Interview 18: "Open the gates of Discovery."
/I can’t say enough good stuff about Bianca! When we first spoke I felt like we were kindred spirits. She so eloquently articulated past struggles and triumphs, and had a clear vision of where she is taking her life. After the interview I was fired up from all the energy she had. I am excited to share Bianca’s story with you. I have a feeling you’ll be fired up as well.
Bianca lives in Edmonton, Canada and is a professionally trained and certified holistic chef. She’s truly living the life, creating beautiful food for people through her business called The Vitality Kitchen. For a long time it was a full on meal planning power house. She was creating healthy prepared meals, doing meal delivery, teaching workshops and catering. But she found that all that “stuff” around her business was taking way from her creativity so she brought it back to where it all started. She now works with people as a private chef and mentors them on their food. She’s also found a very creative way to add Essential oils into her practice as well.
Bianca always loved cooking and food but she had a love / hate relationship with it. She was over weight as a kid and after high school she moved straight to Toronto where she had to walk everywhere. “Everyone walked everywhere so my unhealthy lifestyle was masked” she shares. She was able to lose a bit of weight but she knew deep down that her habits hadn’t changed it was just her environment.
After 4 1/2 years in the big city she moved back to Edmonton to be close to family and to go to culinary school. Within the first year being home she gained 40 pounds. What she learned this year really launched the Bianca we see today. You see, every time she went to doctor she was offered a pill and told that it was a simple fix because her “hormone’s are unbalanced.” Instead of taking the pills Bianca started Googling! She was fed up with what doctors were saying so she wanted to learn how to heal her hormonal imbalance. The deeper she dove into this research the more and more she saw that everything was food related. “That opened the gates of discovery for me” she said with excitement. She now had a mission. With her culinary background and new focus she started getting the word out.
It first started with a blog that quickly gained some attention and then she began The Vitality Kitchen. In the beginning she started with juice cleanses and then noticed there wasn’t much of a change in people’s habits. So she brought it back to food. “It all comes down to helping people. What I wanted to do is be a guide for people” she says. And not just a“do this, do that” kind of guide. She wanted to work with each person so they could achieve health in their life. She’s very realistic and wants to give people the tools they need to succeed. “We figure out what works. It’s their compass not mine” says Bianca. I feel in love with that concept. “It’s THEIR compass not MINE.”
I think we get often get locked into what we think we need to do in order to achieve a goal and in the process we stop listening to our bodies. The service that Bianca provides is truly magical! To have someone engaged, listening and providing a map for each person is incredible. You might take a different trail on that map but you’re on your way to ultimate health.
I asked Bianca what her biggest struggle was that she had to overcome during her own transformation. “I think my struggle was bad information” she shared. She talked about how The Canada Food guide isn’t a great resource for people who are looking to get healthy. It’s very heavy on grains and animal products and when she was younger trying to get her act together she relied on that. “It was really frustrating” she said. She tried the counting calories and restrictions but it didn’t work. “I hated counting calories. It devalues the valuable things!” MIC DROP! Can you just take a minute and think about that. Counting calories devalues the valuable thingsJust think of the incredible avocado! If we counted calories for that we’d never eat it! “Looking at it from the caloric value really takes the benefits out of it. I was able to break from that way of thinking and take a different approach to food” she says.
Now Bianca looks at food in a different light. She thinks about how it makes her feel and what it can give her. When she adopted this approach it made her way less crazy about it all!
I asked Bianca if she had any self limiting beliefs and if so what were they? I felt very tied to her response because it highlighted that self limiting beliefs tend to transfer across areas of our lives. If we manage to silence them in one area then it tends to pop up somewhere else. It was a reminder to me, and I hope to you as well, that we always need to be growing, learning and working on ourselves in all areas. It is only through that process of learning and growing that we truly find self acceptance. She said, “I think that when it comes to health I’m pretty realistic. I know I’m going to be bloated if I have a bad week. My self limiting beliefs come from business. Success is a scary thing.” As an entrepreneur myself, success can be scary. I feel like what she meant by that is you can have this HUGE vision of what you want your business and life to look like. And there can be some fear around that - like am I enough, can I do this? But it’s our job to quite that voice and push forward because we have a mission to serve others and that trumps all fears and doubts. Bianca went on to share that she’s working to make sure her self worth is not defined by her net worth. “Don’t attach your self worth to material things!”
I asked Bianca to share her top tips with you and some advice if you’re just getting started.
- In order to get to where you want to go you have to acknowledged where you are now. You can only love yourself to a new position. Being honest with yourself and being kind to yourself. That’s how you get lasting change.
- Love your liver! If your liver is unhealthy you’re unhealthy. Add lemons!
- It takes one small step. Implement one small thing every single day and by the end of the year you’re a whole new person! It’s about changing your mindset.
- We can get caught up in researching, researching, researching. Just start and figure it out as you go. You can never start if you keep reading.
- Listen to your body and continue to implement.
- Just start now!
It was truly a pleasure to meet Bianca. I hope you are as inspired after reading this as I was when I finished the interview. She's truly an incredible soul and I know she will touch many lives!
Thank you for taking the time to engage in my 18th interview of inspiring women! Please feel free to share your comments, feelings and send this to a friend you think would benefit from reading this! If you want me to interview someone you find incredibly inspiring, I would be truly honored to meet them! This is a journey that has no parameters or rules! Let’s have fun with it and continue to spread the message of empowerment, love and kindness - to ourselves and others!
You can follow Bianca on Instagram at both @biancaosborune and @thevitalitykitchen
xo
Becky