Our guest is Marta Tracy

Marta Tracy was working at Sony Pictures Television, when she was contemplating what to do next in her life and career.  The quote that kept repeatedly coming to her mind at the time was: "Where your gift meets the world's need, there lies your success."  This quote encouraged her to think about what her "gift" was and how that gift would provide a benefit to others.  She decided to co-author the book STARRING YOU!

Writing this book revolved around her physical and emotional health and following her intuition. Working on STARRING YOU! helped her with her personal healing after the death of her husband four years ago.  Marta states, “Working on the book was creatively fulfilling and helped me stay focused on something positive instead of focusing on negative thinking and feeling sorry for myself.  Along the way, in my search to heal myself physically, mentally and spiritually, I tried many avenues and approaches.”

Our guest is Michelle May

Ever since Michelle May was a small child she has battled issues with food and her weight.  She first became aware she was fat at 6 years old as the result of a food-related comment her father made about her.  At home she got confusing messages about food.  On the one hand food was equated with love, because both of her grandmothers were wonderful cooks.  On the other, her mother avoided certain foods to stay slim.  She also was taught not to waste food and to clean her plate.

After her parents divorce when she was 9 she turned to food for security and comfort, which inevitably led to more weight and dieting.

She was soon on the roller coaster ride of overeating and dieting and feeling totally out of control around food and with her weight.  This was more disconcerting to her, because her chosen profession was in the medical field.  She became a doctor and struggled with the hypocrisy.  How, she would ask herself, could she practice medicine and fail at dieting?  She came to understand the answer from her husband and children, who never dieted and didn’t struggle with their weight.  She discovered that she wasn’t listening to her own hunger levels or needs, but had been caught in the trap of emotional eating.

Our guest is Roberta (Bobbi) Smith

Bobbi Smith shares her “claim to fame" is that of a breast cancer survivor.  Prior to her diagnosis, family was of utmost importance to her.   She was the picture of health, she exercised regularly, teaching 2 to 4 cardio/muscle classes a week, did weight training, consistently worked on keeping her mental, spiritual, emotional and physical health a priority, thus keeping her stress level down and her energy up.  She then heard those words "Breast Cancer."  She was diagnosed in August of 2000.

Having always been a very healthy person, never sick, never taken medication, never having had to face anything life threatening, meeting cancer head on was terribly difficult for her.  The reality that she could die long before she thought she would was frightening to her, and her family, of course.  She didn't know how she "should" act or feel or "be."  It was foreign territory for her and there were times that she didn't think she handled it as well as she should have.  Bobbi shares, “I tried to be outwardly positive, but on the inside I was scared to death, literally.  I was open and honest with my husband and we were able to share our feelings, which was very important….   I learned that working on getting back physically, mentally, emotionally, all went hand-in-hand.  .  Once I felt better in all of those areas, it was smooth sailing.  Everything got better and better.”

Our guest is Mary Williams

Mary Williams was in a car accident nineteen years ago that left her with physical limitations and extreme back pain.  She went to every health care practitioner available to her, but only got temporary relief.  After fourteen years of pain, she decided she couldn’t live that way any longer.  She began reading everything she could about back pain and discovered that she could be in more control of her situation than she thought.  As she read, she began to experiment.  She tried a lot of different things and kept the ones that helped and discarded the ones that didn’t. 

What she discovered is the correlation between healthy living and back pain.  She learned that stress is a major component of back pain and that regular exercise and anti-inflammatory foods reduces the pain.  This insight led to significant changes in her lifestyle.  She used to drink coffee all morning, diet coke all afternoon and rarely ate healthy meals.  She exercised sporadically and worked all the time.  Now she keeps moving, does Pilates for core strengthening, eats healthy anti-inflammatory foods, avoids caffeine, sugar and alcohol.  For her, life is either a world of pain and limitations or one of self-care and options.  She chooses wellness and has lived nearly pain free for the last five years.

Our guest is Meg Barnhouse

Meg Barnhouse didn't wait to start her life until she reached her goal weight.  She went after her dreams and in the past 15 years she has achieved a second degree black belt, written 5 books, and is a speaker, humorist and singer/songwriter getting her message out to audiences around the country.  What she knows for sure is that you can be happy with who you are, and size isn’t the issue.  She also knows that each person has something to share with the world that no one else can do, and that this is what we should focus on – not our weight.

She focuses on being strong and fit rather than thin and trim.  She doesn't go down the road of bewailing on what she eats or what she should do differently.  Meg stops her self-hatred talk when looking in the mirror and replaces it with encouragement and gratitude.  Listen to Meg share her story on living life and letting go of the ideal body image and destructive behaviors that come with it.