[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to another episode of the So Here For It podcast. I am your host, Amy Mingin, and I am so excited to bring this particular case study-esque episode to you today. Because sometimes you just want to hear a really good story, right? I want to give you a story of what happened with one of my clients where she began the process she went through and where she is now. Because I don't think her story is that different to how a lot of women go through their life, with how they feel about their bodies with how they prioritize themselves or don't prioritize themselves.
And if you're somebody who gets overwhelmed with all of the health advice out there, if you feel like you've tried everything, if you just really actually want to feel really, really good in your body, but you don't have the how to, and you don't have the plan [00:01:00] and you genuinely haven't loved looking in the mirror, then you're going to love this episode.
So let's start at the beginning. When I first met Karina, I was running personal development events. And inside this room, Karina would sit on her chair and she would nibble on lollies all day. Now Karina is shorter than I am. So if you've met me in real life, you know, I'm about like five foot three, 1 metre 60. So I'm a shorter woman and Karina is shorter than me. And it's not that she was particularly overweight, but she kept saying to me that she would really like to feel good in her body. And I said to her, when do you eat actual food? That was my first question I said to her, because she seemed to nibble all day long.
She just loved to snack on these little lollies or a little bicky. She would drink cups of tea, lots of cups of tea. And [00:02:00] she just didn't, when I was observing, I was like, she just didn't seem to like have a proper meal at any time during the day when I noticed her.
So anyway, she moved through that personal development journey. She changed her mindset, which was so powerful for her because the woman who she walked into that room as, and the woman who left were two totally different people. And she started to make firmer decisions for herself because at that stage of her life, she was 41 years old. She had just left her husband. Her husband and her were going through a separation, so she had a lot of emotions going on.
She would, she didn't necessarily know what the emotions were all the time, but she felt better when she ate. So that's how come she ate. And being someone shorter, she's like, Oh, my jeans are getting tighter. I don't really love the feeling that I get when I look in the mirror. And she wanted to be able to keep up with the kids.
Like she had three kids that were under nine at the time [00:03:00] and they're active kids. And she wanted to be able to be a good role model for them. So she did say to me that her health is really, really important. And I said, and this is what I say to everyone who tells me that their health is important, and I said, well, let's work together to make sure that your actual behaviors line up with what you say you value.
Now, here's what I mean by that. People who tell me that they value their health, very rarely are they committed to their health. So yes, of course, like I, I know I'm going to buy fresh food and I'm going to cook fresh food, but then also there's the times of life where overwhelm sets in. There's the times of life where you don't feel like you've got enough time.
There's the times in life where you're like, oh, it's okay. We'll just grab a burger tonight. We'll just grab the fish and chips by the ocean. We'll just, we'll just, we'll just, Oh, skip Pilates this week. Oh, it's raining so I won't go for a walk. All of the excuses end up piling in, which changes your behaviors.
And it doesn't mean that [00:04:00] you don't value health. What I'm saying is the behaviors are showing otherwise, because otherwise you would be doing it, right? So you could potentially go walking with an umbrella. You could potentially remake the meal and take it with you, but I digress. I'm going to go back into Karina's story now.
With Karina, she told me about three weeks into the plan. So she came into my program Catalyst. I gave her what to do. She gets her shopping list. She told me all of the different things. We created her plan. And the basis of it is it's anti inflammatory. So it helps her body where it felt puffy. It started to release the inflammation because that's all the puffiness is.
Most people think that they're putting on adipose tissue or fat under their skin layer, but most of the time it's actually water weight, about five kilos of it. So people have really fast results on Catalyst because we work on an anti inflammatory basis. So the [00:05:00] cells become more likely to hydrate, more likely to take good nutrients in, and more likely to detoxify things out.
The reason why the body holds onto inflammation is because those pathways are a little bit blocked when we're not eating the foods or we're not having the behaviors that support the anti inflammatory lifestyle that catalyst is, right? So she reached out to me, she says, I just don't know if I can eat this food for like any longer. Like it's so plain. And I said, isn't it interesting. Because the people who give me the feedback that the food is plain haven't ever really experienced whole foods before. And I said, this is what real food tastes like. She was so used to everything being from a packet. She was so used to just like ripping a sachet open, putting that in and stirring the sauce through.
She was so used to getting the jar of bolognese, pouring that into the mince, and serving it with pasta. You know, just those really simple basic meals that she was so used to making, and she didn't know [00:06:00] that she could have bone broth. She didn't know that garlic and ginger and fresh herbs were even a thing to make something tasty.
And so when I got this feedback from her that everything was so plain, what can she do? I checked in with that. I was like, Oh, are you putting the, the ginger, the garlic, are you putting some broth through your meal? Like, are you actually making it tasty? And she was like, I didn't know how to do that.
So it was a really good wake up call for me to show like, all right, well, if we're stepping somebody through this journey, it's going to feel extra hard for some people. And cause I get it like. We live in a society where there's a lot of convenience food. There are a lot of convenient options. And she was now a single mum with three kids and she was busy.
She worked. She's like, Oh, I don't like, I don't know how to do this and have time. So what did we do? We worked together because this is the beauty of having somebody by your side, having support while you start to [00:07:00] change your behaviours. Not only did she start to change all of those behaviours with the way that she ate, she started to change the behaviors around, okay well, what do I actually want to wear? Because I said to her, are you happy with what you're wearing each day? Because sometimes what we're putting on isn't in alignment with what we're feeling and it's just like, put the clothes on that you really, really like, wear the good clothes. So she started to do that and she's like, Oh, you're right, that pink top, I really like it. And she bought this really beautiful linen set one time. And I'm just like, Oh, this looks so great. And she started to feel really good in herself. And this isn't just about like this vanity metric, but it's about her realizing that she got to finally put herself first. She started to stop looking at things on her phone and she started to do the cooking.
She started to, instead of look at how other people were dressing. She started to go, well, what suits me? What do I like? And now every single time I see her, she actually goes, I love the way that I [00:08:00] look, I love the way that I feel. And very soon after she finished the program, she'd sent me a message and she said, this is the first time ever in my life that I have actually felt sexy in my body, that I'm the confident, sexy woman that lives inside.
That the mirror actually reflects that back to me. And to me, like that really, really just makes me go wow, wow. That this woman has gone at that time, 42 years of her life, and she'd never felt good in her body. She'd never felt sexy. She'd never felt like she could love herself. But the thing that really changed it for her is she put her health first.
She put herself first. And instead of sacrificing herself and saying she didn't have time and pulling on the convenience food that didn't make her feel good. She put the convenience food down and she became more organized because she had a structure and a plan. And she had me as support. So this is the thing. I get feedback from people all the time, [00:09:00] and people will say, it's just, you know, I've tried a lot of things in the past and whilst they work, they didn't work long term.
And that's why I created Catalyst. I created Catalyst because I want you to be able to have a lifestyle that you can follow. So whilst I say most women will release eight kilos in eight weeks, that's if you're of that weight range, right? That's just most women who come into the program. If you're a smaller woman like myself or Karina, Karina released, I think she was getting closer to 10 kilos.
And then she went into phase two and now she's in maintenance mode and she, like she will go out for a breakfast, but she knows her meals later, she's right back on track. She'll have the kid's birthday party. She might have a couple of lollies, but she doesn't sit down and have the whole packet anymore.
She still has her actual main meals. Like this is the thing. We're not living on treats. We're not waiting for the reward of the chocolate later or the, or the glass of wine, but we're [00:10:00] also not denying ourselves having that. So yes, there is a stricter eight weeks that we go through because of course we need to reset the behaviors.
Nothing changes if nothing changes. So that's why the first eight weeks exists so that we can reset things, reset your taste buds, reset your neurotransmitters, reset your gut, reset your hormones. They're the major things. Your metabolism finds a new set point. And that's why the food is plainer. We don't use the packeted sauces.
We don't use anything above and beyond what is already natural. You get to taste the actual food. You actually hear your body's full signal. Some people never knew what that was. You get to know when things are emotionally driven. You notice if you have a really stressy day that you go to grab a snack and you're like, Oh, now I see when I'm doing these things.
And this awareness, like, this is priceless. This style of behavioural change, this is [00:11:00] priceless. And that's why I've created it the way that I have because I want you to be able to use it for the rest of your life. I want you to live a happy and healthy and vibrant and fulfilling life. And if you're using all of the old behaviors that are all entangled with your food, it's very hard to segregate, well, what is the emotion? What is me? What is the food? Where is my energy really? I want you to be able to somewhat compartmentalize, but also know where everything joins together and feel more control of yourself. Because at the end of the day, the only thing that you do have control of is you. And I want to assist you with that.
So if Karina's story has landed with you, reach out to me. I am available on social media, come to my DMs, I'm going to put my catalyst mindbody link in the show notes, feel free to come into my DMs, come and consume some of my content, listen to some of the other podcast episodes that really are things that you know, that [00:12:00] you would love to learn more about.
And if you have a request of something that you'd love to learn about, reach out to me on social media. It's @catalystmindbody. And do this for you, like at the end of the day, yes, this is my program. Yes, this is part of my life's work, but this is really something that is true to me. It's something that I live. I embody. I have been doing this for over 17 years as a women's health naturopath. I have a degree in this. But also I have so much experience and I know what women want. I know what they need. And the thing is when you put your health first, everything else in your life, like it infiltrates everything.
All of a sudden you start having healthier conversations. You start hanging out with healthier people. You start having healthier behaviours. You start feeling so much more confident in different situations. It's not just about health. Your health is actually the foundation of everything. And technically [00:13:00] everything is a relationship.
So if you want every single relationship to improve, your health is going to infiltrate every single aspect of that. So that's how important this stuff is. So when you're ready, reach out, I would love to hear from you and have the absolute best day.
