Ep 19: Helping Moms Get Unstuck with Melissa Rohlf

Today I am interviewing Melissa, a transformational coach who battled with her own feelings of overwhelm as a mom and struggled with binge eating sugar to help ease the internal suffering.  Once she was able to get to the root of her problem she began to lose the weight, feel empowered, and made the decision to help other moms through their health and transformational journey.  Today she is discussing how you can get unstuck and feel empowered. 

You can find Melissa on her website

Home - Free 2 B Coaching

on Facebook

(3) Happy Healthy Mama | Facebook

on Instagram

Melissa Rohlfs (@free2b_coaching) • Instagram photos and videos

Learn more about her upcoming program:  Finding Freedom

Finding Freedom (melissarohlfs.lpages.co)

Or join the Raising Healthy Humans Community over on Facebook at:

Form Fit Mom (facebook.com)

Transcript

Unknown: 0:09

Hi, I'd like to welcome you to raising healthy humans. I am your host Courtney, a personal trainer and health coach and the founder of formfit. a community where I help busy moms move more. As a busy and sometimes overwhelmed mom of three myself, I understand that it can be difficult to find ways to live and raise Healthy Families. It is my goal to help provide you with the information and tactics you need to help raise healthy humans. Episode 19 helping moms get unstuck. Today, I am interviewing Melissa, a transformational coach who battled with her own feelings of overwhelm as a mom and struggled with binge eating sugar to help ease the internal suffering. Once she was able to get to the root of her problem, she began to lose the weight, feel empowered and made the decision to help other moms through their health and transformational journey. Today, she is discussing how you can get unstuck and feel empowered. Let's listen in. Thank you for coming on the raising healthy humans podcast. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself, Melissa? Yes, Courtney, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm a wife, I'm a mom, I've got a 13 year old and 11 year old coming to you from Arizona, where I'm a holistic health and life coach, and I help moms become calm, confident and healthy. Excellent. And what is one thing? As a holistic health coach, what is one thing that you are noticing, right now with families in as kids are going back to school? What are you noticing for these moms? And they're seeing a little bit of stress, but also a little bit of relief? Because I think you know, it's easy as a mom to maybe not have that time that we need to ourselves. And so I feel like some moms are kind of like, oh, I've got some time to myself, and they're excited about it. But then maybe they feel guilty about feeling excited. And so just all of the emotions that kind of go with that, and kind of getting back into that back to school routine. Okay, and what are what is one thing that you would recommend to moms right now to help them take a little bit of time for themselves? Yeah, I love just encouraging moms to maybe block 10 minutes in their calendar, just schedule some time to kind of decompress, unwind, kind of you know, get your emotions in check, before you go pick up the kids or before your family gets up in the morning whenever that is for you. Because we're all different. But just make sure you're giving yourself some time build it into your day, so that you're able to kind of decompress and unwind and maybe process like maybe there's some stuff that you feel like you just need to do a brain dump and just get all those thoughts out of your head. And that's one thing that I've noticed for myself as well, is I used to always allow my family to kind of dictate my life. And for me, I now made the decision that I was going to wake up early every morning, and give myself at least 20 minutes to myself. And what a world of difference it makes. Yeah, watch out though, because I also started out with 20 minutes, and now it just keeps getting longer and longer and longer. Well, yes. And I I keep pulling my clock back so that I don't think I want to wake up too early. Because then you start working into the, you know, lack of sleep not getting enough sleep, which is good work. And you're getting dawn Yes. Yeah. So as a holistic health and wellness coach, you work with women, not only on their mindset, but also nutrition as well. Correct. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. I would say it's really kind of a beautiful journey of helping women learn to listen to their bodies, because we're all different. So we learn you know, how to listen to your body and how to honor and respect what your body needs, rather than your neighbors or whoever else maybe you heard about a plan from but really tapping in and listening to your body. Right? And how would you recommend someone to start to do that? Because I'm thinking, for those of us who are people pleasers, it's really not we are constantly trying to say yes to everyone. So what would you recommend for someone who's just starting this journey of trying to take some time back for themselves? What would you recommend for them? I would recommend really kind of honoring your yes and your no and I feel like you know, we maybe have this temptation to say yes in the moment, but maybe just instead of answering right away, say, can I think about that and get back to you? Or can I check my calendar? Like give yourself some warning so that you have a buffer reply built in so that you're not compelled to just answer on the spot because as a people pleaser, you want to say yes to all the things. But I think there's a real benefit in just giving yourself that buffer in that space to process and see if it is going to fit into your schedule, and if it aligns with your goals. So how do you work through that whole process of these moms who just it's this guilt, this guilt, that they're not responding quick enough? They're not doing what other people want of them? I guess I would be curious, and I would ask is what other people wanting have them in alignment for what they want and the vision they have for themselves? Because so many times we can get so caught up in trying to be all the things to all the people that we lose ourselves. And I think that happens to a lot of moms, we lose ourselves because we you know, have these kids and we have these responsibilities. And we think we need to be all the things and don't lose yourself in that. So I think a good reply to answer that question might be, thank you for asking, may I give it back to you in 24 to 48 hours after I've looked at my family schedule, you know, that might be a really good phrase to use. And then if you need to put a note in your calendar for that 24 to 48 hour hours to follow up with so and so on XYZ. Perfect. Yes. Because I'm thinking of how this could then turn into something, I say I'm going to get back to them, I don't get back to them in a timely manner. And now I'm feeling guilt about not getting back to them. Because this is what we do. It's that self sabotage, we are very hard on ourselves. And speaking of like, self sabotage, we as women, and I'm sure it's a lot of people, but I think mostly women tend to just constantly get in our heads, and we will replay. You know, you go out to dinner with friends. And then you start to replay everything you said that night and how it could have been misconstrued. And all of that. How do we start to work through some of this? Yeah. And I really think it's changing your mindset, right? Because that's your thoughts become your beliefs, and your beliefs become your actions. So where do we need to start at that root cause to not go down that trail, and it all starts with our thoughts and our mindset. And so I think we need to really kind of retrain our brain and ourselves to learn a new way of being, because it is possible to not live in that place, because I used to be in that place. And I used to overanalyze everything and process everything. And it was mentally exhausting. It was like a gymnastic show up there. And now it's it's not so much a thing like, Yes, I think there's a benefit and maybe like assessing the day and evaluating what went, well, what didn't go, Well, what you could change, but not get hung up on that loop of that self sabotage. And that beating yourself up. And that's really kind of looking at where the root of where the self sabotage comes in. What caused it in the first place? And how do we handle that? Because that's the main driver of the situation, not just the conversation at dinner, maybe that didn't go well? Hmm. Very interesting. I'm about the root cause, man. So in your course that you offer, you're digging deeper into the root causes of why we do what we do? Absolutely. Because if you can start with why, and you can identify that that's where we can change. It's when we spin our wheels, and we don't know why we're doing what we're doing. And we're just spinning. We're not going to have that change in that transformation, because we haven't identified the why everything starts with why and you've got a surface. Right now for the younger moms for the newer, not younger, newer moms, they've just younger said. Yes, thank you. That is also a very difficult time, because you're constantly hearing other people and their opinions. And you start to really question how your parenting style is, and honestly, is, if I'm thinking about this, it's not even just new moms, I think about this constantly for myself with are they in front of screens too long? How are my children compared to other children in that they're going to school with and you know, you've got this whole spectrum of moms trying to figure out what to do. Do you have any recommendations for just how to not constantly go outside and looking at what others are doing? Yeah, I think there's some really practical things you can do, I think, the main cause and the best thing to do which is awesome. So maybe the most challenging is to really learn to listen to yourself and trust yourself. Because we all have our, you know, our gut, our instinct, our intuition, God, whatever that is, we all have that inside of us. And it's really learning to tune into that voice and act on it. So I think that's the big thing. But I think you know, if that seems overwhelming, and big, and like, oh, my goodness, I don't know how to do it. One thing you can do is really just acknowledge that you are your children's parents, like God entrusted you to them for such a time as this and you have everything you need, they have everything that they need. And if you fall into that trap of comparing, or wondering how your kids are doing XYZ, maybe kind of put those blinders on like they do on horses, and just monitor what you're allowing in and where those thoughts are coming from. And maybe just focus on what you need to do for this season. And it's easy to do that on social media, we can go down this trail and see what they're doing and what these people are doing. And we've got reality TV, and just really kind of choose where you're focusing on. And there's some great books, there's some great resources, there are things that you can really tap into to kind of navigate that as well, we are going to really focus on what we want. I think what I notice for many moms, I don't know if they really know what they want. Or Courtney, do they know what they want, but they're afraid to say it or they're afraid to admit that they have a want or a need. Because I think that's the other thing, right? Like as moms, I think we get so used to like suppressing what we need we want because when you have this new baby and you like can go to the bathroom because you the baby will cry or you end up getting a bladder infection because you've not gone to the bathroom because you've got a new baby like I think it kind of trains us to not focus on what's inside of us. And we get lost in that almost. Yes, most definitely. I remember my children when they were little, and how much you don't have time for yourself, you have zero time. And for those of us who need to have that space and time to refill. When, in the beginning, you mentioned taking that time. And we mentioned that taking the few minutes in the morning. But for new moms, that's probably not something they're going to be able to do. Because open up all night. Right? Exactly. And I mean, time or sleep is precious at that point. So they need to get everything they can. And usually they're woken up by their child. So what would you Is there anything that they can do during this time? Or is all lost? No. I think the thing to remember is I didn't have this mindset, and I wish going in that I did like nothing lasts forever. Like I know when you are in the trenches of having this new baby who's not sleeping and you all you're doing is changing diapers, and you're covered and spit up and you can't wear earrings because they're tugging on them. This is not gonna last forever, like, but it feels like it's going to because it feels like Groundhog's Day, right. So just remember, it's not going to last forever. And it's not always going to be this way. So all hope is not lost. And I think too, if you could just, you know, maybe after your husband gets home from work, or after you have put the baby down, maybe just take five or 10 minutes, take a bubble bath, take a walk, sit in your bedroom in journal, don't go to the pantry and eat all the sugar like I used to do but find some healthy things for you that are going to kind of fill your cup back up. Because the issue there is you need the time to yourself and the sugar and going to the pantry like I did wasn't ever like the answer to that it was like ships in the night. Right? Just like with fitness this. Like you said, taking just a few minutes. We think it's got to be all or nothing. I've got to spend 30 minutes doing this thing. Or it's not going to count. Yeah. So I like that you said that. Even if it's just five or 10 minutes, where they walk outside the front door. They take a few deep breaths or something. Yeah, and then come back inside. And yes, it may not fill your cup up completely. But my goodness, it gets it to the halfway point, right? Yeah. And a splash is better than nothing. Let's be honest, like, and there along those lines. There's a great phrase I learned in my coach training that I think is worth maybe sharing and it's that small hinges open wide doors. And I think so many times like you said, we think we have to have like this huge hinge. But no, it's those small little things that we do every day that have that big result. So never minimize those small things everyday that you can do. Whether it's you know, like you said, stepping outside to take a breath. Right. And you mentioned just a month. I'm going to go about how you personally would go to your cabinet for sugar. And can you talk into that a little bit more? Do you feel comfortable talking about though? Of course. Yeah. So I was like, the biggest sugar and exporting and I thought that sugar was like the answer to all of my problems. As a mom, I thought I was tired. So I would eat you know, some Oreos, I thought I needed to feel happy. So I would drink a Diet Dr. Pepper any big pretzel for lunch, like I was totally living off of carbs and sugar, trying to I don't know if it was trying to like make myself feel better. I don't know if it was trying to stuff feelings because I felt so many things as an overwhelmed mom. And I didn't really like it. And I felt bad saying that. But I know for me, like sugar wasn't the answer, and oftentimes made things worse. And I didn't realize it at the time, until I kind of worked through that and was like, wow, no wonder my moods were all over the place. No wonder I was hungry and tired and crabby and emotional. And it just it wasn't the solution. But I thought that it was at the time. Right? It was legal. Let's be honest, it's legal. It's widely, you know, socially acceptable. Everybody's doing it. Yeah, very acceptable. Whether it be from, like you said, the carbs, the overloading the carbs, the sugar, the alcohol, which I see so many moms. Yeah, just that one, one or two glasses in the evening. In regards to that? How can we start to break that? I think again, the harder and bigger question to ask is, why am I going to this? Or maybe, what am I looking for in this moment? Because yes, sugar does release those chemicals in the brain. And it does make you feel good. And it does give you that good feeling, right? Like, it's very easy to get addicted to that feeling, especially when you're an overwhelmed new new mom in the trenches like I was. And so you get addicted to that feeling. But you don't realize the impact that it has later because it affects your blood sugar and your moods are all over the place, and you're literally on a blood sugar rollercoaster. And so I think the bigger question is, what am I looking for in this experience, and it's oftentimes not even sugar, it's not even food. But we think that it is. And so we turn to that. But maybe it's a lack of connection, maybe it's feeling feelings that you don't like to admit about where you're at in your life. Or maybe it's you don't like where you're living or your financial situation, I get some, usually there's a bigger area of discontent that we're trying to mask that with by using the sugar. Okay, and what if people figure out what that is? What what's the next step at that point? like they've identified not only have they, they know, because I think for some people, it's going to be going through a process trying to figure out, what is it, but there are other people who know exactly what it is why they're doing that. And it might be more than one thing, let's be honest, I have like full view. So I would say, you know, find somebody to journey with you find somebody that you feel safe and comfortable with and that can walk with you and help you like, I think the really beautiful thing about coaching is we help people get from where they are to where they want to be. And so find that safe space where you can have somebody journey with you and help you kind of connect those dots and make that plan to get you where you want to go. Because we can we can do it on our own. Like if you don't want to journey with someone, you could journal, you could read books, you could go to classes, there are lots of things you can do. I think it just depends on what's best for you in a situation. And for me. I needed somebody to journey with me because I tried all those things, and they didn't work. And that's what you offer as well correct. is to allow people to go through that journey with you. Yeah. So can you tell us a little bit about your program? What exactly you offer? Yeah, absolutely. So I have a 12 week finding freedom program for moms who really want to get unstuck, from whatever is holding them back in life, because there are so many things that come at us. And we think that maybe we want to lose weight, or we want to get rid of the sugar. But I think we need to peel those layers back and ask what's behind that. And so it's really a process of getting to the heart of what holds us back and maybe makes us not feel calm and confident and healthy as a mom what are we doing in our lives? What are we saying yes to what are we allowing in what are we putting in our bodies and kind of creating this holistic picture of what life is like and what it can be like and get you from here to there. Okay, and then do you have you said it's 12 weeks? And do you have certain things that you focus on each week each month? Yep, we share Do we have a weekly zoom call with a different topic. Things might include finding your energy like what gives you energy which Talk about nourishing our bodies. We talk about how to honor your guests and your know we talk about sabotage, we talk about all these things that kind of come in and trip us up and make us feel stuck. Right, right. So let me ask you, if you don't mind, finding what nourishes you, what would be a little snippet of what you share with them? Yeah, so the tricky thing with nourishment and energy I feel like they kind of go hand in hand is there are two main ways that we get energy and we get nourishment, and one is through food, and the other through activities. And so it's kind of figuring out based on you and your life and your body, which, which does that for you like, which foods are going to energize you? Which activities are going to energize you? How are you going to walk away feeling nourished and supported, and healthy and ready to go and tackle motherhood? You mentioned nourishment, and helping them with that. And you also had mentioned earlier about listening to your body. So is there something that moms could be doing in regards to nourishment and listening to their body with the foods that they're eating? Absolutely, because that's a huge part of it, right? Because what works for one doesn't work for all. And so really, you know, again, it's slowing down. And it's recognizing which foods work for your body type, which foods give you energy, which foods take away or energy, which foods maybe even make you a little bit crabby, because there's a big correlation between food and mood. And so really, I think, if you want to do something tangible after this five guests, you could start to journal and you could start to journal, I ate this, I increased my energy, it took away my energy, it made me feel this, and you really get the bigger picture of how food impacts you. Because we're all different, perfect. Is there anything that you would say that they can start to do today? to help them on this journey? of taking care of themselves? Yeah, I think the main thing would be to recognize that they matter and that they're worth taking care of. Because if you don't believe that, and you don't operate from that space, it's not gonna last you have to believe and know that you matter, and that you're worth taking care of, and that it's okay to take care of yourself. And it's okay to fill your cup. And I feel like there tends to be judgment and shame and guilt from other moms maybe when you do that. And so just push those voices aside, and just focused on focus on being the best version of yourself. You can be for your family, and for yourself. But I think sometimes it's easier to do it for our family instead of ourselves. So well. And if even if you start there, start for your family for yourself. Do it for your family. Right. Yeah, I think that's that's definitely a key there because some people just aren't willing to do it. For right. That was me. I didn't have any reason to change. I mean, I was perfectly happy being crabby and eating sugar all the time. Like what a great life. So what was it that made you finally change? My kids? I'm like, I don't want to be this mom. to them. This isn't how I want to raise them. This isn't what I want them to think of me as this isn't what I want them to remember me by it was totally for them. Okay. There wasn't like a breaking point or anything? Oh, yeah, I think there was I mean, it was there were so many breaking points. It was like the perfect storm I call it had a new baby. He wasn't sleeping at all. So I was exhausted. Our two year old had sensory challenges and undiagnosed food allergies. My husband was traveling for work, and I had just gotten diagnosed with PTSD from childhood trauma. So perfect storm right there. Right, I could see where everything would have played in. Mm hmm. Yeah. And I was like, you know what I need to change for them. Like if I didn't believe in myself enough, or have enough self worth and value to do it for me, but I could do it for them. And then look at where you are now. Now you teach others to do the same thing. Yeah. Which is a wonderful concept to grasp, right. Like we have been bombarded with messaging that you're selfish, and you're this and you're that and I don't think anybody wants to feel like a selfish mom. Like we carry enough guilt and shame as it is, like you mentioned earlier, and then to throw that layer on. It's debilitating. Mm hmm. Yeah, it definitely is. It's It's It's much tougher than I think we realize. Mm hmm. And I feel like the last year has made it worse even with all the differing opinions on everything. Oh, most definitely different opinions, having to homeschool your children having to pretty much take it take everything on and not having a ton of support. You know, you we were all kind of left to figure it out for ourselves because we We also couldn't get together with family. And, you know, so it was just one thing after the next for everybody, as we close out, is there anything that you'd like to mention? And also, where can we find you? And where can everyone go to, if they're interested in your course, give us all the information, give you all the juicy details. I just want moms to know that anything is possible and nothing lasts forever. And I really do desire to create a safe space for moms to be their authentic selves, because there is a lot of judgment and there is a lot of guilt. And like I said, we carry so much of that on our own. So why not have a safe space where you can have encouragement and support and grow and change in the process. Like that's what I wanted as a new mom and I tried to find it in different groups and clubs, and I just didn't find what I needed. And so that's why I'm doing what I'm doing. And you can find me at free the number two, the letter B coaching. com free to be coaching calm. I'm on Facebook, happy, healthy Mama. And then we will also make sure everything is in the show notes so that people can just clicked on the show notes to find you. Perfect. Yeah, and I have lots of free gifts on my website. So people want to go there. There's like a free sugar guy. There's a free time, like guide like there's something for everything. Perfect. Well, thank you for having me. Yes, of course. Thank you for taking time out of your day to listen to our podcast and I hope you were able to find some valuable information from Melissa. All of her links will be in the show notes, along with information for her upcoming program beginning on September 13. Finding freedom, a three month mindset and accountability program helping you to become calm, confident and healthy. And if you are a mom who is just feeling alone in this phase of motherhood, then I would love to have you join us in our form fit mom community over on Facebook, where we get together for conversation activities, share recipes and exercises. Have a wonderful day.