#338: Health Update: What Is and What Isn't Working

The idea of discipline used to repulse me. It felt like I was forcing myself into a box I didn't choose. In many ways, discipline equated to hate. I assumed self-disciplines were the same. Instead, I stuck with setting goals. But as my life progressed, I quickly realized that setting goals is one thing, and meeting them is entirely different (learn what has and hasn't been working in my health here). Ironically, achieving my goals required self-discipline. As I started to study self-discipline, I came upon a new understanding of discipline. One that is more about protection and purpose, even pushing you forward, and less about dictatorship and punishment. In all areas, growth requires self-discipline, which creates the action to birth the outcome. I realized I needed to incorporate self-discipline to achieve my goals. All good things in life take work. That work comes from healthy self-disciplines. But honoring that and even living it means you must change your view of discipline. I share more about that inside this podcast and the five self-disciplines that have changed my relationship with my husband, God, and myself. Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/339. Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

It's easy to assume nutritionists don't struggle with food. But it's often the opposite. At least it has been for me. Recently, I took a very unexpected break that happened for a million and one reasons, including some current health struggles (or what I labeled as health struggles based on what I saw on the surface).   Luckily, the space gave me time to reflect. In this podcast, I share my current health struggles and my wins. As much as it's easy to miss the wins, I don't want to discount that regardless of what I see, this is what I know. Listen to the podcast to get my vulnerable conversation about what I'm dealing with. Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/338. Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

  If it feels like we’ve been here twenty times over, asking what is good and what is bad food. While it might seem elementary, food is still the most debated topic in health. The health space seems to continuously change what food they claim is ‘good.’ It’s like the flavor of the day. Fifty years into the bloom of the health era, we’re still asking the same question: what should we eat? It’s the same question I asked when I set my life path as a nutritionist. I wanted to help break the noise and define what foods create health. But that path was harder than anticipated. It wasn’t straight or clear but it felt narrow, even elusive.  Many people find themselves in the same boat. Just when you think you have it figured out, your ideas about what is healthy change again.  Yet, the longer I’ve been in the space and recognized patterns, the more I’ve realized it’s really not about a list of healthy and unhealthy foods. It’s about what your body needs. Your diet is personal. JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE SAYS IT’S HEALTHY DOESN’T MEAN IT’S HEALTHY FOR YOU.  Of course, I know that’s not as sexy as telling you exactly what you should eat. I do hope you can see the freedom that health isn’t as complex as we’ve made it. It’s just showing up daily and feeding your body what it needs to thrive.  With all of that said, there are still some frameworks to follow. A set of boundaries that helps clarify what is more healthy and potentially what is less. In this podcast, I lay out that framework by teaching you how to determine the difference between healthy and unhealthy food. That begins by learning how it interferes, influences, and alters your internal energy. Inside the podcast, I break it all down. Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/336. Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

Even after getting my nutrition degree, I spent a lot of time thinking that health was a to-do list. I believed health was the product of what you did or didn't do. And in a lot of ways, this is true. But there is something more true. What is more accurate is that your body isn't just responding to what you do. It's responding to your perspective of what you do, your essence, how you show up, and your motivation. It's really about responding to how safe or unsafe you are, which is determined by your presence. I invited Jessica Ash to come on the show and talk more about embodying your healthy masculine and feminine energy, how this reacts inside your biology, changing your metabolic output, and how it changes your view of life. Learn how to embrace your feminine side through the four feminine archetypes. Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/335. Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

We might be living in our rest era, but are you really resting? Or maybe you're resting too much. Rest is essential, but like hustle culture, too much of anything can become toxic. If you're resting too much, your body will get bored. Just like if you're not resting enough, your body will get sick. Both lead to similar results. In this podcast, learn all about rest, whether you're resting too much, and the difference between real rest and artificial rest.  Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/334. Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

Weight loss isn't one of my favorite topics, but it is important. I decided to answer the question of how to lose weight in a way that helps you understand why the traditional way hasn't worked and what will. There are many ways to lose weight, but not all are healthy. If you want to keep it off, you must choose the healthy route from an expansion form of health, not reduction. Body fat, like all biological components, serves a purpose and is necessary for our well-being. However, it's all about balance. Excess or insufficient body fat can lead to issues. The key to achieving a healthy weight lies in understanding the purpose of body fat. This knowledge will help you comprehend why your body might be reluctant to let go of excess fat. In this podcast, I explain how to lose weight, where it goes, and what a healthy body weight looks like. You'll also learn why doing hard things is important (because your body thrives in work). Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/333.   Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

When I lost my health, doing everything right, and by everything, I mean eating all of the ‘right’ foods and working out at least once a day, I realized everything right wasn’t right for me. No matter what anyone said, the best health plan didn’t pan out for me. At the time, I had no idea how much of a blessing this was. It felt like a battle I had lost.  My body failed, and everything I knew about health was wrong. I was left with nothing.  But a few years into my healing journey, I started to realize it wasn’t necessarily what I was doing that was wrong. I had just failed to recognize how it was influencing my internal state. I lived fixated on the external metrics of health. What I could count, measure, or time. It was always about what I did and never about how my body reacted to what I did.  It was always about doing more and attempting to arrive at some far-off destination. But this was wrong. I was wrong. Arguably, the entire health space has it wrong. It’s not about what you do. Health is about how your body reacts to what you do. This understanding eliminates the idea that there is a to-do list or a perfect health plan that will fix you. Things aren’t good or bad, healthy or unhealthy; they can be either, depending on how your body reacts. How your body reacts is understood through the foundations of bioenergetics. In this podcast, I introduce the study of bioenergetics and how it connects your entire lifestyle, proving that health is more than what you eat and how you move. Health is everything about your life, from the air you breathe to the relationships you interact with. Proving why even the best health plan might not work for you. Everything may be separate, but it’s all connected, and we need to focus on that connectedness.  Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/332.   Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

Today, I interviewed Dr. Jolene Brighten, asking her all of your hormonal questions, including if you should take hormone replacement therapy, how to prepare for menopause, how to tell when you're in perimenopause, what blood sugar has to do with your hormones, and so much more. Listen to the podcast and check out Dr. Brighten's latest book, Is This Normal: Judgement-Free Straight Talk About Your Body. Hormone replacement therapy is becoming increasingly common. The conversations are so familiar it feels like if you're not on hormone replacement therapy, you might be doing something wrong. It's the same for all other hormones. Everywhere you look, someone else is telling you they're a problem, making you assume you have a problem, even if you don't.  I'd even argue that hormones are one of the most wrongfully villainized body processes today. But that's a story for another day. The reality is that we encounter a lot of chatter about hormones. Nearly all of it is negative, making you believe that you probably have some hormonal problem, even if you don't.  I know all too well it's easy to fall into this predicament. Not long ago, I found myself questioning if my hormones were the problem and perhaps I needed some form of external therapy to fix it.  Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/331.   Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

Hormones are the conversation everywhere right now. Honestly, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing you probably have a hormonal problem just because it sounds like everyone does. But the common causes of hormone imbalance are not what you think. Just the other day, I was on Instagram, and ten posts in a row made me think my hormones were out of whack. How must someone who doesn’t study nutrition feel if I’m overwhelmed by the fear-inducing information? When it comes to hormones, there are many thoughts, ideas, and modes of healing. But I want to show you that most hormonal issues are actually a deeper issue that stems from your nervous system response. Hormonal problems are very real and need attention. It’s good to get them measured once in a while. But I think we need to look harder at how we heal them because it rarely has to do with our hormones. On this podcast, I've continually made clear that hormones are messenger molecules. They don’t write the message your actions take but only ship it. This proves that the problem is rarely with your hormones, but what message is your body sending that requires a different flow of hormones, and why? In this podcast, you will learn how your hormones function and the control that powers them. I also share the three most common root causes of hormone imbalance—you might be surprised to hear what they are.  Learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/330.   Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

I was sitting in an old lecture hall, daydreaming about health. As my professor scribbled on the whiteboard different caloric equations, I couldn’t help but question if there was something more my education had failed to teach me.  I couldn’t understand the idea that health, or at least weight, could be summed up into basic equations. There had to be more. I just couldn’t put a finger on what it was.  As I sat through those lectures, my questions ran deeper, but my understanding was slim. I had come here to find the answers to why so many people all over the world, especially those I loved, still struggled with their health no matter how many times they attempted the ‘perfect equation.’ I can’t say I ever found it in my college education, but I am grateful for the path that led me to look deeper. The path led me to understand, not only for myself but for a world of people, that health is not about what you do. It’s about what you perceive about what you eat.    Learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/329.   Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.