Today I’m excited to share with you an interview with Callie Revell. This is a different topic than I normally share on my blog, but I truly believe it will inspire you or may help someone you know going through a similar situation.
I met Callie at the NACWE conference in April (National Association of Christian Women Entrepreneurs). When I heard her story, I knew I wanted her to be a guest on my podcast.
So join me and read on to learn more about Callie and how she can inspire you to be a better writer.
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The Interview Transcript
SHELLEY: My name is Shelley Hitz and I’m the owner of Author Audience Academy. I’m a true believer that success leaves clues. Therefore I’m always excited to introduce you to authors and experts who have amazing success and are willing to share their tips and strategies with you.
Disclaimer, Callie is not a medical professional, right Callie?
CALLIE. Right.
SHELLEY: This is not medical advice. She is not an expert in the medical field. We do recommend that you consult your own doctor, but she has a story of transformation and has gotten amazing results. That’s why I wanted to have her on this show. I just want to share just a little bit about you Callie, is that OK?
CALLIE: Yeah.
SHELLEY: Callie is, she’s kind of an amazing detail person. Would you say that’s true?
CALLIE: Yeah, yeah.
SHELLEY: All the things that she’s good at, she’s detail oriented, the things I’m not good at. Callie Revell is a writer, editor—so she deals with editing if you need that for your book. She’s a professional organizer. I’ve seen some crazy, neat before and after lately of people she’s been helping.
Her editing services include book manuscripts, blog posts, websites, articles, and much more.
She messaged me on Facebook the other day to let me know that one of my social media graphics had an edit issue on it.
I think that’s what editors do; they’re good at catching those things that just fly over our heads sometimes.
Her goal is to help her clients successfully communicate their professional and personal ideas with others and reach their goals through organized thoughts and environments.
She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Hardin-Simmons University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and minors in Communications and Honors Interdisciplinary Studies.
During her time at Hardin-Simmons, she served as Chief Copy Editor of the school’s student-run newspaper and as the Head Literary Editor for the school’s literary arts publication.
She has won awards for her poetry and creative writing.
Callie loves reading, making paper crafts, and writing poetry.
I love this: she loves bright colors and office supplies and has way too many books! Can anyone else relate? I think my audience can relate to that, you know? We love our books.
She also loves to travel and has been all over the world, from England to Australia to Hungary and beyond.
She has served as an editor and organizer for everyone from high school administrators to marketing consultants, graduate students, independent authors, and many others.
She lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband, Samuel, and their two pets: a Labrador retriever named Sadie and a chinchilla named Rigby.
So, welcome Callie, her website is callierevell.com. So, welcome!
CALLIE: Thank you, I’m excited.
SHELLEY: Yeah, so in this week’s Center Stage Spotlight Training I’m going to have her really focus on the topic of health. The reason is the title of this episode is How This One Change Brought Callie More Energy, Productivity, and Motivation.
Could anyone benefit from that? Would you benefit from having more energy, productivity, motivation for your writing? I think we all could.
So, Callie, welcome and I want you just to kind of start with the story that you shared, that I heard, at the NACWE conference.
CALLIE: Sure, OK. I want to start by saying that I am a writer at heart, that’s why I put that first on my business cards, because I love to write. I always have, ever since I was a little kid I used to write books when I was in elementary school.
In middle school and high school I would keep very emotional journals, I used to fill them up and they would be thick. So, I’ve always loved to write.
I wanted to tell you about a period of time that I call my writing drought, which was about a period of 4 1/2 to 5 years of my life.
I’m young, I’m 26, so that’s a huge chunk of my life in which I really struggled to put pen to paper. I struggled even to write a single sentence, it was really hard on me.
A lot of that was a physical manifestation of what was happening in my body.
I’ll start by saying that a lot of my problems have to do with my female body, but these symptoms can happen to men too. This is a lot about what goes in your body and how it affects you.
In June of 2010 I was having a lot of trouble with my reproductive cycles, and so I started hormonal birth control.
At that point it was just an easy fix, it acted like a band aid, and over the next 4 1/2 years a lot of things happen.
First of all, I gained 60 pounds, which was insane, and I didn’t change my diet at all, or my exercise routine, it was all of my hormones that were messed up.
Second, I started having serious symptoms, mainly sickness and fatigue—not sickness like a cold, but just body aches and pain. My fatigue was really serious.
When I started as an entrepreneur I quit my job in an office and started working from home. For that first year my fatigue was so intense that I would sleep from about 11pm to 7am, I would get my husband sent off to work and then I would go back to bed till 2 or 3pm and I would still be tired.
I just slept all the time. So, that was really physically hard.
Also, I was dealing with a lot of depression, partly from the hormones and partly because that’s just something I’ve always dealt with. The depression also contributed to that too.
Life was really kind of dark. Literally I kept the house very dark because the light kind of hurt, if that makes sense.
SHELLEY: Yeah, it does.
CALLIE: Through all of that, besides the weight gain, I also had a breast reduction surgery because the hormones had caused my cup size to go from DD to H, which was crazy.
I had to have surgery for that, and I guess I thought that would fix everything, and it did fix my back pain but the weight gain didn’t change.
I went to the doctor several times, tried a few different pills, obviously none of them made a difference.
I finally got fed up and in November of 2014 I just quit mid pack. I was like, “I’m done. We’re going to have to figure something else out.” So that’s what I did.
When you quit hormonal birth control pills your cycle is supposed to kick back on its own the next month, but mine didn’t.
It took six months for anything to happen, and after that my cycles, which are supposed to be 28 days, they ranged from 40 days to I even had a period of 200 days of nothing.
That’s very scary when your body stops doing what it’s supposed to do.
SHELLEY: Yeah, something’s not working right.
CALLIE: Exactly, something was really wrong. So I’d read that sometimes weight gain can cause irregularity like that, so I decided to start losing weight.
The only way I knew how to do that was to exercise a lot, so I did for five days a week an hour a day, and I also cut my calories way down to about 1200 a day. I thought that would work, and it’s supposed to mathematically. Calories in, calories out, that’s supposed to work.
That’s when I started to understand that I probably had some sort of metabolic disorder going on, because I did that for a year and I lost about ten pounds. Which was great, that was great, but that wasn’t the results that I should have been seeing.
Those ten pounds were very, very difficult to lose. At that point I’d gone from 205 pounds to about 195, 193, but I was still so unhappy. I knew that something needed to change.
So, after a year of that I finally decided to visit my doctor, which I really should have done in the beginning but I’m a very stubborn person. I’m also really, I guess, scared of the doctor, I don’t like going to the doctor.
I finally did, and that’s when I kind of got my wake up call, because I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.
Basically this is a hormonal disorder that also has a lot to do with the way that your body processes insulin. But it manifests itself in cysts on your ovaries and other hormonal symptoms like hair loss, weight gain, and all kinds of stuff.
It also causes infertility, which is a big deal for me right now because we’re getting ready to try and start a family.
So, I was just devastated to hear my doctor say that because of the state of my body, which it was broken, it wasn’t working, I wouldn’t be able to start a family like I wanted to.
That just broke my heart and I could not understand how it had gotten this far.
Keep in mind, in all this time, I wasn’t writing at all. A lot of that had to do with how I didn’t want to remember what was happening.
When I used to journal, which I did daily for many years, a lot of it was expressing joy and celebrating life. I felt like I had nothing to celebrate.
So, after that I went to several support groups online, and I kept seeing over and over the idea that people with PCOS really benefit from a low carb, low sugar diet.
That was a very hard pill for me to swallow, and I’ll tell you because not only have I always been a writer, but I’ve always been a baker. I love to bake, especially cupcakes, cookies, birthday cakes, everything. Sugar was my biggest tool, I used it in college, my first night in the dorms I made a huge batch of chocolate chip cookies and everyone was my friend.
SHELLEY: Yeah?
CALLIE: Yes. I did that all the time, and I was known as the girl who always had something sugary to offer, because that made people like me, that made them want to be with me, and that made me really happy.
Friends would come over to our house and they would immediately go to the freezer because they knew there would be ice cream waiting for them there.
So, sugar kind of became my medicine. It truly was devastating to my body, now that I understand the effects of what happened to my pancreas and everything that my body uses to process the sugar.
I was definitely addicted to sugar, and I don’t use the word addicted lightly, I really mean it.
I had to have sugary cereal for breakfast. I would have an apple, maybe two, a day. I know fruit seems healthy, but it’s also very sugary.
I had a bowl of ice cream every night, like not kidding, and since I worked from home I spent a lot of time alone in my house.
I would just walk laps around the house telling myself, “Don’t eat the sugar. Don’t eat the sugar.”
Sometimes I would even cry because I wanted it so badly and I was so frustrated that my body wanted.
I would get terrible withdrawal headaches if I didn’t have it. I needed it.
So, to read that cutting out sugar and cutting out carbs, which are basically sugar, was the way that I was going to get better, that was so hard for me to understand and process.
But I looked in my life. I looked at the people around me, and I knew how much they would benefit if I could lose the weight and start processing all of these chemicals in my body correctly.
So, I did. I quit cold turkey, just overnight I boxed up all the sugar and the carbs, and it’s sitting in a box in my closet because I don’t know what to do with it.
SHELLEY: Still?
CALLIE: Yeah! It’s still there. That was in February.
SHELLEY: Do you have the support of your husband?
CALLIE: Yes, I do. He loves potatoes and he loves Pringles and stuff. So, he’s sort of gone in halfway with me.
He’ll do it with me during the week, and then on the weekends sometimes he’ll splurge a bit, but he’s very supportive. I think for him it helped a lot to see the results, which the results came so quickly that he noticed them right away.
It’s been, oh gosh, I don’t have a count, but I know it’s been over three months, just a little bit over. I’ve lost 30 pounds.
SHELLEY: Wow. Before you’d only lost 10 pounds in a year?
CALLIE: Yeah. So, it came so quickly, it was like my body finally understood what was going on and everything fixed. Let me see.
First of all my mood is fantastic, I don’t feel sad, I feel so happy. Here, I have my notes here.
No sugar crashes. I used to, after every meal, I would just doze off and fall asleep, but I don’t feel that any more.
My cycles, every 28 days like clockwork. They just kicked on.
I’m ovulating regularly, which never happened before.
I have more energy, I’m not bloated, and I don’t really feel a craving for the sugar any more. Since February a bunch of our friends have had birthdays, and I’m still the one that makes their birthday cupcakes, but I didn’t want a single one, I just didn’t need it.
Once I knew the benefits of quitting the sugar, the sugar just wasn’t important.
The temporary sweetness just pales in comparison to all of the benefits of leaving it behind.
So, I just want to encourage your audience to set higher standards for themselves, and respect themselves, because my standards are so much higher now about what goes in my mouth, what goes in my body.
Sometimes I’ll be grocery shopping and actually have to say that to myself out loud, “No, my standards are higher,” as I walk past all these things.
SHELLEY: Oh I know! It’s everywhere.
CALLIE: It’s everywhere, especially sugar.
SHELLEY: It is, and it’s in everything.
CALLIE: Absolutely.
SHELLEY: One of the things that I remember you specifically saying at the NACWE conference is that it was like you were walking around in a fog, like a brain fog.
Can you explain the before and after sugar and carbs and stuff? How that felt to you?
I have felt that before, and you motivated me and my husband, and we’ll talk about that in just a minute, to decrease our sugar, but talk about that a little bit.
CALLIE: I’m glad you mentioned that. For the last five years, obviously I have a lot of great memories. We went to Australia. We moved around. We’ve made a lot of neat friends, lots of great memories, but when I look back it feels like those memories are from someone else.
I feel like a completely different person, and at the same time I feel like myself for the first time since high school. A lot of that had to do with that brain fog, when I look back everything is kind of fuzzy.
I remember being in the moment, maybe playing a game with our friends or something, and being there but not quite being there. I would either be completely curtained off with fatigue, or I would be anxious about when I was going to get my next sugar fix, I just wasn’t there.
The difference that I feel now is so astonishing that I just can’t believe how different it feels.
I feel like I was watching a movie of my life, and now I feel like I’m actually there, and I had no idea that sugar was doing that to me but it was.
It kept me behind a veil almost, and when the veil was lifted everything was brighter and everything was prettier.
So, the thought of putting the veil back on over my eyes, as in going back to eating sugar and everything, it just doesn’t make sense.
Even if the sugar feels good and tastes good, there are other things that taste good and feel good that I can do, that are better for me.
SHELLEY: You mentioned that it has given you better clarity, more energy, more motivation, and are you writing again?
CALLIE: Yeah, I am actually. I’ve started my journal again.
SHELLEY: Yeah!
CALLIE: I’ve started writing poetry again.
SHELLEY: Great! So it has even overcome what some people might call writers block. Every person is different, every person has different situations.
You had a very specific diagnosis as well, but I think it’s really encouraging to hear. It was night and day, that wasn’t medication or surgery or anything, it was simply changing the food you put in your body, right?
CALLIE: Right, exactly. The fuel that you use, it was like going from the regular unleaded fuel to super fancy stuff. Now I can’t go back.
SHELLEY: Anyone can do this. It’s not out of your reach. It’s not too expensive and not too anything. If you’re feeling a lot of these symptoms, you could just simply give it a try and see how it works for you.
There is a book called Whole 30 and I know a lot of my friends have gotten great results from that, and it’s also a similar thing of eliminating certain things for a season.
After I heard your story I came home from NACWE, and my husband and I have been on this health journey for years, but we always keep coming back to sugar.
It’s just so easy in our culture, and it’s almost like what you do for a date or celebrating. It’s a reward, you know?
CALLIE: It’s so social. When everyone is eating sugar, and you’re not, that’s such a hard situation.
SHELLEY: I just experienced that recently.
CALLIE: Yeah, because sugar is used as a reward, it’s used to celebrate things like Birthdays, it’s used to make people happy, and people don’t really remember other ways to do that.
SHELLEY: I came home and I told my husband your story, because he’s actually said this to me recently. “Shelley, I honestly think I’m addicted to sugar.”
He had the same thing, he had to have his sugar cereal in the morning, we had to have our treats, he had to have some sort of cookies or cake with his coffee, and it was like sugar was such an integral part.
I didn’t feel it quite as much as him, but I know it was affecting my body, those crashes; the ups and downs in the day. If he was eating it, I was eating it too.
So, I told him your story, and I told him, “she just came out of this fog, really felt better, all this stuff, lost weight, helped her female stuff,” everything you listed as the results.
We watched a couple documentaries, one of them you recommended, what was the name of that one?
CALLIE: There’s a couple that I like, there’s one called Carb Loaded, Sugar Coated, there are a ton of research that’s been done about it.
SHELLEY: Yeah, I think it’s the Carb Loaded one. We watched it on YouTube and paid a little bit to do it. Then there was one on Amazon Prime on sugar that we watched.
We watched those documentaries, and we know enough, and yet it’s like sometimes the information alone doesn’t sink in.
It was just like it was the right time, so we decided not to give up all carbs, but to really give up processed sugar and sweets. So it was like, “OK, if we’re doing it together we can do it!”
At the same time, my husband is a sponsored runner, he’s a very good runner and he has companies that sponsor him to run for them. So, he gets all these really good nutritional stuff, and yet I didn’t even realize everything we had access to.
After one of the documentaries they were talking about all this stuff that was really good for you, and I went and looked, we had this little thing called Perfect Food Berry, it’s from Garden of Life, and I looked at the ingredients. I was like, “oh! These are all the things they’re saying in this documentary we’re supposed to be eating.”
I eliminated the sugar, and then I started adding this into my protein drink in the morning, and then my husband also has these things called Super Beets.
CALLIE: Yeah.
SHELLEY: He’s sponsored by them. So I started adding in a scoop of the beets and then a scoop of what are basically fruit, vegetables, and grain.
Anyway, by eliminating the sugar and then adding in the nutrition I needed, literally, it was almost like a battery that’s being charged up.
I could almost instantly feel more energy. In the mornings when I have my protein drink with all this good stuff in it that my body was probably not getting; most likely, because I’m a carb girl, toast, sandwiches, sweets, and all this stuff.
We just have been doing it, a month next week, but I already feel such a difference in my energy level. I’m getting to the point where I’m not craving it anymore.
CALLIE: That’s the fun part.
SHELLEY: Yes! So thank you, I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your story, and thank you for motivating us.
I think it’s only going to help my husband’s performance in running too. We keep watching the documentaries.
I was like, I think we need to watch a different documentary a month to remind us why we’re doing this, because it is hard.
I love, love, love that it’s something so simple. It’s not easy, that doesn’t mean that it’s easy, because it will probably be one of the hardest things that you do should you chose to go on this path, but it’s so worth it.
Most of my audience are Christ followers, are Christians, so the Bible talks about honoring God with our bodies. Our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit, our bodies are creations that he has made, and yet so many times I have not treated my body very well.
I think that so many times we could be even more effective for the kingdom of God, more effective in our writing, more effective in what we do—and I’m getting chills just saying this because we could do so much more just by this one little simple change.
Already, my husband and I are joking because on the Strength Finders I’m an AA, which is Achiever Activator, which means I’m a go person anyway. Since I’ve started doing this, I’ve been adding these extra things in and he’s like, “it’s the beets.”
He’s just joking about the beets because I almost feel like I’m even more productive. I’m like, “how is that even possible,” because already people ask me, “How do you get everything done?”
It’s just such a great feeling to have that energy, to know you’re feeding your body something good, and the body rebuilds itself every so often, it takes longer for bones. You’ve probably already rebuilt most of yourself in your body at this point.
We could talk forever on this, this is so exciting, and the results can be so dramatic. It’s different for everyone, but what I like to do in these times is just to give a Take Action tip. So, if you had a Take Action tip for our listeners, what would that be?
CALLIE: What I want to reiterate here is that, for me, what was controlling me was sugar, but you need to find what is controlling you and you need to figure out how to control it instead. So, for my journey it was sugar, but for you it might be television, cigarettes, whatever it is.
SHELLEY: Social media.
CALLIE: Yes, social media, whatever. The first step is just to start. If I just started four years ago, I can’t imagine where I would be. I’d probably be on my way, I might have a baby by now, there is so much that could have happened if I had just started when I had first thought about starting.
I just encourage you, whatever you need to do to take care of yourself, take care of your body, do it today, do it right now and get started.
You only have one life, and there is no reason to waste five years like I did suffering from a health issue that can be solved by simply controlling what you put into your body, and what you allow your body to be affected by.
Nothing is stopping you by yourself. If you need support, find it, it’s there and you just have to find it.
Have the self-respect, and once you learn how to respect yourself and respect your body that comes out in everything you do. You become more confident, your writing becomes more confident, your words are more confident, and your words come easier. At least for me, I express myself so much easier when I’m not in that fog of being controlled by sugar, or whatever controls you.
I just want to say, you deserve it. You deserve to live a healthy and productive life. Whatever you’re using as a band aid just rip it off and start actually healing yourself, because the benefits of that are just unimaginable, they’ve been wonderful.
SHELLEY: Thank you so much, this could literally be life changing for some of you that are listening.
It’s going to be different for everyone, we’re not saying everyone has to go on this same path, but Callie and I have both gotten very good results and the research is there. I just know that this could really change things for a lot of you, and that’s why I wanted to bring Callie on and have her share her story.
Callie, if people want to connect with you, maybe with more questions about your health journey or maybe hiring you as an editor or organizer, or something like that, where can they connect with you?
CALLIE: You can go to my website, callierevell.com, and then if you do callierevell.com/health-journey I’ll be posting some resources, videos, all kinds of stuff, and I’ll tell my story in more detail there. On my website there is a contact tab, just feel free to reach out. I’m happy to answer questions and just connect with you.
Like I said, support is important, and I’m here to be your support if you need it, or if you want to be my support we can do that.
SHELLEY: Callie is an amazing person, she is also a Christian and an entrepreneur, and she’s just talented in many areas.
She’s created a speaker video promo for me, so thank you Callie. She may be able to provide a service that you need, but also just the inspiration on your own journey.
Thank you so much Callie, I’m so excited that you’ve joined us today, and thank you to everyone that is listening, and thank you for joining me on my podcast, I truly appreciate you. I want to continue to help you, not just in your writing and marketing, but in life.
So I hope you got a lot out of this episode, and I’ll see you next time.
Callie’s Full Bio:
Callie Revell is a writer, editor, and professional organizer. Her editing services include book manuscripts, blog posts, websites, articles, and much more. Her goal is to help her clients successfully communicate their professional and personal ideas with others and reach their goals through organized thoughts and environments.
She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Hardin-Simmons University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and minors in Communications and Honors Interdisciplinary Studies. During her time at Hardin-Simmons, she served as Chief Copy Editor of the school’s student-run newspaper and as the Head Literary Editor for the school’s literary arts publication. She has won awards for her poetry and creative writing.
Callie loves reading, making paper crafts, and writing poetry. She loves bright colors and office supplies and has way too many books! She also loves to travel and has been all over the world, from England to Australia to Hungary and beyond.
She has served as an editor and organizer for everyone from high school administrators to marketing consultants, graduate students, independent authors, and many others. She lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband, Samuel, and their two pets: a Labrador retriever named Sadie and a chinchilla named Rigby. You can learn more about Callie at callierevell.com.
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