Life Consultant Zoe Guirlinger
Zoe Guirlinger knows about nourishment.
"I've been doing research in this field for 15 years," says the trim 48-year-old blonde, who is CEO of Ultimate U Total Health. "Thirty years if you count all the years I was reading diet books."
And those first 15 years of reading diet books-well, they're the reason Guirlinger is doing what she's doing today: helping people go through the "closet" of choices in their lives and finding the food, exercise and mental attitudes that nourish them best. And there is no room in that closet for diet books.
"I think of myself as a personal shopper," Guirlinger says, sitting in her office at the 10,000-square-foot Ultimate U facility in New Albany. "I'm there to help someone find what I call her 'million-dollar outfit'-those things that unlock the vitality within and the physical freedom to do what she really wants to do."
Outside Guirlinger's office door, her husband and company president Troy McGowan keeps an eye on the two-story operation where weight machines, massage tables, yoga mats and exercise balls are all in use on a busy weekday morning. The seven-year-old company serves nearly 300 clients, both at the New Albany site and via online meetings.
Guirlinger truly is her own research project. She has studied jazz music and physical therapy at the university level. She has yo-yoed between careers-detailing cars, selling homes, singing lead in a Top-40 cover band. She has battled her weight, her attitude about her weight, and fibromyalgia, a neuromuscular disorder.
Today, Guirlinger is happy and healthy.
"(This is about) creating a vision of what one's life would look and feel like," she says, "if everything was as it ought to be."
LivingBetter: 5 Things to Know
Guirlinger shares her thoughts
The average American knows more about nutrition than we need to. It's not that complicated.
Our culture has caused women to develop a food-police voice inside ourselves, and the word "should" is used all the time. That's disrespectful to ourselves.
The way we think has everything to do with the physical pain we feel.
Nobody should believe their thoughts when they're tired. Suspend until you're rested.
My kids (Austin, 12, and Aaron, 6) have been my greatest teachers. Every good people skill I have, I learned from them.