Rebuilding From the Inside Out feat. Tricia Stover

Life rarely unfolds the way we expect it to. Sometimes plans fall apart, timelines shift, and what we thought was progress, isn't. This can be especially hard when you're putting an effort and waiting for clear confirmation that it's working, but I want to share with you today a conversation with Trisha, one of our former clients, who existed in that in-between space, where progress was happening, but not in the way she was taught to look for it. I want to remind you that change isn't always a loud announcement. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's a big change, all at once. But often, it's small things that we tweak and then eventually our momentum, it goes in a completely different direction. We pivot five degrees to the left and then we look up in a year and everything's different. And we didn't notice it in the moment until someone brings it up until someone points it out to us. And sometimes we just need to take that little sign, that little something that says, "Hey, this is where you need to be," and embrace it. Hello and welcome to the Nourished Chat. I'm Bonnie, registered dietician and founder of the Nourished Path Personal Online Nutrition Coaching. I'm here to give you all of my best tips and tricks to live a more nourished life without giving up all your favorite foods or spending all of your time cooking. Well, I just love when fate brings people together and fate has brought us together in life. Just different now. All right. Here's our story of how we met and how we got here, which is phenomenal. I was at a business conference with Bonnie's husband, Clint, and we ended up sitting at the same table for dinner at a restaurant. It was a really nice steakhouse. And there were three women at the table, and this was a 10% table. Yeah. Yeah, six, seven guys and three women. And as I said, they're eating my salamonyan. Listening to everybody talking to Bonnie, you were sitting two seats over. And I think our dinner was about two and a half hours, and after dinner, you rallied everybody and said, "Okay, we just say way too much food. We're going to go for 25-minute walk." I bullied everyone into going on that. I totally bullied everybody out of going into going. And what you didn't know at that time was what I was going through personally. And I was trying to navigate a six-year breakup with a long-term partner of mine, and it was very devastating. That had happened earlier in 2025. So what we met was August of 2025. And I knew I was on a journey to better myself. But I just really wasn't hitting the mark. And of course, we all love to focus on our careers and read books and how-tos and we're also both coaches. And there's a little bit of me that is intimidated by other coaches, because I know what my clients feel when I'm coaching them. And to be honest with you, I didn't want to feel it, right? I just don't want to go through what my clients go through, but I see the end result, right? And I recognize the importance of it. But that day or that evening, you must have said something or done something to basically trigger that thought in my brain that I really needed to focus more inward. And it wasn't just psychology. It was health-related. And where I was unhappy as to with myself was my weight. And I was bloated. I was navigating court. It's nothing I noticed. I think everyone thinks like a body was must be judging or whatever. A little bit going. Man, I look back at pictures, even August of last year and April look last year. Part of a really big myth that, oh, I just won't eat in all those weight. But it really doesn't work very well, even though it feels like a shut-up paper. Yeah. Doesn't mind max calories at the time. And most of 2025, there was some days I did not even hit 400 calories a day. When I met you, I was at a steady 600 calories a day. And I was so frustrated because most of that was not fasting on purpose. It was stress-driven. Yeah, PTSD stress-driven. I wasn't hungry at all. And I just wouldn't eat. I could go 30. What was the first thing I'm just curious, fast-boring when you started with Trisha as your coach? How did that go at first? Because I'm sure I know what she obviously said to do, but I'm curious to hear how you thought about it. Yeah. I was frustrated at the time. Yeah. Because according to, you know, everything we read and abs and data, I technically should be eating 1500 calories, 1700 calories a day. And I was terrified because I'm thinking to myself, how am I going to eat that much? I can't remember if you said it or if Trisha said it, but one of you said it the best. And it was how it was positioned to me that changed my mindset. Because the conversation went like this. And I know who are trying to lose weight have to back things out of their diet. And we had the advantage of knowing this situation was emotional, stressful, everything in that those categories that I would actually have a blank slate to build my own eating habits. And that was huge because I didn't look at it like I used to look at it before. I was looking at it as, okay, I'm rebuilding my life myself. And I'm going to now rebuild how I eat, how I exercise, and basically how I want to be happy for the long term of my life. Because it wasn't just about not eating. I mean, this is health issues, smell nutrition, all the things that come along with not eating. When I look at this journey and look back on it, I started thinking that I wanted to lose weight. And what ended up happening was I was able to build a sustainable lifestyle eating habits and and exercise and know how to track it and understand what works for my body. I knew it was going to be a long haul. So I started. You say long haul, but you made a lot of changes in relatively short amount of time. I think it was actually very efficient. Well, it was mostly over three to four months. Yeah. I think this transformation changes and not very, very long time. I right after I met you, there was this time period between when I met you and when I hired you. And it was in that frame that I decided I was going to start by walking every day. And it's sound boring because in my younger years, I would hit the gym and be like super excited, motivated to wet and hit the weights and all these things. And well, I can't do that these days because of work and responsibilities. So I just decided I was going to walk three miles every day. And what I learned is through walking because that was my exercise. It was also my self regulation and how I ended up coping with this PTSD. The music I listened to the cadence of my walk. I started to set these little micro goals, but they compound over taught the hardest part is not starting. The hardest part is staying consistent, but that's where Trisha came in because every week there were check ins and how are you doing? What can I help you with and where you stuck? But the photos, that was a big deal because I didn't like my hair. photos taken, even if I didn't share them with anybody. The other massive factor was when I started working with Trisha, I expected that my weight would drop right away and I was really disappointed. So we switched over from weighing myself, which disappointed me because I wasn't getting the results I thought at the time and we switched to measurements instead. I saw, I can't even remember the very first time I did, well I had to have a baseline. We started measuring instead of the stress of weighing me because I wasn't seeing pounds on the scale drop, but at the same time I had started lifting weights and walking. So she said, you need to start measuring yourself because your body is changing and all these things are happening and you need to see it and you're not seeing it. I mean, she was thinking, I can see these changes. I just want to make sure you can see them. That's huge because we oftentimes doubt ourselves when we can't see that progress but someone else can see the progress and that's with weight loss or anything else. You're learning to play piano and you're like, I suck, but your teacher says, I heard you three weeks ago and I can't tell you how much better you are now, but I can't tell. I can tell. And we know when we look in the mirror at ourselves, we do not see what other people see. We are the last ones. People ask how long does it take to see change. I say you'll see changes in measurements. In a few weeks, you'll start to get people commenting, especially people who don't see you that often, who see you once a month or every other month. Not people who see you every day. They'll notice you're if you're a teller at a bank, you're calling it comes in every two weeks. They'll notice because they're seeing that little snapshot of you every couple weeks. And then people close to you will notice and then you'll notice last because you see yourself every day. It's like a flipbook one page of the, you see the animation. That's a great analogy and that's exactly how it played out. There's this little boutique store here where I live and I have to have my clothes special ordered just because I'm on the shorter side and I have to have them altered anyways. So I go into this little boutique and I work with this lady. She's French, one of the times that I had gone in and seen her. And then I had gone back like 45 days later and she said, what are you doing differently because you don't fit in these clothes anymore. I'm going to have to re style you or re help you. And I'm, and I looked at her like she was Medusa and I'm like, well, I'm gonna lost a pound and I've been working out and I've been doing all these things and she said, no, you're a complete size smaller and you might be even a size and a half smaller. And I just looked at her like, yeah, that's a great sales compliment. I remember the day that I took my measurements and I had sent them over to Trusha and I remember saying to her, I have lost six inches, six weeks, but I haven't lost 10 pounds, right? And the measurements ended up being what motivated me forward. And there really was a matter. It really is. And like, we have these sizes off somebody and they not lose a pound. Like, that's what you actually want. Yes, for that. It was fantastic. What I ended up doing was that's what made me stick to the program because had I not found a way to actually measure my progress, I would have been really discouraged. And what I loved about Trusha is I could say, I don't like that food. I don't like any of those foods. I don't even like to eat vegetables. And she would always give me resources back. Okay, well, if you don't like this, then let's try this. I think I was just resistant in the beginning. And there it was completely unnecessary. I just should have trusted the whole process, which I ended up doing. And now I like, everybody should do this, right? And there's, you know, so many ways to lose weight these days. And I think there are a lot of shortcuts that might not be the best health wise for people. But when you look at the long game and you look at your health and how do you want to do it, we know that it's going to take time and we have to accept those micro movements and just build on them. And then you become addicted. Oh, I'm stressed. I need to go for a walk. I need to listen to this soundtrack. And by the way, I'm exercising on top of it and eating right. I think, I think, I'm, we think that these things are, I have to do this when you think I, I always think of it, what would you say to your child? You know, we tell our kid to take a deep breath. We tell our kids to go for a walk, to go outside for a few minutes to cool off. And then we don't do it. And I think it's hard in the moment to do it. But I say, well, what I say to me if I was my own mother. And that, that really gets to it. Yeah. We don't know. You didn't know before the two going for a walk would help. Yeah. And now that you know, yeah, I don't need to go to the gym and crush it every day for two hours. I can just hop outside my front door and on the way to my walk, I do a three-mile, takes me one mile to get there. There is a farmer's market every single Wednesday where I live. And it's about three to four blocks long. And I had to walk directly through the farmer's market on Wednesdays to go in my walk. And I ended up because I was then walking through the farmer's market thinking, huh, these are other things, Trisha, Toby, all the vegetables I said I'd want to look at everything I didn't want. And here the universe is. And it literally delivered it right to my lap. Well, I think the great thing is you saw the opportunity of me sitting at your table, of going through the farmer's market of what, and you said, give me a sign. And you listen to the sign. You saw the sign and you took it. He said, "Anything is, I never go with Clinton word trips." I know. That's the only one I went with him on because I was a family in Minnesota. So I said, well, why wouldn't I go get to see the fancy hotel? That's the same price whether I'm there or not. So I not go to the foche fancy fancy place. Have fancy dinner, steaks. And the other thing is we weren't even supposed to go to that restaurant. We were going to go to a different place and we couldn't get a reservation. I wasn't invited to go to dinner until two hours before we had dinner there. Just seeing, seeing what the universe is putting in front of you and taking advantage of it. And how it's seen, taking that leap of faith. And then you were also talking about how this last year, I was been a year of rebuilding. What are some other ways? Because I find that nutrition and exercise tend to be very good foundational bedrocks for other change. Have you noticed the same thing? When I came back from Minneapolis, I emailed Clint and said, "It basically don't really want anything to do with you, but your wife is fire and I want to hire her." And it was just kind of like a funny ha ha right. And it was so wonderful how we ended up getting connected and going back to things falling in your lab and the universe putting things out there and listening to the opportunities. It was just right there. So grateful. Yes, I've made a lot of changes. Life changes several times throughout the course of your life and you recognize what works and what doesn't work. And we all know the definition of insanity. But through this, one of the big deals that has changed for me is my boundaries, big time boundary. Because now I know how much work I put into this. I don't want to go backwards and it has just changed the way that I think about food and how I eat food when I eat food, where I go to eat food. And I'm not one of those people who says, "I'm not going to that restaurant." It's more of, "I will find something on that menu that suits me. My IBS has gone. I feel vibrant and I'm no longer tired in the middle of the day. Everything changed." For really yourself, stable fuel. So still laying your eating the things you need. Mm-hmm. And finding the right foods to eat, the tracking was interesting. I baked data nerd, so I wanted to get into the whole metric and macros and watching what was happening with my measurements and my weight and figuring out what actually worked for me in the end. And it was consistency, accountability, coaching, all the good things that come with the coach that I didn't want to accept in the beginning. Well, I think it was more than just the food, too. There were so many things that changed. Yep. And you got a fresh start? I did. I found a condo that I love in the right place. It feels good. And it's across the street from a botanical garden. It has a hiking trail. It has everything that I want. And that's what I visualized for almost not every word, but where I was living was not, did not suit me. I got rid of everything in life. That was not serving me. And said, okay, this adds on to the bill. And this is how I'm going to build. And I am building differently this time than I did the last time. That I feel like you learned in who's taking this metaphor when you weren't eating anything. That wasn't working either. It has to be what you need in finding what serves you. Not only saying goodbye to what doesn't, but ushering in and welcoming what does, even when it's uncomfortable. Growth is uncomfortable when you were a kid and you had a growth. That's uncomfortable when you're teeth come in. That's uncomfortable learning things are uncomfortable. But that discomfort leads to a better outcome. As long as it's intentional. Obviously. That's what you really need. It was building new habit. I remember years ago, I would hire a trainer at the gym or sign up for a class or whatever. And just like the rest of people who start things, you do it and then life gets in the way. And then you stop doing it and then you retract. And this, I think had I years ago hired someone like you and Trisha for the food portion. I think the exercise portion would have stuck. But when you're exercising and you're not really taking accountability for what you're eating or how you're eating. But when you start with the food piece and the health piece, and then you just migrate the exercise in as part two, you'll feel like it. There's something about when you feel that energy and that vibrancy and that, and that weight literally being lifted off. All of a sudden the idea of going to the gym feels like maybe not fun. But it feels like there's a pull there. There's a what if there's a wonder what else I can do. Or I feel like I can do this now. And I love that you started with walking because it gave you the habit of movement. Without it being how do I walk? You didn't have to ask that question. Yeah. Starting with something that you know you're very confident in. I knew that night when you rallied people to go for that walk. I asked a few questions because you gave a description of where we were actually walking to and how far it was. And I said no. And it wasn't because I didn't want to go. It's because I didn't know if I could do it. Yeah. I was said from the break going on the walk with us, but I didn't want to say that. Yeah. That's why I didn't go. But that was also why I ended up hiring. Yeah. Cherry Street something. Wasn't it? Well, we want to see it. The giant cherry on the spoon. Open books. It was actually a little further away than I thought it was. Well, thank God I didn't go. I had a good time. I couldn't have made it. I mean, I could have. You would have dragged me. I didn't have the energy. But I love that now someone. If someone asks you to go on a spontaneous walk to see a cherry. You would say, I'm in. It's right. I'm excited. Let's go further. Yeah. Well, I can't think of a better note to end on, actually. I feel like this brings everything around full circle. It's been one of the easiest things. It was the best healing point for me. It was the best thing I could have done for myself at the time. And I would recommend it to anybody who. It's going to be a difficult time in their life. Or any type of change. I know we all are strapped for time. But when you focus on yourself, you focus on your business. The time almost regenerates because you said your energy was so much better. It almost creates the time it took up. It did because I needed. I needed 30 minutes in the middle of the day. You were slower and things just got done. Yeah. And it does make a massive difference. Yeah. And I mean, you have a lot going on. Yeah. But it made everything else so much easier. It did. I see things clearly. Oh, that was another thing. Brain fog. Hmm. Brain fog. Completely gone. I don't have to take any vitamins. I think your body just functions differently now. It does. It does. Mm-hmm. Well, cheers to the future. Thank you so much for being with me today. Yeah. I can't wait to see what's to come. I know. Thank you. And I'm glad we sat at the same table. Randomly. To a dinner, we weren't supposed to go to. In a city I wasn't supposed to be in. It was fantastic, wasn't it? It was. Yeah. If you liked this episode, please follow and rate the podcast and share it with a friend. It really means a world of difference for this small podcast to get discovered and help more people. And thank you so much for joining us today.