About Puzzle Piece Wellness
Self-care is our foundation. It's what gives us the energy we need to show up for the people we love, the causes we support, and the activities we enjoy. But true self-care is not an occasional, expensive indulgence that hopes to compensate for a life that doesn't work. True self-care is building a life that works--a life that allows you to consistently prioritize your physical and emotional wellbeing.
Puzzle Piece Wellness is here to help you create that kind of life. By looking at the big picture and by tending to each piece of the puzzle, we provide compassionate, comprehensive support for wellbeing. With our unique approach to self-care, you can finally treat yourself with the dignity you deserve. And then, you can go out and make the difference you were always meant to make.
Let’s discover together just how much you are capable of when you are taken care of.
Principles of Practice
Self-Care is the ultimate ROI
Puzzle Piece Wellness approaches self-care as a means, not an end. You do not magically become a superior person when you take better care of yourself. But you will probably become a more effective person. That's because self-care is really about ROI—Return On Investment. It’s hard to do the things you want to do when you are injured, ill, exhausted, uncomfortable, dysregulated, or whatever else you become when your physical and emotional needs aren’t met. Puzzle Piece Wellness keeps your eye on the prize. You are on this earth to do something that matters. You have something beautiful and important to contribute, and you probably can’t do it—or do it well, or do it sustainably—if you feel like sh*t. Self-care is the only way to reliably give your best to a world that has never needed it more.
Self-care requires balance
Puzzle Piece Wellness helps you care the right amount about self-care. Some of us care too little about food, movement, and our bodies—we neglect them and suffer the consequences of poor health. Others care too much about food, movement, and our bodies—we become obsessed with what we eat, how much we exercise, and how we look. Whether you care too much, or too little, your suffering matters and is worth addressing. Puzzle Piece Wellness can help you find balance: where to focus, where to let go, and how to live in the richness of color between our culture’s black and white extremes. Yes, you can eat both the carrots AND the cupcakes!
Self-care is how we love ourselves, not how we "fix" ourselves
Puzzle Piece Wellness is here to help you care for the body you have right now--a body that is already good enough. Folks often seek nutrition and exercise guidince hoping to lose weight, but we believe that our culture’s relentless focus on weight loss does more harm than good. The overwhelming majority of people who attempt to lose weight through diet and exercise will regain what they lost, and will often gain back even more, as restrictive eating sets off a cascade of biological and psychological compensatory measures to restore lost weight. Meanwhile, weight-based discrimination and eating disorders are fueled by this collective obsession with thinness. So let's get you off of the roller coaster. The truth is that bodies of all shapes and sizes benefit when they are nourished, rested, and strengthened. No one is exempt. By focusing only on weight, we diminish and undermine the true value of health-enhancing behaviors for everyone. With Puzzle Piece Wellness, your weight may or may not change. But you will feel and function better either way!
Self-care doesn't happen in an office
Puzzle Piece Wellness strives to help you actually experience new behaviors, not just talk about them. Behavior change can feel exhausting and intimidating, and most of us will benefit from the accountability and physical presence of a trusted person when getting out of our comfort zone. That’s why Puzzle Piece Wellness aims to incorporate self-care activities into our time together so you can practice lifestyle change with real-time support. If your goal is to move more, let’s walk while we talk. If your goal is to cook more, let’s go grocery shopping and then hit the kitchen. If your goal is to eat more mindfully, let’s visit your favorite restaurant and relish what's on the menu, one bite at a time. If your goal is to unplug and get outside, let’s have our session at a park or on the beach. We meet you not only where you are, but where you want to be.
To honor our values, we must first meet our needs--to the best of our ability
Puzzle Piece Wellness uses an original, resource-oriented framework that addresses both values and needs, and which seeks to offer sustainable, realistic solutions to improve self-care. We are grounded in reality, acknowledging how inequity, trauma, burnout, and individual vulnerabilities can limit what is possible for us. We are iterative, adapting goals in real time to accommodate the ever-changing landscape of a human life. We don’t promise that you can “have it all.” We do promise that it is possible to address whatever situation you are in with intention and compassion, so you can make better use of the resources you have and begin working towards what matters most.
We cater to those on the margins
Puzzle Piece Wellness exists to help folks reconcile their needs with a world that is not built to meet them. Alas, this applies to most of us—few will thrive in a culture that celebrates working to exhaustion, that values independence to the point of isolation, and that asks you to spend most of your time indoors and staring at screens. But some people will struggle more within these constraints than others. Those who are neurodivergent, disabled, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, bigger-bodied, or hold other marginalized identities will generally carry greater psychological burdens and encounter more practical barriers than those who do not hold these identities. We’re here for anyone who can benefit from working with us, but we are especially here for those who don’t feel that their unique needs are being sufficiently addressed elsewhere. Puzzle Piece Wellness is here to support you in a society that does not.
Meet Shelayne
Shelayne Werfel, RD, NASM-CPT is a Registered Dietitian and Certified Personal Trainer with over a decade of experience helping clients rebuild their relationships to food and movement. She graduated summa cum laude from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and subsequently completed 1700 hours of supervised practice at UC San Diego Medical Center. Her career in dietetics spanned a broad range of practice areas, including concierge-model primary care, a women’s gym, a university health center, and a residential mental health/substance use treatment center for teens. Throughout her work, Shelayne has been struck by how self-care behaviors are inextricably entwined with the rest of life. She founded Puzzle Piece Wellness because she saw the need for a new approach to behavior change—one that honors the bidirectional intersections of self-care with everything else.
Shelayne’s work is informed by her own successful recovery from an eating disorder, and by her deep belief in the power of human connection. She strives to help her clients feel seen, heard, and understood, and she hopes to inspire them to use their newfound wellbeing to make a positive difference in the world.
Credentials:
o Registered Dietitian
o NASM-Certified Personal Trainer
o Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor
o Medical Exercise Specialist
o Wilderness First Responder