Summary: 

Megan Lyons interviews Jenn Trepeck, a health coach who left her full-time job in 2019 to focus on her health coaching practice. Jenn emphasizes the importance of health, especially during the pandemic, and shares her nutrition philosophy, which includes eating foods you enjoy and not forcing yourself to eat things you don’t like. She also discusses the science of behavior change and the importance of making healthful choices easy. Jenn debunks the myth of motivation, explaining that motivation comes from momentum and habit, not the other way around. She also shares her personal struggle with taking rest days and the importance of balance in her life. Jenn offers a complimentary wellness discovery call and can be found on social media and her podcast, Salad with a Side of Fries.

Full Episode:

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Transcription:

Megan Lyons:

Thank you so much Jenn Trepeck for coming on Wellness Your Way. I’m very excited to chat with you today.

Jenn Trepeck:

I’m excited to be here. Megan, I feel like we’ve had a lot of buildup already.

Megan Lyons:

For good reason because your background is so impressive. I already read to our audience, so please, in your words, just tell us a little bit about you and how you wound up here.

Jenn Trepeck:

Yeah, so it’s funny. My background is really business and marketing and I came to all this wellness stuff through my own, I call it a saga of trying to figure out my health and my weight. And ultimately I lived the rollercoaster, right? Every diet under the sun gained and lost all that stuff. But ultimately what I found is what I believed to be like the nutrition education we’re all supposed to know and no one ever taught us. Yes. And so I really felt like everybody deserves this information and why isn’t this what we learned? So I set out on a mission to pay it forward and help people help themselves with this information and these tools. And so I started health coaching on the side in late 2007, which it was like before side hustles were thing. It was before health coaching was even a common thing. So I worked with clients nights and weekends. I ended up leaving my full-time job July of 2019, launched my podcast in August, salad with a side of fries and the rest is history. Now I’m here with you talking to the masses and helping everybody reclaim control of their health.

Megan Lyons:

That’s amazing. I mean everything when you say 20 19, 20 20, 20, 21, everything centers around that March of 2020. So you were really only in it for, what is that, five months or so? Six months when everything went down. I guess fortunate timing because a lot of people needed your help.

Jenn Trepeck:

And it’s interesting. I mean, I had always been fully virtual with my health coaching practice. So luckily for me when the pandemic hit, nothing really changed, which was very fortunate. But everybody else was all of a sudden really realizing the importance of their health and that if we don’t have our health, everything else is second. So yeah.

Megan Lyons:

That’s amazing. So I love what you said at the beginning about the health education that everyone should have that no one has. I don’t think we can probably share your entire nutrition philosophy, nor would we want to give away all of the secrets. But what are some of those things? What are some of those basics that you feel like everyone should know but they don’t yet?

Jenn Trepeck:

Yeah, essentially metabolic health translates into overall health. We cannot look at any one part of the body or any one organ in isolation. Yes. So if you have a diagnosis, your diagnosis is based on the organ system that failed first. It doesn’t mean that everything else is fine. We only have an issue in this one place. So then taking the step back from disease states and those kinds of things, taking a step back, looking at health, metabolic health is really one of the fundamental pieces to overall health. And when it comes to metabolic health, despite what is happening in our world right now, it is not a size, it is not a number on the scale. It is not a body shape. What we know is that our health is a function of our body composition. How much of our body is lean muscle mass?

How much of our body is bone and organ and water and blood and all of these things? And then how much of our body is fat mass? And whether we are burning fat or storing fat is a function of blood sugar. And so our objective is to fuel with quality nutrition regularly to keep our blood sugar within sort of like a middle range. Now, we don’t want it to be perfectly flat. Our blood sugar is certainly going to fluctuate. That’s a healthful response of insulin in the body that we have sort of a wave there. What we want to avoid are extreme highs and extreme lows. And that can exist whether or not you have a diagnosis around blood sugar or insulin activity. Yes. So quality nutrition, protein, fiber, quality, fat, protein is clean, lean protein. I don’t care if you want that to be animal or plant, but clean, lean protein fiber is vegetables and sometimes fruit.

And that’s every time we eat, we’re having protein and fiber. So the only difference between meals and stacks is how much we have at a time and therefore how long it’s going to last us until we need to fuel again. And then the other thing that we need a couple times a day is quality fat and quality Fat is avocado and olive oil and avocado oil and walnuts and almonds. So also everybody gets really afraid of fat. A serving size of avocado is half the avocado. Everybody’s like, oh, I had a sliver of a quarter of a half. Eat some avocado. You’re going to be fine. Your body’s going to thank you. So that’s like the very short Cliffs Notes version.

Megan Lyons:

That’s so great. And I think sometimes we avoid the Cliff’s Notes version in order to get into the fancier stuff, but people need to hear the Cliff’s Notes version, even the devoted Wellness Your Way. Listeners who quote Know that stuff, we need to hear it again and again and again. So thank you for laying it out so simply. I love also what you said that the only difference between a snack and a meal is the portion size and how long it needs to tide you over because snack food does not have to be chips and popcorn only. Not that you should never have chips and popcorn ever. I’m definitely not saying that, but that stuff leads you more to the blood sugar rollercoaster if we have it alone and doesn’t really make us feel full. So getting that protein and fiber, like you said, that’s key. Amazing.

Jenn Trepeck:

And by that token too, I was just having a conversation with a new client the other day and she’s like, look, I don’t need a lot of things. And I’m like, that’s okay. We’re going to eat what you like and don’t eat what you don’t like. And she’s like, well, but I can’t do eggs, so what would I have for breakfast? And it’s like, we’ve all been told all of these

Megan Lyons:

Things,

Jenn Trepeck:

I don’t care. Don’t eat eggs if you don’t like eggs. Right? Right. Yes. That’s just torture. If we’re trying to make ourselves eat things that we don’t enjoy, the only thing that makes something breakfast similar to way, the only thing that makes something a snack or a meal, it’s breakfast. The first fuel of the day, if it’s leftovers from dinner, enjoy.

Megan Lyons:

Yes, absolutely.

Jenn Trepeck:

My favorite breakfast is a breakfast salad. I happen to put eggs on it, but you don’t have to.

Megan Lyons:

Yes, the breakfast salad and the dinner leftovers are so underrated. I really love that. And I’m someone who always craved sweet for breakfast. That always sounded better to me until I shifted and started trying those more savory breakfasts and the way I feel different throughout the day, the way my sugar cravings are lower and energy is higher and all that stuff. Now, I genuinely crave the savory protein, fiber rich breakfast because of how much better it makes me feel. So if someone out there is thinking, Ooh, Jen’s super weird breakfast salad. I don’t know. Just give it a shot you will convert too.

Jenn Trepeck:

I was a skeptic, I will admit. I was like, and the first time I was eating it, I remember it because it was such a moment. And I remember sitting there and I was like, this is just weird. I don’t know about this. Somebody recommended it. And I was like, I don’t know. And then just like you said, I felt so good for so many hours.

Megan Lyons:

Yes.

Jenn Trepeck:

That I was like, okay, I’m a convert.

Megan Lyons:

Yes.

Jenn Trepeck:

So amazing.

Megan Lyons:

So one of your specialties is the science of behavior change and just how the mindset works as we’re going about these changes. So I’m putting myself in the shoes of someone who’s hearing us and saying, oh yeah, I know protein and fiber is a healthier snack than 18 handfuls of m and ms, but I don’t know, I just keep putting my hand back in the bowl of m and ms. So why do we do these things that sometimes we don’t even want to do? Why do we keep turning back to them?

Jenn Trepeck:

Yeah. We expect ourselves to flip a switch. We think the expectation and what we see in the world is flipping the switch and all of a sudden that person doesn’t crave sugar anymore and there’s something wrong with us that all we can do is think about the cookie,

Megan Lyons:

Right?

Jenn Trepeck:

I promise there’s nothing wrong with you. Our expectations are misaligned. We think it’s flipping a switch. It is actually a process. And there can be a lot of processes within the overall umbrella process. So one of the things that’s sticking in my head, I don’t know why this is coming up, but I’m going to go with it because it popped in my head, like late night eating. So the first thing we want to do with late night eating is simply just switch the thing that we’re eating. We expect ourselves to go from late night eating all the time, maybe even having another full meal before we go to sleep, to all of a sudden going asleep and feeling fine and then we don’t, and we’re mad at ourselves. So understanding the process, the first piece is let’s just change what we’re having. So maybe we go from the full meal to an apple and walnuts before we go to bed, and then over time we get comfortable with the apple and walnuts and then we go, okay, I’m ready for the next, I’m ready for the next thing. And maybe we just switch to tea.

Maybe we just have a little bit of tea or some hot water with lemon. And then we can sit there and go, what am I really looking for right now?

Megan Lyons:

Great. I like this part.

Jenn Trepeck:

What am I actually looking for this to do? Am I actually hungry? Am I actually craving something? Am I really just tired and I should go to bed? Yes. Is this an excuse to stay awake? Am I craving food because my body is exhausted and I’m staring at blue light? And blue light is telling my eyeballs that it’s daytime. And so my body is confused and says, well, if I’m going to stay awake, I need fuel. And we can start to tweak things. And then maybe we aren’t even going right to bed. Maybe it goes to, I’m going to read a book, and then we start to go to bed, and then some days that late night craving pops up and we’re like, good Lord, I thought I had kicked this right. I thought this was gone. I don’t eat at night anymore. And then there are some days where it is just strong and we take notes and then we start to look at all the days where that late night craving was really strong.

What do all those days have in common? What are all the days before that have in common? And then we could start to identify some patterns. Most of the time what people start to identify is that, like I said, we’re often not even actually hungry at night. We’re either overly exhausted and our body’s trying to stay awake or there’s this habitual thing. And so our body craves things in that moment because what we’re used to, but also a lot of times we see late night eating connected to not eating enough early in the day. We’re not sleeping well the night before. Yes. And having these sugar cravings, and then we can start to go, oh, wait a minute. I don’t have to white knuckle it every day after dinner if I just make sure that I have 30 to 40 grams of protein early in the day.

So much easier. It’s not that we suck at all, it’s just that we have this misaligned expectation of how this happens. So that’s one process. And I also teach what I call the bullseye of change. So this is, think of a three ring bullseye. The outermost ring are the behaviors, behaviors that we repeat become habits. So the next ring in our habits, and then the bullseye is our identity. So we have our behaviors, when they repeat, they become habits. And the sum of our habits is our identity. So now we can think about this either from the outside in or the inside out. So outside in is I just put shoes on when I eat dinner. So then the habit of walking after dinner happens, and next thing you know, over time we have an identity of I am an active person. I take a walk after dinner. Or we might say, what’s the identity that we’re looking to create? Right? I fuel myself. Well, okay, awesome. What are the habits of somebody who fuels themselves? Well, right? They eat protein and fiber and quality fat. They make sure that they have time in their schedule to eat right. Okay, great. Now the behavior, I just have to make sure that I have those things in my fridge. I just have to block the time in my calendar. And if I have those two behaviors in place, then over time the identity becomes inevitable.

So now here’s what happens. We might start and we’re plugging along and we think we’re great. We’re at that identity thing. And then life happens. We change jobs, we move, something happens, and all of a sudden our world is disrupted. And now this thing that was at the identity spot, we have to pause and go back out to that outer ring and look at those behaviors again and put them back in place again. It doesn’t mean that we suck. It doesn’t mean that anything is different about who we are, but there’s actually this outer ring outside the whole thing. That’s our environment.

And we overlook what can happen when there are changes in that environment. So if you change jobs, and now it’s a little different with working from home, but let’s say you change jobs and you’re going to an office in a very different place. Well, your morning routine might change because your commute looks different or the places that you go to lunch is different. So we expect ourselves to not have to bob and weave and adjust, but when we look at this as a process and recognize that everything, as long as we keep going, everything is part of the process, then we’re golden.

Megan Lyons:

Yes. I like the way you explained that with the bullseye and the reflection that if you already have the identity, if you already are that active person and the environment changes, then you can just think about the behaviors and kind of rejigger those behaviors to match up with the identity. But if the identity feels so far away, just start with the behavior. Just start by putting your shoes on after or before dinner, and then just going for that short walk one time after dinner and let that build into the identity. So it kind of goes both ways.

Jenn Trepeck:

Exactly. And so many times we hear people and they’re like, well, you have to become the person first. And you’re like, okay, what does that even mean? What am I supposed to do to do that? And so we can just break it down and keep it really simple. And a lot of those things happen in time, but when we expect that we’re just going to flip a switch and be something else or do something else without laying the groundwork, we’re setting ourselves up.

Megan Lyons:

Yes, really great point. So I think you kind of addressed this, but I want to ask the question specifically anyway. Is it more difficult to stop a habit or to add in a habit?

Jenn Trepeck:

I think it’s infinitely more difficult to stop something. It’s why, for all the behavior change geeks out there, it’s the crowding out method. It’s why habit stacking is a thing. We can add something to something that already happens.

We focus on everything we’re adding rather than focusing on the thing that we’re moving away from. And that other thing will disappear. So a great story about this. I had a client years ago, she had a long history of self-destructive behavior. And all along in her life as she would recover, the behaviors were always replaced with something else that was still pretty destructive, but had a longer lead time before we realized, right? Yeah. So now here I come in, I’m like, guess what? Right? All the food things. So we started with soda, right? She was a big soda drinker. She didn’t drink water at all. So we started with soda, and the first thing was really just looking at how much soda she’s drinking.

And we had talked about getting in water and why water is important. I also believe the difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it is understanding why. So we talked a lot about why water is important, didn’t really mean it wasn’t happening. She didn’t like the water, all those things. So we changed the approach. We said, fine, instead of focusing on not having soda and having water, here’s the deal. For every ounce of soda, you have two ounces of water. So if you’re going to drink 16 ounces of soda, we need 32 ounces of water.

Megan Lyons:

Love it.

Jenn Trepeck:

Right? Over time, what happened? We just crowded out the soda. Yes, it was happening less and less, but the focus wasn’t what we were losing. And so we can sort of crowd out some of these other things. And that is, it’s a shift because we think that that’s not supposed to be how we do this, but it is. Yes. And then when we want to add the next thing, it’s like, okay, let’s add it to even going back to the walk after dinner. If we just add our sneakers to dinner, all of a sudden the walk after dinner becomes infinitely easier. We just stacked this thing on because the dinner was certainly going to happen.

Megan Lyons:

Yes, absolutely. And it also ties back to your late night eating example, because what I hear most commonly when we actually get down to the why is like, this is my biggest source of joy. It’s the one time in the day where it’s just me time. I’m giving myself a treat for the hard work and whatever. But that’s after a lot of exploration. And if right at the beginning you say to someone who’s using that as their quote, only source of joy in the day, just stop snacking at night. They don’t really want to because deep down it’s like that’s my source of joy. So trading it to the apple and walnuts in your example, and then working through what’s going on and giving yourself other methods of joy and all of that kind of stuff, that can be a process. Instead of just saying, Nope, no more snacking for you. That’s I think, way too hard for most people, myself included.

Jenn Trepeck:

Totally. And one of my favorite things, one of the best questions, so my therapist once asked me this question, and I use it all the time with my clients in this kind of scenario. And the question is, where am I not being fed if my desire to eat right now is not true? Stomach hunger. And we could talk about stomach versus head hunger in a second, but if this isn’t true stomach hunger, then where am I not being fed? I am not finding those moments of joy, those moments of time for me.

Okay, well that’s what we need. I’ve chills as I’m saying this. So this must be right for somebody. If that’s what we need, then how do we find that? And I’m a big fan of a post-it. I have my clients write a lot of things on post-Its I want you to take a post-it, and write down all the things that you feel like you never have time to do. Take a bath, read a book, listen to certain music. Have 10 minutes of actual, literal quiet. Yes. Call a friend, make a list, and be specific on that list. If it’s music, what’s the song? What’s the artist? Be specific on the list. And then sometimes there’s an exercise of putting time, blocking time in the calendar for these things. But sometimes we find those moments or it happens and it’s that late night spot where you’re like, it’s Hershey kisses or something.

And in that moment, it’s really hard to think of anything other than the Hershey kisses. That’s where the post-it comes in. We look at the post-it. We pick something and we do it. The objective is to put that post-it, where you’re going to run into it so that it reminds you of the options in the moment where you need them. So sometimes if you’re one of the people who’s like, I’m watching TV and I have to do something with my hands, put the post-it on the coffee table, maybe we write another one. I had a client who put one on top of the ice cream thing and the freezer so that it interrupted her. She saw it. I used to keep one on my computer at work of a handful of things that I could do to just get out of the situation, find a couple minutes for myself of things that I could do, because it’s also setting ourselves up. If we think that in the moment we’re going to remember this list, we’re not

Megan Lyons:

Because we’ve trained ourself. And the bummer thing is that in the moment the chocolate does work, it does give you that rush of dopamine. Now we all know, even the listeners know it only lasts for a few minutes and then the come down is worse and whatever. And we would’ve been better off without it. Not saying that chocolate is bad. I eat chocolate every single day mindfully. And I have a

Jenn Trepeck:

Very happy relationship, a little ritual with it.

Megan Lyons:

But I in the past for sure, have been in the place where I had 18 handfuls of chocolate every day. And that certainly was not serving me. So what I’m saying is the writing it down in advance is the only way I think, or one of the only ways to preempt that because our habit is go to this, it works, go to this, it works. And if it’s not literally staring us there in the face, it’s going to be hard to break that habit.

Jenn Trepeck:

And I always say, nobody wins for making this the hardest.

Megan Lyons:

Right? Yes.

Jenn Trepeck:

Right. My objective is to help everybody figure out all the ways to make this as easy as possible. How do we make your most healthful choice the easiest one in any given moment?

Megan Lyons:

Yes, absolutely. So what are some things if people, because I’ve had people say this to me before when I’ve given them similar exercises. If they’re like, I just don’t know music. That doesn’t really sound good. I would like to go to Hawaii, but I can’t do that every day. What are some ideas that you have seen clients use successfully that have given them that little joy in the day?

Jenn Trepeck:

Yeah. It’s funny. We’re all like when somebody asks those questions, I actually liken it to when somebody says, well, what are your hobbies? Yeah. You’re like, Ugh. I don’t know. It’s the answer where I’m sure I do have hobbies, but when you use that word, I have no idea. Yes. So it might be Saturday, you have nothing to do for six hours. What do you do? Right. I am going to work out and watch TV and do nothing, and that makes me really happy. So what are the things, right? You have this much time with nothing on your calendar. What are you going to do?

Megan Lyons:

Yes. That’s exactly the way I phrase it. Sorry to interrupt you, but exactly the way I say it. You have a few hours, you’re not allowed to work, and you’re not allowed to do any chores or anything like that. What would you do? And when you say it, or I say it that way, almost always people can find some fun way to fill the time.

Jenn Trepeck:

Or really, if the thing that excites us is this trip, then the thing we’re going to put on that post-it are all the things that we need to do to plan that trip. Right? We’re going to research hotels. Yeah. We’re going to look at the different islands of Hawaii and decide where we’re going. We’re going to look at the calendar and figure out when maybe we’re going to do some budget stuff to say, okay, I know I want to go this time of year. Is that this year is that next year, right? We’re going to start to put the wheels in motion toward the thing that does get us excited.

Megan Lyons:

Yes. Amazing. I love it. I’ve heard you talk about the myth of motivation. Can you tell us more about this and why it’s a myth?

Jenn Trepeck:

Yeah. If I had a dollar, maybe even not a dollar, a nickel, for every time somebody said, I know what to do, I’m just not motivated. BA status over here, right? Yes. Because we are taught, we’re led to believe that motivation comes first. Yes. We have the motivation. Lightning strikes, we elevate from the couch, and all of a sudden we love working out and we’re going to enjoy it when we go. Right? It’s like we have the Baywatch run to the treadmill. No. Right? And no one’s real life. Does that happen? No. But we’re told led to believe that the motivation comes first. Yeah, it doesn’t.

Megan Lyons:

Agreed.

Jenn Trepeck:

It doesn’t. With our food, it doesn’t with our activity, the motivation comes second or third or fourth. The motivation comes after. So just like we were talking about with the breakfast salad, I wasn’t motivated to eat the breakfast salad until I connected it with how I felt the rest of the day. So it’s the outcome. Having had that experience motivated me to do it the next time. The first time I did it, I was not motivated. I was compliant. I was following instructions. Yes. So rather, our objective is not motivation to start. Our objective is to get into momentum.

Momentum leads to the motivation. So how do we get into momentum? We just start doing it and we figure out how to make it easier to do it. We block the time in our calendar, we set the alarm for five extra minutes. We eat dinner with our sneakers on. We buy the vegetables at the grocery store. We spend five minutes figuring out that the vegetable for this meal is this one, and the vegetable for that meal is that one or those four. We just get into momentum. We start to do it. And we do it over and over. We block the time in our calendar, we do the behavior things till momentum creates the habit, and then we can get to that identity. And the identity is when we have the motivation.

Megan Lyons:

Yes.

Jenn Trepeck:

But we’re not going to have the motivation when we’re in the outer ring going, what’s the behavior I’m supposed to do? What? Right.

Megan Lyons:

I like the way you’ve broken it down and continue to repeat, make it easy. There are all these books, power of Habit, tiny Habits, atomic Habits, you name it. All the habit books are like make it easy and build momentum. And yet still, I have people say to me, well, just putting on my shoes and going for a five minute walk after dinner isn’t going to make me lose a hundred pounds. Well, you’re probably right, but it’s not just about that one five minute walk. It truly does have to start somewhere doable in order to become the inner rings of the bullseye.

Jenn Trepeck:

And I would say, in fact, that is exactly what’s going to lead to losing or removing those a hundred extra pounds. Right.

Megan Lyons:

Over time, not just the one time. Yes. But

Jenn Trepeck:

Over time. Yes, exactly. Repeated over time. And this brings up what I often call C versus I, or consistency versus intensity. So a lot of times, all the gurus out there make us think that if we haven’t run a marathon and eaten four times and meditated for two hours by 6:00 AM we are failing already. If we don’t do the wild hit workout every single day, it doesn’t count if we don’t eat, if this even existed a textbook perfect day, right? Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, everything was textbook, we failed. What it takes for any of those things to happen is incredible intensity. Intensity and consistency are inversely related. So the more intense something is, the harder it is to be consistent. The less intense, the easier it is to be consistent, especially when we’re getting started, when we’re looking to get into momentum, right? Consistency creates momentum. So we’re looking for things to be less intense, to get to consistency and momentum. And then there might be times where you say, I’m ready for a little bit of intensity. I’m ready for the next thing. And you work with someone like Megan or like me or somebody out there who can help guide you through a period of intensity while recognizing that that period of intensity is not designed to be your every day for the rest of your life.

And most of the time when we look at Tom Brady, when we look at a lot of these people who are doing these wild intense things, their level of commitment, their need, and I’m using need on purpose for their body to perform is different than yours. So their commitment to that level of intensity is different. So we can have periods of intensity knowing that they’re designed to be short-lived, and the longer periods, the consistency requires less intensity. So we might do a couple days of more intense workouts, but the idea that we’re going to motivate ourselves every day to have the workout of our lives is also setting ourselves up for frustration and feeling like we’re failures, even though that is not the case at all.

Megan Lyons:

And I think that for sure inverse relationship applies to working out. I wonder if it’s a moving target for something like eating healthily where I definitely don’t believe there’s a perfect meal of any kind. But I’m thinking about when someone’s just starting out, just having one vegetable a day might be huge, and that’s enough intensity. And then as they get more and more consistent, can they also maintain the consistency and increase the intensity by eating multiple vegetables and focusing on protein? I think they probably Exactly. Something like food

Jenn Trepeck:

Because our threshold adjusts.

Megan Lyons:

Yeah, good

Jenn Trepeck:

Point. I always say to people what you’re willing today, what you’re willing to do today is different than what you’ll be willing to do in six months or six years or even six weeks.

Megan Lyons:

Yes.

Jenn Trepeck:

So great example of this 2011, my sister was getting married. I coached my entire family before the wedding. Want to be challenged as a coach. Coach your family. Tell

Megan Lyons:

Me about it.

Jenn Trepeck:

So at one, my sister and I grew up, we ate a lot of vegetables growing up. That wasn’t a thing for us, but we would eat Brussels sprouts, like steamed plain boring and dip ’em in ketchup. We grew up eating a lot of ketchup. So now my sister says to me, what kind of ketchup are you using? And I had evolved into this ketchup that at the time used agave or something like that, right? And she’s like, I’m not giving up my ketchup. And I was like, fine, I don’t care. Eat your ketchup, right? Use the ketchup a few months later. So what’s that ketchup you use again? Because the choices that we’re willing to make in six weeks, six months or six years are different than the choices that we’re willing to make right now. And so we evolve.

Megan Lyons:

Yes.

Jenn Trepeck:

So what was once intense will eventually not feel so intense and sort of that line changes. It might grow a little steeper for something to register is intense.

Megan Lyons:

Yes. Oh, amazing. I know people are going to want all kinds of information from you. So I’m going to try to give you a triple whammy at the end and see how much we can get of this one. I’d love to know one example of balance or behavior change in your own life that you’re either working on or have worked on. Two, if you want to leave any parting thoughts and three, tell the audience where to learn more about you.

Jenn Trepeck:

Balance in my life is salad with a side of fries, not the show, but literally eating salad with a side of fries. Yes. But also I will say I struggle with rest days. I have a hard time because I don’t feel like myself without movement. I wasn’t always this person. So even especially with the pandemic and switching to workouts at home or workouts that were less intense, I struggled with that. And now I crave certain days that are not as hard as others. Or I just notice when my body doesn’t have that in me. And that’s okay. But that’s a piece of balance for me. That’s always a constant learning.

Megan Lyons:

Amazing. Thank

Jenn Trepeck:

You. Yeah. A parting thought. I think we focused a lot on behavior change and all of that stuff. And I think the thing that I would say to everybody is, there’s nothing wrong with you. Yes, you are fine and you are not what you eat, right? Yes. You are not chips or chocolate. Right? And the people in your life are there and people love you because of who you are as a human. Yes. And that’s the value. That’s what we want to bring out. That’s what we want to fuel more with all of these other things.

Megan Lyons:

I love that.

Jenn Trepeck:

Thank you. And then how do we connect? That was the third thing, right? Yes. You got it. Okay, awesome. Alright. My website is a salad with a side of fries.com. On there you get a freebie called It’s not what to eat, it’s how to Eat. Yes. I love it. I think yes. So everybody go snag that. Talk about the easy button. It’s like a couple pages of the easy button. Love it. So that’s a website. We also gave you a link for everybody to get a complimentary wellness discovery call because I love nothing more than talking to you and hearing from you. So please schedule that and then you can find me all the places on the internet, wherever you’re listening. Now, salad with a side of Fries is the podcast and all social media. I’m at Gen Tpic, J-E-N-N-T-R-E-P-E-C-K.

Megan Lyons:

Amazing. We will link all of those, the freebie, the website, the free call, the podcast, and the social media, all the things, all in the show notes. So anywhere, whatever is your preferred method of contact, scroll on down there, find Jen, give her a follow. I think you’ll find so much more helpful information with all she has to offer. You are truly a wealth of information and wisdom and compassion. So thank you for sharing that with us, Jen today. I appreciate you being here.

Jenn Trepeck:

Oh, Megan, I appreciate you too. Thanks for having me.

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Want to hear about this topic in audio format? → Check out the podcast episode here!