How Journaling Can Help You Get in Shape, with Michale Hartte

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We are beyond excited to tell you about our interview with wellness coach Michale Hartte, because we know her ideas can help. Whether you struggle with achieving wellness goals or you’re just looking for extra inspiration to maximize your health regimen, you won’t want to miss this conversation. Discover the ways journaling can help you achieve optimal health and fitness.  

Michale has 20 years of experience helping people get fit and healthy through her courses and 1 on 1 consulting. She is also the author of The Fit ‘n Healthy Plan and writes for numerous magazines. Michale’s passion to help others stems from experience reversing her own cases of amenorrhea and osteoporosis through diet, detox, and daily routine. 

Michale credits journaling with saving her life. As a child, she struggled hard to fit in. Low self-esteem and a desire to feel accepted led Michale toward unhealthy behaviors like smoking and anorexia.

Years later, Michale began to seek answers. “I sat down and asked, ‘Who am I, and why am I here?’  I journaled about it, got it out of my body, and I started to see my story in my journal. It made sense, and  I realized exactly why I’m here.â€

Since this life-changing discovery, Michale has established healthy habits, a strong mind and body, and now she helps others do the same. She attributes much of her success to journaling.

If you’d like to listen to the full audio interview, look for The Power of Journaling wherever you find your podcasts!

Michale’s Top Three Tips to Help Slim Down and Get Stronger

1. Have confidence in the right plan. There are so many diets to choose from. The goal is to select a plan that will work for the long-term and that emphasizes health not merely weight loss.

2. Be consistent. Establishing a morning time journaling routine helps maintain a schedule that ensures you reach your goals. Michale suggests starting each day by recording important key indicators in your journal which include tracking:

  • sleep patterns
  • energy levels
  • bowel movements
  • menstrual cycles if you are a woman

This kind of record keeping shines a light on important details you can use to track your body’s response to diet, exercise, and particular sleep routines. You’ll see where and when you’re  falling off track. In these ways, journaling helps us stay accountable.  

3. Find your courage and glean support. You don’t have to do this alone. Seek out or cultivate a community void of judgement in which you are loved and your health goals are supported.

The Value of a Good Night’s Rest

Each of us has different health goals. In Michale’s case, she’s focused on optimizing her brain and body health in order to ensure a long and productive life. To achieve this goal, she commits to getting enough sleep. As an explanation, she recommends everyone read Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival by T. S. Wiley and Bent Formby.

Wiley and Formby show that getting the required amount of sleep supports healthy weight loss because it curves our cravings for unhealthy carbs. Among other benefits of a good night’s rest cited in this book are:

  • reversal of type 2 diabetes
  •  relief from depression
  • normalized blood pressure
  • reduced risk of heart disease and cancer

All of this sounds great, but sometimes a good night’s sleep feels elusive. Michaele has an answer for that. She explains that preparation for a good night’s sleep starts in the morning.

Michale credits a consistent morning routine with her healthy sleep hygiene. In the morning, she puts a kettle on for beloved black organic coffee—chock full  of antioxidants to support healthy aging. For this part of her day, Michale remains in a fasted state, giving her body time to “clean up old worn out cells.†She does an oil pull with coconut oil while waiting for coffee. From there, along with her coffee, Michale drinks one liter of water within 2 hours of waking. This helps turn the brain on and gets her feeling energized. From there she enters her office where she takes out her journal and records key markers (sleep bowel movements, menstruation, and energy) from the day before. Michale reviews the information and makes connections between how her body is performing vs the food, exercise, and level of activity she engaged with the day before.

This journaling routine, Michale notes, helps people be in alignment with their goals.

Healthy Meal Plans That Squash Inflammation and Lower Blood Sugar

Michale doesn’t track the specific foods she eats and never records calorie counts. She discourages her clients from doing so as well. Insead, she offers tips to ensure your body gets exactly the nutrients it needs to perform well.

  1. Choose your protein source. Protein is a part of every cell in the body and it’s a fundamental part of a healthy diet.
  2. Eat healthy carbs. We need fiber found in colorful veggies to produce regular bowel movements that remove toxins from the body.
  3. Consume healthy fats for their anti-inflammatory effects.
  4. Prebiotic foods like beets and dandelion greens and probiotic foods such as sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir, and yogurt encourage healthy gut bacteria.
  5. Digest minerals to help take pain away. Sea vegetables full of trace minerals such as nori, dulse, and kelp are good sources. Drink a cup of bone broth each day.
  6. Season your food with herbs and spices—parsley is a diuretic for the kidneys, oregano bolsters the immune system, and cilantro is a heavy metal detoxer.

 If all this talk of food is making your mouth water, you can download Michale’s cookbook, Fit ‘N Healthy Plan, on her website.

Your Action Plan

Michale’s final words of wisdom came to her via Bob Proctors and his staff. She teaches, “See what you want. Be it how you want it and become it now.”

We would also add, love who you are right now today even before you lose the weight.

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