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A Guide for Making a Big Career Shift, Being Single in Your Late 20s, and Trusting Your Intuition

Updated: Feb 14


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3 Things We Dive Into In This Episode:

  1. How to discern the difference between intuition and procrastination.

  2. How to trust your gut and honor dramatic transitions in your life.

  3. The nuances of embracing being single beyond loneliness and the biological clock.

📘Resources

📌Episode Highlights

[08:32] Get to Know Whitney

  • Whitney was my first business coach.

  • She helped me start and eventually go full-time into my private practice after losing all my jobs in 2020.

  • Whitney describes her career as a reflection of her experiences. She was a dietitian because she had an eating disorder and an intuitive eating dietitian because of her recovery.

  • She pushed herself in her career and established a good reputation.

  • In 2020, Whitney felt trapped and decided to make a significant career shift.

[12:52] Whitney’s Transformation Story

  • Whitney decided to change her career from a registered dietitian to a self-worth and alignment business coach.

  • Since then, she has strived to educate herself and invent things to grow her business.

  • Her career as a business coach reflects her as a content creator, business owner, and person dealing with ADHD.

  • It also reflects our move to a creative economy where more and more people are becoming freelancers and entrepreneurs.

[16:40] Why Whitney Gave Up on Her Book Deal

  • During the pandemic, Whitney received a book deal to write about her expertise in emotional eating.

  • While writing the book, she felt and knew that something was physically blocking her from writing the book, so she decided to quit.

Whitney: “When I quit the book deal, it was like, the best way that I can describe it is that something like took over my body and redirected me onto a path that I needed to be on and was like, ‘No, you're going the wrong way.’ And that shifted me over.” - Click Here To Tweet This

  • The hardest part, according to Whitney, was getting backlash from people calling her a “brat” and condemning her for “making the biggest mistake of her life.”

  • Whitney knew in her heart that she was making the right decision.

  • She realized that she had the empowerment and reassurance from inside her — the backlash was only external.

[20:06] Learning Her Mission as a Career Coach

  • If you feel stuck, you may be out of alignment.

  • Take time to find your mission and begin your transformation story.

  • Whitney decided to pursue career coaching after realizing that she would rather live a life that makes people happy beyond their bodies.

  • Now, her business coach style focuses on self-worth, productivity, dealing with ADHD, alignment, and a money mindset.

  • Visit Whitney’s Instagram for more information on her coaching.

[26:59] Discerning Between Intuition & Resistance

  • Finding the line between intuition and resistance takes a lot of practice to figure out.

  • There are two types of resistance: one from fear, and one from the knowledge that you are not aligned.

  • Whitney recommends dropping the idea for a week or two. Stop thinking about it.

  • After two weeks, sit with it. Ask yourself, “Do I actually want to do this thing?”

  • You will probably get an intuitive hit on whether you should pursue something.

[29:50] Honor the Resistance

  • Honor the resistance. Decide once you have more clarity.

  • Do this for your other feelings: sadness, grief, frustration, or absolute bliss. Lean in and ride the wave of emotions.

  • Move slowly and take time to sit it out.

  • It may seem lazy or unmotivated to other people, but that's okay. That is part of the process of writing your transformation story.

[33:29] Embracing a Single Life in Your 20’s

  • Single does not equate to lonely.

  • Do not make the mistake of feeling miserable because you're single or just got out of a relationship.

  • Breakups are almost always for the better.

  • There’s a form of spontaneous adventure that's available when you're single that becomes unavailable when you're in a relationship.

  • Own and embrace being single.

[46:15] Whitney’s Learnings as a Solopreneur

Whitney: “I don't think everyone is called to be an entrepreneur. Most people are not. But if you're called for this, this life is so much more fulfilling, in my opinion.” - Click Here To Tweet This

  • Whitney shares that the most challenging part of starting her solopreneur journey and transformation story is the mental and emotional piece — not a strategy.

  • When you try to do things out of the box, people will try to talk you out of it and make you feel like you're making a mistake.

  • They will find evidence watching and waiting for you to fail.

  • These people are often just projecting their fears onto you.

[49:23] Do Not Rush Marriage or Parenthood

  • Do not rush for marriage in your 20s.

  • Be mindful of who you choose to be your partner.

  • People often rush to get married or become parents, leading to an expensive divorce or becoming a single parent.

  • Remember, you can start a family even in your 40s.

[53:57] Whitney’s Mindsets for Solopreneurs

  • Know that this is your transformation story.

  • Accept yourself and your desires. There’s a reason why you have these desires.

  • Do not be afraid of failure.

Whitney: “You will fail. You will embarrass yourself. You will fuck up. You will be terrible at something at first... But all these little failures of not being, or fears of not being perfect, fear of screwing up, and fear of failure, they're gonna happen. Get over it.” - Click Here To Tweet This

  • Let yourself be imperfect; let yourself go through it in real time. Then, you can start sharing your transformation story as you go.

  • Remember that people value vulnerability and authenticity more than anything else.

[46:15] Whitney’s Processing Prompts

  • If you could guarantee success, what would you do? What are the desires that you have? Be mindful of what your brain tells you.

  • What would you do if you knew there was a person out there with all the things you felt you wanted?

  • Do not settle. Life is too short to be with shitty people.

[01:03:13] Whitney’s Actionable Experiment

  • Put down the things that you resist naturally. But do not mistake putting these things down for procrastinating.

Whitney: “If you are not accepting every part of yourself in every part of your life, you will continue to be stuck in cycles that you don't like. You have to lead with acceptance, and putting things down for a minute is a radical act of acceptance.” - Click Here To Tweet This

About Whitney


Whitney Catalano is a Self-Sabotage, Accountability, & Alignment coach who helps creatives, ADHD’ers, and multi-passionates master habits, confidence, money mindset, & self-trust so they can embody that person they've always dreamed of being.


Connect with Whitney on her Instagram and Twitter


You can also visit her website for more details on her business coaching.


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Transcript


Whitney Catalano: Procrastination is a label that we've put on an experience of something. We're still not doing the thing no matter what it is, right, but we've labeled it procrastination because what's actually happening is that we are fighting ourselves the whole time, and we are actively avoiding it. I mean, like, I'm avoiding it, and I'm doing all these other things, but inside I feel terrible about the fact that I'm avoiding it.


Putting it down is acceptance. Like, I cannot emphasize enough if you are not accepting every part of yourself in every part of your life, you will continue to be stuck in cycles that you don't like. You have to lead with acceptance and putting things down for a minute is a radical act of acceptance.


Caitie Corradino: Welcome to Whole, Full and Alive, a podcast exploring the art and science of falling in love with your life, with your story and with who you truly are, underneath your titles, your resume, your relationship status, and your bank account.


I'm Caitie Corradino, a registered dietician nutritionist, certified fitness and yoga instructor, eating disorder recovery coach, Reiki healer, and founder of Full Soul Nutrition, but underneath my titles and resume, a big fan of kitchen dance breaks, early mornings, all things chocolate truffles, world traveling and serendipity. I'm here to share no bullshit stories and actionable tools to help you feel unshakably worthy. You have everything you need within you to feel whole, full and alive right here, right now. Let's get into it.


Hey, welcome back to another episode of Whole, Full and Alive. I'm so freaking grateful that you're here. Thank you so much for tuning in. I am so glad that you and I are connected in some way, shape or form, and you want to tune in today to hear what we have to say about feeling more whole, full and alive.


So before we dive into today's episode, let's make sure you're feeling a little more grounded right now. Before we dive into this whirlwind of an episode, we actually talked about a lot of different things, let's take a nice deep breath. Actually before you take a deep breath, wherever you are, take a few shoulder rolls. Roll your shoulders all the way up towards your ears and all the way down your back.


Just create a little more opening and spaciousness and your upper body, and then relax your shoulders away from your ears. Maybe stretch your neck side to side, and then if it's safe to do so, you can close down your eyes. If not, if you're driving, if you're walking, just take a nice deep breath in through your nose, hold and exhale. Let it go. One more nice deep breath like that. Inhale through the nose, hold and nice, long exhale.


If you close your eyes, you can open your eyes. Shake it out. How are you today? I hope that you're ready to hear about a few different things right now. I am so excited about today's episode. Before we get started, I just want to remind you that I have a few spaces open right now for one-on-one coaching. I offer a very unique combination of nutrition counseling, because I'm a registered dietician, with body image coaching, because I'm a body image coach, and also just overall confidence, embodiment and well-being.


So I incorporate a nice combo of nutrition education and meal planning with some body image coaching with some embodiment practices breathwork and things like that to really help you feel whole, full and alive, frankly, to help you really feed yourself well and feel yourself and live your life more fully, freely, authentically and energized. I love one-on-one coaching. It lights me all the way up.


So I have just probably one or two spaces available by the time this episode comes out. So if you're interested, you can visit my website fullsoulnutrition.com to book a free consultation to see if it's a good fit for you. I'll also have group coaching open pretty soon, and my Whole, Full and Alive toolkit is a collection of mini workshops, journal prompts, actionable experiments, that's also always available for purchase on my website if you're looking for more of a self-directed thing.


So let's get into today's episode. My amazing guest, Whitney Catalino, is a VIP in my life, actually, a very important person to me. She actually was my first ever business coach. She was the person who kind of helped me take a jump off of a cliff in order to start my own private practice and really go full time in it in the year 2020. Since that time, Whitney has completely pivoted her own business.


She actually was a registered dietician, when I started working with her, and now she is a self worth and alignment coach. She's going to tell you the story about how she just completely changed her career and decided not to be a dietitian anymore after being incredibly successful in her private practice and getting a book deal and dropping the book deal and really cool story, all of that stuff she's going to share.


Also, Whitney and I are also going to dive into this topic of being single in your late 20s, and how different people perceive that, and how it feels to be that person and the different types of grief that come with being that person and how it might not be the type of grief that people are expecting you to have when you're a single woman in your late 20s. Whitney and I offer some tangible tools for kind of reframing your mindset around this if you are also a single female in your late 20s, 30s or older, and just kind of processing the many feelings and emotions that come with it.


I'm excited for you to hear this conversation, because honestly, one of the initial reasons why I started this podcast was because I wanted to start a show that could speak to the single female in her late 20s or older, because I felt like there kind of was a lack of that in the podcasting space. There are a bajillion podcasts out there. I know. I know. Also, I feel like there's a lot of podcasts, especially the ones that focus on nutrition, health and wellness with this, like Instagram model type person who has her dream, athletic husband and always talks about how much she loves him.


Like, I just feel like there's such a hyper fixation on partnered women in the wellness space. I wanted to really talk to more women in this space, coaches, healers, people who help people uncover their sense of self worth, who are not partnered, and Whitney is one of many that I've had on the show. Yeah, I want to start talking about this topic a little bit more, so I'm excited that Whitney and I kind of dip our toes into it today, and I hope you find something you need on this episode today.


Even if you are partnered, there is a lot we talked about in relation to self worth, and motivation, talked about procrastination, too. We really do go a little bit all over the place in this episode, and also, I think that speaks to really the multi passionate and authentic person that Whitney Catalano is. She is multi-passionate and fearless about it and not afraid to talk about it, and she also is just really authentic and kind of just go with what's on her heart, and that's something I really, really admire and love about Whitney and the content she shares on social media.


She shares not only content about self-worth and creating an aligned life and finding an aligned career, but she also talks about living with ADHD and coming off of ADHD medications and getting control of your personal finances and just all kinds of things. So I hope you'll enjoy this episode. I really enjoyed having this conversation. I can't wait to hear your feedback. Let's dive in. Whitney, thank you so much for being here today.


Whitney: Yeah, thanks for having me.


Caitie: I want to share that Whitney was my first ever business coach.


Whitney: First one, that's crazy.


Caitie: Yeah, not that I've had like 95 business coaches, I've just had like three. But still, it's significant because you came to me at a really pivotal moment in my career when it was 2020, and I lost all my jobs. Like I was working a million different contractor positions, and they were just all gone overnight. It was like I could work in a hospital, or I could put my foot on the gas starting my own business.


I was like whose business do I want to emulate? It was honestly yours because you showed up so frickin’ authentically and had a combination of anti-diet, intuitive eating content, and then just like, authentic, ‘this is me, here's my story’ kind of content. I wasn't seeing a lot of that. I was seeing a lot of really cookie cutter dieticians, a lot of people putting out the same things and so grateful to be able to talk to you in that time because it did a lot for me.


Whitney: Oh good. I'm glad I know. That was a crazy time. I remember you lost your job while we were working together.


Caitie: Yeah, yeah. It was like, well, I lost my last job when we were working together. I started losing my jobs one by one, and then by the time you and I were done working together, I was like, “Okay, I guess I'm a full time entrepreneur. Here we go.”


Whitney: Yeah, you were forced into it.


Caitie: Yeah. It was really beautiful timing. I think that one of the things that really drew me to you is just your energy and who you are. So can you tell everyone who you are? What makes you who you are? What is your energy?


Whitney: I don't know. So when you asked me this question, I really did not know like how to answer this, because there's a lot of things that I know about myself. Like, I'm very intuitive. I can be a little spacey. I like sitting on the couch. I love traveling. I'm very honest, and like, I have absolutely zero filter with my life. I'm very aware, like, I'm just very aware of the world around me and of things that are going on, and I feel like I'm really perceptive.


But I don't know how else to say who I am, really, because I'm always kind of trying to like, de-identify with things that I thought I knew about myself. So yeah, that's the best I got for you.


Caitie: I love it. What's important to me about that question is that people have an opportunity to introduce who they are beyond what they do, because what you do is so important, and also who you are is what makes you so special to people. I just like to start every episode by reminding people that so some people literally say, I don't know, and kind of just like, plop a few things out.


Then some people are like, I have this kind of essence when I walk into a room, and it's great. Either way, I think there's so many different ways to answer that question, and the most important thing is that you are not what you do. But what do you do, Whitney?


Whitney: Great question. I do a number of different things. I'm a business and a life coach, and I help people with purpose and energetic alignment. So I really believe that the things that you do in your career and in your life are much easier when you're doing them, quote, in alignment, and I can't really explain what that means until you experience it for yourself. I work with a lot of creative so people, whether it's entrepreneurs, or coaches, who are also entrepreneurs, or content creators, people, influencers, things like that.


Like people who tend to be a little bit more creative and outside the box and like not a don't take to traditional business advice or productivity advice, or don't fit into capitalism in a traditional way.


Caitie: Can you just briefly share how you ended up becoming or doing what you do today? Because the reason you and I initially connected is because you were initially a dietician, and now, you're working in a totally different space using a totally different set of tools. But how does it make sense that you've arrived here?


Whitney: Yeah, I mean, my business has always been a reflection of what I'm going through. So I became a dietitian, because I had an eating disorder. Then I became an intuitive eating dietitian or food freedom dietitian, because I was healing my eating disorder. Then during COVID, I just realized I was really unhappy talking about the same things over and over again. There's really so many times I can talk about, like binge eating, or like emotional eating, things like that.


I just couldn't do it anymore. Especially after my own recovery journey, I just got to this point where I was like, I felt so pigeon holed in what I was doing, and I made such a name for myself in what I was doing very quickly, because I think the way that I went about it was really unique. Like you even said, I forget if you said it on the podcast or before, but the intuitive eating or dietitian world, it tends to be very cookie cutter, and so I think the way that I was going about it was really unique and vulnerable.


But the flip side of that is like I really pushed myself in this career, and I had a certain number of dietitians that I looked up to as career goals. I just felt trapped and was like, “Oh my god, I can't keep doing this. This is not the business that I want.” So during the pandemic, right when the pandemic hit, I had a book deal, and I was supposed to be writing the book, and I just couldn't do it.


I realized in writing that book that if I published that book, four to six months later, I would then be on the hook for marketing it for like a year and a half, and that I would be really trapped in one career path for like two years. I would still probably be in the marketing of that book right now. Like I may just now be able to move on. I burned it all down. I was like, “I can't do this.” So I switched into what I knew to do, which I had learned a lot about business coaching at that point.


I had learned a lot about what it means to put yourself out there online, and I just kind of started inventing things over the past two and a half years, and it's grown. Now really what I'm doing is not only a reflection of where I'm at as a content creator, as a business owner as all these things, but it's also a reflection on my journey with ADHD and learning how to manage that. It's a reflection of what I see in the economy, how we're moving towards a creative economy.


There are more and more people becoming freelancers and entrepreneurs and things like that, so I want to be part of that. So that's how I got to where I am now.


Caitie: So good. Thank you so much for sharing all that in such an elevator pitch kind of way. There were so many big things that you just shared there that I kind of went all over on. I shared with you off mic that one of the main reasons I'm so excited to have you on the show today is because you recently shared about what it's like to be single as a 20 year old female, what that feels like, what it feels like to be living in the world as a single 28 year old female entrepreneur, 29 year old, you actually are — I’m 28, but also, same thing.


There's so much duality in that, right? There's so much that's so good, and empowering, and energizing and glass ceiling breaking about that, and there's also so much that's kind of filled with grief and discomfort. I kind of want to keep on that theme for this episode when we talk about other things, too. I mean, you gave up a book deal.


You let go of a book deal, and I'm sure that was something that was so empowering, and energizing, and groundbreaking, and then also something that was filled with a good amount of shame and doubt. So before we dive into the other thing I want to talk to you about today, can you tell us a little bit more about what that was like to give up that book deal?


Whitney: So I actually didn't really have any shame and doubt around that, which was funny, because you would think, but I think I was manic during COVID or hypomanic. There's a huge chunk of time where I was like going through it.


Caitie: Yeah.


Whitney: Specifically when I quit the book deal, it was the best way that I can describe it is that something like took over my body and redirected me onto a path that I needed to be on. It was like, “No, you're going the wrong way.” That shifted me over. I remember I called my mom crying because I could not, for the life of me, write this book. It was a book about emotional eating, like that was my expertise.


I could not, for the life of me, write the book, and it was more than just, “Oh, writing a book is hard.” It was like there's something physically blocking me from writing this book. So yeah, I called my mom crying, and I was like, “I think I need to quit this book. I can't.” They weren't giving me any more extensions. It turns out the book deal, honestly, was horrible. It was a horrible book deal, and I found that out after the fact because I didn't have an agent.


So they really took advantage of me when they hit me up to write a book. That's a word of warning to any coach or dietician, or whatever it is, publishers will show up in your inbox and pitch you this, like you're gonna have a book deal and all this stuff, and they'll screw you. They'll absolutely screw you. They'll totally take advantage of you, and you'll have no idea until you have a three month deadline and are like scrambling and then you make no money on it.


So that I found out after the fact, like thank God, but no, I really was just like I couldn't do it. So I just called my mom, and I was like, “Can I quit?” and she was like, “I think that's a good idea. You're obviously really stressed out and really unwell.” So I gave back the advance, and it was so freeing. The hardest part of that whole process was the backlash that I got from people who took it really personally that I got a book deal, probably people who wished they could get a book deal honestly.


But like even close family friends, I got a series of emails from a family friend condemning me and calling me a brat and saying I was making the biggest mistake of my life and all this shit. It was like, the more backlash I got, the more I knew that my decision was correct because I was just like you couldn't possibly understand why this is right for me, it just is.


Caitie: So like the light and dark of that wasn't necessarily coming from you. It was coming from like all the empowerment and the reassurance was coming from you, but there was just some backlash from people outside of you who had a different agenda or their own feelings.


Whitney: People did have a lot of agendas about what I should and should not do, and people were very confused because it wasn't long after I quit the book deal that I announced that I was pivoting my business and I had a lot of people be like, because my Instagram handle used to be trustyourbodyproject. So a lot of people were like, “Well, what happened to trust your body? What happened to everything you've taught us? What happened to this?”


I was like, “If you don't see that I am trusting my body then, you clearly don't get it.” Like, you know?


Caitie: Yeah, I think that's also a really important part to pull over on to you is that it makes so much sense that you ended up where you are. Yes, you went from being a dietitian to being more of a, how do you want to label yourself right now?


Whitney: I call myself a life and business coach. I really resisted those terms for a long time because it sounded so basic. Like telling people I'm a life coach is just, but I mean, whatever.


Caitie: Yes.


Whitney: Whatever.


Caitie: Yeah. I mean, your life and business coach that focuses specifically more on self-worth productivity with ADHD.


Whitney: Alignment, things like that.


Caitie: Alignment and money mindset kind of stuff. You'll just look at Whitney's Instagram, you'll see. But you went from being a dietician to doing that. You still have the same mission.