My guest today is Allie Cass. Allie is a former bodybuilding pro turn functional health and fitness coach who helps stressed out women optimize their metabolism up level their mindset and shift from surviving to thriving. We discuss movement, metabolism, nutrition, stress and mindset to get and stay healthy.

The real magic, the secret to any business success actually comes behind the scenes through the work you do on yourself to set the stage for your business. Without it you and your message can get lost in confusion and overwhelm.

There’s only one skill you need to master if you’re going to succeed in the fitness industry (or any industry really) and it has nothing to do with sets and reps, macros and calorie balance, alignment or movement modifications. You can be an expert in all those things but it means nothing if you can’t safely self regulate your nervous system. Wellness work is based on relationships. Physical, mental and emotional dysregulation is the fastest way to kill personal and professional relationships and guarantees burnout. 

For many of us establishing strong boundaries is an ongoing evolutionary process. I have heard so many clients, mostly women, and colleagues, again mostly women, complain about a lack of boundaries and how they struggle to stick to them. There’s definitely a lot to unpack there for women. We could blame the patriarchy, “good girl” syndrome, people pleasing, codependency, imposter syndrome…really any and all the cultural things out there. But I believe a big part of our problem setting boundaries is actually in our understanding of what a boundary is. And what it should do for us.

Isn’t it interesting to note how many of us in wellness come to it through some kind of struggle with food and body image?

That is the crux of this diet culture - our relationship with food.

One might think fit pros SHOULD have their act together when it comes to nutrition we’re human too. We survive the same trauma to get here as everyone else. And just because you are athletic when you’re young or look fit now doesn’t mean you’ve got it all figured out. In fact when it comes to disordered eating and eating disorders Athletes are far more likely to suffer from some kind of body dysmorphia or eating disorder than non athletes at any age.

What that means is we’re all in it together.

This year is all about being more intentional on the work IN when it comes to health and that includes making conscious decisions around how and what we eat. If you’re a fit pro or in wellness at all you’ve probably gotten a lot of questions about what to eat from clients. And it’s difficult to answer those questions and stay within your scope. For myself and many of my colleagues it’s even harder when you also struggle with disordered eating. But I think that’s a beautiful thing about the fitness industry when you can share your own experience (which is always within your scope) and bring your people the latest nutrition information so they can make intentional informed choices for themselves. My guest today is author and health advocate Lynne Bowman.

Lynne is living proof that you can cook, eat, sleep, laugh, and walk your way out of type 2 diabetes, along with other chronic ailments, and her latest book, “Brownies for Breakfast, A Cookbook for Diabetics and the People Who Love Them," is a cool, fun, beautiful, guidebook for anybody who wants to reverse chronic disease, and eat healthy: vegan, vegetarian, plant-based, pescatarian, gluten-free, sugar-free. Plus, because she's a grandma, expect all kinds of advice along with the recipes from her lifetime of experiences.