Practice English Speaking&Listening with: OPTAVIA Inspiring Stories of Transformation 2.12.20

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The following audio may contain the personal

testimonials of some Independent OPTAVIA Coaches

or Clients of OPTAVIA.

The results relayed in these messages

are based on the unique experiences

of the participants,

and we can not guarantee like or similar outcomes.

While you may be inspired by these accounts,

please note that any stories

of success have not been verified,

and your individual path to healthy living

and weight loss will vary.

As always, it is our recommendation

that you consult with a health care provider

before starting a weight-loss program.

In addition, this audio may contain

income or earnings representations

of some Independent OPTAVIA Coaches.

OPTAVIA makes no guarantee of financial success.

Success with OPTAVIA results from successful sales efforts,

which requires hard work, diligence,

skill, persistence, competence, and Leadership.

Please see the OPTAVIA Income Disclosure Statement

for statistics on actual earnings

of Coaches under the U.S. Compensation Plan,

which differs from the International Compensation Plan.

Yours in health, the OPTAVIA team.

So welcome to our call tonight,

where you're gonna have an opportunity

to hear what OPTAVIA is all about.

This is an opportunity to hear real stories

from real people

about the impact that OPTAVIA has had in their life.

February is heart month,

and so today we want to focus on the heart of the matter.

We wanna focus on what really it is

that matters most to people.

Society will try to convince you

that you live in an either or reality.

That you can either be successful professionally,

or you can be present

for the things that matter most to you.

But what you're gonna hear tonight

is stories of successful professionals

that discovered that OPTAVIA was a vehicle

for a both and reality.

Where they can be both successful professionally,

and present for the things that matter most to them.

My name is Donni Alvarenga,

and I honored to be one of your hosts tonight.

As far as what matters most to me,

I'm gonna tell you what.

It is my family.

I happen to be mom to nine year old twins,

and nine years ago, two magical things happened.

The first was I achieved a dream of becoming a mom.

If you had asked me when I was seven years old

what it was that I wanted to be when I grow up,

I wanted to be a mom.

And when I delivered my twins,

that was a huge momentous event.

However, what I didn't realize

is that I had also just stumbled upon

the vehicle to create another dream that I had.

The dream to be a stay at home mom.

And I was a professional,

I was a nurse practitioner,

and I have always been a significant contributor

to my family's budget,

and I was trapped in that either or reality.

I thought that I could either be successful professionally,

or I could either have a comfortable lifestyle,

or be a stay at home mom.

I had to choose between one or the other.

And what OPTAVIA has offered me

is the opportunity to be both.

A successful professional and the stay at home mom

that I never imagined possible.

And beyond that, it has also shown me

that it is also possible

that kids have both mom and dad home.

I thought that it would either mean

that my husband had to be working

and we would never see him,

and I would be home with the kids,

or my kids would have no parents home.

And over the past five years,

even though my husband was also a successful professional

in the IT world,

OPTAVIA has created a vehicle

for us to be able to be home with our kids.

And we live in Florida, and our kids had never seen snow

until last month.

And thanks to the freedom that we have

to control our schedule,

and to plan life around what matters most to us,

we literally got in the car

and went on a snow hunting expedition.

And I am so incredibly blessed and excited

that we get to plan our lives

around what matters most to us.

And that we could be hunting for snow

on a Thursday afternoon,

and not have to ask anyone for permission

on how it is that we use our time.

I'm excited to introduce you to my co-host today,

Doctor Joe, who also was a successful professional

as a physician and general and vascular surgeon.

Welcome Doctor Joe.

Well thanks so much Donni,

and as you can see in the picture

I mean you talk about both and.

I'd say even more than that,

because a lot of people wonder can a surgeon

really have a life?

And mostly it's physicians that wonder that

because the average person doesn't really understand

what a surgeon's lifestyle is like.

So what OPTAVIA really had done for us

was an incredible thing

in that it allowed us to be able to follow our passions

without having to give up one or the other.

It's not as if I had to only do surgery,

you can see what I call my business before and after there

is in the operating room and on the kayak,

really just to represent the two different aspects

of things that you love,

but one representing a greater degree of freedom.

And then you see me with that

little boy on the mission field there as well,

and really that's one of the things

that I'll talk about a little bit later.

But it's just,

something that a lot of people don't realize you can have.

They would like to believe it, but they don't.

And so hopefully we're gonna bring

those belief levels up tonight

for those who are wondering

and they're looking at this for the first time.

Oh yeah, I believe it Doctor Joe.

You know, I had a hard time believing it too, right?

Yeah, no question.

Now before we get into the details though

of the transformational program

and some of these stories,

let me give a little bit of background on who we are.

Because I know when I first looked at this as a physician,

I said to myself,

I remember all those crazy liquid protein diets in the '60s

and the medications that people gave,

and how people developed heart arrhythmias and things,

so I said let me look into

what it is that I might consider getting into.

And so what I found was,

I found OPTAVIA,

which is a company that's committed

to providing solutions for people to create optimal health.

And more than 30,000 Independent OPTAVIA Coaches

are around the country,

and now in a few other areas of the world.

Many of those are health professionals,

but the vast majority are not.

The vast majority are people

that saw the value in our program.

And thanks to our co-founder, Doctor Wayne Andersen

who, I think it's his birthday today.

He's also a New York Times bestselling author,

and what he did, is he put together this system

with the overriding mission

to Offer the World Lifelong Transformation

One Healthy Habit at a Time.

And we know that we can do that,

our parent company, Medifast,

has been a leader for years.

They've won so many awards,

they have developed proven products, proven programs,

have their own R&D, all based in this country,

New York Stock Exchange,

and they've already, we have already impacted

more than a million lives.

So when we look at what's possible, it's a lot more.

And so lifelong transformation

is something that starts with an individual.

But individuals make up populations,

and you can see the statistics there.

Worldwide, obesity has tripled practically since 1975.

And what we do know now too

is that more people in the world are dying from obesity

than from malnutrition and starvation.

Which is something that is new in the last few decades.

But what we're gonna talk about tonight

is gonna take it one more step.

And that's what about,

how do Americans feel about their lives?

And you can see that almost a third of people with partners,

and who knows what the single percentages are,

say that money is a source of conflict.

And so we know that since 69% of people

are stressed over their finances,

a lot of them are even talking about it at work,

so who knows what's going on at people's jobs these days.

These are important statistics

because we know that people will often say

I don't want to be a statistic.

Well the good news is, with this program,

you don't have to be those kind of statistics.

That's the truth.

And as we mentioned,

we're gonna be talking about

what is OPTAVIA really all about?

And our goal is to help people create optimal health

which we believe is a sweet spot

between a healthy mind, healthy body, and healthy finances.

Wherever you're coming to us from today,

whether you're a Client, or a Coach, or a guest,

I invite you to ask yourself

how are you doing in each of those areas?

Have you ever noticed that if any one of them

is a little bit off,

how it trickles into the other two?

And what OPTAVIA does,

is it offers a resource, a tool,

a system, a structure to help people find that sweet spot

where all three areas are in balance.

Now we don't believe that health comes in a pill,

or a package, or a prescription, or a potion.

We believe that it comes in our daily choices.

And those daily choices are so much easier said than done.

It is so much easier for me to tell you what to do

than it is for me to do what I know,

I mean have you ever felt that way?

Where you know what to do,

but you're not doing it because, fill in the blank?

Well what we do through OPTAVIA

is that OPTAVIA offers four separate tools

to make the process of habit retraining simple.

As Doctor Joe mentioned,

our goal is Lifelong Transformation

One Healthy Habit at a Time.

And so we offer people tools

to make that process simpler.

A tool is an instrument that makes a job easy.

Let's think about, for example,

the task of putting a nail in the wall.

You can do that by whacking it with a rock.

You can do that by whacking it with a pen.

You can do that by whacking it with a hammer,

or by using a nail gun.

The difference between each one

is how simple you're gonna get the job done,

and how quickly you're gonna get the job done.

And the longer you spend working hard on something,

the higher the chances that you might give up.

And so what we do,

is we give you a nail gun,

and we make it very, very simple.

So the thought that it just may not be possible

does not even cross your mind.

So the first tool that we use

is the one-on-one accountability of a Coach.

I like to call that the power of saving face.

When you know that somebody's gonna be checking in on ya,

and that cares about ya,

and that is in this journey with you,

then all of a sudden it increases the chances

that you're going to follow through

with whatever commitment you made.

So that's the first tool

is the accountability piece.

The second tool is the educational component.

And it is a very simple system,

including a book, and a LifeBook

which is a lot like a journal, and an app.

And the intent there

is to empower you to become the expert on your own health.

And so what we do as Coaches

is we guide people through the Habits

of Health Transformational System.

And that addresses everything from sleep

to stress management, to water, to nutrition,

to activity, to relationships, to mindset, all of it.

The third tool is the sense of Community.

As human beings, we tend to do what other people are doing.

People do what people do,

and we tend to become like the top five people

that we spend the most time with.

So what we do,

is we leverage positive peer pressure, if you will,

and plug you into a Community of people

that are all making health a priority.

And that sets new behavioral norms,

not to mention, that it's just so much more fun.

So that's the third tool, is the sense of Community.

The fourth tool is the simplicity factor

when it comes to healthy eating.

We know that health is about so much more than nutrition,

but when it comes to the eating piece,

a lot of people stumble.

Have you ever heard that the healthy way to eat

is to eat frequent small meals?

As a nurse practitioner,

I used to recommend that all the time.

And I would have people that would come in

with 100 calorie pack snack of cookies.

And I couldn't understand why I couldn't help them.

I couldn't understand why they couldn't chop up an apple.

But what I discovered

is that most people live very crazy busy lives,

and if it's not simple enough, we won't do it.

So what OPTAVIA has done,

is they have offered us a very simple system

so that we can develop the habit

of eating the right food at the right time

for the right reason.

For those that are looking to lose weight,

all they have to do is plan and prepare one meal a day.

That one meal consists of a lean protein and vegetables.

The other five meals,

we actually make them healthy grab and go meals

that we have delivered to you at home.

And what that does, is it creates

a little bit of a controlled environment,

so that we're able to create predictable results.

Now we have meal plans for people

with multiple different goals,

whether you need to lose weight or not.

But ultimately the bottom line is this,

we make it simple.

We make it simple.

I'm so excited to introduce you guys

to two successful professionals

that were trapped in that either or paradigm.

A successful nurse practitioner,

a successful attorney that had this beautiful family

and decided that they were not okay

with being trapped in that either or,

and they wanted both and.

They wanted to be successful, and they wanted to be present

in the lives of their children.

So Joslyn and Dave welcome to the webinar.

Thank you so much Donni.

We're super excited to be here,

and to share what we hope will inspire someone

the way that this program

has truly inspired and blessed our lives.

About a year and a half ago I reached out to Donni,

I had heard her speak at a local nurse practitioner meeting,

and she said "if anyone's interested

"in learning more about health coaching, I'd love to share."

And so three years later,

I found our family in a tough situation.

Dave was working around the clock, he was never home.

I had lost my dad who was my biggest cheerleader,

and we had three little children

ages three, two and one, or four, two, and one at the time.

So it was crazy busy,

and Dave, I could count on one hand

how many times he was home for dinner on a weeknight

since our second son was born.

So I just looked at him,

and if you see in the first picture there,

you see we love the outdoors.

We love nature, we love to be active,

there's so many things that we love to do

that we weren't doing.

Dave, one thing when we met

we loved being adventurous, and explore, and travel,

and there just, none of that was able to happen

with our lifestyle the way that it was.

And so I reached out to Donni

and found out how I could help him

not be so incredibly stressed

in a corporate law job

that kept him away from our family all the time.

But also wouldn't put me in a position

that I had to be away from our family more.

And so I like to say the side effect of that conversation

what that I lost 50 pounds, which is amazing.

And Dave actually,

in that also he

reversed five years ago,

he had a stent after a 95% block

in his widow maker artery

in his heart for heart month.

When he was working so much my uncle said

he needs to get the hell out of that job.

It's the stress is no good.

So anyway, he had put on 40 pounds

after the stent was put in,

and I was beside myself worried about his health.

So he lost 40 pounds,

you see us there at my 40th birthday, such better health.

And fast forward again,

I started my coaching business

along with helping Dave come home

to start his own business as an attorney.

And as he was starting to build that business,

I was building mine, and also working much more

outside the home than I wanted to.

But in the past year I've been able to

grow my coaching business

so that when they closed the doors

to the corporate,

the retail nurse practitioner clinic I was working in

I didn't have to run out and find another job

to be away from my kids more.

I actually looked at Dave and said I think we're okay.

We have freedom to make this choice,

and build our life around what's most important to us

which are these three little people

you see in the other picture there.

So it's been an incredible journey.

I think Dave's seen,

one thing that he has commented on a lot,

if you wanna speak to like how the impact you've seen,

how it's been.

Yeah so, Joslyn loved being a nurse practitioner,

she spent many years in school to be able to do it.

She was able to take care of patient's acute needs,

but it didn't really fulfill her in the way

that she expected it to.

When people go to nursing school or medical school

they think they're gonna be able to cure people's ills.

But what she found is it was more putting band-aids

on people's problems,

and they came back over and over.

She was in primary care,

with the same stuff year after year,

that didn't really get better.

And so that's why it's been

so obviously intrinsically rewarding

for her to do the coaching.

Because she's changing people's lives

in a way that she never really got to

as a nurse practitioner.

She started with our friends,

she would help our friends lose 40, 50, 70 pounds.

And now hundreds of people

that she has had that same effect on their lives.

And while I see her working hard at it,

I also see her heart fill up through the process

by impacting other's lives so immensely.

How has it impacted your schedule Dave?

And your availability?

So to answer that I'll just step back a little bit,

so Joslyn was describing how I was working

before we found all this,

and the health issues I was having,

and it sort of seems crazy in retrospect.

How could somebody that had a 95% blockage,

and such a dangerous situation

allow themselves to gain the weight back?

And in candid because I didn't think it was plausible

to do what I though was necessary to lose the weight.

We're told all these things

about what is necessary to be healthy.

You have to wake up two hours earlier and exercise,

you have to go through starvation pains and stuff.

And I didn't have time to do that.

But I did have time to get healthy

because there was another better way.

And so fast forward to after I got healthy,

the amount of time that I did have

I could actually use in a constructive way.

I wasn't tired, loafing on the couch.

I was able to get up outside, like this first picture,

and hike with my kids, hike with my family,

go kayaking with them.

I had more energy to make

the time that was there more valuable.

Yeah.

I love that, thank you guys for sharing.

Really what that has done for your family,

in terms of creating some time.

And I love how Joslyn said

that losing the weight was a side effect,

because there are so many benefits

to becoming a Coach with OPTAVIA.

First of all, it reinforces your decision to be healthy.

Because as you help others,

you just can't help but live what you're helping them to do,

and that just reinforces the habits.

Now when you pay it forward,

you heard Dave talking about

the incredible sense of purpose

that that has brought to Joslyn's life.

Not only is it incredibly rewarding,

but it's actually kind of fun,

Actually a lot of fun.

And so you get compensated

not only in the currency of good will,

which is amazing.

But you also get compensated financially

which is part of what creates more freedoms, more options.

As Joslyn mentioned,

her position was downsized at the end of last year,

and she had options.

My husband's position was downsized five years ago,

and we had options

because we had this business in place.

And we can leave a legacy that we can be proud of.

Now OPTAVIA offers us a progressive growth model

where you can grow as far or as fast as you like.

You start out as a Coach

where you acquire and support Clients.

And what ends up happening

is that your Clients oftentimes are loving life,

are loving their results,

and they can't keep quiet about it.

And so it's often a very logical progression

that they just wanna pay it forward

and help their friends and family.

And so when they decide to do that,

then you become a Business Coach,

and you support them in launching their coaching business.

And then there's also the option to become a Business Leader

where you can build teams of Coaches

which are kind of like little micro-franchises,

that you can expand your business

as big as you like.

Earlier you got to hear a little bit

of Doctor Joe's story,

but what I would love for you guys to hear

is also Rhonda's side of the story.

Rhonda is Doctor Joe's wife,

Rhonda, welcome to the webinar,

we would love to hear from you.

How many hours did Doctor Joe used to work

and be away from home?

Oh my goodness, many, many hours.

Basically it was a life of inconvenience.

Him being a general vascular surgeon,

and I was in the office, I managed the office.

We drove separately to church,

we drove separately to vacations and would meet up.

Just because he worked so many hours

being in solo practice.

And he also had a bank clinic too,

so it was just a lot of time,

and we just didn't have that time,

so our life was not normal.

He would get called in

at all hours in the middle of the night,

or if we were at an event, or at the movies,

we had to just really plan carefully.

And of course our health suffered.

I was up 20 pounds, Joe was up 123,

like he talked about earlier.

And it was very stressful,

and I was really really very concerned with his health

because that was when we

started out as Clients in OPTAVIA,

we became health Coaches the same day.

Because honestly, we were looking.

We were looking for,

we had a great life, we really did.

Joe's a very dedicated father,

but you know what, we were looking for something greater.

Yeah, and it certainly was a life of inconvenience,

but I think every surgeon going into that career

knows that it's gonna be a life of inconvenience.

And that was just our life.

What happens though is a lot of people

don't think about the family aspect.

What is the family experience

of very busy professionals

that are working some weeks more that 110 hours even.

It takes a lot of support,

and Rhonda and our children gave great support in that way.

But at the same time,

things changed dramatically.

Once we got involved in this,

and we started coaching as Rhonda said,

concurrently while I was a surgeon at 123 pounds,

barely able to lean over the operating table,

and we got started

and in little cracks of time

we didn't realize how liberating

the freedom was going to be.

Because what happened was

eventually we were able to pursue other passions

more liberally in the sense

that we had more time to do them.

As soon as we started really living fully

on the OPTAVIA income.

And it was eight years ago on my birthday

that we looked at each other and said

"You know what, it's time to close the practice."

And a lot of my colleagues thought that our lifestyle

was going to suffer.

And when they saw that it didn't I kind of laughed

because one of 'em said oh he must have been hurt

at a lot of money or something

I'm like no, we just played our cards right,

we did the work, and we helped other people.

Oh my goodness, the OPTAVIA income has just been,

I mean we love health coaching,

we love helping others, that's our heart

to love and serve others.

And we love adventures and experiences too,

but we were very, very limited.

So now we have the time, wow.

The time to do our mission with our non-profit,

and just serving in those poor areas in the world.

And also the earned trips that we get to do with OPTAVIA

that are so much fun,

and just we're living that relaxed lifestyle now.

And making our own schedule.

I remember a week when Ariel was in college,

we went to visit,

and it was during the week,

there were no parents around but us.

And we had so much fun being with her roommates,

and just spending time, and making dinners,

and wow, just those experiences

you don't want to miss in life.

And so we get to see these massive transformations

every week when we talk to our Clients,

when we talk to our Coaches, mentor Coaches.

Because we're helping people get to better health,

what greater blessing is that?

And have a better life with healthy finances

as a health Coach.

Yeah, it really, it's true.

Things are so different,

and when we talk about the relaxed lifestyle,

it's, I can remember the one time Rhonda said to me,

"If the hardest decision you have to make right now

"is whether to go for a run,

"or go kayaking before the massage therapist gets here,

"that's pretty good."

And I say that not because we don't work,

because we do, we work very hard,

but we're able to control our time,

and we're able to prioritize our time accordingly.

So we can pursue the non-profit mission work,

we can oversee the building of churches and wells,

and now a hospital in Kenya

without having to ask someone for time off.

Or without having to think about overhead happening

while we're gone.

Or for having to find someone

to actually work for me, and cover my practice

while I'm gone.

So this is one of the reasons,

and some of the reasons why we share this opportunity

with so many people.

So you might ask well how does this coaching thing work?

Well it's a relational model.

People come first.

Just as you've heard so many people talk about tonight,

it's helping others first.

And once we help other people,

we realize that not only is that good for their well-being,

but it's good for your well-being.

You're self-employed,

you're an independent business owner.

You don't work for your Coach.

In fact if anything,

your Coach works to help your business grow.

Full time or part time income opportunities,

really depends on your work ethic.

And for many people,

they can develop what might be considered a full-time income

during little cracks of time.

Like for me, it was in between hospitals.

Or while I'm waiting for another operation to start.

But the startup costs are not like a traditional business,

they are extremely low.

$199, and I can tell you,

15 years ago when we got started,

it was actually $299, so things have gone down.

So you can start this business with $199,

work from anywhere,

and have the flexibility to be able to grow your business

while you're busy,

and have the complete training and support.

It's a unique business like none other.

So what kind of support do you get?

Well I say it's unique, and it's complete because it is.

It's a comprehensive system.

It's duplicable, in other words

you don't have to keep reinventing the wheel.

The wheel has been invented, and we just have to roll it.

It's something that you can learn while you're earning.

If you get busy right out of the gate,

you can start earning right out of the gate

because you're working with your Business Coach,

and your entire Business Mentorship Team.

So we employ something called team coaching,

which is much like an apprenticeship.

That as you grow, you learn,

like what Donni showed the progressive growth model,

you reach those at different levels

according to your work ethic.

But your mentor, your team

will be working with you all along the way.

We can show you the trail,

we say we show you the,

we show the path,

but you get to work at your own pace.

So you might be looking at this

and say okay, where do I sign up?

Well get with the person who invited you here,

or get with your Coach,

because it only takes a few minutes to get started,

they can get you going right away.

You may need a little bit of time to think about this,

but I know there's people already

are thinking to themselves

I know people that I can help, so why not do it?

Get started, join a team that's a winning team,

really a championship team,

and let's get you as part of the OPTAVIA team tonight.

This audio may have contained

the personal testimonials of some

Independent OPTAVIA Coaches, or Clients of OPTAVIA.

The results relayed in these messages

are based on the unique experiences of the participants,

and we can not guarantee like or similar outcomes.

While you may be inspired by these accounts,

please note that any stories of success

have not been verified,

and your individual path to optimal health will vary.

As always, it is our recommendation

that you consult with a healthcare provider

before starting a weight-loss program.

In addition, this audio may have contained

income or earnings representations

of some Independent OPTAVIA Coaches.

OPTAVIA makes no guarantee of financial success.

Success with OPTAVIA results from successful sales efforts

which requires hard work, diligence,

skill, persistence, competence, and Leadership.

Please see the OPTAVIA Income Disclosure Statement

for statistics on actual earnings

of Coaches under the U.S. Compensation Plan,

which differs from the International Compensation Plan.

Yours in health, the OPTAVIA team.

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