I was spinning by myself in a spinning room which locked the door locked from the outside
and you needed a key to get it so I was inside this locked spinning room and I had this massive
head pain.
It was a massive head pain and it wasn't a headache and I remember that this is such
a distinction for me.
It wasn't a headache, it was a head pain.
It felt like somebody was stabbing something into the left side of my head and it went
away very quickly.
And I kept slowly slowed down a little bit and then every time my heart rate would go
up this head pain would come back and it wasn't a headache again.
It was this head pain, like a sharp shooting head pain.
So I went into the, I was able to go into the doctor.
I went into my doctor and my doctor was available and I went in right away because of the symptoms
that I had but it was just my doctor's office and my doctor said well let's just be safe.
I wanted you to go on and get a CAT scan right now so I drove to get a CAT scan and
then I went home and the doctor's office called me right away and said you have to
come back right now, you've had a stroke.
The words you just heard were of someone I have known since high school.
She was 27 at the time that she had a stroke and that was just the beginning of terrifying
health instances for her.
I'm so happy you're here today to hear her stories and if her words don't remind you
how the universe all has a plan for us, I don't know what will.
Today's guest is going to use her lessons to share how we can make sure that our remaining
years are healthful and that we are having the best quality of life.
Thank you for joining me for another episode of Life Snacks Lesson Plan.
I'm Rachel and I started this podcast during my 29th and last year as a high school teacher.
Goal of my work with Life Snacks Lesson Plan as well as my Live and Learn Patreon is to
create a connection where we are all teachers.
We all have lessons and stories to share that can help others.
I'm so fortunate to be able to extend the four walls of my previous classroom to an
unlimited audience where we can all learn from each other and my guests are some of
the most inspirational people with the best stories and lessons I know, which is why I
want to share them with you.
Their words are something everyone should hear.
It is my hope that you are able to take away something from each episode to apply to your
own life, whether that be a career search, path to a more fulfilling life, or new ideas
on current topics.
I'm so excited to throw it way back today to my high school days with my guest, Tracy
Danielson Mitchell.
We definitely met in high school and had some fun in our early days of college.
So it's really a treat after all these years that our paths have continued to cross and
that I can have her expertise on the show.
So I won't say too much more because Tracy's stories will fill you in, definitely, but I'm
going to let her just give a little bit of a snapshot of her background.
Great.
So, well, thank you so much for having me, Rachel.
And yes, we do have a very colorful history in the years that I've gone by.
My name is Tracy Danielson Mitchell.
I am a board-certified Mayo Clinic Health and Wellness coach and I work with women all
over the world helping them be healthy.
That's what I always say is my job really is to help people live their healthiest lives,
especially women, especially at midlife.
And I am the author of a book called The Bellyburn Plan and that book largely focuses on areas
that I also focus on which is finding ways to use healthy living to balance our hormones
and help us live healthier lives.
My book deals largely with food and what we should be eating, what we should be avoiding,
things like that, why our hormones do the things that they do.
And so all of that is essentially my wheelhouse.
I live in Chicago and I've been married for almost 20 years.
My husband's Justin and I've got three kids here in Chicago, one's in college already.
One's 16 and one's 10 years old so I'm all over the map.
Yeah, that's oh my gosh to hear that we're both having kids in college thinking about
some of the stories we're going to share today.
That just cracks me up.
Yeah, yeah, it's not that fast.
Yeah, it does.
It does.
So, because I always start the podcast by going back to our school days, I asked Tracy
to think back to a funny or memorable moment from high school or college and I was telling
her before we started taping she has a really good memory because I did not remember some
of the things that she's going to share today.
So I'll let her kind of share her funniest or most memorable school stories.
Do you want it all?
No, no please.
We had some good times.
No, I mean, well, we went to Hartford together and you know, I did not go to the same grade
school.
So our high school was a feeder high school, right?
And took all sorts of grade schools from around the area and brought them in.
And so I went to a really small grade school with, I think we had 17 kids.
I graduated from Freeslake school and I met you Rachel, my freshman year.
I think maybe over summer school even if we were in the same health class or typing class,
we took typing then.
And hey, how bad.
And we, yeah, we became friends and then after high school, we went to the same college.
We went on to Whitewater together and had a lot of mutual acquaintances.
We were two of a group of us.
There were quite a few of us that went to Hartford that went to Whitewater as well.
But of the people in our orbit, we were two of the few that actually stuck it out the
whole time without transferring to another school.
And we lived in Wells.
The biggest dorm on Whitewater's campus, the two towers, and I lived in West, you lived
in East.
Those were good times, Rachel.
I know.
Yeah.
Well, and again, probably smart that we don't share any more details about that.
Pre the days of social media, thank goodness.
Don't get in trouble.
Yeah.
Okay.
So walk us through then kind of your path in college or kind of post maybe undergrad
and then how you got into the current line of work that you're doing now.
Yeah.
So, you know, when I started in, when I started my freshman year, I really didn't, I wasn't
positive what it is that I wanted to go into.
And I was a theater kid and I was a more of, I did forensics.
I lettered in forensics in high school, right?
I mean, who letters in forensics.
And for those of you who don't know what forensics is because not everybody does, it's essentially
I mean, it's not just drama or humor.
It's a way of like, it's, I would say it's like acting.
It's an acting sort of a format.
It's kind of like competitive public speaking, I would say.
Yeah, it is.
That's a great way to describe it.
And then there are different categories within that would be humorous.
It would be contemporaneous.
It would be dramatic.
It would be group, like an ensemble thing.
And anyway, there are a lot of different categories.
I was good at that.
And I thought, well, you know, I'm going to go into theater when I go into college, but
I also really liked the idea of going into something that was post professional.
So I wanted to go into medicine as well as crazy as the sounds.
This tells you kind of the person I was my freshman year.
So I double majored in theater and biology.
And then I quickly realized that I didn't want to have a degree in theater when my professor
told me, and I remember this my freshman year and he said, well, the average person with
a theater degree earns, I forgot exactly how much it was, but it was something like $15,000
a year, something like that.
And I just realized then I wasn't hungry enough where there are a lot of very talented actors
who go on to do amazing things with those degrees.
I didn't have the appetite for it and I would have been gobbled alive.
And so I dropped out and I went to broadcast journalism.
And that's where I landed.
And that biology major, I realized too that I wasn't as good of a student as I needed
to be to fulfill what I wanted to do in biology and I wasn't then.
So I changed that to psychology, which was less of a technical degree for me to get in
terms of technical, like all the science classes and things like that.
That would have been too hard for me then.
So I changed it to broadcast journalism and psychology and that's what I graduated with.
When I graduated from Whitewater, where I worked in the, I worked for the radio station
at Whitewater.
I worked for WSUW and I was a DJ and I was the music director.
And it was the greatest job I had in college because imagine, you know, getting interviews
with some of the coolest musicians and groups and then getting all of the CDs that you wanted.
It was like a candy store for people who love music.
And it was wonderful.
And so when I graduated, I went for my master's degree in communication at Marquette University.
And so I continued on there.
And that's when the wheels really started turning for me in terms of what it was that was becoming
interesting to me.
I wanted to look more at media and how media was affecting people, specifically women.
And so my master's thesis was in, and I forgot the exact very long window title, but it was
media and the, how did I put it?
It was media and the perception of the female body as it related to eating disorders, specifically
bulimia.
Because everybody was looking at eating disorders and the wave model thing that was happening
then, right?
We had all of the wave models that were everywhere.
And for people who aren't familiar with what a wave model was back in the 90s, late 90s,
it would be, you know, like all the models that were walking the runway that were, I
mean, six feet tall and 90 pounds.
It's a bit of an exaggeration, but it wasn't so far off the mark.
And it was greatly influential on those of us who are in our teens and in our early 20s
at the time.
And a lot of people were looking at anorexia because of these wave models.
But I wanted to look at specifically another way that people could be affected, women especially,
in looking at different eating disorders, specifically bulimia.
So I looked at that through the communication lens.
And then I graduated from Marquette University.
I assumed I would be walking into this great career.
And I did walk into a really great career that afforded me the ability to travel all
over the place.
I worked in the automotive industry where I was able to become very fluent in how fan
clutches and roller bushings were designed and things like that.
So nothing at all in line with what I had just studied for the last how many years,
right?
I mean, eight years of my life, seven years of my life.
But I was still able to understand business and get my arms around business better.
And I traveled all over the country.
I was able to work with some really cool people.
I learned a lot from them.
I learned a lot about business acumen.
Again, I was able to do some forecasting for the industry.
I was able to do a lot of marketing analysis.
I worked largely in marketing.
And I was really getting into it.
And then I am traveling all over the place and then I was promoted to another job and
then I was recruited away to another job.
So this was all happening very quickly.
All the while, I started really getting more into this mode of, okay, if I could only,
my life would be perfect if I could only lose five more pounds.
So I really started putting a lot of value on how much it was that I weighed.
And now this is, you know, I'm a mid-20-something year old woman at this point.
And I'm living in Minneapolis, Minnesota with my roommate, Jen.
And I'm really going all over the place.
Like I'm working out a lot now.
I am single and I care a lot about how I look.
Vanity was like a big thing for me then.
And I care a lot about how I looked.
And I really wanted to just like, okay, if I could only lose five more pounds, if I could
only lose five more pounds, all the while being aware of this master's thesis that I
had written.
And you know, I did all the things that I think a lot of us might have done then.
I drink all the diet sodas.
I eat all the diet foods, all the snack wells, all the potato chips with Olien.
I mean, the Stofors Lean cuisines were in my freezer.
I don't remember a lot of fresh fruits or vegetables I ate back then that were available
in my refrigerator that would have lasted or gone rotten if I wasn't eating them.
And I was over exercising then too because I wanted to lose these damn five pounds.
And I think what was happening in the process of doing this, now I didn't go out, I was
in a partier, never used a drug.
I didn't have that smoke.
I didn't really drink a lot.
You know, I didn't have a lot of vices that I thought I had, but I was abusing my body
by the foods that I was eating and by the way I was exercising.
So I was on this extreme diet route and I was still maintaining this awful weight, this
god-awful weight that I thought I was, which I wasn't.
And then one day I was exercising.
I was in a spinning class.
I taught spinning classes to you by the way.
I was spinning by myself in a spinning room which locked, the door locked from the outside
and you needed a key to get in.
So I was inside this locked spinning room and I had this massive head pain.
It was a massive head pain and it wasn't a headache.
And I remember that this is such a distinction for me.
It wasn't a headache, it was a head pain.
I felt like somebody was stabbing something into the left side of my head and it went
away very quickly.
And it scared the bejesus out of me and I kept slowly slowed down a little bit and then
every time my heart rate would go up, this head pain would come back and it wasn't a
headache again.
It was this head pain, like a sharp shooting head pain.
So I went into the, I was able to go into the doctor.
I went into my doctor and my doctor was available and I went in right away because of the symptoms
that I had.
But it was just my doctor's office.
And my doctor said, well, let's just be safe.
I wanted you to go on and get a CAT scan right now.
So I drove to get a CAT scan and then I went home.
And the doctor's office called me right away and said, you have to come back right now.
You've had a stroke.
And so I had a stroke on the left side of my brain, my posterior prefrontal cortex.
And that was, yeah, I mean, it was a very scary time.
So I had this stroke, it's 27 years old now, 27 years old.
And I had this stroke and I was given all sorts of the typical post stroke protocol,
which was avoid caffeine and don't exercise more than 45 minutes, three times a week.
They knew that I was a young wanting to be fit person.
I'm like, I teach spinning classes.
What am I supposed to do?
And that was really all they told me to do because the damage had been done physically,
outwardly.
It wasn't severe enough of a stroke, thank God that I needed any sort of rehabilitation.
I was in for tests all the time.
I was constantly in for scans.
There was the mystery wasn't solved at that point.
And so I was following this protocol and I was in with my doctors pretty consistently
over the course of about three months.
Then I got a paper cut on my left finger.
And the paper cut came from, I was wrapping something up to put in my refrigerator.
I was cutting a piece of saran wrap off, you know, like the jagged edge of saran wrap.
And I got a cut on my finger and my knuckle from that.
And it didn't heal right away.
And I thought, well, I'm just going to let this go.
Who goes in to go on antibiotics for a paper cut?
And I let it go and I let it go.
And then after a week or after two weeks or so, I noticed that it was getting kind of
swollen and then two weeks later I went home for Thanksgiving to my parents' place outside
of Milwaukee.
And it was swollen and it was kind of oozing.
It sounds so gross to say, but it was oozing a little bit of pus.
And so I just ignored it.
I mean, I hate to say that I ignored it, but I ignored it.
And a month goes by and it's still there.
I still have a paper cut.
I'm putting bandages on my finger.
This is the same paper cut that I had now at this point from two months earlier.
And I woke up one morning and it was Thanksgiving and then Christmas rolls around.
I was about to go home, drive home back again to outside Milwaukee, Hartford area.
And I felt something underneath my left arm and I felt like a lump that was underneath
my left arm.
And I couldn't stretch my left arm all the way above my head without feeling a little
bit of pain.
It was just bad.
It was just a little bit of pain.
It was discomfort.
And that's all I really felt.
And so my roommate and I, you know, we got our bags together.
We both lived around the Milwaukee area.
We were driving back home together and we were driving from Minneapolis to outside the
Milwaukee area, which is about five and a half hours, five, five and a half hours.
So by the time we stopped for breakfast, I remember laughing, getting in the car with
her about a joke that we told and I was laughing and this was a memory of mine.
I laughed and I had fun.
And then by the time we stopped for breakfast an hour and a half later, I had a fever and
I couldn't really, couldn't really move that left arm anymore.
I was wearing a red long sleeve T-shirt.
So I told her, I'm like, you know, and I'm not feeling good.
And I lost my appetite.
I couldn't eat breakfast.
So I just let it sit there.
Whatever I ordered, I remember just letting it sit there and she's like, what's wrong
with you?
I don't know.
I just don't feel right.
And that's what I kept saying.
I don't feel right.
And then by the time we got home to my place where I was dropped off, my mom, who had worked
in surgery for the better part of 30 years at that point, I showed her under my arm and
she's like, oh, it looks like you have a swollen lymph node or possibly an ingrown hair that
got infected.
Just put something on, like put a warm compress on it and you'll probably feel better.
That did not work.
So within six hours, I think I had fevers that were spiking over 104, started throwing
up.
I started getting really badly, badly, badly sick.
And this one, now remember, we're coming up on a Christmas.
Coming up on a Christmas.
And so, you know, healthcare around the holidays in Hartford, Wisconsin was hard to come by.
But one night I was laying in bed and I'm telling you I was going in and out of bouts
of throwing up to fevers.
And it was fever or throwing up.
I was doing one or the other constantly.
And so I went downstairs in my parents' room in the middle of the night and I said, I need
to go to the hospital and I need to go now.
Because I knew that I wasn't getting any better.
And so my dad took me to Hartford Memorial Hospital where we were met by a physician
who worked there, who I had never met before, who gave me a bag of Vicodin, told me to come
back to the clinic to have my armpit lanced to let whatever was going on inside of my
arm out.
And it was probably just some ingrown hair, kind of something like that.
And I remember the nurse taking the doctor aside and saying, are you sure you want to
discharge her?
And she said, yeah, she's fine.
It was four o'clock in the morning.
Remember this so well.
She said, yeah, she's fine.
And I remember then I was like, I'm going home to die.
And I was throwing up in a bedpan in front of her.
I mean, I don't know what else she wanted.
So I went home and then within a day my mom brought me into her hospital in Milwaukee at
St. Joseph's Hospital.
I was quickly admitted where they discovered very quickly my mom requested a vascular surgeon
that she worked with because she knew something was up.
The doctor evaluated me and he said, I think she has necrotizing fasciitis.
Necrotizing fasciitis is what the media calls a flashing bacteria.
And so I was admitted into surgery right away.
I had the lymph nodes of my left axilla, the underarm removed, as well as tissue from my
bicep and then subsequently other surgeries that needed to be done to remove tissue from
my back.
And I had to travel this paper cut that I wasn't paying attention to.
Some bacteria entered there mutated to what they called like the, it was a strep A bacteria
mutated to the strep A bacteria landed in my lymph nodes, infected my body.
Thankfully, it only stayed on my left side.
I was scheduled for an amputation of my left arm.
And I mean, thank God my white blood cell accounts came down enough to show that the
infection was under control because the only cure for necrotizing fasciitis is surgery.
There's no other cure.
And so I was able to recover from that after, oh God, I don't know how many months it was.
It took probably six months for me to really recover because there's no stitches they're
going to put in your armpit, right?
I mean, from the inside out, it sounds so gory to say this.
But it was a real wake up call for me then.
So that was a real turning point for me.
And I thank God that I had that experience because had I not had that experience, I don't
know where it would be.
I don't know what the course of my life would have been like.
I don't know, but I'd still be putting fan clutches together and talking about roller
bushings.
But I felt like I was shallow as a puddle back then compared to what I really need to
learn about myself now.
So fast forward.
And this was the ultimate, like, OK Tracey, this is a sign from God.
I moved from Minneapolis to Chicago about eight months later.
And I moved here, I at the time was dating somebody else and I moved here because it
made more sense for me to move here than he there.
And I was starting to run again.
And so I started running a little bit.
And I went to a race out in Aurora, Illinois.
It was a 10K in Aurora, Illinois.
It was a Walter Payton 10K.
And so I go out there for this race.
And now, mind you, I'm starting to be much more aware of what I'm eating and eating
more healthy, but I'm still having this little pity party for myself.
Like, gosh, you know, like I feel so woe is me, you know, my life was saved.
And but I had to go through all this trauma, which was very traumatic.
You know, I had a stroke and it's not fair.
And then I had the next choice in fashion.
I just, it's not fair.
So I go out to this event and I line up.
And as I'm lined up, a man to my left stands next to me and a woman to my right stands
next to me.
Neither of them have a left arm.
Whoa.
And so I thought, like, I thought they came to the event together.
I'm like, well, they must know each other.
None of them have left.
And so I thought I stood in between them.
So I took a step back, like a couple of steps back and I just, I observed them and like,
they don't know each other.
Like, they're not buddies just because they don't have a left arm.
So I stepped up again and I was like, okay, well, wow.
And they proceeded to run circles around me.
They proceeded to run circles around me.
I think she, he smoked it.
And then I remember hearing a couple of men talk about the woman that didn't have an arm
and they're like, she ran something around six minute miles for the 10 K.
So you know, it was a real sight.
I mean, I have zero to be feeling bad about.
I have only things to feel grateful about.
Stop this pity party right now.
This is embarrassing.
It was a real slap in the face for me, but in the best way possible.
So I decided to throw away my career in marketing and I'm like, I'm going to really focus on
health, wellness, and that is, that is it.
So I was, you know, coming up on 30 now.
So I'm giving you the fast forward version of all of those six.
So finally, like finally when I get to about 30, I decide, no, it's 29.
I was 29 now at this point.
I became a personal trainer.
And so I, which does not require a college degree, but I got my certification in personal
training, but it afforded me the ability to go back to school for a second master's degree
in health and nutrition education shortly after that.
So I went back to school in health and nutrition education and when I landed in nutrition,
I knew I found my calling, what it is that I am supposed to be doing.
And nutrition was it's like encyclopedic for me and I have, I'm able to understand and
translate this information very easily into real life situations for my clients that I
now work with.
But we have to, I got my master's degree in health and nutrition education.
Now the fast forward of this is a wonderful man whose name is Justin had a couple of children
have this master's degree in health and nutrition education.
So I decided after a few years of, you know, working with clients that I want to write
a book because I have a lot to talk about.
And so I started, I wrote a book called the belly burn plan and it's all about how we
can eat our best while maintaining a healthy body, you know, you know, talking about foods
eating right for your body type really without worrying about dieting.
There's no counting calories.
There's no counting macros.
There's no diets.
It's just eating real food and it's a lifestyle.
And so that's the kind of the path that I took to writing the book.
Now, you know, I went back again, you know, I'm big proponent of continuing education.
I don't think that we should ever stop learning.
I think it's really important to continue learning.
I think it's important to keep growing in that capacity too.
And so I went on and I got my additional credentialing through the Mayo Clinic as a Mayo Clinic Health
and Wellness Coach and I hold my certifications through the National Board of Medical Educators.
And so what I do today, thankfully, I work with women all over the world.
As I said earlier, helping them stay healthy.
And a lot of women who are our age now, Rachel, are running into this little thing called
menopause.
I don't know if you know what that is.
But a lot of us are perimenopause.
I am perimenopause.
And then there are a lot of women who might go into menopause as early as, gosh, you know,
their early 40s.
And dealing with all of these hormonal consequences of what our bodies naturally go through, this
is not a punishment.
This is a way that we can learn to live with.
And there are a lot of ways to live through this healthily.
And so that's what I do now in a nutshell.
It's not a straight line.
I didn't become an accountant and now I own a firm.
You know, it was very zigzaggy, but well worth it.
Yeah, the universe definitely spoke to you.
That story at the start line, holy cow.
Yeah.
That talk about perspective check, right?
It really was.
Oh my goodness.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, we're going to take a little break and then when we come back, we'll continue
with Tracy's stories and a little bit more in depth about her career and her lesson for
us.
To those of you who have followed me for a while, you know that I value mental and physical
wellness.
Personally, I've worked with a few different coaches over the years and even been one myself.
If you are looking for education and support in your own wellness journey, I would love
to invite you to the wellness community I am currently in that keeps me accountable daily
with my nutrition and movement.
If you are a Facebook user, you can search for our free group called team MG.
This group is led by my coach, Megan Grimord, who is a certified trainer and nutrition coach.
She offers lots of education and support for your wellness journey.
If you want to get to know coach Megan more, you can follow her on Instagram at all lower
case Megan M E G A N underscore Grimord G R I M O R D or even listen to her on episode
10 of the podcast.
She has also created a discount code for my listeners.
Just go to her website www.team-mg.com and enter called lesson plan 10 to get $10 off
any of her premium coaching packages for the first month.
Coach Megan is a busy mom like me who works full time.
So I appreciate her practicality mixed with some tough love to keep me going.
All right, we are back from our break and I'm just going to have Tracy talk a little
bit about her career in coaching, kind of what she does on a daily basis with her clients
and then some of the highlights as you can probably imagine from hearing her story today
of how the universe definitely called her into this line of work.
It has to be really rewarding and fulfilling.
So Tracy, would you say you meet with clients kind of every day?
I know you obviously wrote the book.
You've been on the news, you blog, you've started a podcast.
Do you tell us just kind of the scope of your job, I guess is what I'm trying to ask.
Yeah.
So what I do because my, so as a Mayo Clinic health and wellness coach, my specialty is
in behavior change.
And so oftentimes what I find with women who really women of any age book, the older we
get the more set in our ways we become, right?
There's no mystery there.
We kind of want to keep doing the same things that we've been doing and we get very comfortable
with certain habits.
Sometimes those habits can be created negative feedback loop, right?
So and it has an impact on our overall health.
So when I start working, what I do on a day-to-day basis is exactly what you just said.
I talk with women, usually via Zoom, sometimes over phone.
And they are usually coming to me with some sort of an idea of what they want to see a
change with.
More often than not, it's weight, right?
So more often than not, they say, I went into my doctor.
A lot of my clients come to me from physician referral and others find me through my website
or through other ways.
And more often than not, they will say, I just went into my doctor and I have high A1
Cs, which are a marker in your blood that will indicate that you have high, you know,
your very close pre-diabetic or pre-diabetic.
Or I have high triglycerides or I have high cholesterol or my doctor said that I've had
clients with congestive heart failure.
Very serious complications of their health that could be made better simply by cleaning
up their lifestyle.
How do you clean up a lifestyle after you're 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years old?
Well, you have to change things.
And so that's what I really work with my clients on international.
I think of it like this, a box, right?
One corner of the box is the one that's most tangible for them to be able to anchor onto.
And I provide them with meal plans.
The meal plans are not diets.
I do not give them calories account.
I do not encourage them to count macros.
I do not lean one way toward a macronutrient than another.
You know, I want them to eat real food that is nutrient dense and learn how to eat the
right way.
I could speak ad nauseam for how our generation has been affected by processed foods, specifically
our generation.
But, you know, we have that's one corner of it, then the other corner of it is looking
at how are they moving?
What sort of activity are they doing?
They don't have to run marathons, but are they making the most of their body in terms
of physical activity?
It's a really important element of it for multiple reasons, many, many, many reasons.
And then we look at other things like lifestyle, stress management.
How are those things really impacting you as a client, right?
How is stress impacting you?
How has it impacted you?
A lot of my clients are very surprised to hear that stress can impact your blood sugar
levels and trigger belly fat.
You know, these are things that we work through and give them perspective in terms of, okay,
what can I do to take ownership of my own actions that could affect my lifestyle?
And then the last corner of this box would be the coaching.
And we meet regularly for coaching calls.
So they're about 30 minutes long, but that's what I do all day long.
And I'm just so happy at how effective it is, right?
Because really sometimes people just need a flashlight put on the problem and then they
can see it and they can make sense of it and do something about it.
Absolutely.
So meeting with people every day and kind of working them through their specific problems,
what are some highlights?
Obviously, this is a passion of yours.
And so helping people do this, I'm sure, is a reward.
But is there a certain highlight or two that stand out to you in this career?
Certainly objectively, you know, like the things that I can point to would be when my
clients come back from their doctors after working together for six months or in some
cases longer.
But usually three to six months is a good threshold to see a good report card, so to
speak, from their doctor.
Tried glycerides have dropped.
Bad cholesterol, your LDL cholesterol comes back in line with HDL cholesterol, your good
cholesterol, so there's a better ratio there.
Visceral fat, visceral fat is the type of fat that you have around your belly area has
diminished, which typically does not want to stay on our body.
It comes off rather easily.
It's just a matter of making things happen to see that.
And then seeing that they've just improved their overall intake of nutrient-dense foods
that a lot of clients have RA, rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune disorders.
How are your, what are your markers looking like for inflammation in your body?
So that's a way that I can go, okay, this is absolutely working for you.
Keep doing this long after we finish working together.
In other ways, I have clients who never thought that they would run or never thought that
they could run.
I have a client that I started working with a year ago who wanted to lose X amount of
weight.
She wanted to lose a certain amount of weight.
And so she committed to eating healthier.
She was one of these clients that was on a lot of GLP1 agonists like issemic glutides,
or more commonly known as like an ozembic or oligovia or something like that.
And then if that's an issue, she's on also a fentramine and another different pharmaceutical.
It wasn't really helping her get her to where she wanted to be.
And so she went off of it and it created a slower pathway for her, but that's lower
pathway allowed her to eat better.
And so fast forward all of these months to a year later, she ran her first half marathon
and she beat her time by four seconds.
She beat her goal time by four seconds.
Wonderful.
And so watching my clients achieve this, like kind of like what we all want to achieve,
that thing that we think we can't do and watch them do that, it's pretty cool.
And did I see that you ran with her?
I ran, I did that run together, but I ran, I was registered for it and I talked her into
it and she did it.
And so yes, I was there at the finish line with her along with her husband and we cheered
her on and yeah, she was fabulous.
Oh, that's so amazing.
So she, oh, that was awesome.
So you said that the majority of your clients will come to you for most likely weight loss
and do they get blood work done?
You review their blood work for them.
Correct.
So then you'll see other markers that are obviously contributing potentially besides
lifestyle and nutrition to.
Yeah.
You know, usually they'll come with a good sense of what's wrong already because they'll
have visited their doctor and their doctor will say, okay, this is high.
You need to work on this.
And that's what they'll come to me with.
So it's not me doing the interpretation of the blood work.
I mean, it is important to see like where liver enzymes are for example.
And liver cell and that's pretty telling in terms of what I suspect might be going on
in their lifestyle.
But you know, it's, yeah, so it's there, the physicians are the practitioner, the medical
practitioner will almost always do the interpretation and then I'll get the data and be able to make
use of it and be able to, you know, affect some changes that will benefit them and usually
do.
Okay.
Interesting.
So I know you've had clients who come to you first with just this weight loss goal.
What are some other things that you're working on them with?
Do you work on heart health markers, hormone balancing markers?
I know that's what I've been working on for the last year.
Yeah.
Hormones is a really big thing.
And it's one of those things that we all have hormones, men, women, children.
Women tend to be subjected to more nuts.
I don't want to use the word subjected.
It's just who we are.
We have more variation in many of our hormones more often than not.
Whether we're going through puberty, boys do too.
Boys go through a real loop when they go through puberty.
You know, women at a very young age, we deal with things like menstruation, which is not
always easy.
And it's a difficult thing for a lot of young women to cope with because it's a challenge.
When it comes to lifestyle and sports and things like that, but you fast forward through
our, you know, we give birth to children.
We, you know, we go through perimenopause and menopause, giving language to what women
are going through when it comes to that specific time in our life.
When to start?
Perimenopause starts.
Perimenopause can start as early as our late 30s and it can drag through.
Usually perimenopause won't last much more than a few years, but it can, like it can
seem to drag on forever.
And then the average woman actually hits menopause by around 52.
And then there's the postmenopause here.
So it's not, but we're done, you know, we just kind of wipe everything away and we move
on to postmenopause line is everything's wonderful.
That's not what happens.
So when our hormones are affected, and this is almost usually women are not like, this
hormone is often my body.
It's not never as specific as that.
They think that their hormones are off.
They think that their hormones are off because of XYZ.
Maybe it's hot flashes.
Maybe it's belly fat.
Maybe it's a lack of energy.
And the answer is yes, yes, and yes, it could very well be hormones.
Let's look at what we can do through lifestyle to improve the balance of your hormones because
you're always going to have them.
But it's like, how do you make the most use out of what you're doing currently in your
lifestyle so that way you can bring some, some homeostasis because our hormones only
want homeostasis.
They want that balance.
When we go through menopause or perimenopause, perimenopause specifically, there could be
wild variations from woman to woman.
Some women have steep drops in estrogen to progesterone.
It could be the other way for some women.
And so helping them understand what's going on with their body, more importantly, okay,
what's going on with the foods you're eating, with your stress levels, what's going on with
all of these other things that could be contributing to hormonal imbalance.
A lot of people think it's just food.
They don't really attribute or exercise possibly, but they don't think stress affects things.
They don't think sleep affects too much.
And that's a real eye opener for a lot of women.
And a game changer too.
And I know when I was going through the change of switching off birth control to see where
my hormones were eventually as they balanced out, I was on an anti-inflammatory diet,
only doing really slow yoga, walking gently.
I didn't realize how much exercise was taxing my body and how that affected my hormones
until I went through it and the difference in how I felt.
I heard this statistic too.
Tell me if, and then maybe you might get it wrong, but when women enter menopause, which
is really just a day, right?
It's the day that you like switch over, you no longer have, you haven't had a period for
a year, right?
But you're, I don't know if it's your estrogen levels, but I had heard that women kind of
premenopause have maybe now in today's day and age with our current lifestyles a 30%
chance of heart situation, heart disease, heart attack.
And that after menopause, because of how the hormones shift, it can go up to 50%.
Is that, did I mishear that or is there some truth to that?
So before menopause, a premenopause, they're not hairy menopause, premenopause.
Let's say a woman who's 30 who has normal hormonal regulation, 4% risk factor.
Okay.
Like women are generally at a 4% risk factor.
Okay.
And this is, you know, you were casting a really wide general, but yeah, you know, it's roughly
4%.
44% of women, 44% of women will live with heart disease.
So it's not a heart attack.
So when we say heart disease, right, there's coronary artery disease, which is obviously
very serious, right?
But then there's also things that affect our vessels, our nerves, that affect our arteries,
they're independent of the heart attack, right?
And so you could still have heart failure, you could still have a heart disease and all
of these things count.
And so when we look at things like how much sugar are you getting in your added sugar
in your diet?
Diet, when you do that, you affect your blood pressure.
A lot of people think it's just salt.
Salt's no good for us.
Like excess salt's not healthy either.
But we really need to look at all these little variables and how all of this can affect us.
But yes, you're absolutely right, that because estrogen drops and estrogen is a wonderful
blood sugar buffer, helps to really keep blood sugar where it needs to be.
In the absence of estrogen, blood sugars rise, which taxes insulin.
So insulin is a hormone that's released from our pancreas because estrogen doesn't do its
job as effective, what's not as present as much.
So we have blood sugars that are on the rise.
So insulin has to step in.
The problem is that insulin isn't as effective anymore.
It's not as efficient in doing its job.
And this can result in insulin resistance.
And this is a precursor for pre-diabetes.
Diabetes, this sets the stage for heart disease and other metabolic disorders.
And I don't think people realize that those numbers, those A1C, those triglycerides are
linked to your hormones changing as well.
Like there's a lot of factors, of course, but I never knew that.
I don't think a lot of people know that when your estrogen dips and it continues to go
down as you age, that causes health issues that aren't just, oh, I'm gaining weight because
I'm in menopause.
Right?
Like there are actual longevity factors attached to that.
Yeah.
I think a lot of women, this is what I really want to work against this mindset is a lot
of women are like, well, I'm through menopause.
This is just what happens to my body.
No, it doesn't have to happen that way.
It doesn't have to happen that way.
You can actually do a lot to support your body.
And you're not going to be 18 years old.
You're not going to walk around with the resiliency of an 18-year-old.
But you can be a pretty hot 55-year-old, 60-year-old, 65-year-old.
You can still look amazing.
70, 75.
I mean, I've clients through their 80s.
You really thrive through those years.
You have, I'm sure a lot of us have heard of this.
We have our lifespan.
We have our health span.
The health span is that gap in between where our life ends and where our health ends.
We want to close that gap as much as possible.
We do not want to take this attitude that, well, for women, I'm speaking specifically
for women, well, I'm through, this is menopause.
I'm not going to be able to do XYZ anymore.
My shit sailed.
That is just not the way we need to be thinking.
We need to be thinking in different ways from that.
But yes, so, yes, hormones affect a lot within our body and they coexist with our lifestyle.
So we affect our hormones by lifestyle.
Lifestyle affects our hormones too.
So everything kind of works together.
It's like this animal that just kind of moves in the same direction.
We just need to start moving with it rather than resisting that.
Yeah.
That's really, again, because you don't think of something until it happens to you very
often, right?
And so because of this age, I've been learning more about how this works and how to do exactly
what you're saying is I don't want to spend the last 20 years of my life with no quality
of life if I can do anything about it.
And so taking that into my own hands, right?
So you get into your own hands.
Yeah, exactly.
You can own this stuff.
You can take accountability for it.
It's very liberating to do that.
Right.
So we might have already covered your lesson a little bit just because I jumped ahead with
my questions.
But I think you had a couple of specifics that you were going to talk about today with
that idea in mind of just how can you increase that lifespan so that there's more quality
in the years that you're living, right?
Up until the end.
So if you want to talk a little bit about more specifically your lesson today and then
we will reflect and give them some action steps today.
Okay.
Well, I think one of the most important things is just that, right?
We oftentimes feel like we're too old.
And this is probably one part of human nature, one part cultural conditioning where it's
normal to reflect on our life.
Oh, when I was 14 years old, I could do all of this.
And this is independent of the responsibilities that we now have as adults.
Then we add on these layers of responsibilities and life circumstances, challenges with our
families, challenges with health, challenges with careers.
You name it, right?
You could throw the kitchen sink at this.
But it doesn't mean that you're excluded from doing other great things for yourself.
Don't be afraid to try new things.
Never be afraid to try new things.
There's been a lot of really wonderful research around doing novel things and how that lights
up the brain.
And just by taking steps to do things that are novel and doesn't mean that you have to
go climb Mount Everest, right?
You don't have to necessarily travel to see the Seven Wonders of the World.
It means, well, you know, maybe I'm going to go to the farmer's market that I've never
gone to before because, you know, I didn't really think that I would find anything that
I like there.
Do it.
See what happens.
Maybe you'll find something that you like.
Well, I didn't really want to go and join this walking group because I'm shy and I don't
really want to.
I don't know anybody.
My friends aren't in the group.
Well, go do it.
You might find some really cool people who are like-minded, who think like you, who want
to achieve these great things for themselves.
You just do it.
It's really important to have this ability to just step outside of your comfort zone a
little bit.
You don't have to- you know, it's stepping outside your comfort zone doesn't mean that
you have to take on your world's greatest challenges.
Just means putting one foot in front of the other and making a little step like that often.
And it really lights up your brain and it can change your lifestyle.
Yeah.
This reminds me of another way our paths crossed in our lives is when I was turning 40.
I did my first triathlon for my 40th birthday and somehow I bought your triathlon bike from
you.
I still have her.
Her name is Black Beauty.
Hi, Black Beauty.
Yeah, that idea and again, you know, now I'm 51 and still, you know, still challenging
myself to do things.
But that idea of like, why not?
You know, I was biking and I was running.
The swim scared me to death, but I did it and I'm considering doing a relay triathlon
this summer because I missed it.
I went and watched last year and I was like, ah, there's just nothing matches that feeling.
I don't know if I want to do that to my body to do the whole thing again, but I could definitely
do the swim leg again because nobody wants to do the swim leg.
But you know, doing those things keeps you energized, I think, and it's all healthy.
I love, I love, love, love that message.
So you have kind of some homework or a few three, I think, action steps for us of things
we could start to do today, tomorrow, to expand our longevity and our healthy years.
Yeah.
And of course, I'm going to go back to my wheelhouse if that's okay.
Yeah, of course.
You know, when it comes to nutrition and life and give some context to it.
So it's three very easy things.
And I think if, you know, just making small steps to doing these things, you will see
a significant difference.
So pay attention as you do them because none of this happens overnight.
This is not a prescription.
You're not taking pills.
You're not, you know, you're not giving yourself an injection or anything like that.
These things take time, but you will notice a difference right away.
So do you want to eat better?
Do you want to work on your diet?
It's not so much about thinking about what you need to cut out.
Look at what you can add in.
Try not to add in the added sugars, of course.
Like really read your labels.
Look at the side of what it is that you're eating, of a package of food that you're eating.
And if what it is that you're eating has more than 12 grams of sugar in it, which oftentimes
they do, maybe just put that back.
And you're talking about heart health, Rachel.
The American Heart Association recommends that women get no more than 24 grams of added
sugar a day in their diet.
Added sugar is the stress.
Not fresh fruits, not vegetables.
Men, by the way, if there are men listening, 36 grams is the threshold the American Heart
Association recommends.
Add in as many fruits and vegetables as you want, but try to curb the added sugar.
And don't make a banana synonymous with a bag of jelly beans.
That's not going to work for you.
So eat the banana, avoid the jelly beans.
Oftentimes we don't associate sleep with hormones.
And this is tip number two.
So if you want to sleep better, and let me tell you sleep is the hot button for a lot
of us women who are in our 40s, 50s, and beyond 60s, 70s, if you want to sleep better, turn
your screens off at least 30 minutes before you go to bed.
This is a very spoofable thing.
I've seen memes about this, like people trying to pry their phones out of their hands before
they go to sleep.
And this is something I work on greatly with my clients, too, struggle with this.
Turn your screens off.
Your pineal gland in your brain releases moa tonin.
The blue light from your devices, from your screens, emits blue light from these screens.
Blue light blocks moa tonin from getting released.
So your brain and your body are not necessarily getting that signal that it's sleepy time.
And you really want that.
That's what helps you feel drowsy, helps you get to sleep.
When you go to sleep, you want that deep sleep.
Deep sleep can happen when you're feeling really well rested.
And that's what helps scrub your brain.
It helps kind of get rid of all the gunk that's in your brain and your body and helps you
rest and digest, helps your muscles regenerate.
It helps your skin look good.
It helps fat metabolism, insulin regulation.
So sleep does all of that.
So turn off the devices and read a book or drink a cup of tea and just sit quietly, but
turn off the devices.
And then if you want to exercise more, and this is tip number three, if you want to exercise
more, don't look at it.
You have to go do 45 minutes, five days a week.
How about you just get up and do 10 minutes if you're not doing anything right now?
Starting small is probably the best and most effective way to maintain exercise.
Then you can grow from it.
Because once you start getting conditioned, once you literally condition your body, you
can start building on that brick by brick.
So that's the recap again.
So read your labels.
Try not to add in more than 12 grams of added sugar per pack, like anything that you're
eating or 24 grams a day.
Eat as much of the fruits and vegetables as you want.
And don't worry about sugar when it comes to those types of foods, but wash the added
sugar.
So when you want to sleep better, turn off your devices at least 30 minutes before you
go to bed.
And then if you want to pick up the exercise, don't look at it as running a marathon.
Rachel and I will be welcoming you for our next triathlon.
Please just start small.
10 minutes a day is all you really need to do to give your heart a good shot.
That's awesome.
And yeah, I'm just trying in these cold, gray winter months.
It's painful to get outside and get that pressure and get the walk.
But before we recorded this today, I was like, you must go with the dog for 10 minutes.
Just do it.
Always do something else later, but just start.
Just do it.
And you always feel better after just 10 minutes.
Well, I think it's gonna feel worse.
Yeah, no, you never regret it.
Never.
So, wow, there's so much packed into this episode that I am going to have Tracy back
in March.
Actually, we're going to do on my live and learn Patreon, we're going to do a hormone
and heart health month and Tracy will be back with us at the end of the month to do a Q&A.
So definitely I will talk a little bit more about that.
You can find out by signing up for our email list at life'snextlessonplan.com or watching
our social media.
I thank you so much for your time today, Tracy.
And obviously your work is so, so, so important.
More especially women our age.
I mean, again, you don't worry about it until you get there sometimes, but we are there
and I really appreciate the work that you do.
Thanks for having me.
I'm happy to be here.
I'm so glad you could be here to listen to Tracy's stories and how they led her to her
calling in life.
We could have talked all day.
And because she has so much important knowledge to share, as I said, I will be having her
back in March to talk all things heart and hormone health.
100% of us have hormones, men and women, and 100% of women will experience the changes
that come in midlife.
I have learned a lot and I'm still on my learning journey to optimizing the life in my years
as I age.
You can check out Tracy's work in the show notes and stay tuned on our website at life'snextlessonplan.com
as well as Life's Next Lesson Plan, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, and Apple Podcasts and
Spotify.
I can't wait for us to live and learn more about these important years of our lives together
on Patreon.