Tonya Kinlow is a wellness lifestyle entrepreneur, a woman in technology, a certified health & wellness coach, a blogger, and an author. Her three books, A Year of (ME) Mindful Eating to Improve Wellbeing, The 10 Days: A Wellness Retreat for Personal Transformation…at Home and A Wellness Journey are all dedicated to health and wellness through mindful living. Tonya writes a weekly blog, Mindfulness Matters, to raise awareness for living a holistically healthy life. An avid foodie and mindfulness enthusiast, she left corporate America in 2016 to launch the UGottaEat app. It aims to create a virtual marketplace for providing much-needed fresh and healthy meals to local communities, as well as a platform for food sharing. UGottaEat is dedicated to improving the overall health and wellness of society. Tonya also launched TK Inspirations, which offers remarkable wellness transformation coaching, group wellness journeys and inspirational meditational talks based on discovering wellness through purpose, and outlines how together, we can improve the overall health and wellness of our world.
Before becoming an entrepreneur, Tonya was a finance executive with a corporate career spanning 26 years. A crippling car accident involving her children led to the awakening of her spiritual journey. She takes great pride in being a native of Washington, D.C. and a graduate of Florida A&M University. Her greatest joys are her children, Evan and Taylor, and her husband, Chef Craig Stevens.
Learn more about how this life-changing event inspired a renewed take on Tonya’s purpose and her desire to help others.
Fancy: How would you describe your swagher? What makes Tonya, Tonya?
Tonya: As the fourth of five children and the youngest girl, I knew I was unique and had to be outgoing. I grew up in southwest Washington, D.C. and my parents were from Arkansas. They moved to the big city for better opportunities.
I grew up wearing my brother’s hand-me-downs and happy to have nappy hair. I struggled with my self-worth and the ideas of beauty for people who looked like me. By the time I was in high school, I had fully-grown into who I was – a young, black woman who felt comfortable in her own skin. My parents prioritized education, and I flourished as a student and an athlete, being named the valedictorian of my class. I am a proud graduate of Florida A&M University, an HBCU, where I fell in love with its small southern town and notable network.
Fancy: How were you introduced to holistic living and was it an easy transition for you? Also, was this before or after your divorce?
Tonya: I actually fell into holistic living slowly. My children were in a tragic car accident in 2011 that changed the course of my life. My son became a quadriplegic just after turning 15 years old. I went through a chaotic divorce the year before and was still in the midst of the aftermath. Like the cleanup of a community after a tornado, I was thrown into the incalculable task of cleaning up my life and asking myself some very difficult questions, like how? What? When? Who? The car accident led me into yet another storm, a deeper type of despair. I felt like giving up on life. I fell into a deep depression and turned to alcohol as the solution to my troubles. Then, just as I thought I was on the brink of despair, I heard a voice asking me about Evan…my son. Suddenly, I refocused my life and made Evan my priority. With a fresh outlook on life, that decision gave me clarity of purpose. I left my job, moved in with my best friend in Cincinnati where my kids lived and began the enormous responsibility of caring for my paralyzed, teenaged son. Being a mother and a caretaker gave me purpose. The dejected ex-wife persona, the betrayed, and the competitive corporate executive took a back seat. This was the beginning of my awakening.
I began to live by the following mantra: Use your talents to get the job that will provide the money needed for Evan to find relief. So I began looking for and found that job. Within one year of the accident, I had moved into my own home, built to accommodate my son’s disabilities, and my life has been on an upward spiral ever since. It was then I understood that living a life of purpose was the path to inner peace. My priorities were clear, and my life began to flourish on the path of least resistance. I followed the part of me which contained the most love, the mother. In 2015, I was introduced to meditation. It gave me the stillness and confidence to receive the divine guidance that had appeared to me in those critical times before.
I married my new husband, Chef Craig, in 2014. We were lovers of good flavors and drinks and avid about exercise and workouts. It is what connected us. In 2015, I had another inspiration. While on vacation, sitting in LaGuardia airport, I was reading about 10X exponential organizations and how technology has become an essential business factor in exponential growth. I wondered how I could use technology to make our healthy restaurant concept 10x? Then it hit me like electricity. We would participate in the sharing economy like Airbnb or Uber and disrupt the restaurant industry as they did for hotels and taxis. I called my best friend as I was boarding, to tell her the idea, and I gushed over it for the next 10 days while traveling all over France. When I returned, I scratched out the shell of a business plan and gave my two weeks’ notice at work. Just like that – I left corporate America to begin my own company. I wanted one that would provide healthy food to the world, and in the spirit of a sharing economy, would let cooks and chefs be the vehicle of its delivery. And UGottaEat was born.
Fancy: So, tell us more about your UGottaEat app.
Tonya: UGottaEat is a virtual marketplace app that allows cooks and chefs to make money by selling healthy and affordable food to communities in need or who desire healthier food options. The mission is multi-layered: to make the world a healthier place by supporting local economies, eliminating waste by buying local, promoting food sharing, and feeding the hungry. Under the UGottaEat moniker, I also wrote my first book, A Year of ME, Mindful Eating to Improve Wellbeing. It is 366 days of daily affirmations to inspire health and mindful eating.
Fancy: Were you considering becoming a health coach prior to releasing the app?
Tonya: I did not consider becoming a health coach until the vision of my second book came to me. During those years, I began to deepen my understanding of meditation or mindfulness, and it expanded me beyond mindful eating to mindful living. I began to attend spiritual retreats and found it difficult, if not impossible, to maintain the feeling of balance in my daily life that I had achieved at the retreats. How does one stay in harmony? Not theoretically, but practically. How can the concepts taught in retreats be brought into daily living to improve everyone’s health and condition, and change the world?
I wrote my second book by incorporating the wellness themes that had worked so well for me over the years and were also being taught in so many wellness retreats. I wondered how people could, without the resources to go on retreats and become open to a path of wellness, have access to this formula to apply it to their daily lives?
I took the seven intentions that I learned about and combined them with the concept of a wellness retreat and created an at-home retreat that anyone could do, at no cost, that will elevate their spirit to discovering their own purpose. This book is called The 10 Days: A Wellness Retreat for Personal Transformation…at Home. In this book, I reveal the seven intentions that lead to higher understanding and clarity – meditation, exercise, mindful eating, self-care, journaling & daily affirmations, kindness & gratitude, and sleep. My promise is that these seven intentions, when actively practiced as prescribed, will raise your consciousness within 10 days to a level where you can receive divine guidance for your life. This book is God-breathed. I practiced these methods and focused on the right combination, aligning practical living with spiritual guidance and the desire for wellness. I also wrote an accompanying transformation journal, A Wellness Journey, designed to practice these principles over 60 days. This is the group coaching that I do today, twice per year. I decided to become a certified health coach to combine practical education with spiritual enlightenment. When a group of my sorority sisters encouraged me to help others with this formula, my path was again made clear.
Fancy: What type of individual might be in the market for health coach services and why?
Tonya: I believe all people are in the market for a healthier and happier life, but during the day-to-day, most don’t know where to start or are simply more comfortable being unfulfilled instead of taking the steps necessary to make the audacious change to achieve their own greatness and unleash their inner power. I always say, “The life you have is getting in the way of the life you want.â€
From a practical perspective, people who have a deep desire for change are feeling stuck, at a crossroads, overwhelmed, sick in their thinking and body, stressed or simply just tired of life and ready for help. This help comes best in holistic coaching, which is what I provide. I am not just a health coach. I am a transformation coach. And just like the darkness cannot survive when a light is turned on, sickness can’t thrive through purposeful and spiritual transformation.
Fancy: So were you journaling throughout your transformation process and that’s how you wrote your book, or did you write it after your transformation?
Tonya: I began journaling many years ago, but could never stick with it consistently. When I put all of the intentions together and began practicing The 10 Days as a lifestyle, I realized the power in the creative process through the intuition in the epiphanies that come forth, and now I journal every day.
Fancy: As a mom who is trying to live a more holistic lifestyle myself, how did you get your kids to adapt or did they do so? Do you have any tips?
Tonya: My kids grew up with me cooking healthy meals, always working out and going to church. I would say those principles are still foundational, although I would add to religion a spiritual connection directly to the Divine, for quicker access to what is good for everyone.
The car accident was a turning point in all of our lives. As I began to encourage them in creativity, not competitiveness, kindness, not gossip, and cultivating a mindset of generosity, not scarcity, they were able to grow into the people they wanted to be, rather than what I or society says they should be. As my son Evan says, “It’s simple, but it’s not easy.â€
The easiest way to live your life and teach your kids is in the seven intentions. The #1 tip would be to begin a practice of meditation for yourself to find stillness and peace. Then by example and expression, and through your own growth, you will radiate this to your children.
Fancy: So what is a typical workday like for you?
Tonya: My entire life, all through my corporate career, I always marveled at women that would be at those lady lunches at any time of the day. I wanted that flexibility in my life with a force I didn’t even realize until recently. I was stuck feeling guilty when I had to leave work for a doctor’s appointment. Conflicted as to how to schedule in hair appointments and leave for school and social activities for my kids. How did people do it? Could they all be independently wealthy? Where did that confidence and flexibility come from? And so now, in entrepreneurship and walking in my path and purpose, I have created the lifestyle that I want.
I awake between 4:30-6:00 am after 7-8 hours of sleep. I meditate first, journal, workout, and eat a healthy breakfast. Then I take meetings and schedule appointments for the next week, as needed. In every religious and spiritual tradition, the morning is the best time for the transference of positive energy, in stillness. Be still and know that I am God. Before the frenetic energy of the world wakes up and worry creeps in about schedules and to-dos, and when I am in creative mode, I journal and write my blog, or book or next book. I often go to Starbucks to do this, with a sense of community around me. Today, I revel in gratitude when I realize I am now one of those women that I wondered about and admired.
I have standing meetings on Mondays and Wednesdays with members of my team to do the practical work-related business. Obviously, health and fitness are important to me, so I work out in the morning. I cannot allow the world’s priorities to get in the way and weaken my defenses. I resolve to stay healthy. I try to leave Thursday and Friday as open as possible for space for whatever comes up. I work diligently to not overcrowd my schedule so that I always have room for the unexpected…which will always come up. I complete the business of the day before my husband comes home by 6:30 pm, so I can spend the remaining waking hours with him talking or watching whatever we want. Typically, he cooks me a great dinner (being a chef and all). Over the years, I have learned to put myself first. I have created a ‘Higher Level Day’. I write about it in my weekly Mindfulness Matters blog – https://www.ugottaeat.com/blogs/2019/8/30/the-6-habits-of-happy-people.
Fancy: While I see more black women taking an interest in holistic health and being more mindful of what they put in their bodies, do you feel like the industry or demand is growing from the perspective of a coach?
Tonya: Absolutely. There is an awakening going on in our culture now. You see it expressed in millennials and in Gen Z. The old ways of working ourselves to death, dieting and fads have only resulted in more stress, chronic diseases, and depression. People are searching for purpose and want to have the energy and vitality that will allow them to express their best selves. Black women, especially, have been the cornerstone of our culture. Black women have historically supported our black men, been the backbones of the family and community, and have even run white households and raised their children. We keep the home, care for the children, make financial decisions, and from a place of service, we lead. It has taken a toll because we have forgotten how to put ourselves first. Protecting our families from bias and racial attacks, coupled with our desire to please, has chipped away at our protective covering. The need is clear, and the time is now to rejuvenate and stand in our power. This wellness conversation is expanding and moving to the forefront. Now is our time to take the lead and begin within ourselves. This is the way.
Fancy: How does purpose align with health?
Tonya: Health is contained within purpose. It is not outside of ourselves. When you discover purpose, which is your divine reason for being, your choices and actions become clearer. Everything lines up. No one has to tell you what to eat, drink, or wear. You begin to express your authentic and unique self with confidence and radiance. This is why diets don’t work for long. You can do what someone else wants you to do when it is not in alignment with your truest self. The same applies to your job or anything else.
If you are eating or distracting yourself with an addiction, it is because you are trying to fill a hole or an emptiness. This resistance simply means you are out of alignment with your purpose. When you recognize your purpose and walk within it, all things good and healthy emerge from that knowing.
Fancy: How do you practice self-care?
Tonya: Practically speaking, I give myself a facial or do my own nails instead of going to a shop. I take naps and have occasional massages. But my highest form of self-care is meditation and mindfully protecting my energy from all things that don’t serve me. I steer away from negativity. I limit watching the news to only staying informed so that I might be a light or a resource to help the world in some way. I enjoy uplifting programs and books. I love to laugh and have interesting conversations.
Fancy: Do you seek balance?
Tonya: Constantly. It is my practice. I pray without ceasing to find ways to make the world a better place.
Fancy: Can you share any tips for those struggling with practicing mindfulness?
Tonya: Please read my blog below and purchase my books, which outline daily routines to create peace, mindfulness and promote health and wellness.
https://remarkablewellness.us/5-steps-for-the-person-who-thinks-they-cant-meditate/
Connect with Tonya and Remarkable Wellness below.
Website: https://remarkablewellness.us
Website: linktr.ee/u.gotta.eat
Instagram: @tkinlow
Instagram: @remarkable_wellness
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TKIRemarkableWellness
