Words of Wellness with Shelly

Send us Fan Mail Your brain isn’t the problem, the plan is. Shelly sits down with Caitlyn Costa, a personal trainer, group fitness instructor, and mom of four, to talk about what wellness looks like when you’re living with ADHD, managing a packed family schedule, and trying to stay grounded in a world that never stops talking.  Caitlyn shares how she’s known about her ADHD since her teens, what it...

Send us Fan Mail Freedom is easy to celebrate for a day, but it hits differently when you let it change how you live on an ordinary day. After the Fourth of July and the 250th birthday of America, Shelly shares a personal reflection on patriotism, gratitude, and why those themes belong in a wellness podcast. Shelly talks through what’s shifted for her with age and why she feels more connected and...

Send us Fan Mail If your doctor says your labs are “normal” but you still feel exhausted, bloated, anxious, foggy, or stuck in a cycle of headaches and hormone chaos, you are not alone and you are not imagining it. We sit down with Colleen, a clinical therapist who shifted into functional nutrition and gut health work after her own long health mystery, to talk about what gets missed when care only...

Send us Fan Mail “Not medically necessary.” Those three words stopped Shelly in her tracks, because they were used to describe a preventive test she is choosing to do on purpose. If we wait until something is wrong enough to “count,” we’ve already lost time we can’t get back. This message is a candid reminder to stay proactive with your health even when insurance, cost, or confusion makes it harde...

Send us Fan Mail Father’s Day can hit your heart from two directions at once: deep gratitude and deep grief. Shelly shares a personal message to honor the dads, bonus dads, and father figures who shape our lives, often in quiet ways that don’t get enough credit. This is a pause from the noise of wellness “shoulds” and a return to what supports real emotional well-being: love, connection, and appre...

Send us Fan Mail WOW! Excited to share our 200th episode and Shelly is celebrating this milestone by sharing what has mattered most across Words of Wellness, plus the simple health foundations she comes back to again and again when life feels busy, confusing, or unmotivated. We talk about wellness as more than fitness and nutrition. Shelly breaks down the bigger picture, including mental wellness,...

Send us Fan Mail Your doctor says your labs are “normal,” but you’re exhausted, foggy, not sleeping well, and doing all the right things with no payoff. That gap between results and real life is where this conversation starts and where it gets practical fast. We sit down with returning guest Lisa Marie, a nurse practitioner with a PhD in holistic nutrition and a functional medicine doctor, to unpa...

Send us Fan Mail Want better health results fast? That urge makes sense, but it can trap us in short-term thinking that never turns into lasting change. This conversation is a reset for anyone who’s tired of chasing “overnight” wellness and ready to build a body that holds up for decades. We talk about preparing for the next 30 years, not just the next 30 days, and how to make daily choices that s...

Send us Fan Mail Peptides are having a moment, but the real story is bigger than a trend. We sit down with nurse anesthesiologist and peptide educator Mei Mattinson to explain what peptides are in plain language: signaling molecules built from amino acids that act like messengers, telling your cells what to do. When those signals change with age, inflammation, and poor sleep, it can show up as fat...

Send us Fan Mail A $109 fee should not be a big deal, but when it shows up with the word “delinquent” and you never even got the original notice, it hits a nerve. That is exactly what happened to Shelly after a trip to Omaha, and what followed was a week of callbacks, confusing online steps, and three different DMV answers that did not match. She is sharing the whole story because these small stre...

Send us Fan Mail “It’s normal” can be comforting, but it can also be a conversation stopper. If you’ve been told your midlife symptoms are just part of getting older and then sent on your way, we want to offer something better: context, clarity, and real next steps. We sit down with nurse practitioner Rachel Smith, owner of Aspect Wellness, who focuses on optimizing health for midlife women. Toget...

Send us Fan Mail Your kids are learning “normal” from you, even on the days you think nothing is happening. As Shelly gets close to 200 episodes of Words of Wellness, she wanted to share a message that sits right at the heart of why she started this show: wellness, health, and longevity aren’t just personal goals, they’re a legacy. We dig into what it really means to model healthy habits for your...

Send us Fan Mail Hurry has a sneaky way of feeling normal, until you realize your days are packed and your mind never truly lands. After a full season of travel, family time, and big milestones, we wanted to pause and share a message that’s both simple and challenging: the little things you do every day add up, including the pace you keep. If you’ve been craving more calm, more clarity, and a stea...

Send us Fan Mail A special, personal share; a faith story related to a baseball tournament, two sons on two different college baseball paths, and the hope that everyone would be together. This is what happens when you pray for something specific and then have faith that whatever is meant to be, will be.  Shelly shares a personal moment from a Big Ten baseball conference tournament. She talks brief...

Send us Fan Mail A heart transplant is a medical event, but it’s also a crash course in how you live. Guest  Jimmy Owens brings a perspective you don’t hear every day: a veteran swim coach and wellness-minded leader who suddenly had to stop coaching everyone else and fight for his own life. Jimmy shares how injuries and testing revealed serious heart function issues, how he lived with congestive h...

Send us Fan Mail Groceries are heavy for a reason, and they tell the truth. While walking home from the store with two full bags, Shelly had a simple realization: staying active is not just a “fitness goal,” it is how we protect our ability to live independently. If carrying groceries, walking a mile, lifting your kids, or taking the stairs leaves you out of breath, that is a signal your body is a...

Send us Fan Mail Most workouts labeled “HIIT” are really just hard interval circuits and that one mix-up can be the reason you feel exhausted but don’t see the fat loss, power, or muscle definition you were promised. We get specific about what high intensity interval training actually is: near maximal cardiovascular effort with recovery that’s long enough to repeat that same max effort again. If y...

Send us Fan Mail Motherhood can be the biggest blessing and the heaviest load, sometimes in the same hour. Shelly takes a quiet moment after Mother’s Day to honor you, whether you became a mom through birth, adoption, being a mother figure, or even loving and caring for your “fur babies.” What you do matters, and the parts no one sees count, too.  Shelly talks about why her family-first choices sh...

Send us Fan Mail A school shooting. A childhood shaped by addiction and neglect. A brother’s sudden death witnessed up close. Melissa’s story is hard to hear at times, but it also explains something many of us feel and cannot name: trauma does not stay in the past just because we stop talking about it.  We continue our conversation with Melissa, an RN turned holistic trauma and anxiety coach, as s...

Send us Fan Mail Heart disease doesn’t always announce itself with a dramatic chest-clutching moment, especially for women. Some of the most important warning signs can look like “normal life” fatigue, shortness of breath, nausea, or nagging jaw and shoulder pain. That quiet reality is exactly why Shelly is sharing this conversation; to put women’s heart health front and center and to replace fear...

Send us Fan Mail If you’ve ever left a doctor’s office with a prescription and a sinking feeling that nobody really asked the right questions, you’re going to feel seen here. We talk with Melissa Armstrong, an RN who spent years in pediatric critical care before stepping away from protocol-driven medicine and into her work as a holistic trauma and anxiety coach, helping women regulate their nervou...

Send us Fan Mail Some wellness topics are easy to post about. Infertility is not one of them, and that’s exactly why we’re talking about it. We’re coming off National Infertility Awareness Week, and I wanted to slow down and make space for anyone who has struggled to conceive, to carry a pregnancy, or to become a parent in the way you hoped. I share a few fertility statistics that put the struggle...

Send us Fan Mail The moment I saw my two sons walk toward each other after the game and hug, I felt time stop and speed up at the same time. One of them was on the field as a Division I player. The other was there as a coach. Same conference, same weekend, same family, and a reminder: presence is not a luxury, it’s a wellness practice. I share the story of how our baseball journey led us here, fro...

Send us Fan Mail The afternoon slump, constant cravings, and “why is my metabolism so slow now?” feeling can seem like a mystery in midlife, but the answer is often surprisingly basic: you’re not getting enough protein. We share a simple, realistic way to spot protein gaps and make small shifts that can change your energy, appetite, and results, especially for moms and women over 40 who are juggli...

Send us Fan Mail You can be doing “all the right things” and still feel exhausted, puffy, moody, and stuck. That’s why we wanted to have a real conversation about stress and not the vague kind. We get into what chronic stress actually does inside the body, why your physiology can’t tell the difference between emotional stress and lifestyle stress, and how that constant load can quietly derail your...