Brazen and Brave
This podcast encourages women to be brazen and brave in their walk and relationship with God. I will share stories, offer encouragement, and provide a safe place to connect so we can learn and grow together!
Brazen and Brave
13: A Healthy Lifestyle from the Inside Out with Kelly Killen
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This episode is FIRE! Kelly talks about how mindset is so critical when it comes to losing weight and keeping it off. She delves into how her history of being a cognitive behavior therapist shaped the future of her current wellness business. You do not want to miss this episode.
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Welcome to the balance. I am your host, Kelly Roman, and this is the podcast where we talk about all the things for those in life who want it all. This podcast is for you.
Speaker 2Hey Kelly, how are you doing today? I'm great. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you so much for making time to be on podcast today. I'm super excited about the interview. Great. Okay. So for anyone who may not know you, please share with us who you are, what you do, and what your journey looked like to get where you are today.
Speaker 3Sure. So my name is Kelly killing and I am a board certified behavior analyst. So I'm licensed to the board of medicine and with that licensure I've taken my passion towards wellness and nutrition. So out the years starting in 1999 when I was a bodybuilder and becoming very well versed and you know, getting very involved in nutrition. That kind of led me on this path of wanting to help other women and then using my science of applied behavior analysis and my license to the board of medicine to kind of bring both worlds together. They just, they collided very kind of happenstance. What, what I was doing with my license was, and what most people do with their ada license as a behavior analyst is I was providing services to individuals with autism and I was doing that for 17 years and when I realized that the science can be applied to women with weight loss, um, it just kind of opened up and I took a leap of faith. I left the state of Virginia. I was working in the state of Virginia and decided to take that leap of faith and jump into opening my own business. This is year five. That is exciting. Can you tell us a little bit more about your business? Sure. So my, my, my business is a, it's called K K wellness consulting and it provides one on one intensive coaching to individuals who have had a lot of short term success in the past because they've made a decision to diet it to go into our strict binge kind of mode and they have not really implemented lifestyle changes. So we use Aba and having a behavioral therapy and our intensive coaching to allow women and men to shape their behavior towards food and make lifestyle changes. And once those life style changes are implemented through our coaching model, then they're able to really have sustainable changes. Now our sustainability rate is about 82 percent once they graduate from our program.
Speaker 2That is amazing. That's a massive success rate. So like that lead into my second question, I think you've kind of answered it, but I got this quote off of your website, um, when I was looking it over and I really liked it. It says utilizing scientifically based behavioral principles to achieve health and wellness goals. Um, like I said, that's featured on your website. Can you just explain to us in a little bit more detail like what exactly means and how it works?
Speaker 3Absolutely. So the science behind behavior analysis is what we call applied behavior analysis. If, if you're trying to look for behavior change, which eating and behaviors that allude to the wrong types of eating, in order to make any kind of behavior change, you want to have a lot of, do you want to implement what we call proactive strategies. They're all the antecedent interventions according to the science of being or change that affect the outcome. So we look at all ways in which people can sanitize their environment, use prompting, use, shaping, be able to, um, prep. So prepare their foods, all kinds of ways in which we allow people to self manage their behaviors. They use self management tools. Uh, all different kinds of prompting is done in the way of texting. We use group contingencies. We use reinforcement and motivation. So we do short term and longterm goal. So all of those are the science of behavior change and we implement them in our bottle.
Speaker 2Okay. Yeah. I love that because I agree with you and this doesn't go just for wellness and health, but so much of the time the issue at hand is our mindset, you know, and it's how we think about things and how we create the world and shape the world and if we took a closer look at those things, it would help us achieve whatever goals that we have.
Speaker 3Absolutely, and we we were only tried for, for any individual to pull the perfectionist attitude out of it and also the start go the all or nothing. That duck academy thinking that most of us had that we have to. We have to go into a restrictive mode and then there is a point in time where we just kind of throw the talent and we go out. We try to let women understand that the lifestyle is great and so we don't have. We get them out of that all or nothing and we allow them. Instead of having a perfectionist attitude, we allow them to shape how they handle a failure. Because your success is determined on how you handle a failure because you're going to fail. But most women fail hard because of how they handle it and in order to, to, you know, define their success. So that's kind of a, that is all cognitive and that's the cognitive behavioral therapy that we do. You're right, your thoughts drive your actions. So we change mantras. We allow people to say it's not never, it's just not now because it's a lifestyle change. There's no finish line. This is just a journey because once people get to a point where they feel like they've arrived at what they would consider to be a healthy maintenance weight or a healthy maintenance composition, we really try not to focus on weight in our programs. One state, once they're there, I, I will tell them from the day that they can start to let them know the way that I'm going to teach you how to eat. You're going to eat this way for the rest of your life. And when you're in a work face, all you're doing is you're putting it wholefoods, balanced nutrition at a little bit of a slight deficit that's manageable, that's sustainable. And then once you arrive at your weight, nothing changes. And that's the difference. We always think that the, here's your guiding food, here's your regular food. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You know, 77 percent of our population is overweight. Eighty percent, yes. Overweight in some way, you're over 20 to 24 percent body fat for most women. Your, you know, anywhere between 26 and 30 and then 34 percent of our population's obese. So we had a significant health issue in our, you know, because of the food and the restaurant industry there, they're basically dictating our portion. So that's why in our model we really want women to realize you need to start taking control of your own portions. You walk out the door with no food and you're allowing, once hunger hits you, you're allowing yourself to go somewhere and they're dictating the portions for you. They're dictating what you eat based on their menu. So that's the unfortunate thing is, you know, here's a great example. Men and women eat off the same menu. We choose the same options off the same menu. And that's a disgraced because that should be eating more, eating one and a half times what women eat, but we're both being served the same portions. Have you ever even thought of it that way?
Speaker 2No, never. I mean, that's a great way to think of it.
Speaker 3It's just these are the kinds of things that we try to teach our clients. It's just these Aha moments. There's a million of them like that in our model where they start to just really take a step back, reassess and that shaping allows outcome over months and years. And if they just begin to what we call edit rather than diet 2019, we want them to flip the letters and instead of dieting out, they need to be just thinking about walking their day and editing. Oh I love that.
Speaker 2Just a small adjustments here and there and recognizing where your old mind may have done this, but now let's think about it. Maybe shift towards this direction. Absolutely. I love, love what you said. I'm a massive advocate and like ditching the perfectionism. I'm John. I mentioned this all the time, but John, I don't know if you read the book finish. It is, so I love that book and I love all the lies he kind of dispels about how we think about. But I love what you said about the gray lifestyle because it's not a black and white and that's where people kind of even like you said, they fail because like, well Dang, I did this now I no longer can have this, you know, I killed my diet, now I shouldn't even exercise. And then they just, they think they have to be perfect and it ruins the whole journey for them.
Speaker 3Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2Okay, so that leads us into our next question. What are some of the most common setbacks and limiting beliefs you see in people who have an unhealthy relationship with food and who struggled to keep
Speaker 3weight off to lose it and keep it off? Well, we work with both men and women, but I can speak for women since they're probably 80 to 90 percent of our demographic and typically for women, they will falter to this mindset of really what it really is is it's instead of time management, they always use the time management or the, the we or the or the use statement when it's really the fact that they don't make themselves a priority. That's number one. They don't delegate, um, they like to control and do everything themselves so they overwhelm themselves with motherhood, with being a wide, with all of the expectations that go into that, especially if there's fulltime working, which is very typical. And we really want to kind of pull them out of that victim mentality and really show them that many of the decisions that they're making are actually, they're owned. So you want them to have ownership. That's number one. A dark environment typically get stressed work relationships if they're trying to make a lifestyle change, typically what they try to do in affect everyone else rather than put the oxygen mask on them first. Because once they and, and they cannot allow their environment to affect what they truly, authentically want for themselves, their egos get a bark at them from time to time when they're in a very toxic or unhealthy environment and you know, after 30, 40, 50 years, which is our typical demographic for women, they, they had a history of really poor behavior. They, they had to find intimacy with their spouse around alcohol and food. That's really the only past time that they do with that individual. So a lot of changes going on in their life. They're, they're kind of cramping the style of other individuals. So we have to kind of help them and walk them and navigate through that. And we do it in our model. We do it because our clients have access to US 55 hours a week. They're allowed to communicate with us all day every day. So we actually walk them through those interviews via text or phone.
Speaker 2That's awesome because people definitely need that. Especially in the early stages, you know, like a cheerleader coach. Um, I love several things that you said, just like the owner ship piece. And the playing the victim, um, you know, you're so right because as you know, mothers, wives, women, a lot of the time it's like a badge of honor to say, Oh, I can do it all and I know I am extremely or was extremely guilty of this and still am from time to time. But for me recently it's been I leave the dishes in the sink because my husband said he'll do them. He may not do them when I want him to or when I would, but I'm like, you know what, no, I have other things I want to do, need to do for me and if he's going to help me then that's what I'm going to let them to, you know, instead of playing the victim saying, no, I have to do this because I'm the woman of the house. Yeah. And then I really, really love what you said. This is kind of eyeopening to me and it's something I haven't really thought about, but you mentioned how women sometimes shape, especially after a long period of time, they really shape their relationships in a certain way. Like, like you said, about their version of intimacy with their spouse is dealt around going to dinner or watching a movie and there's nothing wrong with those things, but they really lose a possibility of a different life. And I think that's so compelling and I honestly think so much so much of the time. We don't even think that way. You know, we don't want to admit to those things
Speaker 3what the script and you know, you can, you can, you know, you can hear a lot of this and you know, the book finish, um, there's just a lot of correlation and I know you're a woman of faith, but I think it's just really bringing yourself back to kind of, um, I mean for, for a lot of men and women who are willing to open up to some faith and scripture, they will, they will really use that time in order to kind of reshape what they're into intimacy needs to look like outside of the things that I think are holding them back from their best self. Especially if they are dealing with way that they're dealing with prediabetes. That they're dealing with hypertension, high cholesterol, they have to address those issues, but first it's really going to take, you know, getting themselves grounded together as couples spiritually in order to get that, you know, in order to get that strength that they need to work together in tandem to, you know, to, to come up with some solutions that it does it really look at it really mean defining and reshaping their, their day, their week and the rest of their life moving forward.
Speaker 2Oh, I think that's such beautiful advice and I think that is something that I know for me personally, it's something that myself and my husband don't do enough of. We do things separately or individually as far as our faith during the motional whatnot. But we really have to work on doing things together, you know, which shouldn't be the case. But like you said, it's so critical and so pivotal to be on a common of understanding
Speaker 3what you both need and what you both want. And you know, like you said, looking at scripture and saying, well what does it say about intimacy and different things. So there's so much scripture about, I mean, don asked me to quote it right now, but I know that, that whenever I am reading my devotionals, it always goes back to he uses me. I always feel like my business is my ministry and he has absolutely driven. That's expansion that I've had for me driving around in my car without even a storefront. Me, myself and I meeting clients at their homes to now 11 coaches in four years. It happened because he just gifted me with this opportunity. He gifted me with this passionate, gifted me, the ability to motivate and speak to these women in a way that I do. I'm very, um, I'm very transparent. I'm do not sugarcoat. I'm very straightforward with them. I do shake things up. I do walk that edge something sometimes I'm not politically correct. That is sort of my, I'm just going to be quite honest with you. But um, that has really afforded me the opportunity to really break through a lot of the things that I mentioned to you earlier about women really playing that victim role and just, you know, kind of defaulting to, well I just do everything. I don't have enough time in the day and I have a million things to do. I think it's because like you said, they are choosing that they have to do all those things and if one, if you really kind of rip the bandaid off and you decide what am I, what, what, what am I not giving to myself as a result of feeling like I have to do everything and what are some things that I really don't have to do now in order to be doing some things for myself. And that what we try to do with a lot of these women's. So above and beyond the nutrition, which is our focus were life coaches and we're all certified as wellness coaches. And certainly with my license as a behavior analyst. That really the thread and what we do as well because it's never what they're eating is what's eating them. That's allowing them, you know, it Sorta is a vicious cycle so we have to get through that with, within the scope of what we do. We can't go outside of the scope. There's some type of larger fish to fry. There's women that might have eating disorders. We don't, we don't, you know, we, we can't, we can, we can make recommendations and referral or there's women that may have issues with alcohol and we really feel like they're probably on the continuum of alcoholism that has to be addressed before and that mental illness. So if there's depression and anxiety that are really getting in the way and I feel like that has to be addressed first out, typically refer them out and there's, we haven't grading process so we're pretty good about it. But you know, those are some, those are some things that women deal with for sure. I think that speaks so to you and your business
Speaker 2that obviously you're not in it just to get as many clients as you as you can. You really care about the customer, you care about the person and you want to get them the help they need, whatever that is, even if it's
Speaker 3not with you, I'll absolutely. And we do that. Um, you know, we uh, we'll move couches. It's very, very rare, but we have five or six different personality types with our coaches and it doesn't happen often, but will even move a client that would just do a little bit better with more of a softer approach, direct approach, more of the direct approach. And then I have some, some other coaches that are just have a different approach and I think that they, that they do well with, with Ana end, but I do also think my coach has to have the ability to um, to modify their approach based on the client, which is kind of Nice. Sweet. We can all Kinda tone it down or you know, pick it up if we need to as well. Oh yeah. I mean it sounds like you have definitely a great team to work with, which is all. Yeah, they're all degreed in nutrition. I had a phd, I have two nurses, so we have medical, behavioral, you know, of course we're all certified in nutrition and psychology backgrounds as well as fitness, so we have such diverse backgrounds, but all of us with a common thread of nutrition, some of course more than others. So I'm very, very fortunate, very fortunate. Every one in highly, you know, master's level degreed or more. So we're, we're in a good, good shape there. That's definite blessing. I've loved watching
Speaker 2you know, your business, grow through Kayla's instagram and seeing everything. It just looks like a really great place.
Speaker 3That's wonderful. Okay. So a little bit of a shit,
Speaker 2a tier since this podcast is called the balance. So how does balance look different today for you than it did say 2010, 20 years ago?
Speaker 3Wow. Well, I'm going to be 50 this year and um, you know, I'm very blessed because I had my children young and so, you know, balance for me when they were Hildrun was, you know, I did experience a lot of the same things that my clients are going through and I, you know, I learned to kind of, I'm a type A and I'm very structured and very organized and I think that's lent. It lends itself to this lifestyle that I try to promote and I try to model that has definitely been a benefit. Um, and you know, as you get older, I think you just make a decision with, you know, less in this situation is sometimes better. You know, trying to be. I'm trying to minimize, I'm trying to kind of declutter my life so that I can just get to that point where in order to have balance you just kinda have to look at areas of your life that just, boy, do they have any return on investment, you know, whether it be relationships, whether it be, you know, caring for the outside of your home, whether it's things that you've had in your home, whether it's just tons of pet, whether it volunteer thing that you're doing, you kind of have to look at every aspect of your life and decide what is the return on investment? How is this giving me peace? How is the stilling the up? And um, I think I've just slowly kind of migrated towards that kind of shift. Even as I have grown my team, I'm now really solely be kind of an administrator and director of my business versus having somebody coaching clients because I've decided that my strengths are in leadership and in with the business management side. Um, I had my years of coaching. I still keep myself kind of, you know, keep my, keep myself well versed in coaching, but I have much less clients and I, that's a balance for me is kind of moving out of all of the, you know, having a full roster of coaching clients and building the business and, and knowing when it was time to kind of do those things. So yeah. Oh, absolutely. Love that answer. And I have never really, I mean, I've never thought about the, like you said, look at your time and ask yourself what's the return of investment, you know, like really analyze it and say, you know, I've also heard someone say if it's been in your cart for a while and you haven't really done anything with it and it's not going anywhere, maybe it's time to get rid of that item in the car. Um, I believe in and this morning I had a thought, you know, so often we want to create margin in her life and we want more time. But I think that what the challenge should be is to go ahead and look at where you're spending your time and ask yourself, is that actually getting you towards your goals or is it aligned with your values? Because even if you had more time, would you even feel better about it? Yeah. The pathway for me to balance that I've been able to incorporate in my coaching and I now do it everyday, all day, is what we call self journaling. And it allows you to look at your, you know, if anyone's taken a path where they do vision boards, vision boards are huge in my business, so people have short term and longterm goals. Where do you see yourself in a year? And we try to let them map it out for vision board workshops that we do. And the same thing that you could do on a daily basis is when I wake up to do my own funnels, I use what they, it's called a self journal and it's just the book of Day by day and everyday is the same. You basically write out your schedule. So you kind of, you know, I look at my schedule of what I've got on my phone and I, I write it in the book, I write what I'm grateful for in the morning and at night I write tasks that I want to achieve and it just helps, helps me to take just a snapshot of half a day, the whole.
Speaker 2And even if everything doesn't get accomplished, it's still, once I've written it down, it allows me to have, make sure I'm prioritizing what has the greatest return for me. It has to have personal business, you know, you kind of want to look at all aspects of you as a whole person so that you, that's how you create the balances and the work. The worksheet allows for that and there's lots of different journals out there that help people to do that. That is great advice. Yeah, I do something similar and it's definitely helpful. Um, just to get your thoughts out of your brain is something very empowering about it. Okay. So you'll totally understand this question since you have already finished, but what are you choosing to bomb right now due to your current priorities? What am I choosing to, but I'm sorry. So what are you choosing to bomb or what's taking a backseat at the moment due to your current priorities?
Speaker 3Well, let's see what's taking a back seat. Um
Speaker 4Hm. Hm.
Speaker 3You know, probably, you know, probably travel probably some leisure and travel because of have a bunch of times in my this needs but, but from a personal standpoint and a business standpoint, um, even just, just daily personal self care, I, I've really been able to balance that pretty well. So My, you know, obviously my nutrition is really well I definitely get enough sleep and enough, uh, enough like working out and movement. That's definitely a priority of mine. Um, I would say just getting away and kind of just unplugging from, from business and just spending that one on one time with my husband. I would say that's probably the one thing that's taken a back seat for sure.
Speaker 2Okay. No, that's great. That's a perfect kind of answer that I'm looking for, so do you have any last words of encouragement for our listeners and what's the best piece of advice you can give on how to live a healthy lifestyle?
Speaker 3Wow. So it's never too late. You launch, you move out of a perfectionist attitude and you think about looking at you in choosing the top three things that you know clearly are holding you back. Whether it's your relationship with alcohol, whether it's your sugar addiction or it's fast food you can eat. Most people can identify their top three and just making a decision each day in each week. Set a goal for how you want to edit that. How do you want to just continue to shape it? If you set your goals really high, I have. That's why we always set people up for success. Small goals that are achievable and that you can gain some behavioral momentum that way rather than setting them so high that, okay, I'm going to go to the gym six days a week. He perfectly, you know, we do that, but we as women, we do that. So decide that you're not going to worry about all areas and I always tell women this, if your food is the data, which is 80 percent of your equation to health and wellness, 80 percent of shifting your body's composition and losing weight is your nutrition. It is not through exercise or movement. If your not doing either one with consistency that I say focus on nutrition and look at the top three things that you can edit and start there. That is perfect advice. I love it. I know my listeners will definitely be able to put that practice to you. So thank you Kelly so much. Um, where can my listeners go to find more about you and learn more about your company? Sure. They can go to www dot k, k wellness consulting.com. And that's our website and they can also find me on facebook, which is a KK wellness consulting. And then there's also okay k wellness consulting on instagram. Perfect. And let's just say a listener, you know, wanted to be a part of, you know, years coaching. They don't have to be local or anything. We are national and international clients currently Japan. Wow. That is super cool. Yeah, it's been amazing and we know right now we do have a free subscription page, so if they go to our website and they want to just get to know the coaches for 30 days free, they can subscribe through my website and if they don't, you know it's, it's, it's once you know it's month to month so one can unsubscribe at anytime, but that's just an easy way to kind of get to know us a little bit further and learn a little bit more about the coaches. Awesome. Well, I have definitely enjoyed talking with you today and getting to know you and I appreciate you being on the show very much. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1Thanks for tuning in to today's episode of the balance. For more information about me or to receive your free goal setting die, visit Kelly Rowland.com. Can't wait to talk to you.