I'm Anne, a Holistic Nutrition and Life Coach on a mission to help women stop letting weight hold them back so they can create the lives they crave.
Almost ten years ago, I lost about 50 pounds – for the fifth time in my life – and this time, I don’t fear that I will regain the weight. Honestly, it wasn’t always this way, and it took me getting to a point of complete frustration before I decided that I couldn’t go on with habits of yo-yo dieting and self-destructive behavior anymore. Deep in my core, I felt things needed to change – for good. I decided that it was time to confront my obsession with food and delve into the real reasons I was holding onto extra weight.
Throughout my life, weight has been a constant battle for me. I grew up with a mother who constantly talked about weight and size, which impacted my body image at a young age. My family life was far from perfect, as my parents divorced soon after I was born, placing more stress on my family and my mother. She never fully recovered from the divorce from my father, and being one of eight children, my older siblings became my primary caretakers. When it came to my relationship with my mom, I can remember specific conversations we’d have repeatedly. She’d make it a point to tell me that her waist was still the same size (21″) as when she got married and that at her heaviest while pregnant, she weighed only 139 pounds. I didn’t have the most healthy relationship with her, and these conversations made me think more and more about my body and weight. Between these conversations and growing up during a time when curvy women were not celebrated, I found myself going on my first diet at the age of twelve – a diet that my mom put me on!
During my time in college, I read two books that started to change this narrative: Feeding the Hungry Heart by Geneen Roth and You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay. After reading these, my whole world turned inside out – literally and in the best way! After reading these books, I understood my approach to weight loss was something I had been approaching from an external point of view; I always looked at it as something I could control with diet and exercise. There wasn’t much I could do about my unsettled family life, so my focus remained on things I could control: food, weight, and my body. If I could lose the weight, everything would be alright – at least, in my mind, it seemed that way. Dieting and exercise became an obsession for me for years, with the seeds of the notion that smaller was always better being planted in childhood and then growing to full bloom into my twenties.
After reading these books, my perspective shifted, and I started to acknowledge that this was not simply an external issue that I could resolve with external choices. I realized that this was a series of internal healing that needed to happen, and that there was a lot that I needed to feel and work through to move forward if I wanted lasting change – body, mind, and spirit. My relationship with my body and my weight were things that were displayed to the world on the outside, but there was so much more beneath the surface that I didn’t know was causing my body to hold onto this extra weight..
As my path inward continued, I learned so much about myself. The world seemed to open up before my eyes, and before I knew it, I was losing weight in the healthiest way I’d ever experienced. As time progressed, I educated myself even more on health, wellness, fitness, and, most importantly, how my body directly reflected how I felt about myself and the world. This notion brought me down a spiritual path as I always had a desire to understand the deeper meaning of life.
I was always one to question things in life, and this journey of introspection was no different. I kept asking questions and seeking answers, and this time, I wasn’t searching for answers in diets and workouts; I was seeking them by going inward. As I worked on healing my body, I began to uncover layers of myself. My biggest realization was learning that there was a direct connection between my body, weight, and spirituality.
It's all connected - the body, the mind, and the spirit: the external world and the inner world.
I firmly believe that humans are always a work in progress, and though I have healed many of the reasons why I was consciously trying to lose weight (and why my body kept holding onto it), I am still learning. To say that this journey has been educational would be an understatement; over the last 12 years, I’ve been certified as a Life Coach, Nutrition and Health Coach, Personal Trainer, and Archetypal Consultant. Each of these modalities has given me the tools to go to greater depths with my own stories and deepen my understanding of self. It’s also allowed me to guide others on their journeys.
I’ve helped dozens of women realize that they, too, can live the life that they crave and that their weight does not need to take up so much mental space. Let me be the first to tell you if you’re carrying extra weight, it is not your fault. In a world where diet culture seems to be never-ending, know that there is a way out, a way to discover your True Self.