No More Hiding Behind Doors for Nadia

You don’t drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there. –Edwin Lewis Cole

I met Nadia Giordana at the Bloomington Book Festival several years ago. She had just published her first title, Thinking Skinny, an inspirational book detailing Nadia’s journey from fat to fit after losing her job and becoming a couch potato for one long and boring year. 

home grown at Nadia's

I passed corn fields and forests on my way to Nadia's home in Dayton, about 20 miles north of downtown Minneapolis. She lives on a culdesac in a peaceful neighborhood. First, Nadia gave me a tour of her garden, chock full of broccoli, lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, and other juicy tidbits at various stages of getting themselves ready for the dinner table. No wonder Nadia is so slender and healthy! We then went inside and sat at her round oak kitchen table which faces the backyard and garden. 

Judy: You mentioned two milestones in your life. I think we could term these 180’s, one had to do with weight loss and the other public speaking. Could you tell me how your fear of public speaking showed up?

Nadia: I took speech class when I was 16. It was miserable.  I am an introvert at heart. When I was five I hid behind doors. But this assignment was to get up in front of an auditorium of students. I memorized the Highwayman so I kept talking, but I remember my head jerking, out of nervousness. It was excruciating. I never tried again for many years and even before that I had a hard time when I was called upon in class.

Judy: When did you realize this fear was holding you back?

Nadia: It may sound weird but when I was about thirty I got into sales. But it was not in-person. I needed a barrier, so it was telephone sales. I did pretty well because I wasn’t looking at anyone. I still had fear, but I could do it. I became a good salesperson. I had the opportunity to move into management but I was too shy to speak up and I knew I would have to use power point and run meetings if I advanced, so I engineered ways to avoid that. I would be asked, “Nadia, how would you like to….?” And I would turn it down. I’d do anything to NOT be the center of attention. If it came up, I would change the subject.

Then when I was 58, I lost my job during the recession. I partly blamed myself because I had skirted all the opportunities. And with carrying all that weight, I kind of fell in a hole, feeling like I was less and less capable of advancing. 

After I was laid off, I sat on that couch for a year—Nadia points to the couch in her living room. I believed I was unhireable. I didn’t even go out to look for a job. 

So eventually after a year on the couch, I went to a few motivational seminars and I guess the seed was planted. I thought, this is stupid, it’s dumb. I have to do something. The first thing I did was decide to get healthy. 

Twenty years prior I had been a health nut, so I knew I just had to get back to common sense and my roots. I quit eating junk foods, soda, wine, fatty foods, all food that was unnecessary.   I got back into walking and bicycling. It took fourteen months and I lost eighty-eight pounds. That was eight years ago.

In December of 2007 I went to a Christmas party full of women who worked at my old job. They all knew me when I was fat. I walked in the door and they didn’t know who I was. 
“Who’s that?” they said. 
“That’s Nadia.” 
“Nadia?” 
They just couldn’t believe it. That was when I knew I'd really done it.Then someone at the party asked me if I would like to tell my weight-loss story at an upcoming event.  
“No,” I said, “I can’t speak in front of people.” 

It was a knee-jerk reaction but then I thought.  Wait a minute, yes I can. If I lost all this weight maybe I can speak. It gave me a little confidence. If I could do this, I could do that, and so I accepted the offer and spoke to a group of fifty women for about twenty minutes. 

My legs could barely stand and I'm sure I wasn’t very good, but I did it.  And I knew I could do it again. But I had to hone my skills so I found out about Blog Talk Radio. I opened a free account and started interviewing people on the phone. I picked people who made major changes. This was good because I was practicing, but still I wasn’t face to face. If I did something face to face, the shyness would well up.

I did that for a couple years and then I got into shooting video clips about the topics in my book, Thinking Skinny. Soon this grew to one on one interviews on camera. If I go six months, I start to get the butterflies again. It’s good to keep in practice. I did a lot of the filming in my home. That felt safe to me and I could control the environment. I started volunteering at other cable network shows and then I was offered the position on the show Generations as the host. 

Now, I am also one of the co-hosts for the show, It’s a Woman’s World. I work on their website and am the social media director. Thinking Skinny is the story of how I lost the weight, but a year after I wrote the book, I came to the realization that my journey wasn’t really about weight loss at all. It was bigger than that. It was about having the courage to change your life when you think you are too old to change. That is when I wrote my second book, Reinventing New Chapters in Your Life at any Age.

Judy: Nadia, how are you different now than you were before you lost your job?

Nadia: It has to do with a real appreciation of women of my age. When I was forty, I thought I was too young and inexperienced to be valued by men and older women. But now I know I have something of value. I try to speak up. 

Judy: It sounds like you have a deep respect for older people.

Nadia: Oh yes, I always loved and respected my grandparents. I admire my parents to no end. When my parents were 50, they sold their farm and packed everything they owned to go find gold in Alaska. They lived in a log cabin. This was my father’s lifelong dream. My mom went kicking and screaming. After the first long winter in Alaska, my mother left and came to live with me in Minneapolis for nearly a year, vowing never to go back to that state. But she missed Dad and they loved each other. (Her story could be the subject of another book and it would resonate with a lot of women.) So she went back and made the best of it. They were there for twenty-seven years. 

Judy: “Did they find gold?”

Nadia: They found gold in their relationships. Then Nadia read a piece she wrote in her Dad’s book of journals called, Ten Thousand Days in Alaska.

She read, “They found it [gold] in the air, in the mountains, in the wildlife, and especially in the people. The people they worked shoulder to shoulder with; the people they shared their table with; each one weaving an independent piece of the tapestry of everyday life in the 70’s 80’s 90's and until 2005 (when due to health reasons, they returned to Minnesota) along the Glen Highway.”

Judy: Beautifully said.

What a delight Nadia is! I came away from the interview energized and grateful to hear Nadia’s candid and inspiring story.  She is not afraid to show her vulnerability. which is a beautiful thing. I could see that she had busted out of her cocoon and doesn't hold back when it comes to trying new things.

 Visit her websites at: ThinkingSkinny.com and WhereWomenTalk.com