Dr. Ellen Albertson, also known as the Midlife Whisperer is a renowned Psychologist, Nutritionist, Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach & Reiki Master. She empowers women at midlife to make their next chapter the best chapter. It is her passion to empower her clients, who are professional women at midlife to feel at ease to find the energy to live the life they dreamt of with confidence. She has worked in the fitness industry as a personal trainer and uses that experience to motivate her clients to enjoy their midlife to the fullest. She has written several books including Rock Your Midlife: 7 Steps to Transform Yourself and Make Your Next Chapter Your Best Chapter. Dr. Albertson works only with women as she finds it less complicated than working with men. She has this approach of five lifestyle tweaks that help people towards better wellbeing at their midlife.
Dr. Albertson, you are known as the Midlife Whisperer. Can you start off by telling us about the services you provide to clients?
I provide a compassionate, supportive space for midlife women seeking transformation. My clients are professional women at midlife who want to make their next chapter their best chapter. They sense something is missing in their lives and are yearning to find it. Often there’s an issue related to self-love and making peace with their bodies and food. As a Psychologist, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, Mindful Self-compassion Teacher, and Board-Certified Health & Wellness Coach, I help my clients get unstuck and find the energy, confidence and clarity to make their next chapter their best chapter. Through the 7 steps in my system and book, I help my clients discover and do what brings them joy, health and happiness.
How do you help clients achieve their goals and reach their dreams?
I empower my clients to think BIG, plan, maximize opportunities, and take positive, deliberate action steps to manifest their dreams. I help them face their fears, remove inner and outer blocks, and leverage the changes occurring at midlife to transform their bodies, careers, mindset, relationships… and life and find the joy, happiness, self-love, peace, and vibrancy they are craving.
What are the advantages of having a life coach and accessing your services?
A trained, experienced coach can listen deeply and help you see where you are, where you want to be and what’s holding you back. A coach can also help you get unstuck and moving towards your desired destination much faster than you would get there on your own. Coaching is also different than therapy, although there can be overlaps. A coach sees the client as whole, knowing the answers, and not in need of fixing.
Video credit: The Daily Flash
You work with women rather than men. What was the inspiration to focus solely on working with women as clients?
First, I’m drawn to and love working with women. Working with men can get complicated. When I was a personal fitness trainer, I sometimes received inappropriate advances which were creepy and violated the client/trainer relationship, so now I steer clear of working with men. As a woman who’s been through the gauntlet herself, I understand what women at midlife go through. From divorce, a health crisis, menopause, and empty nest, I’ve seen and experienced it all. I never felt drawn or excited to work with men.
Dr. Albertson, can you tell us about the five lifestyle tweaks that will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing?
Moving towards eating a more whole foods plant-based diet, eating less (until you’re 80% full, not stuffed), moving/exercising daily (include cardio, strength training, and stretching throughout the week), getting adequate rest/sleep, learning how to effectively manage stress.
You have previously spoken about your mother changing your family’s diet overnight. Can you explain how she altered the family’s way of eating and the effect it has had on you throughout your life?
When I was 7 or 8 my mother read Frances Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet. One day we were eating franks and beans, luncheon meats, bacon and potato chips, the next the unhealthy food completely disappeared. We started eating more vegetarian fare and even experimented with tofu, which back then was a very unusual food. Being healthy, exercising, and eating right were important values in my family that have really stuck with me. The interest that my mother had in nutrition influenced my desire to become a nutritionist.
You before working as life coach, you worked as a person trainer. How did working in the fitness industry prepare you for your current career?
Working as a personal fitness trainer enabled me to hone my coaching skills. While working as a trainer, I enrolled in a program with Wellcoaches to become a health and wellness coach. I talked with my clients during workouts which allowed me to practice all my new coaching skills and truly discover how powerful coaching is. In addition, working in the fitness industry really showed me how hard women are on their bodies and how negative body image is rampant. This was one of the things that motivated me to find an effective modality that would help to decrease body shame and body dissatisfaction in woman.
How are you helping people view the middle stages of their lives?
When you google “midlife” it’s conjoined with “crisis”. When you put it in the thesaurus “the wrong side of 40” and “middle age” come up. I’m helping to reverse the way people see the middle stage of their lives. Midlife is not a time of crisis or downhill slog. Yes the period is filled with change and challenges, but these transitions can be a vibrant transformational period that can help you create the best chapter of your life.
What should every person entering mid-life know? What is considered mid-life these days?
Life is happening for you not to you. The changes you may be going through are normal. You have power to create a life you love and my 7 steps will help you do just that. You are powerful and influence up to 4 generations – grandkids, children, peers, and parents. Midlife is considered the period between 40 and 65.
Dr. Albertson, you have written a few books. Can you tell us about your books, including Rock Your Midlife: 7 Steps to Transform Yourself and Make Your Next Chapter Your Best Chapter?
My ex-husband and I were known as The Cooking Couple. We were celebrity chefs and wrote several books about food and romance.
Rock Your Midlife is a roadmap that will help readers discover and become who they want to be as fast as possible… without confusion, frustration, and discouragement. The book busts outdated concepts of midlife and prickly, crisis-driven, over-the-hill life plans. It challenges everything we’ve been told about getting old and provides proven solutions to make midlife the best time of life. The book includes my story and stories of my clients. It equips readers with the keys to unlock the life-changing power within and create a vibrant second adulthood. A step-by-step guide, it enables readers to envision the life they want, shift their vibe so they can attract that life, and take action to make their dreams a reality.
How is a day in your life?
I wake up around 6:30 and do a set of exercises called the 5 Tibetans, followed by yoga, some meditation and a little journaling. I work (usually writing or supporting people on social media) from 7:30 to about 10. I have a green smoothie made from kale from our garden (my fiancée is an incredible gardener.) I either coach clients or take a walk with Rosie, my dog. Between 1 and 4, I often have meetings, coaching sessions, or interviews. Typically, I eat a large salad around 2. If I didn’t take a walk earlier, I take a walk before dinner. I end my day with cocktail hour (usually homemade kombucha) and maybe a bit of Kundalini yoga with my fiancée or zoom yoga with my Sangha. We typically have a light, vegan dinner, which consists of raw veggies and hummus and maybe some tempeh or a veggie burger. At night I may draw, journal, dance, read or watch a movie or a television episode.
What is something most people don’t know about you?
I collect tigers. Tigers are my power animal and I have hundreds of them in everything from watches and rings to snowflake shakers and of course stuffed animals. I also lived in Sweden as a child.
What makes you smile?
My fiancée, Ken and my crazy, tree climbing border collie, Rosie.
What scares you?
Getting to the end of my life and as Wayne Dyer puts it “dying with my music still in me”, i.e. having regrets/not living fully.
If you had the power to change just one thing in the world, what would it be?
Our health care system. It’s really sick care, not health care. Not enough emphasis is placed on the lifestyle changes needed to live a long, healthy life the Standard American Diet is indeed SAD. Tied with that is famine. NO ONE should be hungry, especially children. We can and should grow enough healthy food to feed everyone on the planet.
For more information on Dr. Ellen Albertson, please visit https://drellenalbertson.com
