We recently connected with Kerri Wilson and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Kerri, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
To be honest, that purpose continues to expand and shift as I grow and learn. Foundationally, I do believe my purpose comes from a few things. Growing up in a household with a parent who was always sick in one way or another, I knew I didn’t want my kids to grow up the same way. Seeing that parent try every fad diet, every medication, and even surgeries to only watch them eventually fail showed me that there has to be a better path to health. What that was, I had no idea.
Fast forward to my early 20’s when I had two kids a brand-new pre-diabetes diagnosis with the stern warning that I was headed down the same medical storyline if I didn’t make some changes, I realized that my new mission was to avoid the lifestyle diagnosis that so many in my family had earned for themselves. With the smallest of tweaks and very little guidance, I started to see my weight drop, my energy increase, and soon I was acting like someone my own age…well, as much as I could with two littles.
A few years after that I lost my job and enrolled in college without really knowing what I was going to do, but just knew that as a high school dropout, I needed an education to better our lives. I took a personal health and wellness class and that professor saw something in me, encouraged me to pursue a higher degree in something health related, and pointed me in the direction of exercise science.
After earning my bachelors degree I took a part time job working with our community’s 55 and older gang, leading them in fitness classes. What I thought would be a stepping stone turned out to be nearly 5 years of the most fun I’ve ever had at work. I’d wake up on a Monday morning excited to go to work and play! We even joked that all my friends were over the age of 55.
Ultimately, I learned more from them about life, the value of time, and the power of health than I could have ever taught them. They’ve EARNED their age. So many never get the privilege of growing older, of retiring and enjoying their third chapter. I became close with many of them; a woman who drove herself to line dancing and fitness classes in her 90’s because she saw the value in continuing to move, a man who lost 80 pounds and reversed his type 2 diabetes diagnosis by coming to classes and coaching with me so he could go on a trip to New York with his wife and keep up with her, a woman who started over and moved to a new city to be closer to her adult children and immediately immersed herself in fitness classes for her health and for the socialization. There are many, many stories like these, and because they had an outlet to be creative, to move their bodies, to get a healthy meal, and to socialize, their lives were longer AND quality.
These days I’m battling some chronic issues myself, as well as working with other parents who are living with chronic pain, fatigue, digestive issues, and other unwanted symptoms so that they can enjoy raising their kiddos, but also they too can go PLAY when they retire. My goal is to keep them out of the doctor’s waiting rooms and in their homes as long as they possibly can be. If I had not had the experiences that I’ve had throughout my life, as the child of a chronically ill parent, as a parent with chronic illness, and in that role at the senior activity center, I believe I would have fizzled out of this career by now.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I serve my clients in several different ways.
I offer sound therapy 1:1 sessions, using the vibration and sounds from Tibetan singing bowls, crystal bowls, and several other instruments to help my clients release stored tension from trauma and stress, improve their sleep and ability to cope with daily life stressors.
I offer assisted stretching to help clients improve their flexibility, building them a personalized program that they can complete at home as well. Increased flexibility will help them improve their ability to complete daily tasks of living with ease, decrease the chance of falls and injuries, as well as decrease their joint pain.
I offer a full body health test, done with a simple hair and saliva sample, to test their nutritional sensitivities, deficiencies, toxin exposures, and hormones. They receive a lifestyle plan based on their results, along with recipes they can use to get them started on giving their body what it actually wants and needs.
Finally, I also offer The Live More Method; a comprehensive program that includes the full body health test. It’s a 4 month program meant to guide, assist, and support clients through the lifestyle shifts that will get them closer to their goals. We work on everything from nutrition and movement to finding the right support system, creating and maintaining boundaries, and beyond!
What’s different about what I offer is that you’re receiving care from someone who truly gets it. My lived experience combined with my expertise offers a unique experience that clients truly appreciate. They don’t want the fluff, they really don’t want to be shamed into losing weight, and they definitely don’t want someone who makes empty promises. They get a genuine connection from a real person along with expert care.
As a parent of 25 years (6 kiddos and 4 grandkiddos) myself, I understand life happens. Need to bring your kid along? No problem! Want to switch to a virtual appointment because they’re FINALLY napping? Awesome. Spouse isn’t super supportive? Okay, let’s find who in your life is and work with that. Don’t like vegetables? Fine, let’s find your nutrients elsewhere. We practice “yes, and” in my office space – there is no black and white, no good or bad, no right or wrong. Everyone is treated as an individual with individual needs.
Coming up in September I’ll be offering an online group for parents. Obviously we’ll talk about health and wellness things, but there’s definitely room for sharing parenting stories, getting advice and words of wisdom from others, and the difference between this group and others will be that this one has a zero-tolerance policy for shaming and bullying.
Locally there are a few events coming up; a perimenopause summit in November with 6 other women’s health experts, a women’s wellness day in December aimed at helping women reclaim their confidence and voices, and I’m always running workshops and webinars!
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I feel like learning how to truly listen was a skill that I was sincerely lacking before this career. Even now, it’s something I need to practice. Active listening has become a buzzword, but it really is the most important skill, at least in my opinion. So many of us are so busy thinking about the next thing we’re going to say that we miss what the other person is saying. Learning to hear what isn’t being said is also key.
Learning to put my blinders on to the toxicity of this particular field has become a necessity. The health and wellness industry is growing faster than green technology, IT, and sports. Where there is money to be made, there is toxicity. And who foots that bill? The consumers do. There’s been much harm from the shaming tactics used to coerce people into buying a product, and I refuse to be part of that. It physically makes me angry to see people I love and care about falling for it, so I’ve had to learn to put up strong and firm boundaries around who I follow, who I personally support, and some that I’ve had to put blocks on are people I know personally and have worked with. It is literally everywhere.
Keeping up with the current trends can be useful, but if you can master the basics – nutrition, movement, sleep – it’ll all come back to those eventually anyway. The basics are tried and true, even with minor tweaks as science improves and we learn new things. For instance, learning that cholesterol in our food didn’t actually increase people’s blood cholesterol levels shifted the entire food industry. However, we still know that more vegetables on your plate is better than a bowl full of cholesterol free potato chips. Basics.
What would you advise – going all in on your strengths or investing on areas where you aren’t as strong to be more well-rounded?
I love this question! I think knowing our strengths and using them to our advantage is always a solid choice. However, there is SO much value in knowing where we could use improvement and working to improve upon those areas. When something comes easy to us, there isn’t much effort that we have to put in, so there isn’t much room for actual long-term growth. However, if we continue to challenge ourselves in ways that feel uncomfortable, that’s where the real magic happens!
I started officiating weddings 15 years ago and that has really shoved my fear of public speaking right out the window. The first few weddings were absolutely beyond terrifying, but the more I forced myself to commit to others to be there for them on the most important day of their lives, the more I developed the skill of not just being able to talk into a microphone, but to effectively communicate, to plan and prepare, and to stay organized. What I thought was just going to be a fun little gig for a few bucks here and there has grown my ability to serve many more humans than I ever thought possible.
If you had asked me 16 years ago if I’d ever be getting up in front of a group and speaking, I would have laughed and then cried from embarrassment. I now have given presentations to global companies and while I still get nervous, I know that if I’m well-prepared, I can do the whole thing well.
And yes, I still officiate weddings!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://livemorewithkerri.com
- Instagram: @livemorewithkerri
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/livemorewithkerri
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/livemorewithkerri/
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