Jessica Kishpaugh – Imperfect Action for Wellness Wins

Hi and welcome to the You World Order Showcase podcast. Today we are talking with Jessica Kishpaugh.

And she is from loyal Wellness or one life. Infinite possibilities. Welcome to the show, Jessica. It's so.

Nice to have you here.

It's so great to be here. This is always so fun.

Yeah. It's always exciting to see what different coaches are doing out there to be.

The change they want to see.

In the world. So tell us.

Your story how do you get started?

Oh my goodness. So I'll give you the abridged.

So I struggled for many.

Like upwards of.

Probably high school, even middle school and beyond, with just a real negative body image. I struggled with my weight ma bit and just a real negative body image. Just sort of thinking around food, dieting, mentalities, tried every diet. Lots of, you know self worth when it comes to body image and.

Comparison and.

You know, I tried every diet out there, kind of Fast forward. That trend kept going, kept going somehow I ended up.

In law school.

That really wasn't my calling, but I.

Did practice law for upwards of.

10 to 11 years, give or take, minus a little maternity and kind of.

In that in those last few years of law I was, I was burned out. I was just, I was unhappy. I was like, this is not what I meant to be doing. I'm.

I'm getting married. I want to have children like. I mean, it was a lot of things happening for me and I also really was tired of the body image and the negative self worth and the and the diets. And I was like, I just want to like, look great and feel great and feel good about myself from the inside out. And so they're they all came to a front.

Kind of.

Personally, career physically, professionally, this was all kind of happening over the course of a few years and I was able to work with some other professional coaches and, you know, realize there's a lot of mindset that went beyond.

Like behind a lot of my struggles, a lot of you know, emotional.

Attachment to food. Emotional eating, you know, loss of disorder, thinking around food and a lot of that all kind of came to a front for me as I worked through that personally professionally I started to redevelop. I would say an interest.

In nutrition and helping others in.

Wanting to serve, you know, the greater good and you know, I got into law for that reason too. I was a prosecutor. I did help victims of crime like, but that wasn't my calling. And so.

Long, long, long.

Long story short, so I did go back.

To school, I became certified as a holistic nutritionist and then I really started to dive into the mindset component of that. So I love working.

In emotional eating, binge eating, overeating, mindless eating, dieting behaviours, that's really my specialty. I am now a certified mind body eating coach, nutrition psychology counsellor. So I that's my passion. I've been doing that. Gosh, it's been.

Five or six years already since I've been practicing and it's been amazing just working with women who share my struggle but also have others and you know, really.

Able to build something for myself, which is.

Fulfilling its makes me happy. It makes me balanced. It keeps me, you know, you know.

It just lights me up to see women make their changes to do the inner work, to do the inner healing, just like I did, and I was finally able, by the way. Just personally, I was finally able to get to a.

Place where?

I, you know, feel great in my skin and you know, I live a really healthy and balanced lifestyle and I think that's.

Part is really important and you know.

It was a personal professional career, but it kind of transformation for me. So I feel really good about it and I feel really great about helping women in their space and in their journeys and in in their mind, body eating challenges and transformations as well.

How do you feel about like?

Becoming a different person as you go through these processes.

So interesting. So you know, I did a lot of personal development work in in my journey, and I think it's.

It's like you have it in you somewhere and I don't know if you become a different person per se, but I do look at situations differently. I react to situations differently. I treat others in differently in terms of like.

Kindness and respect and patience. And you know when you're controlled by your emotions. Sometimes that sort of gets put to the wayside and maybe you it maybe it shows up with more.

I don't know frustration or anger or resentment or, you know, and of course that also leads to our eating behaviors. But so for me and then growth and then age and you know, there's a lot of things. So do we become a different person?

A little.

But also maybe these are just qualities that need to be dug out and like allowed to flourish and allowed to be to become, so to speak.

Yeah, I look at it, it's like seasons, there's different seasons in our lives. Nothing ever stays the same. You're either growing or dying.

What? What are your?

Philosophies around food and.

Dieting and how does your program work?

Sure, sure. So philosophies, it's so interesting.

I take a very multifaceted.

Very holistic approach to each individual that I work with and looking at their particular challenges, customizing the experience to that particular person. So when I work with women, you know, we work together for, you know, a minimum of three months and beyond. And we are looking at the whole picture.

So maybe they for example.

You know they want to lose.

Great. OK, great. So we really kind of dig that entire piece of the puzzle apart and it's not just not nutrition, it's not just nutrition, but it's actually so much more, I would say maybe that's some of what we might or might not actually work.

I've had lots of clients who, you know, want to lose the weight, but really their biggest struggle is their emotional eating behaviors or their compulsivity is, or they're binge eating or their, you know, self the way that they self soothe or their levels of stress in their life and how they eat.

As opposed to what they eat and you know, so there's so many sort of techniques and things that we work on when it comes to all of that. Right. We'll put nutrition over here and we'll put kind of like everything else. Mind body you know.

Spirituality, mindset, work, lifestyle, emotions, kind of all in this other clump. But through that work you are also.

Adjusting, you know.

Aspects of your life that that you don't even realize are having a benefit to your weight, like there are certain things that you can do to your stress levels or the way that you eat, how you eat right, that also have a hormonal impact. And when that has this particular hormonal impact then you know that helps burn more fat. So you know we're really working on all of this. I've had clients really.

Have such amazing success with weight, even when we take.

The pressure off the weight.

When we stop the restrictive dieting, when we stop right, when we allow people to get curious about their behaviors and actually ask, hey, what does that mean? What is? What is? Why am I doing these things? What does this actually mean? What is the real root reasons of what's happening? And we're addressing the whole picture, right? Maybe it's like, I don't know. I live in a cluttered.

House, with cluttered kitchen and a cluttered mess, and A and so. And my sleep is off. And I'm constantly stressed because I just feel overwhelmed and like.

We might work on that.

His life calling you to be and do and. And you know when we can get a better picture of that. There's so many wonderful things that happen with women. So I would say just to answer your question.

It's not one philosophy per se or methodology, but we do take a very like larger view in terms of looking at lifestyle choices and emotions and behaviors and habits and things of that nature.

I have long believed that.

Excess weight is a symptom. It is not the problem in and of itself.

Almost everyone who is overweight.

Is struggling somewhere emotionally.

Yes, your our emotions drive so many chemicals in our bodies that it's just like if you can't get that under control.

Just give up.

On the whole, lose weight thing because.

That's not happened.

For you, honey.

But that's just my philosophy.

Yeah. I mean, there's, there's a lot. There's a lot that goes into it. I mean there there's a lot, right. And I think that's why it's important for.

Women. Well, I work with women, but for people generally, right? Not to, you know, to learn how to not compare to others or to, you know, you can get lost on like.

The Googling and the what new fad diet is out there, and honestly like what works for one, doesn't work for all, and at the end of the day, if you're restricting your diet and you're doing some sort of quick fix, it may work for you in the short haul. But is that your lifestyle for the rest of the life? No, that's.

Why there's an?

Crazy statistic which is, you know, 96 to 99% of.

People who have.

Ever been on a restrictive diet will gain the weight back.

Within two years. So.

And more.

And then some, of course, yeah, of course. So, like, maybe you're that 1%, but that's just not, you know, the odds are not in your favor in that respect. And so when I teach women how to live, how to live a healthy, happy lifestyle like.

I don't mean that in like a.

Like Ohh let's live a healthy happy lifestyle like truly, truly how?

Do you live?

Day in and day out, living a healthy, wonderful, happy lifestyle. Like find the things that you're joyful in and passionate. What lights you up right in your life.

What you know? How's your job? How's your relationships? How's your hobbies, your interests? What is your?

Stress level like.

What is your nutrition like and how can we optimize that to make sure that you are living a healthy lifestyle? Are you moving? What is, you know, what do you find joy in? You know, it's not just do this strict thing. Eat this. Don't eat that.

How are you enjoying your food? Right. It's there's a there's so much to it. It's very, very multifaceted.

And it's not even just people who are.

Overweight that would come to you.

People that are you know.

Underweight could come to you.

Because those people are like struggling with Wellness issues also or people who have, you know.

Unreasonable expectations of what their body should look like.

Those people need help too.

100% and I will say this, I was not an obese kid or an obese, obese, early adult young adult, whatever you want to call it.

I was a little overweight.

I had a belly.

I had like double chins, but I wasn't obese. I had some weight to lose. It was my body image and all of the other things that were really bringing me down my negative self esteem about who I was as a person. I got married late, and I think that that was a huge reason.

You know, I had kids.

I think there was a lot that was happening for me in terms of that body image that that self esteem that self worth, that emotional connection to food, right, that stress in my life, right, a young attorney in New York City, I mean, it's very stressful and there's plenty of women that that come through my path where they just want to stop dieting.

They don't. Maybe even. Maybe they don't even want to lose weight. They just want a better relationship with food. They want a peaceful relationship with food. They want, you know, to stop worrying every time they go out to dinner or go on vacation. It's the food obsession or the diet obsession or the constant battle with the scale they just want.

To let go of the scale.

Right. I had one woman. She just wanted to maintain. She was. She was content where she was. But she weighed herself four times a day. Could you imagine like what that does to a person's, you know, Psyche?

Constantly like this.

Your body changes during the day like 5 or 6 lbs. Easy. Whether you're drinking enough water or not. I mean, water weighs.

Totally. Totally.

8 lbs a gallon. You talk about, drink a gallon of water a day. Well, there's 8 lbs you're adding to your body.

I mean, and women too. We have changing hormones. They're cyclical. You know, there's a lot of things.

When you when I talk a lot about this concept of counting calories, this very archaic, you know, eat less, move more, I eat less exercise more, you know, take in less thing you've consumed right then you're like expending and it is outdated because it's purely a scientific laboratory analysis.

And it doesn't take into consideration.

Hormones, which play a huge role, and I'm not just talking like female to male hormones, but that is one of them, right? Hormones, emotions.

Which then also contribute to our hormone levels, which contribute to our fat burning capabilities, IE stress right gender.

Our sleep patterns.

Like it, there's a lot that our behaviors, our habits.

We're all unique, and so it's really important to see each individual as unique and look at their whole picture. They'll get their whole lifestyle, look at, you know.

I just can't say it enough. It's not just eat this, don't eat that and everyone can go on the same diet. So.

To speak.

That's to do with the way you work too. There are a lot of companies out there that have rolling schedules where people are working days and nights and or just nights if.

If you work.

That kind of schedule, it throws your whole body off.

And you might not even think about it until you know a couple of years down the line and you're like, gosh, I keep gaining weight and I don't understand why.

I think I'm sleeping enough hours, but you're not sleeping during the times when your body needs you to be asleep. Our bodies are designed to be asleep between like, 2:00 and 6:00.

That's how we're made.

And there's optimal times for digestion. There's optimal times for fat burning, right? It's not just what we're eating, it's how we're eating when we're eating, how often we're eating, how much we're eating, what we're eating. But.

It's not just what, right?

It's a lot more than that.

Yeah. And the other.

Repair things that your body does.

You know when you sleep your body.

It processes stuff. You're.

Asleep for a reason? It's not like you're just in this coma and nothing's.

Going on all.

Lots going on, and if you're not getting.

Good sleep.

You're not. You're not well.

Not to mention that you know fatigue and stress play like an integral role with one another, so oftentimes stress.

Leads to less sleep.

Which then leads to inability to manage stress well, and it becomes this like vicious cycle. But it also leads to.

Fatigue leads to the release of our hunger hormones, so we also have this like false sense of hunger when we're tired. So like late night snackers people who are up in the middle of the night, right. Like when we don't get enough sleep, our body thinks like we're hungry.

But we're actually not. But we feel hungry because we're there's a hormonal released for hunger, but like, you're not really hungry. You're not. Your body is not actually meaning food, but you think you are, which makes it really easy when.

You're stressed to then.

Go eat because you think you're hungry. So it's like they're so intertwined, which is. So why I got it like.

Our emotions handling our emotions. And it's not just stress. It could be other negative emotions that are, you know, grief, sadness, loneliness, boredom, whatever. But they're so related to how to an effective night's sleep.

And they go back and forth to how we're dealing with our everyday.

And then our behaviors around food.

And even.

Even our environments play into it in the winter time when it's dark and.

You're not getting the sunshine that you need.

And you become depressed and then food becomes comforting.

As we head into winter.

Yeah, yeah. And I like to say like.

You know, comforting food is there's nothing wrong with that, right? We just. I want so many people have a lot of, like, guilt and shame around their behaviors around eating. I say that your behaviors are actually a.

Sort of sign. And they have a lot of wisdom and they show you things.

Right. They they're telling you things. It's bringing awareness to certain.

Things so, you know, we can take the pressure off of something's wrong with me. Why am I doing this? There's something wrong with me. I now feel like guilt or shame. Or what's my body is broken because I can't lose this weight because something's wrong with me. Because I eat. No, no, no.

No, no, like.

We have to.

Take a step back and realize, hey, your body's not broken.

You're not broken. There's nothing wrong with you. Your behaviors like have reasons so.

Let's look at the reasons.

Let's just not like, oh, you have to just stop cold Turkey and stop eating these things. Like, no, we need to look at the real actual reasons. And that could be so many different things. It could be any slew of emotions or events that happened from trauma to grief to just a stressful day with your kids.

Right. Like it's, you know, there's a lot that's going on.

Yeah. And everybody, like you said, everybody is different.

I know that you offer.

Some free gifts on your website you want to talk about that a little.

Bit because I think it would help people.

Yeah, sure. So

So I have a craving sheet. It is it. It's great in terms of being able to understand both your physical cravings and your emotional cravings. So similar to like you know.

Emotional eating. Sometimes we don't realize if they're emotions or emotions or not. Sometimes we don't realize we have these emotional eating behaviors. Sometimes we just have cravings because of physical reasons. So it kind of is. It's this like step by step guide to both physical and then emotional cravings and like some things that you can do and.

I also put one of my favorite recipes on there too and a couple of other resources and links to it, so it's a. It's a really great first start to start to understand like.

OK, what are what are? What are my cravings all about physically?

Is it nutritionally? Isn't it a depletion in certain nutrients or is it something else? Is it an emotion or is it a behavior or an event or circumstance?

And they can find that on your website.

Yes, and your website.

I have a link for you too. If you know I can give it to you as well, but yes.

OK. And we'll put that in the show notes below is there.

Anything that you would really like to leave the?

Audience with today.

Yeah, I always love that question as well.

Like you know, I have this mantra and.

And we use this a lot with our clients and it's to take imperfect action.

So this can apply to so many things, not just food, not just diet and weed, and emotionally eating behaviors. But this can really apply to anything that you want to do or change. It's to take action, and usually when you take action and it's something new or different, it's scary and that's OK.

Leaning into the fears part of the process of change and change doesn't happen overnight and change shouldn't happen overnight. Rome wasn't built in a day, right? So taking imperfect action means.

Taking action, it means doing something you know we can learn and read the books and do the Googling and keep doing all these like learning, learning, learning concepts. But ultimately we have to take a.

And allow ourselves to have some courage, which means have some fear, right? This change is scary. So have a little bit of fear. Let it be uncomfortable. Let it be a little.

Bit scary, but take a baby step in One Direction and then take like another little baby step and then another little baby step. And that's really how I work in terms of moving people forward.

And gaining positive momentum and helping people make positive habit changes.

Drastic, drastic changes overnight, they're going to be short lived.

So instead, why not take small baby steps in little imperfect action steps, so that way you can build new habits and be able to keep moving forward instead of, you know, five steps forward, 10 steps backwards and like never actually move forward, right. So taking perfect.

I love that.

And perfect action. Messy action. I like to call it.

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. It is messy like.

And it doesn't have to be perfect. You just do something, move in that direction, and stand there for a minute if you must. But you know.

And this can be it can be anything. It can really, you know, apply to anything in your life if you think about the things that are keeping you stuck and holding you back and the reasons that you're telling yourself are usually just reasons up here, they're usually just, you know, stories that we're telling ourselves in our head. But when it comes to it, you know, rip.

The Band-Aid off take a little baby step.

Put your pinky toe in. Take a little bit of action.

It's not a better lie.

Sports appears.

Thank you so much for joining us today, Jessica. It's been amazing.

Thank you so much, Jill. I appreciate your time.