Carisa’s mission: to help you create a healthy lifestyle and build a new relationship with food. A relationship to fuel all the fun, desired and deserved in your life. Some of my favorite things she shares with us: “The biggest secret, and it's like the hidden secret behind all the diets is…” WHY you should drink lots of water. “It's like a nutritional meditation.” “Love your body, period. You're right where you need to be.”
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Transcript:
[music]
0:00:06.7 Mischa Zvegintzov: Welcome back, everybody to the Tools For A Good Life Summit. Now, I would like to introduce to you Carisa Caudill, a dear friend of mine. Welcome, Carisa.
0:00:18.0 Carisa Caudill: Thank you, hi, I'm so excited to be on your show. Thank you.
0:00:23.1 MZ: Yes, indeed. So real quick, I'm gonna read your bio for the seven audience, so they can get an idea of who you are. And then we'll go from there, okay?
0:00:32.7 CC: Okay.
0:00:33.5 MZ: Alright, fantastic. So Carisa, you're a nationally certified nutritional recovery coach, certified testing and designing... I guess certified in testing and designing personalized DNA-based fitness. Which sounds awesome, we were talking about that before we started here, which... So anybody listening, if we happen to touch on that, it's amazing. Diet plans associated with that. You're a personal trainer, trainer, yoga meditation practitioner. You were awarded first and second place in a bikini competition and a bikini competition title in a drug-free natural body building show after losing 50 pounds in 2018 and 2019. I don't know if that flowed right, but suffice it today that you...
0:01:27.4 CC: It's a lot in there.
0:01:29.0 MZ: There's a lot in there. But that's amazing. Congratulations on that. You have an athletic background, a background since you were 5-years old. You've struggled since your teens with addictive behaviors, emotional eating, weight gain. Approaching, you're approaching seven years into your personal health, wellness and nutritional recovery journey. Your entire life is dedicated to teaching and sharing with others, your unique approaches to help build a new relationship with food, enhance energy, manage weight, curb cravings and bring more awareness around nutritional recovery, recovery habits. Your mission is to help others create a healthy lifestyle and build a new relationship with food to help fuel all the fun, desired and deserved in life. Freaking love that. How amazing is that. So I think what's really cool, maybe we could touch on for a second is like the ability to utilize nutrition. I know you said to manage cravings or things, but also to manage like energy and stress levels and things like that. Maybe talk to that for a minute.
0:02:49.3 CC: Yeah, that's a big part of my journey. You know, since I... And I'm transparent about this, and it has, but I... Was in my addiction really deep six years ago. Six math years ago, and I knew nothing about nutrition, like I really was not taking good care of myself. So through my journey, learning how to slowly take care of myself through exercise. And all the other things we're supposed to do that are out there that help us. Nutrition... I realized I was eating food to fill a void for the longest time, for the longest time. I wasn't realizing that hormonal balances were off when I was craving a lot of carbs or a lot of sugar or just wanting to fill up on food.
0:04:04.1 CC: And I know I was going lengths of time without eating at all, and I really thought that it was gonna help me lose weight. So bottomline is nutrition is... We have to eat. We have to eat. [chuckle] And so the biggest secret, and it's like the hidden secret behind all the diets is managing sugar levels, and they don't tell us that. And so I've done the cleansing, the starving myself, the, all the diets that are out there, I think I've tried them all. And a lot of them worked for short periods of time, but they were not sustainable. Sustainable with energy or sustainable overall to really help me understand how to connect with my body. So I know I'm kinda talking in code a little bit, but the biggest thing is to manage your sugar level, and that is what I focus on most. That we really...
0:05:08.1 CC: It's so important, I can't emphasize enough, how important it is for me to share with people and for us in general to understand what foods are spiking your sugar level. And what foods are causing different cravings, what foods are causing different energy crashes, what foods are causing different... Have an effect on different moods.
0:05:34.2 MZ: Yeah.
0:05:34.7 CC: You know food moods. So food mood logs are a really big thing I do with my clients. And once I started to interconnect my relationship with food, like what food was doing for me, that's when I... So to speak, nutritional recovery plan really, my journey really started. And so we all know that eating vegetables and eating...
0:06:03.7 CC: Lean meats or healthy foods are important, we all know that. It's kind of common sense, but our bodies so often want other things, and I'm just keeping it real. It's like I'm keeping it real. I've been to the point where I was 50 pounds overweight because my eating spiraled. And then I've gone on to the crash diets and the bikini competition was one of them. I went on a crash diet. I got super ripped and I learned... I thought at the time, I was actually eating healthy, and I really thought I was 'cause I lost all this weight and if you look at pictures of me on the stage of that bikini competition, I was ripped, but I can't...
0:06:52.9 CC: And I didn't know at the time, so this has been an evolving nutritional journey for me. So I didn't know at the time I was actually doing more harm to my body than good by losing all that weight so fast and not allowing my body to have the healthy fats it needed. I was eating too lean and I pushed my body to adrenal fatigue because it wasn't getting the nutrient, and I was a nutrient deficient. So when we see pictures of people totally in shape, ripped, I'm just gonna be... I have to be honest, it's...
0:07:36.4 MZ: Please do.
0:07:37.4 CC: It wasn't the healthiest journey at that time. [chuckle]
0:07:41.2 MZ: Yeah. No, I love that. I thank you for that. You've made me think of two things. One is, we tell our kids or at least try not to give the kids too much sugar 'cause we see the emotional roller coaster it can put kids on, and I think that still... You just reminded me that still holds true to adulthood. We're not immune to that just 'cause we're older, and that as a matter of fact, now sugars... And this is not to do a discourse on the food industry, but we'll save that for the next summit, but that perhaps unhealthy sugars are hidden all over the place. So there's that and don't answer that yet. And then the other thing is that, if we're going through a hard time, there's foods... How we eat can enhance the stress or temperate or provide calmness, and so sometimes... Well. I'll just say that. Is that a true statement?
0:08:58.0 CC: That's a 100% true. And it took me the longest time to really embrace the process of my eating, and I know it kinda... And it was so embarrassing for the longest time because I really struggled. I really struggled with what was healthy, what isn't, eating a bunch of nuts, eating a bunch of fruit, eating... And then somebody's saying or you're hearing that nuts make you fat or... You're getting all these mixed messages out there of what's right, what's wrong, what to do, what not to do, and then your body's here craving something else. So there is a way to get to a point where you intuitively... There is intuitive eating, where you do intuitively know what works for you and what doesn't work for you, but it takes work. You've got to actually write it down, and that's what I do with my clients. We actually have a food mood log. What foods make you feel this way? What foods spike up?
0:10:12.2 CC: And then your sleep. That's something that is really, really big, the sleep hygiene, when we eat late at night and we are spiking that sugar level at night, that cortisol level. It's actually linked to the melatonin, the melatonin hormone. So it really does affect our sleep, and there's a whole cortisol, a little cycle where your cortisol should be really low at night, and then you should wake up hungry. So if you're not hungry when you wake up, that's kind of like a little signal to where you need to look at it 'cause you're now starting the day for a potentially triggering day to emotionally eat or grab foods that are gonna be not in your best interest. So there's a lot to say on that. [laughter]
0:11:15.0 MZ: I love that. I love that. Yeah, thank you for that. I think too, one of the reasons I brought you on to the show, or not the show, the summit, and to speak to me and our audience right now, is that I loved the balanced perspective that you bring. It's so easy to find people that are like, "Work hard, push through, get ripped. Bam, bam, bam." And for some people, that might be the solution, but the reality is, as you said earlier, that might just be heightening the... Might not be a proper way of applying the tool of nutrition to having a good life, to stick with the summit theme. It might be heightening your anxiety versus calming your anxiety. So that was what excited me about having you on here is that it's like, "Hey, let's bring someone on who can talk pragmatically," if that's the right word, or...
0:12:18.3 MZ: About nutrition. So I think on that note, we get to the question.
0:12:22.5 CC: Okay.
0:12:23.5 MZ: Yes, you ready?
0:12:24.7 CC: Hopefully, I have good answers for you. [laughter]
0:12:26.0 MZ: I know... You better. Oh, I love the little tip about sleep already. I think the way you described it versus don't eat before you go to bed, the way you described it is, oh okay, that makes sense. I see, right? I don't know...
0:12:41.0 CC: Well, if I'm gonna eat the popcorn at night or if I'm gonna... Of course, I always work on the next best option. If I'm gonna make a smoothie of some sort, I try to do it as low glycemic as possible because of my awareness around it, and what it's gonna do and set me up... For not failure, but it's gonna be more challenging when I wake up. So at least my awareness around it helps my decision making. And I'm not so hard on my body, and it makes me want to choose something that's actually gonna be more beneficial. But if you don't know what those options are and you don't know what's going on with your body and how food actually affects your body, then you don't know. You don't know if you don't know. [laughter] 'Cause the longest time, I didn't know.
0:13:31.3 MZ: Alright, let's get to it. So, I'm gonna lay out a scenario and then I'm gonna ask you a question. So, the scenario is this, if we think of life as a three-legged stool of relationships, finance and health, and if we think of someone who is successful or was successful... Successful or was successful, and then they have two or three of those legs fall out from under them, that's when stuff can get gnarly. Sometimes it's easy if, "Ah, there's a little relationship chaos, but mentally, I'm okay." But if there's relationship chaos and then financial chaos or... And then you have a health ailment or... For me, it was my parents were dying and I was getting divorced, more failed relationships, and I was... My... That success, pull myself up from my bootstraps, apply more success to it, work harder through it, was no longer sufficing, right? I needed new tools. And for me, by the grace of God, I was open-minded. So, my question to you is, thinking of nutrition, what are the exact next steps you would offer a man or a woman who's coming out of that tumultuous time... What are the exact next steps you would offer this person, so they know they are headed in the new right direction, that they will have positive momentum towards getting their life back on track? How can they use nutrition as a tool to facilitate that?
0:15:14.5 CC: Oh man, and I've been there. I have been there more than a few times in those circumstances, and I didn't have the tools that I do now. So I'm really excited to speak on that, so thank you. I love your question. Man or woman, doesn't matter. First and foremost is to know that you have to take care of yourself, like the airplane going down analogy, if you don't put the oxygen mask on you first, you're not gonna have strength, you're not gonna be able to save anybody else, and that's actually a mindset that I have every morning. I'm still cleaning up some wreckage of my past, so to speak...
0:16:07.6 MZ: Sure.
0:16:07.9 CC: And I'm still in those phases of certain things not transpiring yet. And I know they will, I'm optimistic, I'm open, in my life circumstance with the relationship, the family, like stuff like the finance, all that stuff. It's still not where I would like it to be, and I still have my personal challenges. So, how I use nutrition to help me and what I would best offer, my suggestion and mindset to help anybody else is to make sure, first of all, you're drinking lots of water, lots of water. We have to drink water, and sometimes we put that on the back burner. And as we say that, I'm gonna take a sip. [laughter]
0:17:00.7 CC: And I learned to do that. I learned to pause and I learned to take a breath sometimes when needed, but water is so important. It... Water will help push through the circulation and the blood flow that you need, it'll help the whole circulation process so you can actually think clearer. If your brain is foggy and you're over-stressed and you've got all these things going on and you're dehydrated, you're lethargic, you're not gonna able to think clear and have any rations. So first and foremost, you need to drink water. Me, I drink a gallon a day, that's my goal. It's a good goal. It's always worked for me and because I like to drink, but that's in the hydration actually allows you deeper meaning, to absorb nutrients. You will actually be able to absorb more nutrients when you're eating healthy foods versus it getting stuck in the body or just being flushed out too fast so that there's an equation there, but... And I work a little bit closer, but water hydration, hydration, hydration, I can't tell you enough. Stay away from... And lower the caffeine. Lower the caffeine because a lot...
0:18:22.1 MZ: Sorry, sorry everybody. [laughter]
0:18:24.0 CC: Lower the caffeine and it... And I'll tell you, when I was doing those bikini competitions and the fitness getting all crazy, 'cause I had just gotten sober and I was trying so hard to get my new life back and all this stuff, my revenge body, so to speak...
[laughter]
0:18:41.2 CC: Yes I wanted it. I wanted the revenge body.
0:18:45.8 MZ: That's all good.
0:18:46.9 CC: Yeah, but I was drinking a pot of coffee at a time.
0:18:51.3 MZ: Oh my God.
0:18:52.0 CC: No joke.
0:18:52.0 MZ: Which is brutal on the emotions, right, and your physiology, I guess.
0:18:57.4 CC: All of it, all of it. And so I was in trouble. So anyways, water and... Go ahead.
0:19:08.5 MZ: So any tips or tricks to help somebody drink more water, right. 'Cause I think a lot of people go, "Okay, I'll drink more water," but as you said, you have built the habit.
0:19:20.3 CC: No, water workouts. I actually have a course and there's a little section on water workouts.
0:19:24.4 MZ: Okay.
0:19:26.1 CC: A little tip on that is... So I just drink. My goal is to drink four of these a day. So I drink two by two, from the minute I wake up, I drink two by two, and then two by the time I go to bed. I just break it down, and I keep it with me at all times. And I remind my... And I breathe, of course, and I like to take a deep breath and actually visualize the water flushing through my body and getting my circulation going and pushing out the toxins. I really love to visualize that because it just... It's an inter-connection. It's kind of like the ocean and the waves. I like to just feel... And it's a sense of calm, and it's an esteemable act that I'm doing for myself, so it really helps me with esteem. And knowing that if I get a phone call, that's either good or bad, if it's a good phone call, I'm able to show up, if I'm mentally clear. If it's a stressful phone call, which we get them, or emails you didn't the bill or whatever it is, I feel like, if I'm on top of my water, it allows me to just have this sense of calm inside where I can just show up for a situation better. My water and me, 'cause I'm thirsty, I'm a recovering alcoholic, I'm in sobriety, and I had no problem drinking then...
[laughter]
0:21:02.6 CC: It's like the drinking...
0:21:03.4 MZ: I hear that.
0:21:06.2 CC: So, the drinking the water, I can't emphasize enough. So...
0:21:09.0 MZ: Fantastic.
0:21:10.0 CC: That's the number one.
0:21:10.8 MZ: Okay, fantastic. So good, thank you.
0:21:13.2 CC: Number one, and number two is to be mindful of what you're eating. Be mindful, because we put ourselves... It's so crazy, and I have to go back to this, and I share this with a lot of moms I work with, that for the longest time, we used to... We... Ever since we were moms, we would pack our kids all the snacks and all the meals and all the things, and how many times as a mom was I out and about where I was like, "Oh shit", constantly feeling like, "Where's my food?" I forgot to pack me, I forgot me. So I'm either eating their snacks, which at the time they weren't that healthy, they're snacks, and I didn't know better then, or I'm just quickly eating out.
0:22:03.7 CC: So, one thing I've done for myself and it's... And my purse is literally a backpack, it's half insulated, so it can hold in a little... A little ice pack thing, and then I keep food with me at all times. And then the other little section of the backpack is where I keep my wallet, my stuff. And so I literally, I have a backpack. And that's something I do for myself every day. I have food on hand, and I make sure I'm never in a situation where I don't have something prepared for myself. And if I'm out and about, and if I'm running short or if I didn't have time to... Which making that time is the best act of self-love I do for myself today, is making that time to make sure I have my smoothie in there, my snacks in there, whatever it is. I set myself up for success when in the food arena.
0:23:01.3 CC: I never... That is my first and foremost. And if I'm out and about, I already know that I'm gonna go to a deli, either it's Sprouts, Whole Foods or... And I know what my go-tos are rather than... What I was programmed to do for the longest time is the drive-through or... So I know what my next best option is. 'Cause when I get in those moments of panic of... And I don't know I'm hangry until I'm totally my... That's the thing, when your sugar level drops so low, where you're in an oh shit mode and you know you're hungry... Know you're angry when you're in that drop level, that's when your cortisol levels spike, and that's when everything's out of whack. I have gone on that hamster wheel so many times, long enough to know that I won't do that to myself anymore.
0:24:00.1 MZ: You know what I love about that and you just reminded me and how these days, I guess for the awareness that I have or that hangry, I know that hangry, that was a heavy thing for me back in the day, is now, if I'm going into a... If a circumstance with the boy's mom comes up or something, or perhaps with one of my kids or whoever, maybe... It's like, you know what... And I haven't eaten, it's like, "Hey, can I eat and then we can come back to this?" Prioritize that food that nourish, to bring down, right?
0:24:38.1 CC: And I don't even ask anymore. I just eat when I need to. I'll be like, "Oh, I'm gonna have something to eat." And I offer and I like to have a little extra something 'cause I like to offer people. Because, I don't know, eating was always like this really awkward thing. You know, when you're eating in your car and someone's looking and you're... I don't know. For me, I was like, "Oh God". I have this weird thing around... But now I'm just... I'm okay with it, I need it. And you need it too.
0:25:08.1 MZ: Yes. [laughter]
0:25:09.7 CC: Here you go.
0:25:11.8 MZ: Love that. Here, have a bite then let's talk.
0:25:17.2 CC: Yeah.
0:25:18.0 MZ: Dawn my ex wife, I think, you know Dawn, or the boys mom whatever. We're dear friends, but she was like, she started packing food for me 'cause I would get that hangry and she'd be like, "Eat." [laughter] So, I love that.
0:25:34.0 CC: So those are my two, I wanted to have three in there, but two... Oh, and I guess number three would be to make sure you get no less than six hours of sleep. No less. And it's gonna be a little different for everybody, but that six to eight hours of sleep is... Even our cell phones, they die, we have to charge our cell phones. We are not... The expectation of myself to keep going and keep going and keep going, and it's not real, it's not fair, so my water, my food, and my sleep are crucial. And sometimes that looks like taking a 20-minute nap. Sometimes I'll pull over, 'cause if I'm feeling... I'm just so in tune now to where if I'm feeling like my energy level is... I like to keep it between my heart and my gut. My throat and my gut. If it's too high, careful, 'cause you're gonna come down and you're gonna feel a little you know... But if I'm too low, it's hard to get back up. It's hard. So I will literally pull over sometimes and just shut everything down, shut the phone down and I'll close my eyes for 10 minutes. Of course, you find a safe spot to do so.
0:26:55.0 MZ: Yeah. Of course.
0:26:55.8 CC: But I always pull in, I pull out my backpack and make sure I have water, I take... It's like a nutritional meditation. A lot of people meditate different ways. Moving meditation with extras, but that's my way of meditatively bringing it in. And what does your body need right now? If it's sleep, give it to her. [chuckle] And then I know... I used to think all this self-care stuff was selfish, but honestly, it's the best gift I can give to anybody I care about; my clients, my family, my kids. And yeah, me too, but all these things I wanna do, if I'm not doing these things, how the heck am I gonna show up for anybody else? So I just know that the people around me are gonna... I don't know, you kinda train people how to treat you. And it's just been a thing I've had to do for myself that it is who I am, I'm not afraid to eat, I have no shame in eating anymore, and that was a lot of work. 'Cause I was in the overweight. I've been in relationships where they monitored my weight or they made comments on my weight, and actually that made me revert into emotional eating even more. [chuckle] I do this for me, and I'm okay with it. That's the best advice I can say, is to take care of yourself enough so you can actually show up for all those situations the way you want to.
0:28:37.6 MZ: Carisa, that was freaking amazing. Thank you so much. I think that that's a great place to end. Everybody listening and watching with us, if this interview with Carisa was fantastic, and you want to get even more content from Carisa, upgrade to the all-access pass for that bonus interview, 'cause we're gonna talk about more amazingness. Any final thoughts to share that we did not get a chance to cover?
0:29:16.7 CC: I would just say, enjoy the journey. Love your body, period. You're right where you need to be. Sometimes those things you wanna do for yourself seem far-fetched, as far as in the health arena, but they're very possible, and I love just sharing all the ways that you can get there through nutrition and how that's really the base of it. So, that's it.
0:29:46.5 MZ: Beautiful. Everybody, you can find Carisa at... She's got a Facebook group, an awesome Facebook group, she's gonna vet you just so you know, but it's called "Sober Sundays." So go to Facebook, search the Sober Sundays Facebook group, and she might graciously let you in. You can find Carisa at coachcarisa.com, and soberfitlife.com. Am I saying those... Did I get those right?
0:30:15.6 CC: Soberfitlifecoach.com, that's that. And then from there, I have an Instagram link where you can follow me on Instagram or you can send me an email and you can ask any questions and I will get back to you, I answer all my emails. My website has a platform where you can just find different avenues to reach out to me.
0:30:37.6 MZ: Fantastic. And quick in the... If you upgrade to the VIP all access pass, which the buttons either there, there or there, I'm not sure which yet, but Carisa graciously... She has a DNA, what do you call it? It's this DNA package where you'll get the DNA sequence and then build a best health program for them. Right?
0:31:09.2 CC: Right.
0:31:09.4 MZ: It's got four sessions. Normal price. Well, she's gonna heavily discount it, it's gonna include the DNA piece, so she'll help cover that for you.
0:31:24.1 CC: And I think I'm gonna have to limit it to the first 10 people. Because it's a lot of time invested, it's a lot of time vested. We do a DNA, I register a kit with you as your coach, and we get a DNA swab and...
0:31:42.7 MZ: What I'm gonna do... Oh, go ahead. Go. Finish, finish.
0:31:45.8 CC: It helps us together, me and the client, whoever it is I'm working with, he or she, customize a nutrition plan, fitness plan and lifestyle plan, based on what works best for your body, how you metabolize carbs, how you metabolize certain fats, your exercise response system, everything. [chuckle]
0:32:15.7 MZ: I might be the first of 10. Sounds amazing. So generous that you're offering it. So upgrade VIP all access pass. You can get unlimited access to all of these interviews, plus all the bonus interviews. Carisa, I'm gonna hit stop. Thank you so much and we'll see you in a minute for round two.
[music]
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