Living a Healthier Life with Nikki Sharp

A Personal Note From Orion

If you’re trying to lose weight and become a better, healthier version of yourself, today’s conversation with Nikki Sharp will be as refreshing as it is informative. For decades, women have been bombarded with quick weight loss programs that do more harm than good. From juice cleanses that starve you to death and diet fads that actually negatively affect your gut health in the long run. My guest Nikki likes to keep things clean and simple. In other words, no frills!

Nikki Sharp is an internationally known wellness expert and two-time bestselling author of the books, The 5-Day Real Food Detox and Meal Prep Your Way to Weight Loss. Nikki coaches women to find ultimate confidence.

According to Nikki, if you want long-lasting results, you need to start with your mindset. So without further ado, let us give you all the tips and tricks you need to become a better you! Tune in.

In this Episode

[01:17] – Orion introduces Nikki Sharp, an internationally known wellness expert, 2x best-selling author, and coaches women to find ultimate confidence.
[05:27] – Nikki shares how she deals with imposter syndrome and self-doubts in achieving goals.
[11:12] – Nikki shares interesting stories of her clients who enrolled in her 3-month Transformational Program.
[16:36] – What is the first step to take when desiring for change?
[21:28] – Nikki recommends ways on how to feel more refreshed and alive every day.
[26:52] – What are some stress reduction techniques/rituals you can do regularly?
[31:32] – Orion and Nikki discuss the concept of nondominant handwriting and inner child work and how it can be an exercise of both.
[35:51] – Nikki talks about the emotional and spiritual side of cravings.
[41:06] – Nikki shares her nutritional diet and explains why she calls herself “a vegan who cheats.”
[50:08] – Follow Nikki Sharp on her social media accounts and visit her website at NikkiSharp.com to learn more about awesome health and wellness tips.

Jump to Links and Resources

About Today’s Show

The 5-Day Real Food Detox by Nikki Sharp

Hey Nikki, welcome to Stellar Life Podcast. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for having me.

Before we begin, can you share a little bit about how you developed your passion for a healthy lifestyle and healing in one’s relationship with food?

Absolutely. I had no desire or knowledge that I would get into the health or wellness industry; it happened because I had two eating disorders that I battled for quite a few years and had terrible skin. I was on antibiotics. I had tried every single skincare, gone to a dermatologist for that. I had insomnia for seven years straight. I was on sleeping pills for five years. When people look at me now, they don’t have any idea that I went through many things. I was hospitalized two different times for lack of sleep. I went to a sleep study in New York trying to figure out what was wrong. I was hospitalized because of acid in my stomach. These things led me eventually to need to learn a quantum cure to what I was going through because nothing was working at that point. That’s what led me to change my diet, learn about nutrition, count colors, not calories. From there, I started diving into a lot of the mindset. That’s the short version of how I came to be where I am.

Wow. I’m sure it feels really good to see when your clients are having breakthroughs.

Yeah, it’s one of the most powerful things, especially because many people feel lost in today’s day and age, and doctors don’t understand them. They’ve searched high and low for the answer; they’ve been diagnosed with something that there’s no cure for. It is really rewarding to help someone overcome an eating disorder, or body dysmorphia, or lose the weight that they’ve never been able to or help with some sort of internal issue. It is very rewarding.

You know, when someone looks at you like you said, they never imagined that you had any problems. You are so gorgeous, beautiful, and perfect. It doesn’t seem like somebody like that has any problems with anything that has something to do with food or weight loss; it seems so natural.

Meal Prep Your Way to Weight Loss by Nikki Sharp

The challenge that so many of us face is that we judge others on looks, how they present themselves, and what they share on social media. Without any understanding that we, as human beings, all go through some form of suffering because we’re meant to learn lessons in our lives. Nobody goes through a life of no challenges or problems; it just doesn’t happen. From my end, I just learned how to manage these things and work hard towards it. That’s not to say, I don’t have bad days now, but it’s just I know how to overcome them so much quicker than I did in the past. I think that it’s important that we all understand that you should never judge a book by its cover, as the saying goes. Purely for that reason, you have no idea what someone is going through internally in their lives based on how they look or how they act.

Especially these days. And everything is going on in social media. Because of social media, people feel like they’re not good enough. You talk about imposter syndrome and self-doubt, which is a topic that I’m very curious about. I want to know, did you have imposter syndrome? Did you have any doubts that you had to deal with?

Oh, my gosh, I mean, who doesn’t? It’s that question, “Who doesn’t have that sort of thing?” The question is, “What were the things?” We all have that at some point in our life. It’s funny; the more success that I’ve had, the more the self-doubt has come up. I have to work hard on understanding where that comes from, but I hold myself to such a high standard with everything that I do. When things don’t go to my expectations, I get self-doubt, and then I get imposter syndrome. I did two books with Random House, one of the best publishers globally, and I had massive self-doubt and imposter syndrome.

I talked very openly about it, and I blogged about it because it was one of those things where you’re doing this incredible thing with a company that believes in you. And all I could think about was, “Oh, my god, what if I don’t succeed?” What does that mean? What does success look like? Well, it’s the self-imposed walls that I’ve put on myself. With imposter syndrome, it’s always these “walls” that we jail ourselves in because we have expectations on how something should be done, and then we don’t believe that we can live up to those expectations that we set for ourselves. This is ironic and funny because it’s us putting those expectations on and not believing we can even make them and become what we think we can. And it’s all created by us.

What did you do to overcome those self-doubts?

Honestly, The first thing was just acknowledging that I had them and talking about them, and being aware that like, “Hey, this is normal.” The more that I shared things like that, people came out and said, “Wow, I can’t believe you. Nikki Sharp has those sort of feelings or thoughts.” Talking about it and acknowledging it was the first step. From there, I found that understanding the fears behind it. What was the fear that I had beyond not being successful with these books that Random House was publishing? Once I understood what the inherent fear was, I was able to look that in the face rather than myself and be like, “What’s the worst-case scenario?” If this fear happens and this becomes truth and reality, what is the worst case? And I remember with my second book, I was asking myself, “What’s the best-case scenario for this book? What’s the worst-case scenario?” And it’s so funny because my best case was it hits New York Times bestseller, I go on all these talk shows, it’s a wild success. That was the best case.

And my worst case was, it doesn’t sell many copies. I don’t do very much press, and I’m going to move to Paris because I was over in America, this was a few years ago. And I started thinking about it being like, “Wow, so my best case is something pretty magical, and my worst case is still pretty magical.” I won’t be as happy with the book’s outcome, but I will have known that I put everything I could into making it successful. And I’m still going to do something that makes me feel good. As soon as I looked at the best and worst case, the actual fear was not present. Then I was able to focus on my passion surrounding why I wanted it to succeed.

You need to have a deep desire to want change. Every fiber in your body must want something so bad. If that's not the case, you'll never be motivated enough to just go for it. Click To Tweet

Why did you want it to succeed?

Ultimately, anytime you put your heart and soul into something, you want people to see it, view it, read it, and listen to it. It’s like a podcast; nobody does a podcast because they want nobody to listen to it. You do a podcast because you want to get information out to people. I knew that I had answers that people needed to hear about food, nutrition, and mindset. I wanted it to become successful, not for my ego, but because I knew that the more people that read the book, the more lives that would be able to touch so that people would no longer “suffer.” For me was the ultimate “Why.”

What are some of your most extraordinary stories with your clients? Something so interesting, like something that changed their lives.

I have a program; it’s called the Three Month Ultimate Transformation Program. In that program, which is my most favorite thing that I take clients through, so it’s a money-back guarantee after three months. If you didn’t hit all of your goals that we line out in session one, if you don’t hit all of them, it’s a 100% money-back guarantee, no questions asked. I love this program so much, and the transformation that my clients have seen on it is, for example, I had one incredible woman in the Navy, and she had two very hardcore eating disorders. However, being in the Navy with mainly men, it’s not something that you can go and just tell anyone because they put it as a psychological disorder, and then they take you off of the fieldwork that you have to do.

So she was very mindful that there were not a lot of people she could talk to about this. And so she kind of shared bits here and there, but not being able to talk about it made it worse. And then being in a very male dominant field and having very little control over her career. What she got to do, what she got to eat, things like that made it very tough for her—working together within one month of this beautiful girl having severe eating disorders. Within one month, she never threw up again, a day in her life. She was bulimic. Within three months, she completely eradicated the eating disorders. She finally understood that that was–this is going to sound weird for people listening but–a choice that she had chosen to no longer be in that jail of.

When you have an eating disorder or body dysmorphia, you must understand that it does feel like a jail. I love to always catch up with my clients a few months later or a year later. We spoke three months after the program; we spoke six months after, I randomly ran into her in another country; it was just wild. A year later or two years later, she said that she’s never once gone back to the eating disorder. She’s never restricted again; she’s never thrown up after that first month of our course. She said, “I never thought it would be possible that I could say I’m healed from eating disorders, but it’s true, and I’ve never thought about it again to this day.” And so it’s stories like that that make me do what I do and know that there are solutions out there for people who feel like there are none.

What was her catalyst for change? What are some of the things that you shared with her that helped her transform in this way?

Well, I believe the first one, this is the most important that people don’t talk about, is you have to have a deep desire to want to change. People say that they want to change, they want to lose weight, they want to change their job, they want to find a romantic partner and live happily ever after, XYZ. But at the end of the day, there’s a difference between wanting and being willing to make the change. That’s the first step, is you have to be willing to make a change in your life to see a different result. That’s the first thing that I go through with people. And then I think why she saw such a change was having tried everything else out there and feeling like there was no more hope, feeling like rock bottom. Then I come at it from a very interesting place where having gone through eating disorders, body dysmorphia, pretty much anything that someone is suffering I’ve been through. And so I’m very compassionate and very empathetic.

When you have a strong reason for doing what you’re doing, you will not give up on it easily.

You’ll feel very supported when we work together. Not just that, I do group coaching programs, but I also share a lot of personal stories, which helps people to understand that I’m just like you. I’ve seen challenges and issues because I think there’s nothing worse than hearing from an expert in whatever field they are, and knowing that they’ve never had a mess up. Or if you think of famous actors, you secretly don’t want to know that someone like Nicole Kidman has never had a day in her life where she forgot a line. Like if you’re an actor, you want to know that she had a day like that because it makes you realize, “Hey, I’m normal, too.” I think that it’s very powerful for my clients that when I share a story, they’re able to understand that, “Oh, like Nikki’s been there.” Once we go through that, they can kind of attach themselves to something outside of themselves. Mixed with that desire for change, they see dramatic results.

If somebody’s listening to you right now and want to take the first step for change, what do they have to do?

Getting clear on what it is that you want to change. So I have so many people come to me and say, “Oh, I want to lose weight.” It’s like, “Well, is that the goal? Or is the goal that you want to find more happiness? Or is the goal that you want to learn how to stop binge eating or restricting? Because of weight in itself, I’m just giving this as an example; weight is not necessarily the thing that you want to change. Anytime someone comes to me, and they have a negative goal. “I want to stop. I want to stop eating chocolate.” Like what’s the actual goal, the actual goal might be, “I would like to feel more fulfilled in my life, so I don’t have the desire to go to chocolate.” Understanding your goal is the most important piece of change. And then I always say the second step is you can never have a negative goal. People all the time are like, “I don’t want to do this, I won’t stop…” Say January rolls around; that’s when everyone starts these ridiculous resolutions. Unfortunately, 80% of resolutions fail by February, and that’s why.

But one of the big reasons is that people say, “I don’t want to drink caffeine anymore. I’m going to stop drinking alcohol. I’m not going to do this; I’m never going to drink caffeine or sugary drinks.” In reality, we know that that doesn’t work. So what’s the real goal? You have to make it positive and say, “I’m going to have one green smoothie a day,” knowing that naturally, you are not going to crave the chocolate anymore, for example. There are different ways change can happen, but first, understanding your goal and why that is so important—and then making sure that it’s an actual positive mind frame, not a negative one.

You want to move toward a compelling future instead of running away from something you don’t want. You want to have something that pulls you; you want to have that vision of yourself and who you want to become. And so you move toward that goal.

Yeah, for example, what’s a goal you have in the next year or a few months?

My goal right now is to redesign my website.

Okay. Why is that so important?

It’s important because I don’t like the way it is right now. I think it’s too cluttered, and I want to refine my message.

Okay, so that’s the key, “I want to refine my message.” You want to redesign the website; what’s stopping you from doing that?

Right now, time.

Right. And so then the question becomes, what’s the ‘real reason’ that’s stopping you?

I don’t want to deal with the back and forth with the design company. Just the thought of it is a little stressful.

Right. Because what will that mean if you have to go back and forth with a design company?

More time and stress.

Right, but what’s the reward if you do it?

Beautiful and compelling website.

Get clear on what your goal is and find your' why.' This is how you change your life. Click To Tweet

Just for anyone listening to and for yourself, this is why it’s not going to happen in the foreseeable future because your why is not great enough. Having a beautiful website with a refined message is not a great enough reason for you to deal with the potential tension back and forth with a web designer. Because already the mind is going into fear and that self-doubt that you’re not going to have enough time. Therefore, you’ve already put all of these perceived walls in the “jail” that I talked about earlier on this one thing. Instead of understanding that, “Hey, actually, there might not be a lot of back and forth, if I get clear on what I want on this website. And if I have a more refined website, there will be more podcast listeners, or I will get more clients from that, or I will have a greater impact and be able to help more people.” When you get clear on that, on what the real reason is why you want to do something, and then you take away the self-imposed jail, or walls, or self-doubt, you’re able to understand why things don’t happen in our life. That’s what I find the most interesting based on everything that I do and teach. It’s being able to get clear with people super quick.

Yeah. That was good. I’m so sleep-deprived lately that I’m like, “Yeah, one day maybe.” Taking care of my little one and being in relocation is a lot right now. I feel like even the why is not strong enough for now. Even that big why of, “I want to save the world and help so many people.” I’m just like, “I just want to sleep and take care of my baby right now.”

What the goal would be, at this point for you is, “How can I feel more refreshed and alive every single day?”

That’s a beautiful goal.

There are so many ways to do that. You can take little small naps here and there, little five-minute meditations, or breathing exercises, and all those things that we already know. But it’s just putting them into practice, or supplements, or eating the right foods and making sure that you’re getting off your phone at night. When I work with people, there are so many ways to do it. So I never say, “Never try to find how you’re going to do something, just get clear on what the goal is and the why.” Because the solution will always present itself if you’re clear enough on everything else.

That’s beautiful. And so if someone wants to feel more alive and more vital, what should they do?

So many things, and it depends on where they are in their life. I always say sleep is the most important thing. Yes, eating the right foods is vitally important, but if you’re not sleeping and you’re waking up early to hit the gym, or you’re going to bed too late because you’re scrolling your phone. Then you’re not getting decent REM sleep because the blue light from the phone is messing with that, the melatonin production, you’re going to wake up feeling tired. Even eating a kale salad with all the right things, the hemp seeds, blah, blah, blah. You’re not going to be digesting and assimilating the nutrients from that food; your serotonin levels are going to be rising. When I talk to clients about their diet, everyone comes to me, and they want a meal plan. On purpose, I do not give out meal plans because it’s not the meal plan that you need. We need to do stress reduction and increase quality sleep. Because think about it and you as a mother know this when you are tired, what do you crave the next day? Do you crave spinach?

If it’s covered with chocolate.

Right. Or are you craving things like sugar or chips or things like that? The reason that we crave those, and people don’t even realize this; we crave things like sugar or carb-heavy foods because it gets digested the quickest in the body as energy. Sometimes when people go for these big long marathon runs, they’re having those gels, and they’re having things like banana because it gets digested into glucose quickly. When you don’t get enough sleep, your body naturally craves the things that get digested into sugar so that you have energy. When you’re not focusing on sleep, instead, you’re like, “Oh, I want the perfect meal plan.”

Have an awareness that everyone is going through their own struggles. A little bit of kindness goes a long way.

Well, the two things that are going to sabotage you from getting the results you want are: having increased stress, and we all have a lot of stress with COVID stuff. It’s just natural because of the uncertainty, and a lot of people still haven’t taken responsibility for their own life, and it is what it is. Where in this new paradigm, you just have to make changes. A lot of people are still thinking, “Oh, I want it to be back on things before COVID,” and things like that, and trying to control how other people live their life. The more that we do things like that, the more stress we put on ourselves. When we’re stressed, our cortisol levels increase. Especially as women, when our cortisol increases, we end up gaining weight around our midsection, and it doesn’t come off easily, even if you’re eating clean and exercising.

So the bad news is that diet doesn’t matter. Of course, it does. You should always be eating a clean diet, but you need to be focusing on where that hidden stress is in your life. Often, people have no idea that the hidden stress comes from trying to control other people in their lives. Because when we try to control other people in the way they do things, we get frustrated when they don’t do what we want them to. Then we get frustrated and irritated; our cortisol levels are rising. And then we do things like being on our phones, scrolling Instagram late at night, and then we don’t get quality sleep. So we naturally start to crave bad food. Instead of the meal plan and the proper diet, I always have people work on stress and sleep as the primary things.

Do you have any stress-reducing rituals that you do every day?

Don’t try to control other people’s life. That’s probably the biggest one. Meditation, we all know. Fortunately, it’s more mainstream now, which is great. Unfortunately, so many people still say, “I don’t have time to meditate.” It’s like, “Did you have time to check your Instagram on your phone? Did you have time to check Facebook? Did you have time to check your emails and sit there for two minutes before you responded to someone? Did you have time to put on the news or watch TV?” And so it kind of goes back to this whole thing of…

Desire, and the big why.

Exactly. What’s important to you. If you find that you’re stressed, or you’re finding that you’re not able to lose the weight that you want, and you come to me and you say, “I don’t have time.” I’m going to call your bluff immediately. You have to find and make the time. I meditate every day, not because I want to because I know the benefits it gives me. For example, there are days where I’m just like, go go, go go go. I didn’t have time. I didn’t make the time. And so I’ll put on meditation, as I’m going to bed. There’s always a solution. The other thing for stress reduction is, I always say call a friend if you’re getting f*** up in your own life. The more stress that I get in my life, the more I reach out to those that I love to check in on their life. Because when we get stuck in me, me, me world, that is absolutely where anxiety comes from. Whereas when we’re able to check-in with a friend, you shift the focus from the I to we. When we go from I to we, we automatically start to get better results. You feel less stressed; you feel part of a community, you feel more connected. So checking in with friends is an underrated way to become less stressed.

Yeah. I’m taking this workshop from an Israeli instructor; it originated in the US. One thing that she taught us to do, she calls it, “morning pages.” So every day, you write three pages, and it’s got to be exactly three. You just intuitively write whatever is on your mind. It doesn’t have to be pretty or coherent. And you can jump from one thought to another just the way you think. And you just write write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write. When you’re done, you tear everything apart, and you toss it. It’s almost like taking all this clutter and junk from your mind and just tossing it, and if you have some epiphanies, you just remember the epiphanies. You write it down in a different notebook after you did this ceremonial act. And I found it very helpful, especially these days.

Meal planning is great, but not the number reason you'll lose weight. It's stress reduction and sleep quality. Click To Tweet

I love morning pages. I think that any time you can sit with a pen and paper, the reason that handwriting things are so important is because it goes into the right side of the brain or the cognitive hemisphere, where we’re able to tap into our subconscious mind a little bit more. I’m a massive fan of journaling; I have notebooks and notebooks just filled with God knows what. There are days when I’m doing morning pages. Instead of doing three pages, I just write for however long my hand wants to write or like whatever is coming up. Sometimes it’s a page; sometimes it’s five. I always end it with what I am grateful for.

People who can’t sleep well at night and they say, “Oh, I’m just constantly thinking about things.” Just keep a pen and paper and a journal next to your bed, and before bed, write out what’s on your mind. If it’s a to-do list, get it out of your mind so that your brain knows that you’re still thinking about it, it’s still important, and you’ll get to it tomorrow because that’s what keeps us up at night when our mind thinks that we’re going to forget something the next day, it kind of puts it on repeat. Whereas when you’re able to just get it out on paper, that becomes a really helpful thing. Anything to do with writing is a huge benefit to your stress, your anxiety, sleeping better, or things like that.

My first interview on Stellar Life Podcast was with Bill Donius. It’s episode number one. And it’s about non-dominant handwriting. When you write with your non-dominant hand, you connect to the right side of your brain, which is connected to more of Source, God, creation, creativity, intuition, all that good stuff. To get different answers sometimes than the answer you can get when you ask the same question with your dominant hand because the dominant hand is connected to the brain’s left hemisphere, which is logic and thinking. You get more of these answers when you write with your non-dominant hand. Sometimes I’ll do that within my morning pages as well.

That’s another great way to talk with your inner child. With your dominant hand, you write a question, and then with your non-dominant hand, you write the answer. Your handwriting is going to be terrible, and it’s going to frustrate you,

It’s very slow.

The goal of that becomes what needs to come out, especially as you’re talking to your little girl or little boy. One thing that anyone can do is check-in and say like, for me, it’d be like, “Little Nicky, how are you feeling today?” And then, with my left hand, an answer comes up. It’s mind-blowing and freaky to know what comes up where you’re like, “Wait, how am I even saying that? That doesn’t make sense?” I’m a huge proponent of everything you’re talking about.

You know, I did that. The first time I did that, I expected to hear beautiful, fun answers, and I got into a childhood trauma that I needed to resolve. It took me about two days to deal with it, shake it, and process it. But that too is something that needs to be processed and get cleaned so we can have the desire to get to where we want.

Yeah, completely. One thing that’s hard for people to understand is that to have a beautiful life, one must be willing to understand the process and learn from the traumas that we’ve had. We all have had some form of trauma, whatever it is, some of us may have had really beautiful childhoods, but then a parent died. Other people had great parents but then were bullied in school. Others had great friends at school but had a really bad childhood in terms of parents or one parent left. It could be something that happened later in life, too. We all have something in our life that we can go back to and say, “Wow, that affected me.” Or maybe you didn’t even realize that it affected you until you start doing some of that inner work. But the goal of self-development and this whole self-improvement world is to understand yourself better so that you can start to feel happier and fulfilled day by day and not let the childhood traumas affect your decision-making and how you act and react. That’s really what it’s all about. I think that people get so scared of that world because it becomes very woo-woo in a sense. But at the end of the day, if you want to live a better, happier life, it’s your choice.

Studies show that too much time spent on social media can affect your mental health. A social media detox every now and then is good for your health.

That’s your choice. I’m not woo-woo in anything that I do share, say, or teach. I’m not. I’m very practical and realistic. I’ve studied so much psychology. At the same time, there is a lot of spirituality infused in it. But there are so many different teachers, guides, and mentors that you can find to help you get to where you want to go. It’s just really understanding where am I trying to go?

Amazing. I loved everything that you shared so far. And I want to get more into some practical tips for our listeners. When it comes to dealing with sugar cravings. You said, if you have one smoothie a day, you’ll crave less sugar. If you sleep well, you’ll crave less sugar. What else can we do?

Craving sugar. So one thing I always say to people too is the emotional and spiritual side of cravings. Anyone listening, I want you to think, do you crave sweet or do you crave salty-crunchy? I crave salty-crunchy always. On the spiritual-emotional meaning of cravings, salty-crunchy means that you have a lot of pent-up aggression or stress in your life. Having a sweet craving means that you don’t have enough love in your life. Now the thing is, when it comes to love, people think that love is an external thing. Love has to do with how you show up for yourself. But I always say that when you have a sugar-filled craving, and you want chocolate every day. Yes, there are habits and routines that people have gotten themselves into. Sometimes, you can just go cold turkey. I always recommend people doing my five-day detox because that helps reduce cravings dramatically.

Increasing your fruit intake. So a lot of people are scared of fruit, but then they’re not scared to eat chocolate. It’s like, “Okay, well, let’s talk about that.” Because one is a natural sugar, the other one is not. So having an increase of fruit will help that, definitely having more colors in your diet. Every color corresponds with a different nutrient, vitamin, and phytonutrient that your body needs. When you start getting those cravings, it naturally goes down, and then your body has more energy. If you are craving sugar, it could be truly that you have not slept enough. There are different ways, and all of those are simple. The other thing is drinking more water. And people say, “Well, I drink enough water.” If your pee is not super clear all the time, you’re not drinking enough water. And if you’re having cravings throughout the day, or like you’re starving by the time lunch hits, you probably haven’t had enough water because like 90% of the population is dehydrated. Those are some kind of quick, simple things that people can do.

Yes. Do you do meal prepping?

I do. Yes and no. As COVID happened, I kind of stopped doing a lot of meal prepping just because we’re all at home so much that I don’t need to meal prep quite as much. But I still do where like, I’ll roast a ton of vegetables, and then I’ll use those in my lunch or dinners for the next few nights. And I think that at least when you’re like out and about, or on the go, or if you know that you have a really busy day and don’t have a lot of time for breaks, then meal prepping is key. And I always say make it simple. Keep it simple; make it simple. This is a little bit more outside of COVID; if you know that you always eat breakfast at home, eat lunch at the office, which like lunches good, you’re fine. And then dinner you always go out. Then the key will be, make it, so you meal prep breakfast, knowing that’s the meal you have the most challenge with.

Always try to meal prep the food, or the recipe, or the meal that you need to help with and that you tend to make the poorest decisions on. Once you start with that meal prepping, let’s say breakfast for five days straight, keep it simple. Just do that for a few weeks and get in the habit of it. And then you can add on lunch, for example. What happens is people start to meal prep, and they make all this food, and then they don’t put into their schedule as their meal prepping like, “Oh, I have dinner on Tuesday, and I’m going to lunch on Thursday.” Then they have excess food, and they don’t eat it, or they buy things like an uncooked artichoke. And they think that they’re going to come home from work, or at the end of a workday sitting at home, they’re going to make it, that doesn’t happen. So in meal prepping, when you buy the food, be super realistic with how many meals you’re going to meal prep for.

You have no idea what someone is going through internally or in their life based on how they look or act. So it's always best to have a little bit of compassion for others. Click To Tweet

Right. I remember the meal prepping days; everything was so beautiful and packed. Now I’m just like, “I have food in the refrigerator. I can feed everyone. That’s great. That’s the most important thing.”

Yeah. With COVID, at least from my side, I started ordering food way before because we do need a certain level of variety in our life. As most people stop going to the office, it was like, “How can I get variety in my life?” For me, naturally, that was, “Yes, I’m going to order food a lot more because I get bored of my cooking if I do it day after day after day.”

Yeah, I hear you. Do you eat organic? Do you eat vegan? Do you have any specific diet you follow?

I eat plant-based mainly. I call myself a vegan who cheats, which tends to p*** the hardcore vegans off, which I don’t care about. Because I do things for my life that work for me. I don’t try to tell other people what to do. So I call myself a vegan who cheats; I mainly eat plant-based because I just feel the best when I do it. I try to be organic when I can. I used to go to farmers’ markets a lot before COVID. The world has been opening up a little bit more. But I find that buying organic at Whole Foods, for example, is just astoundingly expensive. I just have a hard time justifying that. So I try to buy from local farmers’ markets, and then I follow the dirty dozen and clean green. Lemons, for example, I don’t buy organic. But I eat predominantly plant-based. Once a month, I crave meat. My body just tells me, “Yep, go crave some meat.” I eat that, and then I’m good. Sometimes, there are months that I don’t need it because I don’t crave it.

Brave of you to share that with people. I like people who are so outspoken. As you said, don’t try to control other people. I feel that it’s a new thing that is happening, especially now during COVID, where everyone tries to control somebody else’s opinion about everything. Even during pre-COVID. You have to be vegan, you have to eat a paleo diet, you have to do intermittent fasting, you have to, you have to, and you have to. You have to do whatever it is that your heart, soul, intuition, and body tell you because this is the way. The way is your way, nobody else’s way.

Exactly. I always say this to my clients and my Instagram community when someone is trying to control you or trying to control someone because we don’t normally think of it that way. Like, “Oh, I’m trying to control someone.” When we put expectations on other people’s lives, it’s an expectation that they should live a certain way according to how you live your life. And the thing is, nobody lives my life. I’m the only one that lives my life. I’m the only one that knows my body and what it reacts to. For example, some people can’t eat oats; I can eat oats, totally fine. Some people need meat all the time. I have a client who genuinely feels better when she eats fish at least four times a week. I don’t like fish; it doesn’t do anything for my body. Instead of me trying to say, you shouldn’t do that. I tried to help her make the best decision for her body and her lifestyle. When we get into this whole expectation and judgments on how other people should live their life, it is because you’re not focusing on your own life anymore. At the end of the day, if someone’s going to come to me and be like, “Oh my God, Nikki, how dare you for calling yourself a vegan who cheats.”

Talk about the anger, or sadness, or unhappiness in your life. Because if someone is trying to control me and the things that I do in my life, I don’t do anything based out of anger, or malice, or trying to make someone do something, I share things that I do based on love and based on things that work for me. But I don’t tell people what to do. I offer advice, but I never tell you that you need to. I share things that have worked for me. I do remind people that if you’re a vegan, paleo, or keto, or whatever you’re doing, you were not always like that. The thing is, in 20 years, you don’t know where you’ll be. You’re judging someone else based on the journey that took you to get to where you are. Whereas, what if I came to you and said, “Five years ago, someone who wasn’t vegan was still eating meat.” And I was like, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe you’re doing that.” Five years ago, you were a different person, and you have your journey to get to where you are. By trying to control someone else, it’s taking them out of their journey. I don’t care what people say to me; it doesn’t affect me in the slightest bit. But what I care about is when people try to control other people because it means that inherently, you are not happy in your own life.

If you’re trying to control other people and you’re not happy with your life, it will make you essentially gain weight.

You’re right. The interesting thing is, it’s not necessarily like gaining weight, your cortisol levels will rise, or the acidity in your body will rise. You’ll find like people on the internet; they’re trolls. I look at this of anyone that’s coming and bashing me on my photos. Again, it doesn’t bother me.

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How can they bash you on your photos?

I get the, “You’re too skinny, eat a burger this, that, like whatever.” The thing is, if someone’s coming in bashing me, I know that they’re unhappy with something in their own life because happy people don’t bash others. I have no desire to bash anyone. I want to help people. And I think, where someone might say, “Well, yeah, Nikki, a vegan diet could be the best diet and this, that, the other.” There’s a difference between encouraging people to change their lifestyle because it will make them better and telling people they’re wrong for not doing something. So I encourage people, how do they change their diets, their lifestyle so they see more results. But I will never judge you if you don’t want to do it.

I don’t like anything fanatic. Whatever diet, it becomes like a fanatic religion. I don’t like that. And I run away from that. I don’t think people are trying to influence other people from their heart, like you said, from the right motives. It is a means of control. If I control you, I will feel that I am in control.

Right, exactly. That’s the thing; the whole world has become “fanatical” because I think at the end of the day, we don’t feel heard, or seen, or acknowledged enough. Therefore, anytime we’re trying to put our opinion on someone else, our opinion is the right opinion. It’s because we haven’t felt heard or seen in growing up, or whatever it is. At the end of the day, no one is right. Everyone is right, and no one is right. I’m not saying you per se, but your opinion does not matter, just as mine does not matter. There’s no such thing as the ultimate truth.

Yeah.

How you tell the truth is that if you think that your truth is the truth, you forget that other people have a different truth. They’ve had different experiences, and your perceived reality is based on how you’ve grown up and what has happened in your life. We’re now in this day and age where you know this whole cancel culture thing which pisses me off beyond, anything that happened 40, 50, 60, 100 years ago is now getting canceled, or we can’t talk about it.

Oh my god, it drives me nuts. You have to be politically correct with everything. You can’t say gender anymore; you can’t say white anymore; you can’t say black anymore. You can’t say anything because people can’t. Yeah, I don’t like that.

The reason we’ve gotten to this point is because we’ve had all these experiences. And so it’s almost like well, nobody wants to talk about that there’s gender roles and masculine and feminine energy, and black, white, Asian, this, like, whatever. We are here today because we have history; that is what they teach in school. For example, the history of America, the history of France, the history of the world, because with every passing year, we learn more and grow more. That is why the nutrition industry, the food industry, the health industry, everything keeps changing year after year because we learn more, grow, change. And so it’s kind of to say like, because of where we are today, we don’t want to acknowledge that any of this happened, even though all of that happening got us to where we are today. I mean, I could go off on it.

That’s a whole new podcast. But I want to respect your time, and it was fascinating talking to you. Before we say goodbye, for now, I have two questions for you. The first one is what are your three top tips to living a stellar life? And the second one is where can people find you and connect with you and go on a journey with you?

Sure. So my three top tips are focused on your happiness, that’s number one. And understanding what does that mean to be happy in your own life, and then putting those into action. So that would be tip number one, focus on what makes you happy and why you want to do it, And then number two, do those things. And a stellar life number three is nourishing your mind, body, and soul with things that set your soul on fire. And that could be books, podcasts, being outside in nature, exercising, eating clean foods, connecting with friends, like whatever it is, do things that make you feel incredible because when you feel good about your life, you make better decisions naturally. And then where can people find me? Nikki Sharp everywhere. nikkisharp.com, my Instagram is Nikki Sharp. And if anyone’s interested in coaching or working with me, you can send me a DM or an email. It’s nikki@nullnikkisharp.com.

Beautiful, Nikki, thank you so much. I appreciate you.

Of course. Thank you. What a fun episode. I love how you know we never know where it’s going to go.

So beautiful. Thank you and thank you, listeners. Remember to focus on your happiness and just go for it. Nourish your mind with lots of great things that will make you feel incredible and have a stellar life. This is Orion till next time.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

{✓} Find your ‘why.’ Discover your purpose and let that be your North star in life. When you have a strong reason for doing what you’re doing, you will not give up easily.
{✓} Be willing to make changes in your life for the better. Before making the big move, you need to want it with all your heart.
{✓} Be a more compassionate human being. Have an awareness that everyone is going through their own struggles. A little bit of kindness goes a long way.
{✓} Discipline yourself from using social media. Studies show that too much time spent on these websites can affect your mental health. A social media detox now and then is good for your health.
{✓} Overcome self-doubt by first acknowledging it exists. Every one of us has our own insecurities, and we either find a way to deal with them or make peace with them.
{✓} Focus on the feeling and not the material aspect of the goal. For example, don’t focus too much on achieving a beach body or having more money in your bank account. Focus on working to become more confident, disciplined, and determined.
{✓} Stop counting calories. Instead, make a promise to eat as healthy as you can. Avoid processed junk food that’s full of GMOs and stop yourself from binge eating.
{✓} Fight stress and prioritize sleep. When our body goes through so much stress paired with lack of sleep, we tend to make bad decisions about our health. This instantly makes the body crave more sugar and fat.
{✓} Start implementing small amounts of ways to improve yourself. You don’t need to do 100 push-ups right away or completely eliminate chocolate out of the blue. Small habits build up over time until your body gets used to them.
{✓} Check out Nikki Sharp’s website to learn more about awesome tips about health and wellness and grab a copy of her book, The 5-Day Real Food Detox: A simple, delicious plan for fast weight loss, banished cravings, and glowing skin.