Realfoodology - How To Keep the Weight Off, Reverse Pre -Diabetes + Ozempic (the truth) | Organic Olivia

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

EP. 186: Struggling with weight loss, yo-yo dieting, reversing pre-diabetes, and managing PCOS can feel like an uphill battle, but Organic Olivia (Olivia Amitrano) joins me to share a wealth of knowledge around all these topics. We get to the root of common health issues, offering actionable advice and the inspiration for a more informed approach to personal wellness. We also touch on Ozempic, herbs, protein intake and strength training. LEAVE US A VOICE MESSAGE Topics Covered: 0:07:18 - Focus on Muscle, Reverse Insulin Resistance 0:09:29 - Diet and Exercise for Prediabetes 0:13:12 - Functional Nutritionist and Blood Sugar Balancing 0:15:40 - Managing Carbohydrate Intake for Optimal Health 0:22:39 - Managing PCOS and High Blood Sugar 0:23:12 - Genetics and Metabolism in PCOS 0:29:20)- Transforming Body Through Holistic Health 0:36:13 - Breakfast Choices Impact Binge Eating 0:40:03 - Healthy Eating and Exercise Tips 0:46:48 - Debating Fat's Role in Nutrition 0:47:53 - Optimizing Macronutrient Intake for Body Composition 0:56:42 - Building Strength Through Weight Training 0:57:19 - Reevaluating Portion Sizes and Food Associations 1:06:06 - Herbs and Adaptogens for Stress Relief Check Out Organic Olivia: Online Instagram Podcast Sponsored By: Cured www.curednutrition.com/realfoodology Code REALFOODOLOGY gets you 20% off Natural Cycles https://www.naturalcycles.com/  15% off with code REALFOODOLOGY Paleo Valley https://paleovalley.com/promos/realfoodology for 15% off Armra https://tryarmra.com/realfoodology 15% off first order with code REALFOODOLOGY Organifi www.organifi.com/realfoodology  Code REALFOODOLOGY gets you 20% Off Check Out Courtney: LEAVE US A VOICE MESSAGE Check Out My new FREE Grocery Guide! @realfoodology www.realfoodology.com My Immune Supplement by 2x4 Air Dr Air Purifier AquaTru Water Filter EWG Tap Water Database Produced By: Drake Peterson Edited & Mixed By: Mike Frey

On today's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. We're so conditioned that women need to eat like birds or that we have to eat Jenny Craig-sized meals. If you can think about eating in the framework of feeding that muscle growth, you can finally get that voice to quiet down that's telling you to eat tiny baby portions and try to be as small as possible.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Courtney Swan, and I am so grateful that you're here today. On today's episode, I sit down with Olivia Amitrano. You probably know her as Organic Olivia. This was such a fascinating episode. Olivia really knows her stuff. She's such a wealth of knowledge, and she speaks so eloquently and so clearly to health concepts that may be a little bit harder to understand.

She really brings a lot of value in all of her conversations. We talk about her personal journey with weight loss and also being almost diabetic. So she was pre-diabetic, was able to reverse that with her diet. We talk a little bit about PCOS and we also talk about how your diet can actually mimic Ozempic. And this is a conversation that is a hot topic right now. I know everybody is super interested in this. And we talked too about her thoughts on Ozempic and we really cover a lot in this episode. It was so great. I'm so grateful that I got to sit down with Olivia and I really think that you guys are going to love this episode. So I hope you enjoy it. As always,

if you are loving the podcast, if you could take a moment to rate and review it, it would mean so much to me and it really helps the show. Thanks guys. Love you. Friends, before we get into the episode, I'm so happy to share that Olivia has given me a code to give you 10% off of any of the Organic Olivia products. So if you want to go to organicalivia.com and use code REALFOODOLOGY, you're going to save 10%. Snacks. Let's talk about snacks. Everyone loves snacks. And I feel like it's hard to find a good snack that actually fills you up and that you really crave and like to eat. I am obsessed with the grass fed beef sticks from Paleo Valley. If you guys follow me on Instagram, you probably saw recently that I went, I literally went to this show

downtown and my girlfriends were making fun of me because when I met up with them, I literally had a Paleo Valley beef stick sticking out of my pocket. My friend goes, are you packing meat in there? I was. I always have a Paleo Valley stick with me either in my purse or I always shove a bunch of them in my car and just leave them in there for emergencies, for snack emergencies. I'm always bringing them places on hikes, you name it. I always have them on me because they're such a great snack. It's a great source of protein. They taste really good. They come from 100% grass-fed beef and they're really high quality. It's only organic spices in there. You're not going to find any other fillers. And

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The algorithm lets you know whether you're fertile or not fertile each day. A green day means you're not fertile and you're good to go. A red day means you're fertile and you need to use another form of protection or abstain. So all you have to do is first thing in the morning, take your temperature either with a thermometer or if you have a wearable like an Oura Ring or an Apple Watch, it automatically connects to your app. But you do not need a wearable. You simply just need a thermometer and to take your temperature first thing in the morning. If you would like to try Natural Cycles, go to naturalcycles.com, use code REALFOODOLOGY, and you're going to get 15% off an annual subscription plus a free thermometer. Again, that's naturalcycles.com, code REALFOODOLOGY. This is an ad,

and Natural Cycles is for 18 plus and does not protect against STIs. Olivia, I'm so excited to have you on today. Yay. It's such an honor. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on. I feel like everyone knows you for herbs. I feel like you're everyone's like bestie herbalist because you really give off that

vibe of like, you're my bestie. And then you're also telling me about herbs. And I definitely want to dive into that. But you've been really on the blood sugar balancing tip lately. And I want to dive into that first because it feels really important to talk about. A hundred percent. So let's talk about what your journey is with blood sugar balancing. And I know that you were on the verge of being PCOS, but you weren't actually.

So tell your story. Yeah, for sure. I was pre-diabetic. I was diagnosed with prediabetes and I was insulin resistant. And I started to have hormone issues as a result of that that were very indicative of PCOS. So I had high testosterone levels, high DHT levels. My cycles were getting longer and my periods were getting lighter. I was also having some hair loss. I was just very PCOS-ish and I obviously had a high fasting insulin and was insulin resistant. So my doctor basically told me that I was going down that road. And for many of us, that's how PCOS would begin with metabolic

derangement. But prediabetes was my issue. And even before that, I'll just give a little context to say that I have always had lifelong food and weight or body composition, I'd rather say issues. Because as a child in my family, food was our thing. Food was our coping mechanism. Both of my parents had a lot of struggle with their weight and with chronic illness. My mom with hormone issues, she had fibroids and PCOS. And so I have essentially lost the same 30 or 40 pounds three times in my life. This is the third time I've done it. And I'm telling you right now, it's the last because I finally got the muscle components. And that's what I was missing all along. I was always focusing in my life from the sixth grade

when I went to weight washers with my mom and was totally lost and afraid and just focusing on the scale and trying to eat less. I was always focused on weight loss and getting smaller and losing pounds. And no one ever taught me about body composition, about not being over fat, but being under muscled, as my doctor said, and about the role of muscle, not only in a healthy body weight and healthy hormones, but in preventing health issues for the entire rest of your life. So now I am all about the muscle and that is how I lost 30-ish pounds this time around and reversed my insulin resistance and hormone issues. So if you want me to kind of talk about how. Yeah, I was going to say let's just dive into how. Okay, so the how. So essentially this time around, again, I've always been very

yo-yo with my weight. And this time around I had started my business. Like you said, I'm an herbalist. So I started in like 2013 ish blogging and with my platform and talking about herbs and health and all these things. And as I got more and more stressed out as a young entrepreneur who had no idea what I was doing in the business world and was just trying to make the right decisions and was sitting at a desk all day and was super stressed, I became more and more sedentary'm studying herbalism. I'm really good at what I do with herbs, but I'm not necessarily practicing what I preach or in a good place with my metabolic health. And I never really had that term before. I didn't know what metabolic health was. I didn't know what blood sugar balance was. I didn't realize that blood sugar balance and prediabetes related to our cholesterol levels and our lipids and heart disease risk and all of

these things. And I started to realize that I was metabolically unhealthy. Even if I was healthy in other ways and knew how to use herbs to help with my digestion and gut health and all the things, I needed to fix my body's digestion and processing of carbohydrates as fuel. That was really my core problem. And so I went to my doctor, got all my labs done. I had high fasting blood sugar, high fasting insulin. I was diagnosed with prediabetes. And the first thing my doctor did was tell me not to eat less. It was the first time in my life that someone didn't tell me to eat less or cut calories. She told me to eat more protein because she knew that if I started my meal with a huge dose of protein, if I ate the steak first, I would be so satiated. My satiation hormones would come online. My brain would get the message

from the gut peptide hormones that I was safe. And I would naturally regulate my food intake and have less of an issue with things that I was struggling with like binge eating and cravings and all of these things that can come from blood sugar dysregulation or even emotional issues and trauma. And so she told me to eat more protein and she told me to start weight training. I got the protein part and I started walking and I started doing Pilates. Again, this is 2018. I started my journey a little bit. And slowly but surely, I got a little bit healthier, right? I started to focus more on the protein on my plate. I was doing my Pilates and my walking. I was seeing some

differences in my body and how I felt, but my blood sugar still wasn't coming down. And so in 2020, my parents both had COVID at the same time and they were both hospitalized in different hospitals. I remember that story. It was insane. Yeah. And my eyes were just opened maybe for real this time because it was so real and right in front of me to the fact that these metabolic issues and the chronic illnesses that both my parents struggled with that basically set them up for such a strong reaction to the COVID virus were very real. And I needed to get so serious about my health to where I wouldn't end up in the same situation that they were in. And I don't know if you're familiar, if your audience is

familiar, my mom also has Alzheimer's disease, which we're now finding out is like type three diabetes of the brain. My dad has diabetes. My mom has type three diabetes of the brain. And so I realized I need to get a handle on this. I need to actually get my body composition right, which for me meant, yes, losing body fat,

but more than anything, gaining muscle. And so what my doctor continued to teach me until I was ready to hear it is that the way to truly reverse blood sugar dysregulation and insulin resistance is not only to eat protein at every meal to regulate your appetite and your satiation hormones and to feed your muscle, but to add lean body mass, add lean muscle to your frame by any means necessary to truly get in the gym and start lifting weights. Because what happens is your muscle mass is actually your body's glucose disposal site. So think of your muscle. This is how my Dr. Gabrielle Lyon says it. I was going to say, who's your doctor?

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. She tells me your muscle is essentially like a suitcase. And when your body eats a healthy dose of carbohydrates, which might be totally healthy for someone else who has enough muscle or who has a healthy metabolism, they are able to put those carbohydrates into the suitcase of the muscle until it's ready to be used for fuel. But for those of us who are insulin resistant and who have PCOS or blood sugar issues,

because we don't have enough muscle or because our muscle tissue is unhealthy or we have too much body fat around or inside of the muscle that's preventing the muscle from functioning properly, we are not able to use the muscle as a suitcase. And so the carbohydrates that we eat hang around in the bloodstream instead and act as high blood sugar. And so what I did was I started to weight train. And I started, I worked with a coach actually. She's a nutritionist and a trainer. And she was actually in Kuwait. I love her. She's the functional nutritionist.

So we were on totally different time zones. And she had me just start at home with these bands, just like really simple bands. And she basically had me do, like I would put the bands on a really high cabinet in my kitchen and I would pull them down as if I was doing lat pull downs just to get my muscles ready to even enter a gym and start lifting weights because that's how much muscle I didn't have. I was not a strength trainer. I hated exercise. I was terrified of being in the gym and picking up a weight. I did not enjoy moving my body because that's how I was raised. And I was just always very sedentary and turned to food as my coping mechanism. And I just didn't have that exercise love. So I started with the simple bands and I eventually got in the gym and I just fought

tooth and nail against myself and my own embarrassment and just lifted and started to build muscle and got a program from my trainer, although people can also get a program online from an app. And I just went every two or three days and lifted like it was my job and ate so much protein. And at the same time, I used my herbalism background and I started looking at how I would work with a client who came in with blood sugar dys botanicals that we can actually take before a meal that not only act as digestive bitters, which are these bitter plants that help to increase your stomach acid and help you digest your food better, but they also help to keep your, basically they help your cells utilize the carbohydrates from your meal more effectively.

And so that again, those carbohydrates aren't hanging around in the bloodstream and you're not having a huge blood sugar high or response to that meal. And so I made something called gluco bitters. It's this formula of all these different blood sugar balancing herbs in a base of vinegar instead of a traditional alcohol tincture, because vinegar also helps you to use carbohydrates more effectively. So it's like a double whammy. And I started, I just made it at home in my kitchen and tinctured it up in the vinegar and started taking this little blood sugar balancing vinegar before my meals. I made sure that in the beginning I did initially lower my carbohydrates. This is something I tell everyone. I did have to lower my carbs at first because when you're insulin resistant, you can't really

use carbohydrates. They make you tired. They dysregulate your blood sugar. You're not primed or equipped to use them just yet. So often people need a therapeutic pulsing essentially of a low carb diet in the beginning to help them when they're resensitizing their cells to insulin, when they're building muscle, when they're first starting to lose body fat and becoming more able to utilize carbohydrates. So I did a low carb diet for like maybe four months maximum. I really don't recommend it for longer than that because your thyroid needs carbs. And once you start to be able to use them, you want to use them so that you can lift heavier in the gym and have more energy. But it really helped me to go low carb for a while while I was doing the blood sugar balancing herbs before meals, while I was walking after meals

and while I was also weight training. And it took dedication. If someone is gonna utilize this, how will they know when it's time to start incorporating carbohydrates back? Well, you could find certain signs that maybe your thyroid is struggling a little bit. Some people find that when they're on a low-carb diet for too long, their hair starts thinning a bit.

Their nails and hair get dry and brittle. Fatigue. Fatigue. They don't have as much energy. Their skin is looking a little bit dull. You're hungrier. Maybe you're feeling weak in your workouts. Maybe you're waking up in the middle of the night hungry or craving carbs and

your body actually just needs more fuel. Maybe your period's getting a little bit lighter. You need more carbs before your period. You can just almost intuitively feel when you need a bit more carbs and you can just start to reintroduce them slowly. So as I started to reintroduce more carbs, I would do 15 grams of carbs before I would go to the gym and train and 15 grams of carbs after I would go to the gym and train. And obviously that's in the context of my meals that also had fiber, fat, and protein. But I would just increase them by 15 grams at a time. And then I'd increase them by 20 grams. And now I eat like 50 grams of carbs before the gym and 40 grams after. I eat a good amount of carbs because I can finally use them for energy.

But it took me a while to get there. And the magic wasn't necessarily in the herbs or in my product. It wasn't necessarily in the vinegar or in these little things. It was in building the muscle. That is what I was missing all along. Yeah. Yeah. If you're like me, you know the importance of eating healthy, but you don't always have the time or the willpower to cook with all the colors of the rainbow. And your body is an amazing organic machine. It turns food into energy. It heals wounds, supports your consciousness and so much more, but it needs the right fuel and signals to function at its best. Some of those signals include adaptogens. These are compounds that balance hormones and help you deal with stress in a healthier way. If you're feeling tired,

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He goes straight, he like beelines in there every time he sees me in the pantry and he just begs for these treats. And I've never seen him beg for treats like this before. Like he truly is obsessed with these and they have a little bit of CBD in there. And so they really help him because he's a more anxious dog and they really help to just calm him down. Cured Nutrition is offering an exclusive 20% off discount just for you, my listeners, when you purchase any of these products I just mentioned. So the Rise or the

Nightcaps or the Serenity Gummies, and even yes, the dog treats. So if you visit curednutrition.com slash realfoodology and use the coupon code realfoodology at checkout, you're going to save 20%. So again, that is cured, C-U-R-E-D nutrition.com slash realfoodology. And the coupon code is also realfoodology. so i know a lot of women are struggling with pcos and i know you you were at least pre-diabetic and you were headed that direction first of all i want i'm curious to know why you think so many people are dealing with metabolic dysfunction pcos and then if someone is on that path or maybe already struggling with PCOS, is this something you would recommend that they would do? Would this help them to bring those

numbers down and manage better? And oh, I have one more question. Sorry, the answer first. Are your numbers back down now? Oh my God. My fasting blood glucose, it was like 110, 115, which is quite high. Maybe it doesn't seem all that high. 110 is like pre-diabetic, but in a functional range, you want to be like 70 to 90 max. My fasting blood glucose is now 78 down from 115. And my fasting insulin was like 11. And now it's, I don't know, three or four. It's unbelievable the way my numbers have changed. My testosterone and DHT are now normal. My cycle is now 28 to 29 days, whereas before it was going 35 days, 40 days. Sometimes

that's very common for women with PCOS because they're not ovulating at the right time. And, you know, PCOS is interesting. There's, I can't say it's all metabolic, right? There is a bit of a genetic component. We don't know if that's genetic in terms of it's written in stone or if that's epigenetic, meaning your mother or even your father had metabolic issues and that turned on certain genes that made you more susceptible to PCOS. We know that there are certain studies showing that if your mother over eight or under eight while you were in the womb, either one, you can be more susceptible to PCOS. So there is this sort of familial or genetic component. And then also

with PCOS, there is of course this metabolic component. And that's the one that we can control. Can't control our genetics, but we can control our metabolism. And the reason why metabolic issues and high blood sugar specifically can contribute to or be a causal factor in PCOS directly is because when your insulin is always high, because your body's always responding to this issue with metabolizing carbohydrates, essentially your ovaries respond by producing more testosterone. And so PCOS is characterized by this increase in testosterone, which throws off your hormones, which can lengthen your cycle, which can also cause all of these issues that women with PCOS deal with like hirsutism, so facial or chin hair growth and a lack of hair growth on the head or hair loss on the head. And what also happens when your ovaries

are producing a ton of testosterone and when you're always having high blood sugar and high insulin levels is that your LH levels, your luteinizing hormone, which is supposed to have a really demarcated specific spike at one point in your cycle, which tells your body to ovulate, because your LH levels are always high as a response to the high blood sugar, your body never sees that there's a spike. And so many women either ovulate too late or don't even ovulate at all. And so then you get anovulatory cycles in PCOS, late or missed periods. And of course, due to the high blood sugar and the metabolic issues, you have weight gain and other issues that we see in PCOS, infertility and things of that nature.

So it's really the imbalanced blood sugar, the blood sugar highs and lows, the overconsumption. I don't even want to say it's overconsumption of carbohydrates because carbohydrates can exist in a healthy diet. We just all have our own carb tolerance. But it's really also the overconsumption of energy intake, calories in general, including the overconsumption of carbs, that puts us in a surplus mode and that can keep our blood sugar high. Yeah, that's so fascinating. I also think it's important for people to hear this, that just because your markers are showing

that you could be going into diabetes, you're pre-diabetic, even if you have been diagnosed with diabetes too, we have been told in the conventional allopathic model that you're just going to be on medications for life. There's nothing you can do. There's no diet or lifestyle intervention. And you're sitting here telling us that you were pre-diabetic and you brought your numbers down simply by weight training and modifying your diet.

Type 2 diabetes is reversible. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease. You're always going to need to take insulin. But type 2 diabetes is beyond reversible. And so is pre-diabetes. And preventable. And preventable, absolutely. And I mean, we're seeing now, for example, we're seeing a lot of people take Ozempic. And it's treating their type 2 diabetes. You know, I have a friend who's a dietician in the Bronx and in the inner city area in New York. And a lot of her clients, they don't have access to time or resources in order to make

the dietary changes or get the trainer that I got or go to the gym and have all this extra time to do what I did. And they're simply not going to make the lifestyle changes that will help to reverse their diabetes. So for those folks, because high blood sugar and type 2 diabetes is so damaging to the body and because the longer your blood sugar is high, the more your kidneys are at risk of becoming diseased and failing. She's giving them a drug like Ozempic because it is a life-saving drug for them because it is able to essentially reverse or treat type 2 diabetes. And that's for many reasons. I mean, Ozempic has a lot of metabolic effects that can be mimicked with weight training, higher protein, higher fiber consumption.

But it's also that it's helping these folks to have less cravings, better satiety, and to eat less and to actually lower their body weight or their body fat percentage. The problem with Ozempic as a drug is that because it is so suppressive to our appetite, because the GLP-1 satiety hormone that it is mimicking, the effect is so strong. A lot of those folks are not eating enough period and they're definitely not eating enough protein. So while they're losing weight and losing weight is actually helping their type 2 diabetes, they're losing half body fat and half muscle mass. And losing your muscle mass is never going to give you long-term results. So those people get off of Ozempic and then they end up gaining the weight back,

if not more, and they end up having more issues with type 2 diabetes. But the thing is, you can mimic that satiety hormone GLP-1 and help your brain to feel safer and to not want as many carbohydrates or not overeat by doing things like taking blood sugar balancing herbs, things like cinnamon or gemnema or ginseng. All of these herbs have been shown to actually increase levels of GLP-1, which is what's in Ozempic. Berberine too, I think, right? Berberine as well. And just by eating a higher protein and higher fiber diet, you can increase your own endogenous levels of GLP-1 and mimic not only the satiety and appetite effects,

but also the metabolic effects that we're seeing that help to physiologically lower blood glucose. So you can do it with diet and with putting on muscle and giving that blood sugar a place to go and becoming metabolically healthier through that muscle tissue because it's more metabolically active. Or you can do it through drugs that are very lifesaving for some people. But unfortunately, through the drug route, people end up losing, again, a lot of their muscle mass, and so it's not sustainable. So it's much better to do it slower. For me, it took a long time. I've been, again, lifting an atlas since essentially 2021 because 2020, I was not okay. But I made the changes in 2021, and it's been three years now. And I've

completely transformed my body. That's incredible, though. I mean, you just said this a couple minutes ago that you feel like this is the last time that you're going to have to go through this and lose this weight. And that is the whole point of this is that it's not about these quick fix, you know, quick results. You are setting yourself up for a lifestyle change and you're going to reap the benefits for the rest of your life. This is the only thing that really concerns me about something like Ozempic, not saying that it can't be applied in certain situations like you just said, but the loss of muscle mass, we're also not educating people on how to actually eat well. And we don't know what happens when they come off of it. And then if they don't learn how to build that muscle

and to change their diet, do those diet modifications, then they're just going to gain all the weight back and possibly more. So that's the only thing that is concerning to me about that drug. Yeah. It's also with any of the semaglutide brand name drugs that are having that similar effect on our gut peptide hormones. There's also this delayed gastric emptying effect that is seen in terms of the mechanism of how it's working. So food is digested a lot slower. It's moving through the intestines at a much slower rate, which means that the carbohydrates that you do eat in your meals are hitting your bloodstream at a much slower rate. So you're not getting the

blood sugar spikes nor the inflammation and the damage from the blood sugar spike. So you end up becoming healthier and less insulin resistant. Yeah. But that's happening a bit too extreme with the drug. We're seeing a lot of people have gastroparesis and gastritis and issues where they're not digesting food properly because it's too slow. But you can also slow gastric emptying and slow the digestion of your food by simply eating more protein and fiber

in every meal. And that is my thing. I now eat so much protein. It's like pathological. No, no, no. It's not pathological, but it's just, I thought I was eating enough protein by having two eggs in the morning and toast and whatever. I thought two or three eggs was a high protein breakfast. Two eggs is 12 grams of protein. Yeah, that's not very high. The amount of protein that you want to consume, especially as you start getting older, is at least 0.8 grams per pound of ideal body weight, ideally one gram per pound of ideal body weight. So let's say my ideal body weight is 140 pounds. I'm going to want to aim for 140 grams of protein per day, which is a lot. You're not going to get there with two eggs in the morning.

So I started, I found that when I would have a huge breakfast, and I mean bigger than I ever thought possible to the point where I was a little bit too full at the end, but ended up feeling good after. And I would have, let's say, one egg and six egg whites in my scramble, or I would have three eggs and three chicken sausages, or I would have protein oatmeal that had protein powder and Greek yogurt, and there was 50 grams of protein in that oatmeal. I was so much more satiated. I was happier. My brain felt safe because I was getting that huge dose of protein. I was getting that GLP-1 release in my stomach that tells your brain we're safe. We don't need

to keep seeking and eating more food. We're good. It helps with cravings. And I also found that eating that huge meal in the morning with that huge dose of protein was the only way that I would not binge eat at night because that was a huge issue for me. I mean, when we talk about why folks get overweight, you know, there's so many factors. A lot of it has to do with accessibility to good foods, you know, food deserts, budget. There's so many things. There's so many reasons why people only have access to poor quality foods or overeat or whatever it is. But there's also a huge emotional factor. And for me, I had a lot of emotional eating and a lot of binge eating,

especially at night. And so I've done a lot of nervous system work in this time to help me feel safer in my body so that I'm not reaching for that food at night as much. However, it's so much easier to do that nervous system work and to exert the willpower and the practices that are needed to help yourself feel safe in your body when you've taken care of half the battle by releasing the right hormones early in the day and all throughout the day by eating enough protein. You're quieting 50%, if not more, of those cravings by just eating enough protein to where your brain feels satiated and safe. And then you can do the rest of the nervous system work to help with the root causes of why you're binge eating or emotional eating. Is it just me or is colostrum just totally taking the internet by storm? I mean, I'm so happy about it. And it's so interesting how certain things will just become a massive trend. I've been taking colostrum for probably at least 10 years now

or so my mom got me on it. It's an ancient practice used for immune function. It really helps to strengthen and bolster the immune system. And I will say Armra colostrum has really taken the internet by storm. And for good reason, it is a really good high quality colostrum. I get so many DMs from you guys

just specifically asking me if I use Armra colostrum. And yes, many DMs from you guys just specifically asking me if I use Armour colostrum. And yes, I do. I've been taking Armour specifically for almost a year now. I travel with it everywhere I go. I bring the little individual packets with me and I especially take it while I'm traveling because that's when we are most susceptible to getting sick. And you know what's really cool? There's actually a study that's been done comparing the effects of the flu vaccine and colostrum, and colostrum performed better in protecting the body from the flu. Isn't that wild? And this is a peer-reviewed study posted in a very well-renowned medical journal. So what is colostrum? It is the first nutrition we receive in life and contains all the essential nutrients we need in order to thrive. Armour is a proprietary concentrate of bovine colostrum

that harnesses these 200 plus living bioactive compounds to rebuild your immune barriers and fuel cellular health for a host of research-backed benefits. Armour colostrum strengthens immunity. It ignites metabolism. It fortifies gut health. It helps activate hair growth and skin radiance. And I actually have seen all my little,

I have all these baby hairs that have been growing since I started taking it. It helps activate hair growth and skin radiance. And I actually have seen all my little, I have all these baby hairs that have been growing since I started taking it. And it helps to power fitness performance and recovery. And what's cool is we have worked out a special offer for you, my audience, my listeners who I absolutely adore. You're gonna get 15% off your first order. So go to tryarmra.com slash realfoodology. That is T-R-Y-A-R-M-R-A.com slash realfoodology. That is T-R-Y-A-R-M-R-A.com slash realfoodology,

or simply enter code realfoodology and you're going to get 15% off. Again, that's tryarmra.com slash real times with the binge eating outside of the emotional because the emotional is a big component of it as well from my understanding is eating not enough protein like you said not being satisfied enough in between meals and allowing your blood glucose levels to crash so far down that you're just looking for anything to have quick energy yep 100 if you're having a breakfast that's you know the standard american that you're just looking for anything to have quick energy. Yep. 100%. If you're having a breakfast that's the standard American breakfast, you're having cereal with milk, or you're having a breakfast sandwich where there's a nominal amount of protein, a bagel, some pancakes, a cereal bar, a granola bar,

like a quick protein snack, a Pop-Tart, any of those things. A muffin, any of those. A muffin. A lot of people have muffins for breakfast. I was a muffin girl. I was too. Yeah. Cause it's like, you think that, oh, well, it's just a small amount of food. It's just a little bit. Yeah. Or you think if you're coming from like more of traditional dieting where I was like with Weight Watchers, you're counting points and you're trying to eat as little food as possible. Or you think that if I just eat this muffin, then I can have a bigger lunch later. Or I'm doing something good for myself by eating this muffin because it's like low in calories and it's small. But you're actually not because you're paying for

it later because not only is that muffin going to cause a blood sugar spike, there's no protein or fiber or enough healthy fat to blunt the blood glucose spike that you're going to get from that injection of carbs. So you're going to get a blood sugar low. You're going to be on a roller coaster and get a blood sugar low within one to two hours of eating that muffin. And you're going to be ravenous and you're going to want a quick source of carbohydrates. You're going to be craving something as sweet as humanly possible because your body wants to survive. So it's going to tell you to reach for an M&M or whatever, a cookie or an iced coffee. That's a big one. A lot of my cravings would come through coffee because my brain knew that

an iced caramel latte had a lot of sugar in it. Yeah. And the caffeine. So it's like a double boost. And the caffeine because your body needs some sort of fuel. It needs some sort of energy boost and it knows that it can get it through caffeine. So you're going to have these intense cravings and then you're probably going to make a poor choice at that meal or snack because your body's desperate and you don't have willpower at that point. And then you're just going to be on that roller coaster for the whole day. But if you eat a huge breakfast, and at the beginning, again, I felt overly full. And because I had been so conditioned to be like, if I feel full, then I'm just going to gain more weight. Or if I feel full, then yada, yada, like I'm going to get bigger.

I was afraid to be full at first. But once I just pushed past that and was like, no, I'm fueling myself. I'm eating enough protein and enough food to make sure that I don't crash and that I make a healthy choice at my next meal. And I'm satiated and emotionally balanced. There's a huge emotional piece too. I'm going to be good. And it changed my life. That first meal of the day, I can't stress enough. You're also coming out of a huge emotional piece too. I'm going to be good. And it changed my life.

That first meal of the day, I can't stress enough. You're also coming out of a fasted state overnight. Your body is the most primed to accept protein at that first meal. Your muscles are the most primed to exert muscle protein synthesis in response to your amino acid intake at that first meal. So you can have the greatest effect on building muscle with breakfast. Wow. Wow. Okay, so let's talk about how these diet modifications actually look in a day-to-day. So if someone's listening, they're like, okay, I would love to apply this. Maybe walk us through meals or just what do you think about when you're building a meal knowing this?

So a big one for me for a while was eggs. It was just so easy and I didn't have to think about it and i used to also think that meals had to be so intricate and always so delicious and hyper delicious you know because a muffin is amazing or yeah whatever a breakfast sandwich they're really good um and at a certain point i was, not every meal has to be the best meal ever. Sometimes it is just whole food and fuel, and it can just be pretty good. And then you can have certain meals throughout the week that you look forward to that are super delicious that you're going out to dinner with friends to eat. But I just started to think of food differently. I wasn't relying on it as much for pleasure as I was relying on it as a smart decision that I could make in

collaboration with my body. So yeah, some hard boiled eggs in the morning with a piece of toast probably isn't the most delicious breakfast, especially if you're eating it every day. But for me, eating that same thing over and over again, at least in the beginning, took the guesswork out of it, took the pressure you know I didn't need to come up with fresh new meal ideas every day and I just kind of was like a soldier with it and I was like yeah I'm gonna literally shove a bunch of hard-boiled eggs down my throat it wasn't I mean a lot of people have a hard time with it but I ate a lot of eggs in the beginning that's how I did it yeah the more the merrier they're they're a protein bomb and so I would have eggs with some turkey

bacon I would maybe have like two full eggs, four or five egg whites, and then some turkey bacon and a little bit of sourdough toast with some butter. Or when I was much lower carb in the beginning, I would maybe have some fruit, like half a banana or some berries instead of the sourdough toast. Now I have toast because I eat more carbs. But that was always breakfast. Nowadays, again, I can have more carbohydrates. I can have more fun with my meals because I'm not like trying to change my habits. So I'm not adding an extra layer of, I also have to be a recipe guru and like looking for new delicious recipes all the time. It just doesn'tphosate free oats. And then I do some chia seeds. I do some protein powder. I do Greek yogurt, some almond milk. I do some PB2 powdered peanut butter. There's probably an organic version of that somewhere. There is an organic one. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So you can put that in the show notes and I need to buy that. But I just have been doing the powdered peanut butter because it gives a beautiful peanut butter flavor and it's high in protein and pretty low in fat. I do want to say really fast for the peanuts,

the reason why you want it to be organic is because they are one of the crops that's very heavily sprayed with pesticides. Oh, good to know. Notoriously. Okay. So I'm going to get the organic powdered peanut butter. I love that. Yeah. But that'll be my concoction in the morning and I'll do it as overnight oats and I'll make enough for two servings, pour the almond milk, shake it up with the chia seeds, whatever, put it in the fridge. In the morning, I'll take it out and I'll just heat it up on the stove because I don't really love cold breakfast or cold oats. So I heat it up and then I add a ton of blueberries and a little bit of butter and it's so good. And blueberries are also a really wonderful food for insulin resistance because the polyphenols within blueberries not only help your gut

microbiome and shift your gut microbiome in a direction where it helps your metabolic health, but they also contain compounds that help to lower your postprandial or your post-meal blood glucose. So I ate blueberries almost every day throughout my entire journey of lowering my insulin resistance. Blueberries and cinnamon, those are two superfoods. They also contain inositol, which is a great blood sugar balancing B vitamin nutrient. Yeah. Amazing. So that's breakfast. Sorry. Yeah, no, you're good. You're good. Keep going. I love it. And then lunch and dinner, I just have like protein meal prepped and some veggies. So

a big thing I've been doing for dinner lately is like a turkey taco bowl. I'll just get some organic ground turkey and I'll cook it with like siete taco seasoning and some onions. And then I'll just craft a taco bowl that has shredded lettuce on the bottom, a little bit of rice, some tomatoes, the turkey. I'll put maybe the siete foods queso or queso. What did I say? Queso. I'll put the queso. Tomato, tomato. I'll put a little organic sour cream or a little bit of Greek yogurt even on top instead of the sour cream to add more protein. And I'll just eat that kind of like a Chipotle bowl. And so then you get plants and protein. That's just kind of my philosophy is plants and protein and making things as easy and simple and fun as possible.

And a lot of meal prep. I would make a ton of chicken breast and shove it in the fridge and then make salads with it or have it with some rice or just bake a ton of sweet potato. I love Japanese sweet potato. It's really good. It's better than orange sweet potato. I agree. I attest. Yeah. And I would just reheat it midday. And especially in the beginning, I would do chicken and sweet potato even as snacks, just in a smaller amount because it didn't really make sense to me to be snacking on like processed food snacks when my goal was to build muscle and eat more whole foods and protein and reset my appetite and get myself to a healthier place. So I would just have mini meals as snacks. So it might sound boring, but that's what I did in the

beginning. And now I eat more packaged foods and fun things and cookies because I can, because my metabolism is better. But in the beginning, it was hard work. It was discipline. People think I took Ozempic. I'm so serious. I mean, you kind of did. You just said nature's Ozempic. Exactly. Exactly. But it was hard. And I was in the gym all the time. And I was, if you're not working hard in the gym to the point where you are at failure at your wits end and you feel like you just beat yourself up, you're not doing it right. And I don't mean through cardio. Cardio sucks. I'd rather get myself with weights than with cardio.

It's hard, but it's a different kind of hard. It's slower. It's lower impact. You're more present and you feel stronger at the end of it. I will tell you the hardest thing that I have with weight training is that I have been so conditioned to do that cardio, like just, you know, working up a sweat, feeling like you're just getting your heart rate up like crazy and not saying you don't with the weight training, but what you just said is it's slower. It's more repetitions. I sometimes, and this is something that I've really been trying to work on this year because I feel like everyone is talking about weight training and how important it is for so many

different reasons. There is that part of me that struggles with like, if I don't do some form of cardio, I feel like I didn't get a good workout in. Well, here's the thing. Cardiovascular health is important. Being conditioned is important. When you're 30, 40 pounds overweight, it's much easier to just focus on one thing. It's like to just start with the weight training and have that be your focus. Because it's changing your body composition faster, it's helping you to actually build muscle. And if your diet is dialed in, also burn fat at the same time. It's going to get you to your goal faster, it's going to give you better metabolic health faster, and it's going to get you to a place where you can start to run and do more

cardiovascular exercise because you're healthier. You don't have as much excess body fat on your body, you're not as inflamed, all the things. So it's better in the beginning to start with the weight training, but I'm not going to say I'm against cardio. Now I run maybe two times a week or whatever. But like you said, when you're really like heavy weight training, your heart is racing. It's a cardiovascular workout. So weight train hard enough to where you're getting a cardio workout or mix it in in a joyful way throughout the week as well. Both are important. Yeah, I totally agree. From a diet perspective, I'm curious what your take is on fat and how much you incorporate it in.

Because I know it's so interesting as someone who studied nutrition and I watched all these trends happen in the last like 15 years. At first, it was obviously low fat when I first started studying. And then we went into keto, which is like fat, everything, high fat.

Like you want to be focused mostly on fat. Now, I feel like we're more focused on protein, which I think is a good thing. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but where does fat come into that? And what is your take on fat when you're thinking about it through this lens? So I learned from both my Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, as well as Alan Aragon, who's a scientist in the space. She originally had him on her podcast, and then he came on my podcast. I've asked him this question. She asked him this question. And from what I understand, the science is pretty clear that as long as you're controlling for protein, like you're getting your, let's say for women, 110 to 140 grams, right? The rest of your

caloric intake can pretty much be spent where you want as long as it falls within your maintenance range, if you want to stay the same weight, if it falls in your deficit range if you're losing, or if it falls in your surplus range if you're trying to build muscle, right? It just depends on where you want to be. So you can kind of split your other macros however you like. Someone who likes to eat a higher fat, lower carb diet that works for you, you're not having thyroid issues, your hair is not feeling brittle, and your body responds well, and you prefer to add avocado onto your meal instead of adding rice, you go for that. Protein is the most important because you always want to control for it because you want to keep your lean muscle mass on your body. That is your most precious currency.

You cannot lose that, especially as you age. You want to be mobile. It's a metabolic organ. It's active. It's an endocrine organ. Muscle actually produces things called myokines, which are anti-inflammatory cell signaling molecules compared to fat or adipose tissue, which produces adipokines, which are pro-inflammatory. Excess body fat also produces estrogen. So all this to say muscle is not benign. It's metabolically active. It's doing things for you. So that's why you want to control for your protein and always eat enough to keep whatever muscle you got on your body and build more of it. That is our job as humans. We also want to be able to

take care of ourselves and move around when we're older and have good posture and structure and muscle is the only way that we're going to do that. So that is most important. But again, in terms of splitting the rest of your macros, it's up to your preference. I feel for me, interestingly, I was always eating too much fat. Not that I'm a low fat diet girly, but my palate somewhere along the way, maybe from a childhood of very, very processed foods, I skewed to wanting everything to be more fatty. And so I would always want to add more avocado on things or like mayo or some kind of fat to my meals. And once I just stopped doing that, once I started working on my insulin resistance and was eating in a bit of a calorie deficit, I cut a little bit of fat and my palate adjusted. And now I don't

like as much fat on my meals anymore. And I found a lot of metabolic benefits lowering it. There's also some studies showing that for women with PCOS and or metabolic derangement, saturated fat intake, for example, may be a bit pro-inflammatory, whereas for someone who has no metabolic issues, saturated fat has no inflammatory effect. So it all just depends on the person. So I actually started eating leaner meats and lower fat dairy and cutting my fat, and that helped me a lot. And I am seeing now, especially as I'm going harder in the gym and building muscle, that I'm doing better with a higher carb diet versus fat. But you had mentioned that you do better with fat.

I do. I do better with fat. And it's interesting because I figured this out before I actually had the blood work to prove it. But I actually just got this genetic test done through my doctor and she was sitting down with me last week going over it. And she goes, wow, you actually do really low on pretty low carbohydrate. According to your blood work, your body loves protein and fat. And I was like, I figured that out somehow on my own.

That's the thing. You know it. I can feel that my body wants carbs more than fat and you can feel that you're, it's amazing. And I'm by no means like low carb or like really low carbohydrate. Obviously, like you said, we need it for energy. And I've noticed, like I tried to go keto once and I was on the floor. I was so fatigued.

Women in keto are not friends. Yeah, we are not friends with keto. No, it just doesn't work for us. Men, great, go for it. Or if you're a menopausal woman, amazing. But when you're of childbearing years, your body's highly sensitive to signals of famine and not having carbohydrates and having to bypass our Krebs cycle and not be able to produce ATP from glucose and having to go over to ketones. It's, it's metabolic stress. If you don't have to do that to your body, don't. Yeah. I mean, you're essentially telling your body we're in danger. Yeah. We're in a famine.

Yes. We're in a famine. All we have access to is whale blubber. Now, now start to make ketones. Like it's like, let's go's go yeah it's an interesting thing yeah but it's really interesting and um and i was thinking about so when i'm really feeling like i need more like if i'm not feeling satiated enough i'm reaching for the higher fat stuff because that's where i really feel like satisfied and obviously i do with protein too and the beautiful thing that you were just saying i love what you said about eating your protein first and then everything else kind of evens out because then you're already full and satisfied and then you're not going to be binging on all these other things. I mean, it's so easy to binge on like a huge bowl of pasta. So try to, so when you're eating,

do you try to really eat your protein first before you have your carbs? Like, are you thinking that actively as you're eating or are you just kind of like, okay, I've got all my protein here. I can still eat my rice whenever. Cause I know like, for example, the glucose goddess, she always shows like, you know, eat a green salad first or eat your protein or fat first and then have your carbohydrates. Are you actually thinking that when you're doing it, when you're eating? Not necessarily. And I think even in a glucose goddess says that you can always eat them all in the same bite. You don't have to necessarily get the order right. It's just kind of having them together and like all in one. Although the veggie starter, obviously there is a benefit to having that first, especially if there's vinegar on it.

So I would say I do tend to eat a veggie starter first, especially when I'm at a restaurant or if I'm at home kind of making a salad for me and my husband. But when I have steak and rice, it tastes better to eat them in the same bite. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. It doesn't really, I mean, maybe. I also am a meat lover. So I do tend to start going for the meat because I just love it. Especially if like, for example, the other night I was flying from Austin to LA. I was in the Austin airport. It was really late at night. Everything was closed. There was a burger joint open. I was like, for example, other night I was flying from Austin to LA. I was in the Austin airport. It was really late at night. Everything was closed. There was a burger joint open. I was like, all right, I'm going to get whatever, a burger without a bun because they didn't have a gluten free bun. So I got a double patty and I'm going to get some fries because I need some carbs. That is all I have access to right now. I mean, fries are maybe mostly fat because they're fried

in seed oils, but I needed some kind of carb. Yeah, I feel that. But I knew that if, and I love a French fry once in a while, but I knew that if I started with my patties first and ate a good amount of the patties that I'd be able to really naturally regulate how many fries I needed to just have enough to fuel me. And that's how it worked out. So it kind of depends on the meal too. And yeah, sometimes I'll eat the protein first, but it's nice to eat meat and potatoes in one bite. You don't have to be too religious about it. Just get that protein on the plate.

Yeah. Oh, this is so good. This is so helpful for people because I think so many are struggling with either binge eating or just feeling like they're not getting satisfied and they don't really know how to apply it in such an easy way like this.

So this is just, I think it's so helpful for people. Yeah. You got to eat more than you think you need. We're so conditioned that women need to eat like birds or that we have to eat Jenny Craig sized meals or, you know, it's, I'm not one to go on a trope about diet culture, but I do think that the way in which corporational diet culture got us is wild. You really don't have to eat these small, tiny portions to lose weight or build muscle. In fact, you need to eat to build muscle. And if you can think about eating in the framework of feeding that muscle growth

and actually seeing the results from all your hard work in the gym, as well as keeping yourself nourished and satiated, you can finally get that voice to quiet down that's telling you to eat tiny baby portions and try to be as small as possible. And then you free your mind. You free so much space up in your mind

because you're not like constantly feeling like you're trying to figure out how to go in between meals without eating as little as possible. It's just like, it's torture. I feel like almost every woman knows that mentality of like you were just talking about the Jenny Craig, the, okay, I'm gonna have this tiny little muffin. And then, you know, you're looking at the clock and you're like, it's 11 a.m. I probably shouldn't eat lunch yet. Cause then I'm going to be starving for dinner super early. And like, you're just, it's like this culture. It's a mental jail. It is literally a

mental jail. And it keeps you, it keeps you in a state of low energy to where you don't have the energy to work out. If you're under eating, and there's also a difference between under eating enough real food and like overeating calorically. Like obviously if you're eating two Pop-Tarts for breakfast, it's this much food, right? You know, it's like a deck of cards essentially times two. That's not going to fill you up, but you are going to be overloaded on calories. You probably are going to end up being in a caloric surplus if you're having foods like that that are processed and highly calorie dense for a very small volume of food because they're

processed foods. So I'm not saying eat more in the sense of like eat way more calories and go crazy. You are not going to change your body composition and lose weight and gain muscle that way. No, I had to actually be in a caloric deficit by just 100 calories or so in my initial fat loss phase when I lost the 30 pounds to reverse my insulin resistance. chicken breast and salmon and kale and sweet potato and squash and strawberries and all of these real foods, how much of that food I needed to get to a 500 calorie meal. You know what I mean? Like a normal size meal. Whereas I could eat that easily in a delicious cookie from Erewhon. I mean- That is so true. It's such a good point. Yeah. When you think about those processed foods, I mean, we talked about this on your podcast.

They're designed to be overeaten. Yeah. And it's so easy to overeat those. No one's binging on steak. No, they're not. You can't. You physically can't. Did you also grow up with like 100 calorie packs? Oh my God, yes. And so that's what?

I know, that makes me so mad. Like three little Oreo thins? I was going to say my favorite slash I thought the worst was they made these little like mini Oreos and there'd be like 12 of them in a bag. Yes. Oh my God. I had those all the time. So you think we get deranged like having grown up with those foods and associating them with, oh, this is what a hundred calories look like. I can only eat this small portion of food. If it's a snack, it needs to be 100 calories. 100 or 200 calories of steak and potatoes is a good amount. That's a good snack. That's going to keep you filled up. So it's just realizing that your plate's going to be actually way more full when you're eating

real whole foods and like specifically protein and plants. You're going to have a lot more food on that plate and you're going to need to kind of train yourself to be okay with eating that much if you want to reach your goals. It's a mental thing. It's a conditioned thing. It's a, I don't want to get bigger thing. And you won't. And there's also phases. I mean, again, my initial phase was very much a body recomposition or like fat loss phase when I was first losing the weight to reverse the insulin resistance and starting to train. And so my body did get smaller. And now I'm in a phase of building muscle. Now I'm eating in a caloric surplus.

I'm eating way more carbs. Well, not way more, but a good amount more. And I'm lifting heavy in the gym. I'm dead lifting 110, 120 pounds. I'm going hard and I'm putting on muscle. In the last six weeks, I did my in-body scan. I put on four pounds of muscle mass, pure muscle mass, and lost 3% of my body fat eating more. So you'll get to a point after you have initially lost the weight when you can start then ramping your calories back up and eating more and using those carbs to put on muscle.

And your body will continue to change, but you'll get more solid. And you're not going to want to be little anymore. You're going to want to be strong and solid because you'll have shape and you'll have curve and cuts and you'll be able to see this beautiful definition and you'll feel strong. That's the best part is feeling strong, walking into a room and having good posture and knowing that my body can do things. Yeah. Wow. That's so cool. And I think about, as you were saying that I was thinking about lifespan, longevity as we get older and you think about as people get older, they slump down, they look really frail and they don't, they lose so much of their muscle mass. But a lot of that is because they're not practicing this and not starting and implementing these practices now.

Yeah. I mean, you can build muscle at any age though. They just did a study. I was at Gabrielle Lyon's summit and Molly Gale breath. She was talking about a study of women who were 90 to 96 years old and who did a 12 week strength training program. They put on lean muscle mass. Oh, that's amazing. You can start at any time, but you're right. It's that slouching, the posture, the more strength that you have and like physical structure from your muscle, the better posture you're going to have. That's the more blood flow that you're going to have. The more access you'll have to movements that can help you take care of yourself and get around and be autonomous and independent in your later years. It's not thinking about you in a bikini this summer. That'll only get you so far that we know that doesn't work. We've all dieted

for the bikini in the summer. It's often not enough, but thinking about ourselves when we're 75 and don't want to have to rely on someone else, that gets a fire in my belly. Yeah, that's cool. I also, I'm literally sitting here right now being like, I got to lift some more weights, girl. I know. We got to work on that. I've been working on it. I've been doing it like three times a week. Okay, good. I go to classes right now

because I don't feel comfortable enough. Like I was going to the gym with my boyfriend and he was showing me some moves and stuff. But it's also like, actually our friend Mari talks about this a lot, but I don't think it's talked about enough. Women are, or at least for myself and a lot of my friends,

I'm so intimidated to go to the gym. And I never thought I would be that person because pretty much nothing really intimidates me like that. But I'm intimidated when I go to the squat, oh my God, the squat racks and like try to pick up weights. And yeah, it's a little intimidating. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about it. It's legit like exposure therapy. You have to, I like to practice taking up space in the gym because it's a constant practice and if I don't go to the gym for like a week or so I start to get real shy

again and it's harder for me to go back in and take up that space at the squat rack so I'll do things like for example it feels really good for me to lift with no shoes on I like to I mean I have good lifting sneakers but there's nothing like feeling the bottom of your foot in the ground yeah because then you can really feel when you're driving into your heel, when you're doing a, whatever, like a glute step up or when you're driving into the middle of your foot, when you're doing a deadlift, the foot is really important and having that proprioception. So I'll take my shoes off at the squat rack in front of all these dudes. And it's so embarrassing and weird. And they're probably like, who is this girl? Or they're probably not looking at me at all but it's my perception yeah exactly and it's just

me practicing doing that something that I think is weird or would get attention that I don't want or whatever because that's what feels best for me and I'm allowed to do it and it helps my training and it's it's almost like the more I do outlandish things like that the better I feel and not that that's outlandish but no but even yesterday I moved a bench from the squat rack section over to the smith machine so that I could hip thrust on the smith machine and you know it's like I'm like dragging this bench and like it's it's looking funny and I'm like struggling a little bit but I can do it and I don't need help and but it definitely will draw attention to you or it just feels like one of those things that you'd rather have your boyfriend or your husband do for you. And yeah, if he was there, I would lean on him, but there's something so empowering

about just doing it myself and accepting if people look at me, that's fine. And just practicing, flexing that muscle of not being embarrassed or pushing through the embarrassment. And that's also why I started at home. Like I have videos of me in my living room with, yeah, again, like the little pull bands, doing the lat pull downs or doing a cable row with the pull bands in front of me, or even just having five pound dumbbells and doing walking lunges. I started with five pound dumbbells and now I'm dead lifting 120 pounds. That's where I started. I could not do shoulder presses with more than five or eight pounds. And now I can do 20 pounds in each hand, probably more. I mean, it's really unbelievable

the baby steps that are required. So start at home, get a bench from Amazon or maybe not Amazon, but whatever, get a bench, get some five pound dumbbells from like TJ Maxx or something. You can get a great deal there and just look up on YouTube how to do a dumbbell shoulder press, how to do a dumbbell row on a bench. Watch these videos, look at their form, practice, really pay attention to where am I feeling that in my body? when I'm doing this row and they're telling me I'm supposed to be feeling it in my back am I really squeezing in my back and can I feel it there practice that so that you you know you have your form down before you walk into the gym once you have that base at home if you have a male friend or a boyfriend or a girlfriend who works

out who can come over to your house and help you with your form, ask for that help. Or download a Fit app. I think Fit On is an app that people use. We can look for some. But download those apps that will walk you through it and teach you form and practice, practice, practice so that when you walk into that gym, you don't feel like you're walking in there and doing some obscure exercise. You know what you're there to do. You have your four exercises written down.

And that's what I did in the beginning. I only did four exercises every time I went to the gym and I did 10 reps per set and maybe four sets total. So I would go into the lat pull downs. That was one of my four. I would do 10 reps, take a break, and I would repeat that four times. And then I would go do lunges. Then I would go do whatever. It doesn't have to be more than four exercises and you're done, but have your plan before you go in there, execute it. It takes maybe 35, 40 minutes. You don't have to be exhausted every single time, especially in the beginning. Yeah. Well, this is so inspiring. I love that. Especially what you said really spoke to me about just taking up space because as women, we need to give ourselves that permission to take up that space. A hundred percent.

It's so empowering. Yeah. Okay. I want to dive a little bit in herbs before we go, because like I said earlier, you're our bestie herbalist. What are... Ten. Okay, ten.

Perfect. Thank you. What are some herbal, either herbs or herbal remedies that have changed your life? I feel like I'm probably asking you to pick like a favorite child, but... Yeah. No, I mean, there's so many herbs I love. I could maybe break them down into the classes or the actions of herbs. So you'll have different classes. For example, we have our adaptogens. That's one that a lot of people are familiar with because they have taken a mushroom coffee or an ashwagandha supplement or something like that. It's a buzzword. Adaptogens are these food-like medicinal, but like non-toxic because they can be eaten in food-like

doses. They're these food-like nutritive roots that increase our general resilience to stressors. So they just help our HPA access, essentially our neuroendocrine system, be less reactive to stressors, whether that's physical stressors, whether that's emotional stressors, whether that's lack of sleep, they just increase our nonspecific resilience. And they do so through different mechanisms. Some adaptogens actually boost our heat shock proteins, which is what's released in a sauna. It's really interesting. They have some wild mechanisms as to how they work and we're still just starting to study them. But traditionally they're used for people who are stressed out, depleted, overworked, undersleeping. They're really good for new moms.

They're good for anyone who has any sort of chronic stress, which is almost all of us in today's world. And they just help you to be, your nerves to be a little bit less frazzled and they help you to have more energy and they also really help with your circadian rhythm. For some reason, this class of adaptogens, when you take them in the correct doses

and consistently enough in the morning, you'll see that you're actually able to wake up in a little bit more of alignment with the photo period or the daylight period of the day, and you're tired at the right time at night. So they're also really good for people who, when nighttime hits, they get a second wind and they're wired but tired. That used to be me. That is my definition of life. I'm always a little chronically stressed. I have a lot of nervous system stuff going on that lifting helps with, all these things help with,

like doing hard things helps, but adaptogens help too. So I would say adaptogens are a lifesaver for me. I take adaptogens every single morning. It's like a mainstay in my routine. I have a blend called Adrenal Recovery in my line and it's a really nice balanced blend of things like ashwagandha, eleuthero, ginseng, schizandra. I find that a blend of adaptogens works better than just one

straight up adaptogen for most people. Because for example, ashwagandha can be very heating and drying. So depending on your constitution or your climate or where you are in your cycle, you might not need something that's so overtly heating and drying. So I formulated adrenal recovery to have some adaptogens that are cooling and moistening, some that are heating and drying, some that are neutral, and it's a nice balanced blend. I love that. I also love nervines. If you've ever had chamomile tea at a restaurant, you are an herbalist and you've had a nervine. But what's nice about nervine herbs, which are herbs that calm the nervous system, they can also often be anxiolytics or herbs that reduce anxiety, is that they are so

specific and they kind of have these personalities. So in herb school, I went to Arborvitae. We learned kind of the personalities of the different nervines so that we could match them to the person. And you learn the personalities of all plants. I mean, something like St. John's wort, for example, is a very uplifting nervine that can help people with depression. But it's also good for people who need a little bit more brightness in the psyche and who often have chronic pain. And you'll just get these certain indications where you might choose that herb over another one. So chamomile, for example, is a nerve vine that is calming. It's soothing to the gut, but it's specifically meant for people who, when they are nervous or anxious, all of it goes right to the stomach.

And it feels like there's a rock in your stomach. People who hold all of their nervous tension in their stomach and their solar plexus area, that's a chamomile person. There's also catnip, which is not just for cats. It's a great nervine. Wow. What about if you hold all of your stress right here, like me? So that would be something like blue vervain. Blue vervain is a really – or agrimony is another good one.

But blue vervain is an herb for perfectionists who hold their tension in their shoulders and then also in their jaw a bit. Agrimony is also really good for shoulder and jaw. It's good for people who have kind of like a little bit of liver stagnation as well. Maybe they have some hormone stuff going on or a little bit of repressed anger. Agrimony is really good for that can also create some shoulder stuff. But catnip is kind of chamomile's cousin in the sense that my teacher Claudia Keel would always say, chamomile is for people who are crying on the outside and catnip is for people who are crying on the inside. So chamomile is for

someone who will voice their issues. They'll be like, are we there yet? This is so annoying. Oh my God, my stomach's killing me. Oh, I can't even deal right now. I'm so anxious. Oh my God. Catnip is the person who's like, I'm fine. I'm totally good. They're not complaining. So that's why chamomile is a great kid's herb because kids are going to whine and tell you that they're annoyed and that they're in pain. So amazing for kids. And then there's other ones. We were talking about passionflower before we came on the show. That's a really wonderful herb for people who have a lot of looping thoughts, the same thought over and over again. Maybe it's keeping them up at night.

And when you look at passionflower and the way that it grows, it has these tendrils that wrap around itself and other plants. And that's called the doctrine of signatures in herbalism, where the way that a plant presents itself gives you clues as to what it might work for and who it might be good for. So it's those little looping tendrils. Yeah. So nervines are great. I use nervines all the time when I'm anxious or frazzled. Adaptogens again are those deeper acting herbs to help you be more resilient and not need the nervines quite as much. There's so many. I love herbs. I know. And there's a cool fact that I heard years ago that I always reference because I think it's so fascinating.

A lot of the pharmaceutical drugs that we create are based off of herbs and plants that are already existing in nature. Yeah. So digoxin for heart failure and AFib is from foxglove. Obviously aspirin is from willow bark and has salicylin in it. There's so many other examples. There's a malaria drug that's from Artemisia, sweet wormwood or sweet anny. Wow. So many pharmaceuticals because there's these beautiful plant compounds that we can isolate and synthesize and kind of control for and standardize in a pill form

and herbs are the original medicine. That's not to say that that's the way herbalism is meant to be used. It's amazing that science has been able to isolate certain compounds and create really strong medications for a specific purpose that can be studied and repeated and all of these things. But in traditional herbalism, you want to take the whole plant and it might not act quite as quickly, which is why it's not Western medicine. Everything has a place. It won't be as fast acting, but it'll be a bit deeper acting because you're getting the full spectrum of all of the phytochemicals in that plant. And we haven't studied, we know that there's curcumin and turmeric, but there's thousands of plant compounds that we haven't discovered because

we just haven't looked for them in turmeric. But they're there and they're all synergistic. That's why if anyone's ever hating on traditional, more holistic medicine like this, I always like to remind them of that. Like, cause you know, there's people I feel like sometimes that are like, oh, the natural way, does it work? They're just very on the Western medicine track. Yeah. I'm like, well, we get all these herbs and you know, plants from the inspiration for that. Is that. Yeah. I'm like, well, we get all these herbs and, you know, plants from the inspiration for that. Is that. Yeah. And, you know, the natural way might not work, quote unquote, for everything or for everyone. You might need an integrative approach, but also sometimes it's the natural way, quote unquote, isn't working because maybe they're applying herbs in an allopathic way.

They're applying this herb for this issue instead of looking at all of the factors as to why this person has this issue. Is it that they're not sleeping properly? Is it that they have a chronic gut infection? Is it that their immune system is over activated because they had COVID and now their immune system has never turned back down and they're having all these crazy long COVID symptoms, but you're just treating the symptom with an herb and of course it's not working. Herbalism still has to be root cause medicine for it to be true functional medicine. We can't use it allopathically, which is hard with a supplement company. I mean, obviously a lot of the things that I make are these sort of these gateway herbs

to show people what's possible and to act as tools to help make your life easier and better. But when you're working one-on-one with an herbalist, they're going to make custom formulas for you. They're going to make things that go a lot deeper. They're going to ask you every single question about every bit of your history in your life and what led you to this moment and this diagnosis and these symptoms to help support you on a really deep level. So there's levels to it, you know? Yeah. I love that, which is why bio-individuality is so important. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So in the essence of time, I want to ask you a question that I ask all my guests at the very end. It's a personal one actually. And I'm so curious to know what your answer is. What are your personal health non-negotiables? Things that no matter how crazy busy your day is that you prioritize

for your health? That's a great question. I always take a bath every day. I think like baths are really important for me. They turn down my nervous system a lot. They really help me with water retention and also detoxification because I use Epsom salts, magnesium sulfate, and they help me with recovery. So that's a big one. Another thing is that I do a castor oil pack religiously at least once a week. I think that's one of my favorite health tools in the world, even more than taking supplements. I like castor oil packs. Wow.

I mean, obviously, we're getting vitamin E that way, but there's also this lymphatic element. It's the absorption of the castor oil directly over your liver, over your stomach. It really helps to move that gut-associated lymph tissue, helps with constipation, helps with liver detoxification, moves your whole limb system. Lymphatic health is big for me. I have a sluggish lymphatic system, so I have to do things like walk every day and do a castor oil pack once a week. And maybe that's my other one is walk. I walk my dog three miles every morning, no matter what. Oh, I love that. Not in California, but I miss it.

Even in the dead of winter in New York? Oh my God, yeah. Oh, I'm out there. I love that. Not in California, but I miss them all. Even in the dead of winter in New York? Oh, my God, yeah. Oh, I'm out there. I love that. I'm out there no matter what. We got the boots on. He loves the snow. He's obsessed.

That's me when I'm in Telluride. Everyone's like, you're going on a hike right now? I'm like, yeah. Outside every day. Non-negotiable. I have to get outside. Even in the rain, I'll walk. As long as it's not pouring.

But I'll put my rain jacket on. I'll put his little thing on. You have to. I think it's so important to be outside every day. we're not supposed to be indoors the way that we are yeah absolutely I love that well please let everyone know where they can find you where they can find your herbs absolutely so you can find um I'm like going through a little identity crisis on Instagram so I'm not posting quite as much as I once did I want to move to the woods and become an artist and run away so So that's where I'm at.

But my Instagram is organic underscore Olivia. But more importantly, where we are posting all of our educational information and everything about herbalism is at shoporganicolivia on Instagram. That's my brand Instagram. You can see my website there, all of my educational blog posts. My podcast is What's the Juice podcast. Courtney was just on it. We just did a swap.

And then my website is organiclivia.com. That's where you can find my full apothecary, all my different formulas. I have something for everybody. Digestion, anxiety, gut health, thyroid health. We're launching a PCOS two-part formula as well that provides some further support while you're weightlifting and doing all the things to help balance out your testosterone and your hormones

and to also help with fertility for those with PCOS. I love it. That's going to help so many people. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. If you liked the episode, please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know. This is a resonant media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Mike Fry. The theme song is called Heaven by the amazing singer Georgie. Georgie is spelled with a J. For more amazing podcasts produced by my team, go to resonantmediagroup.com. I love you guys so much. See you next week.

The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship. I am a nutritionist, but I am not your nutritionist. As always, talk to your doctor or your health team first.