Episode #17:

Learning to Love Plants with Karen Kjaerulff

Welcome back to the Becoming Virtuosa podcast! I’m so excited to be able to bring you these interviews. Today’s guest is fellow certified life coach, registered dietician, and wellness expert Karen Kjaeruff. Karen combines her scientific background and knowledge of plant predominant nutrition with her skills acquired from becoming certified as a life coach to help her clients achieve lasting weight loss and optimal mental health.

At just 16 years old, Karen discovered she had high cholesterol, and shocked, set off on a journey to lower this through nutrition. This piqued her interest in becoming a dietician and she’s here today to tell us how we can manage our physical and mental health through a plant-based diet.

Join us this week where we’ll learn why addressing the reason you’re eating certain foods might just be the key to losing weight and keeping it off! We’ll discuss why dieting doesn’t have to be a case of all or nothing, and how we can use nutrition to become our virtuosa selves.

WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER



How to work with your mind to improve your diet and stop eating junk.



Where to start if you want to transition to a plant-based diet.



Why managing your nutrition can benefit other areas of your life.



How to improve your health regardless of where you’re at in the journey.



Why it’s progress that’s important, not perfection.

FEATURED ON THE SHOW



Check out more episodes of the podcast here!

TRANSCRIPT

Susan Crockett: Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, the podcast, with Dr. Susan Crockett. You are listening to episode number 17: Learning to Love Plants, an interview with fellow certified life coach and registered dietician, Karen Kjaerulff. This episode is dedicated to Karen’s daughter, Isabella, who’s one of this year’s senior graduates.

Female Announcer: Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, where women learn to love their lives. Do you find yourself frustrated by society’s expectations? Looking for practical advice on how to discover your talents and level up your life? You’ve found the right place. Here’s your host, US News top doctor, robotic surgeon and certified life coach, Dr. Susan Crockett.

Susan Crockett: Hello, my virtuosas. I’m your host, Dr. Susan Crockett. And especially today you can call me Sue. We are doing another one of our amazing certified life coach interviews. This one is girl talk between me and my friend, Karen Kjaerulff, who is a registered dietician and wellness expert. She is so much fun. She’s got so much to talk with us about. And I am really excited to be able to bring these interviews to you today.

I have a funny story to tell you all. This past weekend when we were set to do our podcast interview and we do it online together, I made a decision to travel to visit my parents, and it was a very last minute thing. My dad is getting up there in years and he’s had – he had a fall a couple of months ago, and I haven’t been able to see him. And so, I packed up everything kind of quickly, made kind of an impulsive decision to go, although it was a good one.

But I got all set up in my parents’ house on Saturday to interview Karen and realized that I forgot my mic cord. So I packed everything up. I unplugged my, you know, regular mic cord that I use for this podcast, that gives us this beautiful rich sound and it wasn’t there. So we kind of talked about it, we made a decision that I was going to record it anyway using AirPods. So I apologize for the quality of this podcast, it may not be what you guys are used to or what are standard. But I think the content was so good that we made the decision not to go back and redo it again. So forgive us that.

I am really excited about today’s show. It’s about learning to love plants, and maybe some of you already do love plants. Maybe some of you are not like me and you have a green thumb. My husband’s like that, he can grow anything. He’s a gardener and grows beautiful flowers. Me, if it’s an animal or a person I can heal them, take care of them, amazing with them. But I just don’t get plants, I either overwater them or underwater them or just it’s just not my jam.

So I bet some of you are great gardeners. But what we’re talking about today is about eating plants. And I bet some of you also are vegan or vegetarian. Maybe some of you have tried a whole food plant based diet in the past but haven’t.

The interesting thing about this conversation, I think you’ll see as we go through it is today’s topic isn’t just about choosing what to eat. It’s really about how to work with your mind to figure out how to do better on the things that you want to change when you’re struggling with it. So for me, I’ve been wanting to do a whole food plant based diet for a while. And I just, I try it and I fail, and when we eat dinner and I just think to myself, I’m a meat eater.

So for those of you who are struggling with anything like that in your life, where you like know what you should do or know what you want to do and you just can’t quite get there. Listen in on this podcast, even if the diet thing isn’t something that you want to hear about. I think you’ll get something out of it. It’s a really fun interview.

Welcome to today’s podcast. Welcome to Learning to Love Plants. I’m your host, Dr. Susan Crockett; I’m here with my friend, Karen Kjaerulff today. I’m so excited. You know, Karen, I think this is a topic that’s really going to be interesting to a lot of our listeners. Is something that I have struggled with, like I know that I’m supposed to be eating more vegetables and healthier. And I’m really curious about how you integrate your coaching with the nutrition.

So let me give our listeners a little bit of background about you. Karen is a registered dietician, and she’s also a certified lifestyle medicine practitioner. This amazing lady combines her science background and knowledge of plant predominant nutrition with her skills acquired from becoming certified as a life coach. And in combining all of that she helps her clients achieve lasting weight loss and mental health. So, welcome, Karen, I’m so happy to talk with you today.

Karen Kjaerulff: Thank you. I’m so thrilled to be here.

Susan Crockett: Awesome. Could you tell us a little bit about how you came to be in this place where you have all of this knowledge for nutrition and lifestyle medicine and coaching, and how those pieces work together for you? How did you come to – how did you get here?

Karen Kjaerulff: Sure, sure. So I started back being interested about nutrition when I was 16 years old. I was helping a friend out with a science fair project. And part of that was drawing blood and doing some lab tests. And we found out that I had high cholesterol, everyone was talking…

Susan Crockett: At 16?

Karen Kjaerulff: At 16, I mean it wasn’t through the roof, but it was higher than it should be.

Susan Crockett: And you were like, “What the heck?”

Karen Kjaerulff: Right, exactly. And my family were shocked because I was the healthy eater. So this kind of got me on my voyage, on my pathway to figure out how to lower my cholesterol through food. And I saw a registered dietician that time, and I thought this is super cool. So fast forward, I actually have two degrees, I have a business degree also, and I have my…

Susan Crockett: Wow.

Karen Kjaerulff: Yeah, and I have my nutrition degree. So while I was studying for my nutrition degree I had a practicum at a lifestyle intervention place called Pritikin Longevity Center and…

Susan Crockett: Oh, I’ve heard of them, I’ve heard of Pritikin, that was like way back in the 90s.

Karen Kjaerulff: Yeah, it was one of the beginning one, you know, beginning lifestyle facilities where you could go, and really reverse and prevent chronic diseases.

Susan Crockett: Fascinating. Okay, tell me more.

Karen Kjaerulff: So I went there and I learned all about nutrition, which is a nutrition that wasn’t taught in school. And it really changed the way I looked at nutrition from that point on. So that’s where I became super passionate in the plant based nutrition. And that followed me all the way through to where I am currently.

Susan Crockett: So then you became a nutritionist first. Tell me about where the lifestyle medicine came; was that from the Pritikin thing or something additional? And then you became a certified coach after that, tell me about those.

Karen Kjaerulff: Yeah. The lifestyle medicine just kind of came in because I’m so interested in that area and I wanted to learn more. So the lifestyle medicine just kind of incorporates nutrition, incorporates physical activity, mental health, all these different pillars of health. And I just wanted to kind of continue my education in that area.

But being a life coach came in because like so many people out there, and especially women, I find, I came to a point in my life where I just thought is this is it? Like I wasn’t happy, there wasn’t anything massively wrong. But, you know, some things have happened in my life, and I was living a lot in the past. And I started it for myself, so I started some self-coaching and some life coaching for myself. And I thought this is the golden ticket, like this is it, how come we don’t all know about this?

Susan Crockett: How come we don’t all know? You know, your story’s so similar to so many others who have advanced science degrees and then they come upon this life coaching. And we’re like, “Why aren’t we taught how to manage our brains? Like why didn’t I find this piece 20 years ago? Like why isn’t this in every curriculum?”

Karen Kjaerulff: Right. Why isn’t this taught in elementary school?

Susan Crockett: Right, because it’s just like how to figure out your brain. So what you’ve done now is you’ve integrated the how to manage your brain into helping people choose healthier eating, is that what you’re doing?

Karen Kjaerulff: Yeah, so, you know, it’s so obvious to so many of us, that it’s not just about the food, right? Like I mean you can go anywhere, you can read a book. You can join a diet center. You can learn about diets anywhere. And I would say the majority of people know that they shouldn’t be eating bags of chips and ice-cream. So why are they still doing it?

Susan Crockett: Yeah, why am I still doing it?

Karen Kjaerulff: Right, why are you still doing it? That’s where this comes in, right, because we take a look at that. That’s the whole point of this life coaching is we’re looking at the cause of why you’re eating. I’m not telling you, “Hey, you know, instead of eating pretzels, crunch on some carrots.” I’m telling you, “Let’s look at why you feel the need to start eating that, and let’s work from there.”

Susan Crockett: Wow. And tell me about the kinds of successes that you’ve seen in your practice.

Karen Kjaerulff: The successes I’ve seen, clearly there’s the biometrics, or there’s the weight loss, right, those are success stories. My clients are losing weight and they’re able to keep it off. But it’s not just that, it’s about my clients having that same aha moment that I had going in, and starting to learn about how to manage their minds a bit better. And for me the success is that it doesn’t just affect them with food. It is affecting every area of their life in positive ways.

Susan Crockett: So, in essence you’re using this particular arena of food and nutrition and life coaching. But you’re actually creating virtuosas on your own. You’re helping people create the best versions of themselves physically with this model, and kind of like we talk about in our podcasts in other episodes about making transformations in our lives. That’s just amazing what you’re doing.

Karen Kjaerulff: Thank you. Thank you. And it is it’s about transforming into, like you just said, into the very best versions of themselves.

Susan Crockett: Yeah. So, you know, my background with this whole food plant based diet thing is as a physician I’ve been curious about it for a while. I was introduced to it about probably two years ago with that Netflix show that came on, Forks Over knives.

Karen Kjaerulff: Yes, great, great documentary.

Susan Crockett: It really is, like I think we should probably put that in our footnotes along with the other stuff that we’re going to put there about what we’re listening to and what we’re eating. And I watched it and there’s so much science packed into there about how the vegetables and the whole foods are helpful to us. And I am really, like I know that’s the right thing to do but I really struggled with it. Like I’m a meat eater and every time I try to go vegan I like completely fail, right. So what would you say to somebody like me?

Karen Kjaerulff: So I usually start off where my clients are. You know, I take clients on that, yeah, maybe they are meat eaters right now, right? And I just bring them along the spectrum. Let’s see where you are. We move you one step towards a different direction. And, listen, I would say half of my clients continue to eat meat.

Susan Crockett: They do?

Karen Kjaerulff: They’re eating – yeah, they do. They’re eating less meat and what we’re doing is we’re using every other bite to flood their body with nutrients.

Susan Crockett: Oh, so it’s not an all or none. I think that’s where I failed.

Karen Kjaerulff: Yeah. And I’m not an all or none person because we don’t live in a vacuum, right? And there are going to be people who aren’t willing to give up meat or dairy, right? And there are going to people that want to give up meat or dairy. And then there’s everything in between. So what I do is I work with my clients where they are, how can we improve your health? I mean I’m working towards optimal health for my clients. So what step can we take with you to get you to the next level of optimal health?

Susan Crockett: That’s amazing, you know, I really, really like that approach. I think I really struggled just because it’s kind of an all or none. But maybe I haven’t actually failed because I’m still trying. And, you know, I’ve pretty much given up, except for my Cheetos, I’ve pretty much given up processed foods. Like I eat basically whole foods like lean meat and vegetable, if I have a choice, you know, I eat as a rule, pretty healthily as far as that goes.

So like I have moved away from the processed foods, which is like a first step. Maybe I should be thinking of that as, well, I haven’t completely failed yet. Maybe I’m still just in process, and then progress.

Karen Kjaerulff: Yes. And that’s what I constantly remind my clients, is that you don’t fail until you quit trying.

Susan Crockett: Oh wow, that’s good. Say that again.

Karen Kjaerulff: So you don’t fail until you quit trying.

Susan Crockett: Oh, I love that.

Karen Kjaerulff: So that means maybe you didn’t – yeah, so maybe you didn’t eat how you wanted to today. Or maybe at dinner you didn’t eat how you wanted to. But until you quit, you’re not failing, right? So you get up the next day and you do the best that you can. It’s just it’s progress, not perfection.

Susan Crockett: I love that, wow, that’s just awesome, okay. So you don’t fail until you quit trying, that’s the only real failure. That is a great take home for our listeners. Thank you so much for meeting with me today, Karen. Why don’t you tell our listeners about how they can find you if they’re interested in working with you. Do you want to tell them a little bit about you?

Karen Kjaerulff: Sure, sure. I have a website, if they’re interested in learning more about my background, which is Karen, K.a.r.e.n. Kcoaching.com. So you can learn about my background a little bit more there. But if they want to book an appointment with me and start working together, as you know, they can also find me through your fabulous site, and I reserve some of my time for your clients.

Susan Crockett: For the Virtuosa coaching, yes, you’re one of our fabulous coaches. We have so many talented people there. I’m really having a great time starting to interview each of you and yeah, it’s just amazing the work that you’re doing. So, thank you for joining us today.

Karen Kjaerulff: Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.

Susan Crockett: You’re welcome. See you.

Karen Kjaerulff: Bye.

Susan Crockett: Bye.

Wasn’t that a great interview? See, I told you guys, that it wasn’t all going to be about nutrition and plants and stuff. It’s about, it’s not a fail until you quit trying. And you know what the other thing that really struck me through this as we were talking is the idea of putting a whole bunch of nutrition into your food. Like it’s not about calorie counting or switching it out even. It’s like getting in the nutrients that you need, even if you’re eating other stuff. And that’s a different thought for me.

When I talked a little bit more with Karen about that, we got into the ideas for the end of this segment here like we always do about what we’re listening to and what we’re reading. Since she’s a wellness expert, not just a nutritionist, but since she’s also into whole body wellness.

She’s suggested what we’re listening to or what she’s listening to us is a guided meditation by Jason Stephenson, that’s with a “p-h,” Stephenson. It’s called Sleep in Peace. And so if any of you are looking for help with guided meditation or with insomnia especially, this is a great thing for you to try, a great resource.

But then we were talking about what she’s reading and she referred back to a classic called Eat to Live. And it’s by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. And this book was originally written in 2003, but been recently updated. And this is where she gets the idea, because it’s what he teaches, about getting in like the daily nutrients that you need. And sometimes we’re overeating or obese because our body is craving the nutrients that we aren’t getting. So for me that’s a total like mind blowing thing, right, when I’m thinking about my eating.

So hope that gives you some ideas and some inspiration too. And then what she’s watching, like what are you binge watching, Karen? She’s like, “Working Moms.” I’m like, “Me too.” So that was kind of fun.

Next week we have another coaching interview, the next one is with Jennifer Cruikshank. And oh my goodness, it’s going to be a good one. If you’ve ever considered that maybe you are drinking a little bit too much, and I’m not talking about water, girls. If you’re considering, maybe you’re drinking a little bit too much and you just want to learn how to drink less a little bit, maybe you’ve tried to cut back, struggled with it. Or maybe you think you should drink less, listen in, it’s going to be a great podcast next week. I’m really excited about that one.

And that’s all I’ve got for today, so okay, my virtuosas, that’s all I’ve got this week, have a wonderful blessed week. I will see you next week. Love always, Sue.

Female Announcer: Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming Virtuosa. If you want to find out more, come check out virtuosacoaching.com. That’s virtuosa - with an A - coaching.com. See you next week.

DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPT