Happy Healthy Holidays Guest Bloggers

As part of my Happy Healthy Holidays this December, I am excited to share with you some of my favorite health, wellness and food bloggers. These are some ladies that I really admire because of their dedication to leading a healthier life. They are inspiring, motivational, and have lots of incredible insight to living a healthier life.

Our first guest blogger is Rachel Stewart. I found Rachel on Instagram and instantly connected with her on her philosophy around healthy eating. In particular, she is all about making sure we are fueling up your body for success and picking the right foods to help us reach our optimal performance. I hope you enjoy this interview with Rachel! I particularly love her answer to question 5, below. Make sure you check out Rachel on Instagram and her website.  

Now, let’s get to the amazing Rachel Stewart!

 

Happy Healthy Holidays with Rachel Stewart

Welcome to the Happy, Healthy Holidays series! Please tell us about yourself.

Hi there, I’m Rachel! I am a plant-based diet and fitness coach. I help women dig into their self-love to transform their bodies with nourishing plant-based nutrition programs and strength-focused workout plans. I specialize in helping clients transition to a vegan diet with a fitness focus to create, lean, toned, energized bodies.  I am deeply passionate about the power of our mindset and self-love to completely change the course of our days. I work with my clients to shift their mindsets and start treating their bodies with love, leading to fat loss, more muscle tone, and healthier lifestyle habits. I love watching them grow and learn to become their healthiest selves!

I live in Dayton, Ohio. I have a dog, Luna, who is my favorite thing in the whole world. I love trail running, lifting weights, healthy cooking, and am an avid Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy fan.

What sparked your healthy lifestyle journey?

My relationship with food and my body has been tumultuous since grade school. Throughout high school, I was a competitive dancer, so I was active, but I struggled with my weight because of emotional and boredom eating habits. My weight loss journey started when I was in college. I was dieting to avoid the freshman fifteen and ended up spiraling into some really disordered eating and exercise habits. After years of excessive cardio and basically starving myself into skinniness, I came to the realization that my journey had to shift from being about weight loss to being about true health. That is when I found the power of a plant-based diet. It allowed me to eat in abundance and feel vitality that I didn’t even know was possible for me. From there, I discovered weightlifting and how empowering it was to feel in control of my body and how bad ass I felt lifting heavy weights in the gym! Since then I have been on a quest to live my best, healthiest life and to help others do the same.

 

Why are you passionate about leading a healthy lifestyle?

My passion stems from a true understanding of how terrible it felt to live an UN-healthy lifestyle on both ends of the spectrum. Because I have found my own healthy balance, I can see the difference it makes in the quality of my life. I am strong and energized. I have healthy skin, hair and nails. My digestion is on point. I almost never get sick. And, I am fit enough to handle just about any activity that I would want to try. It is empowering and liberating. It is not something that I could ever give up.

 

What is your best tip for maintaining your healthy lifestyle during the holiday season?

I think the #1 thing that we should do to stay healthy is to manage our mindset during the holiday season. We can get so caught up in stress, family obligations, sugar cookies, drinking, busy schedules, etc. So having a healthy mindset and reasonable expectations will carry you through it. The biggest thing I tell myself and my clients is that “maintenance is still progress during this crazy time of year”. So rather than hoping to see significant weight loss, set the goal to maintain what you have been working on. This is progress when compared to the holiday weight gain of years past.

Set yourself some healthy intentions. Find ways to stay active. Eat your favorites so you don’t feel like you’re missing out, but maybe skip the leftovers. Get enough sleep. Drink lots of water…And if you find yourself not sticking to any of these intentions? Be kind and forgive yourself. Then get right back to the program when things slow down. I recently published a blog post diving deeper into these topics. You can check it out at www.rachelestewart.com

 

What advice would you share for those looking to lead a healthier lifestyle?

The biggest advice I would give someone is to start NOW. There is no official start date for living a healthier life, just start doing it. Get your body moving and eat more fruits and vegetables. Just doing those two things consistently for a few weeks will make you feel better and start to build healthy habits.

If you’re already doing that, and you want to increase your results, the absolute BEST thing you can do is to hire a coach. The benefits of having a coach are twofold. First, you have an expert in the field who is able to hear your goals, create the right plan, and guide you through it so you are supported until you can sustain the new habits on your own. Second, when you invest your money into a change, you are more likely to follow through. Money is a representation of the energy that you are going to bring to these changes, so it works to keep you accountable during your transformation. In the past several years and in my own personal experience, I have seen that hiring a coach is the single most influential factor in a client’s success.

 

A little more on Rachel Stewart…

I am almost 29. I live in Dayton, Ohio where I work as a high school teacher by day. By night, I put on my superhero cape and work as a personal trainer, group fitness instructor, and online diet and fitness coach. I specialize in plant-based diet coaching and strength-focused fitness programs that help women to transform their bodies without restriction. I help women reinforce their self-love by nourishing their body and minds through one-on-one coaching programs. I have a dog, Luna, who is my favorite thing in the whole world. I love trail running, lifting weights, healthy cooking, and am an avid Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy fan.