About Me

My Story

It’s Never Too Late… to Be the Version of Yourself that You Want to Be

All of my life experiences have led me to this place in time. I know in my bones that this is who I’m meant to be, and coaching other women is what I’m meant to do.  I share my story in the hope that you see your story, too, and that you feel inspired to live your best life. I cannot remember a time when my body and weight weren’t the source of intense scrutiny, for me or someone else. I also cannot remember a time in my life when I was not obsessed with food.  I was put on my first diet when I was five years old and thus began a lifetime of diets – temporary successes and ultimate failures. 

As a child, I was always thinking about forbidden food – chocolate, cake, cookies, sweet rolls, doughnuts, pastries, Ding Dongs and Twinkies, licorice ropes, M&Ms, pancakes, ice cream, and on and on. I obsessed about what and how much I could eat, about how I could get food, when I could eat, and where I could eat.  Always in secrecy, hiding. Always alone. No one could know. No one could see. I ruined my sister’s birthday cake, I grabbed as many cookies as I could at friends’ houses and special events where platters of them were available, I scraped layers of ice cream from the carton in horizontal rows so that it would look like nothing was missing. I took coins from my mother’s purse to purchase candy on after-school runs to the local mini-mart. 

During puberty, everything escalated. As I packed on a lot of weight, I was constantly plotting and bingeing vast quantities of food in private. Trick-or-treating on Halloween, by the end of the night, most of my candy was gone. I had more wrappers than pieces of candy. Putting together Easter baskets for my two best friends. I went to the store and bought the baskets and candy. My friends never received those baskets.  I always ate in private, hidden away from others. I couldn’t tell anyone about the food I planned to eat. I couldn’t show it… ever.

I began to hear more frequently and urgently than before, loud and clear: 

~that I was too big,

~too fat, 

~that I overate, 

~that I’d be pretty when I lost weight. 

Decades

So I pivoted from bingeing to restricting and purging when I reached my teens.  I went on a 1,000 calories per day diet and a booklet of foods and their caloric value.  I figured it out.  I would no longer be the miserable teen. Until I gained it all back.  As my teens progressed, I discovered purging in a variety of forms. I could eat and be thin. I also discovered extreme restricting – not eating at all. I would go on week-long fasts, “two-bite” diets, eating only pickles. Restricting was a relief. I didn’t have to think about food at all.  I didn’t have to eat, so I didn’t have to decide what, how much, when, and where. It worked well, too – I lost a lot of weight very quickly.  But then it didn’t.Throughout my teens my magical thought was, “One day, this will all just go away.” Once I was an adult, I’d be free of the dual burden of obsession and weight. I would figure it out… how to eat, how to be thin, how to be acceptable, lovable.

Throughout my 20s, 30s, and 40s, I tried so many different things: Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Overeaters Anonymous, various well-known authors’ suggestions, no-sugar-no-flour. I even hired a coach and tried intuitive eating. They all worked, but not for long. Nothing lasted. Ultimately, I failed at each one of them. “Why can’t I figure this out?” I asked myself more times than I care to admit. 

Throughout these decades, I kept packing on more and more weight. 

~In my teens, I needed to lose 20, 30, maybe 40 pounds. 

~By my mid twenties, I had gained more weight, and needed to lose 50 pounds. 

~Into my thirties, even more, to the point where I needed to lose seventy to eighty pounds. 

~By the time I reached my forties, I needed to lose 100 pounds. 

“I cannot forgive myself.”

After the last significant weight loss in 2011 and massive weight regain in 2012-2013, that is what I said to myself. And I didn’t… for years.

It is important to note that I never gave up. To the outside world, it looked like I had. And I wanted to. I really did. I was tired of the depression, the discouragement, the drain.  But I didn’t. I never gave up. December 2018 I found myself researching weight loss surgery options at local hospitals. As I read about options, the voice in my head said, “Jenny, you know it won’t work. You can have the surgery, and you’ll lose weight. But you know it won’t work.” It was at that point that I returned to a podcast I’d listened a couple of time during the past months: Losing 100 Pounds with Phit and Phat.The host is Corinne Crabtree, who did indeed lose 100 pounds. She runs a program called PNP Tribe.  I joined her program and learned about the basics of weight loss – sleep, water, using a hunger scale, planning meals ahead of time, and assessing how it worked. She also introduced me to thought work, and Brooke Castillo and The Life Coach School.  All of it has been life-changing in the best ways possible. Thought work changed my life.

Here is what I want you to know:

~You are not alone. 

~You are not too old.

~It is not too late.

~You are SO worth it. 

~It is possible to change in midlife.

~It is possible to master your thoughts, your feelings, your eating, your relationship with food and your relationship with your body.

~It is possible to change anything else in your life that is not currently serving you. 

~My goal is to help anyone who can relate to my story, and who has the desire to change, to do just that. 

~Let’s do it together. 

My Approach

I practice causal coaching. With causal coaching, we examine the causes of our issues, not just the issues themselves. We strive to understand the thinking and emotions that drive our actions and create our results.

Causal coaching will help you to understand:

•why you eat in the ways that you do;

•why you struggle with eating, food, and weight;

•how you can overcome your food, weight, and body issues.

Causal coaching will help you to create the life you have always known you’re capable of having. 

Let’s get started. Sign up here for a free session with me.