Episode 27
Transcript
Welcome back to the Fully Nourished podcast, a place to explore where female physiology and feminine energy dance together to shape our life experience. I'm your host, Jessica Ash, functional nutritionist and integrative health coach and I'm inviting you to journey with me through both the scientific and spiritual facets of what it looks like to awaken our feminine radiance and become deeply and fully nourished despite living in a society that is increasingly desperate to erase our female set-apartness. You ready?
As a reminder, everything in this podcast is for education and inspiration only and is not intended as medical advice. Please talk to the appropriate professional when necessary. And please use common sense before making any changes to your diet and lifestyle.
So today's episode, Episode 27 is a little bit of a q&a/listener write in. I was going through some of the topics and questions that have been submitted over the past couple of months, and just feeling very inspired by some of your feedback and your questions and your inquiries. And I felt so inspired. I was like, I'm gonna make a whole episode out of it. So thank you, I absolutely love your insights. And so we're gonna hit on a variety of different topics like low progesterone, how progesterone impacts body composition, feminine alignment, we will do a little touch on fasting, but I actually have an episode in the works, that's going to the whole thing is going to be about female fasting. So I won't spend too long on that. We're going to talk about nourishment as a gateway, dairy intolerances, healing pounds, realistic fat loss, just a lot of different topics that we'll discuss in probably a way more than that as well.
And if you're thinking to yourself, I did not know that there were listener write-ins; I want to write in. Absolutely do it. The website is down for the next couple of weeks, we're switching the old website to the new website. And I've been working on this, I have to say, I have enjoyed working on this masterclass that I've been working on now for a couple of months, so much. It is a free offering that I just wanted to create a resource where you had something tangible to kind of pull all these ideas together in a very visual way. Because I feel like if you as you start to explore this kind of female physiology and feminine energy, it can feel like this is an endless journey. And there's so many parts to it, that it can almost feel very esoteric or beyond understanding. I just wanted something that will pull some of these ideas together for you. So you can say, Okay, this makes total sense. I have a strong foundation. Now where do I want to move forward from here? So keep an eye out for that masterclass, it's coming out in the next couple of weeks. I'll announce it here on the podcast, it will be announced on Instagram. And it will be also announced on our Sunday email list to our Sunday Tea subscribers. So let's dive into some of these questions.
Women and Fasting
This first topic suggestion or question was, “I know you've talked about this a lot. But I would love an in depth episode on why women do not thrive practicing fasting, honestly, just to send the men in my life who preach it to anyone and everyone, it would just be great to send them a nice Jessica package of info.” That’s really very kind. And I am working on an intermittent fasting episode. It'll come out in the next month or so. But as a short answer to that question, more on the I don't know, just a thoughtful side is, to me it would be the greatest smartest weapon to convince your enemy, that something that makes them weaker is making them stronger. To me, it’s just very interesting how more and more people believe that the less they eat, the healthier they become. Even though we're seeing with our very eyes, their loss of muscle, their loss of youth, you know, I look at some of these, “biohackers” that have been fasting for years. Most of these are men who are in their more middle ages, I would say like late middle age, and you can tell all of them are in testosterone replacement therapy. An easy way to tell is the nasolabial folds of a man when he's on testosterone replacement therapy begin to get very deep very quickly. Now I'm sure you know, that's just kind of a little bit of a trick. Not every man who has deep nasolabial folds is going to be on the juice or taking testosterone replacement. But a lot of these men you can tell have just been taking huge amounts of testosterone replacement. And the interesting thing to me is a lot of them are still very much feminizing, they are starting to look softer. They've lost a lot of muscle.
They've also lost that really great layer of fat in between the skin and the muscle. That layer of fat is really it's subcutaneous fat and when we're in a chronic state of stress, or we're eating our tissues are in a really high catabolic state, we often will break down that subcutaneous fat that's in between our skin. And the muscle that really makes our skin look nice and plump and juicy and healthy. When someone goes through rapid fat loss very quickly, they'll lose that subcutaneous fat as well. And they'll look kind of sallow, or their cheeks will look really sunken in, you've probably seen this on other people that are underweight for their body size, or who have lost a lot of weight very quickly. So this can definitely be a sign of stress for for some people. And so I just find it interesting that in the fasting space, you know, so many of these men who've been doing it for years and years and years are definitely showing signs of stress, even when being on testosterone replacement. And, a lot of them are very transparent about that as well that they take growth hormone and they take testosterone therapy. But to me, it's kind of funny to preach a lifestyle and preach a specific practice. And I don't know if it's cognitive dissonance or what, but to be appearing one way and to have your body pretty much breaking itself down, and to still be a proponent of that thing. And then have people looking at you and being like, yeah, he looks good. He's super healthy, when clearly before your very eyes don't look that healthy.
But it's just funny how our minds can be manipulated to think a certain thing is healthy, that is not healthy. So I think of this a lot, where we've been conditioned to see that if somebody is at a healthy, but what we would consider a healthy body weight or skinny, they are healthy. And so that's the only lens that we're viewing things through. And it's getting us into trouble. I mean, it's gotten us into trouble for decades where we think, okay, if someone is lean, or someone is skinny, they're healthy. I see this a lot in the women who are big proponents of intermittent fasting as well. A lot of them don't look very healthy. Or they look very stressed all the time, very tense. And you can tell their jaws are clenched all the time, you can tell by the voice too, when a woman is under a lot of stress, they kind of get this voice heard, like Hi. Like, there's no animation to their voice, because they're just so burned out that you're just kind of hearing just a kind of straight, very almost monotone voice or just a tone of voice that doesn't have a lot of energy behind it. There's just no more energy to give, because I don't have any. And there's very little like animation and joy on the face, no true warmth, right? It's like the smile doesn't touch the eyes. And you see this a lot. I mean, once you notice it, you can't notice it. So this is something I've been seeing a lot in the health and wellness space. And it just gets worse and worse and worse. Where the passion, the focus, the joy, just there's none of it. It's just all dogma, and all very disordered, to be honest. So that's what I'll say about intermittent fasting right now. But I can't wait to dive into it more of the science behind it, the physiology behind it in a full episode. That's going to be really fun.
Nourishment & Connection to Source
The other part of that question was, “it would be really cool to hear about how the deeper we are nourished, the more in alignment we are with source and well being. And the more we create our reality with ease. That's been my experience. Anyway, I would love your perspective.” I guess this could also be a full episode, and maybe it will at some point. But nourishment to me is the gateway, right? When you start your cellular energy starts to be supported. You’re operating on a completely different energetic level when your cells are actually functioning metabolically. It's a completely different life experience when you have enough progesterone versus when you don't - completely different perspective on your whole life. I mean, this is at least what I have experienced.
And so many women I've worked with and just heard from have experienced where if you don't have enough progesterone, right, and this is something that just I couldn't reach me and I could go down a whole tangent about it, where a lot of women are getting robbed of their progesterone, whether it be through being recommended hormonal birth control, which stops our own innate ovulation and so therefore, we don't produce progesterone or things like you know, full hysterectomy even when they're not needed, or even tubal ligation or getting their tubes tied. You know, women are not being informed at the cost of removing progesterone from their system. And because progesterone in and of itself has that fertility and creativity energy, but it also impacts the metabolism so systemically, right, it affects our blood glucose and our insulin sensitivity, our muscle growth, our adrenal function, our thyroid function, really our cellular metabolic function, it helps with our inflammatory response. We have receptors in our frontal lobe and our eyeballs and our liver and our breasts and our ovaries and our uterus, we get a metabolic stimulatory effect from it every time we enter our luteal phase or every time we ovulate and enter our luteal phase and that corpus luteum is producing us progesterone, there are so many benefits of our physiology on our cellular energy, but are we have to get out of our own way, right?
We can't put something in the way of how physiology is meant to function, which is what's happening. And for so many of us were under fed, right, we're not eating enough of the right macronutrients with the right nutrients, we are having maybe maybe we feel like we're eating enough, you know, we're eating three meals a day, or we're having you know, some meals and snacks, but they're full of food that was very difficult for our body to digest, or absorb, or does not really contain a lot of the nutrients that we are after, you know, making sure we have the calorie density, but the nutrient density as well, not just a protein, carbs and fats, but the nutrients to help us utilize those things. And then on top of it, you add the layers of stress and possibly skipping meals or eating very inconsistently, and you've got a recipe for metabolic dysfunction.
And once you are operating in a low energy state, you know, metabolic dysfunction can be considered a low energy state where your cells are no longer transforming energy at their potential, they're pulling back purposefully because they don't have the resources necessary. You're not properly resourced to live within your cellular potential or your energetic potential. These very real physical phenomenons affect us emotionally and spiritually. And if we're in a constant state of hypervigilance, we're going to be constantly reacting out of a place of fear, out of a place of self preservation, we're not going to be acting in a place of alignment, we're not gonna be able to tune in and say, what feels right to me, what is the right choice? We’re not going to be able to slow down and create enough space to pray or to reach out to our higher power, or we're not going to feel very connected to our experience, right? Because if we're constantly in a state of hyper vigilance, constantly in a state of survival, we are not resourced. We don't have the resources to function metabolically, we're going to be kind of constantly living within the future, where it's just like, oh, no, what's gonna happen, I gotta make a decision so this doesn't happen, or this doesn't happen, constantly being worried or overwhelmed.
Or we're going to be in a place of living in the past, where we're just rehashing our mistakes over and over again, living within certain patterns of behavior that don't work for us anymore. And just constantly operating out of a place of I don't want this to happen again, so I'm gonna make this decision. And so our physiological state or what's going on with our biology absolutely impacts the glasses in which we view life through our perception of life and how we move through life. Can you imagine if you move through life in a way where you physiologically felt in a state of alignment, you didn't have constant anxiety or wake up exhausted from the night before, or your digestive system was just constantly causing discomfort, when we get into a place where we feel much more metabolically healthy, and our cells have the energy to function appropriately? You know, just enough, we are so shocked with how good we can feel because once our body has the energy to bring itself back into balance, there's a lot more harmony taking place.
We are not disassociated from ourselves anymore, which means we can actually really enjoy what's going on not just within our body, but what's going on around us our life experience, we can enjoy the people around us, we feel more connected to God, right, because we can actually stop and smell the roses and look around for a second instead of just constantly moving in one direction. You know, I was sitting in traffic the other day, and I was thinking, I am super fortunate to have to not commute every single day of my life. But I was sitting in commuters traffic. And I was thinking to myself, if I had to sit this every day for like an hour before work and an hour after work, and then go sit at a desk all day, from nine to five. I don't know if I would believe in God. Or I would have a really weak relationship because it would just be so hard to find the magic in life. You know, just looking straight ahead at the car right in front of you. Try not to get hit by motorcycles and just stay alive and avoid the construction. And then going and sitting under fluorescent lighting all day with just you know people that are drudging through their life, no joy, no passion, and then having to again just go back down the freeway staring at the car in front of me.
It would be so difficult and I remember just being like, oh my gosh, this sucks so bad and just looking up and there was this falcon that was flying from tree to tree over the freeway hunting, swooping back down beside the highway. And the sky was so blue and the clouds were just stunningly nice and puffy. No, no chemtrails clouds but actually beautiful, fluffy clouds with a bright blue sky. And it was just like such a different reality. If I just looked up, right, instead of looking at that car in front of me, it just looked up. And I caught so much magic, so much soul. But if you're in a place of anxiety, where you're just oh my gosh, I gotta get to the next place, I gotta get to the next thing, I gotta go, I gotta go. It's so difficult to have the space in your life to just be and to just take in all those around you.
So going back to the question, you know, the deeper we are nourished, the more connected and in alignment we are with source and just our well being. And the more we create our reality with ease, it's absolutely true, we can live in a place of ease, if our physiology is in a place of ease, where everything's working in harmony, right? There's not a ton of dis ease or blockages of energy, whether that'd be very physical, low thyroid function, overactive adrenals, digestive distress, not eating the right things for our physiology, not exercising lots of inflammation, I absolutely believe that dis ease and the discomfort brings us into a place of almost, I guess you could say lower vibration, or you're just feeling you're humming at a much lower level than when you're feeling like you're humming on all cylinders.
And we talked about this in episode three, where metabolism and energy is that deep hum of the body, right? The masculine part of energy is the force behind things, the structure, the order, the life, but the feminine is the is really like the.. I shouldn't say that the masculine is the life, it's the structure, the order, the force, and then the feminine is the life. It's the vibration. It's the magnetism, it's the energy. It's the creative force, it's the song of the body in a way. And that's why focusing on metabolism can be so effective, because it actually gets that deep hum, that deep rhythm of the body going and operating and vibrating at a completely different level.
Dairy Intolerance
So the next question has something to do with dairy, it was just a dairy reintroduction, and gut healing, any good coconut product alternatives, and recipes for milk, cream, oil, butter for someone that can't do dairy, just a little bit more about dairy intolerance. So going back to metabolism. And also, I think we need to include reality a little bit into this discussion as well. Because I see people on both sides, where people say that if your metabolism is functioning well, you should be able to tolerate dairy no problem, like dairy is an absolutely beautiful food to have in your diet. It's a nutrient dense food, like you should never not eat dairy. And then you kind of have this other audience where it's like dairy is inflammatory, never have dairy ever, bye. And I think there's nuance to this discussion.
So when we say dairy, we lumped dairy into one category, I think that's the first problem that we have is not all dairy is created equal. The health of the cow will determine the health of the dairy, and how that cow is raised, what medications are being used, what food it's being fed, how much sun it's getting, I mean, there's the list goes on and on. Also, what type of cow is it, we have these cows that are almost, I guess we could say in a way they've been genetically modified or mutated. And now the casein protein that is in their milk is different. So A1 casein is a little bit different than A2 casein and it's just a polymorphism in the milk. And a lot of people seem to be very reactive to this A1 casein and I think this might have to do too with casein is a hard to digest protein as it is and then you modify it into a form that the body can't recognize. And you're probably going to have some problems. Let’s say that the body is already very reactive, the body is already dysregulated, digestive function is not optimal, or genetic ability to tolerate milk is already quite low. And then you add in this kind of weird milk that has polymorphism in one of the proteins, it can definitely be problematic, so that's a factor.
Then we also have the different types of dairy. So you know we have cheese, we have different types of cheeses from soft cheeses, very soft, that are very high in casein, to harder cheeses that are very low in casein. Then we have dairy ferments like sour cream and cottage cheese, and kefir, and all types of dairy ferments that have been fermented by different types of bacteria. We also have pasteurization, different types of pasteurization from really ultra high heat pasteurized for long period of time just killing everything, anything that's in there, and denaturing the enzymes changing the fats to a more like that pasteurized situation where it's just a very low pasteurization just doing the pasteurization necessary at the lowest temperature possible for the least amount of time as possible. And then all the way to raw, right, which has gotten very popular. But really, it's just a milk that has not been pasteurized or homogenized, because that leads us to homogenization, where you have the fat globules and milk are being manipulated, so that the cream and the milk don't separate any longer. And I think that homogenization is actually some of the most irritating parts of milk processing more than pasteurization.
But when we just lumped dairy all into one category and say dairy, dairy, dairy, oh, I didn't tolerate mozzarella cheese, so I therefore cannot tolerate Parmesan cheese. Well, they're two different foods. And they have completely different protein contents. You actually might be able to tolerate one and not tolerate the other. And something I've also noticed with clients is that they sometimes have a tolerance for dairy. So like, they can have a splash of milk and coffee. And they can have maybe a little bit of milk in a smoothie, or they can't have any milk, but they can have a little cottage cheese, a little Greek yogurt, no problem. But if they hit too high of a threshold, let's say they put cottage cheese with their breakfast they had Greek yogurt for for a snack, they put cheese on their dinner, and they just hit this threshold and it was just too much. And there's irritation now, or a lot of times, dairy will express acne, and other skin issues are histamine issues. That's up for us to decide if we have any tolerance for it. Or we don't have any tolerance at all.
But health is complex. And you don't need to also add a layer of guilt like I can't tolerate dairy, or something I am seeing a lot more people do lately is eat a bunch of dairy even though they're not tolerating it well. And their body's telling them they're not tolerating it well. So there's definitely nuance there. For some people, it's just not the time to reintroduce dairy quite yet, or they're in a really stressful place physiologically where their metabolism is still in need of support, or they're in a really stressful season of life and adding in a new food. It's just not the right time to do that.
But there's no perfect way to reintroduce dairy. You know, I've heard of people who say have sips of milk every day. For two weeks. I've heard of people that say how bites of Parmesan cheese. But for me, it's really about just like a slow and gentle introduction, not like all of a sudden you're turning the light switch on and off. We're like I don't do dairy at all. And then all of a sudden, it's like you're like binging on ice cream and cheese and a lactose intolerant person's worst nightmare. And just having all the dairy and doing all the dairy all the time, there is a happy medium in between.
I think it's really important to find your individual context there for replacement of dairy. I think that's where people can actually go astray if they're doing a bunch of like oat milk or almond milks, or these “milks”, I put quotations around them. Nut waters or oat waters, that have a lot of additives and fillers in them and if they already have digestive distress, which is clearly stated to them with their inability to tolerate dairy, there's really no reason to be adding in something that has a ton of fillers in it. But even if you're opting for a brand that doesn't use fillers of like let's say nut milk or oat milk, you have to ask yourself why you're consuming that food. And if it actually is benefiting you, if it's just a small amount, it probably isn't going to make a difference. But if it is making a star, it's becoming a star in your regular routine or regimen, it's definitely going to start impacting your physiology.
So I always caution clients to be a little bit more careful with what they replace their dairy with in smoothies and things like that. You can replace it with juice or water or coconut milk and coconut milk is probably one of my favorite ways to replace if you're if you tolerate coconut, okay, not everyone tolerates coconut, but I like to buy the coconut and cans with no gums added — no guar gum. There's a few brands out there that don't use guar and I will usually just buy a coconut cream because it goes farther and then what you do is you just warm up that coconut cream into like a coconut milk consistency I usually will just put it in a glass of water warm water until it kind of gets all melty. And then you can blend it with water to make coconut milk. That's the easiest way for me and you can use the cream as a replacement for heavy cream.
You know oils and butters. You can easily replace that with ghee fairy regularly. People with dairy intolerances tend to be okay with ghee depending on how clarified it is. It's it should be completely clarified with no milk solids left in it. But trying to replace dairy can be a little tricky. But it's more about just being aware of what you're replacing dairy with. If you have to replace your dairy with a ton of dairy alternatives, then you're probably not going to get the most benefit as just being dairy free. So focusing more on animal proteins, and whole food, carbohydrates, fruits, roots, grains, if they're tolerated beans, if they're tolerated, using dairy free, you know, sauces and oils, that is, in my opinion, a more effective way to go dairy free, and actually reap some rewards from it than just try to replace all the dairy that's currently in your diet with dairy free alternatives.
And that doesn't mean like don't use coconut milk ever don't use coconut cream. I'm more mean like if you're having coconut yogurt, or let's say you're having Greek yogurt for a snack, and you replace that Greek yogurt with coconut yogurt is going to have a completely different breakdown of protein, and carbs, and fats. It's also a lot of times they add all these fillers in order to give it the consistency of yogurt, rather than focusing on how can I make a nourishing food for this person? It's like how can I replicate the texture of regular yogurt as much as possible? One yields a very nourishing result, one yields just this like weird Franken food.
So it's more important to say, if I need to be dairy free, what can I put in my diet that kind of gives me the satiation that dairy does. And that can definitely be a challenge. I think it's pretty hard for people to be both nut free and dairy free. I think when people are dairy free, they are going to need to include a little bit more nuts. But I just encourage people to be you know, do it in a biologically appropriate way, like don't pound nuts and seeds, because that's just not biologically appropriate, and it can lead to all types of digestive issues and gut irritation, histamine issues, inflammation, like that type of thing. So it's just important to be aware.
Healing Pounds
So next question is I personally would like to hear more about healing pounds. And this again, could be a whole episode in and of itself. So we'll just touch on some key points. I went from 150 to 200 pounds in a short period of time, it's been about two years, and it has stayed the same. I get that healing pounds can be necessary. But at what point does it become too much? And if it's too much, what are some ways to address it will not impact my health negatively? Also, what could this mean from an energetic standpoint? Yeah, so I don't know where the misconception happened with safety weight and healing pounds kind of became these key points that people were talking about. And I've also talked about healing pounds. And safety weight is something that I covered my course Fully Nourished. But I feel like there was like a miscommunication or misconception that gaining all the weight that you needed to gain was healing pounds. This idea that if you switch your diet over, that you should just allow yourself to just keep continuing to gain weight until it stops. I don't know where that misconception came from. I'm really not sure. I think maybe some people that switched to a pro metabolic diet, or more metabolism supporting diet, they were under eating for so long that their metabolisms were truly damaged. And so when they started eating a normal amount of food, they gained some of the weight that they needed to gain. It was kind of inevitable. I think a lot of people who were underweight gained a lot of weight, because there's a lot of metabolic damage when you're starving yourself all the time to stay underweight. So it's common.
But I think there were some maybe people in the pro metabolic space that were “pro metabolic leaders” or influencers that are promoting this idea that it's totally fine to gain like 40, 50, 60, 70 pounds, and that that's just your metabolism, healing, and you should just roll with it. I think that's kind of not good information. Because what that ends up doing is you feel like something might be wrong. And it makes you say, No, nothing's wrong. This is just a part of the process. Instead of evaluating if your habits are working for you, or you're partaking in the right types of foundational habits for your own body. For example, one of the things that I've seen a lot is people were eating a very on a lower carb end of the scale, whether they were intentionally low carb, or they were eating just more of a paleo esque type diet and paleo diets depending on what you're eating. I mean, if you're eating a lot of nuts and seeds, it can be really calorically dense. But if you're not, and you're eating mostly vegetables, some roots, some proteins, it can actually unintentionally be a very low calorie diet just depending on what you're focusing on. And, I mean, I've I have met a lot of women who are on paleo diets or who were on paleo diets that were binge eaters, so they would go all week really not consuming very many carbs because they were so focused on no grains, no dairy, right, they're just kind of focusing on fruits and roots, and not putting enough emphasis on the carbohydrates.
So here they are not eating a ton of carbohydrates, whether consciously or unconsciously, they're craving sugar, craving sugar, craving sugar, think they have a sugar addiction, or that there's something wrong with them. I need to eat more fat, that was a big one. And then eventually, you know, eventually their body would kind of override everything, their brain would override everything. And they would eat something or binge on something that was high in sugar, or they would be constantly trying to paleo-fy desserts or constantly trying to make healthified desserts, usually out of lots of nut products like nut butters, nut flours, nuts, and seeds. And so whatever background you're coming from a lot of women who gained a lot of weight moving to a pro metabolic approach, usually, we're trying to replace the volume that they had before with, “pro metabolic foods”. Now I put quotes around it, because what foods really are pro metabolic and not pro metabolic, it's kind of based on the person, right, dairy could be very anti metabolic for somebody, whereas it could be very pro metabolic for another person, veggies could be very pro metabolic for someone and then very anti metabolic for someone else. So it really does depend on the context, the nuance of how you're preparing foods, so much complexity to it.
But when women were switching to a more pro metabolic approach, or what they consider to be a pro metabolic approach, they were starting to gain a lot of weight, because the biggest thing is the caloric density, most women were coming from a low calorie diet, and they were over exercising, doing lots of exercise, or maybe no exercise, but really under eating, and maybe eating like two or three times a day. And then you switch that to eating every three to four hours, calorically dense foods. And a lot of women also stopped exercising on top of that, it's a recipe for weight gain, or if they're eating foods that don't really work for their system, right, like dairy is a perfect example of that, where if dairy doesn't really work for their system, or they hadn't drink milk in 5,10 years, and all of a sudden, they start chugging whole raw milk, it's going to be a problem. And it's going to lead to rapid weight gain, because not only is the body not utilizing energy, well when on top of it, now there's more calories or more energy coming in, and there's less energetic output, there's less movement of energy going out, is going to be a recipe for weight gain.
So when it comes to healing pounds, usually the healing pounds is referring to when a woman is underweight for her physiology and has hormonal issues because of it, or is keeping her weight low using stress, right, constantly exercising constantly over exercising in relationship to nutrition, and not eating enough calories to sustain not only her body and her physiology, but also the excess energetic output that comes from exercise. And this could also apply to like really mentally strenuous careers or really physically laborious jobs. But it's important to find that balance and when we have lost her appetite, because distress being high as well, there can be a period of time where we do have to kind of nurse our appetite back to life, right? Where if we've completely lost our appetite, or our appetites really imbalanced or we don't have a morning appetite, or really an appetite at all, sometimes we have to almost force feed in a sense or a better term would be to intentionally fuel ourselves in a cadence that kind of gets our body back into a place of understanding, okay, there's consistent and regular fuel coming in. Therefore, I don't need to be constantly stressed and jumping into a state of famine or survival every time I don't get a meal. But intentional fueling is a little bit different than completely forced feeding.
So that's another mistake I'm seeing is not only are we switching from low calorie to very high calorie and very frequent eating, less exercise, but also this force feeding there is that period of time where yeah, if your appetite has been completely pummeled to the ground, from being in a high stress state, you have to nurse it back to life, so that you can trust it again, and that you can work together again. But if you're just constantly day in day out, years and years and years, just ignoring your appetite, forcing food down there does need to be a reevaluation of maybe I don't need to eat as frequently or maybe I don't need to eat as much at meals. So there's nuance there as well. And then you know, on a more energetic scale, a lot of women have put on fat because they're protecting themselves from their environment. You know, fat is stored fuel for later. It's where our body puts glucose and free fatty acids and fuel that stored for later energy that can be burned at any point in time or accessed at any point in time into storage. It also is a place where our body stores toxins in a safe way away from the immune system. It's one of the safest places to put certain metals, certain plastics, certain hormones like Xenoestrogens, because it sequesters them away from the rest of the body. And fat cells have a particular affinity for expanding to sometimes up to 10 times their own size. So they're really great storage containers.
The problem with this is, if our body is continually having to put fuel into storage for later that shows us one of two things, it either feels the need to protect us from our environment past us from our environment, where that can be very much the case, right? There are women that are living in really traumatic situations, or they're living in their traumatic experiences of the past, and their body is storing them and rehashing them over and over. And they're kind of behaving from a place of a pattern that has been set in stone by a traumatic event. So their body is kind of almost rehashing or going through that same nervous system reaction day in and day out. And having to protect itself from that, or there's something physiologically very much in our metabolism that is impacting the way that that fuel is being utilized. And so that fuel is not being utilized well, or efficiently and there's too much coming in. And so the body's just shunting it to the fat cells.
This can happen for many reasons, you know, we can have heavy metal overload, we could have insulin resistance from mineral deficiencies, high amounts of cortisol and high amounts of stress will do this, high amounts of estrogen in relationship to progesterone will do this. There are many different factors that can impact our ability to burn our fuel as energy and utilize our fuels energy. But if we're continuing to gain weight, you know, that skill is continuously creeping up after 15, 20 pounds of weight that we needed to gain. And we just continued to gain and gain and gain and gain we are in a place where we're overweight, right? It’s hard to get through life, we don't move properly, it's hard to get out of bed, our feet hurt. That's no way to live, right? That's I think all of us know deep down that that's not a healthy weight.
It feels good to be lean, it feels good to be able to move and to be mobile, and to also be healthy and have healthy hormones. If you've been very lean before, like I have been too lean at certain points in my life. And the type of food obsession that I get, you're constantly thinking about food. I at least experienced a very visible decrease in stress, resilience, constantly more tense, more anxious, more overwhelmed, I have definitely noticed that the times in my life when I was the leanest, I had the least nervous system resilience. Absolutely, there was a correlation between my body fat percentage, and my ability to handle stress.
I think for each and every woman, there is going to be a healthy setpoint that their body likes to stay around. And if they go too far below that, they're going to start to feel off. And no matter how good they look, they don't feel very good inside, they don't feel like themselves. However, on the flip side, when you start to get too heavy, and you can't move correctly, or your mobility starts to be impaired, your hormones will start to be impaired at some point, right, because body fat can create estrogen. This is where I think a few things come into play, where we have to really take personal responsibility for how much calories we're consuming. I see a lot of people just globbing on the butter and globbing on the oils. And then drinking raw milk that's whole and eating full fat dairy and just very calorically dense, you know, eating ice cream every day. I mean for somebody that has weight to gain, great. But if they do not want to be gaining weight, this is probably not the diet, that's going to work very well.
The other thing is food frequency, you know, if you have a lot of extra fat to utilize, then there's no need to eat when you're not hungry. Because when you're not hungry, your body is going to utilize energy. And so you might find when you're overweight, that there's certain periods where you go through where you're hungry all day, you have a normal appetite, and then you kind of lose your appetite a little bit certain days. And that could be that your body is actually tapping into stored energy. And so as long as you feel good, and if you're resilient to stress, you feel balanced. You don't feel anxious or anxiety, that high stressed kind of feeling. It's okay to listen to your appetite. If you want to eat a little bit less of a portion size or you want to delay your meal a little longer until you're hungry. I think that's a little bit more sustainable than constantly being in a caloric deficit to kind of lean into the ebbs and flows of your appetite a little bit as long as the appetite is not being reduced by stress because once the stress is high, it's kind of defeating the point, you're not going to be utilizing energy very efficiently anyways, but I think I am starting to notice the pattern of women being like, oh my gosh, if I don't eat, then I'm gonna have a high stress reaction, or I'm gonna have a cortisol response or an adrenaline response or something like that. And that alone that thought of prophesying that over your body that you're going to have a response is going to cause you so much more stress than just listening to your appetite and eating when you're hungry and not making a big deal about it.
And then also, just getting real with movement, the amount of exercise that we're doing, I think a lot of us are living really sedentary lives. We're not even if we're exercising for an hour a day, we're not, you know, walking or moving or lymphatic system. And so lymph work is really important when we've gained weight, because whenever there's pressure, the fat cells have expanded, there's also pressure on the lymph moving properly and flowing properly. I think this is a lot of times why gaining too much weight can cause cellulite for some women or a lot of women, a majority of women, and also just make them feel a little more imbalanced hormonally is because the lymphatic system plays a huge role in just mobilizing any type of contaminants, toxicants, pollutants out of the body, and the interstitial fluid and lymph fluid needs to be able to move and drain properly. So lymphatic work and just mobilizing the body. And mobilizing energy is really, really important.
And this can be very helpful on a more emotionally or spiritually and an energetic level as well. A lot of us are just sitting there thinking and consuming information. And it's just kind of floating around in our head, like we talked about in last week's episode. And no moving the energy, no mobilization of the energy. Sometimes exercise can be much more than just the physical cognitive benefits of Oh, exercise does this, this, this and this for our insulin and for our fat loss. But more so exercise gets stagnant energy moving. And so when we have gained weight, and we're trying to lose weight in a sustainable way, and I specifically want to say utilize fat or burn fat, because losing weight in general, is not always the goal. I want to utilize fat. It's really just about getting our body in motion, not consuming food in an unconscious or a mindless way, really practicing a sensibility about food.
I just sent out an email recently on Sunday that I was talking about, where did we lose the sense of being able to eat sensibly. We have gone to such extremes with food, we have no really strong relationship with our eating, we don't eat in a sensible way. There's a lot of emotion and stress, a lot of times involved in our meal times and our food choices. And so it's really about tuning in and saying, am I trusting my appetite? Am I living a really stressful life that's keeping me in a place where I don't feel safe enough to utilize that energy? Am I over eating from my own activity level? Do I need to maybe reevaluate my food frequency, maybe I do need to eat a little bit less often? I find myself really forcing myself to eat a lot. It's really about creating balance with the intake and the output, especially for the female physiology, because it's important for us to not be pouring from an empty cup, right, we definitely need to be nourished, we definitely need to have a consistency and stability about our nutrition habits and our eating habits.
But on the flip side, if we're not utilizing energy, you know, we're not in that creative energy where we are cycling, we are moving and mobilizing energy on a regular basis, we are practicing our creativity and our creation, using our brain and central nervous system using our body to move energy, bring it in pour it out, expand, then we have to be careful to balance the two, we need to make sure that our output is matching our input and we're not, you know, extremely moving in one direction. And there are certain times in life where we're focused more on output and more on input. You know more nourishment and taking care of ourselves and then more on creation and output and taking care of somebody else. But life should kind of move in this ebb and flow and keep those two in balance. We shouldn't be bouncing to one end of the extreme. And then the other, which is what a lot of us do. But usually when we have fat to lose, it's about the basics. It's about being sensible with our nutrition, exercising, not necessarily more but exercising efficiently, making sure we're doing some type of cardio and some type of strength training and then moving you know, lymphatic movement, walking actually moving our systems moving our bodies beyond just exercise. And that's usually a sustainable place to start. And if we aren't already doing that, then it's a definite sign that Okay, it's time to do that.
It’s Actually Simple
So you'll see again and again that my advice often just comes to, you know, really sit with yourself and figure out the nuance for you. Most of us actually already know the answers to our problems. I noticed this a lot in the questions that people ask where they will ask a question, and then they will answer the question inside of the question. And I find it really funny because most of us already actually know what we're supposed to be doing, or we know which direction we're supposed to be heading. But we have lost the trust in ourselves. Or we've been so trained to look outside of ourselves for the information or for somebody else to give us the permission or the how to or to hold our hand, or to blame. If we don't follow through whatever it might be. We're often trying to look outside of ourselves for permission, when in reality, our gut, if we really get real with ourselves, and we really have an honest conversation, we already know what the next step is, right? We already know what we're doing. That's steering us wrong.
And if you're listening to this, and you're like, Absolutely not, I am doing something and I don't know what it is. My first question for you would be, are you practicing any sort of extremes? Or things that really defy your own common sense? And is it possible that how you took in certain types of information, or certain types of advice, healthwise was maybe I don't want to say skewed, but possibly, your perception or your hormonal state at the time, allowed you to take it in in such an extreme kind of black or white way. And maybe if you went and reviewed the information, it would have a little bit more nuance to it. And that's a part of the self evaluation that I think is really important, especially in the health and wellness climate of today, where there's so many extremes out there, right, where it's like, it needs to be this or this or this or this. And health is actually quite simple. It's complex, and it can feel very complex. But at the end of the day, put into action. It's quite simple and quite unsexy. And the health and wellness industry has tried to sexify so many things that are just not sexy. It's about consistency. It's about moving your body. It's about evaluating your life, and recognizing the places that are draining you dry and sucking you dry and stressing you the heck out and evaluating where can I make changes so that it's not that way anymore. It's about being devoted to yourself in a way and just choosing to be devoted, every single day, regardless of how you feel. And really, at the end of the day, it's about playing the long game, and focusing on the things that really give you life and bring you a strong quality of life. Rather than focusing on all the things all at once your health practices should be things that really fill you with joy and life and give you the quality of life that you're after. And if they don't, they're really not worth it. And that's why you're probably having a hard time doing them consistently. So this really applies to all things, including fat loss. This also includes gut issues and other things that we're trying to overcome. A lot of us gets so hyper focused on one thing. And because we're so good at taking something small and making it very big and very complex, we often make health and the pursuit of health way too complex, way too complicated. And it's sometimes more important for us to actually take layers off and remove things from our priority list so that we can focus on the foundational things that actually matter that actually make the biggest difference. But coming to you soon, we'll dive into these topics much more in depth.
Episode Links
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