Hi, I'm Lisa, and here is my story......

 

I'm a NBHWC Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, NASM Personal Trainer and a Corrective Exercise Specialist.

For years I believed that I didn't have enough time,  energy or money to live a healthy lifestyle.  Today, I’ve created a life that’s not only healthy, but balanced and also sustainable in the midst of real-life responsibilities.
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I grew up active, thin and surrounded by a pretty natural “farm-to-table” way of eating. I didn’t think much about it. It was simply how we lived.

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Then, at 19, I moved away from home to a big city where I didn’t know anyone. I had one month’s rent in the bank, no job and was starting a part-time school program.

​Meat and fresh vegetables felt like luxuries. Bread, pasta and rice were cheap, filling and could stretch for days—so that’s what I lived on.

​I gained weight. My energy suffered. I spent hours commuting to school and eventually juggling that with a minimum-wage full-time job. There wasn’t much time to exercise and there certainly wasn’t money for a gym membership.

 

For the first time, I started to understand something that has shaped the way I think about health ever since:

 

Knowing what would be good for you doesn’t necessarily mean you have the time, money or circumstances to do it.

 

My life kept changing, so I had to as well.

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Eventually, I found a better job and joined a gym, where I later ended up working. I finally had access to all the exercise equipment I could want. Problem solved, right? Not quite.

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​I still wasn’t nourishing myself well. I didn’t sleep well. And despite having access to a gym, I still didn’t feel my best.

Then I became pregnant with my son, and something shifted. Taking care of my health wasn’t only about me anymore.

 

I started getting creative and figured out ways to get protein and vegetables that worked within my budget and didn’t require hours in the kitchen. After my son was born, I wanted him to experience some of the healthy upbringing I’d had. I grew vegetables, made his baby food and found my way back to eating in a way that made me feel good.

 

And then life changed again....

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I became a single mom, working full time, juggling a tight budget and trying to fit everything that needed to happen into the same 24 hours everyone else gets.

There was no leisurely trip to the gym every day. Sometimes exercise meant doing squats at the park while my son climbed on the monkey bars.

I batch-cooked on weekends, found inexpensive sources of protein and learned that when I couldn’t find an hour to exercise, ten minutes here and ten minutes there still counted.

Was it perfect? Absolutely not. But it worked for the life I was living at the time.

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So what  does “healthy” mean to me now?

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I’m 61, and my relationship with health has continued to evolve. I’ve struggled with food and body image along the way, and I’ve had times when I’ve taken wonderful care of myself and times when life has gotten in the way.

 

The biggest difference today is that I’ve finally learned to listen to my body.

If I don’t nourish it, move it and give it enough rest, eventually it starts yelling at me until I do!

 

I certainly wasn’t very good at listening to it in the past, and my health suffered.

These days, I’m less focused on doing everything perfectly and more focused on the habits that help me feel well and doing the things I love!.

 

I don’t believe health has to mean extreme diets, hours in the gym or giving up everything you enjoy. I believe in a balance of movement, nourishment, sleep, self-care, connection and yes—having fun.

 

That last part came from my dad.

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He lived with Type 1 diabetes from his early twenties, long before today’s technology made it easier to manage, so a healthy, balanced lifestyle was part of how I grew up.

Near the end of his life, the advice he left me with was simple:

“Just keep being healthy and keep having fun.”

I think he got it exactly right.

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And it’s a big part of how Bring Life Balance came to be.

 

So where do GLP-1s fit into all of this?

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I’m watching as GLP-1 medications rapidly change the weight-management landscape, and I find it incredibly exciting.

 

I’ve never taken a GLP-1, so I won’t pretend to know exactly what that experience feels like. But I do understand what it’s like to be a woman trying to navigate her weight alongside nourishment, exercise, a changing body, finances, family priorities, stress and all the other pieces of life that don’t disappear just because we decide we want to be healthier.

 

And that’s exactly why I’m drawn to this work.

 

The medication may be new, but the challenge of figuring out how to create a healthy lifestyle that actually works in your real life isn’t.

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I believe there’s an incredible opportunity for women using GLP-1s to use this time not only to change their weight, but to think about the bigger picture of their health and the life they want to live moving forward.

 

That’s where I want to help.

Because after everything I’ve learned in my own life, I keep coming back to the same belief:

Your healthy lifestyle has to fit your life.

And sometimes you just need a little help figuring out what that looks like.

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