This may not be entirely your fault, because you've been given bad information for years. And that helps us release the guilt and shame. When I assess women for the sugar addiction, I'm able to say, this is not your fault. Your brain has been hijacked. And addiction is a brain disorder. - Did you grow up with this? Kids are to be seen and not heard. You do have a voice. And we want to hear it. If you have ever thought about sharing your story, speaking up, of course, it's terrifying. Speaking is the number one fear most people face, but it doesn't have to be public. You could begin sharing your story just for your family. You might want to turn it into a podcast or a book, or maybe not, but the important thing is to start speaking, to start sharing your story. If this seems like something you want to do, and you want to just check it out, see if it's for you, go to www.coachlory.com and book a session with me. It's free, no tricks are trying to rope you in. It's just a way for you to explore what's next in using your voice to share your message, your story. www.coachlory.com. - Has your life, your dreams been interrupted? Good news, it is possible to reinvent our lives. People are doing it every day, and some are brave enough to share the struggles, disappointments, and challenges. If you are looking for a new beginning, a do-over, or to rediscover your passion, maybe even find a new one, then grab a cup of coffee and let's talk. Interrupted, act two, reinventing your legacy with your host, Coach Lori. - My life has been so interrupted. - Christine Tramp is a weight loss practitioner, and I am so excited to talk to you because your big topic is sugar. - Yeah, welcome. - Thank you. - My show is called The Interrupted, and that's why you reached out to me. So let's start first with where you are and how you became a weight loss practitioner, and tell us all about that, and then we'll get to what got you there. - I have a tremendous passion for helping women step into their weight loss journey, and be set free from what I like to call the sugar shackles, Lori. The sugar shackles 'cause I personally was enslaved by the sugar shackles for a decade, but now I left a 32-year corporate career as a career controller, a countency, and a left corporate America to set out onto this weight loss coaching, weight loss being a weight loss practitioner now three years ago full-time now, and that is how my life has become completely interrupted. I was a numbers girl. I loved numbers, and now I'm writing, speaking, and coaching women, and yes, you could say my life has been dramatically interrupted at the age of 50, which is crazy. Yeah. (laughs) - What was your interruption? - My backstory is being probably, I'll take you back to a mountain side. This is where actually my interrupted moment I can identify the time in my life when I was 48 at the time. My husband and I went on a 25th wedding anniversary trip to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Now, I've never gotten my home body husband out of the state of Michigan, and so it was super exciting time for us. He planned a lot of hiking trails for us. Rocky Mountain National Park is beautiful. If you haven't been there, you must go. This one morning, we did a fairly easy trail around the Bear Lake area. It was not strenuous, just to walk around the lake. It was about a mile long. It was amazing, and he's like, "But I also want to walk up to Nymph Lake." And I was like, "Oh, okay, I think I can do that." So we went to the trail marker, and it was a half a mile up to Nymph Lake, and I was like, "Okay, I can do another half a mile." But I looked up in the trail. It was like straight up. It was not a flat trail, but I didn't want to disappoint my husband. So I was like, "Let's go." I got about halfway up that trail, Laurie, and I was gasping for air, and I could just not go another step further. And so in that moment, I had to sit down on a stump. I told my husband to go on without me. That was what I call my turning point moment, because as I sat on that stump, I was 100 pounds overweight, morbidly obese, and there was a physical reason why I couldn't climb up that mountain. And so I had that major turning point moment in my life, because I remember just sitting there. I had tears welding in my eyes, felt like a disappointment again, knew I had to get back control of my health, and I just remember crying out to the Lord, "Lord, I just want to feel better. I just want to feel better. I want to stop disappointing my husband. I want to get off the sidelines of life." But I just couldn't, because of 30 years of living in obesity, trying over and over again, doing all the things that I thought were going to help me. But in that moment, the Lord heard me, and he took a tiny mustard seed of faith that I had in my life, because I was raised in the church home. I knew who Jesus was. I had surrendered my life at a young age to him, but I was not walking it out at that time, Lori. I was just so involved in my own circumstances. Most of them self-inflicted at the time. But just saying, I just want to feel better, because at that point in my life, I felt like there was nothing else I could try to lose the weight. I had done it all. Nothing worked. And I felt like I was just meant to be overweight for my life. But that's where I was. That was the interrupted moment that I love to point back to, and say like, God was waiting patiently for me to get to that point. I'm just so grateful. It took a moment of gasping for air, feeling sorry for myself. And at the same time, just remembering who the Lord was and what his promises were for me. Maybe I needed to start paying attention to what he wanted me to do for my health. And so I came home from that trip, set up a doctor's appointment, which I had been putting off for years because I needed a sleep study. I had obstructive sleep apnea. So that was my very first medical intervention, was getting a sleep apnea machine so that I could sleep better. And that set me on the path to healing. - I hear that so often women who have say, "I have tried everything." And I believe them. A lot of times when women say that, people have a judgment against them. Well, or they'll say, if you just do this, and it's not helpful. So what did you discover and how did you lose all that weight? - What I discovered is all that old dietary dogma had dogged me for years was not helpful. Calories in, calories out didn't help me, eat less, move more, didn't help me. I would end up being angry and angry and eating just to satisfy that hanger. Also, the one thing that really tripped me out, Lori, the most when I look back is the everything in moderation. So for someone like me that has carried obesity for any length of time, I started out gaining weight when I was in college. Instead of the freshman 15, I came home with the freshman 40. And from that time period, what was happening in my body was a lot of metabolic dysfunction. My metabolic health was terrible. It was because even when I followed the standard American dietary advice, that said 60 to 65% of your plates should be carbohydrates like whole grains, whole wheat bread, whole wheat pasta. I could follow all of that to a tea and just be super frustrated with my weight loss, lack of weight loss. I mean, I could lose a little bit, but then I would regain and what happened? Again, the everything in moderation always mess me up because I haven't had a piece of chocolate cake in a month and it's my daughter's birthday. I'm gonna have a piece of cake and what I learned was as someone who is metabolically unhealthy, I also had a sugar addiction, sugar and food addiction. That would trigger my cravings which would make me crazy. I would fall off the wagon hard until I could try to call myself back up and again, repeat the same thing, eat less, move more, everything in moderation. And it was just a continual cycle. And I have learned so much more about my food behaviors in this journey that I can't help but share it. I learned about metabolic health. I learned that weight loss is about your hormones, your hormonal health. I learned I have fatty liver disease because my liver was full of fat from the diet, high in carbohydrates and high in sugar. When I got the diagnosis of fatty liver disease, that really sent me down a rabbit trail of understanding that my insulin hormone was out of whack. Your insulin hormone is your fat storing hormone. My blood sugar was way out of whack. Just the two of them were compiling, compounding, leading to the weight gain, leading to the difficulty in dieting when you try to eat everything in moderation. And I learned I really needed to have my come to Jesus moment about sugar. And I realized that I needed to ditch and eliminate sugar from my diet. Sugar in the forms of the sweet stuff, the starchy stuff, the grains, the flowers, all of that. That's what I learned. It set me on this path of healing. - I had a similar experience. It was once my kids graduated because I was a single mom, I'm not gonna lie, I didn't feed them very healthy. That costs a lot of money. I did a lot of convenient foods. But once they were graduated and I was on my own, I didn't have to eat three meals a day. I knew I had Candida. - Yeah. - It wasn't something a regular doctor would, you know, say you have this, but I knew I had it. I was bound to determine to get rid of it. And I had tried a lot of natural things, but I couldn't beat it. And part of it was 'cause I was addicted to sugar, but I didn't know it. So I went on this little program and it wasn't necessarily weight loss. It was to help me change my eating habits. And because I didn't have to feed children, it was just me. I was able to cut out sugar, flour and dairy. So quickly I lost weight. So quickly I shed the pounds. And that's when I realized in a lot of symptoms that I had had, like I had the sniffles all the time and I just thought I had allergies. Once I had got that all out of my system, I didn't take a suit of that again. And I was probably 30 to 40 pounds overweight. So it wasn't like real obvious, but I shed the weight. And then once we show, you know, I know for me, when I shed that weight, I felt healthier, I moved better, I had more energy. That's why when I saw your story, I was so excited because I do think this is something that is crippling women. - Yes, absolutely. And we don't realize that everything in moderation, for example, is leading us down a path of unhealthy behaviors. And you healed your gut with what you did by, you starved your gut of the sugar and the flowers and the grains and healed your body, not even expecting the weight loss. But it's a beautiful thing when we choose, what I like to call it God's good smorgasbord. When we choose the whole and healthy foods from God's smorgasbord, yes, I don't eat flowers, I don't eat grains. And that's okay because there's so many other things that I can eat that keeps my gut healthy, that keeps me at a healthy weight, that reverse my fatty liver disease, that helped me lose 100 pounds and I'm no longer morbidly obese. I no longer have obstructive sleep apnea, I don't have prediabetes any longer. And I've just fallen into this really healthy rhythm of also through rewiring my brain. And my brain no longer demanding the sugar fix, the sugar is a quick reward, it's a dopamine hit, but I wanna give hope that it can be rewired. I'm sure you experienced that too. Like when you first begin the elimination of sugar, you realize, oh, I do have these cravings going on, I've got these mad cravings going on, but the more you get away from the sugars and the flowers and the grains, that noise in your brain begins to quiet down, you are rewiring your brain. Having a quiet brain when you're a sugar addict is the most beautiful way to live. And that does help you nourish your body well. - I knew I had Candida, but I didn't think I was addicted to sugar. In fact, I told myself the story, I don't eat that much sugar. I know that like carbs turned to sugar, so I knew that. But when I got off of it and the cravings and working through that and whatever it was on, I don't know what I was on, but it cut the sugar cravings or I probably couldn't have done it. But what I recognized, I did not realize I was probably eating a candy bar or something sugary every day. So I thought, oh, well, it's only one. So I felt like I wasn't, but when I got off of it, the cravings stopped. And one time, I remember after I'd been off of all of this for a long time, I went to a celebration of life and they had those jelly bellies on every table. And I was back in my hometown visiting with all these people. Well, we'd visit around the table and I was eating these jelly bellies. But the next morning when I woke up, I literally had just, it was like a hangover. - Yeah. - It was such a sugar headache. And I think that's when I finally recognized this is what sugar does. - Yeah, and I say like, I love to live and I love to coach my clients to live sugar sober. It's like, yeah, it's amazing because we can crush the cravings. That's where I always start with the women that I serve is we need to crush these cravings. Ladies, you can do it. I wanna give you help, it's possible. If I can crush my sugar cravings and my carb cravings, and I wasn't much of a sweet person either, my sugar of choice would have been like potato chips. That's the carb that I really loved. I would always find myself though, in this vicious cycle of salty and sweet and salty and sweet. But I did, we can post those cravings. So that's like really an important first place to start is, I love to say, I love to tell women like, let's quit the sugar, crush those cravings, and then claim that weight loss victory that you want. Like, because the yo-yo dieting, it can be stopped. It can be stopped, yeah. - That is really good news. And when I think about people who have are so discouraged and they've tried everything, I feel like this gives us hope. So first of all, how does someone get a hold of you if they wanna work with you? - I have a website with my name, ChristineTrimp.com. It's t-r-i-m-p-e.com. But I also have a free guide where I begin the process of crushing the cravings, and the guide is called Crush Your Cravings Guide. You can grab that at www.crushcravingsguide.com. That's the best first way to connect with me with a little free gift that I have for you. And the guide, it's a holistic health guide, 'cause it's really, Laurie, it's truly been a journey of physical healing, emotional healing, spiritual healing for me, because in hindsight, I also learned that I had been craving all of the wrong things for so many years. I was filling the holes in my soul with food. Instead of nourishing my body well, how as a Christ follower, I neglected that for so many years. I didn't realize that God's word was so full of, this is the proper way to care for your body, to care for your emotional health, your physical health, your spiritual health. So that has all been a part of the journey too. So I do have a holistic approach to this health around this journey. I just don't show up until women eat this, don't eat that. It is so much more involved in that, especially when you have a carb or sugar or food addiction involved at any level. - If somebody does work with you, they start with a guide, then they get ahold of you. I don't wanna give away your whole thing, but kinda walk us through what you do, how you help and support. - Yeah, when they get my free guide, they get an invitation to my free Facebook group as well too. It's a private Facebook group. It's for Christian women, they're welcome. Just to get to know me, I host a free master class monthly that they can understand my coaching philosophy. And I have a method. It's called the sugar freed me method. (laughs) So it's my own thing that I founded and I'm just so excited about living a sugar freed lifestyle. The freedom, of course, includes more than weight loss. It's the emotional freedom, the spiritual freedom and stepping into your God given purpose in life. So they can get to know me that way. I do have a full coaching program that's right now it's a three month long program, but beginning in 2025, I believe it's gonna be moved into a six month program 'cause I need more time with these women. Also, I have a book coming out in January, January 21st, 2025. It's called sugar freed. Stop losing the weight loss battle, start gaining the victory. Come and connect with me in my free Facebook group or on my email list and keep you up to date on that. So I love spreading the good news of this sugar freed lifestyle. I honestly can't believe it. When the book comes out, I'll have been at a healthy weight for seven years. So ladies, it is possible to maintain a healthy lifestyle and stop that roller coaster dieting. - And that's such a good point too, because right now we're hearing a lot about some of these shots. I don't wanna say a name, Brad, and what I hear is when you stop, then you gain the weight back because you're not really changing your lifestyle or your mindset. And I love that you talk about changing our brain because really, I love the holistic approach because it is mind, body and spirit. And so what I noticed when I lost weight, I would be like walking into a building and somebody would hold the door for me. When I was overweight, I didn't experience that and all of a sudden I was like, what is happening? Now I'm not saying that I like that because it feels like prejudice, but I did notice I was treated better, but also I felt better. So maybe I was holding my head higher. Maybe I was smiling instead of struggling up the sidewalk. - Right, maybe you, like me, you weren't walking around feeling like this heavy weight of guilt and shame on you. Like I carried disgrace for 30 years, which is, it's a heavy thing to carry, but another thing that I love to share is that when I first discovered the ketogenic and intermittent fasting way of life, which is how I live my lifestyle right now, is I was googling, I'm super curious, like why do I have fatty liver disease? Let's go back to the hormones. And I discovered a life changing video series on the world's largest low carb website, dietdoctor.com. Five part video series, five minute videos by Dr. Jason Fung who has been like, these two doctors have changed my life from the free information they put out there. And he looked in the camera. Dr. Fung looked in the camera and talking about obesity, he said, this is not your fault. I got tears in my eyes. After 30 years of feeling like this is my fault, I could not believe a doctor was telling me this 'cause every time I went to the doctor, I was, I felt ashamed. Like, you need to lose weight. I'm like, tell me something I don't know. (laughs) And doctor, I've been trying. I honestly have been trying. I'm a very good role follower. I can follow a program for a year, for six months, whatever. But he said, this is not your fault. And that really changed my life. And that's what I love to pass along to the women that I coach is, I say it a little bit differently. I'm like, this may not be entirely your fault because you've been given bad information for years. But now, and that helps us release the guilt and shame. And the other thing, when I assess women for the sugar addiction, I'm able to say, this is not your fault, your brain has been hijacked. An addiction is a brain disorder. So let's work on, let's find the way of eating that's gonna help us heal. Even though this is not entirely your fault, it's now our responsibility to do something about it. That's why I love to link arms with them and show them the way. I just had a client that just celebrated her 100 pound weight loss. Boy, we celebrated big. I gave her this idea. But she took two 50 pound bags of potatoes and she tried to carry that and she couldn't. And that's what we used. I'm in the 100 pound weight loss club too. That's what we used to carry. It's crazy. So these are the things that we're celebrating. - And I love it that you had dressed shame because I remember when my kids were little, I had this friend and she was, I guess you would say, "Oh, bees, beautiful, lovely woman." I never looked at her like that, but she was a hairdresser. And she said the hardest thing was all of her clients felt they had the right to tell her how to lose weight or tell her that she was overweight. - It hurt my heart to see her because she was the most beautiful person. You bringing up that shame. People don't know maybe the word for it, but that's what they're struggling with. Embarrassment, shame. - Right. I wrote a lot about this in my book. I always felt like I didn't fit in. I physically did not fit in roller coaster seats. I almost didn't fit in airplane seats, but emotionally I didn't fit in anywhere. Like I would walk into a room at a woman's event, a church event and I would feel like there is no place for me here. And I just didn't feel like I fit in. But thank God, thank the Lord that very early in this journey, I started waking up refreshed 'cause I got that CPAP machine. Started picking up my Bible first thing every day and I haven't put it down since. And one of the first books I read studied was Ephesians and Paul writes in chapter two about how we were craving all the things of the flesh. That was me. I was like, oh my goodness, he's talking about me. But now moving into that chapter more, it's all about being made alive in Christ and how we have a seat believers. We have a seat at the table in the heavenly realms. And I fit and all of the women that I coach that have been carrying guilt and shame and lay it down, we all fit, we all have a seat at the table. We always have, if we have surrendered our lives to Jesus, we always had a seat there. It's just been hard to see because of the guilt and the shame that we carried. - That's so beautiful. You mentioned that you had listened to Wendy Gunn's episode and what I loved about her story was people were giving a really good advice, like Apple cider vinegar, but what she had didn't connect with that. - Yes. - You know, we have to find what it is about us and how it works with us. Following a program is great, but following someone that's been there, done that, and it's eliminating the things like for me, if I go have an ice cream, guess what, I'm stuffy. Like all those things, now I recognize what the effect on me was, and so it's a lot easier to say, "Oh, it's not worth it." If we don't even know that sugar's an issue, this is a way for us to learn and go, "Oh, I didn't know," or "I didn't know." Flower turns into sugar. - Yeah, exactly. I remember a conversation I had once with a nurse practitioner in the physician organization that I worked at. She's like, "What are you doing?" When she noticed my weight loss, I said, "Well, I quit sugar." And she said, "Oh, I don't have a problem with sugar. I have a problem with potato chips." And I was like, "I'm really sorry to tell you this, but potato chips break down into sugar as soon as they hit your digestive system." And she's like, "What?" Even medical people, they're not taught to think of it in that way. She may have known that potato chips are carbohydrate, but that's a sugar. Sugar is super inflammatory to your body, and that's why you get the stuffiness, that's why people get joint pain. I love to challenge people to say, "Tell me what's the nutritional value in sugar." I just like to give little food for thought every once in a while. - I remember growing up with the food pyramid, and it's upside down. And it's what people believe in what they think. And I remember I didn't eat that way, and when I got married, the first thing I meal I made for my husband after we got married was stir fry, and he's like, "What is happening? Where's the meat?" And then I started eating his way. - Yeah. - Instead of continuing my way. - And all that dietary dogma that I believe for so many years did not serve me at all. So these are the hurdles that I help to help women get over, because like, no, how is everything in moderation helped you if you're a full-blown sugar addict? What happens when you eat that piece of chocolate cake? You're binging on sugar for the next three months and coming back and asking for help. So much personal awareness. We all have to find our way. We're all unique. I have some coaching clients that should completely abstain from sugar. Anything sweet because of the addiction. I have some clients that will don't include some fruit in their way of eating. I can help wherever they're at, but it's just amazing to have the insight and the training into the addictive behaviors too. That is really super helpful, not only for my own personal story, which is most hindsight now, like, "Oh yeah, that happened to me, that's me, that's me, that's me, but now I get to help women discover so much more about themselves too, and their food and eating habits and behaviors." And I love it that you call it what it is. I'm actually a recovery coach. I teach people to become recovery coaches from drugs and alcohol. Here's what happens. They get off drugs and alcohol and they get in these homes and they're all drinking monster drinks. They're all eating all the pasta and the cheap food 'cause they can't afford it or they're going to the community feeds. What are these people? They want to feed a lot of people so they give them spaghetti, they give them pasta. And so there's really not training in that way. What I experienced was several of my clients, they got to a certain weight and they relapsed because they said, "I can't stand being overweight." - They just traded one addiction for another. - Okay, this has been so amazing, Christine. And I want to talk to you again when your book comes out. - Yeah, awesome, yeah. - Before we go, tell us again how we can get first your free guide and then get ahold of you. You can grab the guide at www.crushcravingsguide.com and then reach me on my website at christinetrip.com. Yes, connect with me there, get on my email list and I send out daily emails to encourage. I love sharing what I've learned in my quiet Bible study time, I love giving food, tips, quick hacks for it to help you take that first or next best step for your health. - Christine, what is it that you really want us to? - Oh, it's possible. Like you can interrupt your poor health journey. I never would have believed it beyond my wildest dreams after living in obesity for 30 years. I had given up hope, but just learning something different something new, I encourage you to take a deep dive on this with me. First of all, let's set you up with success by learning how to crush your cravings. It's a great place to start. - Thank you so much. - You're welcome, thank you for having me, Lori. If you love this podcast, here's a big ask. Will you share with your friends and family, subscribe, give us a review, and a five-star rating so that others looking to reinvent their lives will be able to get the help they're looking for. Thank you in advance.
