Here is a solo episode. I’m so glad you’re here. First of all, I just wanna thank you for sticking around with me and listening to my podcast, especially since they’ve gone to every other week. I hope that you are still staying on track with me and listening. I always like to hear from you, so if you have anything you wanna share with me, please be sure and share it with me here.
I’m actually at my beach house while I’m recording this and I’ve had a little bit of time by myself, which is always good cuz I have time to reflect. so today what I’m going to share with you I’m going to really get vulnerable. And share some things that you may not know about me and share some things that I’ve been thinking a lot about, When I started this journey, I think it’s been five or six years ago with well and Worthy Life, I started it to share my experiences to help other people live this well and worthy life cuz we are all are worthy.
And I didn’t feel comfortable sharing some things cuz I felt like I would be judged. And the fact is that we are all judged at different points in our life. And I’m, I’m far enough away from some of the things that I feel like I need to share these things with you because I want you to understand that my wife, number one, has not been all roses and butterflies or two lips and butterflies.
Those are my favorite. But also, , you know, I’ve made some bad choices along the way, but in the last 10 years, and I really say it’s, it’s been a 10 year journey, I have turned a lot of things around and I am in such a better place than I’ve ever been in my life. Does that mean everything’s perfect in my life?
No. In fact, this year was really a difficult year for me. I had something happen, which I’m not ready to share. But I may not ever share this, but, it’s still been, it’s been okay. So let me just go back, especially if you’re new here, you may not know this or you may know this. . In fact, my, one of my number one podcasts was when I talked about my first divorce and the shame that I felt.
And so, so it really, I mean, my journey started years before that. Obviously, as a child, I had the perfect. , I mean, really people would think. And I, I felt like I had the perfect childhood. I had the most amazing parents. They had a great loving relationship. I have two brothers that are great guys, and we just really, I feel like had a really strong foundation.
Her mother and father went to church. We grew up going to church. My mother really shared with me I’m not sure if she shared with my brothers, I’m sure she did, but shared with me about her relationship with God and Jesus and and really was pivotal to that in my life. And, and I. I accepted Jesus.
I, I still remember it. I was like, in third grade we lived in Florida and gone to some like revival thing. We were Methodists, so I don’t know really what it was, but I remember this college girl asking me about, have you asked Jesus into your heart? And I remember going home that day and jumping on the trampoline and asking Jesus into my heart.
And so I always grew up in church and everything, and I always tried to. , you know, tried to be a, a people pleaser, so I wanted to please my parents and my, my older brother was always getting in trouble, so I learned about what not to do. Right. But I started kind of sneaking and smoking cigarettes at a young age.
And my brother started first and then I started, and my mother was a smoker, you know, back in those days. , a lot of our parents probably were smokers and so we would steal ’em from her. She wouldn’t know, I guess. And and we would steal ’em. So, I mean, I probably had my first cigarette at like 12 years old.
And and then in high school I, you know, I was a cheerleader, but when we would be driving to the games basketball games or something like that, we would, there was a few of us that would be in the car smoking our cigarettes and. So my journey continued on. I was a smoker really through college, and I, I, I was not a big drinker.
And then in college I did start drinking. I was never one that could drink very much. I just, I couldn’t hold my liquor. So I would always drink that one, drink too many and get sick. And so anyway, I went to college and graduated in three. I was ready to move on . I was like, okay, what’s next?
And but I continued to be a smoker during all this time. And then I met my first husband and he was a doctor, and my mother told me, she was like, if you’re gonna smoke, he’s probably will never marry you. And at this point, . I was a whole 21 years old and I wanted to be married. I mean, some of my friends were already married at this point.
I was graduated from college and I wanted to be married cuz I wanted to have children. So I pretended to quit smoking and so I became a closet smoke. we were married for 17 years, had three children. I will tell you, I never smoked when I was pregnant with my children. So I did quit. But the rest of the time I was a closet smoker and I smoked a lot with my mother.
So when she would be in town or I would go visit her, we would sneak and smoke and looking back, I’m. . Yeah. And I was, I have to tell you this, I was always into working out, always all I, I, I just, I was a cheerleader and then I became a runner with my father. And and then after having children, I got personal trainers.
So I always loved working out, but I also loved to. And in fact, I think it was probably around 15 or 16 that I was, that my mom put me on my first diet. You know, I gained a few pounds and I think probably, you know, a time when I wasn’t doing cheerleading and I gained a few pounds. And, and so so that started that diet rollercoaster for me.
Then I went to college that freshman year, came home. 10 or 15 pounds overweight. Went on a diet, lost the weight. And then I really didn’t have too much of a problem. Got married to my ex-husband and like I said, I was a closet smoker and that probably helped me keep my weight down. Plus, I was young, I worked out I did strength training.
I ran. So, life was good, felt like, but somewhere in those 17 years of marriage, I really lost myself. And about , well, it was very shortly into the marriage. I knew it was gonna be a tough one. I didn’t understand how tough and divorce was. Nowhere in our family. Nowhere in the. But so that really was never an option for me.
But then, I don’t know, it just, it, it, it was a long, 17 years to finally, I had to hit rock bottom and I knew I could not live like that anymore. In that time, my ex-husband did find out about me smoking, but again, I sold him. I’d quit and. , that closet smoker again. And then through my divorce, I was never a big drinker.
My ex-husband was never a big drinker, so we really didn’t drink much through those years. But when I hit 40, I was going through my divorce and I was introduced into wine, and I started drinking wine and started drinking wine a good bit. And at the same time, guess what? I wasn’t sleeping. This is one of the times that I wish I knew then what I know now.
So the alcohol was not helping me sleep. Right. But I thought it was because it kind of numbed me to everything that was going on. And yeah, I was still closet smoking, But really looking back, this was probably the very beginning of perimenopause for me and that’s why I wasn’t able to sleep.
It was also, I’m sure my life circumstances going through my divorce, and so that wasn’t so funny either.
Once I got my divorce, I did everything you’re not supposed to and jumped into another relationship. He knew I smoked cuz I was like not gonna hide it anymore. I mean like I didn’t smoke out in public, but I smoked at home on my screened in porch and I’m embarrassed to say this, but my children smoked and we sat on our screened in porch and smoked together.
Thankfully, none of us smoke anymore at all. It’s one of the worst habits. That we can do, and you would think that I would be smarter than that. My father died of cancer at 59 and my mother got cancer at 60. And there was a point when my mother was diagnosed with cancer, she had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, said her clo, she was a closet smoker.
That could have contributed to. . And so you would think, well, Diana would quit at this point. Well, I didn’t. Well, I, I can’t I take that back. I did quit for maybe a couple of years and then I started back closet smoking and I was drinking the wine and every time I had a glass of wine, I had to have that cigarette.
It just kind of went together. It’s kind of the same thing what I did in college. I was not sleeping good. I wasn’t feeling great. I didn’t have a lot of energy, all of these symptoms perimenopausal. But again, I was, you know, drinking and not nourishing my body the right way. But I, I had no idea.
I never connected the dots of perimenopause. Who would’ve thought that they could have lasted and perimenopause for me, really? Cuz I didn’t go through actual menopause till I was 54. So really 14 years. Who would’ve thought it would’ve lasted that long? Right? But it did, and I was contributing to all the problems.
I ate tons of sugar. L I have a sweet tooth and I loved it. But I was working out all this time. I actually owned a peer bar studio. Again, I’m embarrassed to say that, right? I mean, like I was supposed to be this health and wellness person owning a peer bar studio, teaching peer bar, and here I was smoking.
and having, you know, probably I would say four nights a week at least, having a couple of glasses of wine at least sometimes more, sometimes less, maybe periods without it, but not very many periods without it. And so what helped me change was that. Really, I mean, I, I think back, I, I really think the first step for me was I got married and so it changed my environment when I got married, my husband now knew that I was a smoker at the time, a closet smoker.
He didn’t like it at all, but he didn’t, tell me I had to quit or anything like that. . So when I changed my environment and I started thinking about my own parents when they got cancer and how close I was getting to their age, it made me finally give it up. So I gave up to smoking first, and it really wasn’t hard because I knew, I knew that wasn’t serving me well.
I just. I knew that it was not good . Why we do things when we know they’re not good? I don’t know. But the next step for me was I was a diet, diet coke aholic. I loved my Diet Coke and I was drinking five or six Diet Cokes a day. And again, I knew better. I knew, but I didn’t wanna give it up. I loved him so much, but what I didn’t understand, is, that was increasing my sugar cravings, right?
So it just made me eat more sugar, which made me have feel, you know, more lethargic and not have the energy to do the things I wanted to do. You know, I would go teach Pure Bar in the morning and then I’d have this lull in the afternoon and I’d just be so tired. It was cause of the wine at night Sugar.
The Diet Coke. Again, just not fueling my body the way it should. In those, in between afternoons, I would grab a handful of those peanut butter pretzels. I know you’ve seen them. Oh my gosh. I would eat so many of those again. What did it do? It led to inflammation. It led to lethargic, just not feeling my best.
It didn’t lead to more energy. It wasn’t like I was nourishing my body with good. . And again, I did not connect the dots. I didn’t think about what I was eating really could affect me. And I know nowadays everybody hears food is medicine. So, you know, we all kind of know that. But really paying attention to the foods that we’re, we nourish our bodies.
So finally I sold pure. and and so I was just gonna take care of my stepfather who had Lewy body dementia and I’m be a new wife. I gotten married to my husband now I know. Can’t believe we we’re about to celebrate our nine year anniversary. And but I felt like something was missing again, really reflecting on watching my stepfather with this dementia and.
Awful. It was, and I wanted to make sure, number one, I didn’t get dementia because I did know that caretakers are with the stress they’re under, it can cause dementia, , and and so I wanted to learn how to manage my own stress cuz stress wasn’t going anywhere. And I wanted to think about what I could do to hopefully prevent cancer in.
So that’s when I started well and Worthy Life. And I started as a blog to share my experiences. Right? And it wasn’t too long in there during one of my blog posts I wrote about, well, I have to tell you, I have to back up for a second. I have to tell you this story. We were on a trip with another couple front to.
and we had eaten and drank our way all through Napa. And so if you looked at me, you wouldn’t think I looked fat or anything like that. You wouldn’t say, woo, she’s, she needs to lose some weight because I look back at those pictures. But can I tell you, I felt so bad and I think that was my one. No, I don’t think I know.
That was my wake up call for. Was when I was there and I felt so miserable. In fact, so miserable, like bloated, gassy, just not that much energy. Just gross. I mean, I don’t know how else to explain it to you. And I knew I had gained some weight you know, about 10 pounds. So, and I’m five, two and a half three.
So 10 pounds shows up pretty much on me. But one day on the trip, everybody was going to the pool to sit by the pool to relax, enjoy the weather, and the thought of putting on a bathing. was just no, I, there was no way I could do it, and I have never on a trip or anything like that been where I just didn’t wanna participate.
I’m a social person. I usually wanted to be around everybody. And so as I sat in that room by myself, I was like, mm-hmm. . This will never happen again. You’ve got to make some changes. You gotta find out what’s going on. So I think I was probably around 51, 52 at the time, I’m not sure. And I came back and I read a lot about the keto diet, so I decided to do the keto diet.
and it wasn’t a strict keto by any stretch of the imagination. I wrote a blog post on it and and I’ll be honest with you, when I did this the weight I fell off, it was like it was melting off. Unfortunately, it was not sustainable. So I ended up gaining some of the weight. like we do when it goes, when it, when it like just melts off, right?
But it helps me down a path. And when I wrote the blog post, then I started getting people saying, I want you to coach me and will you meet with me and share with, you know, all those kind of things. And I didn’t feel like I had the knowledge or. Kind of felt like I had the knowledge, to be honest with you, but I didn’t feel like I had the credentials to charge.
Right. And so I decided to go get my health coaching certification with I I n and one of the best decisions of my life because in that year was a year long program. I learned so much. I learned about food as medicine. I learned about all the different types of diet plans. I learned that biggest thing I learned is that we are all different and there’s no one size fits all that we have to be in touch with our own bodies.
So anyway, I started. Coaching one-on-one. And I loved it. I loved helping the women. It reminded me of when I owned my peer bar business and the women I was with, and being able to make a difference in other women’s lives. And so I loved that. And then at the same time, I decided to do a group coaching program.
And. . And so this was a program that was already established by somebody and I could just become a certified coach. So I did that and I loved that as well, and I learned a lot. But as I kept coaching that program, it just didn’t align with me. I wasn’t doing all the things that they were talking about doing, like tracking your macros and.
Doing certain workouts on certain days and stuff like that, that just really wasn’t working for me. And but I did continue to coach the program and it seemed that the majority of the clients that were coming to me were my age, or, oh, maybe a little bit younger, but. , you know, forties, fifties ages, and some of ’em would lose the weight that they wanted to lose, and they would go off and do their own thing and then they would come back and do the program again with me because what we were teaching was not sustainable.
So when they went back to their life and their own thing, they. You know, they ended up gaining the weight back even though they had lost some of it slowly, most of ’em. But anytime you change anything up, you can lose some weight. But it’s that long-term weight loss that we all want, right? That freedom from not having to focus on it every single day.
And so, so anyway. . After a while I was just like, I gotta do something different. With a thought of coaching my own program and coming up with my own program, that was a big, big undertaking. But with some help, and I do have an amazing, amazing team. We came up with Bounce Wellness Method and. Yeah, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done because my goal was to teach other women the things that I have learned over the last really 17 years.
And that there is no one size fits all, and that it’s the small changes that we do, that we do consistently, and when we change that mindset. Into this all or nothing and get off that diet roller coaster and trying to be so perfect cuz nobody’s perfect, just working on just being a little bit better every single day.
And that can be with nutrition, movement, stress, just as a person. Learning more about yourself, you know, all of these things. And my journey continues. You know, I started off, I was telling you about as a child and accepting Jesus into my life, and my mother was a big impact on that. . I mean, that journey for me has been a long journey.
A long journey. I mean, I should know things. I should have made different decisions along the way, and I didn’t, sometimes I kept making had decisions over and over and over and over. And you’d like, Deanna, do you not get it yet? , and I haven’t arrived. I don’t know at. , and I’m sure I will continue at some point to make bad decisions, but I make better decisions every single day.
Every single day. I do make better decisions. I still make some bad decisions and I still overreact, and I still do things that I wish I wouldn’t do, but I am on that journey now that that makes me really proud of myself. and, and I am able to give myself the grace that I would give my friends and that I would give my children.
And even though what I’ve just told you is not real pretty , some of it’s really yuck. I’m proud of where I’ve come. I’m proud of the journey I’ve been on, and I’m proud of where I’m going. And my biggest goal is to help other women to see that they can have that same freedom.
That maybe to connect the dots with the perimenopause, maybe to see that, you know, it can be a long journey. , but that’s okay. It’s just the small things and we have to start somewhere. And I don’t want you, your friend, your sister, your daughter, your mother. I don’t want you to have to hit rock bottom. that’s why I feel like it’s so important for me to share this.
I want you. Know that you’re worth it and you can live that well unworthy life. Just like me, just like everybody here. So anyway, I, I know I’m kind of rambling at this point, but I just felt really led to share this and I do have some like I said, the balance wellness method, balance eating method.
And then we’ve created a new course coming up in March, which I’m super excited about, called Balance Movement Method. In fact, In two weeks, we’ll have another podcast and my friend and coach Lori, who’s helped develop this program, create this program, balance movement Method will be on here with me and we’ll be talking about movement and what kind of movement that we should be focused on at this stage of our life.
So I hope you’ve enjoyed this podcast. I love hearing from you, and I would love to hear. What you think of this podcast? I got very vulnerable. Very vulnerable. I didn’t share everything in my life, but I shared a lot. And I hope that this helps you or somebody else. So be sure and share it if it, if it speaks to you.
Thanks y’all.
