Quite often we focus on the physical side of weight gain. We think about the health ramifications of carrying access weight or we fixate on how gaining a few pounds alters our physical appearance.
Yes, this physical stuff matters, but what about the emotional impact weight-gain can have on you?
The way you feel about yourself plays a huge role in the things you do and the way you live your life. This is why, if you want to lose a few pounds or many pounds, it's likely a good time to deal with the emotional side effects of gaining weight.
Here's how you can begin today:
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Make Your Body Work Podcast #120
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How to Overcome the Emotional Side Effects of Gaining Weight
[Full Text]
I'm looking for some advice and encouragement. Please help."
Erin, if you're listening to this, I just want to stay thanks for writing in and thanks for being a little bit vulnerable. Sometimes it's scary to admit that we feel that way, because rationally we can say, "Yeah, I'm more than the number on the scale," or, "Yeah, I'm still a valuable person," but if we don't feel that way, and Erin, you did a great of describing it, if we feel self conscious about going out socially, if we feel self conscious about being naked in front of our husband or our wife, if we feel self conscious about our body, it sometimes doesn't even matter what we tell ourselves. That feeling is still true, and that plays itself out in how we live our lives.
That's why I'm really excited to have a guest here today to talk about these emotional triggers that come with weight gain and then what practically can we do to overcome those so that we truly believe that we're valuable beyond what the number says on the scale and beyond what we see in the mirror. I'm excited to dive in, and I'm just really thrilled to have a special guest here. I'd like to introduce to you Esther Blum.
Meet Esther Blum
Dave: Hey, Esther. Thanks so much for joining us on the show today.
Esther: Thank you for having me, Dave.
Dave: I'm really excited for our talk. Before we started recording, we were just talking about how you and I connected a couple weeks ago and we were just talking about sort of your passions in fitness and in health. I was going back through my database of questions from listeners, and this one came up, and it was like perfectly suited to you. I'm super excited to have you as a guest today.
Esther: Awesome. Let's do this.
Dave: Maybe we could start off by just talking a little bit about yourself. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do in the fitness industry and as well your history? Like how did you come to find yourself doing what you do?
Esther: Let's start with the second half of the question. I came from a long line of physicians, and nurses, and pharmacists. My grandfather, my father's father, was one of the first graduating classes of medical school at New York University in 1921, and he practiced medicine. He did surgery til he was 80, and he practiced medicine after that four days a week til he was 95 1/2, and then took the last 10 years to be a painter til he died at 105 1/2. He took my tonsils out in his home in Brooklyn.
I was always surrounded by . My father's a dermatologist. My mother's a nurse, so I was always surrounded by medicine and medical talk and was very comfortable around it, but much to my grandfather's horror, I did not want to go to medical school. He told me that when I decided I wanted to be a dietitian, because I liked all of the clinical aspects and the science pieces of the education, he told me I would never be a success, that I would never make any money as a dietitian. Which I was like, "Oh, it's on. Bring it on, man."
Yeah. I started out in hospitals for five years and worked in all the cardiology units. It was when AIDS was first really on the scene, so I got to work early on with AIDS patients. I worked with liver transplant, cardiovascular, diabetes. I really saw everything, post surgical. People, feeding them regular diets and then people, I got to feed people through tubes, through IVs. It was a really fantastic experience.
Then about five years in, I was like, "You know what? I'm really not making a difference here educating 85-year-olds after they've had a heart attack. I really want to go to a place of prevention." I got certified in functional medicine, nutrition, and left the hospital, worked for a holistic doctor, started my private practice, started writing books. 25 years in, I'm still as wildly passionate about changing people's lives through food as I was back then.
How Did Esther Develop Her Passion for Helping the Clients She Works With?
Dave: Wow. Can you talk about your own personal experience during this time then? You talked about the clients that you were helping in all different stages of life and going through different things in their lives. What about yourself? What's your personal health history been?
Esther: Well, it's so interesting, because so many people go into nutrition looking to solve a problem, and I truly just like the science. I was healthy. I mean in my 20s, I ate bagels, and cream cheese, and Diet Coke, and coffee, and cigarettes, and alcohol, and really just thought I was immune to all of it. Around 27, 28, I started gaining all this weight, and I was really fit. I was a size four, lean, lifting heavy, doing sprints. I was really, really active. Just by the time I was 30, I mean I packed on 20 pounds in a really short period of time, and I felt awful. I didn't understand what was happening. It took me three years to find a doctor to diagnose me with mercury toxicity.
Six months later, we went through treatment and six months later I was healthy again, but I never lost that last 10 pounds, which I thought was so interesting to me. That really enabled me to be that girl who never lost the last 10 pounds and lived happily ever after. It was really such a lesson of psychological and spiritual growth of really learning to love my body at my size.
Ironically, when I met the man who is now my husband, Dave, I was 10 pounds heavier than normal. My weight was definitely higher, and it was like never an issue for him or me. Then when I lost the weight when we were dating, it's like he barely even noticed. It was really fascinating to me.
Women out there, I just need to say, if you're worried about walking around in front of your man without any clothes on and you're self conscious about your body, A, they never notice, and B, no man is ever going to turn down a woman without any clothes on in front of him. It's not happening. I've confirmed this again and again, whether my colleagues are in the fitness world, whether they're just normal stay-at-home dads. When are not the issue. We are the issue for ourselves.
After I had my son in 2007, I developed this wicked insomnia and couldn't figure it out. I went to doctor after doctor after doctor. I became extremely depressed and really suicidal on certain days, because just I was like, "At least when I'm dead I'll sleep, so maybe that's the answer. I don't know." I mean I can laugh about it now, but it was truly a dark time. It took me about seven years to find a practitioner to diagnose me with Epstein-Barr virus and get treated for that. Then it took another five years. Like I'm just getting results in my sleep now and my son's almost 12.
Again, a real lesson in grit, and resilience, and overcoming the mental hurdles of working with sort of an invisible disability almost where you're just so . Every day really feels like a struggle to get out of bed. But I was determined to get through it, and after a while I just started ignoring it and moving on with my life, and that was really the greatest tool of resilience.
Dealing with Mercury Toxicity
Dave: Esther, okay. You talked about so many different things that I want to dive deeper into a couple different stories you mentioned there. First one, you mentioned being diagnosed with mercury toxicity, and you said you went through treatment. This is maybe an entire different episode all together, but I've had questions about that. Can you just briefly talk about what was the treatment like and then how did you feel? What was the before and after in terms of how your body felt?
Esther: I had such bad irritable bowel syndrome. I was going to go gastroenterologists. I had a colonoscopy. I was parasite testing. I really thought something was wrong. For those of you who don't know, I was eating tuna fish sandwiches every day when I worked at the hospital. You may as well just suck on thermometers at that point. I was literally loaded to the gills with mercury.
Once I found a doctor who . I was at a conference and he spoke. His name's Gary Lasneski. He's in western Massachusetts and he's one of the few people I would ever trust to muscle test me. He found that I had very high mercury, so he put me on a chelation program where I took DMSA orally and I took all sorts of supplements to help my liver remove the mercury and help with phase two liver detoxification, like Spanish black radish. I took N-acetyl cysteine. I took lipoic acid. I took supplements and lots of vitamin C that would find the mercury and pull it out of my blood stream without it crossing the blood-brain barrier. It would enable me to poop and pee it out.
Within I would say between three and 10 days of being on his protocol, my stools went from complete diarrhea, like uncontrollable shit your pants diarrhea to solid, normal stools. I kid you not. I was like, "I have my life back. I can't even believe it." Then the weight began to fall off naturally without any extreme exercise or dieting. I felt very tired. I remember coming home between patients and napping on the couch. Like just my memory was shot. It took a while to rebuild my nervous system, but within six months I was a new woman.
Dave: That's amazing. Like I said, this is maybe a whole entire different show, but do you have any resources? Because I know this is going to peak the curiosity of many of the listeners. Do you have any resources that we could include in the show notes that might direct someone to symptoms they could look at or first steps they could take in dealing with mercury toxicity if that maybe applies to them?
Esther: Yeah. In my first book, Eat, Drink, and Be Gorgeous, I actually wrote a mercury toxicity protocol, but some great steps you can do actually just here and now and you can do every day, because mercury is in our seafood, it's in the air, it's in the water, it can be airborne and travel that way, so what you can do is make a smoothie everyday with a half a cup of . Be sure to include 1/2 a cup of fresh cilantro and two tablespoons of dulse flakes, or you can eat seaweed every day. Those two foods are natural mercury chelators. Also, on my website I have links for Amazon to barley grass juice powder and spirulina. Those are also beautiful sponges for mercury.
If you make a smoothie with some fruits and veggies, some protein powder, and you add in a teaspoon of barley grass juice power, table of spirulina, two tablespoons of dulse flakes, and 1/2 a cup cilantro, and some wild blueberries, which you can buy frozen in the grocery store, that is pretty much going to be a great protocol to get mercury out. I would not recommend necessarily taking DMSA unless you're under the guidance of a practitioner and you can get your levels measured before and after.
Dave: What is DMSA? I'm not familiar.
Esther: It's a mercury chelating agent, and it pulls mercury out. It's aggressive, but it works.
Dave: What is it derived from? Like is it a natural substance?
Esther: It is. It's a synthetic supplement. I have to check on that, because my brain is not working today. It's dimercaptosuccinic acid, and it's used to treat lead, mercury, and arsenic poisoning.
Dave: Well you know what I'll do is I'm going to put a link in the show notes. For listeners, if you go to makeyourbodywork.com/120, this is for episode 120, I'll have a link first off, Ester, to your book, and then I'll also put some notes of the supplements and smoothie ingredients that you just mentioned there, and that's at least a starting point.
Esther: Totally. It's a great starting point. People have all sorts of . THere's a lot of people right now with mystery illnesses, these kind of chronic symptoms that are not picked up by regular doctors. If you haven't been exposed to this before and you don't know the testing but you're just feeling crumby, try this smoothie every day for like three months and you should see a real change in your health, because you're just going to naturally lower your metals anyway.
Dave: It's funny that we're talking about this. This morning, literally about 30 minutes ago, I was doing a cardio workout and I was listening to a Tony Robbins podcast. In it, he was talking about how his health . This was probably, I don't know, maybe four or five years ago. His health took a really bad turn for the worst, and same thing. He did a bunch of testing and it came out that it was mercury toxicity. he talked about how it was because he was eating a lot of swordfish, and he did mention tuna as well, but sushi.
As soon as he said sushi, admittedly my ears perked up, because I live on the west coast of Canada in Vancouver, and sushi is huge here. I eat it very regularly. Even hearing you speak about that, I'm interested. I'm going to get a copy of your book, and I'm very curious to read.
Esther: Yeah. You can get wild Alaskan salmon or any food caught in Alaska. Any seafood caught in Alaska is really safe. It's low in mercury. It's acids are minimal. Alaska is the only state that does not allow farming of fish, so the water are much cleaner and more pristine.
How Did Esther Shed Those Pounds?
Dave: Excellent. I know this is kind of getting off topic, but to move back towards our question from Erin, which we will get to in a second, there's a second piece of your story that you sort of glossed over and I'm interested. You talked about how you had these 10 pounds that never went away after you had resolved these issues, and then you said while you and your husband, your now husband, while you were dating the 10 pounds did go away, but you didn't specifically talk about that process. Was it just from fixing your mercury levels, or were there other components that kind of helped with that losing of the last 10 pounds?
Esther: Mercury does a couple of nasty things. It really takes a toll on your neurological system and your memory. If you've got a lot of brain fog, you've got some headaches, you've got some inflammation, that can be mercury. It resides in the cut, so it can really destroy your immune system and your digestive processes. It also destroys your thyroid. Last but not least, mercury feeds virus like Epstein-Barr and strep.
Your question was, sorry Dave, how do we get rid of it? Or how did it affect me? Basically, my thyroid was kind of dead. At the time, I was also working with a nutritionist. I was training for the New York City Marathon. Like with all this mercury toxicity, I just mentally plowed through it. I didn't know why I was packing on weight. I thought maybe my cortisol was high from training for the marathon.
She had me on all of this soy protein. Can you imagine? Like my thyroid died. My TSH was so high, and it was all unbeknownst to me. Getting rid of the mercury, getting off soy, he fixed my thyroid. My thyroid completely recovered to a working level, so the weight fell off.
Now, I should say that I lost the first 10 of those 20 pounds, but I still have the other 10. Even when I was my wedding weight, I was still 10 pounds above where I was when I started with the mercury toxicity. You know what? I looked damn good on my wedding day, Dave. I did not look like out of shape or anything. I was really in good shape that day, 10 pounds or no.
The Psychological Burdens that Can Come with Weight Gain
Dave: Can you talk a little bit more then about the psychological aspect of that? Because now you say, "Well, I looked good," but you also mentioned that idea of being a little bit self conscious when that weight wasn't exactly where you wanted it to be, and that's Erin's question. She talks about, "I've gained all these pounds." In her case, it was 38 pounds. She talks about being self conscious, not wanting to go out socially, it affecting her marriage and her sex life. How did that play into your story?
Esther: It's interesting. I work with a lot of women who totally lose their libido because they just feel very ashamed about their body, or the roots go deeper. I work with a lot of women who've experienced sexual abuse. There's a lot of shame around the body, and sexuality, and sensuality.
For me personally, I'm one of those women, thank God my libido was never affected by my weight. I really learned to . I spent so many days and months just miserable and ashamed in my body, because I went from being what I thought was very attractive and thin, and it was probably an unsustainable level of thin. I mean I worked out for a couple hours four or five days a week. I don't have that time now unless I want to get up at 4:00 AM, and I don't.
At the time, my value and my worth was very attached to my appearance, and I didn't understand. I thought I was less than or not as worthy once I gained all that weight, because I couldn't wear the same kinds of clothes. I always wore very fitted clothes that showed off my figure. I also was ashamed to be a dietitian who was 20 pounds overweight. I felt tremendous pressure. I was doing TV at the time. I mean it's a lot of pressure to look good all the time. I was worried people would judge me and think, "Well, how can I take advice from a fat dietitian?"
At the time, I worked with a really good therapist. I know that exquisite pain of just getting dressed in the morning. I actually wrote a blog about how I was going to a wedding with my family, and I was too ashamed to shop for clothes beforehand because I knew the situation was not good. I couldn't face it. The day of the wedding, my mother and dad, they stopped over at my apartment. We were all going to go together. My mom was helping me get dressed and she didn't say a word, but clearly she's trying to stuff my fat rolls and my bra fat into my dress so she could zip it up.
We got me squeezed into the dress, but I was horrified, because I could just tell I was not . It didn't fit the way it should have. It was too small. She was like, "Just throw a sweater over it. Everybody's going to look at the bride anyway. Don't worry about it. As I'm getting in the cab, I lift my leg up and my dress rips all the way up to my ass, okay.
That was one of those moments that was so exquisitely painful, and yet it was such a life lesson. like that was my low point. That was it. I was rock bottom then. My mom, we went into the bathroom. It was in Central Park at the boathouse. We went to the bathroom. She found a sewing kit. She sewed me up, but I was devastated.
At the time, I was working with a therapist, and she's like, "Why are you not buying new clothes?" "I can't. I can't face it." Everyone says this to me, Dave. "I can't buy new clothes. I have a whole closet full of clothes that fit me." I said, "I can't. I can't beat to be a size eight. I'm a size four." I thought that's it. There was no room, no margin for anything except perfection. She was like, "Buy the damn clothes and cut the labels out." I was like, "Why didn't I think of that before?"
That's what I did, and I started attaching my worth to my accomplishments. I started remembering who I was, and who I was was an educated woman who helped change the lives of people, who helped my clients put their autoimmune conditions into complete remission within six months, who helped them lose weight, not because of what I did but in spite of what I did. None of them ever said to me, "You look fat. You look porky. You look like you've gained weight." No one had the problem except me.
To people listening, I can tell you, no one's paying attention to the size of your thighs, because they are way too busy paying attention to the size of their own thighs. Once I learned that and stepped back, it was such a gift because then after I had my son, and my body was different, and my stomach skin is looser now, I just never have given a second thought, because I've been down that road before. I was like, "I'm never being mean to myself again like that."
Dave: Esther, I appreciate you sharing personally, like that story of your dress splitting. I can imagine how embarrassing that could be and the thoughts that that could create. I really like the part of your story where you talked about not wanting to change the size of your clothes, because I've been working with women for almost 20 years now and that's something I hear all the time. It's like, "If I upgrade the size of my clothes, I'm admitting defeat." I've heard that before, and, "I won't do that." What do you say to women who are in that position right now? They say, "I want to keep my clothes as they are, because that's my motivation to get back down to that size and I don't want to admit defeat."
Esther: I think that is a pure exercise is self torture. I think that you need to give yourself room to live in your body as it is today, because if you can't love yourself now at this size, it's going to be a real struggle. It does so deep. It does so deep. We attach our weight to our self worth. We have social media sending us messages of perfection. I mean who looks like a Kardashian? Who even looks like a super model? The amount of airbrushing. Every single super model is airbrushed. There is not one out there that isn't. You really have to take a step back and remember who you are as a human, and your contributions to the world, and that they have nothing to do with whether you're a size four or a size six. You kind of have to let that go.
Keep the clothes. Keep your skinny clothes if you want to, and just put them to a side of the closet and get three outfits that you can wear comfortably every day so that you don't hate getting dressed. I have had women tell me, especially if they're plus size, "Plus size clothes are ugly. They're three times more expensive. I think I look ugly. Therefore I think I look ugly when I put them on." That's heartbreaking to me, because you can look good at any size. You can love your body at any size. Shame and deprivation, and I say deprivation like depriving yourself of buying clothes that fit, it's really not a sustainable business model, and it's never propelled anyone to get results any faster.
Practical Steps to a Healthier Mindset, Regardless of Weight
Dave: That's so wise and so practical. Esther, I know you've helped many women who are in this position, the idea of body shaming themselves or finding their value in the way they look. Can you talk about some of the many practical exercises, psychological exercises, or talks that you have with clients like that to actually help them make that mental shift? Because it is one thing for us to sit here and say, "Don't create your own value or see your value based on how you look," but it's another thing to actually get to the point where you believe that.
You did such a great job of for yourself explaining all the places that you find value aside from your weight or aside from your looks. How can you help women who maybe aren't quite there yet reach that place?
Esther: We do a lot of letter writing to themselves or to people they're angry at, because again there's usually a long history of deprivation, or feeling deprived, or being shamed. For example, I have a client whose mother . She has five children and numerous hernias, and she gained some weight. Her thyroid was off after her babies. Her mother says, "Why can't you look like your sister?" Her sister is 90 pounds and anorexic. Then the mother comes and stays with her, so imagine the emotional triggers that that's going to bring on.
I have another client too whose mother's completely narcissistic and shames her, doesn't support her in her healthy eating, all of these things. I often have clients write letters that they won't actually send to the person on the other side, but we burn them afterwards. I have them rewrite those letters and burn them as many times as they need to until the forgiveness is there. I have them ask for forgiveness. We will talk about bringing in forgiveness and releasing your karma with that person and moving on with your life.
We do emotional supportive exercises like that, but then we get to the practical things of making food a really objective experience. For example, I just got off the phone with a client, and we talked about her target macros. She said, "So just to be clear, I'm counting grams of protein and carbs and fat, but I'm not counting calories?" I said, "That's exactly right." It becomes a much more objective experience of, am I hitting my targets or not? Am I exceeding my targets or not? It's just very black and white, and there's no shame, guilt, or judgment. If you don't hit them, guess what? Tomorrow's a new day, and you work to tweak what you're eating, and you get support along the way. That's number two.
Number three is definitely buying clothes that fit and throwing away the scale, because the fact is every single one of us, I don't know about you Dave as a man, but I can tell you every single woman knows what they weigh, what they look like naked at every single weight. They know. I can look at myself naked and know. I don't even get on the scale. I don't own one anymore, but I could tell you if I went on the scale and I go to my annual checkup at the doctor, I can tell you what range I'm going to be in. I just know by the way I look.
I have a pencil skirt that is my scale. If it's tight on me, I know I'm up a few pounds. If it fits me, I'm in my range. That's it.
Achieving a Healthy Sex Life Despite Weight Gain
Dave: I think that's fantastic advice. Like the scale, yeah it serves its purpose, but I have worked with and met so many women who live and die by that number that it tells them each morning. If it's up .8 pounds, all of a sudden that throws off their entire day. It's just so dangerous, because there's so many contributing factors to that silly little number. How should we ever allow that to affect our emotions and affect our life? I really appreciate that.
Can you talk, Esther, a little bit more about sex life? Because Erin in her question, she says, "My weight is affecting my marriage and my sex life." I know you mentioned that guys don't pay as much attention, and that people in general don't pay any attention, and we just pay attention to ourselves. Are there any sort of mental tricks or self talk or anything else that you would ask Erin to go through or maybe suggest to her to help her start to believe that?
Esther: That she's beautiful, and sexy, and worthy of an orgasm?
Esther: Yeah. I mean I think that you have to . Again, it goes back to really remembering who you are and that you are worthy of pleasure. Now, me saying that isn't going to make someone run and all of a sudden hop in bed with their husband, but I think when you come at it from really wanting to connect again in your marriage, assuming you like your husband and you want to sleep with him and be intimate, I think that that's where you have to come at it is really from a place of connection. The pleasure, allowing yourself to have orgasms and to have pleasure in your life is just another way of self . It's another form of self care.
I mean talk about mind-body medicine. Orgasms have really positive effects on the brain. They release the feel good hormones oxytocin. They help raise dopamine and serotonin. They help you relax. They help you feel happy, but also they regulate your hormones. Women who have regular sex have much better hormonal balance.
I think all of that aside, science aside, if you don't want to be naked, you can wear a garment that you feel sensual in, that's maybe a really soft, silky fabric, but you don't have to show everything. You can just put some candlelight on. Just make it romantic for yourself. The more you let yourself . So many women, I find that if I can just get them to the point where they let themselves enjoy, then they remember. They're like, "Oh, wait. This was fun. This is why I used to do this."
Now, if it's not that, it could absolutely be that your hormones are off to begin with, and that's why you have very low sex drive or you have vaginal dryness. Definitely get a good hormone panel done. I'm a big fan of the Dutch test. That's a really, really great hormone panel. Maybe your testosterone is super low. That's something you want to also get checked out.
If you find it's more mindset based, then yeah, I mean you kind of have to fake it til you make it. It's not going to come naturally at first. It's going to feel very scary and vulnerable. I think if you can open up and tell your husband or wife, your spouse, "This is really scary and vulnerable for me," they're going to wait you to feel safe. If you're with the right person, they actually want you to feel good and not ashamed of your body. They want to make you happy. If you can let yourself be a little vulnerable in that moment, I think it will open up doors for you you've forgotten that have been closed for a long time.
Dave: Again, Esther, I completely agree. Erin, if you're listening to this, I just want to applaud you for sending a very vulnerable question, because you'd maybe be surprised by the number of questions of this nature that I get for the show, and that just shows that there are many women or many people that are going through things like this, but quite often we fail to communicate those face-to-face. It's easy to think I'm the only one, or I'm different, or I'm strange, when in fact these struggles are very, very common. Esther, I imagine you hear this sort of thing frequently in your practice as well.
Esther: Yeah. I have worked with thousands of women over the years, and I take notes during . I have strategy sessions with clients before I work with them, and I take notes. I have notebooks filled with stories of women. Guys, ladies, I hate to break it to you, your stories are all the same, what you say.
I mean, Dave, you and I were talking about women's pain points before this podcast, and I rattle off 10. You women need to be more outspoken in your circles of trusted sisters, because you're all struggling with the same things. You're not alone in your struggle. You're so far from alone, it's unbelievable. We're all in this together, so what if we just crack it open, and not make it shameful, and not make it this dark secret? Everyone's struggling with the same thing.
Dave: It's that one courageous person who's willing to be vulnerable first. In my experience, when that person does that, it opens the floodgates for everyone else. Then all of a sudden, everyone feels amazing, but there is that first risk.
Esther: Totally. I mean it's the same with women and miscarriages, right? Like people don't want to talk about it. They don't want to put it out there. It's very dark. Most women go through miscarriages, and people just don't talk about it. It's the same thing. I read Michelle Obama's book, Becoming, and she's like, "Yeah. I went through this wicked miscarriage. The minute I told people about it, they all say, Me too, me too, me too." It's out there. We're connected. Spiritually, physically we are connected as human beings on this planet, so we may as well share our stories.
Make Your Body Work Takeaway
Dave: Esther, I love your message. We like to wrap up this show with what's called a Make Your Body Work takeaway. It's just like a practical step that someone, whether it's Erin or another woman like Erin, who feels like her weight is affecting her socially or affecting her relationships. What would you say is one important step that everyone in that boat should consider taking today?
Esther: Finding a partner. Finding someone where you don't have to do it alone, because you are not alone and it's really hard to get started or to know where to start. Of course I'm going to say hire a nutritionist, hire a strength coach. Hire someone who's going to get you accountable so that you can set goals, smash through them, set newer goals, smash through those, because to get results for yourself, you actually really need structure and you need accountability.
I always tell my clients. Even Sir Richard Branson has a coach, people. Okay. You can do this, but if you could've done it by yourself already, you would have. Now it's time to level up, and invest in yourself, and really just not be through this alone. Have someone who says, "Hey, you're going to a party tonight? Great. Here's your strategy." Or you're feeling really depressed or anxiety. Instead of planting face down into the trough of ice cream, why not go for a walk or meditate for 10 minutes? It's again having someone with a firm hand behind you so that you're not alone, but you're clear on what you need to do.
Dave: Esther, very, very wise advice. I know that many of the listeners, they'll want to find out more about you and connect with you. One thing we have is a free giveaway. It's called your KISS Program. Can you talk about that quickly? Just for the listeners, again if you go to makeyourbodywork.com/120, I'll have a link to Esther's KISS Program. What is in the KISS Program?
Esther: The KISS Program is a 30 day online program where every day for 30 days you get an audio four minute podcast from me. Every day you get a sample meal plan and recipes. The goal is to create three simple but powerful mindset shifts. You get three tools in four weeks. When you're done with the program, you can listen to it again and again. It's always in your inbox. Put a file folder on your computer and stash all the emails in there. At the end of the 30 days, I have an invitation for you to set up a strategy session with me if you'd like to get additional support.
Dave: That's awesome. Where else can they find other resources? I know you've been at this for a really long time. Where's the best place they can learn more and/or connect with you?
Esther: You can go to my website, estherblum.com. It's E-S-T-H-E-R B-L-U-M. When you sign up for my newsletter by entering your email, you receive my 47 page e-book called Eat, Drink, and Be 40-ish. You also can look at I have four books that are on my website. They're on Amazon as well. You can follow me on social media. When you're on my email list, every week I send tips, I send tricks of the trade. I give free webinars usually once a month. I try to be as supportive for you as I can be.
Dave: Esther, you do so much for people and ask for so little in return. Everyone who's listening, I can't recommend Esther's website enough, so go there. Again, it's estherblum.com. Again, I'll put that in the show notes, makeyourbodywork.com/120.
Esther, thank you so much for being there. Thanks for being vulnerable. Thanks for sharing your story, and thanks for offering some hope and encouragement to Erin and to all the other listeners who maybe have been feeling a little bit of that dissatisfaction. Really, really appreciate you being here.
Esther: It's a pleasure and an honour. Thank you.