Welcome!

Thank you for joining me!  If you’re here it might mean that, like I have, you struggle with your body image and mindset towards health.  While I don’t know your exact struggle, I have been in the place where I was unhealthy and suffering and couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t “get over it” like so many other people. Every day I saw these amazing “before and after” posts online; the women who were overweight and at their lowest points but found this amazing plan that worked for them and they now wear a size 2, have glowing skin and climb mountains while raising 3 children and working full time careers.  Or the guys who had the “dad bods” who now post nothing but videos of themselves flipping tires the size of a minivan and shirtless pics of their 8 packs while somehow still holding a beer and having wings with the boys. Because #balance right? (Ok, ok, maybe those aren’t that common – but when you’re not there, it SEEMS much more dramatic).

For me, all I could wonder was, why don’t I have enough willpower to be that person?

What do they have that I don’t?

What was the magic secret that made it different for them?

What am I missing?

What’s wrong with ME?

Because I tried that same plan (and about 30 others that thousands of people have been extremely successful with) and those awesome results were never my results.  All they led to for me was a frustrating 1-4 weeks of trying to fit my apparently healthy foods into a very restricted or difficult plan followed by an epic leap off the wagon, straight into a large pizza and a pitcher of beer.  Back to square one on my mission to find “the answer”.

And then I finally figured it out; there isn’t one single answer; all of these diet plans work.  There is no magical, mythical solution.  Any diet that restricts your intake of calories and encourages you to move more will get you results if you follow it precisely.

I’ll say it again, because I cannot stress this enough: any diet that restricts your intake of calories and encourages you to move more will get you results if you follow it precisely.  Period.  All the fat burning supplements, protein shakes, green tea and fasting in the world cannot escape the fact that in order to lose weight, you have to burn more calories than you consume.  AKA you have to maintain a calorie deficit over a period of time.  So if you just want to lose weight, it really doesn’t matter which one you choose (side note: of course in the big picture it completely matters because some are NOT healthy but if we’re purely talking about JUST losing weight then almost any plan out there plastering their amazing results can get you there if you can stick with the program.) The problem is our mindset – why we’re doing it, our relationship with food, forcing ourselves to do or eat something we hate (looking at you kale!), adopting plans and programs that don’t fit with our lifestyle.  Most people can follow a strict plan for a period of time, but if you sign up for a plan where you have to count calories (or points, or macros) religiously, every single day and you go into that with a bad relationship with food, a fairly wishy-washy reason for wanting to lose weight/get healthy and a pretty serious sugar addiction, a lot of us (solidly me!) are not able to maintain that.

If you’ve ever found yourself weighing fruit and vegetables you probably understand what restrictive is.

So what do I know about it?  I have struggled with my mental and physical health for most of my life.  I didn’t attend most of high school due to depression and anxiety and in my later teens as I started to learn the skills I needed to manage those better I instead started having hormonal issues that caused a collection of very painful reproductive symptoms (cysts, fibroids, pre-cancerous cells – you name it).  I’ve had countless procedures and treatments for these and still have to carefully manage this.

As most women know, hormones and weight have a tempestuous relationship (and if you don’t, I will expand on that down the road because it’s important) and while I was already a little overweight as a kid, the impact of these health battles resulted in a steady weight gain as I had gotten older – with some brief periods of significant weight loss through generally unhealthy means. I have done EVERYTHING to lose weight – including make myself sick and starving myself as a teenager.  I’ve done every variety of diet there is from the points, to the high-protein/low-carb, to just old fashioned calorie counting.  The next fad I came across was always going to be the answer and, spoiler alert, it never was.  I’ve lost 25 lbs in 3 weeks and gained 25 lbs in a month. For years when I went into my closet to get pants it was always a frustrating chore just figuring out which ones fit.  I had sizes 4 – 14 in there because month to month, who knew which ones I would be wearing.

Adding to this of course is that I did not have a good relationship with food.  I stress and binge ate.  I never liked vegetables as a kid and didn’t bother with them much as an adult.  I was definitely addicted to sugar.  I had no comprehension of what a healthy diet was.  Most of what I ate came from packages and if I bothered with the label at all it was just to see how many calories were in it (if you don’t know why that isn’t enough, also totally fine, we’ll get there!)

When a few years ago, after yet another week off work dealing with an extremely painful cyst rupture, and staring down the possibility of another round of medication and a surgery to follow it up, something snapped inside me and I finally started doing some research on nutrition. It is an understatement to say that I was blown away that what I had always thought was a healthy diet, really isn’t…and that nutrition is not as cut and dry as I thought it was. As I learned more and more my life started to change in ways I could never have imagined.  It wasn’t a smooth transition but that change started the wheels in motion for me to go from an frustrated and overweight admin assistant, managing daily pain, to dramatically improving my health, losing weight without stressing about it and becoming a certified Personal Training Specialist, Kettlebell Instructor and Weight Loss Coach.

This site is just a glimpse into the pretty crazy journey I’ve been on to get to where I am now because all I want to do in life now is help other people find the same relief I have.  The name is Grin & Barrett for two reasons – first of all that is me – Trisha Barrett. I am an unapologetic optimist and I smile and see the positive side of everything.  The second reason is that “bare it” is a very apt description of what I believe we have to do in order to actually move past our mindset hangups when we want to change.  We have to lay out and face all the messy stuff and take a good hard look at what parts of it are our own shit that we need to own and deal with, and what has absolutely nothing to do with us and we need to let go of.  We should never be afraid to ‘bare it’.  (Note: it does not mean bear it like just tolerate it…that is NOT at all a part of my belief system).

A few things to start here:

1. This site is dedicated to sharing what I found that helped me to change my mindset and thus my relationship with my body, what I put into my body and how I move my body so that I could make sustainable healthy changes for the long term.  This is not a “weight loss program” or site specifically, just a resource to share the things I have learned about managing both mental and physical health after a very long journey.  This often means losing weight, and I needed to, so I reference that as an indicator of some success but it is by no means the sole focus and doesn’t have to be yours.
2. I am completely transparent that I am a Personal Trainer and Weight Loss Coach for a living and if you want to reach out to work with me in either of these areas please do.  I won’t post one-size-fits-all plans because there are enough of those already but I will post a lot of resources that have helped me figure out what would work for me.
3. If you have a significant eating disorder, please get help from a professional with a specialty in eating disorders.  I have both recovered from my own eating disorder and worked at an addiction and mental health facility that treated eating disorders so I do have a range of tools that I use and know are effective for helping with poor food relationships but eating disorders are complex and extremely serious and I am not trained to treat these or offer medical advice.  Everything I talk about here is about long-term, sustainable solutions for managing our health and seeking treatment for an eating disorder is step 1 if that is where you’re at.  If you live in Canada and have reason to suspect that you have an eating disorder please visit NEDIC to get more information on where to find services in your area.
4. If you have significant mental health issues – diagnosed or otherwise – speak to your doctor.  Again, all I can offer are tools that have worked for me to aid in managing anxiety, embracing my body and my relationship with health but those tools came after working with professionals to address clinical issues.  Some of what I have learned may help for a lot of people but I am not a mental health professional and am in no way offering any medical advice.  Again if you live in Canada you can visit Mental Health Topics on the Government of Canada webpage for information about available services or contact a Distress Centre in your area.

Thanks for joining me and if you can relate to any of what I share here I hope that what I’ve learned helps you too.

Trisha xo