Sugar-Free & Thriving: Overcoming Addiction and Losing Weight – Christine Trimpe on The Healers Café with Manon Bolliger

miss out on activities with my family. So that was 10 years ago. Was the starting point to this, what I call now my quitting sugar journey. But that was…something had to change, and I came home from that trip and was ready to take this journey. And, you know, I’m so grateful that my journey was step by step, and we could talk like about how the steps went, but that definitely was the point of my where my transformation began.

Manon Bolliger  03:03

And do you find that true for most of your clients now that there’s a pivotal point where they make a bigger decision, like a, you know, a value driven life decision?

Christine Trimpe  03:20

Yes, yeah. Absolutely. And of course, I’m so privileged to be able to coach the women that come to me. I coach my old self. I attract the same the women that find themselves in the same type of situation in life. Like I was a professional woman. I had a career in accountancy for 32 years. I was a controller in a medium sized Corporation, and I never felt like a professional person, because I just couldn’t get my health work right. I just could not do this thing right. I would, you know, yo yo diet. I would lose a little gain a lot. Lose a little gain a lot. But now looking back and knowing all of that, and meeting women where they are in the same place, it’s like I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and then coming home and exploring this whole new world of metabolic health that no doctor, no nutritionist, no registered dietitian, had ever shared with me before. So when women hear my story, you know, we connect because they’re like, Oh, no one’s ever said that to me before. So, yeah, it’s…we like…we attract each other, because they also, too, think about their future, and they’re about the same age as I am, and they think about, I want to play with my grandchildren. I want to meet my grandchildren, you know? And so we’re all at that stage of life. And so yes, they, they do all come to some type of I can’t keep, I can’t continue doing this any longer moment.

Manon Bolliger  04:54

But it’s not necessarily with the knowledge that it’s the sugar, the cause, right? It’s generally the weight correct?

Christine Trimpe  05:01

Exactly. Women come to me because they want to lose weight, and they’ve seen maybe a transformation side by side photo, or they’ve read my story in the magazine, and then they…what they don’t realize is that they, yeah, they want to lose the weight, and that’s a great thing to get healthy. But what they don’t realize is how highly addictive sugar and refined carbohydrates. And, you know, food that is high in sugar, it’s addictive, and they don’t realize that.

Manon Bolliger  05:33

So, so what are we including in sugar?

Christine Trimpe  05:36

Oh, sugar, yes, when I say sugar, it’s not just the sweet stuff. So when I started my quitting sugar journey, I did give up the sweet stuff, you know, like the white sugars, the cookies, the cakes, you know, birthday cakes at the office, candy, things like that. But it also includes starch or starchy vegetables and the factory foods, like, if you look at food ingredient labels, you’ll see that there’s sugar in almost everything in the grocery store, right? And when you go up and down the aisles. So I’m talking about sugar, grains, starchy vegetables. Those are things that are, if you give the carb count on them, anything like a high carb count, oatmeal. Oatmeal is loaded with sugar. Heart Healthy Cheerios is loaded with sugar. Things like, yes, yes, yeah, so. And then my thing, my biggest thing that I really loved to snack on, when I was snacking on foods high in sugar are potato chips, like salty, crunchy potato chips are pure sugar when it hits your body to digest.

Manon Bolliger  06:47

Right. And do you find that often it’s, it’s like that it’s a a food or a taste, you know, because you think sugar, but yours was salty potato chips, right?

Christine Trimpe  07:01

Right, right.

Manon Bolliger  07:02

How, how would you describe, like, the scope of this sort of addictive desire? What? How? What’s like? What’s behind that?

Christine Trimpe  07:12

Yeah, I think it definitely the the food that like potato chips that’s made in a factory. I really believe that they’re made to be hyper palatable, meaning, the food manufacturers want us to keep coming back for more. And so those potato chips, like the ruffles with ridges that were salty that I could not just eat one, you know, if you start, I’m just going to have a handful of potato chips. And then before long, you realize you’re like, oh my goodness, I need to close up this bag, because I just ate half a bag of potato chips without even thinking. So food, those foods are hyper palatable. They keep us coming back for more. And I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I know that they you know, it might be profit driven to create foods, you know, the salt, the fats, the sugars, and then our brain gets used to that dopamine hit, and it just it wants that reward, especially when we’re in a…I often would cope with food when I was, you know, emotionally dysregulated. And that doesn’t mean just being sad or depressed, like even being in times of celebration, you know, you’re like, Oh, you’re driven, I was driven to ingest, eat more foods that was not serving my health at all.

Manon Bolliger  08:30

And what’s your approach? I mean, there’s different approaches, obviously, with or different methodologies to help people what is unique or different about the way you approach and maybe if you could explain a little bit, how do you approach this?

Christine Trimpe  08:49

Yeah, so I actually wrote all about my method, which is called the Sugar Freed Me Method in my book, Sugar Free same name, and my coaching programs are all named Sugar Free as well. So I came up just looked back in hindsight. Look what happened for me was when I began quitting sugar, I realized what sugar was doing to my health. I realized how it was damaging my metabolism, and I realized how I’d been stuck in that cycle because my blood sugars were unbalanced, my insulin hormone was no doubt out of whack. So in hindsight, I looked and I saw that, first of all, for me, this was a very faith based journey. Finally, for once in my life, being someone that grew up in the faith, grew up in my church, I never thought to incorporate my spiritual side in this journey. I just felt like I could control the physical aspect of it by counting calories and doing the graphs and the charts and weighing myself. But so first and foremost, I have five pillars, and the first foundational pillar is my faith. And then my other pillars are food, choosing whole, nutritious foods to fuel our body well. And then fasting, not being afraid of fasting, learning how to do that also, it really grows the characteristic of self control, which is very helpful when you’re trying to get healthy, and then feelings. That’s another part of the journey that I missed out on my 30 years of dieting. But yeah, I learned, and I coach my clients through the emotional health aspect is really important, and then fitness. I’m not a gym, I’m not a fitness trainer, but I really discovered that once I got to a healthier weight, I wanted to move my body, and it just felt so good to move my body. And I also talk and coach my clients that fitness is important for not just our body, but for our mind and for our spiritual health as well too. So those are the five pillars of the Sugar Freed Me Method.

Manon Bolliger  10:49

So can we go a little bit into the faith aspect of it? Could you expand well what it meant for you and how it might relate to other people. What…what does that mean exactly?

Christine Trimpe  11:05

Yeah, so for me, I never really thought that God cared about the way I cared about my health. I felt like he was just like too busy to be concerned about that, and I was really good about hiding my food behaviors, which, in hindsight, now I talk a lot about how I used to do a lot of secret eating, where I would, you know, hit the drive through and in secret, you know, and the only person I was fooling was myself. Because, as a person of faith, I know that, you know, God, God sees everything. But when I finally started on this sugar free journey. I started waking up first thing in the morning really refreshed, and for the first time in my life, I started picking up my Bible every single day, and I’d never done that in before in all my years. I was almost 50 years old at that time, so I started reading scripture, and I started learning that God does care about how I care about my health, and he called me to care about my health as a temple, this one body, this one life that he’s given me. And now I’m so excited. I just love sharing about how through this journey, this faith based journey, like joy has grown in my heart, and when you have joy increasing in your heart, you can’t keep it quiet. And so that’s why I show up. And I have to share with women like, there, there’s so much more to life I was living. I would…I would say I used to wear a lot of masks quite well. Like I would have the appearance that I was a happy person, but really deep down, I was really full of sorrow because of my circumstances, not only just my health circumstances, but it also, you know, it made me emotionally depressed and feeling anxious and feeling like a failure and all those things. So incorporating and using scripture to help me through this journey really has built that solid foundation, and that really is the weight loss was wonderful, but growing spiritually and having this greater joy and freedom in living is really where the victory is.

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Manon Bolliger  14:12

Yeah, no, it’s interesting, because I’ve seen many times in health having a spiritual component to the journey. It’s kind of what the journey is about, you know, and it doesn’t need to be religious, per se. I think for some people, that’s not how they find it. It sounds like for you, you were exposed to a platform that was already established, you know, but I, I don’t know. Do you…can you comment on that? Like, do you think how much was your…did your past help you and or can a person in your mind, you know, have a spiritual experience, a spiritual journey, without necessarily having any real exposure to that like and yet, you know, do your program and lose the weight. I don’t know if my questions are clear, but…

Christine Trimpe  15:23

Okay, let me see if I can answer this for you. So I do feel like I was very blessed that I was raised in the Christian faith, so I had that Heritage of Faith, right? But it was very, I always say it was my casual Christian years. I was very casual about my religious, you know, you would call it my religious experience. I would go to church off and on, and I did it to, you know, to make sure my parents or my grandparents weren’t disappointed that I didn’t take my kids to church. So that was my foundation. But I’m very blessed that I did have that. But what I discovered in this, you know, realizing that God does care about how I how we care about our bodies. I 100% believe that God created us, man, woman, uniquely in body, mind and spirit, like we are not just a physical body. We have thoughts, we have emotions. We have ways to move forward. We have ways to connect with the Lord. You know we could read, we could read His Word, and we can have an understanding of what He is calling us to do individually. You know, for our health, some of us are in different places, but yeah, I just seeing and understanding like there is more to life. I mean, again, it’s just like this greater freedom and this greater joy that I had never experienced before. And I hope everybody finds that, like there is so much more to life than being stuck in a rut or being stuck in your circumstances.

Manon Bolliger  16:53

Yeah. And I think the idea, what resonates with me is, is the idea that there’s there’s more, you know, we are bigger than our physical 3d dimension, you know. And often what initiates change and desire to move forward is that inner knowing that there’s something more, right? And then, and that always calls in values, right? You know, do you value you know, your body, whether you call it a temple or not, you know, or do you value life? You know, do you value your family? Like, I think those are core, you know, fundamental beliefs that if you’re really unattached to all of that, why would you care, you know, and why would you change you know? So I think it’s, yeah, I think there’s something definitely around that that I have seen in my practice as well, when people are, you know, committed to making big, big changes, right?

Christine Trimpe  18:02

And I feel like when you’re you feel stuck in your circumstances, like when I was morbidly obese. I hated that terminology. I hated like, walking into the doctor’s office and then saying you’re morbidly obese. I’m like, tell me something. I don’t know. Doctor Okay, so you just have this like I was, I describe it as just carrying this extra weight on me that I didn’t need. I had the 100 pounds of weight on my body, but I also had, like, 1000 pounds of distress and despair and disappointment and frustration, and, you know, all the things that just really weigh down on your heart. But when you you know, like in that, that turning point moment that I had just knowing and thinking and praying like there had to be more to life, like I’m capable of doing this. If I can have a successful career, there’s got to be a way to get out of this circumstance, too.

Manon Bolliger  18:53

And what do you find from your experience, whether in personal or through your work, that is the hardest for people in this journey. What’s the sticking points?

Christine Trimpe  19:06

Yeah, it’s getting them to move from this contemplation point, like I’m contemplating improving my health, and what I have found with so many women who have been in my world for years, now that they have been contemplating this, and for some reason they just get stuck, and they get hung up there, and they just can’t step out in faith and just take that next step, you know. So that’s a really hard, difficult place to overcome. I mean, maybe you’ve experienced that too in your practice, like people want to get healthy, and you give them the tools and the resources and the advice and you just watch them spin their wheels.

Manon Bolliger  19:50

Yeah, but often in those cases, there’s an emotional attachment to what permits what’s going on.

Christine Trimpe  19:58

Yeah.

Manon Bolliger  19:59

And I’ve seen that with, you know, even very serious chronic diseases, or, you know, in my, think it was my first book, or second book I wrote about it. Just it really hit me, this, this woman who had MS, who got out of her wheelchair, was dancing, was like, her life was back.

Christine Trimpe  20:21

Yeah.

Manon Bolliger  20:22

But she lost her husband’s constant care of her and and she couldn’t, she couldn’t live with that. It’s, it’s interesting. She felt like he was, you know, he was wheeling her. She had attention and obviously she would have attention in different ways in her new state, but she she wasn’t ready to stay in that state, and then she refused to continue treatment because she was afraid then she would lose him. It’s very interesting, right?

Christine Trimpe  21:01

Oh, that is very complicated. Yeah, emotional.

Manon Bolliger  21:04

And that was 25 years ago, knowing what I know now, I think I probably would have found ways around this state. But that at the time, you know, it was like, Okay, it’s not her time. It’s not this is not the journey. And, you know, I honored that this is her process. I did try and convince her, of course, a little bit. But then, you know, it’s like, okay, you know, yeah, people choose.

Christine Trimpe  21:32

Right. And the one thing for me as a coach too, coaches move people forward. I’m a health and wellness coach as well. So coaches move women forward, and once we show up and we start like, getting the food right, and we’re we’re releasing the sugar cravings, we’re overcoming the sugar addiction. We’re not relying on junk food so much, then that’s when I might encourage them, if a lot of emotional stuff is coming up, if they’re like, realizing what the trauma was in their life that may have put them in this circumstance, then that’s when I would recommend, like, go, you know, go work with a professional about the past. But first, it’s great for them to get in that place where they’re eating healthy and they’re feeling better, because then they’ve got this, they’re grounded in this and and as they work through the emotion, the emotions of trauma, because they’re grounded in their nutrition and their food and what they’re doing, and it’s making them feel so much better, too. They’ve got that to fall back on as they start digging up all this, all the emotions of it. Yes.

Manon Bolliger  22:38

Yeah, no, that makes sense. And what about, like, nutritional deficiencies from eating a or, you know, giving most of your calories to foods that are worthless. Have you found that that, of course, when they eat real foods and cook, or, you know, have raw salads or and whatever else they you know, the right amount of protein. I’m not sure what your recommended diet is, but, I mean, it makes sense. It changes the physiology. But have you noticed that often there’s deficiencies nutritionally, that common ones that you see?

Christine Trimpe  23:17

Oh, yeah. Well, first of all, I think most Americans are deficient in magnesium. We see, you know, we start to that’s one of the things I talk about, first with my coaching clients. But and then I do recommend for because most of the women are my age, like perimenopausal, post menopausal, recommend trying to focus on getting 30% of their nutrition intake from protein daily, and then while keeping their sugar and carbs low. But yeah, and if, if they do have, like, if they come to a place where they’re not losing weight, and it doesn’t make sense, like they’ve got their nutrition right, then I might recommend they work with, like, a naturopath or a functional medicine doctor to figure out, like if something’s going on with their gut health, get some blood work done. What is your fasting insulin? Let’s check that out and see if that is improving, if it’s lowering to a normal range. So, yeah, after 30 years of eating the way I ate, personally, my body was very nutritionally deficient. You know, I had a lot of things that I needed to heal.

Manon Bolliger  24:24

And we’re in a difficult time because a lot of our food is literally poisoned, you know, it’s, I mean, they use, you know, so many chemicals, unless you can do organic but even that, you know, with all the spraying in the skies, you know, you it’s very hard to get clean clean food, you know. So, yeah, we’re up definitely against a challenge, you know. But again, one in the sense that the more people who become aware of this, then we have multifaceted ways of getting on track. You know?

Christine Trimpe  25:00

Right. Yes, exactly. It is hard to trust the food environment, but when I can, when it’s in the budget, I do like to buy from, like my local farms and ranchers.

Manon Bolliger  25:10

Yeah.

Christine Trimpe  25:11

And at the farmers market, and just trusting and hoping that they say it’s organic and pesticide free, than just trusting that it really is. So, you’re right. It’s difficult to navigate.

Manon Bolliger  25:24

It is, yeah. So, well, we’re actually at our time. Do you…do you have something that you could guide people to, either a book you’ve written or you know how to what are the next steps if they’re resonating with this, and they’d like to work with you.

Christine Trimpe  25:41

Yeah, I would love to invite them to check out my book, Sugar Freed. The tagline is, stop losing the weight loss battle, start gaining the victory. And I have a link for them that they can actually get a chapter excerpt free as a free gift. So if they download that, they’ll get more information about the book, and then they can find me on my website, just my name, christinetrimpe.com I have all kinds of resources on there. They can connect with me, and I’m on social media everywhere.

Manon Bolliger  26:11

Alright, well, thank you very much for sharing your time and your knowledge. And yeah, I appreciate our discussion.

Christine Trimpe  26:18

Okay, thank you, Manon. It’s been so great.

Manon – Key Takeaways  26:21

So, as we saw with the interview with Christine Trimpe, she uses a faith based method in addition to the common sense removal of sugar in her methodology. What I wanted to point out as well at Bowen College, where we train people in Bowen Therapy. We use also a physical based therapy. So the question would be, if a person who has sugar cravings is also disconnected from their body, Bowen Therapy would be a wonderful addition. One because it helps the body detox, it increases circulation, it works on the lymphatics, and it’ll help flush all the excess and it’s also good for emotional release. So in addition to this work, if a person had a body based therapy like Bowen Therapy, I’d be very curious to see the the results of this. So thank you for joining us and see you next time.

ENDING: 41:33

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