Welcome everyone to The Real Nutritionist Podcast. I’m so excited. It’s been a while since Amanda has been with us. Amanda, welcome.
Amanda is our amazing, phenomenal health coach, and so I always love our podcasts together. It’s been a hot minute since we’ve done them, so I’m super excited to be doing this.
So let’s get into it. I wanna talk about a moment that happens in virtually in our office, right? Every week, will sit across from us, they’ll tell us what’s going on, they say, “I’m bloated by 2:00 in the afternoon. I’m exhausted no matter how much I sleep. My hair’s coming out in the shower, in the sink, on the floor.” And then a little bit into the conversation, the sentence changes. They say, “I’m an IBS girl,” or, “I’m a SIBO person,” or, “I’m a Hashimoto’s person.” And we always notice it because they’re two completely different sentences, right? The first one is about something that’s happening in your body. The second one is identifying or talking about who you are. So one of them you can do something about. The other one you just tend to carry, and somewhere along the way, a whole lot of us get handed a piece of paper with a word on it, we didn’t just accept that word, that diagnosis. We actually moved in and set up shop, right? We decorated, we put up the curtains. We started introducing ourselves with it as it. And look, we understand that because when you’ve been bloated, when you’ve been exhausted, when you’ve been dismissed for years and someone finally gives you a name for it, that kind of feels like a relief, right? It’s proof you weren’t crazy. It’s proof you weren’t lazy. It’s the name for the thing that has been consuming your life. But here’s what I want you to hear. word was never supposed to be your address. That word is not your birth certificate, okay? So today we’re gonna talk about how to put it back where it belongs, why holding onto it too tightly actually makes you sicker, and I’ve got research on that, and the people who try the hardest get the most stuck. And then we’re gonna talk about a little bit of the numbers. I’ll give you some data. So I think some of it might surprise you, but I’m excited to get into it. Amanda, let’s take it away. So what are your thoughts on that? Let’s
Talk about
how, like how I highlighted, like the topic for today was why you’re not defined by your diagnosis, right? And to your point, it is very validating for many people, and I’ve been the person, to get a diagnosis, to have an i- to identify a label around what it is that you have been frustratingly experiencing.
And so that, that gives comfort in some ways, right? Oh, I’m not crazy. Oh, there is something physically happening, and you now recognize it as this, right? But here’s what I will tell you just from being the person who chronically identified as XYZ for half of my life, is that you really truly become what you believe.
And like we said, the, the diagnosis is really valuable, right? ‘Cause it explains the symptoms. You get a treatment plan. You feel connected in some ways sometimes with people through like support groups and other people who are in your category. But the problem is when it becomes the primary lens through which a person sees themselves it easily becomes a, a huge part of your identity and how you see yourself.
Yeah.
And to your point if you become somebody who now this diagnosis is central to your identity, it then reafort- reinforces a constant state of vigilance in a way, right? Where you’re now monitoring every symptoms. You’re worrying about these setbacks. You’re feeling defined by this illness, and sometimes that creates a limiting belief about what you’re capable of now that you’ve been slapped this diagnosis.
Yeah.
So what are you-
We’re gonna… so here’s something I want people who are listening, I want, I wanna run through a little thing with you guys. And I want you to say this about… I’m gonna give you the condition about Hashimoto’s or gut stuff, right? But I want you to do it with whatever thing you’re dealing with,
You to see how this lands, right?
There’s three different ways to say things. So don’t care where you say it, you can say it in the shower, you can say it in your car, just say it out loud. That’s the goal. Okay?
Is, “I am a Hashimoto’s person.” Okay? Now say, “I have Hashimoto’s.” Okay. Now say, “I am working on calming my immune system so that I can treat this”, or, “I’m working on calming my immune system down right now.”
Let’s just do that. “I’m working on calming my immune,” excuse me, “system down.” And I want you to see how that feels, right? Because the first one becomes a description of you, and it’s like saying, “I’m short.” The second one is something you’re carrying. It’s better, but it’s still just kinda sitting there.
And the third one a person in it who is doing something, that means there’s a door that you can open to walk through to change it. think about this, right? Same thing. Let’s do it with your gut, ’cause we see this all day long as well. “I’m a SIBO person.” Second one, “I have bacterial overgrowth.” the third one, am working on my motility right now.” I want you to see that lands, because look, the fact is you would never, ever walk up to somebody and say, I’m the woman whose business failed in 2019.” Who does that? Okay? So why is this the one label that we wear on the outside, where everyone can see it?
I feel like there’s a piece of that as well, right? It’s and people say the words don’t change my antibodies,” or, “The words don’t…” But when the diagnosis, like you said, Amanda, take, takes over one’s sense of self, that actually a worse outcome.
Totally. And I can speak to that just from personal experience, going through the phases of feeling the symptoms, feeling like you’re not seen, you’re not validated, you’re gaslit by, the many providers explaining these symptoms. And then the next phase is, okay, you have this diagnosis, and then when you ask them what can I do about it?”
There’s nothing you can do. It’s just part of who you are. You can manage the symptoms.” And then you leave with that information that you’re carrying with you. But what I will tell you from experience is, yeah, there was something really validating, and it felt like a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank you, I’m not crazy.”
But what ended up happening, and this is my own personal experience, is that now I see myself differently. I am not… I don’t see myself as that healthy, limitless person. I see myself as somebody who now ha- was diagnosed with dysautonomia, POTS, vestibular migraine, depression, anxiety. You name it, I was diagnosed with it.
That became my truth. That’s how I, I wore that on my back, and I went through the world with that carried\, in my backpack. So perhaps it was a friend saying, “Hey, I wanna go see this concert tonight.” “Oh, no. What if my heart races?” And, “Oh, I can’t stand for that long ’cause I have POTS, and I get really dizzy,” right?
Like now, all of a sudden, I have a limiting way of thinking and living my life because of this diagnosis.
And this is how you kinda can take this to the next level because to your point, when you mentioned a lot of people say why does our mind, how does our mind impact our biology?” But what we know is that the mind and the body are so deeply connected.
What our mind thinks, our body feels. So I was just reinforcing that, that truth day to day. No, I can’t go out really late because, I gotta live in this tight container of safety. I gotta make my body feel safe all the time, and anything that might throw me outside of that could potentially ruin my entire next day, right?
But what I also wasn’t doing is I wasn’t living, I didn’t have trust in my body’s ability to do the things that I really truly wanted to do but felt held back by it, right? So thinking about the mind and the body and how deeply connected it was, truly, and I will tell you ’cause I was on a healing journey for 15 years, still on it in many ways.
There, the, it’s not linear. We know that, right? But the piece that I was significantly missing in getting me to that next level was working on how I thought about my body and these diagnoses, and seeing myself and believing myself to be somebody who was healthy and can do all of those things without limitations.
And that was a work in progress, but that was the missing piece of all of this. And no longer did I use words like my POTS, my dysautonomia, my migraine. I never let that claim me any- I never claimed that as mine, no more, no longer. Changing the verbiage in how you speak about it, right? Is massive, right?
And I think most people are just not aware, and this is why this conversation is so powerful
I like, I get the chills. I couldn’t agree more because I think we see this every single day, every
you?
day. When people can be like, “I can let go of my diagnosis,” that relief, right? And when I start to talk, we start to talk about liberalizing the diet, I had that with a client this weekend, and he’s “What?”
He’s like terrified, right? But I’m like, “We’re here. We got you. We’re your safety net.” So I think there’s so much power in that. But like you said, the fear of trusting your body because you were told
That I couldn’t.
you can’t trust your body. And I feel these conversatio- a- and I think the other piece of it is, and this is where we are so different in the work that we do because you go, it’s everything is linear.
You go to the doctor’s office, you get the diagnosis, you’re given the checklist, “Here’s what I need to do,” yet you don’t work on this piece. You’re not working on, any of that mindset psychological stuff, and that is where the gold is. When people say to me, “Why do I need to do coaching?” This is why, because is the part, o- one of the pieces, ’cause you’re so phenomenal.
But one of the pieces the clinical stuff that I do doesn’t and that people aren’t getting. But as a practitioner myself, realize the value of having that. then the peop- and we see the results in the people, right? I wanna give you, it was very interesting because there’s research on the four different ways people hold a diagnosis, and I think this is really important, right? Some people push it away, pretend it isn’t happening. We certainly know many of those, right? I,
Can tell you a few that I know of, right? Some people get swallowed by it. This becomes their whole personality, right? That’s the second one. The third one is people who make peace of it, that they say, “Okay, this is a picture or a part of the picture of who I am, but it’s not the whole picture.” And then the fourth is- The people who say that it actually gave them something, meaning it made them stronger, it made them pay attention. I can tell you that even from my diagnosis 25 years ago, I… After I learned to make peace with my cancer that I knew it wasn’t who I was, I given this window and I saw it afterwards wow, I can, I am resilient.
I can fight this. I can help others, right? That was the trajectory that put me here.
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what the research has shown is the people who had been swallowed by it and the people pushing it away, those groups did worse in their recovery. Worse mood, worse physical functioning. The people who made peace with it, who said, “I, I can do something about this,” did better on both.
And the gut studies specifically, like the people who made peace with it were measurably better managing their disease, or their condition. It’s really how do you hold it in your head?
And you said something that I think I thought about this quote, “Our wounds become our wisdom and our pain becomes our purpose.” So giving yourself the opportunity to reflect and think about this notion that life isn’t happening to you, it’s happening for you. And this is stuff that I talk to clients all the time about, because when you’re in the throes of it, you get the diagnosis, you’re feeling frustrated, you see the labs, they’re all out of balance, and you’re like, “What is going on?
Why is this body failing me?” But I always try to encourage them to think beyond that. What is this lesson here? What are, what is the universe, God, whatever is pulling you to that higher being, what is that… What is the message here that you are being forced to listen to, right? And how can we use that as fuel and motivation moving forward while also honoring the fact that, yeah, this is frustrating.
This does feel heavy. This does feel, like your body in many ways is failing you. But it’s not betraying you, it’s protecting you, right? And all of these signals are just all… it’s signals to your body. All these symptoms are signals to pay attention, right? And so yeah, that is why I think in many ways, like you said to your point, the coaching can be so valuable.
And I know from experience because I was on the other end of this as a client many years ago and talking to my coach and just being like, when am I gonna get better?” I remember being like just promise me this gets better. That’s all I need from you.” And she’s like, “I can’t do that for you.
You have to believe that’s true.” And I was like, “Argh, that’s frustrating, I just want a timeline.” And we hear this all the time. “We’ll get… We’ll just…” I know everyone’s different, I know we’re all bio individuals, I know we have our own journey, but “Just give me a ballpark.” People really want that.
And I get it. I really do, and I understand. But part of the work is, like you said, signaling to your nervous system, “Hey, you’re safe. I got you. This doesn’t define you.” What… and really tuning in and queuing into, to that piece of this, right? That inner knowing and that connective that connection to your body.
And I think the biggest piece of this is just trusting that your body knows exactly what it needs to do to heal, and that you’re not stuck. This isn’t a limit that’s been put on you, this diagnosis. So- Yeah.
No, go ahead. What were you gonna
No. That was it. What were you gonna say?
I think that… And I’m gonna talk about like why trying hard, so hard can keep you stuck in a
Oh, it’s relax
say, yeah, I do wanna say that we- and we’ll talk about the expectation of the timeline of what people think of, I just wanna feel better.
I do, And none of this we’re saying, these diagnoses are real. We’re not saying anything is in your head. We are totally validating what you are feeling every step of the way,
Total
right?
to
Our goal is to understand, any of these conditions, whatever it is, gut stuff, immune stuff, hormo- anything.
These are, by the time you get to how you are feeling with a diagnosis, these things have been brewing under the s- underneath the surface, like bubbling. You just didn’t learn the language to recognize the symptom because that’s not how conventional medicine is. They do your labs, and then you, they say you’re normal, and then you don’t feel normal, and then you keep doctor hopping because you’re g- gonna, bound and determined to find someone who’s gonna tell you what’s wrong.
W- we get that. That’s valid. You wanna know, right? We want validation of, I know I’m not crazy. And so that’s where some of this starts. But if… I did a YouTube segment on understanding, why it’s important to understand what your body is telling you what it’s… these, these symptoms that start to creep up that people push down, that they don’t pay attention to, that we don’t connect the dots, that if I have a cough for too long, if I’m clearing my throat for too long, of those things are symptoms, and we push them away like it’s just a this or it’s just a that, or, the constant bloating or the burping or whatever it is, right?
The ongoing, the rash, I don’t know, the, the heart racing. Any of those little symptoms The, the conventional system, most practitioners are just gonna be like, it’s always, “Oh, do this and wait,” or, “Let’s see and wait.” And maybe the conversation should be, we need to dig a little deeper, but that’s not in their toolbox, right?
And that’s what functional medicine is about. That’s the work that we do, is digging deeper so that we can get to the root before these symptoms become these overwhelming diagnoses. And I think, that people, people know more about their condition than their doctors do half the time,
Oh my gosh, yes. It’s
right?
actually
But they’re stuck. And here’s what I want you to think about with … Let’s talk about, in terms of trying so hard, right? So let’s… I love gardening. Let’s do this analogy, okay? So you plant a seed, and if every single morning you go up and you go out and dig up the seed just to check if it’s growing what are you gonna do?
You’re gonna kill the seed, right? It didn’t happen overnight. You have to put it back in. You have to be gentle. You have to tell yourself you’re a good gardener, right? But if you keep going in and digging it up, it’s never gonna grow. It’s not because you didn’t care about it. Maybe you cared so hard that you wouldn’t leave it alone, right?
You wouldn’t just let it be. And, know there’s an- there’s actually a, a name for this, you know, in terms of what people call it. But there are re- so for instance, researchers measure how anxious you are specifically about your gut, for example, okay? So it’s not anxiety in general, it’s anxiety about your digestion. So whether you’re scanning for symptoms, whether you’re afraid to eat somewhere new, like you mentioned, right? Whether every gurgle or something in your stomach means something. And so it’s not that the general anxiety predicted how bad people’s symptoms bo- symptoms got. It’s not the general. It is the anxiety specifically about their gut that did, right?
So it’s not that anxious people get IBS. That’s lazy and, quite frankly, insulting, okay? That’s not what we wanna say. It’s that watching your gut like a hawk
I- is what predicts how bad it gets, right? And I think we’ve seen this, right? And so
I think there’s something interesting too, because I… Maybe you’ve heard this before, but in order to heal, you can’t heal in the same environment that your body was sick in, right?
100%. Ugh, I love that
And to take that up even- an extra notch is the environment that your home, your internal world is in, is just as impactful.
So yes, from an external factor, we can change some variables in your lifestyle to support the diagnosis and to support healing. But I think the, one of the most important underrated pieces of this is the mental component, right? And if you don’t change that environment, the environment that your thoughts are in on a databa- day basis, that loop, that pre-programmed dialogue, your body is still in the same state that it was, even though you’ve changed the other variables
So give us, can you I, you and I know what we’re talking about here, right? I don’t know if our listeners necessarily do. So can you of walk me through an example of that, if you don’t
Okay.
‘Cause I
We’ll-
can.
And I can’t take credit for this because this is all Joe Dispenza. But what I’ve learned from him, and I know you’ve learned a lot from him, too, is that we have thisThe familiar past. The familiar past that is part of the pre-programmed subconscious loop that just is on, on a loop.
Day to day, it’s it almost predicts the things we think are gonna happen, right? So one of the things I think could be extremely powerful with a diagnosis of any sort is to reframe and first become aware. What is this thought that… What are these… What is the dialogue that’s coming up every single day that I wake up?
Is it I wake up and I’m like, “Ugh, what symptoms am I gonna expect today?” Or you’re sitting down to eat your meal, and you’re already pre-programmed to think, “Oh, is my gut gonna react? How am I gonna feel?” So what he recommends doing in those situations is, okay, you have the awareness of the thought, of the pre-programmed loop that’s just running behind the scenes.
How do we shift into how we wanna feel, how we wanna be so that we change? Physiologically, we become somebody different, and we are now projecting that to our future selves. And I’ll give an example of something that I did that worked. So I used to have a lot of anxiety around driving because I had strange symptoms that constantly were very unpredictable, and I never knew how I was gonna feel.
And so for a long time, I had anxiety around driving, right? Then I built my confidence because I did some cognitive behavioral therapy, and I just went and did it, and I felt “Okay, I can do this. I trust myself. I trust my body.” But I still had a little anxiety over the years about doing a really long drive by myself.
And I remember I was driving over to Naples to see my dad, and it was a two-and-a-half-hour drive, and it was just me and my, at the time, three-and-a-half-year-old son. And I was like, “Okay I wanna go. I’m gonna go. What do I need to do to break this pattern of anxiety that I noticed was showing up for me?”
And it was, the fear of, “How is my body gonna be?” Those limiting beliefs that my body didn’t, wasn’t capable of doing what it needed to do to get me there. And so I visualized myself in the experience, and I did this every day leading up to it for two weeks. I sat outside and for 10 minutes I closed my eyes and I imagined myself in the car driving, windows down, AC blowing in my face.
There was no sweating, no anxiety, music blasting. James and I just laughing, having a good time. And I did that every single day. So I was pre-programming and priming and prepping myself for the drive and the experience. The day came, did the drive. It was just as I imagined it in the way in which I was safe.
I felt confident. I didn’t have the limiting beliefs. I didn’t have the anxiety looping. So we have so much power over how our body responds to our thoughts, but are we giving our- body the opportunity to have thoughts that are making us safe, that are getting us out of hypervigilant obsession over every symptom, right?
So that’s what I’ve done in the realm of reprogramming mindset. But tell me what are your thoughts on all of that, and what have you done? Because I know you
We both have done this work in so many, in different but similar ways, right? And I think that I just wanna… B- I’ll give my example, but I wanna talk about what you just said. I think the other piece of this is that, or one of, ’cause I think there’s…
it’s so layered. You did the work. There is no such thing as fake it till you make it. I hate that expression, I just don’t. You can’t fake living into this mindset piece. You have to do the work. You did the work, right? I, discovered Joe Dispenza many years ago, and I have been layering the work, his work, on top of everything that I do in my life, right?
So I can tell you from the time I first started, where I was just playing around with the whole belief thing and the meditation thing and, started to see some shifts in my life in terms of just h- my own independence, how my business shifted. And then even just recently, really making a huge mindsh- mind set shift in, in back power and mi- it, it’s not for today’s discussion but of it has to do with deservability and scarcity and, those w- those are my kinds of things.
And some of it was health. I dealt with the health stuff s- many years ago, and I still do it, right? But but for me it’s… I literally have been practicing this, whether it’s the actual meditation, whether it’s the journaling, whether it’s, taking the… there’s a reason my morning routine is so sacred because that is my time to reset my mindset.
And I just… There’s so much power in it, but it really, it takes work. Look, there are days where I gotta just s- separate myself and be like, “All right, wait. Reframe. This is not…” It’s kinda like that reset,
Yeah
And that is work.
It is. But I think there’s a way to simplify it so that you can start where you’re comfortable and where you’re ready. I know a lot of people get very intimidated by the idea of mindfulness practice or meditation or even journaling. A lot of people just feel this like, aversion to journaling.
But this is when I encourage clients to really just give yourself permission, and it only could be one to two minutes, maybe three minutes on a daily basis till you start to feel more confident in the practice. Just Imagine yourself as if you are this person that you wave this magical wand and fantasize that you are becoming, and do that daily.
And what we know about the mind is that it doesn’t know the difference between the past, the present, and the future. So imagining yourself as if is just the simplest process that you can do that’s a little special gift for yourself, and that gets you out of the world of obsessing over your symptoms, obsessing over this feeling of maybe you’re broken, your body is broken, it’s failed you.
I have this diagnosis, now what, right? So it doesn’t have to be that complicated, right? It doesn’t have to be a whole like the, your beautiful sacred morning to somebody might be like, “There’s no way I could fa- fathom doing that.”
100%. And I think to your point, what I want people to think about, even in the smallest little moments, it’s first you believe it, right? You believe it, then you behave as if, like you said, I am this person, and then you become it, right? So it’s the belief, it’s the behave, it’s become. So even if you say that… I remember in the very beginning, that’s how I started. I’m gonna believe. I am this person. The more I believe it, now I am doing things to become it, right? And, or behaving. The, my actions were behaving, and then I became, right?
And so I think if we can look at that… And that’s, again, the beauty of this work that we do, and I’m excited to be into more of a group format in this way in the next coming months. We’re gonna be launching all this stuff in that way because I think that hearing other people’s story, I think having a sense of community around this allows people to feel seen and heard, and most importantly, feel safe
Yeah, for sure.
You know
I’m excited about the idea of a group setting because I think it shows people, number one, that we’re not alone and we’re in community, which I think people are craving, and we see that with these diagnoses. They look for people in their group to affirm, to make them feel seen, to make them feel not alone, someone they could perhaps learn from, right?
And we also know that those can be problematic too, ’cause it’s reinforcing the thoughts, the beliefs, the limiting beliefs, all of that. So I am really excited about the prospect of that, and it’ll also give people permission to share in a space that feels safe and in a community of people that understand what they’re going through.
Because sometimes we work with clients where we’re kinda the only world that’s similar to the world that they’re in. So I’m really excited about what the groups are gonna do.
I’m super pumped about that. I think the other thing I really wanna spend just a minute on because I think so many people stop it really works. Meaning, like you want an answer today. You want your symptoms to go away tomorrow, right?
Oh, I know.
Feelings, your emotion, the emotional brain wants an answer right now. The biological body brain is not on that schedule,
exactly
right? And one of you is being reasonable, right? That emotional part, we… How many times do we see this? Someone changes something on Monday, and then Friday they’re like,
Oh my gosh, all the time
feeling better? Why am I not feeling better?” And they say “This isn’t working.
My body is broken. Nothing
Yeah
for me.” They reinforce identity that they have put on themselves, right?
Totally. Go ahead
what I want you to know is that your body’s timeline biologically, from a biochemistry perspective, if you could look under the hood of how quickly or slowly things get rebalanced, re- right? Red blood cells, a minimum of 120 days, right? Your… your gut lining, it may turn over a little faster, but the fact is you got all these cells that need to turn over, that need to change and the mindset piece that’s connected. When someone looks at me three, four weeks in and they’re like, “Nothing’s happening.”
And I’m like, “I say in the beginning, this is a four, six, nine-month process at a minimum. Minimum.” It’s it- you can’t get the answer… Your body is not broken because you didn’t get the answer in three weeks, right? You didn’t get the answer, you didn’t feel better because your body’s not responding to the timeline that your expectations are. And I think, even though that we say that over and over it, I, we see that. Yeah
Yeah, and I think establishing that from a very early point in our interaction with clients, I think has been really helpful, because I think that, that is the hardest part for people. And to your point it makes you wonder da- is this true? Is this true that you’re not where you are because you’ve put in all this work?
Or is it because you might have thrown the towel in a little too early, right? And I think that’s the other part of this too, is like the, just trusting the process. And people wanna just, get control and control the things that, they feel like they’re putting in the work, they wanna see this outcome so quickly.
But trust the process, trust that your body heals on its own unique timeline, and trust that you’re really doing the work, right? And you’re really changing the environment that your body is used to being in on a daily da- on a day-to-day basis that,
yeah, and I think it’s also understanding that healing happens in layers,
Oh,
meaning that not that everything heals at once. It’s that you start to see shifts, and those shifts build, and they build, right? So for instance I… there’s let’s talk about the stress response for a second because…
And I’m gonna read from my notes ’cause I kinda wanna get this right. But,
Yeah
we know that stress, a real stress response, which many people have every day, all day peaks in about 20 minutes and clears out in about an hour to 90 minutes, right? That’s your body’s way of how it’s supposed to work. It’s supposed to get a stress response, is, and it’s, and it clears out.
So it’s not that you get stress, right? You’re supposed to respond to things that happen, but the problem is when that response, you don’t give it a chance to come back down, So you’re not… We’re not saying you can’t… that you’re supposed to have a life without stress. That’s not realistic.
But what we’re saying is how do you come back down? So for example, right? And that can come back faster than people think, right? One or two good nights of sleep when you’ve had a, a, a chunk of the week that didn’t, that can help, right? It’s not… We’re not saying you have to have three weeks of good sleep. It’s a few nights of good consistent sleep. It’s slow breathing. We talk about that. Slow your breath down. In one sitting, it can help change your heart rhythm, right? In four to eight weeks, it can act- actually shift your baseline. And here’s my favorite, weeks of a regular meditation practice that rese- research can see actual physical change on brain tissue scan, right?
There are areas that are involved in memory. They got calmer. They got denser. And the change in the fear center tracked much less stressed people said they felt, right? So in eight weeks you can see it on a scan Like that’s powerful. And we know your gut is tied to your brain. And we know, how… The other thing that we talk about a lot is the state you’re in when you are eating
Changes what your gut does with food. Are you eating in a stressed way, right? We talk about that. If you’re eating stressed, your body’s gonna feel the stress and it’s not gonna digest food properly. A- and there’s so many of these little things that we talk about.
But it really, mind is so powerful in how we create the outcome. So again, let’s work on that mind piece of our expectation because we’re gonna help you work on, how do you fill the b- tank? How do you create that foundation, that healthy foundation? When we talk about nutrition and fitness and sleep and stress and environment and m- the mental emotional piece, like those are your six pillars. You, we need to work on those, period, end of story. That is where things need to start. I just think that, yes, we’ll start to see… I always wanna say, you’ll start to feel better sooner but it will take longer for the entire system to rebuild. We say that with gut health all the time. It can take months, 14 months, 16 months, two years to rebuild the actual lining of your gut to where it’s really balanced. Will you start feeling better sooner? Absolutely. I think we’ve gotta really be realistic on the timeline of expectation because we know there are programs out there selling the quick fix. It was so interesting. My daughter and I were talking about these girls, these young women who are in these high ticket sales positions, right?
There’s some very famous ones on the internet. they sell these high ticket programs, these nutrition programs for, I don’t know, thousands of dollars and their promise is lose 25 pounds in six weeks or whatever that is and I’m like, “Oh my God.” Like we’re selling eating disorders. But that’s a whole other thing, right? But th- the media, the culture is selling you this quick fix and you’re paying for it because they’re appealing to your emotions
I want that.” reality is it happen like that. Your body doesn’t work like that. Yeah, you’ll lose the weight. You’ll gain back twice as much. Or you’ll feel better, right? Here’s a bucket load of supplements or antibiotics. Sure, you’ll feel better in a shorter amount of time. It’s gonna come roaring back if you don’t fix the foundation
Totally. And to your point and actually to go off of what you said about the social media and the influence of that is now there’s so much more awareness about root cause medicine and diagnoses and it’s now the new name for PCOS the PMOS, and perimenopause, right?
Now we’re so quick to slap labels and diagnose, our symptoms from that perspective too, and now that’s another identity we’ve claimed. It’s another identity we’ve given power to and has a claim over us. So just, that’s just something I would leave people with today is just be mindful of what we claim and bring into our sacred
Our body, our mind, our spirit, our soul.
And yes, while I’m so glad we’re shining a spotlight of awareness around these topics that we know and we’ve been talking about for decades just, be mindful of how much you let that creep into how you see and act and live in the world, and if it does create any limitations for you.
That would be my homework assignment to anybody listening.
I love that. I think that’s a great… i… Look, awareness is a h- is, is all of it. Paying attention and owning your piece. And I think the other part of that is, I had done a rant a few weeks ago about people who are like, “This doesn’t work for me,” or, “I’ve shown up.” You’re responsible for showing up for yourself.
You’re responsible for what you put in. Own that. Own that, and be responsible, and be real with yourself, right? You gotta put in the right kind of work consistently. Consistently, because, And look, and there are people who do everything right. They s- “I’m doing everything right,” and their bodies don’t always respond back.
But that is where this work becomes so much more powerful because now we start to really look at the nuances. We ha- we have a client who w- has been dealing with gut stuff, SIBO, for a very long time. She’s been to a bazillion doctors, no one has ever dre- addressed the mindset. She is extremely hypervigilant about following things. I started pull… Because she’s very, her body is sensitive. It’s definitely a real thing. We’re not saying you’re not responding to this. And I actually said to her, “Let’s pull back a little on the supplements. Let’s pull back on some of this, and let’s address some of this mindset piece about the hypervigilance, about going out to the garden and looking at that seed every single day.
Is it growing?” You know who I’m talking about, Amanda. But so I think there is that part of just owning that, yes, you need to put in the work, owning this whole part of the timeline, the not cr- not identifying as the diagnosis and also allowing yourself to pull back and relax.
It’s not white-knuckle all the time. I feel like so many people are just sitting there white-knuckling right now “Ah, we gotta get through, we gotta get through.” makes it worse, right? So I do believe that all of this like, how do we put these puzzle, and, puzzle pieces together? And the beauty of the work is that we put it together differently for every single client.
For sure. And that’s where you’re meeting people where they are, but you’re also sharing your 25 years of clinical experience, and my 15 years of being on a healing journey. And, making this make sense in a way where we can package it up because we know, ’cause we’ve done it. We’ve done the work.
We’ve come out the other end of this, right? Meeting people where they are, customizing this to every individual, while also honoring these pillars of health and finding as much balance as we can in those areas I think is the sweet spot. It’s what we do I think that makes us so unique and really helps people think about their health in such a different way.
It’s not just the protocol. It’s not just the exercise. It’s not just the food. It’s so much bigger than that
100%. and I’m glad we had this conversation ’cause I really do want people to hear that. And, look, here’s what I wanna leave you with, is that you can be totally serious totally committed
Totally.
the treatment
Yeah
and not lose your identity in it. So you can be committed and serious about the treatment, but you can be loose and fluid about your identity in it, right?
And I think that is really the goal
Yeah, agreed.
Yeah. We don’t want you to think of it as who you are Love it. These conversations are so fun. we would love it if… Look, leave comments, like, subscribe, obviously share with whomever you think would benefit. I always offer a free 15-minute conversation with anybody who wants to talk about this stuff. So sure we’ve got links that you can book that call and yeah, we’re excited to work with anyone who is ready to put in the work and get to the bottom of what’s going on with them, their symptoms
Yeah, love it. And maybe share if anybody feels inclined any takeaways or anything they resonated
Yeah, absolutely, right? Like what is the sweet spot? what hit the nail on the head for you? What did resonate? We love the feedback because it always gives us ammunition for the next conversation. So Awesome. All right, Am- Amanda, thank you so much for your amazing insight and contribution to all of this as usual.
These chats are great
Thanks for having me
Brings a whole other dimension to this work, and it’s so necessary, right? In an era where social media is consuming and confusing. All right, everyone. This is your Rebel Nutritionist signing off. You make it a great day.
