374 Tracee Gluhaich: No Fricken Weigh

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be a fat burning machine …never going hungry or living in the gym? You may wonder if it’s possible … especially for those of us over 40, and of course like everything in business and in life … if you can conceive it… you can achieve it.

MELINDA

I’m Melinda Wittstock and today on Wings of Inspired Business we meet an inspiring entrepreneur and integrative health coach who helps women over 40 transform their bodies into high-energy dynamos … and their minds into laser-sharp achievers.

Tracee Gluchaich (Glue-high-ch) is the founder of HighEnergyGirl.com and author of the book No Fricken Weigh! Her leap into entrepreneurship was inspired by a deeply personal pain – we’ll talk about that, plus practical tips to feel and look your best on your own terms, and what it takes to succeed in business.

Tracee Gluhaich is an Integrative Health Coach and Personal Trainer and her new book is called No Fricken Weigh! 21 Days to Ditch the Diet and Shed the Weight.

Her passion is teaching and inspiring women how to age stronger and ditch the old-fashioned dieting mentality. They can heal their bodies and reach their wellness goals by focusing on nourishing self-care and healthy fat whole foods. No counting calories or points, we mindfully eat what our bodies need and crowd out the crap. By filling your life with joyful activities and nourishing self-care, the need to stuff our emotions and fill the gaps with food disappears. The focus is on creating a lasting lifestyle change.

Tracee also hosts two podcasts: Be Well, Be Keto and High Energy Girl.

The crazy success of No Fricken Weigh proves that there is a demand for diets that are not deprivation based. Women are tired of starting the same program every Monday, only to get side-lined by Friday.

No Fricken Weigh features 21 healing foods with recipes and 21 nourishing self-care practices that the reader can add into her week.

So are you ready for Tracee Gluhaich (Glue-high-ch)? Let’s fly.

Melinda Wittstock:      Tracee, welcome to Wings.

Tracee Gluhaich:           Hey Melinda, thank you so much for having me, I’m super excited to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:       I’m excited to have you too, because I think you’re doing something really transformational for women in their 50s, you know really giving them permission to play a bigger game, go for it, that life is not over at 50, that you can really reinvent and be healthy and vital and all of that. I’m curious, where did the inspiration come for you to really step into helping women in that particular age group?

Tracee Gluhaich:           Well, it’s kind of a long story, and I’ll make it very brief. Basically, when I was from a very young age, I had this quest that I wanted to be skinny. My two best friends growing up were skinny, and I just had this propensity and desire to be skinny, thinking it meant love. Well, fast-forward, I realized that it was the wrong thing because my mom got very sick, she ended up getting Alzheimer’s. My father also got very sick with cancer multiple times, and I realized that skinny wasn’t going to get me anything out of life, I needed to be strong and I needed to be healthy, and I needed to turn my attention to something other than a number on the scale. I kind of ditched that mentality, and went for something else.

Melinda Wittstock:       Isn’t that so interesting, that so many women think that they have to be thin to be loved? Then it’s interesting when you talk to men, they don’t really want a skinny girl, actually.

Tracee Gluhaich:           Well, my dad told my mom when I was 10 that, “If you ever get fat again, I’m leaving you,” and he did, so that’s the reason.

Melinda Wittstock:       Oh my, seriously? He said that to your mom?

Tracee Gluhaich:           Yeah, yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:       Okay, well then everybody, but not your dad. What is that about? Oh my goodness.

Tracee Gluhaich:           That’s a total, like I don’t want to swear on your show, but this is the moment I would, but I just think it’s a male chauvinist, egotistical, jerk-off type attitude, and if he would just look in the mirror, he would see he had no right to say those words.

Melinda Wittstock:       Well, what it is a controlling thing. Like so I think when that’s used against women, it’s used against women because the man knows it will land, that it’s not necessarily about being skinny or being fat or any of those things, it’s that it will convey to a woman that she’s not enough.

Tracee Gluhaich:           That’s a good point.

Melinda Wittstock:       It’s not even about that at all; it’s just a way that the blow will land. I think all too often, because we’re so trapped in not valuing ourselves enough, that’s why those blows can land. It’s not really about fat or skinny or appearance or any of those things, it’s about how much we love ourselves.

Tracee Gluhaich:           I like what you said about, like they’re the ones in control, they have the power. That is a very relevant and good point that I’ve never even thought about, it wasn’t about the weight, it was just about the power.

Melinda Wittstock:       Right, it was a way; it was like an opening. I’ve seen so many women suffer in relationships like that, and I would include myself in that as well, where you realize at a certain point like, “Oh, okay. I could see myself as a victim, but actually what was it about me that allowed that?” It’s kind of a radical way to think about it, because when we don’t value ourselves or we allow society to tell us so much about who we should be and all of that … I don’t know, I just think personally that entrepreneurship is a wonderful way for women to really step into owning their value.

Tracee Gluhaich:           Yeah, own your greatness. I love how so many women entrepreneurs support each other in various communities such as yours. It’s like instead of putting somebody down, build them up and support them and love them. But when you have a father that way, it is what it is, and he ended up leaving my mom, finding a skinny woman, getting married to her, only to leave her for the next skinny woman that he found, so whatever. That had to become his issue.

Melinda Wittstock:       Right, so that says more about him than the women involved, right? It’s really curious when we think about when we’re creating companies, we’re building value. We’re creating value for other people, we’re building value for other people, we’re building value in our businesses. To be able to do that, we need to be able to value ourselves.

Tracee Gluhaich:           Yeah, true.

Melinda Wittstock:       What’s been your journey, really, in terms of like deciding that you’re going to go into entrepreneurship and launch a business, and you have a podcast and a book, and you have all these different things, what was it that made you really burn with that fire to want to go solve this for other people?

Tracee Gluhaich:           Watching my mom just waste away. What happened was, is I started studying nutrition in 2007, and I’ve always been into fitness, but when I started studying nutrition, I realized how much power we had over our future wellness based on food choices and lifestyle habits. I totally had to change everything with my family, but when I saw my parents suffering so badly, it made me realize that they had choices that they didn’t take, and it was heartbreaking. I just was with my mom the other day, and I mean she’s just going downhill and it’s frightening, because she has, you know Alzheimer’s is considered type three diabetes.

I had her on a nutritional protocol for a while, but she rebelled and said, “Oh, it’s too hard to give up my bread.” I’m like, “Well, isn’t it harder to give up your brain?” That’s my motivation. I know that people have options, they don’t have to take the latest pill their doctor’s recommending. They can do a lot of changes with just food.

Melinda Wittstock:       Oh gosh, it’s so true. I mean, we literally are what we eat. Again, it comes back, don’t you think, to valuing yourself enough to give yourself the fuel that gives you the ultimate sort of advantage.

Tracee Gluhaich:           Yeah, totally.

Melinda Wittstock:       I mean, one of the things that I’m doing, I have these retreats coming up this year where I’m bringing really high-performing female entrepreneurs together, and we’re focusing on a whole series of things, like how we can have abundance in all areas of our lives, so not just abundance of business success or money … Because often, I think we fear that kind of success because we assume that there’s going to be some sort of trade-off with it, right? Like if we have this, then we won’t have that, like if we’re really successful in business, we won’t get the man, or we’ll alienate our friends or these sorts of things, or thinking that we have to do it all to have it all, so hence we don’t have time freedom. How can we have abundance of health as well as wealth, as well as happiness, as well as time freedom, as well as creativity, and what does that actually look like?

One of the things that we’re talking about is all the different health hacks and like bio-hacking, and things like that that we can do to really kind of step up. Like we’re really doing kind of like, we’re at our best, not just in business but with our family, with our kids, like in our lives. It’s so, so important, and also that we all get together and lift each other up.

Tracee Gluhaich:           Yeah, love it. There’s so many things that people can do if they’re willing to step outside of their comfort zone.

Melinda Wittstock:       Well, okay, so that’s the hard thing, right? What are some of the ways and times that you’ve stepped out of your comfort zone, like where it’s been really hard and you’re like, “Oh my God, I’m terrified, but I’m going to do it anyway”?

Tracee Gluhaich:           Well, number one is when I changed my diet, that was pretty terrifying. Because I had written a book that totally slammed the way … I changed my diet back, I want to say 2016, because I was looking for a nutritional protocol for my mom who was suffering. I found the keto diet, and I thought, “Oh my God, no way, I’m an athlete and I need my carbs,” and I ran a lot of long races. Anyways, but I was, after studying it seriously for about four or five months, I was convinced I had to give it a shot, and I did a ton of research. That was hard, because I had slammed low carb, I had thought, “Oh, it’s low fat, right?” Having to eat my words literally, and so that was a huge one. Another one is just asking for the sale.

Melinda Wittstock:       That probably is one of the hardest things, and here’s my theory on it, I’m curious what you think, is that we think that we’re, by asking for something, that we’re taking something away from somebody else. As women, we’re terrified of that, but in actual fact as an entrepreneur, you’re creating so much value. Again, it comes back to our self-value. What do you think of that, and how did you get past that fear of asking for the sale?

Tracee Gluhaich:           Well, there’s two ways. Number one is, I read a quote once, and that it said something like, sales isn’t sleazy, real sales is helping make someone’s life better.

Melinda Wittstock:       Yes, creating value for others.

Tracee Gluhaich:           Yeah, and the other thing is, you will get what you want when you help enough people get what they want, so that’s satisfied customers, right? The other thing is, the answer is always no if you don’t ask.

Melinda Wittstock:       Yes, I know. I’ve said this before on this podcast so many times, so forgive me, everyone who’s heard this story already. I had a mentor who told me, in a context where I’d always had companies that were direct-to-consumer, I had no problem with that kind of sale, but in this case I was selling enterprise software into big Fortune 500s, very, very difficult sale. You had to persuade everybody, and no one ever got fired for saying no in a big, giant corporation. I just stalled at it, like I was having a really hard time with it. He just said, “Hey look, you’ve got to go out there and you’ve got to get as many no’s as possible. I want you to beat your record of no’s this week, like get 50 no’s, get 100 no’s, get as many no’s as possible,” and challenged me to do that.

Here’s what happened, it took the kind of pressure off, it got me out of perfectionism, it got me out of being judged, and it meant that I was asking for the sale, because to get a no, I had to ask, right? Okay, and so I like repeating this story because it’s so important and it really works. After a while, you get really experienced at it, you start to not be attached to the outcome, and then boom, you start getting yeses. Everybody, try that, if you haven’t tried that yet, try that, it really works.

Tracee Gluhaich:           I love that idea; I’m going to try that, just to gamify the no.

Melinda Wittstock:       Yeah, exactly, because it means you’re asking, and it means that you’re not making it personal about you, if you don’t get the sale.

Tracee Gluhaich:           Yeah, totally.

Melinda Wittstock:       Because it’s not about you, it’s like about them, it’s they’re not ready or they’re not interested, I mean whatever, it’s not about you, it’s not personal.

Tracee Gluhaich:           I also believe that oftentimes, they just don’t believe in themselves and their own capabilities. I think that that’s what I like with inspiring women, is just to help them believe in themselves, and realize that they are worth so much more, and they don’t need to settle and be complacent. I love this story, there’s a gal named Lily Murphy, and she walked into our local YMCA at the age of 73. There was a sign on the back of the wall that said “weightlifting competition”, and so she says to the kid, ‘Hey, can I do that?” He’s like, “Sure, go for it, granny.” She starts off with five-pound dumbbells, fast-forward three or four years later, she’s 77 years old, she ways 110 and can deadlift 220.

Melinda Wittstock:       Wow.

Tracee Gluhaich:           Is that awesome?

Melinda Wittstock:       Yeah, it is. I mean, it’s amazing, every now and again I’ll see something on Facebook, where there’s some like 70-year-old woman who’s a bodybuilder or something, or just doing some amazing thing. It proves that we can achieve what we can conceive, as long as you just take action, like you can’t just sit there and make a vision board and dream it into action, I mean you do have to take inspired action towards what you want. There’s a kind of little bit of visualization to actually understand what’s possible and what you truly want, and like feeling those feelings, getting into that frequency.

At the same time, like yeah, you have to take action. What are some of the things that allow people to take the kind of inspired action where they do become these fat burning machines, and they do all the things and have all the habits, eat the right food, have the right habits that they need to really look and feel their best?

Tracee Gluhaich:           Well, it depends on the person. It’s a very individualized approach, because not everything works for every body. If it was just like somebody coming to me at the beginning, first it’s like okay, well what has led you to where you’re at now? I like them to write it down on paper, and just write their story up to this point, and then read it with feeling so that they can really feel the way that they’re at, so they can savor, or whatever you call it, the pain, and then realize that the past doesn’t equal the future. Shred it up, get rid of that old story, those excuses that aren’t serving you anymore, and now with a fresh piece of paper, write out what you want.

Then it’s not just about those tangible things that you want, but why? How is it going to make your life better? I always tell them, there’s a great song by Natasha Bedingfield, “Unwritten”.

Melinda Wittstock:       I love that song, yeah.

Tracee Gluhaich:           It makes me cry like all the time, and I’m just like, “That is every day, like that day is not written yet, so write it in a way that’s going to win for you.”

Melinda Wittstock:       Oh my God, I wept hearing that, because my daughter at age 15 in her chorus at an all-girl’s school, they all sang that and they sang it acapella, and I was like weeping, it was amazing. Because you think, for like a teenage girl, not having to go through all this body image stuff that our generation went through, like God, wouldn’t that be nice? Then you see them doing that, and maybe less and less, but the future is unwritten and you are able to write that for yourself, so choose your thoughts carefully, right?

Tracee Gluhaich:           Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:       It’s just so, so important. What do you think holds women back in business, what’s the thing that’s the biggest issue that you’ve seen?

Tracee Gluhaich:           I would believe that it is themselves fearing stepping into greatness. They’re afraid to fail, and like I love what you said, Failing Forward, that’s a great book by John Maxwell, but I think that they are afraid to fail. I mean, I’ve been doing my own business for 12 years, and you have your bumps in the road and you have your days that are great and make you smile, and then you have your days that make you sad, it’s just that rollercoaster of business. My husband said, he has the best attitude, he’s just, “Yep, another day at the office.”

Don’t let your highs be too high and your lows be too low, just realize that everything is going to ebb and flow, and as long as you’re like a torpedo and you keep course correcting and going towards the goal, then you’re on the right track.

Melinda Wittstock:       Yeah, failure is feedback and learning. I mean, I know as a tech entrepreneur, I’m one of these serial entrepreneurs, I’m in business number five now, that everything is a hypothesis until it’s not, and that you’re constantly testing. If you think of yourself as a scientist in a lab, especially if you’re innovating a product or you’re building something that hasn’t been done before, you’re educating a whole marketplace or you’re doing something, that kind of entrepreneur that’s kind of like innovative type thing. Those types of businesses are really hard, because you’ve got to educate a market, you’ve got to persuade people to buy something they never even knew existed before.

It’s really hard, like all businesses are. For lots and lots of reasons, they test every fiber of your being, but what I’ve come to learn over time is a couple things. Don’t take it personally, take the failure, “failure” with air quotes around it, as feedback. It’s like you’re in a lab, you’re experimenting, you’re like, “Oh okay, let’s try this, let’s try that,” because you’re of service to other people. You’re solving a problem, you’re improving the world. As long as women can get into that mode of thinking, that’s where we really excel. Like when we’re really thinking about how we can make the world a better place, we’re so mission-driven and we care about other people.

If we’re coming at business in that mode, it’s much easier because you don’t get like knocked off course just because someone didn’t like it or whatever. It’s like, “Oh, well how can I make it better?”

Tracee Gluhaich:           Absolutely, and not everyone is going to like it, and it’s okay.

Melinda Wittstock:       It’s okay; it’s not personal.

Tracee Gluhaich:           Yeah, all you need is the ones that do, and then the other ones are like, “Okay, well, next.” I love the story about, who was it, Thomas Edison and the light bulb.

Melinda Wittstock:       Yes, that’s right, 10,000 times.

Tracee Gluhaich:           Yeah, and he said, “I didn’t fail 10,000 times or 999,000 times, I just learned 999,000 times how to not make a light bulb.”

Melinda Wittstock:       Yeah, because that’s all you can really, really do when you’re innovating, and entrepreneurship really is about innovation. Like you’re testing a hypothesis, and this is so, so important. I think it’s interesting what you said about fear of failure, because I wonder if women have a fear of success, in a way. I see a lot of women, and recently this is interesting, in some sales copy of mine, I wrote like, “How can we play bigger?” In different sales calls, I was talking about playing bigger, and women would be like, there’d be a split second of like dread in their eyes, and I was like, “What’s going on here, why is everybody afraid of playing bigger?”

Then I realized, like it kind of hit me, it’s like, “Oh crap, it’s because we’re all doing, doing, doing, doing, we’re all so busy.” We’re all running around thinking we don’t have time, and it’s like, “What, you want me to do more?” It’s like no, no, no, no, playing bigger isn’t about doing more, but there was a really interesting assumption in that, that like we’re already doing so much, playing a small game relatively, that to play a big game, like I mean really to go be Elon Musk or something, you’re just like, “Oh my God, I’d have to do so many things, I can’t possibly do that.” Whereas a guy doesn’t think that way, they’re like, “How can I get other people to do all the stuff I need to be done.”

Tracee Gluhaich:           Well, that’s what I was just going to say, like work in your zone of greatness, man, hire everyone else to do the stuff you don’t want to do.

Melinda Wittstock:       Exactly, exactly, but I still, I coach so many and mentor so many women who have a hard time making the leap from the thinking of having to do it all, to like thinking more like a business owner and thinking about leverage, and like do your unique zone of genius, hire everybody else.

Tracee Gluhaich:           Absolutely. I have a couple of amazing people that help me with things, one that works full time, and she is like, I don’t know what I would do without her. I just can’t, I don’t have the bandwidth to that, and there’s certain things that don’t take my talent that I can hire somebody else to do. Now eventually, I mean that’s going to expand, but don’t think that you have to do it all. I find my husband with his company, he at first was so controlling and he wouldn’t release anything, there’s a word for that, I can’t remember, but he wanted to do it all himself. Finally, he realized that in order for him to do his work great, he had to delegate, that’s the word.

Melinda Wittstock:       Yeah, you do. You have to, because a lot of people think that, “Oh man, there’s this thing I don’t know how to do, so I have to learn the thing I don’t know how to do.” No, it is better to really focus on what you do really, really well, the thing that only you can do, like where you’re uniquely differentiated, and just find the best people to do the rest. I know it’s hard, because especially at that early stage of business where you don’t have necessarily the money or the capital or the investment to be able to hire fast enough, but like getting to that point … There’s a study, oh gosh, I forget where this was, but businesses that hire somebody in the first six months, are something like 90% more likely to succeed, like it’s really vital to get out of the gate quickly and get that help really quickly.

Tracee Gluhaich:           Yeah, for your own personal psyche, I think.

Melinda Wittstock:       Well yeah, and just so that it just advances things, you can just do much more much faster, which is really, really important. Tell me a little bit more about your business and your book. You’ve got this great book called No Fricken’ Weigh. I love the title of your book. I think it’s awesome. This whole idea of being high energy and being fat burners in 90 days without going hungry or having to like burn out in the gym, so how does all that work?

Tracee Gluhaich:           Well, it’s about efficiency and being fat fueled. Back in the day, like what am I? 53, so I was raised in that like low fat, nonfat era where we [crosstalk 00:32:44]-

Melinda Wittstock:       Nonfat means sugar.

Tracee Gluhaich:           Yeah, exactly. Yet the obesity in our country climbed exorbitantly, if you look at the CDC website you’ll see that, and disease is on the rise. I was raised in that whole nonfat era, and then when I started doing the research for my mom, I realized no, fat is good for you, and especially cholesterol, because it helps us with our hormone production. When I started eating cholesterol more and eating saturated fat more, my whole body changed, everything, even my moods and emotions changed because, see, there’s something with … When you eat more fat and you ditch the carbs, your body produces something called ketones, are you familiar with that at all?

Melinda Wittstock:       I am, yes. I’ve done keto diets before, and I’m a big bulletproof coffee person.

Tracee Gluhaich:           Me too.

Melinda Wittstock:       Yeah, so I’m all over that.

Tracee Gluhaich:           What I find is that when you are … You know like when you’re in the zone and you’re really focused, and in the morning I don’t eat anything, I just have my coffee with my MCT oil in it, and that way all I have in my body is ketones, because I always go to the gym first thing, 5:30. I’m just living on ketones, and my focus is ridiculous. What I do is I help women, I always say that reprogram your body and mind, because many of them, they’re programmed to think that fat is bad, and reprogram your body and mind so that you can win. This will be something, so I also teach at the gym, a big thing I’ve noticed is after teaching at this particular gym for nine years, there’s something I call the cardio queens, that show up every day and they do their cardio, but nothing in their body changes for the better. I like to empower women to lift weights and reshape their body.

Melinda Wittstock:       Yeah, weights are so important, especially for like bone density, as we get into our 50s that’s really critical as well. I’ve been doing Orange Theory fitness lately, and I also do a lot of yoga, but I like it because I get that kind of cardio thing, but then I’m also doing weights. It’s kind of an interesting mix for me, I just find myself being so, like as you say, focused and with eliminating all the sugar and eliminating all processed foods, eliminating all bread, all of that from my diet, I don’t have mood swings, I don’t have that afternoon dip, I haven’t had that for years.

Tracee Gluhaich:           Yeah, it’s a valid thing. I mean, it’s physiological and it’s psychological, because your brain doesn’t want that sugar kick in the afternoon like it probably did in the past, and physiological, your blood sugar’s stable, you’re not on the blood sugar rollercoaster, so you’re able to go longer in between meals. When you’re body’s not busy digesting food, your brain is more able to focus on other important things.

Melinda Wittstock:       This is so true, I know so many people in, I call it the entrepreneurial movement of sorts, that are really into bio-hacking, really into nutrition, really into looking at ways that we can be our optimum best. As entrepreneurs, we have to be, I mean we owe it to our team members, to our shareholders, to our vendors, to our clients, to our families, everybody just to be the best we can be.

Tracee Gluhaich:           Right, and that starts with your fork.

Melinda Wittstock:       It really does. You have, in No Fricken’ Weigh, you’ve got a whole bunch of different healing foods and recipes, and self-care practices and all of that, and I just encourage everybody, go pick up a copy of that. Then you’ve also got a podcast as well, I love talking to other podcasters. Tell me a little bit about your podcast.

Tracee Gluhaich:           It’s called Be Well Be Keto: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Results, and so it’s just stories of inspiration, having people share their success. I’ve had doctors on the show, I’ve had just regular people who’ve totally changed their lives adopting the ketogenic diet, people who’ve healed their body from numerous diseases. Then what we’re doing is we’re crafting every interview into a story, so that we can publish a book for those few people on the planet, or the lot of people on the planet, that don’t listen to podcasts yet, so that they can actually be encouraged by the stories as well.

Melinda Wittstock:       That’s fantastic. Well, I want to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to connect with you, Tracee. Where can everybody find you and work with you, and get your book, and listen to your podcast and all that good stuff?

Tracee Gluhaich:           Well, I have a blog, it’s highenergygirl.com, and I’m on Facebook, I have a group called High Energy Girls, and I think the tagline is “for women aging stronger”. Yeah, I’m all over social media, it’s just the high energy girl YouTube, but the best place to reach me would be Facebook and my blog.

Melinda Wittstock:       Awesome, and you have a special offer for our listeners as well?

Tracee Gluhaich:           Yes. There’s a guide that is the high energy transformation guide, I will give you a special link that you can put in your show notes.

Melinda Wittstock:       Wonderful, well thank you for that generous offer, really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us.

Tracee Gluhaich:           You’re so sweet. Thank you so much for having me, you are doing an amazing service connecting and helping and supporting all of the women entrepreneurs around, so it’s awesome. Thanks, Melinda.