Reset and Refuel: Post-Holiday Health Hacks w/Health Coach, Keri Lappi

Did you have a few too many Christmas cookies over the holidays? Well, they ARE hard to resist!  Don’t be discouraged, take one step at a time and start with some very doable tips from Keri Lappi, founder of Energetic Wellness Coaching. She’s ready to share her no-nonsense, sustainable strategies to help you reboot your health.

Together with your hosts Lanee Blaise and Sandy Kovach, Keri breaks down practical tips that actually work—from the hidden power of hydration to why diet sodas might not be your friend, and how small shifts in mindset can lead to big wins. If you’ve been feeling sluggish, stuck, or unsure where to start, this episode will reignite your motivation and show you how small, steady steps can transform your health.

It’s time to imagine yourself strong, vibrant, and ready to conquer those goals, give us 10 minutes and we’ll give you some great ideas!

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Imagine Yourself is hosted by Lanée Blaise and Sandy Kovach. Lanée is a TV writer and producer, motivational speaker and podcaster. Sandy is a radio personality, voiceover artist and podcaster. They come to you from the Detroit Metro area and invite guests from all over the world to help encourage you in your health, career, faith journey and more!

Transcript

Sandy Kovach:
Today on the Imagine Yourself podcast, we are tackling the challenge so many of us face after the holidays when maybe we overindulge just a little bit, getting back into shape and feeling good again. Keri Lappi, one of our favorite health coaches, has some quick things that we might wanna do. I'm Sandy, and on behalf of Lanee and I, welcome to Imagine Yourself podcast.

Sandy Kovach:
First of all, thanks for coming back for the new year, and let's pretend I'm coming to you as a client. And, obviously, you gave us some great advice on how to get through the holidays and tactics not to gain too much weight. Well, I was not a good listener or I didn't follow through or whatever happened. I put on way too many pounds over the holidays, and now I'm desperate and I'm coming to you. Help me carry. What is the first thing you would say to me?

Keri Lappi:
Honestly, the first thing that I would tell you is don't panic. When we get kind of in those places, you feel a very strong urgency to go crazy. But just like my book, the title, just one thing, so we just take it one thing at a time because that's actually sustainable, not Sandy, you know what you can do is just drink 2 gallons of water every day, run a marathon, and only eat carrots. Okay? Like, that's not a sustainable behavior. So I want you to have a sustainable take one thing and kinda walk that back. So the first thing I would say is, alright. Let's check how much water are you drinking. Number 1, when you wake up in the morning, before you drink or eat anything else, 16 ounces of water.

Keri Lappi:
Before you ever coffee are you a coffee person?

Sandy Kovach:
I am. But I learned that you have to hydrate before you caffeinate. That's right. Drink 6 why 16 ounces? That's quite a bit.

Keri Lappi:
So one of the things that I would love to have people get to so if you take your weight in pounds and you divide that in half, that's what I'm hoping for people to get in ounces of water daily. And that could be a lot. Right? It's like, wait. Hold on. That's kinda like so, you know, you think of, like, a water bottle is 20 ounce, 24 ounces. How many of those are we drinking? Get it started in the morning with 16. The reason to do it in the morning is because it flushes out your system from whatever else is in there. Like, you're gonna start your day fresh.

Keri Lappi:
You're gonna have your brain everything getting kinda cleared out. And with that one small thing, there's a psychological component to that too because if you've successfully done 16 ounces of water, which really isn't that difficult, you already have a win. So then when you come to your breakfast or your lunch, you're like, you know what? I am basically a health guru. I drank 16 ounces of water already today. I am on a roll. I am gonna have some extra greens with my lunch because you have that mentality already of I'm doing the thing. Right? Like, it wasn't you woke up and had a doughnut. It was like, no.

Keri Lappi:
I'm I'm moving this forward. I have my 16 ounces of water. So that is the first thing that I would say is make sure that you're getting your water. The second thing that I would kind of peel through and look at what's going on is how much liquid sugar are you getting in your day? Things like Starbucks or, you know, fancy little fruit for drinks or pop. I am on a just absolute mission to eradicate that from people's lives because it is so detrimental for your brain, for weight gain, for it's addictive. It is just a huge problem. So And

Sandy Kovach:
you're not even talking about just regular pop, diet pop too.

Keri Lappi:
Right? Diet pop is worse. I obviously don't want my clients to have either diet or regular, but I will fall out of my chair less if they tell me that they're a regular pop addict. If they tell me they're a diet pop addict, then I fall into the chair really hard. Uh-oh. This is just mind blowing for how this can even be allowed. But things that are labeled diet, those those chemicals like aspartame, for example, the things like Splenda, all those little packets that you see, the pink, the yellow, the blue, they actually cause more weight gain with people having the same amount of food and calories, like, even the same diet. So, for example, if you have 2 groups of people, they do studies where they're drinking a diet with those chemicals in it, and everything else is the same. They're having the same amount of breakfast, the same lunch, etcetera, but their body responds to storing fat differently because of that chemical, and it causes weight gain, and it usually causes weight gain around abdomen area Wow.

Keri Lappi:
Which is sort of diabolical. Right? Because it's labeled diet. The person who's thinking that they're like, oh, you know, I'm gonna try to do a little bit better. I'm gonna go for the diet, and that is not the case at all.

Sandy Kovach:
Wow.

Keri Lappi:
The other thing is the attitude of crowding out. This is one thing that is very helpful. If your focus is on if I tell you do not picture a pink elephant, you have already pictured a pink elephant in your head. Right? Right. Yes. But it's it too. Yes. Exactly.

Keri Lappi:
Right? And now it's and it's our best friend now. So what's up? Right? So if I tell you, okay, Sandy, I do not want you to have any cookies. Absolutely no cookies. Cookies are off the table. Don't even think about cookies. You'll be like, the only thing I want is a cookie now. Yep. Right? So what we do, we're leveraging biology and psychology.

Keri Lappi:
If your focus instead is you know what I'm gonna do today? I am gonna focus on some micro wins. I'm going to have what however many 56 ounces of water. I'm gonna have 5 to 7 fruits and veggies, and I'm going to make sure that I get protein at every meal. If you do those things and that is your aim, you sort of inherently crowd out those other things. And when your mind is on the positive instead of the mentality of deficiency or neglect or punishment or starvation, right, that's not a good place for us to be. We wanna go forward. We wanna have positive things and kinda move move in that direction. So that crowding out mentality is something that's huge.

Keri Lappi:
And those things, if you add in a couple of those things, right, avoiding liquid sugar, making sure you're getting your water, and finding a couple of those things to crowd out behavior, you are going to be on your way to a sustainable weight loss and getting back to feeling more like yourself.

Sandy Kovach:
I like it. It's 3 things, Linae. Three things that you can do,

Lanee Blaise:
and it starts your day up right. And I like feeling like I'm winning instead of feeling like I'm losing.

Keri Lappi:
Oh, you you have no idea how much that resonates with me. I love that. Yes. Yeah.

Lanee Blaise:
Little kids like that too. It's kinda like, instead of saying all the things that you do wrong and what you can't do, let's focus on what you can do and what you did do right. And what you are aiming for. I love that. And then you make sure that you specifically pick things that are good and healthy for you also because not everything that's good for all the trendy people is what's necessarily good for you. Right. Kinda learned that the hard way.

Keri Lappi:
One of the things that was a little bit surprising to me when I got into coaching was when I first meet with the person, I do a health history. I just sit down and kinda talk and see where they're at, where they've been, where they wanna go. The last question that I always ask everyone is tell me three things that you right now are not doing for your health, but you should be doing for whatever reason. I have never had a person not be able to tell me 3 things. So the problem is not that I have absolutely no clue how to eat or that I should be drinking water or that I should be exercising or sleeping. We know sort of in general those things. Maybe we don't know all the science behind it of exactly why it works, But there's something that will stand out to you and say, I know that I'm not getting enough sleep or, yeah, I didn't drink any water or I need to cut back on the sweets and have some more veggies. So that's where we can kinda aim for that crowding out.

Sandy Kovach:
I like it.

Lanee Blaise:
I love it.

Sandy Kovach:
So this is a good start to our new year.

Lanee Blaise:
Absolutely. Yeah.

Sandy Kovach:
feel like I can do it.

Lanee Blaise:
We needed it. We needed it. We needed a way.

Keri Lappi:
You can do it. You can do it.

Lanee Blaise:
Yeah. And like you said, we don't have to run a marathon this year or anything like that. We just take little small steps, just one thing here and there.

Sandy Kovach:
Hope this advice gets you off to a great start on the new year or whenever you're listening. And, we'll link up to some of Keri's other episodes as well as many of the other health coaches that we've interviewed, sort of like a little toolkit for you. Plus, don't forget Keri has a new book called quit quitting, and, we'll put that link there too right in the show notes. Until next time when we have something new to imagine, here's to a wonderful year in health.