Angela Villa: Certified Coach Testimony
Hi, there! My name is Angela and I am a Trim Healthy Certified Coach! I have 6 beautiful children, 1 boy and 5 girls. I am married to the most wonderful, supportive man on earth and we celebrated 16 years this past August.
I love the Trim Healthy Mama plan. It has changed my life. I have personally lost 115 pounds on the plan. I have learned to really break down the understanding of THM for others and decided to become an official coach.
A Little About Me…
I have been overweight my entire life. I lost my baby sister in a tragic drowning accident when I was 7-years old. I remember pulling her out of the water and not a whole lot after that. Needless to say, food became a comfort to me in my time of sadness. I began gaining weight right after the accident. Since then I have had a very emotionally abusive relationship with food and diets.
I was put on my first diet at age 8. I reached the 200-pound mark at age 12 while in Jr. High and then the 300-pound mark in college. It was then that I decided to go even more extreme and have gastric bypass surgery. That worked until it didn’t. I may have cut out half my stomach, but I never addressed my relationship with food. And when things got hard, food was there and I gained it all back.
Diets NEVER worked for me because I never addressed WHY I turned to food to soothe my emotions, instead of addressing painful life experiences and comfort the pain. My emotions were stronger than any diet. It was when I was at my wits end in January of 2017 that I reached out on Facebook asking for help in better understanding food and how it worked with and in the body. A sweet friend and business partnerÃs comment stood out among all of the programs and sales pitches I received on that post. She said, “I feel strongly in telling you to check out Trim Healthy Mama”. Then she linked the Facebook group and I clicked on it.
The first thing I read was a post about how eating can heal the body. That was everything I needed to see. It wasn’t about weight loss and dieting and stress and chaos (like most all media we see out there shaming us into losing weight), it was simply… food. It can either heal you or kill you.
I bought the book and the cookbook and dove into blogs I found on Pinterest. I knew I had to keep it simple for myself so I started with 1 meal a day that first week, while cutting out sugar completely. I didn’t even tell my family, I just fed them new meals. I continued to stay completely off sugar and my body began to heal. I incorporated more recipes and more healing happened.
My husband got on board to support me and lost a little weight himself. Funny enough, he realized his body was healing when one day his eyes stopped hurting. They had been hurting for years. I believe it was his blood sugar. So now he is a full blown Trim Healthy Dad. The body is wanting to heal. I knew that I needed to heal both my physical body and my emotions. That was a HUGE key in being able to stick to this change and be ready to handle any emotional trauma that was sure to come. IF I could heal my emotional baggage, my need for being FAT, as a protection, would not be necessary. The side effect of my emotions and physical healing was weight loss. It has been a year and a half since starting my healing journey. I am down 115 pounds and I love my new healthy, whole life!
A Little About My Coaching Techniques…
I work with women to help them breakdown the THM plan into digestible doses. But more importantly, I specialize in the emotional side of eating and food. I know what it is like to lose weight and gain it back because we choose not to deal with our emotional attachment to eating and food.
I run a workshop that anyone can join at any time. They can start where they are and work at their own pace. This group is helpful to all levels of the THM understanding. My workshop also guides you through using affirmations to heal the pain and trauma that causes a need for being fat as a protection. I speak all over the country teaching women how to release the pain and heal the body. With healing comes weight loss and the shedding of weight.
I have a passion for what I do because of the absolute healing that I have personally experienced. I also specialize in emotional wellness using essential oils and I created the Emotional Weight Loss Training Program.
I operate mostly from Facebook. My Facebook community is www.bit.ly/emotionalweightloss
A Couple Tips…
1. My biggest tip is to NOT LOSE WEIGHT. Instead, focus on healing the body. Giving it what it needs. Fueling it when it needs. Loving it as it is right now. You can’t change what you hate, so love all of you.
2. My second tip is to START WITH ONE MEAL A DAY. That is all you need to do to know that this way of eating is simple. Do not overwhelm yourself! One simple, on-plan meal a day for a week or two.
My favorite “after school” or “taxi cab mom” snack is an on-plan, open-faced peanut butter and grape “E” sandwich.
Open-Faced PB & Grapes
Ingredients:
– 1 or 2 slices Sprouted Bread
– 1 big spoonful of Peanut Junkie Butter
– 5 to 10 halved Grapes
Instructions:
1. Spread a generous helping of Peanut Junkie Butter on your bread.
2. Top with grapes and enjoy!