I then had so much guilt and shame associated with that. Food fuels us, but food has a lot of power over us, and we don't know how to reconcile that.
Speaker: So instead of looking at food as good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, I liken it to food serves my body and food serves my soul. And I need both, but I have to serve my body more than I serve my soul because I know the power of what food can do for me in my life and my purpose.
Speaker: Yeah. Because it truly is that fuel, right? it gives you the energy to go. And then if it doesn't do either, and I'm like eating mindlessly and it's not serving my body and it's not intentionally serving my soul, then I really got to ask why I'm eating it. And that drives us down another path of really self-awareness and recognizing what we're doing, which is a big part of our behaviors and and ultimately our success.
Speaker: Well, that self-awareness I think is incredibly important. and I just don't know... If I'm terrible at this. So when I started this podcast, I had so many women I'd interviewed that were dancers or former yoga people and had asked questions. Well, I listened to my body. I listened to my body. i think What does that even mean? Right. I have a program and I do the program. Like where, what is this signal you're getting from your body? And I just think for years, cause now I try to talk to my daughter about, Hey, how does it make you feel? But at the same time, the first, however many years of my career, plus when I was in college, I had no idea
Speaker: about blood sugar spikes. And so I would just load up on carbs and be baffled. Why do I fall asleep after lunch every day? Like why in the afternoon can I not stay awake in the office? Why do I fall asleep in classes right after I have breakfast and I've eaten eight pancakes? Like I had no clue.
Speaker: And it was only when I wore a continuous glucose monitor that I really saw. Like I ate a slice of cake at my daughter's birthday party. I'm like falling asleep on the drive home. And I was like, oh, because I went from, you know, 90 to 220 to 40. And like that, that's not good for your body. you But we don't know this stuff. No, I had no idea.
Speaker: I was an educator for 20 years. I was a, I was a national educational consultant, a behavior specialist and education to me is key. and we know what to do often and we still don't do it. And this is why the diet industry drives me crazy because we're not actually set up for success. We're not set up to truly learn. We're given a meal plan and we're told, do this. This is a script, even though nobody's life is a script. and And I liken it to saying like our body and our life is like an airplane. And we just keep sitting in the passenger seat, following along, having no idea how to fly this plane. How can you listen to something that you have no idea where the buttons are, the levers, any of that stuff? Yeah. And so we have to educate ourselves and get trained really to get in the cockpit. But then our life is our life, our personality, our triggers, our belief systems, our past, our experiences. And we have to be able to reconcile the knowledge along with the life that we're living and why we want what we want. And so when I work with my clients, for example, in my private practice, it's about getting into the cockpit and learning how to fly your own plane. And I would never want to get in a plane with a pilot that did not know how to fly through turbulence.
Speaker: And yet this is another reason why we we continuously feel like a failure because the plans we are given are not set up for success when life actually lives, when we have turbulence. And so we feel like I go on vacation, the life is busy. i can't possibly live on a diet when I am also living a life that is not perfect. But we have to learn how to fly our plane through turbulence. And it might not look the same as it does when it's a blue sky, but it still has to look like something.
Speaker: There's a lot there. um So that the the diet industry and kind of, it doesn't work, right? The people just kind of cycling through um so many different ways and come back through and it's not long-term working.
Speaker: And you come at it a ah different way in this world of 5-2 fasting or time-restricted eating or whatever it is. You have a pretty different take. And so can you take us through how you got there and what that looks like?
Speaker: Well, I think the first thing we have to do is make it is really define what we mean by working. And this is what I think so many people focus on. We we see it everywhere. I was just driving from the airport yesterday home, and I saw billboard after billboard after billboard on weight loss surgery, weight loss drugs, and you know medical weight loss. And it was all... Weight loss, weight loss, weight loss, weight loss. There was nothing there about health. We have been culturally conditioned to believe that weight loss equals health. And I am one to tell you that I have lost weight and done very unhealthy things to do it because we have believed, again, with this corset on, that smaller is better and you do things. You lose weight by any means possible.
Speaker: And i have come to learn that truly healthy person from the inside out Weight, weight loss, it's a byproduct of that. Weight gain is a symptom of health and hormones, but we we never go after the actual root cause. We keep going after the symptom.
Speaker: So when it comes to something like fasting, I will argue a different ah a bit of a different argument for men versus women. But regardless of the physiology behind it, why are you doing it?
Speaker: If we are doing it because we hate our bodies so much and we are showing up because we are trying to lose weight and we are trying to punish ourselves, battle through hunger, which is what women have been taught for years and years and years. My mother had dinner with a Diet Coke.
Speaker: And so when we hear science around fasting and we justify it based on autophagy and some science, all the scientific piece, but what we really want is weight loss, then we're, we're doing it for the wrong reasons. I will also argue that especially for women, there's much more data on men and fasting than there are in women. and we go on a whole lot of hormonal roller coasters when we deprive ourselves of food. So there's a physiological reason. i don't love it for women. There's a psychological reason. I don't love it for women. And me personally,
Speaker: I hate it. I hate the way it makes me feel. And my litmus test as a mom is would I let a kid I love do what I'm doing? And I think that's really important. I have not fasted at all. I've been living the lifestyle that I teach for 12 years of fueling our body. And I'm 51 years old. Last year, I had my blood work done. I had a biological age of 43. And this year I had it done and I have a biological age of 38. So I'm doing something okay. You're running over there. And I'm and i'm eating and I don't count calories. And i I finally have as a person with an eating disorder, being able to say a food freedom is worth every single bit of me, me fighting against the diet culture around the concept of fasting for those reasons.
Speaker: yeah there's There's so many questions I have within that. I mean, so the the first is the why behind it, I think can matter a lot for people. So hundred perception i mean, there's a lot of data eating later does impact sleep. And so people say, look, I just sleep better and go to bed faster if I stop eating at a certain time.
Speaker: Or... If maybe if they're training, like some people love to eat before they train others like no, I feel terrible if I eat and so that kind of pushes back and so there can be different wise behind when people do it and it seems like that may be a big part Well, let me just say this too. I think that for so many people, for so long we've done, we've thrown mud at the wall, we sat in the passenger seat of our airplane and we've ah really established like a callus, you know, like a callus on our hand and like we can't feel and see the things. I don't think we know how good it feels to truly
Speaker: feel healthy, to have a healthy body that we put up with stuff and not realize. So to your point earlier about listening to your body, I think we've got to do some things to get rid of the callus of the toxicity and the way that our body is not even talking to us a lot anymore. We, I have women that come to me and they're like, I'm just not hungry.
Speaker: And I'm like, well, we've actually trained our body not to be hungry in a lot of ways. And food really, truly is fuel. And the way that I approach it is very different than most. But it is very hard to listen to our body when we have not actually given it what it needs for many years. And we've got to get into some sort of a like a baseline of of getting to that place where our body, we're we're speaking the same language. Yeah.
Speaker: Most corporate wellness programs overwhelm employees with too much, or they offer too little to be useful. Alively gets it right. We start with each employee's data and goals, then serve one clear, personalized action at a time.
Speaker: No noise, just real behavioral change. The outcome? A healthier, happier workforce. A measurable impact for your business. Visit Alively.com to see personalized wellness in action.
Speaker: I do have a question on in modern world, right? so like you think about 250,000 years of human existence where, Ooh, I'm craving fats or I'm craving sweet, right? And I need to store this for winter because it's going to get cold and I don't have that.
Speaker: And then now we're in this point where you you push a button and whatever food in the world can come to you. And based on the gut microbiota, you might be telling yourself, I need more sugar. I need more sugar. I need more sugar.
Speaker: um And so you're listening to your body. It's not really your body because it's the microbiome that's telling you, right? It's these bacteria that are telling you to go eat this stuff. how How do we navigate that? So that this is where I have a difficult time in if you eat normal, right? The standard American diet, SAD, you yeah you operate that way. We know where that leads. We know where that leads in terms of your cholesterol and obesity and everything else.
Speaker: And so how do you balance the listening to your body that evolved in a world that we don't live in with companies that are spending billions of dollars on the science to hack your brain to make you crave and want things that are going to poison you, but your body doesn't necessarily know that.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, back in 2018, there was a ah study done in Stanford about how seemingly healthy people have diabetic level glucose spikes on a regular basis. And this is why people talk about fasting. And this is why I get it, right? Because if every time you eat, you are spiking your blood sugar at crazy levels. If you just don't eat, at least for a big portion of the day, your blood sugar will be normal, right?
Speaker: Especially if you're obese and have significant insulin resistance. But what I talk about a lot is that the difference between a psychological craving and a physical craving.
Speaker: Most people do not know the difference at all. And we have to get to the place where we are speaking our body's level language. So what I do with my clients is for one whole month, I say to them, listen, Food serves your body and food serves your soul. You need both.
Speaker: But your body deserves one whole month of you truly in every single positive way. You need to serve it and love on it and give it what it needs.
Speaker: Even if it's not necessarily what you want all the time, let's love on yourself. We sacrifice for our kids. We sacrifice for our job. We And I don't mean we should be sacrificing, but let's actually just flip the script and say, I'm going to serve my body for one whole month and I am going to just bring it back to its factory settings.
Speaker: So we're going eat in a way that is whole, clean, unprocessed foods as much as possible. Recognizing that when we can eat a protein, a fat and a carbohydrate together, It like the synergy of it is incredible. A carbohydrate though, in, in my mind, we forget that carbohydrates are plants and fruits nourishing things. We just keep going to bread and chips and rice. Let's say, cause people say, oh wait, you don't eat carbs. Cause don't want to bread, chips, and rice.
Speaker: say No, I eat all plants. I eat a ton of carbohydrates. It's just from the plant. It's coming with the fiber and everything and the nutrients. We've confused everybody. We really have. There's only three macronutrients. And we have like in the 90s, it was like, don't eat fat at all, right? Now it's like, don't eat carbs. But we also had Atkins, don't eat carbs. And now it's like, don't eat carbs. But we don't understand food. And that's one of the biggest things. So if we're eating a protein, a fat, and a carbohydrate, and for the first month, really going with low dense carbohydrates,
Speaker: fruits and vegetables. And we sit in this place of ready to eat, satisfied, ready, not eating too much and not being super, super hungry. And we can see this because my clients all wear continuous glucose monitor. We can see that every time they eat, they never spike their blood sugar, but they're eating small meals throughout the day, about every three hours, rebuilding that relationship with their body and trust. And And it's amazing how your body will start to talk to you at about three hours. And what we know is if we eat more and we're not hungry at the three hour mark, we will likely spike our blood sugar because it means we've we can go longer, but we've likely spiked our blood sugar when we ate.
Speaker: And if we get hungry before that three hour mark, we can tell that either we didn't eat quite enough or there's some metabolic flexibility issues that we have. That three hour mark is a really very telling signal if we are eating a portion of food that really should last us those three hours. And when we do that for a month,
Speaker: It is unbelievable. I say this is blood sugar regulation. This gets to the root cause of cellular dysfunction. Now, of course, toxins in our environment and all sorts of other things are contributing to cellular dysfunction. But the thing that we can control, the thing that we actually have the ability to do every single day is think about what we put in our bodies. And when we can eat like that for a month,
Speaker: It is unbelievable how within days cravings go away, energy goes up, sleep gets better, and we can start actually hearing what our body is telling us. I love that. And when people are doing that, I mean, how many feedings is that throughout the day? Is there a time you typically suggest to stop? You're like, hey, you shouldn't be doing three hours between nine and midnight maybe or...
Speaker: Well, it I always say this, like, so this is where it's like one it impacts the other. I want people getting seven to eight hours of sleep, right? And so it depends how long you're awake for. But if you, like, if I see people on Facebook or sending me a message at one, two o'clock in the morning, I'm like,
Speaker: um hello, we're ignoring the core need of your body, which is sleep. And and so many people like well, i don't sleep well. or Because we're doing things like on our phones or we're not fueling our bodies appropriately during the day that's impacting our sleep. One of my favorite books is Sleep Smarter by Shawn Stevenson because he really does give some very practical strategies for for managing our sleep. And if we're not sleeping, then we're not getting anywhere. But it really does depend on how long we're awake. So I wake up at five o'clock every morning And I am in bed like by nine o'clock at the latest. yeah And i likely have eaten maybe a small, and I don't even like to call it a snack, but like a small meal. If I ate at five o'clock and I wait until nine, i don't sleep as well.
Speaker: If I am, now I'm not talking about eating like a birthday cake, right? I'm talking about eating a protein and a carbohydrate, and I could even pull back on the carbohydrate, you know, depending on what the carbohydrate is. But ah if I eat a, like, I love chia seed pudding, a little bit of chia seed pudding at about like 7, 7.30. It is unbelievable how I sleep so well. My fasting insulin is perfect. Fasting glucose, A1C, all of that. And so we have this, again, we have these rules and I'd rather give people tools. And
Speaker: And saying, if you're not sleeping well, try a small meal a little bit before you go to bed because your body doesn't... Like if it's hungry, it's telling you something. Your blood sugar is low and we need to have that metabolic resistance, right? And so if we if we're getting really hungry during during the night, we either haven't fueled ourselves quite enough. Like we've stopped eating way, way earlier.
Speaker: And especially for women, that can really kind of mess up our sleep a bit. So... This is how you fly your own plane. You try these things and see how you feel. And nine times out of 10 with my clients, if they eat a little bit before, they actually sleep better. Okay.
Speaker: That whole is still your plane and you need to go figure it out is so, so important here because it's Brian Johnson been on record, I think, pretty famously. He has his last meal of the day at 11. And are like, how in the world did you get there? And he said, because... just kept testing.
Speaker: And every hour I'd go, my sleep would go up, go up, go up. And he's 100% sleep perfect on this whoop score forever. And he said, look, a lot of people, it's the same thing. They they go do it. And the earlier they can stop, the the better off they are. And and this is why i was saying, hey, I haven't told you why I'm excited for this. I'm only day three of a fast right now.
Speaker: So I'm doing, I'd started fasting back in like 2018 with Prolon. i had read about it. have a history of cancer in my family and this whole idea of autophagy and yeah started. And then I had gone back to just water only fast with electrolytes, but now I'm trying Prolon again. And every time I fast,
Speaker: my sleep goes berserkly good. I mean, my HRV goes up 40 to 50%. My resting heart rate cuts by 20 or 30%. I mean, my body goes in full rest and recovery.
Speaker: And so I do wonder if it's personal because you said, know, are other people that, oh no, I'd be too hungry. I can't sleep and it's terrible. And so it's, Yeah. I mean, to me, this is where it becomes around your why and you deciding to fly your own plate. I would say, I will never tell you what you can or can't do. I'll educate you and empower you to then make your own choices. But remember, my population is mostly women who have, and and I've, I've surveyed over a thousand women about how long they have been obsessing about food and their bodies focused on weight as their measure of worth.
Speaker: And when almost every single one of our clients will tell us why they have fasted, it's always about weight loss. It's never about these other pieces. and there's a lot more research for men than there are is for women on the benefits of fasting. i also know that women especially are living these very busy, intense lives that we have to at some point get ah get a hold of. and
Speaker: we've got to really figure out where our priorities are sitting because I know i feel so confident in my health right now and why I do what I do And I want women to literally live with that level of food freedom.
Speaker: And if if they want to do something like what you're doing, I want them to do it for the right reasons, with the right intentionality versus they've just heard, they're sitting in the back of the plane and they've heard this. I just did a workplace wellness event and a guy came up to me and he's telling me that he's fasting and he hates it.
Speaker: And I'm like, okay, why are you doing it? He's like, I don't know. I was just told I should. And I'm like, see, this is where I would prefer us just... just Like make decisions for ourselves based on what we know and what we believe.
Speaker: Yeah. It's ah that, that why is really important. and I, I know there's good data on fasting can help lose weight and over time, but just the first time I fasted, I may have lost eight pounds Over the course of the five days. And then like by the end of the next week, it's back to the same because I'm not trying to lose weight. Like if anything, I'm trying to put on muscle. So it's, that's why I'm very, so it it was not a long-term weight loss. And just to put it in perspective, ah went to Italy for two weeks and ate pizza least want to and ate pasta and ate gelato. And over the two weeks, I lost 10 pounds. And so I'm like,
Speaker: there There are different ways to get there. I have no idea. Maybe I was just walking so much or maybe they're just way less additives. And so I didn't overeat because I was eating really good food. And so because it's calories in, calories out, the the math worked. But...
Speaker: Well, and that's one of the things that we also have to talk about when it comes to calories in versus calories out. If you took 4,000 calories of whole, clean, unprocessed foods, mostly plants and animal protein and all of, you literally couldn't eat it. But I could eat a jar of Nutella and get 4,000 calories. And it's just the constant narrative of eat less, eat less, eat less. My number one clients are doctors.
Speaker: They have no idea. They got no education on nutrition. Yeah, absolutely. None. I'm training physicians and they're like, you don't know anything about this stuff. i'm I'm working in a hospital right now, training a team of doctors around the concept of blood sugar stabilization and why that is so important. But ah also I just, I can't overstate enough is that that it is about but who what is the healthiest version of me do, say, think, and believe. If I have to sacrifice, I just heard about one of my health coaches that I've trained
Speaker: her client is like, you know, working out seven days a week, running. She's a doctor, in fact. And she is literally working herself to the bone between working out and her work. She's got no time for her kids. She's not enjoying life at all. And I'm like, that is not health.
Speaker: So we actually throw away the goals when it comes to like, do I have a weight goal? No. Nope, that's an outcome goal. That is a byproduct of a truly healthy life. You can control your behavior. You can control your response. You can't control your circumstances.
Speaker: How you respond has everything to do with how healthy you are. How balanced you are in feeling like you are living purpose-driven life has to do with how healthy you are. And loving yourself, like literally understanding that you were here for a purpose in order to serve that purpose for as long as possible. You have to be the healthiest version of yourself. So what does the healthiest version of you do? Say, think, and believe.
Speaker: And that is a literal exercise. Take a piece of paper, fold it in force, and write do say, think, believe. i don't think we ever really go there. We literally just go after...
Speaker: Carrie, tell me what to eat or how do I balance all my time and doing all the things? And I really want us to take a step back and say, what does the healthiest version of you do, say, think and believe? Because there's your flight manual right there.
Speaker: And when you can lay that out and then start identifying as that person and start living as that person today with the idea of 1% progress over time adds up,
Speaker: then we don't have to overthink it. We don't have to obsess about it. And we truly can live this life where we serve our soul, we serve our body, and we love every step of the way.
Speaker: And that direction, I think, is really important too. So do, right? Your actions lead to how you speak about it, lead to what you think. And then that is where beliefs come from, is you believe you're trustworthy because you consistently are trustworthy. yeah You believe that you're healthy because you consistently do the right things for your health.
Speaker: Right. And if you think about it, it's like I'm trying to lose weight. I'm trying to like, I just had a conversation today with somebody that's like, next week it will get better. Next week it will be easier. Next week it will slow down. And I'm like, it it doesn't. And we're ah manifesting all of this to continue to spiral. And do we ever really get to that place of...
Speaker: living as the healthiest version of ourselves, we get we get sucked in the dopamine rush of the next thing and the next diet or the next whatever it is and not living in the present and really truly today living as the healthiest version of myself. I also think it needs to evolve. When I first started this journey, I was like, i just need to learn how to, but like if I can balance my blood sugar, because I learned how that that was super important, how can I go to Dunkin' Donuts and still balance my blood sugar? That was where I was 12 years ago.
Speaker: Today, i would never go to Dunkin' Donuts. Like never, but like everybody needs to start where they are and know that it's human nature to want to up level. So I'm not where Brian Johnson is but I don't know, maybe I'll get there. Right. But I know I'm not where I was 12 years ago.
Speaker: Yeah. And so on that, right. It's, because it's not just fueling your body, it fueling the soul. There has to be some joy. There's the thing about breaking bread with other people. It's a shared experience. It's it's not just the scientific fuel of the calories and calories. out it's It's a social experience. And we live in a society that the menus aren't always that healthy, that the options aren't always that healthy. And so, and our brain, a lot of times it's making us crave things or think that we want things that maybe our body does not respond well to how,
Speaker: does someone navigate that and and not just navigate personally, but then in modeling it, because I go back to where you started, right? The and pizza story with your daughters and as a father of a daughter, constantly trying to navigate this world of modeling, Hey, I eat this because i actually think it's delicious. And people,
Speaker: They get crazy and then they taste it like, actually, this is really delicious because it's all these plants and seeds and homemade dressing. and Like, it's just delicious when I eat. But it seems so samey to my daughter and not be the, oh, doing this because it's calories or whatever, but, oh, it's this healthy fuel. It makes him feel good. It makes him happy because i dont you don't want to give your kids disordered eating or Like literally 85% of females have. And I would argue that it's probably more than that.
Speaker: And I've raised two girls now. My girls are almost 20 and 21. And I will tell you that that was my number one goal, that I was not going to raise them to have this really unhealthy relationship with food in their body. And I will tell you that I didn't always get it right because I was on this journey while I was raising them. But what I did is I said things out loud.
Speaker: And I would talk about it. Remember, like how we say things, like if somebody offers you a piece of cake, oh no, I shouldn't. Ooh. And we use words like cheat meal and and and things that just put so much value on our value when we make choices that we have deemed as bad. And so I i outwardly say,
Speaker: The serves our body and food serves our soul. And tonight I am serving my soul. i i love wine. I have loved wine. I love the art of wine. And I don't want to feel villainized if I enjoy a glass of wine, but I am very intentional with it. And I say things out loud to my kids about either when I was struggling, how I was struggling and why I was struggling or why I'm making the choices that I'm making. And i love to call like a soul fill-in meal an appreciation meal.
Speaker: And not a cheap meal or anything like that because I appreciate it. Just like my daughter, Grace, who's 21 years old, wanted Christmas every day. I wish Christmas could be every day. And I would say this to her. Like we we know as adults, we can have Christmas every day. It wouldn't be special. We wouldn't enjoy it. It would be very expensive and it would it wouldn't be healthy.
Speaker: Well, it's the same thing with a soul-filled meal. we can't We can't have it every day. It wouldn't be special. We wouldn't appreciate it. And so like my grandfather used to make the best chicken paprikash. It is just nothing but carbs. It is dumplings and sauce and sour cream. And I feel like garbage afterwards, but it is.
Speaker: soul filling. It brings me right back to my childhood. We have it every Christmas Eve and we know that we are going to have it. And this is what's so beautiful about balancing your blood sugar. The longer you are balancing your blood sugar, the less tired your body is, the less resistant it is to those spikes because our body will balance its blood sugar on its own. It just has to do it all the time. So we're over-releasing insulin. Our body is not even reacting to it anymore, which is then how we become diabetic. But if we give our body a rest and we're like, hey,
Speaker: I'm going to fuel you appropriately more often than not. When it's time for chicken property crash, my body is like, girl, you go enjoy yourself tonight. I'll stay home and I will clean up. And and my body doesn't miss a beat. I don't feel great. And I actually wake up with hot flashes whenever I do it. But you're never going to see me not do it. on Christmas Eve. And these are the conversations that we have with our kids. I'm just very open about it. And because our body is healthier, it can handle those types of things.
Speaker: I just don't want to do it all that often. Right. Because you know how it makes you feel. like yeah And it takes away the special. Yeah. It's amazing work that you're doing, and not just at the individual level, but I think that the generational level I mean, my daughter, when she was 16, 10 years after she talked about calories, I got an Amazon delivery and I opened it up and I was like, who ordered a tiara?
Speaker: And Grace comes running and she goes, I did. And I'm like, why? She goes, because I know my value and this is going to remind me of that. And I thought, I have come full circle. Wait. And also I was like, wait, you can buy a tiara? I had no idea. She spent $6.99 on it at Amazon. And it never occurred to me that you can buy yourself a tiara and remind yourself of your value. And that's where the concept of From Corset to Crown came in because she is the one that taught me 10 years later after I was trying to teach her that I know my value. We know this as little girls, as little boys, like we don't ever question it. We, as a baby is valuable just by existing, but we lose that somewhere along the way.
Speaker: And she reminded me of that in there. And that's what I want everybody to take away. We don't have to earn our worth. And we literally can buy a crown to remind ourselves. And it was that moment, Grace, right there at 16, decided she was worthy. And then her action started acting like someone who was worthy.
Speaker: And she was a great little singer, but she never sang in front of us. She decided to start auditioning for things because she started deciding she was worthy. she and She's a musical theater major in ah one of the most competitive conservatories in the country. She's performed on Broadway and all because she made the decision to believe in herself. And that's what I want us to do, whether it's fasting or not fasting. It's that we all are here on this earth for a purpose and when uniquely curated just for us. And we have to stop treating our body like it's the enemy and that we're mad at it. And if we can start to show up
Speaker: like any other relationship, relationships are built on trust and trust is built in positive interactions consistently over time. And that's the message I really want to get across to people that we absolutely can become the healthiest version of ourselves. We just kind of have to take off that corset and replace it with the crown.
Speaker: Love that. And for people who want, I mean, that's a beautiful bookend to all of this, but people who want to learn more, certainly um from Corset to Crown is available for pre-order now. As ah I heard from you, if you pre-order, you can actually go ahead and get the ebook now for those who can't wait.
Speaker: Where else can people find you? Yeah. So if you go to kerrylapoli.com, you can, if you pre-order my book and go back there and enter in your receipt, you'll get the ebook right away. Plus a whole bunch of other bonuses. I have tons of stuff that will just kind of deepen your thinking around the concept of really what do we want and why do we want it? And then go do the things that allow you to fly your plane.
Speaker: Yeah, that's great. let's land this plan for this episode. Thank you so much, Keri. Thanks for having me. i love talking about this stuff. I appreciate it. Thank you for joining us on today's episode of the Home of Healthspan podcast.
Speaker: And remember, you can always find the products, practices, and routines mentioned by today's guests, as well as many other healthspan role models on Alively.com. Enjoy a lively day.
