Tanya Fasnacht Jolliffe: Eat Right, Live Healthy

Old habits die hard and changing them involves s erious commitment. For some, it may take a while before changes shape into new habits , and one may face several roadblocks. The same holds for changing towards a healthier lifestyle and overall well-being. Adopting healthy eating habits and regular physical activity may protect you from serious problems like obesity and diabetes and provide more energy and vigor. F rom thinking about change to acting can be challenging , and an expert in the field of diet and nutrition may be able to guide you better and facilitate that leap. Tanya Fasnacht Jolliffe, a non-diet registered dietitian and founder of LIT Wellness Solutions , is h elping people live healthy and whole lives with purpose.  

Dietetic Career  

Tanya holds a Bachelor of Science in Dietetics from Mount St. Joseph University. She was an accomplished and acclaimed athlete in both high school and college, besides being inducted into the Greenville High School Athletic Hall of Fame. This included four appearances at the OHSAA State Track and Field Meet for the high jump and a lady's high jump record at GHS for over four decades. Tanya was further honored for her achievements at the collegiate level and included in the Mount St. Joseph University Athletic Hall of Fame for her contributions to volleyball.   

Tanya began her career as a registered and licensed dietitian working as a research dietitian in an NIH multi-center cooperative study on alcoholic hepatitis. From there, she became a specialist in end-stage organ disease as she provided medical nutrition therapy and behavior-centered education to those with diabetes-related complications, kidney and liver failure, and various chronic conditions. Tanya established the transplant dietitian position at a Cincinnati, Ohio, hospital as a kidney, liver, and pancreas transplant nutrition specialist. In that role, she also served as an integral member of two multi-disciplinary specialty patient care teams and serviced two outpatient clinics. Additionally, while serving on the liver transplant selection committee, Tanya helped provide training and education to dietetic and medical interns regarding medical nutrition therapy in solid organ transplantation.  

Fueling Change from Within  

Working as an online healthy eating expert and health coach presented a new setting for Tanya where she could support and promote healthy lifestyle behavior changes for new moms, teens, and adults. In this, she worked closely with individuals and groups coping with eating disorders, diabetes, heart disease, and other diet-related health concerns.   

Tanya's experiences revealed the impact of diet culture on health outcomes. As she looked over her disordered eating past and the effect of her food habits on her personal life and health, she understood the benefits of a non-diet approach through the development of a culture of wellness to help people make lasting health transformations. Subsequently, in 2019, Tanya ventured out on her own with the founding of LIT Wellness Solutions to bring her strengths in non-diet nutrition care, wellness integration, health coaching, and a strategic program designed to help people "IGNITE the Change Within". She is responsible for developing integrative health and wellness presentations, programs, and coaching solutions, including a six-step IGNITE process for lasting change in the company.  

Culture of Wellness  

LIT Wellness Solutions is a federally certified women-owned small business (WOSB) and an Ohio-certified women's business enterprise (WBE) that provides integrative health and wellness services to individuals, families, and organizations. With her company, Tanya's mission is to help people walk away from the diet culture by creating lifestyle changes that embrace attuned and intuitive eating principles and promote lasting health and overall well-being. Her values-based integrative solutions guide individuals and business leaders as they address barriers that prevent them from achieving internal wellness.  

Tanya's vision is to bring about a positive wellness culture that helps people recognize and affirm what is working well while also learning how to be honest and fair concerning what needs to change and improve for the benefit of stress reduction, mental clarity, and emotional resiliency, health, and happiness. For her, IGNITE stands for Introduce, Generate, Navigate, Implement, Talk, and Evaluate. Over the years, Tanya has also assisted startup companies, small businesses, and non-profit organizations produce strategies and programs that brought about growth and change. She believes that healthy and whole people positively influence firms and organizations as they focus on giving their best to positively transform their surroundings through their contributions in the workplace.  

Mindful Transformation  

Tanya is the author of "The Mindful Me Journey: A 40-Day Guided Journal Toward a Healthier Relationship with Food," an Amazon #1 release that has reached international distribution. The program uses non-diet intuitive principles and the journaling process to get in touch with your body physically and emotionally as you journey away from reactive diet culture and disordered practices toward nourishing choices for health and wholeness.   

Tanya is also the guest author of a devotional book titled "Living in Truth Mind, Body, Spirit: A Daily Devotional for Christian Women," released in 2021. Tanya's company has received a Top 50 Healthcare Companies award from the International Forum on Advancements in Healthcare (IFAH) in recognition of its contributions to healthcare through program innovation.

The Road Ahead  

Unhealthy diet culture has permeated our society and made people unwell as they lose sight of the importance of health at every size because a hyper-focus on the world's values of fitness and segmentation have overshadowed the wellness values of health and wholeness. Tanya wants to remedy that and help people is becoming mindfully attuned to the habits, rules, routines, and rituals that are followed as well as the feelings and emotions.   

For women out there who are just starting, Tanya has some pieces of advice that she wants them to look at. "Comparison will kill you. So, stop comparing your life, house, car, and lifestyle with other people. Look at what you are doing well and continue doing that. Next, see what is not working for you and understand what changes you need to make to better it. If you cannot do it yourself, get a coach or a mentor who can give you an outside perspective. Grow your success by making small changes in the areas that need improvement. We can then be women of collaboration, not competition," said Tanya, speaking with WomLEAD Magazine.