Interview with Maripili Rodriguez, Healthy Lifestyle Coach
As a healthy lifestyle coach I work with serial dieters who have struggled for years, even decades to attain and maintain a healthy weight and lifestyle. Working with me you will learn how to lose more weight more consistently that you are now. I will teach you how to lose weight without having to starve yourself, count calories, or be dependent on quick fix pills or pre-packaged meals. You will look forward to working out and reap the benefits of more energy, less weight and stress, and better sleep. Even those most adverse to wholesome foods like grains and vegetable will learn to enjoy preparing and eating quick, delicious, and healthy meals. With my Healthy Lifestyle System, not only will you reach your goals, you will maintain them for years and for life.
Your system and services are very unique, how did you come about them?
I am extremely proud to say that I am a product and result of my Healthy Lifestyle System. I have transformed my physical and emotional health, my body, my career, and in turn my life through positive, healthy lifestyle changes. My journey began 20 years ago as a teenage girl trying to deal with my changing and developing body that brought with it extra weight, low self esteem, and bouts of depression. For the next couple of decades I achieve short lived intervals of weight loss, mostly through unhealthy, unrealistic, and unsustainable methods. In 2000 I enrolled at the New York restaurant school where I gained a culinary education and additional weight to my already overweight, petite frame. After culinary school I took up boxing and kickboxing. These workouts burn massive calories, but I was still eating way too much. I just couldn’t find a balance and was still unhappy and overweight. In 2002 during a shopping excursion with my cousin to find a dress for my best friend’s wedding, there in the communal changing room, my cousin asked me, as I was peeling a dress off over my head, if I would like to join her in her weight loss program. Well, I was glad that dress was over my face because I’m sure my face was beet red from embarrassment. Me in a weight loss program!?! Me who was currently working out 4-5 days a week for hour long kickboxing classes (but still eating all the wrong foods and huge portions). Really?!?! Well I thought about it for a couple of weeks and then decided to join, as a birthday gift to myself. It was best the gift in the world. I joined her in October 2002 and lost 23lbs in 5 months. I then keep the weight off by education myself about natural foods, physical fitness and by staying physically active. In June 2004 I started a new job in NYC’s financial district and I had my vibrant, exciting hobbies and activities like cooking and entertaining, working out which now varied from running, hiking, boxing, flamenco and salsa dance classes, Muay Thai boxing, hours of walking and bicycle riding. The healthier and happier I became the more questions and cries for help I received from friends and work colleagues about health, nutrition and wellness. Not only were they asking questions, but they were actually implementing the advice I was giving and explaining to them, and they were getting RESULTS! It made my day when a work colleague would email or come by with a healthy lifestyle question. I was ecstatic when a co-worker would come in with a homemade, healthy lunch that our conversations and my advice, and tips had inspired them to prepare. I remember using the conference room to give exercise demos and also discussing different types of kale with the budget director on route to Washington, DC. My Ah ha! moment came in 2008 during a conversation at work (with the budget director, a fellow healthy lifestyle goer) where I commented that I felt there were not enough healthy cooking shows on television and my colleague said “Well what are you going to do about it?” Let me tell you, that question just echoed in my mind …“Well what are you going to do about it?”…“Well what are you going to do about it?”…not so much in the sense of what was I going to do about the lack of healthy television programming, but what was I going to do with my life and my passion for helping others and healthy living. What was I going to do about all the people who were in the same place I was 6 years prior? What advantages, insight, and solutions could I offer them? Well not having to suffer for years, even decades as an unhealthy and unhappy person, that’s what I have to offer. I can share my experiences, trails, education and errors from my health journey with others and make their process much, much easier saving them time, money and effort. I already had a culinary education, what if I paired that with personal training and holistic health counseling, two key aspects of my health journey that allowed me to maintain my weight loss over many years. Two months after my Ah-ha moment I enrolled in The American Academy of Personal Training, upon graduating in 2009 I attained an additional certification from the National Strength and Conditioning Association, and graduated from The Institute for Integrative Nutrition in NYC as a certified holistic health counselor again attaining an additional certification from the American Association of Drugless Practitioners. Today I am a healthy lifestyle coach and am in the best physical and emotionally shape of my life. I am blessed to be able to serve you and share my knowledge with you. It is something I am deeply grateful for. If you only knew…
Who are your clients exactly? What do you expect of them?
My health counseling clients are people who I call “serial dieters” people who not only struggle to attain a healthy weight but also struggle to maintain that healthy, ideal weight and therefore have been on a diet for most of their lives, like I was. My clients are ready to lose weight normally and naturally and they understand and accept that the process, the journey will take time and effort on their part. I expect my clients to be positive and realistic about the work they have to put in, in order to attain their goals and maintain them for life.
How is your system different from other weight loss programs?
Most weight loss programs only focus on weight loss and mostly through unsustainable methods. Are you really going to eat pre-packaged foods, cut carbs forever, drink 2 shakes a day, or take quick fix pills for the rest of your life? Or do you want to reclaim your health, achieve ideal weight, increase energy, and feel and look your absolute best everyday for the rest of your life? My system is different because it focuses not just on weight loss, but 3 key factors for a lifetime of wellness: holistic nutrition, physical fitness and cooking wholesome, healthy foods. Doesn't that just sound like it make sense and works!
How will we work together and what does the program entail?
We will develop a step-by-step system that will incorporate simple yet powerful lifestyle adjustments to help you realize dramatically improved health; weight loss, stress reduction, better sleep, increased energy and self confidence. I will educate and support you as you transition your diet and grow beyond old eating patterns and unhealthy habits. We will conduct our coaching sessions over the phone or skype in half hour sessions. If you live in my tri-state area of Jersey City, Hoboken, Manhattan we can also implement personal training and natural foods cooking classes (1 on 1 or in a group if your friends and families are also interested).
How long is the program?
In order to stop the cycle of serial dieting we need to get to the root of your unhealthy habits and mindset, figure out your negative triggers that have led to years of serial dieting and how to disarm them. In order to accomplish this we will need time and intensive work sessions together, that is why the system is offered in 12, 6, and 3 month packages.
I have a busy life. Although I want to become healthy very badly, I don’t have much time to spare. How much time do I need to invest?
The time and thought you are currently spending stressing over your weight, what’s healthy to eat, and making time for physical activity will be replace with a step by step system that will get you the results you want and will require no more time and effort than you are exerting now.
How quickly can I expect results?
If you follow my system and put in the work, you will lose weight more quickly and more consistently than you would on your own. Following the plan faithfully, you can expect to see a weight loss of about 2 lbs a week, in a couple of weeks you will feel the positive effects of the delicious, health-promoting foods we are going to incorporate into your diet, and after a few months you will begin to experience overall improved health and happier more meaningful living. I did it, and now I want to show you how to do it too.
