Her Next Chapters

108. A Whole-Life Approach to Health With Guest Missi Bantner

• Christina Kohl

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In this episode of Her Next Chapters, Christina sits down with Missi Bantner, an integrative neuro rehab, fitness, yoga, and nutrition coach and founder of Whole Life Health.

With over 24 years in the wellness field, Missi shares her deeply personal career journey, including early burnout, recovery from an eating disorder, multiple professional pivots, and how her own healing led her to a truly holistic approach to health. Her work integrates neuroscience, nutrition therapy, movement, mindfulness, and behavior change to help clients heal their relationship with their body, brain, and beliefs.

This conversation explores why sustainable health and habit change is not about willpower, punishment, or January 1st resolutions, but about understanding readiness, nervous system capacity, and aligning change with the natural rhythms of the seasons. Missi introduces practical frameworks such as the stages of behavior change, habit loops (cue, routine, reward), and how stress and overwhelm can block progress even when motivation is high.

Christina and Missi also discuss:

  • Why winter is a powerful season for reflection, planning, and contemplation rather than forced action
  • How neuroscience explains why change feels hard and how to work with your nervous system instead of against it
  • The role of self-awareness in weight loss, nutrition, and long-term health
  • Why your body is not a “trash can” and how childhood food beliefs still show up in adulthood
  • How pain, inflammation, and discomfort can become powerful catalysts for change
  • The importance of meeting yourself where you are and choosing entry points that feel supportive, not overwhelming

This episode is especially relevant for women navigating midlife transitions, career shifts, or a desire to feel better in their bodies without extremes or quick fixes. Missi’s approach offers a compassionate, science-backed path to whole-life health that honors both the body and the brain.


Connect with Missi:
livewholelifehealth.com
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Christina Kohl:

Hi, and welcome to Her Next Chapters podcast. I'm your host, Christina Kohl. I'm a mom of three and soon to be an empty nester. I'm also a certified HR Pro who restarted my career after being a stay-home mom for over a decade. I created this podcast to connect with moms who have an empty nest on the horizon and are wanted to redefine their identity outside of motherhood, which might include adopt search. On this show, we'll have raw conversations about our ever changing roles with moms. We'll hear from women who restarted their careers and share tips for adopters after a career break. So if that's you, you're in the right place, friend. Let's get started. Hi everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of Her Next Chapters.

Christina Kohl:

I am really excited to share that we have a special guest with us today. Missy Bantner is joining us, and Missy is an integrative neuro rehab fitness, yoga, and nutrition coach at Whole Life Health. And in her one-on-one sessions, group programs, retreats, and workshops, Missy guides clients to heal their relationships with themselves, their brain, their body, and beliefs through an array of practices backed by science and steeped in wisdom. Over the past 24 years in the wellness field, she has honed her knowledge, skills, and understanding of how to lovingly and joyfully guide clients to discover for themselves the simple everyday essentials that create the wellness, fitness, and wholeness they desire to cultivate. Knowing that how we optimize our health is a bio-individual and multidimensional endeavor. She guides clients to uncover their own inner truths, values, and desires that create the confidence, agency, and capacity to achieve their desired results. Missy, welcome to Her Next Chapters. Thank you, Christina. It's kind of fun to hear that read back to you. It's like, oh, that's yeah, all the things that you do. And and you and I have known each other since probably, well, I started at the Health Foundation back in 2016, and you were working there. I know it was almost 10 years ago. You were working there as a fitness instructor on site. And I kept hearing about, oh my gosh, everyone loves Missy, and Missy's so great, you gotta go to her classes. And it took me a while because I was part-time, but it took me a while. But then I'm like, oh, once I met you, I'm like, oh now I get it. So yeah, I can't believe it's been almost 10 years since we've been acquainted.

Missi Bantner:

And I know I can't either. The time has gone really fast, and those are such sweet memories, you know, working there with everyone and the group classes. And yeah, you were a wonderful advocate for keeping the programming going for a while.

Christina Kohl:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

It was through COVID.

Christina Kohl:

Yeah, even yeah, during then, we I wasn't planning on talking about all that, but we we found a way to do it online, just like we're doing right now. And exactly. Um, we kept the classes going and kept the community aspect of it too, and mindfulness, and we've done nutrition stuff together. We've done the neural work together, we've done red lives and red rocks with you. Yeah, I've done all kinds of things. So I'm so excited. Yes. So I'm really excited to have you on the show and to share your expertise and something something you and I didn't talk about in advance. I love talking about people's career paths, like how you've been doing this for 24 years. Like, you know, how did you get into doing this work? And were there any pivots along the way? Of course, there have been. So I'd love to hear about that piece of it. And then we'll get into um the health and wellness aspect to share with my listeners. I think you've I know you've got a great message to share.

Missi Bantner:

Sure. Um, I'll keep it relatively brief because there's a lot in those 24 years, but um, it is an interesting backstory to figure out how did I get where I am. And a lot of uh why I do what I do now comes from my own need to figure out how to get myself out of a pickle, um, get myself out of pain and want to understand my own system. So I started um out as a personal trainer. I went to school at CSU um for health and exercise science and started out as a personal trainer and I loved it. I loved working with clients, I loved fitness. I just the whole aspect of it really lit me up until it didn't. I during that process fell deeply into the um eating disorder culture and over-exercised, under eight, and then at some point started playing with bulimia, and then that turned into a full-blown eating disorder. So, very quickly, about four and a half years in, I was physically, mentally, emotionally spent. I knew that I couldn't stay in this world, and at that point, I believed I couldn't stay in the world, that world, and be healthy. So I was going to pivot um into teaching. And at that same time, um, a wealthy couple that I worked for uh hired me out to be their private personal trainer and nutritionist. And in wholehearted honestly, honesty with them, I said, I can definitely be your personal trainer. I don't know what I'm doing nutritionally because I'm not even taking care of myself. So that led me to um get help, A, and B, um go back to school and I got my master's in nutrition therapy. Um, and that process really, obviously, it was so that I could be a good steward in my work for my clients, but also it really was so that I could learn how to heal myself, right? Understand my relationship with food and work through some of those um those demons that I had around self-worth and self-image. Um, so you know, fast forward, I worked with that family for about eight years. And in the process, I got certified in yoga as well, which is also a great part of my healing journey, and then just another thing I could offer. And I started to build whole life health. Um, I learned through that process of um education and self-growth that it was so much more than what's on my plate. It was really what was going on up here in my mind, you know, the the thoughts I was thinking, the beliefs I was believing, and how that was actually playing out in my words and my actions. And um, so that led me to want to uh work with people on a more holistic level. So I created whole life health and started seeing clients on the side. Um when that relationship dissolved, I went back to personal training for a little while and um then was hired by a an online startup to be their fitness and nutrition guru. Um I don't like the word guru. I'm like, I'm forever a student, so I know this much about everything. But um, it was a really interesting opportunity because it um it opened me up to the online world, which I knew nothing about. This was in 205, 2015, beginning of 2015. And I was such an analog person. I I wrote everything. I mean, I to this day I still write everything down, but um it opened me up to the digital world, the digital fitness space. It it helped me develop and hone my writing skills. You know, it's I can see that there was like a little seed planted back then for what I'm sort of working on now. And um, like most startups, they God bless them, ran out of money. So I had to yet again pivot. Um, all along my my personal business, whole life health, was going on. So during that time, I was working at the Colorado Health Foundation and I still had some private clients here and there. And after that company kind of dissolved, I went full tilt into Whole Life Health and have been kind of slowly building that um business, that relationship with my clients over the last um, gosh, it's almost been eight years. So at that same point, I was introduced to um an education company called Z Health. And that's where I started to get my um my neuro background. So they are an education company that works on um teaching practitioners how to apply neurology, which means taking the understanding of how the brain operates and the nervous system and apply it in a practical way to reduce pain, improve movement patterns, um, help with cognition, help with behavior change. And that has been woven into every facet of what I do nutrition, fitness, rehab, um, coaching, all kinds of things. So I hope that was succinct. I don't know if it wasn't leading me to where I am today, which is like this multidimensional coach that offers a lot of tools for helping people heal their relationship with themselves.

Christina Kohl:

Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that dropping in that background. Um, and whole life health is such the perfect name, especially as you describe all the different facets, the the neuro stuff, the nutrition, of course, the physical, the body, mindset, all of that coming together. Um, makes total complete sense. I just I love the name and I love all the different work that you do. We were talking before we started recording about kind of the the seasonality and you know, it being winter time. And, you know, we tend to hibernate during this time of year, and we may not be focused on our fitness goals if we're wearing heavy sweaters and and it's that we've got less daylight, so for maybe old patterns of being outside, it's you know, we're kind of closed off. Um someone, one of my friends, she says, she started saying this a couple months ago. She goes, Oh, the calories don't matter anymore. Those calories don't count, but not until next year, you know. And I'm like, of course they count. But that was just kind of her way of like, it doesn't matter. We can gain 20 pounds right now, and it doesn't matter. Um so if you would kind of like give us your insight and philosophy, this will this will be airing in January for those that are listening, and kind of that time of year where we like to set new goals, and particularly that's when the gems are crowded. Like, if I'm gonna that's when I try to avoid the gems, quite honestly, because it's like a four to six weeks when it's really crowded, and then you know, come February, all the new news resolutions are done and ends back to normal. So what I would love to hear your insight around the season um and how to how to focus on our whole health.

Missi Bantner:

Yeah. Well, first I want to start by saying there's no wrong way to go about your health and your fitness. It's it's very personal. It's you know, in my bio, you said you talked about it being bioindividual, and it is. Every person has a readiness um that happens at a different stage of life and a different season for them. But to hearken back to what you said about the gal who says calories don't count now, I almost hear um an echo of you know our ancestors who instinctively knew to store up for the winter and right, because things were gonna be more scarce and uh to help get the system through the cold and through those winter months. So it's kind of an interesting take on a deep, deep intuition that is maybe kind of, I don't know, you know, warped a little. Um we're no longer living in scarce times. We have food aplenty. Um, but if we listen more deeply to our systems, the things we say, the urges that we have, you know, what we're being drawn to in the winter time, it's often slower, more stillness, more downtime, more rest. Um and that matches everything that's happening in nature, especially in the northern hemisphere, right? For us right now. The all of nature is has slowed down, shed their leaves, the grasses are turning brown, right? Things are going dormant. They're still alive, but they're taking a much needed rest so that when spring comes around and that signal comes back and there's more sunshine, they have the reserves to once again come back to life. I think it's a beautiful um way to look at how we can integrate that into our lives as well. I think we've been conditioned to see January 1st as the start of something new. And by the calendar that some guy created ages ago, it is. It's the start of something new. Uh, but there are a lot of different calendars over the ages. And so if you are curious about this topic, you can just start to listen to your own energy um around it. I'll press pause and let you jump in.

Christina Kohl:

No, I love that. I mean, I always talk about resolutions being it doesn't have to be January 1st. It could be July 12th. That's right. I'm setting a goal for myself. Um, and January just it kind of feels arbitrary, but it's also, well, it is a marker in time. And it is typically because of the holidays, and we, you know, here in our culture, we have that time off, you know, away from work where we can kind of hit pause. And that's an opportunity, of course, to like reset and say, what do we want? But I do love what you're saying about being more in rhythm with the seasons. And here, like I I don't I hate the daylight savings time standard, whatever it's called, the time we're in now, when it's dark at five o'clock. And in the summer, I it's we we have daylight till eight o'clock. And so I can eat dinner and clean up dinner and go for my nightly walk. And now it's I live where there's wild animals. So I don't like walking in the dark um because we've got, I mean, the bears are hibernating now, but there's been bear scat in my backyard. Like that's where I live. And we're in the suburbs, but still, and there's coyotes, I hear them howling at night sometimes. I'm not going for a walk in the dark. So it's it's just a different seasonality that I hadn't really thought of it connected to my health that way. The way that you're talking of like the re the its time of rest, and that's that's appropriate. Yeah.

Missi Bantner:

And it may not be, you know, literally you stop working out, but it could be um a much needed shift in what you do and how you move your body. So it might be a great time to shift into yoga or tai chi or what you know, some of those more energy forward practices that are um that require some introspection and they require a lot of mindfulness and things like that. It might be a really great time just to shift seasonally how you move your body so that it matches the daylight and the energy that you have. And then, as you know, the cool thing about the winter solstice, not only is it the longest, darkest night, but it also marks the return of the light. Yeah. And so it's it's a celebration, right? That we start to work toward that spring equinox when when things are starting to get brighter and things are starting to come alive. And this winter time, you know, it can be a great time of, like you said, introspection, reflection, and even planning for what's to come. There's, you know, in the um, there's a really great model. It's called the trans-theoretical model of change, and it helps describe how humans um change their habits. And the very first stage is called pre-contemplation, and it means I'm not even thinking about changing. Right. This is the place where we don't have any self-awareness, we don't think we need to change, everything's hunky-dory. But the very next stage, contemplation, is where we're actually thinking about change. We recognize there's something that needs to shift in us. And between those two stages, something happened. Right. Some awareness was peaked in you that made you start to think I might want to make a change. And it's a really important stage. If you listen to your own language, or if you're a journaler, or if you listen to your friends talk, they're not actually talking about changing, they're thinking about it. And this can be a really great place to marinate in winter. Right? What are the things you're thinking about, you're dreaming about, you're visioning? You want to call in, but you're not yet ready to take action. And so you can kind of start that process. That thinking about changing is a really important primer for the brain and the nervous system. And it leads us to the next stage, which is planning. And most people skip over planning and they just dive right in. But planning is really important, right? So if you're whatever you're listening to this, if it's, you know, January or February, um, this is a great place to start planning. And then in springtime, it's a nice time to actually take action. And the summertime is a great time to build on the action. If we match the rhythm of the seasons, you know, the four seasons, if you're lucky enough to have four seasons, um, you you can feel the energy difference, right? The heat of summer is a great driver for busy activity and you know, it matches the summer flurry. Uh, and then things start to calm down again in the fall, and we start to let go of things and wind things down and button things up. So it's a beautiful way of um walking ourselves through growth and change over the seasons of our life, too.

Christina Kohl:

Yeah, because when you said seasons, I was even thinking of spring being your youth, you know, the babies up through say age 20, summer being 20 to 40, fall, and I these numbers might be off, but you know, the next 20 years would be the fall. You've, you know, and then the winter season where things really slow down and um so it's seasonally throughout our lives as well as each year. You mentioned the planning. So I'm I'm so I'm such an action, like I want a checklist. Like, what should I do? What would be how do you guide your client clients in that planning piece? Or what what would you recommend? So someone, if they're listening to this and are inspired, like, yeah, I I I am contemplating, but I'm not sure how to get from where I am now to where I want to go. What does that planning stage look like? Or whether it's examples or instructions? Yeah.

Missi Bantner:

Well, it could be different for everybody. Um I wonder if we should pick an example and kind of walk through if that would be easier.

Christina Kohl:

So let's say someone's goal is to lose 20 pounds.

Missi Bantner:

Okay. So yeah, okay. So the first thing we would do is is talk about realistic expectations for that 20-pound loss, right? We would create a vision. So let's say, you know, we're looking at the next six months to 12 months, right? Start with a long view of who you want to be and how you want to be showing up six months and 12 months from now. And then we can backtrack into the baby steps that are gonna need to take place in order to become that person. You don't lose 20 pounds overnight unless you, you know, cut off a limb. Um, but that's not sustainable. So um first is really like setting the realistic tone for a life change. Right? A lot of people can lose 20 pounds in a couple of months, but they didn't do it in a way that was sustainable. So they end up yo-yoing and and really feeling discouraged throughout the course of a year. Um, so someone is ready to lose weight and keep it off, right, to maintain it. We want to take the long view. And then we want to look at um what is their actual level of readiness, right? Those are those stages of change. Are they are they more than thinking about changing? Are they actually thinking about the things they could do, should do, would do, right? Are are they at that place where um they start to have um like arousal in their system, right? They're their their system is actually kicking out neurochemicals to push them into action. Uh, that's a really good sign as well. They're maybe talking about um where they're gonna go work out, what kind of workout they're wanting to do, how often, what time of day they're starting to get more specific about the actual task, which means their vision is getting clearer. So those are the signs that I would look for that okay, you're actually ready to play. plan and now we need to um we need to make it all aligned with how your nervous system prefers to change okay so I'm gonna take a step back and just describe the brain for a second yeah it has number one job which is survival and uh efficiency is built into our survival which means change is hard because change is expensive okay it requires a lot of our nervous system to create new connections to undo old ones to create new neural pathways to you know take it from something that we're consciously thinking about doing and turning it into a habit and things like that so the first thing I would actually look at with a person is is your nervous system ready to change? Do you have space and capacity? Have you created space and capacity for this new change that's going to require energy if your system and your life is already too full and too overwhelmed adding something in might actually end up looking or feeling like self-sabotage. And you might say why can't I change? Why can't I stick with this? Well there's nothing wrong with you it's your nervous system. It's telling you my bucket's full I don't have room for more so sometimes with a lot of clients the first thing we need to do is actually reduce their sense of overwhelm and threat maybe make their nervous system feel safer so that they then can take that next step forward. Sounds like therapy nutrition therapy is one of my hats yeah it is and it it doesn't have to be um we don't have to go to the place of getting diagnostic or anything like that. It's actually just helping you build self-awareness and curiosity around what your experiences of life so that you have clarity about why you are or are not doing the things you say you want to do. That's powerful and and stuff that's hard to figure out by yourself. Can be yes it can be it can be really helpful to have a coach being a loving mirror helping you see yourself educating you about your brain and nervous system about how to develop healthy habits. That's something we can talk about too I think would be really beneficial is what a habit is how to you know how to create a habit.

Christina Kohl:

But yeah coaching is a really effective way of helping us move through our sticking points and so when your coaching practice um I know you've you've you've got yoga you've got the neuro work that we that I've done with you that we haven't really explored here on the on on the recording yet um there's the physical aspect the nutrition counseling so how how do you bring those all together like is it yeah that's a lot to bring in to because and if someone is just wanting I'm losing I want to lose 20 pounds okay help me do that.

Missi Bantner:

Where do you where do you begin? I begin with wherever they're ready. So we talked about readiness right wherever they naturally have a pull or like a it's like a magnet they're drawn to nutrition they're drawn to movement they're drawn to stress reduction they're drawn to meditation wherever they naturally want to go that's where we go first because it's probably going to be the biggest driver almost like a domino effect for everything else to fall in place when the time is right. Right. And that's I mean the biggest shift like if you can hear it in my voice the biggest shift that I'm talking about is moving into a relationship with losing weight with the little behaviors, the thoughts who, what type of person do you need to become to be someone who has a system that can shed weight and keep it off right so it's um it's a different way of going about things. It's not a quick fix. There's no force or coercion um there's no punishment involved it's you know in fact punishment is actually one of the worst ways to change it really has a negative feedback loop develop in our systems. We change much better uh if we can tap into our reward system and if we can enjoy the process. So say someone wants to start with nutrition um we'll meet, we'll talk, I'll listen, I'll reflect most often the place that my clients need to begin and they're open and willing to begin is with developing self-awareness. So I'll give them a little tool to help them um start paying attention to what they're feeling around hunger and satisfaction and fullness. So we'll use a little scale goes from one to 10 and it has gradations of hunger, gradations of fullness and then right in the middle is satisfaction. And they work on um checking in with themselves before and after they eat, when they go to sleep and when they wake up and anytime they think about food to start to understand am I actually physically hungry? And when I'm done eating am I actually physically satisfied or am I too full or am I letting myself get too hungry throughout the day? And this gives them the the kind of map like self-awareness that they need to then figure out okay I'm chronically under eating how do I take the next step to resolve this and are there any emotional blocks getting in the way or I'm chronically overeating what steps am I ready to take to you know take a few less bites or whatever it may be and are there any emotional blocks getting in the way and usually there are quite a lot. So the next step we would do is start to map their emotional landscape and by helping them develop self-knowledge and self-understanding they guide themselves to adjust what, how, why, when they're eating and they end up losing weight even though it wasn't like it actually ended up not being our primary goal our primary goal was get to know yourself and what you're doing and how does that feel and if it doesn't feel great what else could you do? Like what shifts could you make um when I work with my clients we're both experts but they really are the expert of themselves. And so I lean on that right I I help draw out that capacity that's already in them just by giving them some tools to help them develop it.

Christina Kohl:

Yeah. One of the things that has stood out in my mind for years now because it's been years since I went to one of your workshops around nutrition and it's you probably know what I'm gonna say but it's that your body is not a trash can. Oh yeah because there's so many times it's like even okay I was out to dinner the other night and I'm like this is really good food but I'm feeling comfortably full but this is really good food. And but it was a small amount that I didn't want to throw it away and I didn't it was like too small to bring home and I'm telling myself your body is not a trash can. You don't need to finish it. So what I did do though is I picked out the it was it was a Mexican restaurant and it had some steak in it. So I picked out the steak and I ate the rest of the steak so I got the protein and then was able to let the rest of it be taken away. But that has stuck with me for years your body is not a trash can.

Missi Bantner:

So I don't know if that's one that you still say is a phrase but it was very eye-opening for me and it gives it gave me that opportunity to like I don't have to be part of the clean plate club I'm working with someone and they are really struggling with an ingrained pattern from childhood that they have to eat everything on their plate otherwise they're a bad kid, a shameful kid, a wasteful kid, whatever it is that little kid is still living in you getting played out every time you go out to eat um then it's really important for you to know your body is not a trash can period end of sentence you know and there's a lot of different ways to work your way to that for years I would take home or or package up one or two bites of food so that I didn't waste it, take it home, let the emotional residue kind of come down and once my thinking brain was back on track I could say I don't need that food. I can toss it like you know but in the moment that the emotions sometimes like of those old experiences are still alive and well and it can be really hard to override. Well and that's another topic that we that we cover in our work together is the enjoyment of food, right? It's it's meant to be pleasurable you actually experience greater physical satisfaction when you eat food that is enjoyable. And no that's not carte blanche to eat junk food, but if you're eating junk food, you're an adult that is your choice. But you know what I mean like it's the relationship with food and how you feel about it and and the experience actually really matters to your nervous system and the choices you will make again. Your nervous system is like the most amazing AI system. It is constantly learning based on patterns, based on what you're doing and how you're telling yourself and how you're feeling about things it's always feeding that forward into how you're going to be in the future I think coming back to the the discussion about change is for, you know, especially for adults, in order for us to change like two conditions have to be in place. We either have to like do very slow incremental learning and set ourselves up for success and a lot of baby steps, or we have to have a big enough meaning or pain point that's driving our change, right? A lot of us don't change unless the pain of changing becomes less than the pain of staying the same. Right. So a cancer diagnosis changing pivoting overnight. Yeah right or chronic you know inflammation or um digestive issues or something right something wakes you up and sort of helps you shift and it doesn't make it you know necessarily easy but all of a sudden there's an internal motivation that is now driving you to work with the the heart right to work with the urges to break the patterns to figure out how do I become the person who is okay having a loaf of bread you know fresh out of the oven and smelling it and saying that smells wonderful. I don't want it because what I really want is to feel good.

Christina Kohl:

Right. And I'll give another personal example I for years I thought I was kept telling my husband we need a new mattress like I wake up in pain every every morning like during the night just to turn over I had to use my arms to help me turn over because there was pain shooting down my back and he was out of town with one of my sons so it's just and I think I think it was just me and one kid here. The the other three members of my family were gone. I'm like I'm just gonna try eating a gluten free for the next few days. I kid you not on day three I woke up without pain. Yeah I've been thinking it was my mattress all this time. On day three I woke up and that pain was gone. And I don't I mean I'm sure I would love to have a piece of freshly baked bread out of the oven but you know what I make my own bread now and it doesn't have it yeah it's got well it doesn't matter what it has it can go through the whole if anyone wants to see the ingredients for my um gluten free bread with psyllium husk um let me know but I make my own bread yeah and I love it it's delicious to me and it kind of looks purplish for some reason. It comes out of the oven looking kind of purple but that's kind of cool. But I so I still have sandwiches with but it doesn't but I don't have that pain that it was inflammation that was in my body for years that I didn't I just thought I just tried an experiment.

Missi Bantner:

Yeah pain is a huge driver of change it's pain avoidance is one of our brain's you know ways of surviving yeah frankly yeah that's why we have pain has to be great enough you know it's it's fascinating the brain is a little complex um because there there are like drivers for comfort right but there are also drivers for novelty for change and so it's you know at any given moment in your nervous system's experience which way your system is tilting will make change easier or harder. And so that's why like coming back to working with yourself right meeting yourself where you're at tapping into what you're ready for, what feels like it's calling to you and it feels like an easier pathway to take do that right set yourself up for success and the and once your brain starts to learn how to change you have new experiences you start to kind of cull some of those old experiences and replace them with new ones you start to see yourself in your life differently and the possibilities open up and and particularly you build the confidence to be able to change.

Christina Kohl:

Yeah. So how would for someone listening what advice would you have again those action steps um what advice do you have for someone who is ready they think they're ready for a change they might be at different stages but what steps would you advise someone listening to start to take to effect that type of change step one would be identify your level of readiness listen to your language right are you thinking about changing are you actively planning it do you have energy in your body to start taking action meet yourself wherever you're at and just work with that phase for a little while especially if you're in the thinking phase um because if you jump too soon you'll you'll fall off the wagon and that will be defeating.

Missi Bantner:

If you are in the planning ready to take action stage um you're gonna want to create what's called a habit loop so there's three components I think this will be super helpful um to building and sustaining a habit we have them for everything that is automated for ourselves we just don't know it because it's automated right so number one you have a cue you have some kind of a trigger so it could be um a sound a smell a time of day a person an environment a sticky note something triggers you to remember could be tennis shoes by the bed or by the door um something triggers you to engage in a routine or in an action right an action that routine is the second part of a habit it's the thing you want to do right it's the automated or the hopefully soon to be automated part. And then there's a reward right so there needs to be a little dopamine release. There's a lot of different ways to create rewards um personally I'm the kind of person that's cut from the cloth of I love following through on things I say I'm gonna do. That is a huge reward for me. It's like I didn't right I know in my body that feels good. And that's oftentimes enough for me. But sometimes I will give myself some other kind of reward like if I am undertaking some work tasks that are really challenging for me, I might say okay get through these next three work tasks and then we're gonna go for a walk or we're gonna take a bath and read a novel or we're gonna watch a 20 minute Netflix show or something that like actually helps my brain stop working and thinking and just relax and enjoy. That's something you could do a lot of people maybe will accumulate um tasks throughout the week and then at the end of the week they've got something they can enjoy like a massage or a fun date with a girlfriend or you know something like that. So making sure that um when you are successful you acknowledge it and you celebrate it on the smallest or the greatest degree that makes sense for your system and that you feel it in your body like you feel the goodness of what you just did. Right? That you're not stepping into punishment. You're not going that wasn't good enough you're not berating yourself blah blah blah that will a hundred times out of a hundred undermine your desire to do it again. You are literally training your body to be stressed out around a new habit you're trying to create and and um neuroplasticity the state of change the brain needs to be in in order to change nosedives under stress excess stress and negativity okay staying on your own side having your own back is super important right so create a cue do the routine celebrate have a reward have a reward so maybe even

Christina Kohl:

I'm just thinking of journaling too like okay journaling about what what are rewards what are different rewards that they don't have to cost money it's not necessarily I'm gonna go out and buy a new outfit um but maybe it is after you reach a certain milestone okay I've I've yeah I'm a new size so I'm gonna go get a new pair of jeans or exactly whatever it might be. So something that that is connected it doesn't have to be connected but that's just one that I thought of it could absolutely it could be.

Missi Bantner:

And I would say um try not to have rewards be food related if they are like that's that is a very slippery slope for human beings. You got to really know yourself if food is going to be a reward um but even just telling someone that you did that you did the thing that was hard like at the end of the day I will often tell my husband you know I sent out these emails I I invited several people to my event that those things are hard for me to do believe it or not. And so just telling him that I did something hard and letting him celebrate me, that feels good. Yeah right having acknowledgement from someone I trust.

Christina Kohl:

There's a lot of different ways to um to build that reward in yeah no I love that idea I mean my husband and I every night well how's your day what's going on today so that would be a great opportunity to do it.

Missi Bantner:

It's a great place to ask specifically what are you celebrating? What did you feel good about today? What did you do that was hard today that you didn't think you were going to do it.

Christina Kohl:

Yeah when my kids were younger it was um one kid in particular tell me three things about your day I didn't already know because he would tell me I went to lunch I'm like I already know you went to lunch. I went to recess. I already know you went to recess. Yes it's just a way to to talk about things so I love I love that I hadn't thought of that have not thought of that as a reward before but yes it is so the trigger the act the action and the reward the building the routine the ru the reward. Okay all right awesome I think that is very actionable so thank you for for sharing that and thank you for sharing your time and wisdom and and you thank you for sharing all that today. If people are curious and want to learn more about your services and whole life health um couple questions one is there do you provide services outside of Colorado outside outside the Denver metal area

Missi Bantner:

yes I do we do I can do virtual um sessions yep I can um the in-person offerings are I do everything in person yoga, nutrition neurofitness uh once a month I also host um a workshop in Denver uh called Harmonic Inner Freedom Yoga and it's a blend of different kinds of yoga movement, breath work, mindfulness and it's a really great experience to kind of tap into the somatic side of health and wellness and you know getting to know yourself. It's really fun. So that's every month in Denver and every summer we do run the rocks in in uh Morrison. Yeah lots of different things going on. I'll have um in 2026 I will have a a special running for a little while on coaching because I'm working toward my board certification and one of the eligibility requirements is uh 50 hours of coaching. So I'm going to um hopefully work with some new people for those 50 hours, give them a little break on the cost and in return ask for some feedback, very specific feedback to help me refine my skills so that I can sit for my board exam in July.

Christina Kohl:

Okay.

Missi Bantner:

So that'll be based on the hike too lots of different ways to work together.

Christina Kohl:

All right wonderful well we will definitely include links on in the show notes. Tell me uh the quickest way for people to find you.

Missi Bantner:

Yeah you can go to live whole lifehealth dot com.

Christina Kohl:

Okay perfect.

Missi Bantner:

And if you go to the connect page to set up a discovery call, I do free discovery calls all the time. We can just connect and see where you're at. You can learn more. And there's no obligation to do anything more than just talk.

Christina Kohl:

Awesome. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Missy, for being here and for sharing your wisdom and insights. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you feel like we might might have missed that would be helpful for the audience?

Missi Bantner:

No, I think we did a really good job of covering a lot of things and hopefully threads and tie them together into some kind of a neat bow. Yes. All right.

Christina Kohl:

Well, all right. Well, thank you so much for being here. And we I really appreciate you and your insights and looking forward to connecting in person again soon.

Missi Bantner:

Me too. Thanks, Christina. Thank you for asking me to be on this. It's an honor and um so good to see your face. Thank you.

Christina Kohl:

All right, well, everyone, that is it for this week's episode. We will talk to you next time. Thank you so much for listening today. I hope this episode hit home for you. And if you haven't already, be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn and say hello so I can personally thank you for listening. Until next time, remember, your story is uniquely your own. And your next chapters are ready to begin.