In this episode I chat with Kristen Koeller who is an ACE Certified health coach, a group fitness instructor, and a personal trainer. We sit down to talk about the highs and lows of life  and the value of approaching these times with a growth mindset that allows us to move through the peaks and valleys with curiosity and be open to what we can learn from both.

• Episode Transcript

Welcome, everyone. I am here with Kristin Keller. Kristin is an ACE certified health coach, group fitness instructor, and personal trainer.

She has struggled with her own self-esteem, food, and body image issues for most of her life. She’s passionate about using her own experiences and her education to help others free themselves from restrictive diet culture and heal their own relationship with food, movement, mind, and body. Welcome, Kristin.

Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. Kristin, we have an interesting topic today and I think this is something that is important, especially in the age now of social media and highlight reels, and we’re going to be talking about peaks and valleys, highs and lows, cycles in life where you have times for growth, times for expansion, times to retreat, and times to reflect.

So just kind of working through and being transparent about what it looks like to be okay with kind of riding these seasons and never going to be the never ending high and the low is a failure, right? So this is just cyclical and how we can kind of learn to adjust and go with it through life. Kristin, you are a health coach and you’re a personal trainer and you are a group fitness instructor. So you have a lot of experience helping people identify and achieve health and wellness goals.

But what I’d like to do is talk about how you got to this point where you are a health coach, a trainer, a group fitness instructor, and why this particular area is important to you. 

Yeah, absolutely. I think my whole career path is kind of in line with what we’re talking about today with the peaks and the valleys.So going way back to the beginning and how I ended up in the work that I do growing up, just like a lot of us, I struggled with my body image. I struggle with my relationship with food constantly, just being really self-critical, always being really self-conscious. And that kind of held me back from doing a lot of things throughout my life because I didn’t want any attention on me

.And it was always just like constant secret striving to change myself and kind of be what I thought other people wanted to be to me or what other people would accept me as. And that was all the way up until my early 20s. When I went to college, I really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.

You know, you always heard like, oh, you’ll figure it out once you get there. So I was in my last year of college and I still had not figured anything out after changing my major about 10 times. I finally was like, I’m just going to finish this psychology degree.

And if I decide I want to do something else, then I will come back and figure it out then. Otherwise, I’m going to be here forever. 

My last semester of school, I took a class called the Psychology of Living Well.And that was the one class that really changed everything for me. It was really all about the psychology of happiness. And our biggest project for that class, we had to make our own.The only requirement for that project was it had to be something in line with improving your quality of life. So with it being my last semester in college, and like I mentioned, I kind of let my self-consciousness hold me back from doing a lot of things my whole life. My last semester of college, my project was just to go do all the things I had been missing out on for the rest of my, you know, three and a half years in college.

So I was trying different things. And one thing led to another. I decided I was going to run a 5K.And that really spiraled into finally achieving the weight loss that I had always been striving for in the past, which I thought was great at the time. I felt great. I finally did this thing that everyone praises.

Everyone compliments you. I always had an interest in like how to eat well and live well and move well. But it wasn’t really in the healthiest context.It was the context that I knew that we see a lot with diet and weight loss culture. I was really into going to the gym. I was trying different things.I graduated from college and decided to go use my psychology degree working in the Department of Social Services. 

But really, I remember one time I tweeted, like, what do I have to do to just spend all day in the gym, right? I had to kind of turned into one of those gym rats. Eventually, long story short, I went and got a job at the gym.That’s how you spend all day at the gym. You go work at the gym, right? As I started working at the gym, I was working on my personal training certification. So I was like, I don’t know what I want to do with my life.

But I guess I’ll just help other people that know what they want to do with their life be healthier while they do it, which turns out that that is an actual career. But at the same time, I started experiencing the side effects, I guess, of rapid weight loss and the weight loss that we tend to see in our diet and weight loss culture. Your survival instincts start kicking in when you’re not eating enough to keep up with how much energy you’re putting out.

And I started struggling with overeating, binge eating, just kind of losing control around food, which then just really plummeted my image of myself that I had built up so high. All of a sudden, it was like, I have no self control or no willpower. 

Why can’t I do this anymore? And I didn’t understand that.I started honing in more on nutrition at that point. I’m going to work on cleaning up my food, right? So I did that for a while. And I’m still just really struggling with just the up and down and like being quote unquote on track and then being off track and kind of the yo yo dieting.

And I just did not understand it. And it really sent me into a depression again, because I just did not understand what was wrong with me. I felt like something was wrong with me. This had been happening for on and off for a few years.

 Eventually, my depression had gotten so bad to the point. Like I went to therapy a few times.I tried that my depression eventually got to the point where I decided to go to the doctor and try some medication. And I think that was, you know, like the little bit of the push I needed to get my mindset in a better direction. And I started implementing more self care tools.

And I know self care is kind of the trendy thing right now, but I’m not talking like wine and a bubble bath type of thing. Like changing the way I talk to myself, working on affirmations, doing meditation and yoga, practicing gratitude and journaling. And that is when like the light bulb kind of went off for me that you can exercise, you can eat “super healthy”. But if your mindset isn’t in the right place, it’s not going to work. 

So that’s how I eventually came into health coaching. You know, I got my person training certification. I’ve never actually done personal training a day in my life. Just didn’t resonate with me with where I was. You know, as I grew through that, I was managing our juice bar at the gym for a while, trying to just get deeper into the nutrition side of things. And then eventually, you know, I came to this revelation that it’s more than diet and exercise. And that’s where health coaching came in. You know, it’s such a more holistic approach to incorporating your stress management, getting good sleep, getting good rest and recovery. And then also changing the way we look at food and exercise. I don’t really like to use the word exercise anymore. I like movement because it changes your mindset around it, right? 

A lot of times you think about exercise and it’s like this grueling, unenjoyable thing. And as a health coach, I focus on helping people find movement that they enjoy and to work on their relationship with food. So it’s not in that that diet and weight loss driven perspective. Being able to enjoy your food, enjoy your movement, find you find balance in it all.

So that’s why, you know, health coaching really, really spoke to me and clicked with me more so than, you know, going into personal training and focusing just on the exercise or going I at one point was actually enrolled to go back to college for nutrition and dietetics. 

And then I, you know, I just have that light bulb. It’s like it’s not one or the other, just these two things.There’s so much more to it when you get that that mindset piece to it. That’s more. That’s the foundation that we can then build those other healthy habits on top of.That’s a great story and so common. We live in a world like that. You said you did the 5k, your body got smaller.People praised that. 

We live in a society that glorifies the shrinking down of people, of women in particular. It’s nice to get that recognition .It feels good when we’re getting that, that positive feedback, right? So you mentioned when you were working at the gym, you were on track, you were off track, right? Because you were restricting and then you were feeling out of control, trying and your body was doing what bodies do after restriction, trying to keep you alive. And it made you feel out of control. 

So you had that, that moment where you’re like, I mean, they’re on or I’m off that black and white thinking that is really super common because we’ve been programmed to thankless and you can eat well.You can eat poorly. That’s a very, very common, like diet culture view. And then the self blame, right? Your body is doing what bodies do.And we feel like it’s some kind of flaw in our lack of self-control or motivation. You don’t want it bad enough, like all these gross sayings that we have around why you haven’t achieved your goal yet. You must not want it enough.

You must not be disciplined enough, right? So gross. And then all this escalates and it impacts your mental health. So for you, that was a trigger to go, look, I’m going to go take care of all of me, not just the physical and you implemented self care. And I do love that you pointed out self care has become one of these popular sayings. And we think it’s manicures, bubble baths. It’s not, it’s preserving and protecting our resources, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, all that. Understanding what was important for you, for your mental health, for your physical health, all of that together. It wasn’t just food, sleep, stress management, meditation. 

That is, that is such a great way to regulate the nervous system, to help keep everything even.So I love that you did that. And then you moved into the health coaching. You know, you recognize that you don’t have to be a registered dietician and helping people just with their food or just with that.But it’s, it’s getting that holistic view of behaviors and not just outcomes. So I mean, I see a lot of people with their goals are get stronger, get faster. But a lot of times we’re so hyper focused on the outcome.We don’t think about what we need to do, be and have what we need to become in order to get there. And that’s what health coaching does. 

And I think too, one of the things that I experienced, that I think a lot of people experience is like you have this, if you have a weight goal and your goal is that number or shrinking or getting smaller or whatever it is, you can get there and still not be happy.Because the way you talk to yourself and the way you’ve been talking to yourself for years doesn’t change just because you’ve changed your body. Right. How you talk to yourself, how you treat yourself, how you see yourself, yourself, image and yourself, esteem.

If you’re hinging it on the shape and size of your body, no matter what you do, you will never be happy. Let’s talk a little bit what kind of things you do now. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I am a group fitness instructor also. So after getting my personal training certification, I stumbled into the world of group fitness and found that that is where I actually thrive. 

Last year, one of my coworkers and I actually started a program called Awaken, where we meet with people at six o’clock in the morning.We take them through yoga and meditation and then different morning routine tools to implement in their mornings. A lot of the things that I started implementing when I kind of discovered you know, that self-care aspect of things and the power of starting your day with time for yourself and with intention rather than hitting snooze a hundred times and rolling out the door with a piece of toast in your hand, which is, you know, that’s fine sometimes. But if you’re looking for some peace and serenity in your morning, taking a couple extra minutes to like gather yourself and remind yourself how awesome you are is really helpful.So I do we do that on Zoom. 

So that way, you know, we can still roll out of bed right before class. And then I do my one on one health coaching.I’m part of the Phoenix program. So I teach pound via the Phoenix and the Phoenix is a sober active community where the only cost for people to attend is 48 hours of sobriety. I teach some classes at our local addiction care centers or one of our treatment centers.

So we do some yoga and meditation and we can type things over there too. This is a good segue into our topic of having these rhythms, right? Where we do a lot and then maybe we step back and we take time for us and then we can come back refreshed and energized. But you can’t give if you don’t have anything to give, right? So we all need these kind of seasons or downtime to recharge our batteries.

That’s something that you have experienced recently. Yeah, this year has been full of challenges. It’s been a really, really hard year.

The year was off to a really good start. We started our online Awaken program last October. So we were a few months into that in January.I went to Mexico for a couple weeks, had a one week of vacation and then one week of working while we were in Mexico. So that was cool. And then as the year kept going, we just kind of, you know, felt like I was struggling a little bit more without really like a specific cause.In retrospect, I think it was waking up and leading a class every single morning at 6 a.m. Was starting to take a toll on me, but I didn’t realize that because I, you know, I love yoga and meditation. I love the class I lead. And so how could that be bad for me, right? And then in the end of March, we found out that my grandma had cancer and my grandma, she babysat me and most of my 15 cousins.

Every summer growing up. So she was a huge part of my life growing up. She was 87.She was still living by herself, raised seven kids by herself when her husband had a brain tumor from the time. I think my mom was in like, I don’t know, first grade up until he passed away her freshman year of high school. So my girl was just this amazing, strong woman.We found out she had cancer again at the end of March. And honestly, I was like, like my dad called me and told me she was going to the hospital. And I wasn’t worried about her at all because I was like, she’s been so strong this whole time.Like, and then a couple weeks later, we found out that it was everywhere. 

There was nothing that could be done. The first day of May, she went to the hospice.A couple weeks later, I was trying to manage my stress in a healthy way. I decided I would go rollerblading for the second time ever as an adult. A couple of things.If you want my three tips for rollerblading, if there is a sign at the top of the hill that says 8% grade and it’s your second time on rollerblades as an adult, probably don’t go down it. Number two, make sure you know how to use your brakes before you rollerblade down a giant hill. I don’t think I have a third tip.

Anyway. I feel like that second tip should have been the first tip. I practiced a little.I did a little practice and I was like, yeah, I got this. I stood at the top of the hill and there was a fence on one side and I was like, should I use the fence to walk myself down the hill and then go where it’s a little flatter. And I stood at the top.I was like, ah, girl, you got this. And I ended up at the bottom of the hill on my back. 

So I got a concussion.I messed up my neck and my back, which really impacted my work because a lot of my work was really physical. So I couldn’t teach classes for a while. You know, the timing of it was okay because it did give me kind of more reason to not be at work so much.So I got to spend a lot of time with my grandma. But, you know, it messed with my body. It messed with my head.You know, it’s supposed to be on screens and stuff when you have a concussion. I couldn’t exercise, which is my work and my stress relief. 

And then at the end of the month, my grandma passed away.So I had all of these things going on and it just kind of spiraled me down into this depression again. And at that point, I really started beating myself up again because I remember thinking like I have this figured out. I knew how to be happy and how to take care of myself. And this is my job to help people do the same thing, right? 

To achieve this, you know, this level of self-love and thriving. And here I am falling apart physically, but especially mentally. Like I’m not doing any of the things that I teach in my morning routine class anymore. My meditation, my yoga. I thought I had this figured out. This obviously isn’t the solution. So now what? You know, it almost felt like it was like that was my last resort and I don’t know what to do next. So I must be a failure. This must be all there is.It was a couple really, really tough months, mentally, even, you know, up until last month, you know, I started going back to therapy and working on my meds and stuff. And I think all of these things helped me come to that realization. Like I just had to cut back on everything that I was doing.

So that was, you know, my high and low just from January to like mid-summer this year. But that’s something I experienced in the past too, you know, when I thought I had things figured out the first time I lost the weight and got all the compliments and did the big thing that everyone wants to do. It’s like, oh, I got this figured out.And then my body started rebelling against what I was doing to it. And I was like, why can’t I do this anymore? I have this figured out and now I don’t and now I’m failing again. 

So it was really that a lot of that highs and lows of I got this.No, I don’t. I got this. No, I don’t.And so now coming into, you know, this season, really realizing like they’re always going to be the highs and the lows. And instead of, you know, beating myself up for coming back down, realizing that there are seasons of growth where you’re learning more and doing more. But then you need the seasons too where you process everything that you’ve learned or, you know, you face some challenges and accept that that’s part of life.But also realize that that doesn’t mean you’re a failure. That just means you have more to learn to take with you as you move forward. 

Kristen, recapping like you’re the highs. Things going great. Your work is going great. It’s fulfilling. It’s busy. And then you have a family situation. You have a medical situation. And now you’ve found yourself without the tools that you normally use to manage your stress that you’re experiencing a lot of. And it kind of compounds, right? Like it kind of piles on top of each other when you cannot manage that stress. So as you’re going into that, the valley, right? So you had your peak and now you have your valley. And you’re recognizing that your mental health needs attention. Being able to identify looking at your situation saying, okay, here’s where I am. Here’s where I need help. And I think that only comes from experience of having highs and lows and knowing what works for you. 

So if we only have highs and we look at these lows as failures or times where like what’s wrong with me? I thought I had it figured out. I love how you put that, that it just means, you know, there’s times of growth.And now we need to draw back. And as women, we tend to overextend to do all the things. We sign up for all the things.It’s hard for us to say no. I don’t know what you’re talking about. We want, we want, you know, we just want to help.But sometimes it’s to our detriment, right? It’s to the point where we’re overextended. And if we don’t recognize, if we don’t have a conscious boundary that we’re like, look, we know this is what we can handle. Everything outside of this just is too much for me.Your body, your mind tends to send you a message and say, listen, too much. Step back, take a break. Yep.

And I think I, you know, you’ve probably heard this somewhere within your work, but like the universe will like, first, it’ll send you a message with a feather and then it gets heavier and heavier. Eventually it will drop a piano on you. Right.And so I think I was ignoring those initial signs of like, hey, you need to, you know, you might be taking on too much hair. It’s funny to say this now. At the time, it didn’t really like occurred to me how crazy it is.I was teaching 15 to 20 classes a week. I rationalized that as like, well, most of them, I’m just doing like 10, 15 minutes of yoga and some meditation. 

You know, it’s not like physically exerting me.So which I was like, it shouldn’t be exhausting me the way it is. But now in retrospect, you know, when I tell people that they’re like 20 classes a week, like, is that a lie? I think, too, that it’s really easy to look at somebody else’s situation and say, oh, no, too much going on. You’re doing too much.But we can’t look at our own. We rationalize it, right? Because it’s hard for us. Health coaching can be so powerful because you get that outside perspective.You might have a thought, like, maybe this is too much, but you come up with these other things. Like, no, you know, for me, it was like, teachers teach all day, every day and they’re fine. 

Why can’t I do it, you know? So I went to therapy and she was like, Kristen, you got a lot going on, you know? So like having that outside perspective, like you said, you can’t see it within yourself.And so many times I go to therapy and she says something to me. And then I say, you know, I just said the exact same thing to my client an hour ago. Did resonate with me until you said it to me.But in the midst of it all, I do remember saying to her, like, I know what I should be doing, but I’m not doing it. What is wrong with me? And she said, Kristen, isn’t this a beautiful reminder that you are human? I was like, oh, yeah, Nancy, it’s beautiful. 

But it is, you know, like looking back at it, you know, it’s like I was going through very human things and not being understanding with myself that this is part of life and that the way you handle it is okay.It’s okay if you need to step back and process what’s happening and, you know, take that time to learn from it and grow from it. It doesn’t always have to be and it can’t always be learn and learn and learn and grow and grow and grow always going up. Like there are going to be these times where you have to come back into that valley and rest and recuperate and process everything.

And it doesn’t have to be like, like I’ve had a lot of highs and lows this summer, right? Like our little roller coaster, right? But in the grand scheme of things, you know, it doesn’t have to be like these really high highs and then crashing down into that valley. You can ease back into that valley and ease into the rest. If, like you said, you listen to the universe or whatever the signs that you’re giving because I decided, I ignored the feather signs from the universe until the universe was like, you need a break.We’re going to push you down on your roller blades and make you take it. 

So if you, you know, you keep pushing that off, then you might come crashing into that valley. But there are alternatives if you, you know, you stay tuned in with yourself.You give yourself that grace to be human to know that valleys will come and you can ease into them gently instead of pushing and pushing and pushing until you fall apart. This is going to be so helpful to so many people because it’s so hard to look at your own situation and say, yeah, I deserve a break. I need a break.

I’m going to take time because we’ve been conditioned to think that’s selfish. And if you don’t feel the feather, you’re going to get the piano and you’re going to be forced into this valley whether you want to be there or not. And you might as well go there voluntarily without a concussion so that you can actually maybe enjoy it.

It’s not a punishment. It’s not meant to be a bad thing but we all need this time, like you said, to grow and reflect. And there’s always going to be them.And like you said, they don’t always have to be high highs and low lows. 

But the more awareness you have, the more we can kind of keep them moderate so that it’s not so dramatic. We’ve kind of been hinting at the growth and the fixed mindset.Can we talk a little bit about what each one of those looks like and how it can impact how we’re living day to day? Absolutely. 

So I think looking back at this year and you know my challenges in the past in general, had I gone into those with that fixed mindset where this is just the way it is and I can’t change it. I would have stayed stuck rather than being in that growth mindset where you know there’s something to learn from what you’re going through.You know there are resources that you can access to get help out of that. To know maybe you can do it by yourself. 

Maybe you need some help.Whatever it is, just knowing that there is more to come from where you’re at. Having that mindset that this isn’t it, that I have more power over my circumstances than just staying in that fixed mindset like this just is what it is and this is the hand I’ve been dealt and there’s nothing I can do with it. That determines whether you stay down in that valley that you crashed into or if you start climbing your way back up again.A lot of us have been conditioned with fixed mindset. 

Like a lot of us just have that, especially as you get older, things don’t seem as pliable, possible. You know we don’t allow ourselves to daydream, to imagine what could be.And having that growth mindset of, okay this is a situation that I’m in. What are the possibilities here? What is the lesson? What if? Like kind of just looking at all the different parts of what’s happening and saying well what if I do this? How can I, anytime I’m having a moment where I’m like well this sucks, this is not what I wanted. 

How can I approach this and make something else happen in this particular situation? What are my options? And I just allow myself to be ridiculous.It doesn’t have to be realistic. I think I have this revelation in the last couple years when I was reading a book and it occurred to me like there was once a time where people didn’t believe in electricity or flying and now we have electricity in airplanes. 

So like if we can go from like, like really thinking about all of the things that didn’t exist in the past like somebody was like you know what I think I can fly this giant thing through the air with a ton of people in it. Like there are so many things that we haven’t even discovered that we can do. Same thing with electricity. 

Somebody figured it out. Somebody was like hey I think we can make this thing illuminate and make it easier to see in the dark. There was a time where nobody thought of that. So what else is out there that we haven’t created or discovered yet? Thinking about it in those terms and that I mean that’s only airplanes and electricity. There’s a million other things out there that once we didn’t know about or didn’t exist until someone created them. 

So realizing that we don’t have to go as far as flying people through the sky. But if somebody can do that like what can you do within your own life to be in a better place than where you are or be happier than where you are right now.I love that. Kristin we talked a little bit already about the work that you do. I want to talk about how people can connect with you as a coach in your classes and things like that on social.

So tell me a little bit about what it looks like to work with you as a coach. Yeah absolutely. The best way to you know if you want to do a consult I do free consults. The best way to set that up you’ll share that calendar link that I have. You can schedule something directly in there. You can email me Kristin at KellerCoaching.com. 

Beyond that though I really utilize Facebook my Facebook page Kristin Keller Coaching.If you just kind of want to get a sense of who I am and what’s going on and then if you’re local or you’re looking for a great place to vacation in South Dakota coming to any of my classes I post about those on my Facebook page my Instagram as well. My pound classes my body pump classes. 

Awaken is a virtual class on Zoom so people can access that from wherever. We also have the Phoenix virtual platform that you know there are live stream classes on there for people all the time. So it’s a really great resource. I will include that in the show notes along with your website socials and your calendar link for anybody who wants to connect with you directly. Kristin this has been absolute gold and a delight. We’re going to wrap up but what I like to do is have my my guests grace us with their top three tips. 

Gladly for my top three tips for living well.

#1:I would say be kind to yourself because you can’t achieve a positive result from a negative mindset or negative motivation. So if you are beating yourself up trying to reach your fitness goal or whatever it is like we talked about once you get there it’s not going to be good enough. 

So practice being kind and gentle and understanding with yourself.

#2:  I would say slow down. We are in such a rush, rush, rush culture always feeling like we have to be doing something and have to be running somewhere and that’s putting us in this low level of stress all the time and when we are stressed out that’s just going to hold us back from whatever we want to do. So incorporate stress management slow down with your life as much as you can.

You know find some moments throughout the day just to sit and breathe and rest when you need to because rest is more productive than we’ve been conditioned to believe. We need rest. Rest is not unproductive. I’ve worked with clients who don’t get enough sleep because they feel like they need to stay away and be productive and rest is productive. Maybe not that instant gratification that instant result of getting