Today’s Guest – Kathy Gruver
1. Your name, title, and age? What do you do (or did you do) for a living?
Kathy Gruver, PhD, 43. I am a health and wellness expert, practitioner, author, speaker and TV host.
2. Who was the person that inspired you as a child to eat healthy and stay fit? What was their relationship to you?
I had a different type of inspiration when I was a kid, in that, everyone around me was UNhealthy. My mom was a horrible cook and basically assembled boxed meals for us. Both she and my dad were overweight and growing up in Pittsburgh, many adults around me were overweight, smokers with horrible diets. I grew up dancing so weight and body image was always stressed in my dance school. I believe between those experiences, it made me more conscious of eating as I got older. I had to go through much fatigue, headaches, constipation and digestion issues before I made the change to healthy food and lifestyle. And now I live it to the fullest, teaching others to make those changes too.
3. What did they do to inspire you?
I learned from them through bad examples, unfortunately. And I had to discover on my own, what healthy eating was. I grew up with vegetables out of a can and iceberg lettuce salads. Lots of boxed foods and processed items. It was quite the shock when I saw my first clove of garlic or my first avocado. I didn’t have that sort of stuff growing up.
4. How did their lesson change your life?
I think seeing all the disease and obesity made me realize on a very deep level that I didn’t want that as I grew up. Especially being involved in dance and fitness, I had to stay healthy. From their very bad examples of poor aging, smoking, bad diets, and inability to run around with their kids, I learned that health is the better way to go.
5. Do you convey their message to kids in your life presently?
Yes, I work with a lot of kids and parents on healthy eating, exercise and lifestyle habits. Not only by example, but also by going into the community and educating kids around me. I’m going to be going into a grade school next year to work with the students on nutrition and stress reduction. Very excited to reach the kids. That’s the age we need to be educating!
6. What would be your main message to children today to lead healthy lifestyles?
Eat the best food you can, avoid fake, processed foods as it leads to obesity, type-2 diabetes and heart disease. Fake food is nutrient-void so we’re getting all the calories and no good vitamins and minerals. Exercise. We’ve become so lazy and the daily things that used to be part of our exercise, we don’t even have to do anymore. Everything is automated and physically unchallenging. We need to return
to time outside, off the computer to run around, burn calories, reduce stress and breath deeply!
7. Do you have a web site you would like to promote….web address only?