My Story

Welcome to Wilcken Wellness! Figured I’d start the show with my own personal story around fitness, food and all things health. My journey to health started when I was a young, stay at home mom of three. My hands were full, I was overhwhelmed, had no friends, and really no identity outside of mom and wife. Looking back, I’m fairly certain I had post partum depression. I knew I needed some thing that defined me as Lyndsey, not just mom. I’ve always been a fairly active person, so figured I’d start working out. Let’s be honest though, your job as a woman is to be skinny and attractive. At least, this is the story I believed. A good woman is: beautiful, has a “perfect body” (what does that even mean?), is a perfect mother, great home maker, has an immaculate house, a wonderful cook, crafty as f#ck, keep her husband pleased in the bedroom ;), and does it all with a smile on her face and never complains. Anyone relate??

Maybe ALL my intentions for working out weren’t super authentic, but it did give me a sense of purpose and direction. I quickly fell in love with exercise! I would go into my basement, find a youtube or pinterest workout, turn on loud music and have a great time! What I didn’t know at the time was how incredible amazing the body is! With an increase in my activity levels came an increase in hunger. The fitness industry is ripe with messages of how to deal with this problem and how to lose weight. This was the beginning of my downward spiral into my disordered eating and trying to control and white knuckle my way into a smaller body.

I’ve tried so many different diets! There’s loads of information to wade through in the fitness industry. The question of how you ACTUALLY lose weight was the focus of my internet searches. Lots of promises for the REAL way to lose weight: “The 5 things you should never eat”, “The 5 things you should always eat”, “10 superfoods you should be eating to lose that stubborn belly fat”, “Don’t ever eat after 6 if you want to lose weight”, “Carbs are responsible for your weight gain”, and it goes on and on and on…

I gave up my favorite foods again and again with the promise of “if you have enough will power to finish this diet than you will lose that baby weight.” The idea of “good” and “bad” foods started to haunt my brain. I would try really hard to eat “healthy” but would always cave and eat all the cookies.

I didn’t trust myself around my favorite foods. I would white knuckle my way through eating green smoothies, quinoa, “healthy desserts”, but would eventually fall off the wagon, ruin my diet, so may as well make it a good mistake and start again tomorrow. My body and food became the enemy that I was trying to conquer.

AS Master Uguay from Kung Fu Panda says, “One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.” The harder I tried, the worse it got. I was now obsessed with food, thinking about it all the time, and going through the cycle of restricting then binging on a weekly basis. I was gaining and losing the same 10 pounds regularly, and at my worst I had gained 20 pounds.

Let me remind you that I’m also a personal trainer at the same time! So not only am I failing as a woman trying to lose weight, but I’m a huge imposter! How can I teach people about their health when I am secretly eating all the bread, ice cream and cookies when no one is around? It was my biggest source of shame.

I decided to really study the science of nutrition. I said it was for my clients, but really, I was just trying to figure out once and for all, what was the TRUTH around weight loss and how to achieve it. I learned all about energy balance and while it helped me to understand the mechanics of it, it didn’t touch on the “why” of my binge eating problem. In fact, since I was aware now of HOW many calories I had eaten, I would just try to eat that much less the next day (which sometimes would amount to not eating at all).

Somewhere along the line I was introduced to this idea of intuitive eating and that was the beginning of my journey to listening to my body. giving myself unconditional permission to eat and ditching the labels around “good” and “bad” food.

I can’t tell you what a relief it has been that slowly over time I wasn’t thinking about food all the time anymore! It freed up the space to focus on other things in my life and how to live a healthy lifestyle that also includes JOY!!

Now I am on a mission to spread the truth that you really can YOLO while also taking great care of your body.