And they are right, but what they don’t realize is that hormone imbalance or inflammation is a response to something else happening in your body.

Hormonal imbalance and inflammation are not by-products of getting older.

And they sure as heck aren’t just normal things that are supposed to happen.

They are common, but they are not normal.

Your hormones don’t just go off because you turned 45.

You don’t just get inflammation because you turned 60.

Instead, your body is always responding to the external and internal environments you are in every single day, and when the environment is not serving your body or your health, your hormones and inflammatory responses will let you know.

It’s fascinating—if you look at people around the world who have no disease or illness, there are virtually no common denominators with their lifestyle or health habits.

It’s not genetics, they have different diets, some have structured exercise, some just walk, some smoke, some drink, some don’t touch caffeine, some have coffee all morning long.

They don’t have a specific common denominator, supplement, eating style, or routine, but what they do have in common, is how they think, how they talk, and who they are surrounded by.

These people are generally positive and optimistic, and don’t take life very seriously.

They don’t worry too much and they are light hearted.

They show up each day with a spirit of love and gratitude.

They are surrounded with a deep sense of purpose and community.

We now know that thoughts impact our biology, thoughts impact our health, and thoughts impact our body and how our body responds.

I’ve discovered, time and again, that showing up each day with positivity, optimism, and joy begins with creating a beautiful, healthy environment for the body to thrive.

And when I say “environment,” I don’t just mean the environment around you or the space you live in.

I mean the mental, physical, and emotional environments you create within your body and your life.

Over time, I’ve been able to identify three foundational areas that play a powerful role in creating a healthy internal environment where your body can truly thrive: blood sugar, stress, and toxins.

BLOOD SUGAR

If you can understand what your fasting insulin, A1c, blood sugar, and cortisol levels are doing, you will be able to correct, or at least, dramatically improve your hormonal or inflammatory issues.

If you’ve never explored tracking your blood sugar levels, please consider getting a keto mojo (finger prick) or CGM (continuous glucose monitor) to begin understanding what your blood sugar levels are doing throughout the day. You will learn so much about how your diet, your stress, and your lifestyle are impacting your blood sugar and overall health.

Knowing what your blood sugar is doing, and how to balance it, is a foundation to health and vitality since blood sugar levels impacts everything from energy, to hormones, to sleep, and your ability to lose weight.

Once you begin to test, you will naturally want to learn more about how different foods and meal combinations impact you.

You will see how your sleep and exercise impact you.

You will notice the changes that occur once you’re in and out of stressful environments.

I promise you, tracking your blood sugar with intention is one of the most powerful things you can do for your health.

If you’ve tracked your blood sugars before and are still feeling stuck, I want you to explore deeper concepts than just your diet, fasting, and exercise, and how those impact your blood sugar levels.

I want you to explore your nervous system regulation, what your blood sugar does (or how you feel) after being on social media, or after you check your bank account, or when you’re at work, or when you’re doing something you don’t want to be doing.

I want you to explore what your blood sugar does (and how you feel) when you don’t say what you want to say.

I want you to explore what your blood sugar does in the various environments you are in each day.

If you can’t seem to get a grip on your blood sugar, you need to explore your response to stress and cortisol.

Cortisol raises blood sugar. Cortisol also increases fat cell production and fat cell growth in your midsection (belly fat).

Cortisol is your main stress hormone that has a bigger impact on your longevity and hormones than even your diet does.

If cortisol is not managed properly, you cannot get a grip on your stress levels, stress hormones, or your stress response.

STRESS

We all know stress is bad for us, but what does that even mean?

When it comes to understanding stress, I want you to think in terms of acute versus chronic stress.

Acute stress is actually quite healthy for you—it makes you more resilient, challenges you, and grows you; physically, mentally, emotionally.

Acute stress that is felt, addressed, and solved is a super power that most of us don’t have anymore.

Being able to feel uncomfortable for a period of time, and then having the resources and bandwidth to overcome it, is stress resilience.

For example: fasting, exercise, hot/cold exposure, emotional stress.

• Fasting: fasting variations with proper nourishment moves you back and forth between acute stress and repair.

• Exercise: short bursts of physical activity cause acute stress that gives you long term benefits like muscle growth, improved metabolic health, improved blood flow & circulation.

• Hot/cold exposure: causes acute stress, but provides long term benefits like cardiovascular health, circulation, better dopamine balance, and immune benefits.

• Emotional stress: feeling sad/angry/upset without stuffing it down, suppressing, or ignoring allows you to feel happiness on a grander scale; it allows you to appreciate the emotions that are uplifting—you can’t feel happiness or joy without feeling the uncomfortable emotions too.

Acute stress is healthy; chronic stress is not.

Chronic stress is not something to be pushed through, stuffed down, or shoved aside to be dealt with at a later time.

Chronic stress is a full-body, hormonal event and if it doesn’t get turned off, it will change your weight, your sleep, your blood sugar, your blood pressure, your metabolic health, your nervous system, and your ability to heal.

There’s a medical title to describe exactly this: HPA axis dysfunction.

HPA axis stands for hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal glands axis.

Your hypothalamus and pituitary are in your brain, your adrenals in your mid back.

There is a communication pathway between your brain and your adrenal glads.

Your brain scans, watches out for, and affects your perception of stress & survival, while the adrenal glands make cortisol—your main stress hormone.

Your brain is what tells the adrenals how much cortisol to produce.

When this communication pathway (HPA axis) becomes consistently triggered by real stress or perceived stress, it starts to impact your nervous system regulation.

Real stress is anything like an injury, illness, sleep deprivation, or any situation that is threat to your survival and safety.

Perceived stress stems from fear, anxiety, worry, or anticipation.

Anticipation can look like worrying about something you believe will be hard or go wrong.

Action idea: ask yourself how many things do you worry about each day—even if they are minor.

• Do you stress about what to eat?

• A conversation you are going to have?

• Work that needs to be done?

• A perceived stressful evening ahead?

• How you’re going to get everything done?

• If your loved one is okay?

• How you’re going to afford what you need?

• Running late?

These are all examples of perceived stress. Perceived, anticipated stress is always from the past. It is your brain’s way of reminding you of a previous event that had caused a strong emotional reaction.

Chronic, or repeated activation, of anticipated stress is what causes stress patterns to become so engrained in your reality that you oftentimes don’t even realize where the stress or anxiety is coming from.

For example, let’s take rushing around. Maybe you witnessed your parents rushing a lot when you were growing up. You heard the tone of their voice, you felt their energy change, you heard their words. Your little body knew something was at threat. Your little body perceived its survival to be at risk because you didn’t have the conscious awareness or capacity to understand that your mom was just running late for dropping you off at school.

Every single time you come up against the clock, those memories and feelings of rushing will begin to trigger a release of stress hormones all because in the past, it threatened your survival or safety.

This is considered perceived stress because are you going to die if you’re late? No. Is your physical safety affected if you aren’t there on time? No. But it feels that way because it is a subconscious pattern that gets triggered every single time you’re rushing around and worried about being late.

Your body will continue to subconsciously react to perceived stress to keep you safe because at one point your body decided that those types of situations are a threat.

If your nervous system is stuck in survival mode from chronic stress or HPA axis dysregulation, it will not have the resources to completely heal.

You could have the perfect diet, fasting schedule, exercise, supplements, biohacks, etc. and still be stuck when your nervous system and HPA axis are dysregulated.

Other examples of what causes HPA axis dysregulation:

• constant bad news

• constant scrolling on social media

• constant people pleasing or scanning the room on guard to become a shape shifter based on what you’re energetically or emotionally picking up from those around you

• peace keeping

• feeling like you have to do it all with no real recovery

• screens and fake lighting after dark

• hardly moving your body or overtraining without recovery

• not enough of a break from food

• over-fasting without proper nourishment

• unprocessed grief, trauma, emotional stress

• chronic inflammation or infections

These are all situations that compound and can cause chronic stress.

Chronic stress is not always a big life stress; it can be several micro stresses that are hitting your body and your nervous system all day long.

Some of the most common symptoms you’ll notice if this is happening to you are the 2-4 am wake ups, trouble falling asleep, feeling exhausted in the morning, but wired at night, belly fat, sugar/salt cravings, afternoon crashes, feeling irritable or on edge over small things, getting sick often, brain fog, low libido, irregular cycles, and/or straight up burn out, feeling flat, or feeling unmotivated.

If you have the resources and highly suspect this could be affecting you, you might want to get some cortisol testing done.

The least expensive start is a morning cortisol blood or saliva test before 9 am.

It’s a great first look, but what’s best is to see several samples throughout the day.

My favorite way to check cortisol is through a DUTCH test because it shows how much cortisol you’re producing (metabolized) and what your free cortisol is showing over 4-5 samples throughout the day.

I recently had a client who did the DUTCH test. She’s been taking hormone replacement therapy and it’s helped symptoms, but it has not helped her zest for life or her energy. She just didn’t feel like herself—her drive and motivation felt gone.

She thought the hormones from her replacement therapy should have helped by now, and they did in some regards, but they didn’t help the whole picture.

Her DUTCH test showed extremely low morning cortisol and very low total cortisol output. This is a very common pattern for someone who has had chronic stress for so long that cortisol output and free cortisol levels go too low. Learn more about cortisol & cortisol patterns here.

It was super important this client discovered this because she could made some realistic tweaks to her current lifestyle. She decided to shift her eating window, adjust her morning routine, and we talked about how to help body feel more nourished and safe.

TOXINS

Toxins increase biological age. Enough said.

Chronological age = how old you are in years on this planet.

Biological age = how quickly you are aging.

Toxins have been studied and have been shown to shortens the lifespan, increase inflammation and oxidative stress, interfere with mitochondria (which is what produces energy on a cellular level), affect DNA and gene expression, and accelerates biological age.

Detoxing doesn’t have to be complicated.

I spent a lot of time before creating my Detox Essentials course to make sure it was digestible, realistic, and practical.

To this day, I fully stand by the idea that the first step in detoxing is to minimize/avoid toxin exposures. Start with your food, water, anything you put on your skin, and air quality first.

The next step is understanding drainage versus detox.

Drainage is something your body naturally does, wants to do, and is designed to do.

Drainage is moving waste, filtering blood, flowing bile, circulating lymph.

Drainage is activated by movement, healthy foods, hydration, sweating.

Drainage is increasing urine, poop, sweat.

Detoxing is a whole different ballgame. Detoxing begins on a cellular level.

Think about taking your garbage out. During cellular detoxification, your cells need to collect the garbage (toxins) inside your cell and take it to the end of the driveway (your cell membrane).

Once the toxins have been brought to the membrane, and there’s something there to grab it out (zeolite, humic, DMSA), your drainage pathways then bring the toxins out of the body like a garbage truck brings garbage to the dump.

Some of you will only need to work on drainage to see changes in your health.

Some of you will need to work on drainage and detox.

In Detox Essentials, module 1 goes through avoiding toxins, module 2 goes through increasing drainage, module 3 goes through 3 different detox protocols.

You can learn more about Detox Essentials here.

Here’s what I love about health: there is always something you can explore.

If you’re feeling stuck, do not give up. There is always a reason your body is trying to give you the signals (symptoms) it is giving you. ♥️

She has steadily lost over 10 pounds in just two months (which is very healthy weight loss by the way!), and the weight keeps coming off.

She has made small tweaks to her nutrition and lifestyle, but we credit most of the weight loss to one thing: getting back to her feminine flow state.

Our sessions together are far more than just nutrition and detox. They are filled with conversations about her emotional state, her relationship to food, where she feels stuck emotionally and energetically, and where she is misaligned.

We discuss where she’s breaking boundaries, not using her voice, or getting triggered.

She tells me what no longer serves her and consciously commits to making change.

We make plans for protecting her peace, keeping her nervous system balanced, and decide what needs to shift to keep her aligned with her core values and truths.

She contacted me just the other day asking why she didn’t gain weight after eating way more chips than she intended or needed. She hadn’t eaten chips like that in a very long time. She was blown away that the scale didn’t budge. She was happy, but confused.

Her whole life she’s been told that certain foods make you gain weight and certain foods help you lose weight. How in the world could she eat a food that she knows makes you gain weight and not actually gain any weight from it?

My response? 👇🏼

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Your mood, motivation, cravings, blood sugar, desire to exercise/move, your food choices, your ability to release toxins from your brain—every single one of these is impacted by sleep (or lack thereof!).

I’ve had bouts of insomnia, and I’ve had bouts of the most restorative, deep sleep.

I know I’m not alone when I say that I show up as a completely better version of myself when I get good sleep. You too, right?

We know that sleep is foundation to health, and we know we feel better when we sleep well, so why can it be so challenging sometimes?

Why does something that comes so naturally to some feel impossible for others?

Over the years and throughout my bouts of insomnia, I’ve learned as much as I can about what impacts sleep.

With this knowledge, my own sleep experience, and all of the clinical experience I’ve had with clients, I have narrowed sleep issues down to six main categories.

1. HORMONES & NEUROTRANSMITTERS

There are several hormones that will impact how well you’re able to fall asleep, stay asleep, and how refreshed you feel waking up.

The hormone that has the biggest impact on your sleep probably isn’t the one you’d expect. Most people think of melatonin, but cortisol may actually be the bigger piece of the puzzle.

When cortisol stays elevated at night, it can interfere with melatonin release, and that makes it much harder to stay asleep. It’s actually one of the most common patterns I see in people who wake up multiple times throughout the night.

Read about cortisol imbalance here.

The other hormones and neurotransmitters to be mindful of are:

-Melatonin: you can check your levels on a DUTCH test.

-Thyroid hormones: you can check your levels via bloodwork.

-Estrogen: you can check your levels on a DUTCH/Oova test.

-Progesterone: you can check your levels on a DUTCH/Oova test.

-GABA: you can try taking GABA to see if it helps. If it does, you might be low in GABA or have genetic issues with GABA.

-Serotonin: you can check your levels on a DUTCH test or organic acids test.

-Adrenanline: you can check your levels on a DUTCH test.

-Histamine: look out for other histamine issues & consider taking an anti-histamine before bed to see if it helps. If so, address histamine first.

2. BLOOD SUGAR

High or low blood sugars, especially at night, can impact your sleep in several ways. And consequently, a lack of sleep can impact your blood sugar the next day, making it much harder to keep a steady blood sugar.

High blood sugars at night can overstimulate your nervous system and raise your body temperature (fun fact: your body temperature has to drop 1-2 degrees to release melatonin!). Elevated blood sugar can also make you thirsty, forcing extra trips to the bathroom at night.

Low blood sugar, on the other hand, can trigger a cascade of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which can wake you up at night feeling sweaty, shaking, or anxious.

And if you’re someone who likes a little treat before bed, late night sugar spikes from high carbohydrate or sugary foods will cause a fast spike and crash. This crash releases cortisol, which will wake you up.

A note on alcohol: alcohol will help you fall asleep quicker, yes. However, it ruins the rest of your sleep by negatively impacting REM sleep and causes middle-of-the-night wake-ups. Alcohol will also stop your liver from making glucose, which can cause nighttime drops in blood sugar, causing additional wake-ups.

Working on a stable blood sugar during the day is the first sleep foundation I like to address with clients. Read about how to eat a balanced meal that is blood sugar friendly here.

3. LIVER/GALLBLADDER

According to Chinese medicine (and what I’ve seen over and over again in clinical practice), if you wake up consistently between the hours of 11 pm and 3 am, your liver/gallbladder (or bile duct/bile flow if you don’t have a gallbladder) is likely saying hello.

The organ clock theory from Traditional Chinese Medicine maps out a 24-hour cycle where qi energy moves through specific meridians (energy pathways where energy flows to nourish specific tissue).

The gallbladder’s time is from 11:00 pm - 1:00 am.

The liver’s time is from 1:00 am - 3:00 am.

This is also when these organs “come alive” and are able to do their most detoxification and healing work.

If your liver, gallbladder, or bile duct is riddled with toxins or trying to process too much (including emotions!), you will wake up consistently between the hours of 11:00 pm - 3:00 am.

4. MEDICAL CONDITIONS

Medical conditions are outside my scope of practice, but must be addressed. If you are not getting anywhere with your insomnia, please rule out sleep apnea, mouth breathing, restless legs, or other injury/structural issues that might be inhibiting your sleep.

**If it does feel structural, you may simply just need a new bed, mattress, or pillow. 😊

**If you do have restless legs, it could very well be a nutritional deficiency. You may want to explore a deficiency in iron, magnesium, B12, vitamin D, folate, and make sure you are not just dehydrated).

If you suspect it could be a nutritional deficiency, here are some of my favorites (click on the text to see a recommended brand):

• Iron

• Magnesium

• Vitamin D

• B12 & Folate

  5. CIRCADIAN RHYTHM

Sleep hygiene starts from the moment you wake up.

Sleep hygiene is closely connected to your circadian rhythm—your body’s internal clock that follows a 24-hour cycle.

Your circadian rhythm helps to regulate hormone release, sleep and wake patterns, metabolism, energy levels, and mood.

It’s also highly sensitive to cues from the light and darkness. Simply becoming more intentional about your exposure to light and dark throughout the day can have a powerful impact on your sleep.

Morning sunlight, in particular, is the most powerful cue for your circadian rhythm.

Sunlight in the morning signals to your brain that the day has begun, which helps set up your circadian rhythm for the day. This will make you feel more alert during the day, prepare your body to produce the proper amounts of melatonin, and helps to release melatonin as the sun sets and it gets dark.

Without a sufficient dose of daily sun exposure, you will not produce optimal levels of melatonin.

Sample circadian rhythm day:

• From 6-10 am cortisol rises. Get 10-20 min of sunlight—sunlight activates serotonin production, and get well hydrated.

• From 10-2 pm energy and focus peak, serotonin peaks; digestion peaks. Eat your largest meal here.

• From 2-6 pm your body should start to wind down. Your body starts producing melatonin precursors during this time; get sunlight to cue brain to prep for dark. Sunlight helps produce melatonin so you can release once dark out. Stop caffeine exposure at this time.

• From 6-10 pm melatonin rises; avoid blue light as much as possible, turn down lights, avoid screens. Digestion slows down (this is not the best time to have your largest meal). Your body cools down (your temperature needs to drop 1-2 degrees to release melatonin). Avoid working out too close to bed, turn temperature in your house down, apply cold packs to your neck, armpits, and groin, drink cool fluids, take a cool shower or bath, and warm your feet. Warming your feet expands blood vessels in your skin and lets warm blood flow from your center to your feet, where heat leaves your body into the air. This drop in internal heat tells your brain it is time to sleep.

• From 10 pm-2 am: melatonin peeks, and this is where your deepest sleep, deepest repair, deepest healing, detoxification should be happening. You also get a release of growth hormone at this time. Being asleep from 10 pm - 2 am is very important for your health.

  6. NOT LISTENING TO YOUR BODY DURING THE DAY

If you haven’t been quiet enough during the day to listen, your body will wake you up when all of the other noise is removed to get you to listen.

What’s going through your mind in the middle of the night?

It is something you need to do?

Is it overwhelm about your schedule?

Is it a problem you’re having?

These are very important signals showing you what’s causing you stress during the day that you’re stuffing down, distracting, or ignoring.

Middle of the night thoughts, ideas, realizations, and problem solving can actually really support you if you allow it.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Don’t know where to start or which category you’re needing to address?

This is where health gets fun. Yes, fun. 🤩

Reframing your perspective about experimenting, trialing, learning, and practicing health habits will be the most important thing you do for your health.

The reason there is so much confusion about health is because there is a LOT of information out there.

And all that information is right for some people.

And all that information may be wrong for you.

To have long term success with your health, you must experiment and connect dots. You must explore how different seasons of life and different environments you put yourself in are impacting your health, your health choices, and your health lifestyle.

Assess each situation and environment you are in, and adjust accordingly.

Here are some examples of when and why I’ve suffered from insomnia:

1. college: nervous system, thyroid, adrenals; I had to work on these three areas before sleep improved.

2. traveling: circadian rhythm; I now take melatonin and activate my parasympathetic nervous system before bed when traveling.

3. first trimester insomnia: hormonal and neurotransmitter; I had to double down on sleep hygiene and circadian rhythm.

4. week before period starts: low progesterone; address cortisol and protect my peace more than any other time during the month.

5. fasting: ketones/minerals; add in extra magnesium and minerals, go to bed early, wake up early and enjoy the extra productivity.

6. baby who didn’t sleep: double down on circadian rhythm and sleep hygiene.

7. after emotional & energetic work: embrace & surrender the middle of night wake ups; allow insights, realizations, and “ahas” that come pouring in.

HOW TO REFRAME

Think of sleep disturbances as a way for your body to talk to you.

If you don’t know where to start, follow the check list below.

If you follow this check list and still struggle with your sleep, dig deeper. Get testing done. Explore something new that you haven’t yet considered.

Fixing sleep is more than just medicating or supplementing yourself into a sleep coma.

There’s always a time and place for meditations and supplements. For example, when I’m traveling or under a lot of stress, supplements have completely saved my sleep (thank you melatonin, GABA, and phosphatidylserine).

Here’s the difference though: those are acute situations. Once my situation changes (and it usually shifts pretty quick), I put the supplements away.

On the other hand, chronic sleep issues give you an opportunity to explore what is not aligned or balanced in your body or lifestyle.

Once you can figure that out, there’s a ripple effect that will blow you away.

Your sleep issues are very likely also affecting your weight, your mood, your cravings, and even your entire outlook on life.

Take the opportunity to explore what your body is trying to show you.

SLEEP CHECK LIST

1. Consistent sleep/wake time — even on weekends.

2. Make your room cold and completely dark (65-68 degrees F is best for sleep).

3. No screens at least 60 minutes before bed. If you do want screens, make sure to wear blue light blockers or turn your phone on red mode.

4. Finish eating at least 2-3 hours before bed.

5. No alcohol within 3 hours of bed.

6. Morning light exposure for 10-20 minutes.

LAST THOUGHTS ON SLEEP

With all of this being said, I do believe we can put way too much pressure on sleep.

Stressing about your sleep will oftentimes make your sleep worse.

Waking up at night here and there is completely okay and it might even be something your body is doing for a very specific, helpful reason.

It’s been studied that our ancestors would go to bed around sunset, wake up after 3-4 hours of sleep, do some creative work, journal, pray, be intimate, or check on the tribe, and then go back to sleep.

This was before the rise in technology, blue light, artificial lighting, EMFs, ultra processed foods, and massive exposure to environmental toxins, and they didn’t even sleep for 8 hours straight.

You may even have a spiritual experience from those pesky wake-ups. If you allow it, you can get a lot of insight, realizations, and intuitive ideas when your body is resting and your mind isn’t flooded with your to-do list. The middle of the night can be an incredible time for creativity and ideas to pour in.

But what happens when you wake up and start stressing over work or a project coming up or what you need to do tomorrow? You steal that creativity.

What happens when you wake up and check your email or scroll on social media or watch TV? You kill those insights.

Imagine that you reframe each middle-of-night wake up with being one of the best times for creativity, visualizing, and connecting with yourself.

I truly believe that if you have your sleep hygiene and circadian rhythm addressed and you’re still waking up often, or you’re wide awake at certain times, it’s because you didn’t slow down enough during the day to listen.

Your subconscious is trying to get your attention.

You’ve likely pushed stress down during the day, and your subconscious is trying to bring it up at night to help you grow, evolve, and shift what needs to be shifted.

So when you wake up and stressful thoughts come up, don’t ignore them, spiral, or hyper-analyze. Simply pay attention. Get curious.

Get creative and explore ways in which you can shift how you approach that situation that is making your mind spin.

There are reasons your brain is waking you up at night and sometimes it can be the most healing thing your brain can do for you.

It may be as simple as your brain wanting more connection and purpose if you find your days to be filled with just going through the motions and checking things off your to-do list.

Your body is so innately intelligent, and it is always doing what it’s doing for a reason.

It’s okay for your sleep to vary from night to night, but it’s not okay to pressure or shame yourself for a lack of sleep. What matters is not judging or pressuring yourself when you don’t get the sleep you need.

I know I can’t be alone when I say that there are nights where I’m wide awake, or I wake often, and I feel incredible the next day.

Those are the nights where I wake up with realizations, ideas, and excitement. Those are the nights that usually come after energetic work or a lot of introspective work.

And then there are the bouts of insomnia where I feel depleted, drained, depressed, and have no zest for life.

There’s a big difference here.

The first situation should become embraced and celebrated; the second situation requires deeper introspection and lifestyle shifts.

I want us all to experience restful sleep, and I want us all to be able to relax at night trusting our body will rest even if we’re not sleeping through the night.

I want us all to be mindful of what we’re filling our heads with before bed, and to give ourselves permission to try different sleep structures like sleeping for 4 hours, waking up, and then sleeping for 3-4 more hours.

I want us all to adjust our health habits and healthy lifestyle based on our environment, season of life, or hormonal phase we’re in.

Even if you’re not sleeping as well as you’d like, I want you to work on letting go of the need to fall asleep and stay asleep like a perfect robot.

We are human beings. We are not perfect and our health will never be perfect all the time.

So even when you can’t sleep, what can you do to enjoy the time being awake?

Maybe you do something creative, talk to your body, plan something exciting, work on mindset/thinking differently, or you can visualize what you want to dream about.

The night can be beautiful if you let it. Let it be sacred.

Have you ever noticed how when you want something really bad you work hard at getting it, and then once you have it, overtime, it’s just not as exciting as it was when you were dreaming of it?

This happens with weight loss too.

This concept of something seeming greater than it is before we have it happens because of dopamine and negativity bias.

Dopamine is what helps our brain achieve what we want, but fades away once achievement has been made.

Negativity bias is what keeps us stuck in negative thinking, even after we’ve accomplished what we set out to.

There is a never ending chase with success—even when it comes to weight loss.

This chase is what keeps us unhappy, unfulfilled, and always seeking; even when we are at the weight we desire.

If you don’t have a true “why” for the weight you desire to be, you will have a very hard time maintaining that number.

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I often get questions like:

“Is avoiding gluten still a fad?”

“Is dairy bad for me?”

“Is sugar inflammatory?”

But here’s the thing, the question isn’t is gluten bad? Is dairy bad? Is sugar inflammatory?

The questions are:

What is the source of the gluten/dairy/sugar?

What is the quality?

What is the emotional state while eating gluten, dairy, or sugar?

What is the gut health of the individual eating that food?

The more I learn about gut health, nervous system regulation, and mental emotional health, there is no question that your emotional state and level of stress impacts how you digest your food.

Gut inflammation is the root to food sensitivities/food intolerances.

Stress is the root to gut inflammation.

And stress can come from several sources.

Finding the root to your source is where the work comes in.

Let’s start with some basic roots of stress. We are now living in the most toxic times in human history. The toxins on our food and the way that our farming practices have changed over the last 75 years are at the root of why gut function, gut barrier integrity, and overall gut inflammation have shifted. And these shifts are not in the direction we want them to go.

Now more than ever, people are experiencing gut issues, autoimmunity, and cancer. All of which tie back into the health of your gut and gut inflammation.

What shifted 75 years ago to put us in the position we’re in today?

The desire and development for high-yielding, modern wheat.

Modern wheat is very different from heritage wheat, or how wheat used to be.

Modern wheat has a different structure to it, has less digestible gluten, and requires more insecticides, herbicides, and other chemicals to grow it and keep it shelf stable.

Couple this with the health of our soil depreciating (less nutrients and less microbes), and you’ve got yourself a perfect storm for gut irritation after every single gluten filled meal.

Not only are our soils less nutrient dense, but our soils have lost microbial diversity.

When our soils lose microbial diversity, we lose microbial diversity.

When we lose microbial diversity, we lose the ability to break down certain components of foods (gluten, lectins, oxalates).

When we lose the ability to breakdown food, we can develop what’s often known as “leaky gut.”

If you suspect you have leaky gut, or if you have a history of autoimmunity, joint pain, thyroid imbalance, or food addiction, you will likely see a positive change in your health just by avoiding modern wheat.

WHEAT

Modern wheat + autoimmunity, joint pain, thyroid imbalance, or food addiction = the perfect storm for inflammation, weight gain, and a lack of health vitality.

Why autoimmunity and joint pain?

Because modern wheat is highly inflammatory, can trigger an immune response, and inflame the joints.

Why thyroid imbalance?

Because the protein portion of gluten (called gliadin) is structurally similar to the thyroid tissue, specifically the enzyme thyroid peroxidase (TPO).

If you’ve ever had a TPO test show elevated, it is in your best interest to avoid modern wheat.

Why food addiction?

Because the peptide called gluteomorphin that is created when your digestive system incompletely breaks down gliadin.

This process produces similar effects of the substance morphine (which is highly addictive) and gluteomorphin can bind to brain opioid receptors triggering feelings of euphoria and relaxation.

This reaction of euphoria and relaxation, however, is oftentimes short lived.

The undigested molecules may leak into the bloodstream and potentially cross the blood-brain barrier. Once through the blood-brain barrier, these undigested molecules can interfere with neuronal messaging, and cause anxiety, mood swings, depression, and brain fog.

If you’ve ever noticed anxiety, depression, or brain fog after a meal pay attention. Did that meal have modern wheat?

If you have a history of thyroid conditions, joint pain, or autoimmunity, I would recommend avoiding all wheat (not just modern wheat) for at least three months before introducing heritage or fermented wheat.

If you are going to eat wheat, whether you have those conditions or not, I would highly recommend consuming organic, fermented, sprouted, heritage wheat.

DAIRY

Dairy can be extremely inflammatory to some and a health food for others.

For some, dairy can be very mucus forming, contribute to weight loss resistance (I have had clients lose weight by simply removing dairy from their diet!), and can cause sinus issues, joint pain, fatigue, skin issues, and headaches.

And just like with gluteomorphin, dairy has it’s own addictive capabilities.

Dairy contains casomorphin, a peptide created during the digestion of casein (the main protein found in milk).

If you want to see if dairy is your friend or health enemy, avoid all sources of dairy for at least 4-6 weeks.

Once you’ve avoided it for 4-6 weeks, add in one source of dairy at at time and wait at least 3 days before introducing it again.

It can take up to 72 hours to see a reaction after avoiding dairy and then reintroducing.

Don’t just look for gut reactions when reintroducing either.

Dairy can cause skin breakouts, brain fog, mood issues, sinus congestion, or joint pain even if your gut seems to tolerate it just fine.

If you find that you can tolerate dairy, look for organic, pastured, grass-fed (which contains more omega 3 fatty acids), plain, and full fat.

I know that’s a lot to look out for. If you can’t find all of those words, at least go for organic. That’s better than conventional. 🙂

SUGAR

We’ve all heard sugar is bad, but how bad is bad?

Can sugar sneak in from time to time? Or does it need to be avoided forever? How much sugar is “safe”?

The answers to these questions all go back to your health goals, your health history, and the environment in which you choose to consume sugar.

It has been well researched that too much processed sugar has been linked to several disease states, especially Alzheimer’s disease and cancer.

Too much sugar disrupts hormones and metabolic health.

Too much sugar typically leads to weight gain.

Too much sugar will spike your blood sugar quickly, which can lead to mood swings and energy crashes.

And above all, sugar is extremely addictive.

Sugars causes a flood of dopamine—your brain’s reward center.

This flood is so strong that it mirrors the neurological responses seen with other substances like recreational drugs.

Also, when you repeatedly consume highly refined sugars, your brain builds a tolerance.

This tolerance requires larger amounts of sugar to achieve the same “high” you originally got from eating it, while also making you vulnerable to intense cravings and sugar withdrawal when you try to quit.

There’s the initial dopamine release, but then a dopamine desensitization. This desensitization makes you to seek out more sugar just to feel “normal.”

And if that’s not enough to make you feel addicted, you also have a survival mechanism to sugar.

Your brain will seek out high calorie, sweet foods as a survival mechanism—especially when your brain senses that you are not safe.

Your brain does this to give your muscles quick fuel to flee from the tiger if need be.

When you are quite safe physically (but maybe not safe mentally or emotionally) and you don’t actually need a high calorie, quick blood sugar spiking food, eating processed sugar will overstimulate your survival circuit that is biologically built in.

There is zero need for processed sugars in your body.

Your body needs carbohydrates, yes, and even sugar coming from nature’s carbohydrates like fruits and root veggies, but your body does not need highly processed refined sugars to survive.

I am not against carbohydrates and I’m not even against natural sugars.

So depending on your goals and history, if you are going to eat sugar, look for raw honey, coconut sugar, pure maple syrup or the sweeteners that don’t impact blood sugar—stevia, monk fruit, or allulose.

_{not to brag, but my husband makes the very best fermented sourdough cinnamon rolls}

This is why there is so much nuance with food. This is why we can’t label foods good or bad. This is why there is so much nutrition confusion.

Instead of avoiding a food because you saw an expert online saying to avoid it, or your best friend avoided it and got great results, you need to understand if a food works for you or doesn’t work for you.

What works for me may not work for you, and what works for you may not work for me.

And one of the best ways to know if/how a food works for you is to spend some time avoiding that food group.

If you’re desperate to see changes in your health, consider avoiding all three food groups (gluten, dairy, sugar) at once.

If it’s too hard to remove all three at once, choose one food group to avoid and give it at least one week without any slip ups or sneaking it in.

If you are going to put in that type of nutrition work, I’d suggest keeping a little notes section/food journal of what you’re experiencing.

Take notes on your bowel movements, energy, sleep, pain, skin health, mood, and overall gut health—these can all be influenced by gluten, dairy, and sugar if these foods are problematic for you.

And if these foods are problematic for you, this doesn’t mean you have to avoid forever.

I never thought I’d be eating bread again, and now I enjoy a homemade heritage, fermented sourdough bread a couple times per month.

I’ve gone off dairy several times and have found that I can tolerate certain dairy just fine and other dairy I choose to limit because it doesn’t make me feel my best.

Don’t let the fear of having to avoid a food group forever stop you from avoiding it for a period of time.

If you struggle with inflammation or gut issues, it is worth exploring an elimination diet.

And if you struggle with inflammation or gut issues, there’s another component I want you to consider: stress.

THE CONNECTION TO STRESS

Within one hour of a stressful event, we see rises in zonulin.

Zonulin is a protein marker in the gut that can be measured and it indicates how permeable your gut lining is.

The higher the level of zonulin, the higher degree of leaky gut.

The higher degree of leaky gut, the higher the risk of chronic disease.

In fact, we even see changes in the microbiome before Alzheimer’s sets in and before breast cancer develops. That’s how close the relationship between your gut health and other chronic disease states are.

Chronic stress is just as, if not more, damaging than antibiotics, foods like gluten, dairy, or sugar, or toxins are for the gut.

Besides chronic stress, there is another aspect that isn’t talked about with why food sensitivities are on the rise and why we’re having so many issues with foods causing gut distress: your emotional state while eating.

Have you ever thought to ask yourself, “What was my emotional state when my body started viewing that food as a threat?”

Read about emotional connections to food in this substack article.

Did you get bad news, go and eat a certain food, and then you had stress hormones circulating through your body, and your immune system went into overdrive?

Did you eat a certain food with a loved one who isn’t here anymore, and now when you eat it you subconsciously feel grief or sadness?

Did you eat food to get attention growing up?

Or maybe you’re someone who has gone down several rabbit holes of learning health information, and that health information was full of fear, and you decided that food was super toxic.

Maybe you never got the full picture of food quality before deciding that a specific food was not going to be good for you.

If you know you have an issue with a certain food group, ask yourself, “when did I make the belief that food wasn’t good for me?”

Your brain is so powerful—your thoughts literally tell your biology what to do and how your cells respond.

If you consciously or subconsciously believe a food will be bad for you, it will be.

If you consciously or subconsciously believe you are in an environment to digest, break down, and process any food, you will respond completely differently to that food.

This isn’t a free pass to eat toxic food, but it is a free pass to not be so strict and rigid because being strict and rigid is not going to support your gut health any better.

Chronic stress, trauma, how you view food, and your mindset around food play a huge role in how your body metabolizes and uses that food.

Food is not just fuel or nourishment. Food is a signaling molecule. Food is information.

Instead of thinking in terms of food is bad or food is good, consider changing your mindset around food.

I like to think of food as “will this raise my energy and vitality?,” or “will this lower my energy and vitality?”

“will this food help me feel vital” or “will it lower my energy and make me feel unwell?”

“will this food stimulate me (caffeine, sugar, artificial dyes/sweeteners)?”

“will this food depress me (heavy, ultra processed foods, gluten)”

“will this food keep me balanced?”

Food is so much more than nutrition—food is connection, food is grounding, food is information, food is an experience.

SOMATIC EATING

This is the cusp of somatic eating and somatic eating completely shifted my entire relationship to food and how I view food.

Somatic eating is approaching food through your physical body and physical body sensations, rather than approaching food through what you’ve been taught/told about food, through food rules, or through emotions.

It focuses on tuning into your nervous system, recognizing how stress affects your digestion, and identifying physical hunger and fullness cues.

There are 4 layers to Somatic Eating:

1. Going inner and being interoceptive. This is where you develop a non judgement awareness of how foods feel as you eat them and how they affect your energy.

2. Using your senses to be fully present and mindful of the experience of eating

• “what is the texture”

• “what is the smell”

• “what is the temperature”

• “what are the tastes”

So many of us just focus on the taste of our food.

How often have you been present enough to reflect on the texture, smell, and temperature of that meal?

3. Regulating your nervous system before a meal to digest your food better, but to also receive and trust the signals your body gives you during and after eating. One of my favorite nervous system regulation techniques is do some breath work or other grounding techniques right before eating.

4. Addressing the emotional component to food choices and behaviors like cravings, overeating, or restricting.

Food behaviors and food choices are often times due to trying to cope with emotional distress or physical tension.

When you reach for a food you know won’t support your health, ask yourself “what am I not trying to deal with or feel right now?”

Food can be used to escape, it can be used to numb out, it can be used to distract, and it can be used to bring comfort.

Going back to the first layer of somatic eating, I encourage you to develop a non judgmental awareness of your food behaviors and food choices.

This may not mean you change your behaviors or choices overnight, but if you can at least remove the judgment, guilt, or shame, it will allow for a better experience.

The reality is that when you’re eating and you’re stressed, food will do completely different things in your body; even if you’re eating the perfect meal.

This could be why the perfect meal bloats you.

This could be why the perfect meal doesn’t give you energy.

This could be why you’ve developed what you think are sensitivities to foods.

We blame sensitivities on our microbiome, but I’m here to tell you that your microbiome is brilliant, and very strong, and is actually quite resilient.

Fun fact: your gut lining sheds every three days—every three days you have a brand new gut lining.

But when you have chronic stress or a poor relationship to food, your gut doesn’t get the opportunity to be strong, abundant, and capable of doing what its supposed to do.

Our cells and nervous systems have evolved to handle stress in the moment and then feel safe again, but we now have constant stressors that keep us in a low grade stressed state most of the day.

When we start to address that stress, when we start to address the environments we’re in while eating, when we start to address our mental/emotional state when we go to make a health choice, so many aspects of health change.

Food for thought. 🤓

Ahhh, movement snacks. The concept that gave me freedom, flexibility, and permission to be less regimented and perfect with exercise.

Many moons ago, I would wake up to an alarm, drive in traffic for 30 minutes gulping coffee while trying to wake up, enter a building with the most blinding LED lights, and punch at kickboxing bags for 30 minutes.

On days I wasn’t doing HIIT kickboxing classes, I would go for long walks or do long yoga sessions in my living room.

There were very few rest days. I was committed.

But, I was also in a lot of fear.

Fearful thoughts about weight gain, metabolic health, or being less healthy often flooded my brain if I missed a day of exercise, or gosh forbid, if my body was begging for a rest day.

Eventually, the more I learned about nervous system regulation, correcting thyroid/adrenal imbalance, and the power of rest & stillness, I finally slowed down.

Read more

Many of my clients find an eating style that promises weight loss, a cure to their hormonal imbalance, an individualized plan from their personal trainer, or try to follow the plan that helped their best friend drop that stubborn weight.

Many of my clients believe if they can just count, restrict, grit their way through nutrition changes, their health surely has to change.

But the reality is, very few of my clients have been able to stick to a strict eating style or nutrition plan long term.

After working with thousands of clients on their health I have observed many patterns.

Patterns of those who continue to struggle.

Patterns of those who “fall off and fall on again.”

And also, patterns of those who achieve success and maintain it.

To achieve success with your nutrition, I have discovered three aspects that you must understand:

1. What a balanced plate that doesn’t feel restrictive looks like.

2. How foods impact your biochemistry. Aka, eating based on your health history.

3. Your emotional connection to food.

And I’m going to unpack that all here.

BALANCED PLATE 101

Unless you are managing a specific, acute condition (like SIBO, insulin resistance, or autoimmune flares), building a balanced plate is actually quite simple. If you are dealing with a targeted health issue, drop a comment below—I’d love to help guide you!

To build a balanced, restriction-free plate, just remember PFNC with every meal.

PFNC = protein, fat, nature’s carbs.

Protein: (ideally organic, grass fed, wild caught, free range, pastured): chicken, turkey, lamb, beef, pork, game, eggs, cold water small fish (sardines, salmon, mackerel, anchovies, herring), shell fish, raw milk aged cheeses, goat’s and sheep’s cheese, full fat plain yogurt, Greek yogurt, kefir, protein powder.

Fat: handful of raw nuts (almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts, macadamia, pecans, pine nuts, pistachio, walnuts), raw seeds (chia, flax, hemp, poppy, sesame, pumpkin, sunflower), olives and extra virgin olive oil, coconut, coconut milk and oil, avocado, organic grass fed butter, ghee, and fish.

Nature’s Carbs: carrots, turnip, pumpkin, sweet potato, acorn and butternut squash, beets, all beans and lentils, grains, berries, apple, citrus fruits.

Once you have PFNC down, add in as many non-starchy veggies as your heart desires and gut can tolerate! 😜

Non-starchy veggies fight disease, provide the gut with lots of prebiotic fiber, contain tons of vitamins & minerals, and fuel your cells with energy.

Non-Starchy Vegetables: arugula, asparagus, artichokes, beet greens, bell peppers, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, cucumber, fennel, garlic, ginger, green beans, herbs, kale, leeks, lettuce, mushrooms, onions, okra, parsley, radishes, sea vegetables, spinach, sprouts, spaghetti squash, spices, tomatoes, watercress and don’t forget fermented vegetables!

PFNC + non-starchy veggies will keep you full, satisfied, and does not restrict any vital food groups.

Other balanced plate approaches:

If you’d rather count macros, cool. Here’s where I would start:

20-25 gram net carb (total carb minus fiber = net carbs)

25-35 gram protein

20-30 gram fat

If you don’t want to count macros, but want help knowing what portions may look like, here’s where I would start:

1/2 cup carbohydrates, 2-3 times/day

Protein, size of palm (size of hand if trying to build muscle or very active) with every meal

1-2 TBSP of healthy fat with every meal

FOODS AND YOUR SPECIFIC BIOCHEMISTRY

Your body is chemistry and food is a chemistry experiment.

Increase carbs, increase the work of your pancreas.

Increase fat, increase the work of your liver, gallbladder/bile.

Increase protein, increase the work of your stomach acid production.

Increase fiber, increase the work of your microbiome.

History of insulin resistance? An increase in carbs will make your body work harder.

History of fatty liver or liver imbalance? An increase in fats will make your body work harder.

History of gut issues? An increase in protein will make your body work harder.

History of SIBO? An increase in fiber will make your body work harder.

History of high cortisol? An increase in nature’s carbs will help lower your cortisol.

History of low mood? An increase in healthy fats will support your brain health.

History of low energy? An increase in B vitamins from meat/animal products will support your energy.

Other under-looked dietary considerations:

-sulfur intolerance

-ammonia issues

-SIFO

-stagnant bile

-low vagal nerve function

-dry mouth or not enough saliva production

Understanding how food impacts your individual body chemistry is key at succeeding in a diet that feels good in your body.

Use your health history + your current health goals to make tweaks to your balanced plate.

For example, if you have a health history of insulin resistance and want to build muscle, lower your carbohydrates to 1/4 cup per meal and increase protein to the size of your hand.

Tell me a bit about your journey and what you want to achieve next for your health in the comments. ♥️

PS: even if you have a specific history it does NOT mean you have to follow a specific eating style forever. My goal as a nutritionist is to get everyone to be able to eat a balanced plate with no issues.

EMOTIONAL CONNECTION TO FOOD

Eating is an emotional experience.

The moment you see food, think about food, or taste food, your brain lights up.

Your brain’s reward center releases dopamine—giving you feelings of pleasure and motivation.

Your brain’s reward center releases serotonin—giving you feelings of calm and a reduction in anxiety.

Your brain’s reward center releases oxytocin—giving you feelings of satisfaction, love, and comfort.

Once you begin chewing, the taste and texture of food light up your brain’s cortex while your hypothalamus and your gut-brain axis send and relay signals of safety and fullness.

Before you even swallow your food, the sight, the smell, and the texture of the food actives your amygdala and hippocampus.

Your amygdala is your fear center—it processes emotions and memories, and is designed to keep you safe.

Your hippocampus links your emotions and memories—keeping you emotionally attached to certain foods.

When the food hits your tongue, specialized taste receptors send signals to your brain. If the food is high in fat or sugar, signals are sent to your reward system and your brain gets flooded with dopamine. A big hit in dopamine will reinforce this food choice (making you want to turn back for more and more and more!) and create a feeling of satisfaction.

When the food hits your microbiome, the microbes in your gut communicate directly with your brain, further influencing how that food impacts your mood.

Eating is an emotional experience and emotional eating is naturally inborn in us.

Emotional eating begins the moment you are born.

The very first form of love you got from your mother was food—her milk.

This response is further ingrained in you as a baby. Anytime you cried, moments later, your mother was there to feed you. You stopped crying. You became soothed and happy.

Emotional eating is ingrained in your DNA.

We have this notion that we feel bad, we eat food, we feel better. And this works. For several reasons.

First, there is a cascade of feel good neurochemicals released throughout the entire process of eating.

Second, this is an emotional pattern we’ve used for soothing and comfort since the moment we were born.

Third, certain foods elicit a feel good response equivalent to the feel good response from morphine and opioids.

When we consume gluten, dairy, and soy the food molecules become degraded into peptides through the digestive process. These peptides mimic the effects of morphine and opioids.

This means that eating gluten, dairy, and soy can trigger feelings of euphoria and relaxation. This also means that gluten, dairy, and soy can become highly addictive for some, leading to overeating, uncontrolled emotional eating, and intense food noise.

To make matters worse, if you have any sort of intestinal inflammation, the relaxation and euphoria from gluten, dairy, and soy are short-term. This is because undigested molecules (from an inflamed gut) can leak into your bloodstream, cross your blood-brain barrier, and cause brain fog, mood swings, anxiety, and depression.

Not only do these foods make it easier to emotionally eat and to overeat, these foods can also worsen inflammation, impact your hormones, and increase joint pain and weight gain.

More to come on this later. I will write a separate article about how to have your cake and eat it too (gluten and dairy version). 😜

There is nothing wrong with emotional eating—we are emotional beings.

And food gives us an instant emotional release.

Emotional eating only becomes problematic when eating is your only emotional regulating activity.

It’s problematic when you have no other way to express your emotions.

The first step in gaining control of emotionally eating is to ask yourself “what else can I do to manage, regulate or be with my emotions?”

This is going to be something you need to find for yourself, as it has to work for you, but some suggestions may be:

• go for a walk

• journal

• call a loved one

• watch something motivational/inspiring

• listen to music

• read a book that brings you joy

• take a bath

• prayer

• ask for help

These can be done the moment a strong emotion hits, which may prevent emotional eating later in the day, or these can be done when you get the urge to emotionally eat.

Most of the time when you turn to food when you’re not truly hungry or when you turn to foods you know aren’t the healthiest, you are looking for comfort.

Ask yourself, “where can I get the feeling and sensation of comfort without food?”

Turning to food for comfort is ingrained in your DNA and it is a very strong, hard habit to break.

Most of the time, it’s an unconscious behavior and most of us do it without hardly even recognizing it until we’re done eating.

It’s not like we wake up each day and say “I can’t wait to emotionally eat or over-eat later.”

In order to change an unconscious habit, you have to consciously start recognizing it and making steps towards changing it.

Consider writing a list of all of the other things that make you feel good. Think of all of the people, places, or things (besides food) that bring you comfort and joy.

Once you make your list, consider that your menu of things you can do besides turn to food.

Here’s another tip: when you’re about to open the fridge or open the pantry, take a mental inventory of how you’re feeling in that moment.

Are you sad, angry, depressed, tired, or are you truly hungry?

• If you’re truly hungry, eat!

• If you’re sad, maybe you need a hug or need to listen to music.

• If you’re angry, maybe you need a walk.

• If you’re depressed or tired, maybe you need a nap or to take a break.

I’ve personally caught myself many times eating so quickly that I don’t even hardly taste the food, let alone enjoy it.

It’s like I’ve lost control and I just eat and eat and eat. Can you relate?

The reason for this is because certain foods literally highjack your brain, making it near impossible to close up the bag of chips or stop at just one cookie.

This is why being in a good mental spot before eating, being mindful while eating, and eating slowly dramatically helps with portion control and being able to recognize when you should exit the kitchen.

When you emotionally eat, food is not the problem. Food is actually the solution to the problem.

Your emotional problem comes first, and then you use food to soothe.

If you are an emotional eater, can you identify what that problem is before you turn to food?

Please know, you are not your emotions—you are the observer and the feeler of your emotions.

Emotions don’t have to control your behaviors.

Emotions don’t have to cause you to overeat.

Emotions can feel very uncomfortable at times, so we try to stuff them down by turning to things like food or other unhealthy behaviors.

So when these emotions come up, what else can you do?

Finding what works for you is key.

If you’re thinking that all you need is more willpower, that’s simply not true.

You don’t need more willpower, you just need a new perspective and new tools for when the emotions come up.

If this is something you truly want to change about your health, take some time to journal and ask yourself these questions below:

• “how is emotional eating a great teacher for me?”

• “how is emotional eating asking me to grow?”

• “how is emotional eating serving me?”

There is always a reason you are doing something you don’t want to be doing.

The hard part is finding the why.

Maybe you need to look at the relationships in your life.

Maybe you need to look at how purposeful you feel your life is.

Maybe you need to find more pleasure, joy, and happiness.

Do you have enough intimacy?

Are all of your human needs being met?

Are you being true to yourself?

These are the questions that can be painful to admit, uncomfortable to address, or scary to change.

But on the other side of addressing these questions is food freedom and a better relationship to food.

Let me know how I can support you in this journey. ♥️

I was reading an article in People magazine about how lycopene in tomatoes can naturally protect you against the sun. It was like internal sunscreen.

The article then went on to say to eat your tomatoes with avocado because it boosts the absorption of lycopene by 4x the amount compared to eating tomatoes alone.

My mind was blown.

Wait, you’re telling me food protects us from the inside out and when you eat certain foods together the health benefits expand?! 🤯🤯

From that point on I became more conscious.

From that point on I only ate salsa with guacamole and Tostitos. 😜

Baby steps, people.

The second big nutrition leap I made was adding frozen veggies to my ramen noodles.

Once I got that down, I decided to make Ramen even healthier by removing the seasoning packet, and added olive oil + my own seasonings instead.

From that point on, I have become a sponge to all things nutrition.

I have become fascinated in learning how food impacts the body, the “best” way to eat, eating to beat disease, where our food comes from, and most importantly, the incredible role between the mind, our emotions, and food.

What started as simply combining guacamole & salsa and adding frozen food to ramen noodles eventually turned into trying all sorts of nutritional changes —“diets” I guess you could say.

I’ve eaten Mediterranean, paleo, Whole 30, grain free, autoimmune paleo, medical medium heavy metal cleanse, carnivore, vegetarian, low sulfur, oxalate free, high fat low carb, high protein, adrenal reset, candida cleansing, the blood type diet, parasite cleansing, and have done several food intolerance tests followed by a strict food elimination diet.

Only one of these lasted for more than a month (can you take a guess which one? comment below!).

Several only lasted a week.

Each time I tried a new eating style, it was the same pattern.

The pattern:

Curiosity, excitement, determination, grit, “maybe I see some changes”, “oh f*^k it no one else eats this way why should I?”, “wow I suck.”

Can anyone else relate?

Very few of my clients have been able to stick to a strict eating style long term.

That is, until they learn 3 things:

1. What a balanced plate that doesn’t feel restrictive looks like.

2. How foods impact their biochemistry. Aka, eating based on their health history.

3. Their emotional connection to food.

There can a lot of nuance in these 3 buckets.

And it can also be simple.

I’m going to break it down simply for you.

Stay tuned for part ✌🏼.

“Don’t eat this, eat that!”

“Eggs are great for cholesterol; eggs are bad for cholesterol.”

“You need carbs; carbs cause metabolic issues.”

Nutrition is one of the newer studied sciences, and human nutrition studies are extremely challenging because human habits are hard to control and everyone’s biology is a little different.

I often joke that I left graduate school (where I studied human nutrition) more confused than when I came in.

All joking aside, if I can get frustrated with the ever changing dietary thoughts and fads, I can only imagine how most people feel.

After working with clients for more than a decade, along with my passion to continue to learn as much as I possibly can about how food affects the human body, I have made some confident conclusions.

When it comes to weight loss, I have seen some people lose weight when adding carbs, and some people lose weight when lowering/eliminating carbs.

I have seen some people lose weight when adding protein, and some people lose weight when lowering protein.

I have seen some people lose weight when adding fat, and some people lose weight when lowering fat.

Finding the right macronutrient balance requires a deep understanding of your health goals, health history, and current lifestyle.

I believe this is why there is so much nuance with macros and macro counting — there is a lot to consider and most people don’t know how to put those puzzle pieces together. You can’t just plug into a calculator how much weight you want to lose and have AI tell you how many calories, carbs, fat, and protein to eat.

Health is not a+b=c.

Health is not a calculator.

Health is an active, ongoing assessment of the environments around you, an acknowledgement of the season of life you’re in, and a continued curiosity for what your body is trying to tell you.

Health is every changing and ever evolving, which is exactly why your nutrition requirements need to change and evolve.

No matter what season of life you’re in there is a nutrition concept that is often overlooked when it comes to weight loss:

Read more

If you want your fat cells to shrink, your cells need a healthy and balanced environment — not just for detoxification to occur, but also for the cells to feel supported enough to release any excess.

A healthy cellular environment requires toxins to be able to flow in and out of your cells, cell membranes, and detoxification pathways.

I like to think of effective detoxification and healthy environments in terms of steps.

• Step one: avoid/reduce exposure to toxins.

• Step two: open up and allow detox pathways to drain and flow.

• Step three: provoke toxins out of stored tissue/cells.

Not everyone needs all three steps for weight loss to occur, but steps one and two are critical for losing and maintaining weight loss.

Step one in effective detoxing is avoiding/reducing your exposure to toxins.

If you continue to be exposed to a high level of toxins on a regular basis, your body won’t be able to get those toxins out faster than they are coming in.

There are five areas where you get the most toxin exposures:

1. Water (filter drinking and bathing water).

2. Air (get outside often, open the windows, add plants to each room, air filters).

3. Food (among the most toxic are food dyes/colors, artificial sweeteners, high fructose corn syrup, glyphosate.

4. What you’re putting on your body (beauty products, make-up, lotions).

5. What you are cleaning with and breathing in.

Examine each of these areas first to reduce your daily exposure as much as possible.

Step two in effective detoxing is allowing for drainage.

Healthy drainage and opening up your drainage pathways allow for toxins to be eliminated properly.

When toxins can’t be removed properly from your drainage pathways they get stored in your fat cells.

Extra storage in fat cells is extra padding/extra weight.

A major part in weight loss is opening up and allowing drainage and detox pathways to work the way they are intended to work.

The main drainage pathways are the liver, gallbladder/bile, kidneys, gut, lymph, and lungs.

Supporting each of these pathways every single day is not as hard as it may seem.

Supporting each of these pathways every single day boils down to the detox foundations.

Detox Foundations 101

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I attended my very first retreat this weekend.

Not only did I attend it, I helped run it and speak at it too. 😜

It was such an incredible experience that I am still floating between the reality of being at the retreat and the reality of being home.

There were so many insights, realizations, healings, and moments of growth.

The ability to connect with community, to feel the love and support in each conversation, and the oxytocin from every hug was unlike any other experience I’ve ever had.

75 beautiful souls cheering each other on as we shared, cried, and showed our gratitude for each other.

75 beautiful souls cheering me on.

Not only had I never been to a retreat, I had never spoken on stage before.

I speak on zoom a lot, but that is so different.

On zoom, I’m speaking to my computer. I can see people, but they are in little boxes. I can feel people’s energetic state, but not nearly as strong as in person.

Speaking on stage is a whole new ball game. It requires a different set of skills, practice, and preparation.

Speaking on stage for the very first time reminded me of how we all start somewhere.

Whether that’s a new career, health habit, or life experience, we all have to start somewhere.

Success doesn’t just happen over night.

It requires practice and discomfort.

It requires learning and leaning in to the unknown.

It requires curiosity for what may go “wrong” and all of the things that could go “right.”

Speaking on stage showed me how we all have to start somewhere.

If you are trying to lose weight, overcoming a health diagnosis, or just trying to live a healthier life, you have to start somewhere.

Don’t let perfection stop you.

Don’t allow the thoughts of limiting beliefs derail you.

If you really want something in life, you simply have to start somewhere.

Retreat Takeaways:

1. It’s okay to feel scared, nervous, fearful. We all get these emotions — you are not alone or abnormal when you feel this way. Feel them fully. We can’t feel the “good” emotions if we can’t feel the uncomfortable ones.

2. It often feels scary because it’s new. The unknown can feel quite uncomfortable and it’s only because you haven’t built a neural pathway for it yet. Once the pathway has been paved, it grows with exposure. Embrace the new knowing you are growing in the best way possible.

3. Lean into support. If other’s believe in you more than you believe in yourself, that’s okay. Lean into their beliefs while you build and strengthen your own.

4. You can do hard things. Whether you believe you can or believe you can’t — you’re right. Believe that you can do hard things.

5. If you’re too nervous to eat, have a little protein. The amino acids will help your brain and blood sugar.

6. Feel proud of any progress! Feeling proud impacts your brain by activating reward and motivation pathways. It does this by releasing specific neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. Feeling proud helps to keep you focused, motivated, and emotionally resilient. Feeling proud has also been associated with lower cortisol levels — this reduces your stress and gives you a sense of calm confidence.

Why does this matter? Because changing your brain chemistry around any health or behavior change is how you continue to experience healthy living.

This is how you continue to make your wellness a priority.

This is how you pave and deepen a neural pathway for this lifestyle.

Once you decide your health is a priority, that you are worth it, and that you are proud of yourself for any and all steps in the right direction, your brain chemistry shifts.

When your brain chemistry shifts, you begin to eat like you love yourself, talk to yourself like you are your own best friend, and move your body feeling so grateful you have the ability to move. This is health.

Health isn’t how much weight you lose, how many hours you sleep at night, or how many steps you take in a day.

Health is feeling good in your body and feeling proud to live in your body.

Excess cortisol stimulates fat cell production and fat cell growth. Enough said.

Cortisol is one of our stress hormones that the adrenal glands make in response to stress. Your adrenals produce cortisol from physical stress, mental stress, emotional stress, and even perceived stress — the stress our brains make up (worrying, overthinking, overanalyzing).

Cortisol often gets a bad rap, but having healthy levels of cortisol at the right time of the day helps with energy, focus, blood sugars, immunity, inflammation, mood, metabolism and motivation.

Cortisol is not the enemy here; but having too much or too little cortisol at the wrong times of the day can lead to:

• low energy

• anxiety

• depression

• salt and/or sugar cravings

• low libido

• weight gain

• belly fat

You have 2-4x more cortisol receptor sites in your belly. This means that when cortisol rises above a healthy level and your body can’t use or doesn’t need the excess cortisol, excess cortisol signals fat storage in your belly.

The fat around your belly is very sensitive to cortisol. So when cortisol isn’t cleared or used, fat can accumulate in your abdomen.

Here’s the catch: cortisol causes fat cell creation and fat cell growth WHEN cortisol isn’t needed or excreted.

When does this happen? When there is too much perceived stress and not enough movement.

Movement (walking, shaking, breathing, tapping) helps you use up excess cortisol. I will come back to this.

Another cortisol issue that many people don’t even realize: gut issues.

Within one hour of a cortisol spike, zonulin levels rise.

Zonulin is a protein marker that regulates the intestinal lining in the digestive tract.

Think of zonulin as a “gate keeper” that determines what should be passed from the intestines into the bloodstream.

In an ideal gut world, we’d have nutrients pass through and toxins/waste staying in the intestines to eventually be eliminated through a bowel movement.

A rise in zonulin triggers the tight junctions in the gut to widen in your gut lining aka “leaky gut.”

When this happens, nutrients pass through, and so do toxins, bacteria, and other waste products.

These toxins, bacteria and waste products are what trigger autoimmunity, inflammation, and chronic disease.

This rise in zonulin from a cortisol spike is slowly killing your gut.

So, overtime, with too much stress — perceived stress, mental stress, emotional stress or physical stress, our cortisol patterns can become dysregulated, leading to adrenal imbalance.

When our cortisol patterns are dysregulated for too long, we begin to move through the stages of adrenal imbalance. Identifying what stage you’re in is key to healing your cortisol issues and weight loss resistance.

Stages of adrenal imbalance:

1. Stage 1 is alarm — there is an ongoing acute stressor (stressful job, taking care of sick family member). In this stage there are elevated cortisol and adrenaline spikes across the board (think anxiety, mind racing, trouble sleeping, high blood pressure).

2. Stage 2 is resistance & struggling to adapt — this is when we’re still experiencing stress and by this time it is turning into chronic stress. Your body has remained on high alert for several weeks, months, or years and cortisol levels begin to fluctuate to unhealthy levels at various times of the day. This is where they may be high at night, low during day; or high in the morning and crash in the afternoon. Common symptoms here are: fatigue (especially in the morning or that afternoon slump), weight gain in the belly, irritability, needing caffeine or sugar to function, sugar/salt cravings.

3. Stage 3 is exhaustion/burn out. The adrenals are tired - they can’t produce enough cortisol to meet demands and cortisol production tanks. Common symptoms here are: chronic fatigue, burnout, depression, insomnia, getting sick often

   ---

• Stage 1 = high cortisol, anxiety, ”wired” energy

• Stage 2 = irregular cortisol rhythms, causing energy ups and downs.

• Stage 3 = low cortisol levels, causing exhaustion

To recap, cortisol is not the enemy — not being mindful of the natural cortisol rhythm, not understanding which adrenal imbalance stage you’re in, and not being able to recognize when cortisol is spiking versus cortisol being too low is where most people get it wrong.

Testing cortisol is great, but learning to look for the signals/cues your body sends you throughout the day is a game changer when learning how to keep a healthy cortisol rhythm.

And to do this, there are two distinct patterns to look out for: high cortisol and low cortisol.

High Cortisol

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It’s not eat less, move more.

It’s not counting calories.

It’s not even a strict diet or exercise program.

It’s quite simple when you break it down.

As women, when we have an excess of weight, we have simply have excess in our lives.

It may be from:

-excess sugar

-excess hormones (or hormone metabolites)

-excess stress

-excess trauma

-excess toxins

-excess food

-excess thoughts

-excess stored emotions

Or maybe even a combination of these.

When wanting to lose weight, you need to ask yourself, “where do I have excess?”

Easier said than done, right?

The excess part is actually pretty easy to wrap your head around, but there is another major aspect to weight loss that most people don’t know or even consider.

It’s the emotional side. The spiritual side. The energetic side.

It’s understanding on a deep level how to honor and embrace your natural rhythm as a woman.

It’s understanding how to stand strong in your authenticity and values.

It’s understanding how the environments you put yourself in dramatically affect you on all levels — physical, mental, emotional.

It’s understanding that when you’re stuck in your head and out of your body, you are not grounded or stable enough to release excess weight.

This is the side that most people miss.

Your lifestyle dramatically affects your weight, and so does the side that many of us are not willing to confront.

Sustainable weight loss needs to be addressed physically, emotionally, energetically, and spiritually.

There are 8 foundational principles to sustainable weight loss that I’m going to unpack here.

Join me for a weight loss series you’ve likely never even heard before.

Because the moment she believes there is such a thing is the moment she believes she is failing.

There is no such thing as perfect health.

Striving for perfect health will inevitably trigger a desire for control, self blame when things go wrong, and create so much unnecessary stress.

Instead, I will teach her how to put her health first and be curious about symptoms as they show up, and aiming for perfection will get her nowhere.

I will teach her that she will feel strong, confident, and vibrant when she eats well, moves her body, and takes care of herself.

I will teach her that it’s not always easy prioritizing health in this crazy world we live in — a world that allows chemicals in our water/food/air and prioritizes convenience over wellness, but without health, she has nothing.

I will teach her that she will need to practice healthy living every single day if she wants to feel her best.

But I will teach her that perfection doesn’t exist.

I will teach her that she doesn’t need to strive, push through, or try so hard all the time.

I will teach her that her body knows how to heal, she just needs to let it with the right tools (full article here!).

I will teach her that the environments she puts herself in are what dictate how well her body will stay balanced (full article here!).

I will teach her that the path to healing is within and she doesn’t need to follow fads, influencers, or trends that everyone else are doing.

I will teach her what her beautiful body is trying to communicate with her at any given moment:

• That her that fatigue is showing her to slow down, rest more, and remove what’s depleting her mind, body, and spirit.

• That her that her skin is showing what her gut is doing and what she’s putting in her mouth has a direct impact on the health of her skin.

• That her that her moods are showing her how well her body is using the fuel she’s eating and better fuel equals a better mood.

• That her that her happiness is dependent on if she’s following her passions, being true and authentic to herself, and using her voice.

I will teach her how to move her body in a way that feels good and makes her grateful for living in a body that can move, rather than moving for punishment or a desire to fit in society’s image of ideal.

I will teach her how to allow big feelings to come up, sit with them without judgment, and talk about them to allow proper processing.

I will teach her what I never got taught about health — the blueprint of healthy living.

I will teach her how to fight for herself & her health because without health, she has nothing.

Above all, I will teach her how to unconditionally love the body she’s living in.

And through teaching her, I will remind myself too. ♥️

Do you have a focus for your health right now?

Not a health goal, but a focus.

You should have a health goal (or goals!) too, but your focus is what’s going to move you closer to your goal.

The way to stay consistent with your health without overwhelming yourself or doing too much is to have an intentional focus.

One main focus. Not several. One.

There might be a few things you do to maintain your focus, but your focus should be your anchor. The one thing you are focusing on until you see your health shift to the health you desire.

Your focus should be what keeps you prioritizing your health and keeps you working towards your goal.

Your focus can and should change depending on what season of life you are in.

Your focus should ebb and flow because your brilliant body will respond to your focus, adapt/heal/get back into balance, and will then be ready for a new focus.

Here’s where I see most people getting it wrong:

1. They don’t have a clear focus or understand the “why" and “how” of their focus.

2. They don’t give their focus enough time to work or switch focus too often.

3. They don’t switch up their focus once it’s time.

I know numbers two and three sound counterintuitive, but there’s an art to choosing your focus, sticking to your focus, and knowing when it’s time to ebb and flow out of that focus.

This is exactly why health fads come and go.

This is exactly why a health fad may have worked for you at one point and then stops working.

Fads are new, exciting, and catch attention.

Fads work because fads force you into doing something different, and it’s the action of doing something different that causes your body to react and change.

But fads only work for so long.

It’s not that fads aren’t helpful or sometimes necessary for healing, it’s just that fads are simply a tool. I wish that we could look at health fads like tools in a toolbox, rather than an end all be all.

The reality is, fads exist because what it takes to stay healthy is boring — we’ve all heard it before.

Yes, science changes, technology advances, new supplements and biohacks are constantly popping up, but when you truly think about it, fads always fall under one of the core health foundations.

These core foundations to health are things that everyone can agree on — hydration, movement, healthy eating, keeping stress low, prioritizing sleep, and reducing inflammation.

The nuance is in the application — the where, when, and for how long. The nuance is where people get stuck.

To help you uncover the nuance with these health foundations, I want you to first think about each of these foundations as a toolbox.

In each foundational toolbox there are different tools, and the tools you use for your health will change depending on what your body needs in that moment.

For example, let’s break down the healthy eating toolbox.

• One tool is low carb eating.

• One tool is high protein eating.

• One tool is animal based/carnivore eating.

• One tool is plant based eating.

• One tool is no carbs at breakfast, carbs at lunch and dinner.

• One tool is carbs at breakfast, no carbs at dinner.

• One tool is aiming for 25-35 grams of fiber per day.

• One tool is eating a balanced plate of protein, fat, and nature’s carbs.

All of these tools work in certain situations.

Low carb eating is great for those who have metabolic issues or cognitive decline.

High protein eating is great for those trying to build muscle and improve insulin sensitivity.

Animal based & carnivore eating are great for those with autoimmunity in a flare or if needing to drop quick weight.

Adjusting the timing of carbs is great for energy, sleep, and weight loss.

25-35 grams of fiber per day is great for those with constipation or hormonal imbalance (especially estrogen dominance) and producing your own GLP-1 hormone.

A balanced plate is great for maintaining balanced nutrition and eating.

None of these eating styles are “right” or “wrong.” These eating styles just fit in at different times of the month, year, or season of life you’re in.

The nuance here is knowing how to adjust your eating style (your tools) depending on your goals and current life situations.

The nuance is understanding that as women, we need rhythm, flexibility, and flow.

The moment something becomes rigid, we lose the ability to maintain.

The moment something becomes “all or nothing” we lose flexibility and flow.

The moment something becomes fixed, we lose our natural rhythm.

So how do we honor rhythm, flexibility, and flow?

We adjust. We shift. We make tweaks.

The moment something doesn’t feel right anymore, I give you permission to pivot.

I give you permission to change course, try something new, or go back to something that worked in the past.

If something you’re currently doing is working, great. Don’t change quite yet. Take that as a sign that you’re using the right tools in your toolbox.

If you’re feeling stuck, you just need a different tool or an entirely different toolbox (health foundation).

Let’s have a discussion — comment below what your current health focus is.

Let me help you build your toolbox. ♥️

I had been going down to just one breastfeeding session per day (none at night, which was the main time of day I was nursing) and my hormones were feeling it.

I was snappy, not handling stress well, and feeling burnt out.

It’d be easy to blame my hormones, but that’s not fair.

You see, the postpartum experience is perfectly designed.

Yes, you lose sleep.

Yes, your identity changes.

Yes, brain cells are pruned away to make you a better mom.

Yes, your life dramatically changes.

And so does your brain. So do your hormones.

The incredible wonder to the postpartum Supermom all boils down to one hormone: oxytocin.

Oxytocin is a key driver in breastfeeding and milk flow, but it does so much more than that.

Oxytocin is a critical neurotransmitter and hormone that we all need in daily life.

Oxytocin helps us feel socially connected, bonded, builds trust in relationships, strengthens empathy, and even helps reduce stress and stress hormones.

Oxytocin has the ability to override feelings of loneliness, fatigue, and anxiety all because it induces such a high emotional state of love, whether or not you are breastfeeding. However, if you do breastfeed, your levels of oxytocin are dramatically higher than any other point (besides during and right after birth).

By fostering deep emotional connection, oxytocin is a natural buffer to the intense physical, mental, and emotional changes after having a baby.

The night I completely stopped breastfeeding, my main oxytocin source for two years, two months, and two weeks was gone. Or so I thought — more on this to come.

The night I completely stopped breastfeeding was one of those nights where sleep was restless. Every little thing woke me up.

After several wake ups that night, I reached a point I felt wide awake.

I thought, “this is actually nice - I’ll go downstairs, get some alone time, and start work for the day.”

I turned on my phone as I was getting out of bed.

It was 3 am. Three o’clock in the freaking morning.

All I could think was, “Cortisol. Thank you, cortisol.”

I don’t normally have cortisol waking me up at 3 am, but with weaning and a busy work schedule, that night, I did.

My body was adjusting to the hormonal shifts. My mind wasn’t.

When you stop breastfeeding, oxytocin levels rapidly drop, causing a hormonal crash. This hormonal crash can lead to sadness, anxiety, mood swings, and increased stress hormones like cortisol.

If you’re in perimenopause or have gone through menopause before, this might sound a bit familiar.

In perimenopause, estrogen and progesterone levels are on a rollercoaster — up for a few days, crashing down the next. This rollercoaster of hormones can lead to sadness, anxiety, mood swings, and increased stress hormones.

In menopause, hormones levels have declined to levels so low you don’t even recognize yourself anymore. This decline can lead to sadness, anxiety, mood swings, and increased stress hormones.

But here’s the thing, we have a buffer hormone. If we can only remember and intentionally seek out the buffer, hormonal fluctuations won’t be so intense.

And in that moment that night where sleep seemed to escape me, I remembered.

I remembered I can get that buffer elsewhere.

I remembered I have the power to change my thoughts, my perspective, my feelings, and my emotions.

In that moment my mantra became “protect your peace, Paige.”

My thoughts of all the to-dos slowly turned to thoughts of pure love — I wish my daughter could see/feel/understand what I was thinking and feeling at that exact moment.

My heart swelled with thoughts of her smile when she wake ups and sees me every morning.

My anxieties of all the to-do’s turned into thoughts of her running towards me as I open the office door after I’m done working.

My frustrations of not being able to sleep turned to thoughts of her saying “mama up” as she reaches her arms towards me every day.

In that moment I pulled her closer, kissed her head, breathed her in, and thought, “I will want this back someday.”

It’s easy to get frustrated, angry, and upset when you don’t sleep and cortisol is waking you up far too early.

But there’s beauty in it too.

For me, it was a chance to reframe, shift perspective, and enjoy snuggles that will be long gone before I know it.

For you, it may be a chance to hear what your subconscious is desperately trying to tell you.

It may also be a whisper (okay, a scream) from your hormones begging for you to shift your lifestyle in this new season of life.

When sleep seems to escape you, dig deeper. Refrain from sleeping aids, blaming your hormones, or distracting yourself with a book or watching TV.

Allow the uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, and realizations hit you. You can learn a lot from them.

Maybe you need to have the tough conversations you’ve been wanting to have, maybe you need to put up stronger boundaries (and actually stick to them!), and maybe you need to reassess what needs to change in your lifestyle.

Sleep disturbance with hormonal changes is common, but it is not normal.

Sleep disturbance with hormonal changes can be corrected. You are not doomed.

And here’s how you heal your hormones:

Read more

Every morning before I jump out of bed I ask myself, “what do you need today?”

“What do you need to shift to move you closer to who & how you want to show up in this world?”

I ask myself, “Are you feeling rejuvenated?” And if the answer is no I ask, “what will nourish or support you today?”

PS: If you’ve never asked yourself these questions, please start. I credit the introspection and powerful questions I reflect on every day to be what has maintained my joy, happiness, and health despite what life throws at me.

So as I was meditating with my body this morning, I felt called to surrender.

I’m going to be transparent with something I’ve been personally struggling with lately.

With a history of chronic fatigue syndrome, hypothyroidism, adrenal burnout and HPA axis dysfunction, fatigue is something I’ve been all too familiar with.

Before I got pregnant with my daughter, I felt like I had the fatigue puzzle all figured out. If I only did x, y, z and kept up with all of my health habits and high quality supplements, fatigue no longer had a grip on me. I even considered myself an adrenal & fatigue expert by that time due to my history.

Fast forward to a few weeks after having my daughter.

Fatigue started to creep its ugly head back in.

It was so easy to brush it off and say “Oh, it’s just postpartum. It’ll clear up when she starts sleeping better.”

Well guess what, 26 months later and she’s still not sleeping better.

This is a growth and learning that I could write about all on its own, but I’ll stick with fatigue for now.

Want to know the most interesting thing about the lack of sleep and fatigue I feel?

There are several nights where I get a terrible night of sleep, yet feel the burst of vitality, joy, and energy all day long. And there have been several nights where I get “good” sleep and I’m exhausted. Mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted.

It hit me that my lack of sleep has very little, if anything to do with how energetic I feel.

PS: I’m still breastfeeding, which is how I credit the ability to function on a lot less sleep for as long as I have. A woman’s brain changes in pregnancy and while breastfeeding is freaking fascinating.

What I’ve come to realize about how energetic I feel day in and day out is that it is multi-factorial.

It’s tied into how present I am, the expectations I put on myself, if I prioritize stillness, if I ask for help, if I choose nourishing foods, if I seek parasympathetic (especially in the evening), and how much I am performing.

It’s tied into how much I’m trying to perfect.

You see, performance & perfection are tricky ones.

The need to perform and/or be perfect are survival mechanisms ingrained so deeply in us, rewarded by a society who applauds performance, achievements, and success.

You can’t just say, “I’m going to stop performing or aiming for perfection.”

I wish it were that easy.

All of these articles, social media posts, and influencers keep saying “you don’t need to be perfect, you just need to be [fill in the blank].”

I wish it were that easy.

I wish we could just talk our way out of perfection.

I wish we could just decide one day that we no longer need to perform.

The reality is, most of us can’t just do that.

As a recovering perfectionist who had her fatigue all figured out, it was the birth of my daughter that helped rewrite my story, my perceptions, and launched me into a deeper health journey.

I’m still learning, evolving, practicing, and growing, but today I had a veil completely lift around why fatigue is still showing up even though I’m “doing all the things” that I’ve done in the past to override it.

And that’s just it. I’ve been overriding it. I’ve been subconsciously trying to perform and perfect this new season of life called motherhood.

As I was reflecting on subconscious performance (I say subconscious, because I know that I’m no longer consciously trying to perform & perfect), I was seeing all of the areas in my present where I am, in fact, still performing.

I was seeing the roots of my past that taught me to perform & perfect to keep the peace, and get the attention I so desperately wanted.

I was able to feel in my body where I got tight and where it got hard to breathe as these memories were coming up.

I was able to soften, relax, release, and heal my inner child and those deep inner memories.

If you’re new to this concept, this practice starts to rewrite the pattern & change your brain.

This concept starts to bring the unconscious, conscious.

This concept is what heals what we are blind to.

This practice has saved me and my health.

As I was closing out the release work, the last thing I heard and felt deep in my core was the need to surrender.

You see, the release work is incredible. I’m so blessed to understand how to give my body time to reflect & release, but the work doesn’t always end there.

With very deeply rooted beliefs, thought patterns, or traumas, it takes conscious practice and lots of remembering to maintain the release.

And in my case, it’s going to take a lot of surrender.

Here’s the funny thing about life. When you decide you really want something or you want something to change/be different, life will bring you the people, situations, and opportunities to practice and change.

For example, I have found that one of the things that makes me feel like a much better mom, wife, and human being is getting a good 30 minutes alone before everyone else wakes up.

And this morning, as these realizations and words were pouring into me, I so desperately wanted to leave the bedroom and write.

The moment I tried to leave the bed, my daughter woke up needing me. I smiled and thought to myself “surrender, Paige, surrender.” Work can wait. Writing can wait. Your daughter needs you and your presence.

Surrendering feels like tense muscles finally relaxing or a full breath filling your lungs and then slowly releasing. It feels like flow.

Once I got her back down and attempted my escape number two, she woke up again, begging “mama?”

I surrendered again.

And then she was up for the day and once again, I had to surrender.

I surrendered to writing when I was able to, rather than in that moment when the performance and perfection parts of me were begging to show up and perform.

I wasn’t lying when I said it takes conscious practice and remembering.

You can practice surrendering in any area of your life you are feeling stuck, challenged, defeated, or about to give up.

And who knows, maybe the act of surrendering will be what’s needed to make a drastic shift towards who & how you want to show up in the world.

Or maybe surrendering will be what’s needed to give you the health that you so desperately desire.

I was working with a client this week who is struggling with her weight. She’s tried fasting, low carb, exercise, meditations and mindset work to no avail.

Admittedly, I told her to try only fat/protein for breakfast, to eat more & eat more often, and save carbs (healthy carbs) for dinner. I figured she needs to stay low carb during the day, nourish her body, and put carbs in at dinner to help with sleep (yes, this is a sleep tip I give!).

At our next follow up, she was defeated. It didn’t work. Eating fat/protein at breakfast made her more hungry and hungry earlier.

And then she said something so incredibly important.

She almost didn’t say it because she was ashamed.

She told me, “Paige, when I eat a piece of bread with honey, I feel so energetic and I am less hungry.”

I told her she nailed it. I thanked her for being honest. I explained that there is no need to be ashamed of this. I congratulated her for listening to her brilliant body’s incredible signal.

She was someone who simply needed more carbs in this season of life.

She was leery, so I asked her to track her blood sugars to make sure she was responding well to increasing carbs, and the next day I got an email from her.

She was ecstatic.

Her blood sugar response was so good. Her body was loving the carbs.

This is your reminder that when your diet isn’t serving you anymore — surrender. Surrender to what your body is trying to tell you.

When plans change — surrender. Surrender knowing there’s a much deeper reason why.

When you don’t get what you want — surrender. Surrender knowing one door closes so another can open.

Surrender will save your sanity, however, there’s a second part to the surrender experiment.

Stay tuned for part two.

True health comes from learning to listen to your body, and adjusting your habits as your life, seasons, and needs change. Rather than chasing perfection or rigid routines, it’s more important to experiment, stay flexible, and find a personal balance. Ultimately, health is an ongoing journey of self-awareness, not a fixed destination that you eventually arrive at.

If you missed part one, you can read that here.

In part two, I dive deeper into what too much and too little can look like, and how to find the right balance for you.

The topics I chose are foundational — they are the foundations that need to be in place for your body to thrive. This list is not an end all be all, but a starting point.

As you read, mentally assess yourself & your lifestyle. Take notes on what comes up for you. When you’re done reading, look at your list and figure out which area stands out first to work on.

Each topic does not have to be done all at once, and your balance will ebb and flow depending on the season of life you are in.

Use this list as a way to get you back on track when you’re feeling “off,” or simply use this list to assess where you can make some small changes towards your bigger health goal.

Let’s dive in.

Movement:

Sitting is the new smoking. Move that beautiful body of yours!

Too little: increased pain/stiffness, decreased metabolism, detox slows down, fatigue, poor posture.

Too much: inflammation, gut issues, depletion, hormone imbalance.

What does balance look like:

-movement snacks throughout the day (this doesn’t have to be anything crazy either - simply walking around the house for a minute or two counts!).

-intuitive movement versus forced exercise (do you feel like walking even though you planned to go for a run?, do you feel like doing yoga even though you planned for weight training?).

-movement in alignment with your hormones (when estrogen changes, movement needs to change).

Water:

The adult human body is about 60% water - proper hydration is essential.

Too little: you become dehydrated, sluggish, and detox slows down.

Too much: you flush out minerals/electrolytes.

What does balance look like: sipping throughout day, stopping at night so your bladder doesn’t wake you up (I usually stop fluids around 6/7 pm), hydrating earlier in the day because we build up metabolic waste over night.

Food:

Point blank: we are over fed and under nourished. Highly processed foods feed us, but they do not nourish us. In fact, they even deplete your body of vital vitamins and minerals.

Too little: depletion, hormone disruption, fatigue.

Too much: metabolic issues, weight gain.

What balance looks like: balanced plate of protein, fat, and carbohydrates coming from the planet.

Stress:

We are often told to stress less, but what does that even look like? Did you know you can have too little stress too?!

Too little: low resilience, poor stress tolerance.

Too much: nervous system chaos, sleep disturbance, lack of joy/happiness.

What balance looks like (there’s so much to say here, but here’s where I’ll start):

-find times in your day for micro doses of rest/calm/stillness.

-try to catch when stress feelings arise (for me it looks like not handling stress, overthinking, very slight tightness in chest).

-look for signs of nervous system balancing/shifting to know stress hormones are dropping (you yawn, you get hungry, thoughts calm down, muscles relax, you feel like you can breathe again).

-imagine how you feel after a massage or a bath and get as close to that feeling as possible.

Bowel movements:

All health begins in the gut. Bowel movements are a mirror into your gut health.

Too little: constipation; toxins build up; hormone imbalance; if constipated think about sympathetic dominance, dehydration, liver/bile health.

Too much: loose stools; not absorbing nutrients; if loose stools think about microbiome imbalance and food intolerances.

What does balance look like: having a bowel movement every day and a transit time of 12-24 hours.

What is transit time? A bowel transit time measures how long it takes for food to travel from your mouth, through your digestive tract, and out through the stool/bowel movement. If your transit time is less than 12 hours you are at risk of malabsorption and if your transit time is more than 24 hours you are at risk for reabsorbing toxins. Take the at-home transit time test to assess where you are at.

Transit time test: eat 2 TBSP of whole sesame seeds and check the time of when you eat. Watch bowel movements and see when you first see the seeds in your bowel movement. Ideal time should be 12-24 hours later. 😁

Carbs:

Too little: hormone depletion, thyroid imbalance.

Too much: insulin resistance, metabolic issues.

What does balance look like: check blood sugar, check ketones, pay attention to how you feel in your gut after eating, how you sleep, how much energy you have during a workout to see if you’re getting enough carbs.

**this is very nuanced and often requires some coaching or a practitioner/health provider to help you assess here**

Protein:

Too little: low muscle mass, blood sugar imbalance, injured easily + slow recovery.

Too much: digestive issues, sulfur issues (bloat, gas, brain fog), weight gain, blood sugar imbalance.

What does balance look like: check blood sugar, pay attention to how you feel in your gut after eating, assess your recovery.

**this is very nuanced and often requires some coaching or a practitioner/health provider to help you assess here**

Fat:

Too little: hunger, low hormones, low energy.

Too much: sluggish, weight gain, oil in stools/on toilet bowel.

What does balance look like: check blood sugar, check ketones, pay attention to how you feel in your gut after eating.

**this is very nuanced and often requires some coaching or a practitioner/health provider to help you assess here**

Energy:

Too little: tired, need a lot of sleep, rest, and/or healing.

Too much: trouble sleep, mind racing, wired & tired.

What does balance look like: good energy in morning, sleepy at night, no afternoon crash, not needing caffeine/stimulants to get through the day.

Supplements:

Too little: nutrient deficiencies (over 90% of the US population has at least one nutrient deficiency).

Too much: not absorbing what you’re taking, throwing off balance of other vitamins/minerals (too much of one mineral or vitamin can deplete other vitamins/minerals).

What does balance look like: take supplements for 90 days - if you’re still needing a supplement after 90 days, there is a root cause you are missing.

**There is an exception - I recommend daily use of minerals, amino acids, and hydrogen water.

Which category do you need to find more balance in?

Is there another category you want to learn more about?

Questions? Comment below!