A Mother's Love and Determination- Sharon Holand Gefland-: Transforming Her Child's Health with Nutrition

 A Mother's Love and Determination- Sharon Holand Gefland-: Transforming Her Child's Health with Nutrition

[00:00:00] Bettina M Brown: Welcome to In The Rising Podcast. My name is Bettina Brown, and this is the platform where I talk about living a life that's Positive, visionary, fulfilling, and walking away from things that are negative, shame, blame all the things that don't do anything for you. And I like to start off our segments by saying, I'm not a licensed counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist, but I am a physical therapist and a certified life coach.

So I do like to figure out what makes us tick and what makes us healthy, and I'm in an interview season right now and I have really just been so fortunate to speak with people who are at the forefront and premiere in their specific fields. And today I have the wonderful opportunity to interview Sharon Holland Gelfand, who is a nutritionist and was not always one, that it took a life experience, it took something happening to her.

For her to realize that she needed to gain all of the tools for her tool belt to make changes for her son. And thereby, over the course of time, she's making huge changes. And so I welcome you to listen to our interview. Thank you, Sharon, for being here on In The Rising Podcast. I'm so excited to talk to you today.

[00:01:31] Sharon Holand Gelfand: Well, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you, Bettina for having me.

[00:01:34] Bettina M Brown: Absolutely. So you have An interesting story, like your story resonated with me. You said you went from banking to board certified holistic health practitioner and functional nutritionist. I would love for you to say how that jump happened for you.

[00:01:53] Sharon Holand Gelfand: It would be my pleasure because let me tell you, it was one of those times where never my wildest dreams would I have thought I would ever be a nutritionist. I was raised just, you know, get a good job, do what you're good at, and I was good with numbers, so I went into banking. And I didn't enjoy it, but I just did it because I was told to do it.

It was a different time back then, so I never questioned anything. Everything was always linear. One plus one always equals two, and you know, very black and white as a banker. And fast forward a bunch of years, I get married, I have kids. I didn't realize at the time, but my body was falling apart. I wasn't happy.

But you know, you just don't question these things. You compartmentalize and you just keep going forward. And, I think one of my kids, was about 12 years old at the time, and he was diagnosed with Crohn's, ulcerative colitis and ileitis, and I had no idea what any of that was. My son was, Freaking out, like thinking he's gonna die.

And we're sitting in the doctor's office and she's talking about the gut. I knew nothing about it and I said, well, should we change what he's eating now? My son is now 26, so we're talking, this was 14 years ago. And she said, no, don't worry about the food. The medicine will take care of it. And I had this little, hmm, you know, so, you know when you hear something and you're like, something doesn't sound right, it doesn't feel right, but you don't know what it is.

It's like your, your gut, your intuition's talking to you, but you're like, can't put my finger on it. So I was like, okay, here she's the expert. Go home, listen to her. So my son goes on the medicine and within a week he starts complaining. He's getting worse and that it's the medicine. And the doctor says that it's not that it's the disease.

And after a few days, I'm thinking to myself, why am I not listening to my son? And he ended up being my wake up call because he was right. It was the medicine that was making him worse. And I ended up on, on Dr. Google for hours, you know, just trying to figure things out. I knew nothing about nutrition. My idea of being healthy was iceberg lettuce or a bra muffin from Dunking Donuts, like that's healthy.

And it just turned my world upside down cuz the more I learned and I just have this love for learning, it's one of my strengths. It, it led me to grad school really to heal him. I didn't think anything else, but as we, I went through that journey realizing, oh my God, I'd been compartmentalizing all of my common health complaints, you know, I B S, eczema, my headaches, all that stuff.

And I healed naturally and started helping my son heal. And it was like, oh, what am my aunt you here? Like, what, what? You know, what do people. What don't people know? And the business was born and I have not looked back. 

[00:04:50] Bettina M Brown: Wow. And your story resonated with me. Because my son had a multitude of, ] issues. In fact, he coded when he was born.

God and I, there was just this constant, constant issue, and that's when I started to open my eyes to, different foods using food as nutrition. I hated nutrition. I hated that class. But when you learn it and how your body responds, the interest is there. And as a mom, The interest is absolutely there.

[00:05:20] Sharon Holand Gelfand: Yeah, absolutely. Especially as a mom, right? Because all we wanna do is protect our children and we will jump through hoops to do that, but at the same time, we end up then doing it at the, the expense of our own health. Yes. Yeah. Which isn't good. You know, you need to find that right balance for yourself.

[00:05:43] Bettina M Brown: And that's where you said, you know, you tend to, and, and, and women I think tend to do this compar to Alize, yeah. Everything. And what have you. How have you now changed, not just from, you know, the nutrition aspect, but how have you now changed from your experie. 

[00:06:01] Sharon Holand Gelfand: Wow. Oh my God. If you have hours, I actually talk about, I wrote a book called The Gut Method, secrets Beyond Your Health, secrets Beyond Your Plate, excuse me, for a healthier, more energetic life, where I really go into, how it'll change and I give people tips, on how to do it.

But you know when you start taking that step of that one baby step of like doing something good for yourself and realizing it as the flight attendants say you have to put the oxygen mask on yourself first. Mm-hmm. Before helping others. It was as though just like the layers naturally unf. Folded and I learned to trust and let go.

I was always, I was always a type A personality. Like I had to control everything. Everything had to be in its place. I remember, when my kids were little, we took our first trip and I wrote like 10 pages of rules for my mother. Wow. To watch my kids and, and the schedule. And it had to be just this. And, and I realized that, you know, the stress that we put on ourselves and, everything that was happening w it was just like this domino effect.

And, it's changed me because it's allowed me to let, to let light and space in and to like breathe and observe and respond versus react. Does that make sense?

[00:07:21] Bettina M Brown: It really does. And you know, I've had really just the honor of speaking with several people and the word breathe has come up every single time with you.

When you're working with your clients and you're talking, you know, you're sharing your own experience. How do you use your own experience in, in hearing where someone is at that moment? Because you have, and I'm gonna quote you on this one, you said I was doing everything right, but my body was falling apart.

Mm-hmm. How do you, what, what are words that you say to try to penetrate someone that's, that's now working with you? 

[00:07:55] Sharon Holand Gelfand: You know, that's such a great question and I actually had this conversation with the client just the other day about how she doesn't have any of her own children, but she takes care of all the employees and she's become like a mother to them and feels this need.

To take care of and, and puts a lot of stress on herself. And so when I have these conversations, I listen to the words that they're using. And a lot of it, believe it or not, is really just reflection and rephrasing. And then with my clients, it's, it's a lot of coaching. It's not just nutrition of like, you should do this or, mm-hmm.

Let's get the results back from the l from all these tests. It's really listening and honoring what are your strengths? What are your values? Where are you, right? Because I'm not a therapist, I'm not here to fix the past, I'm here to help you open up. So by active listening and like for instance, with this client, she's like, you know what?

I never really thought of it that way. I am a mother to them. And so every time they share things with me, I take it to heart and. Internalize it and it stresses me out and it causes anxiety. So I was like, okay, when this happens, how does your body react? So I started asking questions because ultimately, just to that last point that we were talking about, it was like, do you breathe?

Yeah. And when we don't breathe, we're it, it creates fear and anxiety, but when we're able to release it, It creates space and it can be switched to instead of anxiety, it can be switched to excitement. 

[00:09:38] Bettina M Brown: Which is what you created when you transitioned from banking into going back to school. You created space to really develop into the, the person and woman and mom for your son. 

[00:09:51] Sharon Holand Gelfand: Yes. Absolutely. And I think that because we're all on this hamster wheel, you know, we don't really honor ourselves. And you know, more and more, I mean, you hear about Simone Biles talking about her mental health and deciding, yeah, I can't go on with this.

That was so courageous and brave and it's a huge lesson. And as you know, to your point of like women, like we need to, to listen to these lessons and these messages and realize we're enough and we need. Breathe and create this space and ask ourselves what do we want? Not at the expense of like saying, oh, I'm gonna be selfish, but what do we want?

How can I take care of myself? Because when you do, you show up. Mm-hmm. I was more patient with my kids. I listen to my kids. I don't tell them what to do. They don't live now a life of what the, these expectations of who they should be and how they should be. Right. It's, yeah, it changes everything with your relat.

With it and everybody. 

[00:10:51] Bettina M Brown: Yeah, it really does. It really does. And do you find, because you're, you're also a coach and the nutritionist using that, do you find that people just have kind of a traumatic or a poor relationship with food, period? 

[00:11:06] Sharon Holand Gelfand: Oh my God, absolutely. Absolutely. We've just been so condition. To listen to all these advertisements, to eat advertisements, and we, yes.

That's actually such a, a great way of phrasing it because we are afraid to treat ourselves, you know, we're cheating. We're, you know, we, we shouldn't be having that ice cream or glass of wine, it's, you know, it, it does traumatize us and sets us on a spiral as opposed to, well, what if I look at it as I'm just going to indulge and enjoy.

 Yeah, it's a, it's a huge problem. 

[00:11:45] Bettina M Brown: And, and I've learned that myself. I definitely grew up with a mom who was home making these meals, and it was my expectation to be that same sort of mom, but I'm working and, I don't have, you know, a crock pot can only do so much. You still have to prepare that.

And I was just falling apart and not holding, you know, I didn't make the cake from scratch. I didn't make the pancake, but then I made it like, okay, my tradition is when we're having Sunday morning, those are fresh made pancakes. Hmm. Every other day may not be, you know, and really changing that perspective.

But it really, I think the expectation that we are still able to do the. That we remember, but we're still also doing other things like working, working two jobs, going to school and working. Mm-hmm. Physically we can only do so much. 

[00:12:34] Sharon Holand Gelfand: Such great points. You know, it's interesting cuz we all have the same 168 hours in a week.

Mm-hmm. And you know, you sometimes look at somebody else cuz we are always in comparison mode. Like, well this person's able to do it and why can't I? Right. So that just makes us feel worse about ourselves and yeah. Yeah. And and this is another exercise that I've worked with, you know, that I've shared with people and it's not something I came up with, but you know, you take the 168 hours and you str subtract out how many hours do you work, how many hours do you sleep, how many hours for all the non-negotiables, you know, cooking or cleaning or exercising or going to school.

And when you get, when you subtract all those numbers out people, cuz everybody's answer is, I don't have time. But time we fill it somehow. Mm-hmm. Yes. So the question is, right, it's all about choices. Yes. So at the end of the day, if you even end up with 10 extra hours a week, and, and trust me, my clients end up realizing they have at least 25 extra hours a week.

Then it's like, oh, wow. So if I just shift and plan something and create a, a mini goal, even if it's one thing, All those mini goals, all those little habits then start to shift and, you know, create that space. And you realize after a month, two months, like, wow, I've accomplished so much. Yeah. And, and it doesn't have to be just with food and diet, it could be with anything, right?

[00:14:01] Bettina M Brown: It Can't. Yeah. I can, I would love to go into some more about your, your gut method, because you had talked about it earlier, your intuition. We say it's our gut feeling and the gut is responsible for so much. I've learned more and more about that, especially as a therapist working with women going through breast cancer.

You know, how chemo affects you, how, how your lymphatic system interacts with that. It. Everything is right there. Serotonin's produced, you know, all this much. Talk. Talk a little bit. Talk a lot about your gut method. 

[00:14:36] Sharon Holand Gelfand: So, I wrote the book because I was noticing a pattern, right? The common denominators, the frequently asked questions from all my clients, and the biggest one of where people start is just being so disconnected from themselves.

Mm-hmm. And, you know, just to the point of like, we see an ad or, we're at the supermarket and we, you know, read a box. We're so busy trying to find the. Fix outside of ourselves. And we're running around around like chickens without heads. So the idea of the gut method, the acronym stands for G, getting connected to your symptoms to your body because nobody knows your body better than you.

And when we go to, to. Practitioners, and they're wonderful. Like doctors save lives, so it's not an either or. But when we go to our practitioners, we don't always know what questions to ask. We don't have the answers, and there's a gap. And we fill it with these pre cycled stories. So the getting connected is first and foremost about really paying attention to what?

What am I feeling? What is my body experiencing? Headaches, stomach aches, aches and pains. Um, you know, sniffles things that we just chalk off as getting older. It's allergies, it's my hormones. But paying attention every day, like making that a goal, right? Because once you can get connected and, ooh, was it a food I ate?

Did something trigger a reaction to a conversation? Because it's emotionally, it's physically, it's spiritually, it's mentally, it's a whole body. And when you can get connected and, and recognize the pattern. Then you can go in and dissolve them and create new habits and new patterns. And so the U is that understanding of like, oh, okay, this is what happened.

When I eat this, you know, I feel bloated when I have dairy or I get the sniffles when I have gluten. Again, I'm just throwing these out as examples. And ,or, you know, I get triggered when I hear a certain word because, oh, you know what? My mother used to say that to me when I was a kid, and that just really makes me angry.

Right, because when you can understand all of that, then the T is taking action. And all of this is so connected to the gut because yes, we do have that inner knowing. We do have that gut reaction. We just have lost that ability to trust it. So these are the steps to help you to get connected so that you can start trusting it and then deciding where do I wanna start?

You know, if, if, if you've been on a diet and you know, you're just, what's that phrase from, Albert Einstein, you know, like insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Mm-hmm. You can't fix a problem with the same mindset that you've gone into it with. So if you write it down and I have plenty of space in my book that has all these action prompts, then you can start seeing this, this puzzle piece come together and it becomes your manual.

Then you're like, oh my God. And for some people that's enough. They're able to do it. For other people, it's like, Ooh, you know what? I need more. And then they decide what that more is for them, because we're all individuals and there's no cookie cutter solution, and there's no one right person for everybody.

I may be somebody's cup of tea, I may not be somebody else's cup of tea, and that's okay.

[00:17:55] Bettina M Brown: Yes. Yes. And what I, I like how you divide it out with get connecting, get connected to yourself . That's, that tends to be the problem, understanding and taking action because a lot of us feel out of control.

And we look for other methods to gain control, but realizing that we have the control via our own choices. Yeah. Yes. That we have that power.

[00:18:17] Sharon Holand Gelfand: Absolutely. And that is a, a like a big aha of like, wait, I have a choice. Mm-hmm. Because a lot, you know, maybe you've probably had these conversations too, where you hear, I really didn't have a choice.

Yeah, but you did, you chose not to choose. 

[00:18:34] Bettina M Brown: Correct. 

[00:18:36] Sharon Holand Gelfand: When people hear that right, they're like, " what"

[00:18:39] Bettina M Brown: it's just a different perspective. It absolutely, exactly. Bingo 

[00:18:42] Sharon Holand Gelfand: perspective, right? It's all about perspective or perception or point of view. Mm-hmm. It's like, how can I look at this through a different lens and what will I see?

[00:18:53] Bettina M Brown: Yeah. And there is a different lens that we have options to look at, but sometimes we just need that help. Yeah. To, to see that those lenses are even available. 

[00:19:02] Sharon Holand Gelfand: Exactly. Exactly. And that's why, you know, it's so funny because, and this is another thing that's popping up in a, there was an article in, I think they, in the New York Times of the Wall Street Journal not too long ago, that, you know, people have financial advisors and they have their CPAs and they've got their doctors.

But we, uh, we all need health coaches, wellness coaches mm-hmm. People to really help us to grow and to look at things differently and that it's okay. 

[00:19:31] Bettina M Brown: Right? It is. Yes. Yes. And, I, as a physical therapist, I also now am a life coach. And because I was having this time to have conversations with people, you know, when they come twice a week for so many weeks.

Yeah. And, and just to have that, just that opportunity for conversation, not to interrogate, but to help someone find other answers. Because so many of our problems present physically, but that doesn't mean the origin of pain or issues are always physic. Right? Mm, absolutely. I've definitely learned that a longer, I'm a pt and I have to ask you this question because I know there's somebody else out there.

You've mentioned you're a holistic health coach and a functional nutritionist. Mm-hmm. Can you explain how that's different from a regular, I guess, quote unquote health coach and a nutritionist? 

[00:20:19] Sharon Holand Gelfand: Absolutely. So the difference with, listen, you have re you have registered dieticians who more or less prescribe to a, a hospital mode of, of doing things that's very regimented.

Mm-hmm. And, and it's fine, you know, it works in those settings. You have nutritionist who will look at what you're eating and tell you. How to switch things up, what foods to what not to eat As a functional nutritionist, what I do more specifically is I do, uh, at-home testing. So I send tests to your home, a few different ones.

One that will measure your stress and hormones, the cortisol through saliva. One that looks to see. What the, leaky gut, like what's going on in your gut. And then also one that maps out if you have parasites and, a dysbiosis or, dysfunction of too much bacteria or too little bacteria and overgrowth.

So I'm looking specifically, through these tests of what's going on that they don't do in radical, in regular offices because insurance doesn't wanna cover it. They're like, you know, we prescribe by this, you know, fix the, fix it kind of thing. Whereas I'm like, no, let's really get to the root. And then look at that.

Look at your lifestyle. So that's the functional part. And then the health and wellness coaching looks at your whole life, right? There's like a whole wellness wheel of, all right, where do I rate myself with? Mm-hmm. My physical, my mental, my work, my relationships, all of that stuff. And looking at your strengths, looking at what you value and having you.

Be in the driver's seat. Right? Right. Because as a lifestyle coach, as a a health coach, we wanna empower our clients to be in the driver's seat. So we're, so as a health coach, that's part of what I do, for them as opposed to just as a nutritionist, which is more of the. Consultant of telling you what to do.

Hmm. I combine the two Because you do have test results that you do want to, you know, fix, I don't wanna say fix, you wanna look for healing opportunities. Mm-hmm. But because the body as a whole is not just physical, right. It's all about the connection and the reason that I. And I'm actually, getting board certified as a health and wellness coach as well because it, I realized that there was that missing piece of, there's more to just helping people and the coaching part was that big missing piece cuz people, they, they wanna have a life that is filled with their purpose and their passion.

They just don't really know where to start or what to. Right, and and that's the beautiful role that you also work with them as a life coach that helps them to grow into what they and who they're supposed to be. And it's just, it's a beautiful thing.

[00:23:17] Bettina M Brown: So you're not just looking at potential, but that you're walking into that potential, so it's realization.

[00:23:22] Sharon Holand Gelfand: Exactly. Exactly. Wow. Yeah. 

[00:23:26] Bettina M Brown: So my podcast title is In The Rising, and you have Risen definitely through that. What, what plans for your future? What do you see yourself still working towards and and what impact are you still looking to make? 

[00:23:41] Sharon Holand Gelfand: Such a great question and, because I, I always, you know, continue to l my love of learning, which is one of my strengths.

I, my biggest, biggest vision is to really heal parent child relationships, speci and especially mother. I can't speak from men because I'm not a father, but, you know, we show up as a sum of. Childhood. Mm-hmm. And how we were raised. And it's also passed through our D N A ancestrally. Correct. And I see this bigger vision of how we can heal and heal our kids, especially our daughters, so that they can then rise to who they're supposed to be and their potential.

And I don't know what that looks like yet, but I know that it's going to involve retreats. And more live workshops when we get out of Covid. Yes. You know, and just that expansive, I just wanna help heal and empower as many women as possible, so that they can then pay it forward with their families and with their kids.

And I, I truly believe that all that love. That starts in the home, and it doesn't matter if you're divorced or married, you know, it's, it's, mm-hmm. But it, it's, if one person can embrace it and have that light fill their home, it's magic. It's just beautiful. 

[00:25:10] Bettina M Brown: I, I love your description of that. You know, and it doesn't matter, divorced, married, but really to be that light and with paying it forward, you're leaving a legacy.

Yeah. Sometimes that legacy has a name, like, I get to talk to you, and sometimes no one will know where that came from, but that's the beauty of the work that you're doing is that it's not always visible, but it is still. And the beauty and magic of my time with Sharon is that she is just such an incredibly intelligent woman and has gone about so much of her own study for herself, her family, and also for you.

Her book, the Gut Method, secrets Beyond Your Plate for a Healthier, more Energetic Life is really filled with super positive and. Doable, right? It is about being able to do some of these things. I've read this book, I've been gifted it, and it is just an incredible, kind of like a health bible for you to have.

I absolutely recommend it. I have encoded it down below in the description, and I encourage you to read it and take the simple steps, micro-commitments, so that your body on the molecular and micro level, Gets to just be the, the body that you need, the vessel that you have been gifted to move forward in life.

And speaking of moving forward in life, every single minute that we, um, have on this planet is accounted for. And you've shared some time with us today. I'm so grateful for that. If you like this podcast, go ahead and leave it up. Five star review. It really helps move the podcast into the hands and ears of those that may help.

And until next time, let's keep building one another up!