Crushing the Quarantine 15 w/Weight Loss Coach Elizabeth Sherman
- Lanee and Sandy
- Jun 22, 2020
- 1 min read
Updated: Jun 21, 2024
In a year where we face so many obstacles that we cannot control, it’s comforting to find an area where we can finally make some positive changes—our own personal health and wellness! This episode focuses on the easy, new things that you can start doing and the old, unhealthy things that you can stop doing in order to kick that Quarantine 15 pounds to the curb.
Cravings and Hormones and Carbs, Oh my! This quarantine time has some of us spiraling out of control with irregular schedules and stress eating, but our guest, Elizabeth Sherman, uses her skills as a Life Coach to help change our mindset and her skills as a Weight Loss Coach to help change our habits. She carefully lays out some of the underlying reasons why we might be struggling with our health and weight loss goals—and they are things you would have never guessed!
Listen in as she gives advice on how to make easy, attainable, and sustainable life changes!
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Sandy Kovach [00:00:00]:
Through hard times and happy times, we at Imagine Yourself want to be here for you. We're so glad you decided to join us once again, and we invite you to imagine yourself.
Lanée Blaise [00:00:11]:
Thanks for joining us at Imagine Yourself. I am Lanee.
Sandy Kovach [00:00:14]:
And this is Sandy, and, Lanee, tell us what we have to imagine today.
Lanée Blaise [00:00:18]:
So today, we acknowledge that this has been a hard year and that there have been lots of things coming at us. So many things hitting this country and our world Lanee, but we also recognize that in the midst of all that, our health is important. And so, it's even something that I bet after COVID nineteen, we truly will no longer take for granted. So, today, we are imagining ourselves fit and fruitful. To help us with that today, we have a life and weight loss coach who is also a nutritionist and a personal trainer and health coach. We wanna make sure that we integrate all the different ways that we can educate ourselves. Her name is Elizabeth Sherman, and she has a heart for helping, especially helping everyone, but especially helping us women over 45 to achieve our optimal health, optimal energy, good eating habits, good sleeping habits, good living options, all the things. We want to welcome Elizabeth Sherman today.
Lanée Blaise [00:01:20]:
Thank you for coming to Imagine Yourself. Awesome. Thank you for having me. This is such a treat.
Sandy Kovach [00:01:24]:
So glad you're here, Elizabeth. The quarantine fifteen, a term that I've seen thrown around a lot. It may be more, maybe less. I think it's kind of a play on what they would call the freshman fifteen, their 1st year in college. But people are gaining weight because of stress due to COVID, and working at home. I saw an email from one of my coworkers said she's literally 10 feet away from the refrigerator all day. So the stress, the temptation, how do we adjust our mindset and do something to reverse this?
Elizabeth Sherman [00:01:57]:
Yeah. Good question. What I find with my clients is that there is always gonna be a crisis. The difference between normal life and right now is that we are collectively in a crisis together. What I notice with my clients is that, like, there's never a good time to lose weight. There's never a good time to get healthier. There's never a good time to start an exercise habit or a diet because there's someone's birthday coming up or we have this event that's happening. There's something that always gets in our way.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:02:32]:
And right now, it just happens to be this pandemic that is keeping us in our houses. And so what's happening a lot is that our emotions are heightened, and we're unable to deal with that. We haven't dealt with it before. So how we're dealing with that is through eating, through boredom eating, emotional eating, all of those great things that we do just because we like to eat our emotions instead of deal with them. A lot of folks are realizing that they haven't really worked on healthy eating. So now it's just becoming a little bit more heightened.
Sandy Kovach [00:03:12]:
Yeah. For sure. And I love the emotional eating point. We're dealing with stress by eating. Right?
Lanée Blaise [00:03:16]:
Absolutely. I know that I've read your website and different things like that. A lot of this has to do with our mindset, and a lot of it has to do with our habits, and a lot of it has to do with, kinda like you said, limiting beliefs. And that whole limiting belief aspect that it's not a convenient time. How do we overturn that mindset and start to think any day could be a good day, or or is that even a possible practice?
Elizabeth Sherman [00:03:43]:
Yeah. I love that you brought up habits because when I started out in health and fitness, I've been doing this for, like, 15 years now. And it started with my own desire to get healthy. My mom had passed away from breast cancer, and so my whole motivation in doing this was to help myself get healthier so that I didn't go down that same path as her. Initially, I thought that it was all about knowledge. I thought that if I just knew everything about exercising and eating, then I would magically be able to do everything. So I got my certifications together, and I started in health and fitness. And then I became one of those personal trainers who really wasn't I was telling people what to do, but I wasn't doing it myself, and I felt like a total fraud.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:04:31]:
And so then my next step was to get on to habits. I was like, okay. Habits are the same. And so I started working with my clients on creating sustainable habits and doing all those environmental things that help us create better habits, like cleaning out your pantry and putting your gym bag together the night before so that you'll be more able to do the thing tomorrow. And what I, again, confused about was that my exercise habit was totally on point, but I was still really struggling with the eating portion. It wasn't until I realized that it was all about our limiting beliefs. What it is that we believe about ourselves, what it is that we believe about the world around us, our relationship with our food, that then I was finally able to get real with myself and stop trying to make, like, black bean brownies or, like you know, those fake foods that you make that you're like, oh, these are really healthy for me because they're made with black beans instead of flour, but they tasted terrible, but I would eat the whole pan because I thought that they were really good. You know? So
Lanée Blaise [00:05:50]:
making sure you don't get caught up by the hype, I bet too. Yeah. Exactly. Way to do it. And it seems to me though too, like, everything that they say this is the way to do it may not be best for my body type.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:06:03]:
Yeah. So what's really interesting is that I work with my clients in balancing their hormones. And what we find is that, especially with women over the age of 45, the way that we eat, sleep, and our exercise habits all influence our body's ability to lose weight. What I do is I help my clients create the right eating and exercise and sleep habits for their body type. And so some might need more fat, some might need less, some might need more protein, some might need less starch. It's really kinda interesting how we're all so different.
Lanée Blaise [00:06:41]:
Wow. I love that. I think that there has been way an under representation of the effects of hormonal shifts, and how that affects the way we metabolize things. I know that a lot of people do focus exercise, exercise, exercise. And I've heard, and I think I've got heard this right, that the food part is actually a bigger percentage of what's going to impact the weight even more than the exercise.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:07:09]:
Absolutely. And I love that you brought up exercise because women our age have been conditioned from very young reading magazines and so on and so forth that the way to lose weight is calories in versus calories out. And although that's true, it's the fundamental foundation of weight loss. We need to think about exercise as being stress management, not as a way to burn calories. Because what happens is I get so many women who are like, I don't like to exercise. And so if we shift the way that we're thinking about exercise from punishment, something that we need to do to burn off the cake that we had last night or the extra drinks that we had last night 2, something that's good for us, something that's good for our body, something that helps us manage our stress, then it totally changes how we think about that. And you're right. What we eat, and this is especially true for women over 45, is that we really cannot get away like we did when we were 20 with eating those extra things thinking, oh, I'll just burn it off later.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:08:27]:
Our bodies just don't work that way because when we get older, our bodies become more stress reactive and insulin responsive. And so what we really need to do is to lower the foods that increase our insulin response, so those things like starches and carbohydrates. And we need to do those things that are good for us in terms of a stress response. So walking is a really great idea. Manicures and massages, those types of self care, I mean, they're great, but they're not sustainable and they're certainly expensive. Mhmm. So what I like to do is I like to work with my clients in reimagining what their stress is about. So it goes back to that mindset piece.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:09:14]:
How do we manage our stress before it even happens instead of lowering our stress after the fact.
Sandy Kovach [00:09:23]:
So you're saying that by walking or getting into this regimen, or eating better based on your hormones, you're not gonna get to that stress level that's gonna want make you to eat that Double Stuf Oreo that your kid went shopping and brought during the pandemic, and now you gotta eat it clearly.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:09:42]:
That's definitely the goal. Thinking about how things affect our lives. So, really, we can look at self quarantine as a neutral event. There are some people who are really upset about it. There are some people who aren't really phased about it.
Sandy Kovach [00:09:59]:
Right. It depends on how COVID affected you and your family and if anybody got sick or if people are unemployed. But you're talking about just the quarantine in general.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:10:10]:
Yeah. And so we know that it's not a globally negative thing because if it was, then we would all think the same thing about it. And I'm not saying that we need to be all rainbows and daisies about it, but how can we limit our doom and gloom around it, or see it not as negative as maybe we're thinking about it? And so with that shift in how we think about our circumstances, the events that happen, then we can probably deal with our stress a little bit better and not have to run to the Oreos. What you said too kinda struck a chord with
Lanée Blaise [00:10:48]:
me as far as, like, this being preventative stress management. Even if we do focus on it and things like that, it just seems like taking a very intentional break away from the thoughts of it when you're taking that walk or when you're doing that exercise that you're also pushing your mind to some different areas, and you're allowing yourself the freedom to say and like you said, in some cases, it is doom and gloom. Like, my whole world has been shaken by whatever it is, whether it's the pandemic or anything else that goes on in this country or in our personal lives. And you give yourself a little safe space where you are supposed to not think about it right then versus sitting and thinking about it and munching on junk.
Sandy Kovach [00:11:36]:
As you watch the news with the bad news coming and the Oreos in your mouth and
Lanée Blaise [00:11:40]:
Filling your brain with junk and your body with junk is just too much junk. And I just I I didn't think that the conversation we were gonna have with you, Elizabeth, would go there, but I think it has because I think the habit part is a little stronger than we thought.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:11:55]:
Yeah. And so what happens is that when we go into that doom and gloom, our brain immediately goes to the worst case scenario. It has us all living under a bridge in a van down by the river.
Sandy Kovach [00:12:10]:
Oh, it's that guy, Chris Farley. Yeah.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:12:14]:
And when you write out, the first thing you wanna do is you wanna get it out of your head. And so whether it's a scrap of paper or a journal, just writing down what's the worst thing that could possibly happen or even saying it to your partner or someone best friend. When you say it out loud, then you realize, oh, you know what? It's really not that bad.
Sandy Kovach [00:12:35]:
There we go again. So much of it is in our mind. And so it sounds like what you've been telling your clients and practicing yourself has really evolved. And if I'm reading your blogs right, maybe kind of evolving along the way your life has sort of taken twists and turns, which is a really kinda interesting story just as far as where you were. You lived, like, we are in the Detroit area. You're in the Chicago air we're in the Chicago area right down the street. Mhmm. Cold winters and all that.
Sandy Kovach [00:13:04]:
Now you're in nice, warm, sunny Mexico living the life. So what caused that shift? And it didn't have anything to do with your career and how you're helping others?
Elizabeth Sherman [00:13:13]:
Good question. And kind of in 2001. I moved from Chicago to Austin, Texas. And I did that because my husband and I were dating long distance, and we decided that if we wanted to see if it was gonna work out, we should probably live in the same city. Right? And so I moved to Austin, Texas, and I would never recommend this kids, but we'd only been dating for, like, 5 months. We bought a house together, moved in together, which I think is just crazy. Like, if someone had told you, hey. I've been dating this guy long distance for 5 months, and now I'm gonna move in with them and buy a house.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:13:51]:
You would be like, no. Don't do that. But anyway, it all worked out really well. The crazy thing about that is I mentioned that my mom passed away from breast cancer. The weekend that I actually moved from Chicago to Austin, Texas was the week just before she died. So upon moving, I had to fly back to Chicago. And my mom's death was a huge turning point for me because at that point, I could see that if I didn't change what I was doing, I would be following in her footsteps. So that was really the beginning for me to get healthier.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:14:30]:
And I would love to say that she passed away from breast cancer. I learned everything that I needed to do to be healthier, but the truth is is that it took me about 10 more years of, again, trying to I don't wanna say mess with my system, but I thought I was this special snowflake who was like, oh, I can't lose weight. And it was because I was trying to skirt the system. I was trying to, like, find that backdoor, that loophole that would allow me to still eat cake and drink beer and, you know, lose weight at the same time, and it doesn't work, unfortunately. So that's what started me on this journey towards health. And in, about 2005, I was in high-tech and decided to quit my job and become a health coach. So to answer your question a long way, sorry about that, is my husband and I had spent a month in Belize. It was the first time that we were like, oh my god.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:15:31]:
Could we possibly do this? Could we live on a beach in a tropical area and still work? And at that point, the Internet wasn't good enough and people didn't really know what coaching was, And there certainly wasn't the online health relationship that there is today, especially after COVID. I think that's become much more apparent. People can become healthier and reach out to professionals that don't have to be in a certain radius of their house. And so, anyway, 3 years ago, we decided that it was time, and we loaded up our dogs, we sold everything and moved to Mexico.
Lanée Blaise [00:16:11]:
Wow. And live a happy, healthy life. Right?
Elizabeth Sherman [00:16:14]:
Yeah. It's it's been crazy. It's amazing. The number of processed foods that I actually don't have available to me, it's actually easier for me to eat healthy down here. Yeah.
Sandy Kovach [00:16:26]:
That is interesting. So about your coaching business, now we'll obviously post all of your information on our website. But can you just give a little bit about tell us your website. Tell us, I think you have an offer that you're doing for people like a mini session.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:16:41]:
Yeah. So you can find me at elizabeth shermandot com. If you go to elizabeth sherman.com/mini dash session, then you can sign up for that. And that's just an opportunity for folks to figure out if we're a good fit, if they have some problems that I can help them with. I will try to give them some suggestions on things that they can try, but you can also find me on Facebook at total health by eliz and Instagram at e sherman 68. And so, yeah, what I do is I work with my clients in the areas of eating, sleeping, stress management, and exercise. And what I do is I help them to develop easy to do sustainable habits that will ultimately make them a healthier person. And for women who are in midlife, we balance our hormones by looking at things like cravings, hunger levels, sleep, our moods, as well as our energy levels.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:17:45]:
So if you're finding that you're getting that 3 o'clock mid afternoon craving for either pretzels or chocolate, that's probably a hormonal imbalance. Also, waking up in the middle of the night can also be a hormonal imbalance. Those things really should not be happening. And then once our hormones are balanced, another thing that women in in life generally struggle with is waking around their middle, and so that should go away too.
Sandy Kovach [00:18:09]:
That would go away. Wow.
Lanée Blaise [00:18:11]:
I like these I like this hope that we have because the reason we wanted to talk to you specifically is because, again, we have to some kinda way overturn the thought that it's only about exercising more. And like you said, that that's a punishment. Like, what are some different exercises? Walking is one of
Elizabeth Sherman [00:18:30]:
my favorites, but there are there fun exercises as a go to? There are so many different options. There's Zumba, cycling. There's playing with your kids or your grandkids. It's just about being active and doing those things you enjoy. And, again, it goes back to mindset. If you're doing those things and feeling resentful the entire time, that's not very stress relieving. But if you're enjoying yourself and you're just having fun, then it totally puts it in a different mindset, and you're more apt to do it longer because you're enjoying yourself.
Lanée Blaise [00:19:05]:
I'm gonna challenge folks who are listening and challenge myself to think of some fun exercises. And like you said, either with your kids or with someone else or by yourself so it's not drudgery. And eliminate some of those processed foods and think about your home loans and reach out to elizabeth sherman. Give ourselves credit for, than we give ourselves credit for, than we realize. And you said earlier about it's not just knowing more necessarily. We can just use what we know in some better ways. I really want to do some things differently. This quarantine part, I feel, has given us a fresh start.
Lanée Blaise [00:19:45]:
There's plenty of negative things to take away from it all, but one positive thing is you could start a fresh start on your health, like you said, your stress management, on your eating, on your everything.
Sandy Kovach [00:19:56]:
Mhmm.
Lanée Blaise [00:19:57]:
We always have a portion of the session called takeaway time. And as our takeaway today, I think I just wanna say to everybody, we see you. We see you out there trying to find ways to be better and look better and feel better and sleep better and eat better. And I just think that whole comprehensive way of thinking is so important. Even the part you said about sleeping, I just think people don't give it credit. It's not like today is going to be all the answers laid out in a quick 20, 30 minute podcast, but we love equipping people with some go to places. We love hearing from you. We love sharing ideas.
Lanée Blaise [00:20:32]:
We have imagine yourself podcast .com, which is where we're gonna put, of course, your link, coach Elizabeth, and make sure that, you know, we have ways for people to easily click there and find some solutions. Like you said, from a professional perspective to really talk to you, I hope that people will begin engaging with us. You're on Facebook. We're on Facebook. If people really are into this, we can do more podcast along these Lanee, and we wanna hear from you. We want you to give us a review. Give us your feedback.
Sandy Kovach [00:21:00]:
Yeah. And based on the feedback we've gotten of what we talked about in other topics and in health too, and Elizabeth is pointing out again, it's habits, it's mindset, Whether it's time management or it's whatever we're doing or eating or exercising, if we're not in the habit of doing it, and it's gonna be a pain, and we're thinking it of as punishment, which that's a new one. I love that. Then it's not gonna happen. So this is about the mindset shift. So as we get to the end here, Elizabeth, can you give our audience some things to kinda chew on? Well, maybe that's the wrong word. They don't wanna chew. Good things to chew on.
Sandy Kovach [00:21:37]:
Not or not double stuffed Oreos.
Lanée Blaise [00:21:39]:
Maybe he's gonna go spank them.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:21:42]:
Yeah. So I think that it comes to what is the reason that we want to Lanee? I think it comes back to the why. So why is it that you want to be healthier? Is it for your children, or is it to play with your grandchildren, or is it because you have that upcoming trip that you wanna be fit for and there's gonna be a lot of hiking? And so getting back to the why and then remembering the why. And it's funny because I just wrote a post on it today on Facebook about we think that we're gonna be motivated all the time whenever we start a habit. But motivation is really a feeling, and feelings are fleeting just like joy, happiness, anger, sadness. And so we can't rely on motivation to be there for us all the time.
Sandy Kovach [00:22:37]:
Interesting. So motivation is a feeling. And usually, when we think of the word motivation, we think about being motivated to do something good. But sometimes, it's a motivation to not do something good. Right?
Elizabeth Sherman [00:22:49]:
Yeah. The reason that we don't exercise or don't follow through with our habits has everything to do with something called the motivational triad. And what the motivational triad is, we as humans are motivated to do anything because we want to seek pleasure, we want to avoid pain, and we wanna do it as efficiently as possible. So when you think about pleasurable food, of course, we wanna overeat that because it's pleasurable. And, of course, we don't wanna exercise because it's not comfortable. It is painful. And so our brain immediately goes to, I don't wanna go exercise. I wanna eat cookies on the couch or watch And we wanna do it as fast as possible.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:23:38]:
And we beat ourselves up for this stuff all the time. Right? We're sitting on the couch and we're like, I know I said I was supposed to exercise, but I don't feel like doing it right now. And then after the whole thing passes, then we beat ourselves up about it. But if we can approach the curiosity about why did I do that with the frame of this motivational triad, it all completely make sense. And so how to get around that then is just to be aware of it and to talk ourselves through it. I love that. The other piece to that is that we think that we can will power our way or won't power our way through a bad habit or letting go of a habit that we want to get rid of. So we really need to think about how do we set ourselves up for our future success, knowing that the person that you're gonna be in a week or a month is probably gonna be pretty similar to the person you are today.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:24:38]:
And so what are the things that the previous version of you could have done to set you up for success for today? Do those things for yourself going forward. Be nice to yourself. Don't be a jerk. Don't make don't make yourself have to, like, make 5 meals next week that are all organic and all vegetables if you're only eating 1 serving today. Think about what would you like just a little bit better tomorrow.
Sandy Kovach [00:25:05]:
Incremental changes that are doable. The habits. Exactly. And the habits take a while. Right? Is it the do you do the 21 day rule thing? That's what Lanee always preaches, the 21 day rule.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:25:14]:
I think it depends on how ingrained the habit is. So, like, eating habits, I know that there's something called palate adjustment that if you go from eating food out all the time to homemade food, that's gonna take about 21 days for your palate to adjust.
Sandy Kovach [00:25:30]:
Especially depending on who's cooking it.
Lanée Blaise [00:25:32]:
Exactly. But even all the extra salts and sugars and things and sauces, some restaurants use versus doing it kind of fresher, better at home Lanee, and your tongue might say, woah. That was, not salty.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:25:46]:
This tastes terrible. Yeah. Exactly.
Lanée Blaise [00:25:48]:
Yeah. It's a real thing. Wow.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:25:50]:
Yeah. So again, it depends on the habit. Some habits take longer, and what we may find is that because we know that habits are from the connections in our brain neurotransmitters, we know that those neurotransmitters never actually go away. Those synapses in our brain never go away. What happens is we may revert back to a bad habit later on when stress happens just as a default. And so if you're doing really well for, like, 3 months and then all of a sudden you revert back, know that that's totally normal. But just keep going back on. Okay? So just keep going and get back to your good habits.
Lanée Blaise [00:26:33]:
Don't beat yourself up and know that other people struggle with this too, and then just guide yourself back on the right path. Right.
Elizabeth Sherman [00:26:41]:
Exactly.
Sandy Kovach [00:26:41]:
Be aware without the guilt. Know you gotta change it, but don't spend too much time beating yourself up because then you'll just get upset and eat the Oreos again, and there you have it.
Lanée Blaise [00:26:50]:
I feel like Sandy needs somebody to go to her home and remove any Oreos that are sitting around because I had to do that in my house. So if you want my kids to come over and help do that for you, I'm gaining. It's temptation. Temptation, being honest with yourself, gently bring yourself back on the path. Gosh. I think we could talk for, like, another 2 hours on all this month. We don't have time for that. We really appreciate having you, Elizabeth.
Lanée Blaise [00:27:18]:
We really truly appreciate your candor, advice, your information. We thank you for joining us. As I said, if we get some feedback that they have more questions, we might wanna ask you to come back again. But, overall, I guess, I'll just close this out with imagine yourself just loving the new mindset and new body and new spirit that you have as we ease on out of quarantine time and ease on down the road to good stuff.
Sandy Kovach [00:27:43]:
Thanks for listening. We'd love your feedback. Go to imagine yourself podcast.com to send us an email or connect with us on social media. Take care of yourself, and join us again next time when we'll have something new to imagine.
Get one of Elizabeth Sherman’s free mini-sessions HERE or check out the LINKS WE LOVE page
