Lose the “Wait”! Reclaiming Body Sovereignty with Holly Toscanini

This week we’re joined by Holly Toscanini, a non-diet health and life coach, who shares a powerful message about the often toxic relationship women have with food and their bodies due to societal beauty standards.

Holly shares her personal journey of overcoming body dissatisfaction and transitioning from a career in medical weight loss to  non-diet coaching, driven by her commitment to help women break free from diet culture. 

She explains her philosophy of 'losing the wait'—reclaiming time, money and energy spent on dieting—and living the life you want right now!

Holly emphasizes the importance of self-trust and intuition in building the capacity to stop dieting and living by the scale. 

This episode is chock full of  practical tips for reclaiming body sovereignty and living a fulfilled life beyond dieting - including Holly’s very own 'non-diet manifesto' .

Join us for an inspiring and empowering discussion on redefining beauty, health, and self-worth.

About Our Guest

Holly Toscanini holds multiple certifications in health coaching and non-diet living and her coaching focuses primarily on intuitive eating and body image. Holly's committed to challenging diet culture and guiding women to reconnect with their intuition and self trust. Her clients learn to embrace their inherent worth and develop unconditional self-confidence on their journey to unapologetically living their best lives without having to change their bodies.

Holly's expertise lies in reconnecting women with their inherent intuition and self-trust, helping them reclaim their power from patriarchy and diet culture.

Holly’s Instagram

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Holly’s Website

About the Host

Kim Hagle (she/her)  is a Body Image Coach, Certified Personal Trainer, Registered Holistic Nutritionist, and founder of Radiant Vitality Wellness. 

Through mindset and movement coaching she helps women develop a kinder relationship with their body so they can consistently fuel and move it in a way that supports their health without restricting food, doing tortuous exercise or constantly worrying about the number on the scale

New Here? Join our exclusive email community: “Embrace Your Radiance” is our weekly email series that helps women overcome feeling limited by their body. Each week you'll receive exclusive coaching tips to help you feel healthy, happy and confident no matter what the scale says. As a subscriber, you'll be notified when new podcast episodes drop and will also be the first to hear about all of my free and paid offers. Emails come out every Sunday at 7 pm.  

Want to learn how to support your body without obsessing over the scale?  Register for our FREE mini course. Learn simple, sustainable habits and mindset shifts so you can feel healthy, energetic and confident without rules, deprivation or willpower

Ready to take the next step?  Book a free consultation call to discuss how coaching can help you reach your goals.

Let’s stay in touch! Kim is on Instagram and Facebook @radiantvitalitywellness.  

Disclaimer.  The information contained in this podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice.  Always consult a health care professional about your unique needs.

Transcript

MacBook Air Microphone: 0:47

Hey, welcome back to the Power in Motion podcast. This week I'm joined by a good friend and colleague Holly Toscanini who is a non diet health and life coach and she has a really powerful message to share in this episode about the often toxic relationship we as women have with food and our bodies due to arbitrary and outdated societal beauty standards. So In this episode, Holly shares her personal journey of overcoming body dissatisfaction as she transitioned from a career in medical weight loss. To non-diet coaching and how that fueled her commitment to help women break free from diet culture. As a result of the great work that she's done personally and professionally, she now helps women to lose the weight, and I am using the word weight in the WAIT spelling of the word, whereby we reclaim our time, money, and energy that we would've previously spent on dieting and investing that into living the life we want. right now. Holly is a very spiritual person, as you'll realize, and she talks about the importance of self trust and using our intuition to help us build that capacity to stop dieting and living by the scale. And I'm telling you, this episode is chocked full of practical tips for reclaiming body sovereignty and living a fulfilling life beyond dieting. It's a very empowering and inspiring conversation all about redefining beauty, health, and self worth. So let me just tell you quick a little bit about Holly and then we'll get right into it. Holly Toscanini holds multiple certifications in health coaching and non diet living and her coaching focuses primarily on intuitive eating and body image. Holly's committed to challenging diet culture and guiding women to reconnect with their intuition and self trust. Her clients learn to embrace their inherent worth and develop unconditional self confidence on their journey to unapologetically living their best lives without having to change their bodies. Holly's expertise lies in reconnecting women with their inherent intuition and self trust. helping them reclaim their power from patriarchy and diet culture. All of Holly's links are included in the show notes, and I know you're going to love this interview, so let's get right to it.

3:11

Holly, welcome to the power in motion podcast. I'm so excited to have you here to chat with us today, all about our relationship with food and body and how we can all lose the weight, but not in the W E I G H T spelling of the word, the W A I T spelling of the word. Welcome. Kim. I'm such a big fan of yours and I'm really excited to be a guest on your show today. The feeling is mutual. I'm so glad you're here. Why don't you kick us off by telling us a little bit about yourself and your journey to coming to do the work that you do now. Sure. So my journey really started because of my own experience with low self esteem and body dissatisfaction and basically society's pretty fickle standards of beauty that we're always trying to live up to. And I came out of that with this profound understanding of what truly Finds us. And it's definitely not how much we weigh. It's not the number on the scale. And I decided that I was going to be here to liberate women from that crippling set of rules and regulations that diet culture imposes on us that really steal, in my case, years of my life, my energy, my happiness, my thoughts, everything. And I want to offer women a sanctuary where they can really be their authentic selves and learn to trust their intuition. Focus on things that really matter like their passions and their interests and their health, but defined on their own terms. I hope that makes sense. Basically, I got into this because just like you, I'm sure a lot of us growing up is hard. And when you have to worry about not just fitting in with your peers, but living up to this unrealistic standard of beauty, it's really challenging. And I don't want other women to have to do that. Yeah. And I know that your, your career itself has taken quite a journey. Can you, can you talk to us about what you used to do and how you're waking up to all these unrealistic beauty standards then shaped and maybe propelled you to move into a different Career path. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, like a lot of people, my college degree has nothing to do really with what we can do right now. You know, I've got a master's degree in fine art, but I'm passionate about coaching. So when I graduated from art school, I realized I did not want to be an art teacher. I loved making art, but I didn't want to teach art. I love teaching, but they were kind of two separate things for me. And yeah, that's it. Going through the master's program, I really realized how incredibly insecure I was. Not feeling comfortable standing up and talking about myself or feeling confident to talk about my work. And so I started doing a little bit more introspection. I had gained a lot of weight on and off for my whole life. My weight has always been up and down. And at this particular point, when I got out of school, it was pretty high. And I thought, The only way I'm going to learn to change this is to learn everything I can possibly know about diet and exercise and women's health. So I just dove in, I got a life coaching certification, I followed that up with a personal training certification. nutritional consulting. I just kept building on that. Got another one in health coaching, behavior change, uh, just you name it. Anything I could learn, I did. You're well credentialed. I did everything I could to know it all and thought I had it all figured out. I was working for a corporate wellness company and then started working for a doctor in private practice with a weight loss clinic and did coaching for them. And the whole focus was on very low carb, high protein, low fat diets. like ridiculous calorie counts, less than a thousand calories a day and appetite suppressants. Now, a lot of the people that came in and took, uh, medications like, um, metformin, or they were already diabetic and using insulin, uh, or they were put on a prescription antidepressant medications, but phentermine was the most popular. medication. And so each week, these people would come in. I would coach them on how to stick to their plan, you know, give them a shot, take their blood pressure, weigh them and then give them their fentanyl. And. It works great in the beginning, just like all of the weight loss drugs, you know, when you first start it, it changes how you feel. You're not hungry. You feel sort of liberated from being hungry all the time because we're told we're not supposed to be hungry. So now I don't have to deal with that. But what I noticed was that even though people would have to It's often just pretty significant weight loss fast in the beginning over the course of a year that would stabilize and they would plateau and then they'd all freak out and then their weight would start to climb back up again because it's really hard to live on 900 calories a day, even with a lot of appetite suppressants. And while it was a great business model, because those people always came back, it didn't feel It was Like there was any integrity and telling people that this was going to be their way out when it wasn't it was just a way back into that sort of spinning doorway you go in you go out you go in you go out there was really no end to it at all. And I just couldn't do it anymore with any sort of. Integrity. Well, I was going to ask, how do you feel as a coach when people are coming in and saying they're struggling with blowing this restrictive diet and they're not getting the weight loss results that they want? Or maybe they are, but it's hard to maintain. And then your job as a coach is to tell them what they're doing everything wrong and they need to be more restrictive or like, How does that feel in the beginning? It was easy because I had drunk the Kool Aid. I was following the diet. I was taking the medications. I was all in to the point where I remember when my ex husband and I first started dating, I would get furious when he would take me to an Italian restaurant. And expect me to eat pasta or, or pho, or, you know, wherever we were going, oh my God, if there were carbohydrates involved, I would just get really difficult to be around because I couldn't eat them. And I refused. And so now I look back on it and I'm like, oh my God, that was the silliest thing ever. But it was one of my very rigid rules and it's how I stayed in a smaller size. And so, because I was so Strict and rigid about my own eating. I expected everybody else to do that as well. So I was all in I was coaching them on how to before you go places and counter macros and you know, all of the stuff that goes into it. I was all in and it wasn't until I was transitioning out. I was realizing I don't want to stay on this medication forever. I didn't like the way it made me feel and I stopped taking it. And once I stopped taking it, things changed. And then I started working for, um, here in California, there's a Kaiser Permanente is one of the big insurance companies, but hospitals as well. And I worked for them and their medical weight management program. And I was watching these people do basically the same thing. They weren't on medication, but they were on meal replacement plans. And I was going through coaching them. And as I was Going through like the three years I was there, I really started to see these people don't need another diet. These people need to learn the underlying causes of their insecurities, and really how to feel better about themselves without weight being a factor. There was some, there was some, really amazing people in this group. And I think out of the ones that I still keep in touch with, there's only two that have kept their weight off the entire time. And I worked with a few hundred people in that program over the course of a few years. And I just couldn't keep telling them that they needed to, you know, count their calories. When I really wanted to talk about the psychology of why they felt the way they felt and maybe how to focus on. acceptance rather than conformity. So I was really just, my eyes were open to diet culture and how it really gaslights us into believing it's the only way to be. And I just, I couldn't do it anymore. Yeah. And it's such a powerful story. And I think like so many of us, it's our own transformation, our own journey that takes us on this path. Right. And so in your own unwrapping and figuring this out and realizing like how you're feeling, um, restricted on this medication or you don't like how it makes you feel and that you're just victim to these narrow beauty standards that are arbitrary and oppressive, you know, you started to. Reframe your own beliefs and think differently and then you can't help but not want to share that, right? Like you can't hold this little secret to yourself. And I'll tell you what, the breaking point for me in all of this, when I was just like, that's it, I'm done, was when I was going through my divorce. I was under a lot of stress, as you know, you can understand, and I lost, some weight in a pretty short period of time. And every night I would show up to that group, they would say, Oh my gosh, you look great. And you're just doing the program. And wow, you set such a great example. And inside I'm going, I am such a fraud. I have no control over this. This is not the program. This is life, you know, stress to the mass. It took me down a peg or two. You're exactly right. This is what trauma looks like. It's not that I am like the pinnacle of what you should be living up to. I am not the example that you need to be following. I am an example of life falling apart. And this is what sometimes happens. So when I was kind of ending my time in In the whole diet industry, that was really part of it. I was like, you know what, I'm a fraud. I am not doing the program. I am not living like the low carb lifestyle. I'm, I'm losing it personally, and I don't want people to look to that trauma and think, Oh, I just need to find that kind of stress in my life. So I was like, you really don't want that. No, that is certainly not what we want to be recommending out there as health. Don't divorce your husband just so you can lose a few pounds. Just, just say lose the 200 pounds if you need to leave your body out of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, as you started, getting clear on all these, narrow beauty standards and how they were impacting your beliefs about yourself, what did you start to become aware of and how did your beliefs start to shift? Well, I guess it's because I really started looking at, not just my childhood, but I wanted to look at how my mother, um, looked at her body and how my grandma, you know, I wanted to look back at the women in my family and see how I learned this. How did this happen? How did I learn to do this? Because if I had never seen TV or movies or magazines or anything, I still would have felt this way because it's what I learned from, the women in my family. I learned from them that the way our bodies aren't good enough and appearance is really the thing that matters. And, you know, as little girls, we hear all these fairy tales, you'd be sweet, be charming, be a people pleaser, and Prince Charming is going to rescue you and solve all your problems. And then when we grow up and realize that that isn't going to happen, it's a horrible feeling and we blame ourselves. And that's really when diet culture swoops in and starts to whisper in your ear, Oh, you can have it all. You just need to work on yourself, right? Just 30 pounds, 30 days, drop a dress size in a weekend. And it really, it really, That culture and patriarchy both exist to distract us from stepping into our full power as equals, and it keeps us feeling insecure like our value as human beings is tied to just beauty and physical perfection. I had a couple of episodes of my podcast where I talked about. Kind of that specifically, there was one I did, um, that sort of looked at untangling the paradox of being a woman that was inspired by Greta Gerwig's, speech in, the Barbie movie. And then another one, uh, where I was reading a book called Unshrinking by Kate Mann that was all about misogyny and fat phobia. And so I try to work that philosophy into everything that I do. Certainly not a man hater, but I don't think I should have to shrink my body just to be accepted. It just doesn't make sense. No, absolutely not. And, you know, it wasn't until, like, both of us have, have the same mentor and it wasn't until I was in her mentorship that I even considered, um, body image or my thoughts about my weight as a feminist issue. Like, I had never, I, I had identified as a feminist, but I never considered how misogyny and patriarchy were playing into my relationship with my body and food. Yeah, go ahead. We're so gaslit, right? We don't even know we're not supposed to want it. It's like, it's just a given. Of course, I want to be thin. Everybody wants to be thin. Of course, I want to be perfect. You know, everybody wants to be perfect. So it's, it's one of those things that it's like, if someone was describing this as like, ask a fish to describe water. And that's kind of how it is with women in dieting. It's like, we don't even know what it is. What is diet culture? Yeah. It's just my life. It's just what I'm supposed to be doing. Yeah. It's crazy. So your response to that, which I think is so powerful. You wrote a non diet manifesto for reclaiming body sovereignty. Like even just the title of that is so powerful. So tell us about it and what motivated you to bring that out into the world? Ah, yeah, well, it came because I was working on a podcast episode and was kind of trying to put together this class and I thought, you know, I really want something powerful to say in the beginning that that explains kind of what we've just been discussing, how did I, how did I come to this place where I was ready to say, That's it. We're not doing this anymore. And in the course that you and I both took, um, with Stephanie about body image, one of the things that she had asked us to do was to write a manifesto, um, all about kind of self confidence and the unconditional, Appreciation and acceptance of ourself. And so this document was supposed to be a statement of my new non diet beliefs, my ideals, my intentions, and this new vision for my life beyond diet culture. It wasn't supposed to be a set of rules, but more like a love letter to every inch of my body that I had been told was somehow imperfect. So, uh, By writing and adopting the manifesto, I really started on my journey that began with understanding how I got there. It progressed to unlearning all of that and then reclaiming sovereignty or authority over my own body and my life. I love that. And so what are some ways that you have reclaimed authority over your own body and life? I think the first is just giving myself permission to not have to diet. I think that was one of the hardest things and all of the little insidious things that diet culture does. It, you know, has me looking at the back of labels still. It has me thinking about how much I'm going to eat or is that the right food to eat? And even though I am, you know, fully immersed in intuitive eating, every now and then you're walking down the grocery store aisle and you're, you're thinking to yourself, is anybody looking at what's in my cart? You're still worried about, are they going to judge me because I've got tortilla chips? Or, you know, so even though I am fully, um, Just in the whole culture of letting go of that. It is so ingrained that it still sneaks back into my brain every now and then. And so I wanted to make sure that One, I had control over my body. Nobody tells me what to do with my body. I am the only one that gets to make decisions for myself. Two, I don't have to worry about the number on the scale. I don't have to be afraid to talk about how much I weigh. I don't have to be afraid to talk about my age either. Cause I think a lot of people get those things. Intertwined. I can't tell anybody how old I am, and I can't tell anybody how much I weigh. There was an episode, I don't know if you remember, a long time ago, there's a model named Tyra Banks that had a talk show. And one episode, she had every woman in the audience wearing a t shirt that had their weight. on the t shirt. And I just looked and I thought, Oh my God, that's what 165 pounds looks like. But also that's what, you know, 265 pounds looks like. And, and it was so eyeopening to know that what I thought people weighed was so distorted. Yeah. And my whole life, I mean, I'm almost 5'10 My whole life, I thought I was supposed to weigh 125 pounds. Cause that's what Models weight. I was not born at 125 pounds. So, you know, I had to really recalibrate what normal was for me. And I think all of that in the manifesto, it's about reclaiming my body is my body. It doesn't have to look any other way than the way it looks. It's okay. If I want to wear makeup, great. If I don't, great. If I want to shave, great. Great. If I don't, I'm not gonna. So it's all about being a woman is more than just being hairless and thin, you know, it's about so much more. And I think when we can say that out loud and not be afraid to talk about our age or the number on the scale or any of those things, dress size, any of that, it's empowering. And it really is liberating to not be hung up on those numbers. Well, it unshames it, right? Like we're taught to that. There's a right weight that we should be, and a certain age that's ideal even, like ageism is a whole thing, right? So anything outside of these narrow standards, we're taught to be ashamed of. you were talking about Tyra Banks, and actually something recently happened, in our Canadian television. We have a show called City Line, And the host, had a panel of people on for the day and they all weighed the same as her. They all weighed 185 pounds. and so they all came out and like shared that they were the same weight, but you could see how all these different body sizes and shapes like manifested, but they all had the same weight. Yeah, they just talked about like, you know, how it shouldn't have taken so much guts for all of them to come out and do that show and do that panel, but it did. And then there was a conversation about like, why are we so hung up on this number? And why are we afraid to say it? Right? Yeah, that's why it's so exciting for me to see other content creators on platforms like TikTok or Instagram. showing their size, talking about the size of their clothes, putting it on and saying, this is what a size 16 looks like, or this is what a size 22 looks like. Or I have, you know, a size 12, 14, and 16, and they all fit me because the sizing is so screwed up in women's clothing. You know, so it's really empowering to curate your social media feed that you are only seeing images that you can relate to and that make you feel good about yourself instead of tear you down. Yes, I think that's a really important tip. write that one down, listeners. You can curate your social media feed to only show the things that are gonna, lift you up and not trigger you into body shame. It's really important. Um, Holly. At the beginning of the episode, I mentioned how we're going to talk about, you know, your idea of losing the weight, but in the W A I T spelling of it. And I love how you've used that play on words. Tell us what you mean by losing the wait in that context. I realized in my kind of discovery of, of diet culture and what it had done to me that I had wasted so much of my time, my money, oh my God, my money on Trying to change my body diet programs, diet pills, meal plans, gym memberships, exercise equipment. That is dusty in the corner with clothes all over it. You know, I had spent so much of my time. I am so good at math now because of diet culture. That is the one good thing. It taught me to be really good at calculating numbers. I just realized if I could reclaim all of that, just the money alone. I could probably retire, but if I could reclaim all of that energy and Stop waiting for my body to be perfect to start living my life. I know a lot of us put off dating. We put off travel. We put off asking for the promotion or changing careers because we don't think we look right. You know, we can't be confident until we change our bodies. And I just decided to I wanted to lose the weight of waiting. I didn't want to wait anymore to do what I wanted to do because I was worried about what people thought of my body and what I looked like. So I wanted to create something that could help women increase their self esteem and improve their body image while learning how to also just tune into the wisdom of their bodies because self trust is something so many of us lose and give over to diet culture. And in this class, my hope is that we can begin to build the skills we need to recognize our internal eating cues, prioritize our self care, and really develop a non judgmental attitude about our food choices and our bodies. So that's where the whole program came from, was just this desire to help women stop putting their life on hold until they have the perfect body. Yeah. Yeah. So then how does your wait loss program differ from other W E I G H T loss programs where they might get a meal plan or a workout program or something that they have to follow and it's all prescribed? Sure. Um, well, one of the ways, and I think it also may differentiate me a little bit from some of the other, uh, coaches in the non diet world is that I incorporate A lot of elements of spirituality and reconnecting to intuition. I mean, the whole name intuitive eating should tell you that you've really got to be able to trust your body. So I wanted to make sure that we understand when you don't trust your body, you can't trust yourself. Um, if you don't honor your gut instincts or your intuition, you're probably not going to listen to your body and trust when it's telling you you're hungry or full, or even when you need to rest. And I've had my own spiritual practice of sort of reengaging with my feminine energy for years. And I've taught a lot of classes, uh, to other people on just how to reconnect with that inner knowing or higher wisdom, whatever you want to call it. And when I'm using the word spirituality, I'm talking not in a religious sense necessarily, not in a specific, um, Doctrination, but in a general sense of being connected to something bigger than yourself. And really the best way to strengthen that mind body connection is to engage with and trust your intuitions. So I incorporate this teaching into all my programs. I believe in it that much. Yeah, I love that. And I think that's where a lot of us, um, get stuck in trying to learn intuitive eating on our own, right, is like, we can, we all can buy the book for 25 from Amazon and read it. But implementing those principles is hard if we don't have that sense of inner wisdom, or we're not connected to it, you know, to trust it and make those decisions on our own without a set of rules. Right. And well, it's because we've been taught to not trust our bodies. Right. I mean, going back to my whole story about the appetite suppressants and, and even some of the weight loss drugs now, yes, they do alter your chemical makeup to, to facilitate hormones. Right. But not to go, not to get into that too much, but what it does is it tells you that what your body is telling you is wrong. So don't believe it. We're going to help you ignore it. And that really does disconnect us from everything. It is. Women are so intuitive naturally that we are encouraged to distrust that. And I think that's what diet culture really does, is don't trust your intuition. I'm going to give you a plan, trust the plan. And that's just not how to do it. It really isn't. Yeah, it's really sad when we think about it. Like you're right, that is in our DNA to be intuitive and nurturing and then to be told our, yeah, from the, Time they were about two, three years old, that we can't trust our hunger or that we're eating the wrong amount of food, or we don't know how to move our body properly without a plan. Like we're, we're sent these messages all through our life that we can't trust ourselves. So yeah, it, I, it would take some time to rebuild that sense of trust and tuning into your intuition. So I wonder if you have some tips, like what would be some first steps a person could take to rebuild that relationship with their intuition? Absolutely. First is you've just got to get quiet and you've got to listen to the thoughts that are coming up right away and question them because so much of our thinking is automatic. And so much of it is negative. I think we, every woman I know has had that sort of endless loop, especially when you're anxious right before bed, where it's like your brain just sort of spins out of control. I think Wanda Sykes does a great Um, take on this and one of her, um, comedy shows, she starts talking about, you know, one thing and then ends up in a totally different space and this completely insane, um, list of things that she needs to do or that she's thinking about doing. So just getting quiet, you know, allow yourself to be quiet and then start to pay attention to how things feel in your body. When you experience them, um, a lot of times you'll hear something and you'll get a gut feeling about it. You know, you'll clench up or. you'll get nervous or you'll feel tense. And so listening to the way your body is communicating with you is also really important. So get quiet, listen to your body. And then the practice of trust is just that it's about practice. So when you get a feeling about something, On it and see how that turns out. I know that sounds pretty simple, but one of the best ways is just let's say you're driving down the road and you get this feeling that you should not take the road that you always take like take a different way home. You ignore it. Maybe something bad happens, maybe nothing bad happens but start practicing just acting on that instinct. When I was younger, this is kind of a silly example, but when I was younger, I had that sort of thing happen. I was driving the car, I was headed home and I got this feeling that I should take a different road than the one I was on. And I was like, I'm in a hurry. I got to get there. I actually got into a car accident on the way home. Now, was that a coincidence? Maybe, but I know every time. I'm going somewhere. If I have an instinct that tells me go a different way, I follow. I'm gonna go. And it may or may not ever happen again, but I know that that one time I didn't listen, there was a consequence. Your consequences aren't always going to be that extreme, but you can start practicing. And one of the things, this is kind of a silly tip, but one of the things I like to do is if you have a decision to make, um, let's say it is, should I go this place or this place on vacation? Go ahead and Write down whatever it is that you think the answer is. and put it in an envelope. And then don't label the envelope, maybe do two or three of them, don't label the envelope, three different places, three different envelopes, all of them blank. And just decide whatever envelope I pick is the where I'm going to go. I've done that too. And it's, it's kind of silly because who cares where you go for vacation, but it just gives you the practice of trusting. Number one, and then following through, which is number two. So a lot of this all starts with just getting quiet, listening to the way your body is communicating with you, and then just practice trusting your instincts and see how that goes. And I love how you're giving us examples that don't relate to food. Because that, for someone who's dieted for a long time, like that can be hard at first, trusting your gut around food, right? So learning to build up your muscle of intuition in other areas, I think can then show you, give you evidence that then you can trust your intuition when it comes to food or movement or whatever the case may be. It's really just a good idea to practice on things that don't seem that important. Like, yeah, you know, maybe where I go on vacation or what road I drive home, because if you start with those baby steps, those little, little bits of trust, then you can build into, do I trust that my body wants this food or this food? And Be okay with the, the outcome, you know, whatever you plate of food you choose is fine. But oftentimes we second guess ourselves, even if we're eating the food that we think our body wants, we're like, Oh, I really shouldn't be eating that. You can't enjoy your food. If you're feeling guilty about eating it. So it takes some time to build into it, but it's a really good way of, um, understanding how your body communicates with you. And that's really what intuitive eating is all about. It's about listening to the internal cues, not the external cues. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. That's so good. Um, can you give us some more tips about how we can start to live our life right now and stop waiting? Yes. It sounds so easy, doesn't it? I mean, I mean, yeah, it does, but it's not. Just stop. Just stop dieting. It'll be fine. So the thing that I think is the most important, at least it was for me in the beginning, is as a young person, I put so much of my energy. And to feeling accepted. All of us have our own traumas in life. And for me it was, it was being accepted. That was the thing. So, because I'm tall and, um, Developed very early as a young girl. I always felt like, I couldn't be accepted. Because I didn't look like all my girlfriends. So really focusing so much of my time and energy on just that took away all of the time and energy I could have spent on having fun and not caring. And as I grew up, I realized that. I was spending way too much time on those things and not enough time on developing my personality, my interests, going after the things in life that mattered to me, not matter to the group I was with at the time, but were important to me. I learned to stand up for myself. I learned to go a different way. You know, I learned that it was okay to be, you know, the one person going left and everybody else is going right, but it takes time. And just like reconnecting with your intuition, learning to trust yourself and other areas is all about baby steps. It's about figuring out what's one thing today that I can do that I haven't done before. That's going to. Make me feel happy. Because so often, especially as women, we give so much of ourselves away to everybody else, whether it's your job or your family or your children, we give a lot away. So it's about finding one thing you can do each day that fulfills you, that makes you feel energized and excited regardless of what anybody else thinks. And then building on that, you know, you might find after a few months of learning to trust your intuition and trust yourself that you're in the wrong job. Or, you know, you've been, uh, playing soccer your whole life, but you really wanted to be a gymnast, you know, or you're gonna find out a lot of things about yourself that you didn't know. So reconnecting to that and really learning how to trust yourself, that's going to help you build more confidence in yourself. than any diet ever could because confidence from weight loss is fleeting, right? The weight ever stays lost. You always find it. And even if you have, even, even in that temporary time, it's, it's not real confidence. Cause there's, there's all this anxiety that goes with it. I'm like, well, people only like me when I'm this size. So what happens if I put the weight on and like, you know, I didn't feel confident when I was smaller. I don't know any woman that I've ever worked with that way. That has, I mean, even at your smallest, it was always at least my personal fear at my thinnest was how am I going to keep this off? Is this how it's going to be forever? What's going to happen if, you know, the man I'm dating or the job I have is contingent on just my appearance. Yeah. Right. I mean, one, I'm making poor choices in men, but the other would be, um, you have to love yourself more. I have seen, and I know personally women that have been in bigger bodies their whole lives that command a room. Oh yeah. They walk in and they are sexy, they're confident, they're smart, they're funny, and they're just radiant. Really, you know, it's, it's a woman that you're like, Oh my gosh, I got to talk to her. Who is this person? And at my thinnest, that was never me. Never. I was always so self conscious, even then pulling my blouse, making sure nothing was out of place. You know, just, it was just such a huge energy waste when I could have just been out there laughing and engaging with other people and having a good time instead of worrying about what my body looked like. Yeah, 100%. I love your tip. Everything I'm hearing from you is start small, start with something that's very manageable and build on it, right? Like your tips for stopping waiting and going after what you want. It's very simple. I can think of an example with a client I worked with that might highlight what you're talking about. She has three kids and was very much caught in the mentality of like, With the kids before yourself, like everything was about the kids, and she was finding like she wasn't even feeding herself food that she wanted to eat. Like it was all kid food when the kids were home. And she's like, I just want to have lunch that I enjoy. Right. So we worked to okay. What can you what can you go and buy at the store that is easy to make and that's just for you that you can serve yourself and building the capacity that she can have a different meal than her children and that she can go and spend some of the family's money on food that's just for her that was a lot but you know it seems so simple but it took some coaching to be able to get there. Absolutely. Well, a lot of women, you know, you just take the scraps for yourselves, right? I mean, you eat the leftovers off your kid's plate. You, you know, eat the stuff that nobody wants, and you don't make time for yourself, or you don't really sit down and have a meal. You just take a nibble all day long. It's just a nibble of this, a nibble of that. And at the end of the day, you're like, I didn't eat all day. Yeah. And of course you did, but you don't feel like you did because you haven't really nourished yourself. Exactly. And so what you've done is just given your client permission to nourish herself, not just her body, but also her spirit or her soul. You've got to nourish and feed all of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it takes, a bit of thought work and a bit of like looking at what's stopping me from doing that? What are the limiting beliefs that are getting in the way of me just buying what I want for lunch, right? Yeah. Is that, is that permission? Well, that's why working with a coach is so important. I think. I mean, I know I could not have gotten as far as I did without a coach and my peers in that group to support me. Um, I'm not as, um, outgoing or outspoken as much, but I am soaking in every day. Every word that is said, every practice, I go home on my own and I do it myself. So I know that if I hadn't had the support from the women in my group and my mentor, my coach, I would not have come as far as I have. And I think you said at the beginning, you know, yeah, you can go buy the intuitive eating book. It's 25 and try it yourself. Or you can find someone to guide you through the process. That's done it themselves successfully, but understands. all of the issues that you're having and the challenges you're facing. And when you cannot come up with an out on your own, they can give you some suggestions to try that may actually help you get to the next level. So anybody out there find a coach, there's a whole bunch of us, you know, there's more every day and we can really help you get to the next level with where you want to be in a way that doesn't feel isolating. It doesn't feel so hard and you're definitely not going to be alone. A hundred percent. And so speaking of coaching, tell us a little bit about how you support women, like what are your coaching services look like? Yeah. So the main thing I do, like so many of us is one on one coaching. I work with women for a six month period of time. Sometimes it takes longer, but six months is usually where we start. We meet each week and kind of go through where they are on their journey. Do we need to start with intuitive eating? Do we need to start with body image? Um, a lot of the times women will come to me about reconnecting with their feminine energy and we end up, you know, Then the next step is body image, and then we go to intuitive eating. So there are a lot of assessments we can do in the beginning to kind of figure out where you are and where we need to begin. We may not have to start at the beginning for each, each person, you know, some people have come a little further on their journey. And then each week we go through what's working, what's not working and what's next. Um, Setting goals is great, but what I want to do with my clients is help them understand that the main goal is self acceptance. You know, the main goal is unconditional confidence because when you're confident, you're not afraid to make mistakes. You're not afraid to speak your mind and you're not afraid to take a chance. You know, it's all going to work out. So the ultimate goal is confidence. And we get there by Looking at how we care for ourselves, looking at how we give our authority away to other people and how to reclaim some of that, and then just grounding ourselves in the energy of, I trust myself, I trust my body, I trust that I will know What the right thing to do is. So we meet each week, usually about 45 minutes or so. There's some oftentimes we'll have, uh, assessments throughout the period, or there will be other worksheets or things that we can do together to kind of help get us to the next level or get to a deeper understanding of where we are. I love working with clients. I've been coaching since 2007. I know what wasn't non diet coaching the whole time. Obviously that's been the last few years, but I really love. Being in the moment with that person when they have that, I get it now, you know, or they, they come to you and they're like, they send an email before your, your session. And it's like, when, when, when, when that for me is the most exciting. And then, you know, also having somebody come to you and just be broken. It happens too, especially in the beginning, you're just like, I can't do this. I have to lose the weight. I have to change this. And so walking with them, kind of holding that space for them when they're, when they're going through whatever it is they're going through, and then encouraging them to see kind of what is really happening. And it's not that your body is broken. It's that the way you have learned to think about yourself in life, that's what's broken. And that's what we need to shift and change. And it can be difficult sometimes to get through that, especially if you're trying to do it by yourself. So working with somebody that can help you is really the best way to make progress in your life. And I still work with a coach. So all about the coaching situation. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't see a point in my life where I won't work with a coach, right? Like I just. Think I've seen so many benefits of it that I'm like, why would I try and figure things out for myself when I can have somebody beside me and avoid me ever getting stuck or slipping into a pothole and not, you know, like, I just want to keep moving forward. And yeah, well, and you know, when I think about going back to working for the weight loss, um, doctor, those people spend a lot of money. Oh yeah. And, and when you think about the average kind of pro weight loss program, one that is supervised by medical people. We're looking at anywhere from three to 5, 000 for the program. And now take that number and think about how many times you might've done that. Right. I know we had clients that came back two or three times to lose the same number of pounds. Hopefully, every single time, that's a huge investment. What if you took that money and you invested it in something that actually matters? You know, what if you could take that money and really multiply the benefit, um, by having new skills, new ways of thinking that you can actually work with for the rest of your life. It's never going back to school. Where one, when you work with a coach, you're always making progress and you're always learning and moving forward, you're always developing that skill set. So yeah, when people talk about the cost of it, I'm like, Oh, tell me how much money you spent on meal plans, diet stuff, exercise. Right. Tell me about that. And then tell me about the cost of the coaching program. So I think you just have to put it in perspective sometimes. Well, you do. And one thing I was going to say as you were, as you were talking earlier was like about non diet coaching. It's like, don't you love as a coach being able to provide your clients with results that last forever, right? Like that's for me, the most rewarding part of my job is that once they, heal their relationship with food and movement and body, they never go back. And I follow up with my clients, they have never gone back to dieting or prescribed workout programs. They have got it figured out. It is lifetime guaranteed results, right? I think that's a great point to make Kim is that, you know, when we're talking about dieting or diet coaches, which I know there's a huge industry, there is all kinds of weight loss stuff out there. You're looking for clients. My goal. I don't want to repeat client. Yes. If you want to work on another issue, great, but you should never have to come back once you get it. I want to stand there and wave and be happy for you. I don't want to have to do that. I don't think that that's a sustainable business practice for me to have any kind of, yes, it's not ethical to set people up for failure just so you can continue to have clients. That is not happening when you're done. I'm glad you're done. Now go become a coach yourself. Right? Now you get on the board next. Exactly. Oh, Holly, this has been such a rich conversation. Um, we do have to wrap up soon, but I'm wondering, is there one core message you want to leave with our listeners today as inspiration? It's never too late to change the way you feel about your body. Never. I am About, I think I'm about 10 years older than you are, and I wish that I knew at 25 what I know at 55, right? I could have saved myself 30 years of angst, of disappointment, of feeling like a failure, feeling shame because I wasn't keeping the weight off or I wasn't looking the way I thought I was supposed to look. I could have saved myself so much if I had just realized confidence doesn't come from a number on the scale, but it comes from knowing who you are, knowing your values and what matters to you, and then going and living the life you're supposed to live. So my big message is stop putting your life on hold until you have the perfect body. It is time to lose. Lose all of that. And honestly, I think that now looking at the next 30 years of my life, I am going to be able to do so much more and have so much energy to really fulfill my life's purpose without having to worry about maintaining a specific number. I hope I can do that too. So beautifully said, which brings me to, we've been talking about this Oprah thing on the podcast, you know, it always comes back to Oprah and I recently sent out an email to my community and one of the things I said in it was how I just have so much compassion for Oprah that, you know, as a 70 some year old woman, she's still. is living by diet culture and these narrow beauty standards. And there's a very good chance we'll go to her grave, not believing that she's enough just as she is, despite all of the success and wealth and good deeds that she's done. It still comes back to her body. And yeah, I don't want that for. No, she's haunted by childhood trauma that she has carried with her that had no matter what level of success she has achieved, she has never felt enough. Because of her body and also feel that is so tragic. And I identify with it. I mean, I think there's so many of us out there. I have women that are in their 70s and you know, late 60s that I have worked with that will still tell me. I have to lose weight. Yes. Me too. I have to be thin. It's, it's so, it's so hard because as we were just saying, I don't want that for myself. I don't want that for any women coming up in life. I don't want any young woman to ever feel like that's the only thing that should matter in her life. Or that is the only thing that will make her cross the threshold of true success. You can have it all, but you also have to look like you have it all. And that's just sad. It's so, it's, it's just awful, right? Like, so I'm so thankful that there are people like you and myself and so many others out there that are. are guiding the way and showing women it does not have to be this way. There is another way to feel fully healthy, happy, and confident. So thank you for the work that you're doing and thank you for sharing your wisdom on the show today. Please tell our listeners where they can find you and keep in touch because I know they're going to want to, you know, Follow you. Sure. Yeah. So you can always find me on Instagram at Holly Toscanini. Uh, it's pretty simple because that's also my website, holly Toscanini. com. So if you can spell my name, you can find me anywhere. You probably could butcher my name pretty badly and still find me online. On my website, I do have a lot of free resources for people that are interested in maybe dipping their toe in the water of living a non diet life, but aren't quite there yet. Completely sure that it's for them. Um, I have a couple of free masterclasses. One is just called breaking free from diet culture. And it's just an introduction to help you understand how diet culture operates in your life, what it is, and how you can begin to walk away from it if you choose. I also have some good meditations and things on there too. So yeah, you can find me on Instagram, uh, Facebook at Holly Toscanini, and uh, on my website, hollytoscanini. com, or you can look for the Say Win podcast. Yes. And all of that will be linked up in the show notes. So thanks, Holly. Thanks so much. It was my pleasure. I had a lot of fun. I hope your listeners do too. Same. Thank you.