Thrive Beyond Size

I’ve been reminiscing about my love of 90s era step classes lately. Step workouts were just so much fun and I could just check out and forget my worries and feel great after the workout. It turns out that my guest, Pam Sherman, used to be a step aerobics instructor! Friends, we bonded over step classes. More than that, though, Pam has been in the health and fitness world for 26 years as a group fitness instructor, personal trainer, food coach, and more. Her tagline is “your health is your wealth” and it’s so true. We talk about women’s health and the necessity of movement.

Women tend towards being all or nothing about our health: we either do nothing or start doing everything at once and can’t maintain it. We often think we need to be in shape to start working out. The truth, according to Pam, is that focusing our health is what matters. We need to love ourselves to health and stop hating ourselves to get to skinny. Pam and I talk about finding movement that we can love so we’re happy doing it, about envisioning the health we want in 20 years, the value of sleep, and the encouragement that can be found in joining classes. Pam supports women because it is our right to feel good in our bodies. She wants us to realize we deserve our health and that the work we put into it is valuable. I felt very invigorated talking to Pam and my hope is that you will too. And maybe you’ll even want to try a step workout!

About Pam Sherman:

Pam has been in the health/fitness world for 26 years as a group X instructor, personal trainer, food coach and more! She's passionate about helping women lose weight and feel great. Her no- nonsense approach to health and wellness goes back to the basics. Her tagline is - Your health is your wealth!

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Lululemon Studio Mirror

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Learn more about Dr Michelle Tubman and Wayza Health:

• Website: www.wayzahealth.com
• Follow me on Facebook and Instagram

Contact Pam Sherman | CEO/Author: 

• Website
• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• TikTok

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Is the kitchen your favorite room in the house? If not, I’m really hoping it will be after this episode. We’re going to find out how to make friends with our kitchens and be at peace with food and eating. Heather Carey is a clinical nutritionist and culinary nutritionist and Heather joins me to talk about health and food, meal planning, and cooking healthy meals. I know I have struggled with meal planning and cooking at times, life gets busy, I don’t want to, and all sorts of reasons appear. So Heather talks about that, about the frustrations and obstacles that come up when we try to do what we know is good for us.

“Food is one of these very simple things that I think human beings complicate.” Heather says this to point out how we get caught up in numbers and diets and what we should and should not eat and the food confusion we end up drowning in. Right away she addresses the “good” and “bad” food labels we assign food. Food is neither good nor bad, it’s mindfulness in eating that we need to take into account. Cooking, shopping, meal planning, and snacking all can be simplified if we approach food with mindfulness, self-compassion, and a focus on our health. I share some of my personal food stories with Heather and learn a lot. This conversation gave me so many great tips for approaching meals and eating and I love my kitchen even more after our talk. I think you’ll love what Heather has to say as much as I do.

About Heather Carey:

Heather Carey is a clinical nutritionist and healthy foods cooking instructor (Culinary Nutritionist) who empowers women in midlife to make peace with their bodies, food, and eating.

Learn more about Heather Carey:

• Website
• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

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Learn more about Dr Michelle Tubman and Wayza Health:

• Thrive Beyond Size website
• Website: www.wayzahealth.com
• Follow me on Facebook and Instagram

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Oh friends, I’m so excited to share this episode with you! After this conversation with Caroline I went to my local gym and booked some sessions, I was so inspired. I can’t imagine anyone will listen to this episode and not get excited to lift some weights or go to the gym. I’m talking to Dr. Caroline Addington, who is a former scientist turned personal trainer, about the joy of deadlifts. Seriously, we love our deadlifts, they make you feel so powerful. Caroline shares all her thoughts about fitness and strength and how women being strong is part of defying the patriarchy because we are not expected to be or look strong. 

Caroline and I talk about why it is that there are mental blocks for women going to a gym. It’s intimidating to step through that door, to step into a world of buff men and equipment that gives us stress. But confronting that anxiety can turn that stress into a positive motivation. There are mental and emotional benefits to taking those steps. I talk about how much I love to deadlift and my new love affair with kettlebells and Caroline and I examine why women are reluctant to do weight training. We examine that fear of being or looking “unfeminine” that is drilled into us and how that’s a symptom of the patriarchy. Being at the gym together is an act of solidarity and in defying the criticisms of our bodies. I am so happy about this episode and I hope you are as excited as I am about Caroline’s fitness and strength inspiration.

About Dr. Caroline Addington:

Dr. Caroline Addington is a former scientist turned NASM Certified Personal Trainer who loves helping women lift heavy, get strong and *actually enjoy* the gym. She's the host of top-rated podcast Co-create, founder of Well + Strong Training and an Aries through and through ❤

Learn more about Dr. Caroline Addington:

• Website
• Instagram
• Podcast

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Resources mentioned in this episode:

• “The Upside of Stress” by Kelly McGonigal
• “The Joy of Movement” by Kelly McGonigal
• “The Feminine Mystique” by Betty Friedan
• “The Book of SHE” by Sara Avant Stover

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Learn more about Dr Michelle Tubman and Wayza Health:

• Website: www.wayzahealth.com
• Follow me on Facebook and Instagram

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We understand the journey of learning to make healthier choices for ourselves, right? But what about our kids? How do we help our kids not only make healthier choices but want to make healthier choices for themselves? I’m asked this question a lot. How do we guide our families through nutrition choices? I have to admit that not being a parent means I don’t know how we should be teaching our kids. So I asked my colleague, Dr. Sheila Carroll - who is a board certified pediatrician, obesity medicine physician, life coach, and mom - to talk with me about exactly that: encouraging healthy paths for our children.  

Dr. Sheila Carroll and I have similar childhood stories about how something that was said to us as children affected our body image and relationship with food early on. Sheila understands exactly why we have to be very careful about the message we send to our children. She believes that anything we want to change for our kids needs to start with us. That’s right, the parents are the ones who need to model the behaviors they want their kids to adopt! It doesn’t mean parents need to be perfect, but it does mean we do as we say. We need to make home a healthy influence on our children’s understanding of nutrition and their own value. Sheila has valuable advice to share and she draws from vast experience to explain how we can help children make healthy choices. So join my conversation with Dr. Sheila Carroll to learn how to guide kids onto a healthier path. 

About Dr. Sheila Carroll:

Sheila Carroll, MD is board certified in general pediatrics and obesity medicine. She has been working in the clinical practice of medicine for 22 years.

After discovering life coaching, she applied what she learned to her own life and experienced an upleveling transformation. She then became a certified Life and Weight Loss Coach through The Life Coach School to be able to help other people experience similar life transformations.

She lives and works in Maine with her son Theo and their 14-year-old puppy Finn.

Learn more about Dr. Sheila Carroll:

• Website
• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

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Learn more about Dr Michelle Tubman and Wayza Health:

• Thrive Beyond Size website
• Website: www.wayzahealth.com
• Follow me on Facebook and Instagram

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the first episode of Thrive Beyond Size! I am excited to move past weight loss as a focus because dieting causes us harm. So going forward, we’re going to talk about living your beautiful and vibrant life in the body you have right now. For this first episode I talk with Christa Elza who is a board certified nurse practitioner who helps clients around the country through her virtual health practice. Christa and I talk about her functional medicine path and how hormones, lifestyle, and nutrition come together to affect our health.  

How much about our body chemistry do we really know? Because our hormones, which include insulin, play a very big part in how we feel and how we gain weight. Christa works in areas like how metabolic health is affected by hormones, the clearing of blood glucose, how our adrenal gland is functioning, and the effect of stress on our bodily health. This is what our conversation explores, how hormones and hormonal imbalances directly impact our health and weight, specifically in women. Christa shares her expertise and offers insight into the quality of food we should be eating and the types of exercise that contribute best to our health, as well as explaining the root causes of what we feel when we feel it. I learned a lot from her and I hope you get as much value from our conversation as I did.

About Christa Elza:

Christa graduated with a Bachelors of Science in Nursing in 2000.  She was immediately drawn to Emergency Medicine and was a trauma nurse for 8 years.  She has since earned her Masters Degree in Nursing from Texas State University and is a board certified nurse practitioner in Family Practice Medicine.  She was the sole practitioner in a clinic specializing in weight loss, hormone balance, and aesthetics.  During this time she realized the tool box of what she could offer for health solutions was too limited for how she wanted to serve her patients. She wanted a better way to help her patients achieve lasting health results.  With that vision in mind, Christa began her journey with the School of Applied Functional Medicine, learning the root cause approach to personalized healthcare.

In August of 2020, Christa launched her virtual health practice and is now able to provide help to clients around the country via webcam.  As a functional-medicine expert, she specializes in clinically investigating underlying factors of fatigue, hormone balance, thyroid issues, digestive issues, and more.   Christa uses breakthrough diagnostic testing that’s rarely done in conventional settings to uncover the hidden causes of why people feel the way they feel.  From here, the real healing is possible.

In her free time you can find Christa spending time with her husband of 16 years, Jon, their 3 boys, + her puppy, Sage.  She is now living in the San Antonio, TX area and loves being outdoors, skiing, traveling, hanging out poolside, + spending time with friends.

Learn more about Christa Elza:

• Website
• Instagram
• Facebook

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Learn more about Dr Michelle Tubman and Wayza Health:

• Thrive Beyond Size website
• Website: www.wayzahealth.com
• Follow me on Facebook and Instagram

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Friends, I’m excited that you’re here with me because I have a big announcement to make! The Mindful Weight Loss with Michelle Tubman MD podcast ends with this episode. BUT… don’t panic, I’m not leaving, I am changing this podcast name to Thrive Beyond Size. It’s our 100th episode so it feels like the right moment to make this change, but beyond that, I have been feeling for a while now that a change in focus aligns more with what I truly want to accomplish with this podcast. And I’m so thrilled to share this next journey with you!   

In the first episode I shared much of my story and I got so much feedback from people who said it sounded so familiar and that it resonated. That really is what I wanted to accomplish. But through working with my coaching clients over the last two years and drinking in the knowledge of guests, my own thoughts on weight loss and body size and food in general have shifted. I want to direct the conversation away from the societal narrative of “thin is valuable” to one that assures us that we are good enough as we are, while still weaving my medical interest in health into the conversation. I explain all my thoughts in this episode, and lay out my thinking on why Thrive Beyond Size is the right change at the right time for myself and the podcast. And for you as well, is my hope. So let’s talk about the shift together and look forward to the future.  

Thrive Beyond Size website

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Learn more about Dr Michelle Tubman and Wayza Health:

• Website: www.wayzahealth.com
• Download my free Food Freedom Roadmap here
• Follow me on Facebook and Instagram

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Anyone who has gone to a doctor has had their BMI measured. This is something all physicians do because it’s a standard of care, it’s still considered important according to the guidelines given to medical professionals. BMI is a flawed guideline, we know this now. But why was it adopted at all? What does it actually measure? I thought it was high time to devote an episode to answering all the questions you have about BMI. I’ve addressed parts of BMI in previous episodes but this is the one where I break it all down for you and talk about how it works and why it’s so flawed.  

Medicine is slow to change which is why the BMI is still being used, despite knowing its limitations. The BMI doesn’t actually measure what we intend it to. We use it as a way to estimate body fat percentage but that’s not what it is designed for, that’s not what it does. Measuring body fat is important because there are different types of fat in your body and I talk about them. I talk about why relying on BMI gives inaccurate ideas about people’s health and what a better methodology would be. I talk about metabolic syndrome and diabetes. I really just address all the questions I’ve been asked about BMI so you can see why it doesn’t reliably correlate with health. There are things that do contribute to a “happy weight” and I explain them so you can focus on those with your doctor instead of BMI.  

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Learn more about Dr Michelle Tubman and Wayza Health:

• Website: www.wayzahealth.com
• Download my free Food Freedom Roadmap here
• Follow me on Facebook and Instagram

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If I asked you “Do you love your body?” would your answer be dependent on how well your next diet works or whether you reach your goal weight or if you had more time at the gym? Could you say you love your body right now? I know I’ve struggled with saying that as so many of us have, especially women. My guest, author of “The Doughnut Diaries” and certified health coach Rachel Lavin, is on a mission to teach body love and help people heal from negative body image. Rachel has experienced not loving her body at every size from 12 to 0 so she knows that self acceptance is not in weight loss but in mindset.    

Rachel reached a point where, as she put it, “I got sick and tired of being sick and tired”. She reached a point of just being tired of feeling bad about herself. She worked to shift her mindset from feeling ugly and betrayed by her body to being able to wake up and tell herself she’s beautiful and mean it. She established three pillars of fitness - nourishment for body and mind, movement, and rest - to encourage women to find the same body love. Rachel and I talk about her book, researching body positivity, how our messaging about our bodies affects our children, and why physicians need to abandon reliance on the BMI and focus on actual health. The messages in this episode are so personal and valuable, I hope you find them as helpful as I do. 

About Rachel Lavin:

Rachel Lavin is a Published author of “The Doughnut Diaries”, Professional Speaker, Body Love Coach, Certified Health Coach, Certified Personal Trainer. She grew up in Northern California and has lived in Hawaii, Vancouver, Washington and Portland, Oregon and New York City. She currently lives in Greenville, South Carolina with her partner.

In 2000 Rachel began her career as an ACE certified group fitness instructor teaching a plethora of classes such as Aqua Aerobics, Bootcamp, Jazzercise, Dance Aerobics, Stretch and Chair classes. In 2007 she was certified as an ACE Personal Trainer working at big box gyms in NYC and becoming an independent trainer in 2012.  Rachel wanted to take her passion for helping people to the next level and became an ACE certified Health Coach in 2018.

In 2020 Rachel wrote her first book "The Doughnut Diaries" about her own struggles with her weight and restrictive diets which lasted for over thirty years. As Rachel turned forty the expression “I got sick and tired of being sick and tired” hit home and she made a decision to take her power back and heal from decades of negative thinking and self sabotage. Rachel began to do the work on her mind, body and soul. Writing her book was her way of sharing her message to women that they are not alone! Now using her book Rachel wants to help people who have had or are still experiencing negative body image. By using what she now refers to as her three pillars of fitness; Nourishment for both the mind and body, Movement & Rest.

“My mission is to create a safe space for all women to feel whole in their own body.” – Rachel Lavin

Contact Rachel Lavin

Body Love Educator, Speaker, Author

Website | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn

Resources discussed in this episode:

• “The Doughnut Diaries” by Rachel Lavin
• Obesity Medicine 2023 Conference

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Learn more about Dr Michelle Tubman and Wayza Health:

• Website: www.wayzahealth.com
• Download my free Food Freedom Roadmap here
• Follow me on Facebook and Instagram

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When was your last real true holiday? One where you shut off work and didn’t bring a laptop and truly went on vacation? It’s difficult to do that but so rewarding when you do. I want to share my experiences from the three weeks I just spent in Thailand where I did just that! I even took the work apps off my phone. I felt incredibly liberated. The parameters I set around food added to the good feeling. Usually when I go on holiday I set gentle guidelines for myself in terms of food: I’ll stop eating when I’m full, I won’t overeat, and I’ll make sure to drink all my water. I achieved this and more.   

Let me first say I’m not a real alcohol drinker or a late night partier. I had my party time in my youth but now I want to feel healthy and rested on my holidays. I’m also a bit picky about alcohol but I like to indulge in bold red wine, whiskey, and single malt scotch. On our first evening in Bangkok, we went to a rooftop bar and enjoyed a meal with a gorgeous martini. But halfway through, in spite of how delicious it was, I suddenly decided I didn’t want it. I didn’t want the alcohol. This aversion to alcohol just seized me through the whole vacation and I went with it; I ended up having a dry holiday and thoroughly enjoyed it. And what I realized was how empowered I felt in being able to follow my body and take a stand against what the norm was. I want to share that with you, all the revelations I had on my holiday. So join me on this journey. 

About host Michelle Tubman:

Michelle Tubman is an emergency physician in Alberta, Canada. She is also an overweight woman who has struggled for decades with her own weight and body image. She has spent her adult life constantly battling the urge to overeat with her desire to be thin and healthy. As a physician she understood the nutritional aspects of a healthy diet, but having the knowledge wasn’t enough to produce the changes she wanted in her body. And so she pursued extra training in life coaching, nutrition coaching, the science of habit formation, and eating psychology. And this is where the magic is. There is so much work that needs to happen on the inside before we can see changes on the outside.

Michelle founded Wazya Health to help successful, professional women who, after years of dieting, understand that optimal weight and health is more than calories-in-calories-out. She wants to help women listen to that quiet voice inside that tells them there’s deeper work to be done when it comes to weight and body image.

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Learn more about Dr Michelle Tubman and Wayza Health:

• Website: www.wayzahealth.com
• Download my free Food Freedom Roadmap here
• Follow me on Facebook and Instagram

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Do you drive an automatic or stick shift? The first car I bought for myself was a stick shift, a Toyota Tercel. I drove it basically into the ground. But three years ago I bought a new car and it’s actually sort of challenging to buy a stick shift now. Everything is automatic. There’s less to think about while driving. This struck me as a really interesting analogy to emotional eating. Emotional eating is like driving an automatic car. The car does all the shifting for you, you don’t have to think about it. That’s what happens when we stress or anger eat, we aren’t even conscious of searching for the food until we’re actually eating it. How do we engage thought about it? How do we shift out of automatic and get back in control of the car?   

If a stick shift is what you’re used to driving, eventually your body understands when to gear up or gear down. There’s an actual physical sense of when it needs to happen. You’re in control of the car without effort, you just have awareness of what’s needed. And that’s what we need to cultivate with food. The awareness and control of driving a stick shift. When we let our eating go on automatic, we are in danger of losing our intuition for what to do. It’s empowering to take control of our direction and let our bodies learn to read when they need to gear up or gear down in terms of eating. And just like it’s never too late to learn to drive a stick shift, it’s never too late to gain control of emotional eating. I forget how to drive stick every once in a while. But there are checks in place to help me. I’m going to share with you how to get back into that place of conscious body driving in this episode.  

About host Michelle Tubman:

Michelle Tubman is an emergency physician in Alberta, Canada. She is also an overweight woman who has struggled for decades with her own weight and body image. She has spent her adult life constantly battling the urge to overeat with her desire to be thin and healthy. As a physician she understood the nutritional aspects of a healthy diet, but having the knowledge wasn’t enough to produce the changes she wanted in her body. And so she pursued extra training in life coaching, nutrition coaching, the science of habit formation, and eating psychology. And this is where the magic is. There is so much work that needs to happen on the inside before we can see changes on the outside.

Michelle founded Wazya Health to help successful, professional women who, after years of dieting, understand that optimal weight and health is more than calories-in-calories-out. She wants to help women listen to that quiet voice inside that tells them there’s deeper work to be done when it comes to weight and body image.

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Learn more about Dr Michelle Tubman and Wayza Health:

• Website: www.wayzahealth.com
• Download my free Food Freedom Roadmap here
• Follow me on Facebook and Instagram

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.