Can improvements in diet, exercise, stress result in having more energy; feeling happier, weight loss and putting one's autoimmune disorder into remission? Absolutely. In this episode Sara describes her wellness transformation, or we should probably call it an evolution because it didn't happen o...

Can improvements in diet, exercise, stress result in having more energy; feeling happier, weight loss and putting one's autoimmune disorder into remission?

Absolutely.

In this episode Sara describes her wellness transformation, or we should probably call it an evolution because it didn’t happen overnight. She did lose weight which she has now kept off for several years. But the true benefits are how her life changed-having more energy; feeling happier; and putting her autoimmune disorder into remission.

Other takeaways include:

Intuitive eating provides flexibility to see what works for you, it’s livable

Sara’s keys to eating healthy include: always drink water first, go veggie heavy, track all foods and weigh yourself daily when making healthy lifestyle changes

Weigh yourself to use the data to determine how your body functions best, the scale is a measure of how you’re feeling based on what you’re eating

Emotional eating is positive, but when people eat because they’re sad or upset that’s coping

Transcript of this Episode

Adventures in feeding my fam is a weekly podcast discussing the challenges and fun around feeding your family healthy meals. I'm Andrea Heyman, and I've been a registered dietician for over 25 years. So I know the importance of good nutrition. But I'm also a mom of three so I understand the challenges and tumor that comes along with trying to make this happen. In this podcast, I'll share my tips, tricks and menus, but also share the stories and food prep failures that come along the way to interview guests. We'll discuss family food traditions, how to strengthen bonds around the family table, as well as their favorite family recipes. There isn't one right way to feed your family. But there are countless stories, you can take bits and pieces and learn from all of them.

Welcome to another episode of adventures in feeding my fam. I'm Andrea Heyman. And today we've got Sarah Burdick, who is a nurse turned healthy lifestyle coach and she's been coaching for about three and a half years. But in during that process, she went through an evolution herself. So she is really teaching what she knows very personally and loves. And one aspect is that she is living a refined sugar free life. And she loves experimenting with baking and natural sweeteners. The way she eats is intuitive eating very veggie heavy and she calls it liveable, not restrictive, but focused on energy and feeling good and being in tune to your body. And again, no refined sugar. She's in the baby stages of creating an online course in how to free yourself from sugar addiction, which she believes most of us have, or have experienced in some form or another. She's got this incredible story about how she used to run out in the middle of the night because she wanted Skittles. So that's how far she has come away from her sugar addiction. But she also wants to teach people to get over the fear of not ever having sugar again, in order to thrive. She helps busy women learn to fuel themselves with natural Whole Foods and free themselves from the diet life and just live healthy. So without further ado, here's Sara Burdick.

Welcome, Sarah, I'm so happy you could make it to another episode. And join us for this podcast recording. Thank you.

Sara 02:37 So excited to be here. I feel super honored that you've asked me to be on here. And I can't I hope I can give some value to all your listeners today.

Andrea 02:45 Oh, I'm absolutely sure you will. Now you've been a lifestyle coach for about three and a half years. Tell me about your journey and how you started with that.

Sara 02:57 So a loaded question first. But it's a really cool story for me to be able to share because I actually spend most of my time on social media sharing my story of how I got into Lifestyle coaching from nursing bit by bit every day. So go back a couple years ago, so four years ago, total. And I was at a very low point in my life, I had been a nurse for a couple of years I was working day and night rotation. So if you know anything about hospital life, and day and night rotation, it really leaves no flexibility in normalcy or anything like that for as far as you are concerned with lifestyle, how you eat your eating habits, fitness, things like that. It's something that you would have to really work hard at to keep a routine for. So I was previously an athlete all through college and had been a runner, so I was fit. I don't call myself healthy. Because what I have learned since then, about what healthy means is is a lot different meaning to me now, but I was fit as far as cardiovascular early and all that for a long time. And my first few years of nursing, just all of that kind of went down the drain with the schedule. And because my fitness level went down, I also was eating very randomly. And sometimes just coming home after night shift and putting everything that I wanted in my mouth instead of what I needed or going to sleep. And so I had started looking around for what I was going to do I you know had gone to the gym some but I felt a little lost when I was there. I didn't have any real program to follow but it was just more like, Oh, I feel like lifting something in my legs are always getting up. Right, I'm always getting on a cardio machine, because that's what I thought was healthy at the time. And it just, I just never really saw any change or results. And so I just kind of stopped everything all together. But I had been following a friend on Facebook, she was a previous teammate of mine in college, and she had started doing these home fitness programs, she was a new mom. And she just seemed really happy. And I started following. And of course, at that time, because I was at such a low point, I was super skeptical of anything that anybody was doing at home or online or anything like that. And so I just kind of watched from the sidelines. And about a year and a half after she started, she quit her job. And I was like, wow, like, what are you doing, you're happy and you've quit your job. Tell me about what this is. And she gave me some basic information. And it was home fitness programs. I'm a Beachbody coach. And it was just all nutrition and fitness and community all at your fingertips, which is everything that I was craving at that time. And just being unhappy with my schedule as a nurse with the day and night rotating. It just seemed like a really good fit. And so I asked her if I could get started, how could I get started, she helped me do that. And within just a few weeks, I was feeling so much better, just having a routine and everything laid out for me. I was still just as busy. And my schedule was still just as crazy. But I felt like I at least had, you know, a routine to stick to. And I could literally just make some meals and follow a plan that was all laid out for me. And the thinking was taken out of it, which at that time I needed. Well, that's how I got started. Because as soon as I started feeling good, I naturally started sharing what I was doing with people around me because they're like, well, so you're really happy. You've got a lot of energy tonight, you know, like all the girls in the night picture like, what are you doing? And I so I just started sharing it naturally. And I became a coach myself. And the rest has been history over the last three and a half years. So I now since October 1 of this year, have been one full year retired from nursing, I still have an active license, but I haven't worked in a nursing environment for over a year now. And I've never been happier or felt better or, you know, especially during this whole time of 2020 of everything that we've been going through, it's been absolutely just such a dream come true that I can work from home, have everything I need to stay fit. I've tested out so many new recipes my journey has continued on. And that's where 07:58 I'm at. That's incredible. I can tell just listening to you that you were just super passionate about what you're doing. And it seems like it's very a good fit for you. 08:11 Absolutely. And not not that I knew it would be a good fit in the beginning because I definitely didn't like I said I was skeptical of anything. I thought this was like one of those quick fix lotion, potion kind of things. But it's not that at all. So it's a total solution for making a healthy lifestyle change. And that's what I love about it.

Andrea 08:32 And you mentioned the meal plans that are incorporated in this system. Do you still follow all those? Or do you have flexibility and make your own plans as well?

Sara 08:43 So I do follow them I actually became certified in one of the premium nutrition programs. And it is an intuitive eating style. It's called to be mindset. And it's been really incredible for my life. Because although I love having a routine to be mindset is sort of a routine, but it also gives you some flexibility in seeing what works for you. And so, for me, that was important. Because when I thought about being on a traditional diet, I was like I you know, I don't want to be on that forever. I don't you know, I don't want to have been told what to eat when to eat it every single time I'd rather go on based on how my body feels. And that's exactly what this is. There are some basic principles that I live by which are drinking water first whenever I feel hungry because I'm sure that you know this but maybe some people don't other don't know is that our minds don't distinguish between thirst and hunger. So we all automatically go to eating first because that's what feels good. Um, but usually it's because we're thirsty and so instead of waiting until I felt thirsty, which is Way down the line of dehydration. I always drink water first. So that's one of the principles that I use, and then I go veggie heavy. And then the third and fourth principle is track everything you eat, which I don't do now, I probably should. But I did do it religiously for a long time while I was learning and still in like the the baby phases of making the lifestyle change. And then I weigh daily, which I still do. And that scares a lot of people. Because of what the number says, and it used to scare me too. But I love now that I've learned that using my weight as a form of data. So for instance, if I choose to eat a whole pizza on a Friday night, my plan doesn't say don't do that. But what it says is going by what your body feels best on, and if you are still seeing the results that you want, you can continue to do that. So if I eat a whole pizza on a Friday night, and then I get up in the morning and get on the scale, and it says I'm three pounds heavier, the data tells me that that pizza probably didn't work in my favor. And so that's how I use the scale. And those are the simple four principles that I live by. That's how I help all of my coaches and clients. Be able to use the scale in a non scary way.

Andrea 11:29 And I really like that you're using it really for objective data, and not in a fashion that is like judgy for ourselves. I feel like people, but women are so like, I personally do not have a scale, because I feel like I am too mean to myself

Sara Yeah, no, yeah. And that's how I was for a long time. Um, but I also, you know, going into this, when I was also tracking everything that I was eating, I could see some patterns, like I could physically see the patterns of what was working and what wasn't. And just stepping on the scale, I took the emotion out of it, which at first was kind of hard. But once I was starting to follow, you know, those simple principles and see the results that I wanted, it became instead of a definition of how healthy I was, it was literally just helping me to figure out what my body was working best on as far as food. So I love using the scale now and I have helped a lot of women not be fearful of the scale anymore, and just really realize that it's not a measure of your health. It's a measure of what how you're feeling as far as what you're eating. And that's it.

Andrea 12:56 And that's really interesting. And it's pretty consistent with what I think of when someone says intuitive eating. And it's I really like the intuitive eating concept or mindful eating, I suppose there. They might be slightly different. I'm not sure what the difference is. However, I just think that the reason why lots of traditional diets don't work is just for the reason that you said people can follow them for a little while, but they don't necessarily leave enough flexibility for lifestyle, personal preference, family, occurrences, occurences, things like that, that they just don't last long term. So I like the concept of intuitive eating

Sata 13:45 when I describe it to people, because I get a lot of people ask me how I eat. Because now that I've been, you know, I lost all of my weight in the first few months. But I've been maintaining for almost four years now. And so I get a lot of people that asked me and I just describe it as livable, because that's what it is. It's livable and sustainable, because there's not a lot of rules to it. It's just some principles to be able to apply at meal time. And I still do prep meals. So that is a big part of my success also. So that when I'm hungry, I don't have to worry about making something right then when I'm starving. And instead I have my meals prepped, I can just grab and go. And so that's been super helpful to me too. And I also use a daily superfood smoothie. It's all natural. It's a supplement that I use, but it basically fills in all the nutritional gaps. So it's got all the vitamins and minerals that you would need for your daily values and that cuts down on cravings which is a huge help. And also it's it's something thing that I can grab quickly and make it 32nd. And I know I'm getting a really packed, dense amount of nutrition. And then I can at least think after that about what I'm going to do next next for mealtime. So now I have breakfast at home, like in the morning, as in terms of my meal plan, also, like, I live by a couple rules. So my breakfast is 50% protein. And then 50%, fiber filled carbs. What I mean by that is carbs that have, you know, one gram of fiber per 1010 grams of carbohydrates. And then I also make sure that the amount of sugar that it has in it, first of all, I'm refined sugar free, so I don't if it has white sugar in it, or refined sugar, I do not. I don't have it in my life anyway. But it basically you don't you want to make sure that whatever it's sweetened with the amount of grams of sugar is not more than the amount of fiber per fiber filled carb. So that's how my breakfast is set up. The other meals, I still prep the same exact way that I learned how to prep years ago when I was still working as a nurse, I still pick a couple recipes a week from my platform and just go for it.

Andrea 16:24 Did you have a big transformation? You mentioned you lost some weight initially. But did you have other health improvements that you saw? Y

Sara 16:32 so I have lost overall 25 pounds. But I think I said in the beginning that I lost most of my weight in the first couple of months. And so now it's just been about gaining strength and maintaining energy levels and just feeling good. So I like to eat to feel good. But one of the biggest changes in my life, I have a history of some autoimmune disease, which is alopecia areata. And for anyone who isn't sure about what that is, it means that you lose hair and spots all over your head. So at one time, I had lost about 50% of my hair. And this was actually before I started coaching. And I had still been struggling with it when i when i you know started making lifestyle changes. But one of the biggest things that I've noticed in my change in my health is that my hair first of all my alopecia areata is in full remission. And do I attribute that completely to the way that I eat? No, I think that it had a lot to do with distressing changing my lifestyle, you know, focusing on fuel with my nutrition, for sure. But also, you know, a lot of it was I noticed that my happiness levels changed when I was eating the way that I needed to eat. And a lot of that had to do all of those things together had to do with, you know, my overall health, but also the health of my hair. And I don't know, probably no one here in your audience yet has followed me. So they aren't sure of what my hair looks like within this podcast, but

Andrea 18:16 she has the most incredible gorgeous hair I've ever seen you.

Sara 18:21 But I have a lot of hair now. And I absolutely cherish every piece of it, no matter what, because of what I've been through. And I just think that my eating had a lot to do with my recovery in it. And I think it's really important that people know, you know, when starting an intuitive eating style. I always get asked, Well, how long does it take to get results. And I always laugh when people ask them like, well, you're gonna start feeling better right away, first of all, but in terms of like a huge weight loss, intuitive eating takes time, it just takes time to figure out what you thrive on. One of the that's one of the reasons why it's so important to track what you're eating. I also have people track at how they're feeling every day in their bathroom habits. And so there's a tracker journal that comes with it, and you basically, you know, write down what you ate for the day, how you felt what your bathroom habits were, and over, you know, the first couple of weeks, you really get to see some patterns of Okay, well, the day that I had, you know, that I was all over the place and didn't have my meal preps and whatever and I just ate at work. I felt like crap. You see that on your page. But you know, the other five days I was great. And you see that your energy was great because you're journaling it. So it's important to know that it takes time to figure out but you will start feeling better immediately.

Andrea 19:49 So you also have a really interesting definition of what emotional eating is. Can you share that with us?

Sara 19:56 Yeah, so this might be a little bit of a touchy feely object for some. But in the world of social media, I think it's really important to remind yourself of what you really believe in not just what you're seeing all over the internet and all the trends that are going on. Trust me, I run my business on the internet. And so I love social media. But I also really try to keep it real. And so a lot of people on the internet talk about emotional eating, and how they are trying to stop emotional eating. And how I think of it is that that's just impossible, I don't think it's possible to actually never emotionally eat again, I think the definition of emotional eating is that anytime you feel happy when you're eating something, or if you can't wait for Thanksgiving, which is a holiday surrounded around food, because you're happy. That's emotional eating. And so I don't want that to go away. I love that. I love that I get excited to go out on date night and have pizza sometimes like that, to me is emotional eating. And I love that. Now I realize a lot of times when people are thinking about emotional eating, they're like, Yeah, but when I'm sad, or I'm stressed, I just eat whatever I want. That's coping. And so for me that has that's more in, in the realm of, of the addictive mindset, and using it to cope. And so when I have somebody tell me that they are an emotional eater, I really dig into it and ask them the important questions like What do you mean by that? What emotions are you eating for and if it's sad or stressed, or, you know, negative emotions, then I try to help them rework how they're thinking about it and teach them that it's actually coping. And that is why it's not serving them. But emotional eating in general. Like I said, if you get excited for Thanksgiving, it is my favorite holiday. And I'm telling you, right now, if I was told that I was not supposed to be emotional about Thanksgiving, I really, I think I would just go into a dark hole. I'm not sure. But you know, so I think that we all emotionally eat. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think it's that you have to figure out what emotions you're eating for and deal with those.

Andrea 22:25 That's fantastic. That's such a good such a I love that perspective. Absolutely. So tell us what projects you're working on now in your business. 22:34 Whoo, so exciting. So, um, so like I said, I've been coaching, I've been building an online coaching business for the last almost four years. And I love it. But one of the things I've been really grown passionate about, and I've shared it a couple times already today is that I, I personally was a sugar addict. And when I say sugar addict, I am telling you that I would get out of bed at 11 o'clock at night, if I had a craving and go get a whole bag of Skittles at the store, even if everybody else in the house was sleeping. That's how much I had a sugar addiction. And I did not start out by cutting out refined sugar out of my diet right in the beginning of my lifestyle changes. But what I realized was that I wasn't feeling my exact best, because I would do things like what I just described at 11 o'clock at night. And it would really set me back as far as my mindset and how I felt for days afterwards. It wasn't serving me. And so I grew passionate about learning about my sugar addiction. And how I was going to just kind of make that change in my life. I was Addicted to Candy and sugars like that for as long as I can remember in my life. And basically I by doing it myself, I became what I would consider maybe a slight expert in removing refined sugar. Okay, you can call yourself an expert. I used that 24:14 term lightly. But I I've lived it and so once I started opening up about it on my social media I had a lot of people ask me, oh my god, because I would start posting about you know, things that I was feeling emotions that I was feeling when I was going through the process of giving up sugar because it's not easy. addiction to anything. It's not easy to give up. But what I learned was that, you know, refined white sugar affects the same part of your brain as a lot of heavy drugs. And as a nurse as soon as I found that out, I thought to myself, Oh my gosh, like I cannot allow myself to be addicted to something that is even better. During that part of my brain, because I don't want anything to do with it. And so the more I learned, the more I realized that I was a sugar addict, the more I knew that that was something that I needed to change. And I also, while posting about it, realized how much people could relate to it. And they wanted to do the same thing. And so, over the last few months, I'm still in the, you know, like beginning stages of it, but I'm creating an online course, to help people not only just learn how to remove refined sugar from their lives, but also not be in fear of never being able to have anything sweet again, because that's the first thing that comes up. And also just, you know, teach people how to be able to live without feeling like they have to have sugar in their lives, because it's changed so much for me. So it's an online course and helping identify sugar addiction, the what, the where the how, and some some skills to be able to take into life and just kind of replace the refined sugar in the world with some natural sweeteners and get rid of the fear of sugar addiction.

Andrea 26:14 That's fantastic. We will definitely keep our eyes open for that. And I follow you on Instagram, but where else can the listeners find you?

Sara 26:24 Yeah, so thank you for asking that. But our so at Burdick fitness is my Instagram handle, but you can also find me on Facebook under Sarah Burdick. So you can just look me up, it should come right up. If not, message Andrea and, and she'll let people find it.

Andrea 26:40 We can we can also put those links in the show notes.

Sara 26:42 Oh, thank you. Um, but those, that's where you can find me and then I am working on my website. So pretty soon ob Sarah berdych.com. And I'll have access to my online course for purchase. And then everything, everything else I do will be on my website too. So that'll be all in one place, like a landing page. But those are the most common places to find me. 27:05 Otherwise, I live in Vermont, 27:06 I don't think you want to come track me down. But I 27:08 definitely want to come check you down there. The next time I'm there, I'm gonna knock on your door. Oh my god. I am so thankful that you came today. You are amazing. I love what you're doing. I love your perspective about food and health and wellness. And you have such a passion for it. And it's because you've lived it and have reaped the rewards. So thank you for coming today so much I'm

Sara 27:35 so honored that you had me on here. And I know that I'm kind of a non traditional guests so far for maybe your your podcast because it's about feeding families. But I do help a lot of women learn to feed their families through my coaching business. And I just I love I'm super passionate about you know, sharing with people that they can make simple changes and it doesn't have to be something that is something so scary.

Andrea 28:03 Wasn't that episode just completely incredible. Some of the takeaways for me were listening to her perspective on emotional eating. And that what we call emotional eating, typically call emotional eating is really coping. That just was like a mic drop right there. So other takeaways. Some of the things she said was what's worked for her is intuitive eating, which provides flexibility to see what works for you. Her keys to healthy eating or always drink water first, go veggie heavy, track all your foods and weigh yourself daily. But she uses weighing herself to use the data to determine how her body functions best. And the scale is a measure of how you're feeling based on what you're eating. intuitive eating is livable, and she turned her autoimmune disease disease symptoms around through healthy lifestyle changes. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean a lot if you took a minute to leave me a review and share this podcast. So other busy moms can be encouraged by the episodes that I have to share. I'd love to connect with you on social media, Instagram at adventures and feeding my fam. I have a Facebook group adventures and feeding my fam where folks are really connecting there and talking about their tips and ideas. And it's really a place for you to connect with other listeners and to collaborate and go deeper. As mentioned in the past that I offer nutrition and family meal planning coaching. Before we start that process, I'm always interested in getting to know you a little better. So head over to my website which the link will be in the show notes and you can sign up for a 30 minute One on One discovery call, where we kind of identify your goals and where you are now and where you want to be with your family's meal planning and health goals. So until next time, I will see you and enjoy. Thanks for listeninganscript of this Episode