Meet Kelly Clark | helps Type A women unlock their HAPPY weight—without dieting

We had the good fortune of connecting with Kelly Clark and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kelly, what do you attribute your success to?
Being 100% authentic about my complicated relationship with food and how I recovered 23+ years ago after being caught in the starve-binge-purge cycle for a decade.

Sadly, this diet cycle is FAR more common than you think. In fact, when people pop up on Zoom to work with me, I’d never guess they had unhealthy eating patterns. The problem is that there’s unnecessary shame around
disordered eating, so people keep this health issue a secret. Which isolates these incredible women with misinformation.

Many of the people I work with 1:1 and in my group program have suffered from a preoccupation with food, weight and hunger for 10, 20, 30… and even 60+ years. So I’ve made a HUGE point of being an open book so that I’m approachable.

My experience wasn’t always glamorous (!) but sharing my mistakes saves the people who land on my website TONS of time, energy and resources. Looking back, I learned that BIG problems don’t need big solutions! It’s amazing how just a few simple changes, changed everything for me.

Being completely comfortable with my story helps people be comfortable with me. Often I’m the first person someone’s ever been able to speak to openly about their disordered eating. And I 100% attribute that to the fact that I share details about how I went from bingeing and purging, sometimes 5 times a day, to making food a COMPLETE non-issue and losing 30 pounds for good.

My blog wasn’t originally this way though! Initially I wrote posts using my cat’s name 🙂 Then I realized people want to know whose website they’re on. So I decided in order to really help people I needed to show up as “me” and even have fun. So now I dress up in costumes (!) to capture the theme of each blog post and try to tie in light topics like “The Hot Girl Walk” that’s been trending… I use those light-hearted topics as jumping off points to share information that was life-changing for me and backed with research. Hint: The Hot Girl Walk can help you lose weight but exercise alone won’t unlock your HAPPY weight. So I tell readers what else to do so they have a road map.

Recovering from bulimia was one of the most thrilling times of my life and I want to get people excited about starting their own journey. Trust is key for eating disorder recovery and being open and honest about my own experience has built that trust.

What should our readers know about your business?
I help Type A women unlock their HAPPY weight—without dieting. These people are incredibly hard working BUT they have all the wrong weight-loss information (just like I did). So they put their over-achiever energy behind the 100’s of diet rules, tips and tricks they’ve collected over the years (like drink skim milk, only eat the white of an egg, chew your food 15 times before swallowing, etc.) and go 100 miles an hour in the wrong direction.

Yes… diets WILL work… but only short term. I show women how to eat regular food in regular situations, so they can build sustainable habits they LOVE. Habits that give them tons of energy to discover who they are without disordered eating. And in turn, those beautiful eating and exercise habits naturally unlock their HAPPY weight.
I literally lost 30 pounds when I stopped dieting and exercised LESS. You can eat a sandwich at lunch! You should have rest days from the gym.

Just a little bit of good information helps these go-getter women get in OPTIMUM health quickly. It’s just amazing to see someone who’s preoccupied with food, weight and hunger suddenly free up all that time and be productive.
I’ve worked with Harvard lawyers, actresses on Broadway, amazing moms, artists, doctors who have papers published in the New England Journal of Medicine, etc. And once they get their eating right, the whole world just opens up to them because they’re not spending hours each day worried about how many calories were in their cob salad at lunch… or if they should run an extra 5 km because they had a piece of their best friend’s birthday cake.

For 10 years I struggled with disordered eating. Right before I graduated from teacher’s college I recovered. The first year I had a full-time class, I created a self-esteem building program called Who Is NOBODY? To date it’s raised nearly 1 million dollars to help people, animals and environmental projects that are local, national and international. This experience gave me the confidence to open up about my eating disorder recovery story. And I learned so many things from creating that classroom kit (that I still run today!) So I’ve applied those hard-won lessons to my present focus: helping over-achievers SIMPLIFY their relationship with food.

A big lesson I learned is to MAKE THINGS HAPPEN FOR YOURSELF!

Don’t wait for people to find you.

For instance, I’ve written two books:

1 – It took me 10 years to lose 10 pounds (because I had all the wrong information)
&
2 – What the F do I eat?

I could have spent a lot of time shopping around for a book deal. But instead I started blogging and self-published both these resources. Now I have like-minded people who read my website and purchase my books.

Rather than hoping something happens or being dependent on someone else, I just 100% dove in because I wanted to share what got me healthy, as quickly as possible. And I wanted to be in control of my work. I did all the writing, art and photography in my books (with a cheap camera I got years ago at a pharmacy!) to get them out the door and into the hands of readers as fast as I could. I want people to get healthy and start living, asap. As one of my clients told me “Now that food’s a non-issue, the sky is bluer, the clouds are whiter, everything’s easier and more fun! I have tons of new friends because I connect better when I don’t have a big secret and my hotel has brought in more business than ever.” I want every woman to feel that way.

Both books have the information I needed when I was trying so hard to lose weight but had all the wrong information.

The #1 thing I want people to know is that a full recovery from a complicated relationship with food is 100% possible. In fact with my HAPPY Weight Method™ you’ll likely be the person in the room who has the easiest relationship with food and the most energy. I say that because I went from bingeing and purging, multiple times a day, to food and weight being a complete non-issue for the past 23+ years. And over and over again I see women make this transformation too. I want everybody to know what to put on their plate and feel confident it will make them feel good.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Documentaries, animal shelters, Free Trade Coffee, Vintage Clothing and second hand shops are my love language! I’m inspired by honest stories and get a buzz from salvaging things—so many people, animals and objects are full of potential, but modern society gives up on them too quickly.
And when I wear clothes they need to have a story. Like I love wearing t-shirts that support a cause like an animal rescue center. Or second-hand clothes. When they’re still in great shape, you know there was beautiful craftsmanship and high quality materials that went into the making of them. I love wearing a painted bangle that’s been to tons of parties with someone else.
When I’m in my own city or visit someone else’s I love to find a “Buffalo Exchange” or another thrift store. There’ll always be 10 other up-cycled clothing shops nearby.
Because of my eating disorder I wore black leggings and a black t-shirt for years to try to camouflage my extra weight. So it’s always fun to hunt for rare and sometimes outrageous finds at thrift shops. Then you can experiment with your look without blowing the bank.
A lot of people don’t like second hand clothes. But I always say, if you’ve eaten at a restaurant or stayed at a hotel… think about that. What could be more intimate than a fork or sheets?
I love the busyness of an urban street. But I also love to grab a slice of pizza, grapes from a fruit vendor and a latte, then head to a park in the middle of the city where you can hear birds and cars beeping at the same time.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I’ve had 3 incredible mentors:

Laura Belgray who runs her Mastermind: Shrimp Club

Marisa Corcoran who created the Copy Confidence Society and her Mastermind: Limelight.

Tamika Auwai who does Nurture Marketing for coaches

I LOVE all 3 of these women.

Website: https://www.the10principles.com/