Community Highlights: Meet Lindsey Bonadonna of Kale and Cake

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lindsey Bonadonna.

Hi Lindsey, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Hello, friends! My name is Lindsey Bonadonna, and I am an optimist, encourager, Healthy Habits Coach and yoga teacher that DEEPLY believes that a vibrant, wellness-filled life DOES NOT have to mean giving up everything you love! I love supporting people (especially women and moms), live fuller, healthier, vibrant lives through a series of simple fun-size habits (because, who doesn’t love something that is fun-size!), so that they can sustainably make a meaningful impact in themselves, their loved ones, and the world, for generations to come.

So you may be wondering, how did I get here? Well, I’ve always been someone who’s had the gift of being able to see the possibility in situations, even when the situations really sucked. And not in a non-acknowledging, let’s pretend this isn’t happening kind of way, but more in a, OK, this bites, however, if we look at previous times we’ve felt like this, we made it through, and end up even MORE leveled up than before…so let’s lean into the yuck and the suck, and see what is there for us to learn. It is also my natural talent to leave people more hopeful than when I first find them. I LOVE seeing people thrive, and showering everyone in affirmations, making sure they know they are heard and seen, letting them know how amazing they are, how worthy they are, how capable they are, and especially letting them know that THEY GOT THIS, whatever this happens to be at that particular time. I just never had the right outlet until a few years ago…

My ah-ha moment happened a few years ago, around 2a on a warm summer night. I woke up with a start, sat bolt upright, and thought “I don’t think this is what life is supposed to feel like, I don’t think this is what a relationship is supposed to feel like. There has GOT to be more, I know there is more”!

About a year and a half previous to that moment, at age 36, I was (what felt like randomly) diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis, Sjogrens Syndrome and Hashimoto’s. I remember feeling disappointed in my body, and also a bit frustrated that I now had “one more thing” I had to do. I’ve always been a believer that first, we should do all we can do heal our bodies as much as we can, and then, if we need medicine and additional interventions, let’s do it! So I set out to do just that, and let me tell you this…at first, I failed miserably.

You see, right around this time, I was involved in my (now-ex) husband’s business, we had just went through a tremendous expansion, diversified our business, and let’s just say that the things we had planned on working out, one by one, were not working out. He had to go back into production and he had asked me to be the “CEO”. I remember feeling deep down in my gut, that I didn’t want it, but my ego quickly overruled that as I began to think about how I could show everyone how capable I am and save the company (I even bought some heels and red lipstick). So while I was trying to heal my body, I was also trying to heal a business, make sure that my kiddos weren’t turning out to be jerks, and work on our marriage. I also found myself working 60+ hours, not sleeping well and living on french fries and quick foods. It wasn’t a good recipe for healing anything!

After about 11 months of this grind, and ignoring the multiple signs my body was giving me, I ended up in the ER twice in one week with crazy migraines and that fancy IV migraine cocktail wasn’t even touching them. My (now-ex) husband said to me, hey, I think you may need to go on some meds because I don’t want to have to push you down the aisle in a wheelchair for our kids’ graduation. That SHOOK me.

At that point, I got REALLY serious about my health, I started seeing a Functional Medicine practitioner, Health Coach, got a good look at my hormones, did an elimination diet and discovered that gluten and dairy increased my inflammation, changed my work approach, and also had that middle-of-the-night aha moment a few months after I started taking care of myself.

Through this process, and after deciding to end my marriage, having to leave the business, I uncovered this passion for helping others feel better in their bodies through jumping into a network marketing company (which I never thought in a million years I would do)! While I knew ALOT about nutrition, and healing our bodies, I knew I had gaps, so I then pursued a certification through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, my 300-hour yoga teacher certification, an advanced gut health certification and launched my business!

What makes me giggle is that it took me about 38 years to discover my path, but I had to walk through every single one of those 13,870ish days, experimenting, crying, getting sick, falling down, getting back up, finding something bigger than myself to believe in, doing my best, laughing, loving, failing big, getting curious, to end up exactly where I am meant to be.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
One of the biggest struggles was making the decision to end my marriage. That was a decision not made lightly, and resulted in having to leave the company I helped to build for 6 years, as well as not being able to be around my daughters every day. When I had that ah-ha moment a few summers ago, my (now-ex) husband and I were in a cycle of pain, distress, stress, and while we didn’t often scream at each other, the distaste we had for each other was palpable. When I jolted awake, the curiosity around what the current life I was experiencing was feeling like versus what I thought life could feel like, was a really big moment of awareness that was both amazing and heartwrenching to take action on, but I knew life wasn’t supposed to feel like that.

A more recent challenge I’ve been working through is slowing down and building my life in a more conscious way. IT IS HARD when we live in a society that equates success with being super stressed out and pushes us to believe our worth is tied to how much we can do at one time (spoiler alert, it isn’t). No one is giving us a gold star for working 70 hours, and making ourselves sick and stressed. All that is happening, is that we’re wearing out our beautiful bodies and rushing ourselves to the grave. I deeply believe, know, and am starting to really experience that everything is really ok (and even BETTER), when we begin to question what is true in our lives. If it doesn’t feel good to work 70-hours a week, or if you feel like sh*t after every time you eat a particular food, just pause, and get curious around why you keep doing it. Sometimes we hold on so tightly to what we believe to be true, or what was true for us at one point in our lives, but fact is, we can ALWAYS get curious, change and let go of the things that are no longer working for us.

Now, as I’m exploring this concept myself, I can tell you it isn’t easy, because you’re working NOT ONLY against societal beliefs, conditioning, childhood, and long-ingrained neuropathways, but also fear that things will go REALLY wrong. That somehow, by exploring a new way of being, your whole life and everything you worked so hard for will crumble, or that you won’t be you anymore. It won’t, because at the end of the day, you won’t let it. Slow down, take time to listen to your body and intuition, trust in your self-awareness, try a new approach out for size, lean into the discomfort, and ultimately, if you don’t like it, you can ALWAYS go back or try something new. That’s the beauty of life, our bodies, our spirit, our mind, these are all living, breathing things interacting with other living, breathing things, all just trying to do our best in a world that is always changing, and just like our world, we can also always change (just remember to not get caught up trying to change others, we can only encourage and empower them through the own actions we take in our own lives).

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Kale and Cake?
I named my company Kale and Cake, because I DEEPLY believe that a healthy, vibrant wellness-filled life can ABSOLUTELY include both kale and cake (like, REAL honest-to-goodness cake with sugar, not cake made with kale, yucky!).

To go a bit deeper on what I shared earlier, and part of what makes me unique is that I’m able to support clients on both the health/nutrition/movement size PLUS the life side. My approach involves uncovering imbalances in a client’s primary foods (things like career, relationships, home environment, finances, home cooking, spirituality, movement, inclusion, there are 13 altogether), as well as secondary foods (things we choose to actually ingest and digest), and then, through a series of simple, customized fun-size habits, make sustainable change so that they can make a meaningful impact in themselves, their loved ones, and the world, for generations to come. I am REALLY great at taking what feels like a big, overwhelming, health/life aspiration and breaking it down into tiny steps that really don’t feel like much work at all. PLUS, we celebrate A LOT.

Everything I do is totally custom to the individual client and their needs. I have also cultivated an incredible network of trusted care providers in each of the primary food areas to refer out to if needed.

I’d love for your readers to know, that it is NEVER TO LATE to reach out and get support and that they aren’t alone in their journey. Our society has really put a strong focus that our health is tied to a specific number, what we eat and how much we move. It isn’t just that, our health and wellness involves taking a look at EVERYTHING we bring into our lives and bodies. It can feel intimidating to take the first step, but please feel free to reach out. I offer complimentary 60-minute Get to Know You chats and I PROMISE, they are not creepy sales calls. I genuinely love to talk to people about their health and life aspirations, help them build a fun-size habit recipe or two to get them closer to reaching that aspiration and leave them feeling more hopeful and excited than when we started the call.

I also offer both in-person and virtual options for yoga classes as well, which is a great way to slow down and listen to your body. You do NOT have to be flexible of body to join my classes or have fancy matching yoga outfits! I just ask that you just be flexible of mind, have on some comfy clothes, and have a desire to calm the fluctuations of the mind while learning to meet your body, mind and soul right where it is at in that particular moment.

What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
I love learning, and one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned recently is to befriend my inner critic, you know that inner voice that tells you you aren’t doing a good job, aren’t doing enough or encourage you to compare yourself to others? This discovery has been a GAMECHANGER! For the longest time, I had been trying to just “cut” that part of my mindset out of existence, but after deeper reflection and lots of meditation, I had this ah-ha moment of…Wait, this inner critic, it is just a really scared part of my ego, and it is getting loud AF because I am approaching my life in a way that is TOTALLY different than I have been for the last 39ish years, and this part of my ego is truly just trying to keep me safe. Once I had that realization, I’ve found myself, when that voice starts getting loud, to just pause, and check-in to see what the ruckus is about.

For the first time, I feel totally whole (if that makes sense), and not like I have 2 sides of my conscious (the logical part that knows everything is fine and I’m doing a stellar job, and the inner critic that likes to try to convince me otherwise) battling it out. They now complement and inform each other *most* of the time, but either way, I’ve finally learned to take some deep breaths and just get curious instead of trying to deny a part of my personality and spiral into a place of anxiety and doubt.

Contact Info:

• Email: lindsey@lindseybonadonna.com
• Website: www.lindseybonadonna.com
• Instagram: @lindseyloveswellness
• Facebook: /lindseyloveswellness

Image Credits
@jeremykramerphoto
Lindsey Bonadonna