The Liz Moody Podcast - Why You Need A Dopamine Detox (And Exactly How To Do It)

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

Olivia Amitrano, clinical herbalist and founder of herbal formulations company Organic Olivia, discusses detoxing from excess dopamine, natural alternatives to Ozempic, the link between PCOS and insulin resistance, and more. how to know if you need a dopamine detox how to know what will be most helpful for you to eliminate secrets to eliminating dopamine hijackers like cannabis, caffeine, alcohol, phones, hyperpalatable foods, and more the secret to overcoming cravings in the moments you NEED your dopamine triggers the biggest benefits of doing a dopamine detox + the exact steps to do one  the coping mechanism MOST of us have that we don’t even realize (and how to get rid of it) the natural alternative to Ozempic that triggers your body’s satiety response the exact routine Olivia followed to go from pre-diabetic to having no signs of diabetes the link between PCOS and insulin resistance (and what to do about it) secrets for regulating your nervous system how to encourage your partner to develop healthier habits of their own and so much more For more from Olivia, you can follow her on Instagram at @organic_olivia or visit her website www.organicolivia.com and use code LIZMOODY for 10% off. Listen to Liz on Olivia’s podcast What’s The Juice. To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order my new book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  This episode is sponsored by: LMNT: go to DrinkLMNT.com/LizMoody a to get a free LMNT sample pack with any order. AG1: visit drinkag1.com/lizmoody and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today. Osmia Skincare: get 20% off your first order at osmiaskincare.com with code LIZMOODY. Cymbiotika: use code LIZMOODY on cymbiotika.com to get 15% off plus free shipping on subscription orders. Puori: go to puori.com/LIZMOODY and use promo code LIZMOODY for 20% sitewide. Previous episodes referred to in this episode: How To Make Dating Fun Again—AND Meet The Love Of Your Life Jesse Tyler Ferguson On The Secret To Changing People’s Minds, Staying Optimistic About Social Change, Relaxing Without Alcohol, & More How To Eliminate Bloat & Constipation (+ SIBO, IBS, Parasites, Period Poops & More) with Tamara Duker Freuman, MS, RD, CDN How To Hack Your Dopamine To Stop Reaching For Your Phone & Experience More Pleasure with Dr. Anna Lembke The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Liz Moody podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I'm a best-selling author and longtime journalist. This podcast is all about helping you live your healthiest, happiest life, whether we're learning how to make dating fun again, and meet the love of your life, sitting down with modern families Jesse Tyler Ferguson, to talk about the secret to getting along with people who have different viewpoints than you, or diving into how to eliminate bloat and constipation. And yes, those are all real episodes, and they are linked in the show notes if you want to listen. If you have ever felt dull to these simple pleasures in your life, or like you can't stop

reaching for sweets or snacks, or like you can't put your phone down, even when you're sitting there and you're telling yourself over and over and over to put it down, this episode is going to be so helpful. I had on the lovely Olivia Amitrano, a clinical herbalist and founder of the mega popular brand, Organic Olivia, to give us all of the tea on what a doucheon. dopamine detox is and exactly how to do it. She's also the host of the amazing podcast, What's the Juice, which she just had me on. So when you were done with this episode, go listen to that episode on the What's the Juice podcast. I will link it in the show notes, but it's one of my favorite interviews that I've ever done. It's just a really deep dive into relationships and confidence

and productivity and so much more. And over here on the Liz Moody podcast in my conversation with Olivia, we are also diving very deep, as always. We get into how to know if you need a dopamine detox, how to know what will be most helpful for you to eliminate. Secrets to eliminating dopamine hijackers like cannabis, caffeine, alcohol, phones, hyper-palatable foods, and more. How to overcome those cravings when they hit in those moments that you just need. You must have your dopamine triggers. The biggest benefits of doing a dopamine detox and the exact steps to doing one, you just follow this protocol, the coping mechanism that most of us have that we do not even realize and how to get rid of it. The natural alternative to Ozempic that triggers your body's

satiety response, but in a very healthy, happy way, this was so fascinating and interesting to me. The exact routine that Olivia followed to go from pre-stopian. Be diabetic to having no signs of diabetes to being completely metabolically healthy. This is such important information. The link between PCOS and insulin resistance and what to do about it. Secrets for regulating your nervous system. How to encourage your partner to develop healthier habits of their own and so much more. I have been going through a lot of dopamine regulation, a lot of dopamine balancing

activities in my own life, which I can definitely talk about in a future solo episode, but it is so, so, so important to be aware of because we live in a very dopamine dysregulating world. Olivia and I would both love to hear your thoughts. This episode is filled with so many mind-blowing tidbits. So please screenshot and tag us both on Instagram. I am at Liz Moody and Olivia is at Organic underscore Olivia. And please share links to this episode far and wide on the company, Slack, in your text group messages, with your friends, with your family. We pretty much all need this, like I said before. Also, maybe you can do a dopamine detox with a friend and you can hold each other accountable.

I would also love to figure out a way we could all do one as a community. So if you have any thoughts on that, let me know. The tricky part is that you would want to be on social media to hold each other accountable, but also I feel like we'd be detoxing from social media as part of the dopamine detox. So I do not know exactly how that would work. But if you have ideas, hit me up. And in the meantime, enjoy this episode with the lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely Olivia. Olivia, welcome to the podcast.

I'm so happy to have you back. Thanks for having me back. What an honor to be on for a second time. I'm so excited because I feel like you have been on a whole journey since we talked last. So we're going to get into so many different things. But I want to start in something that I heard that you did that I'm so fascinated by, which is a dopamine detox. You have detoxed a bunch of different dopamine things from your life.

I want to hear first of all why and then what you did. Yeah, it's funny because when you talk about dopamine detox, especially in the way that someone like Dr. Annalemke talks about it, it's more of this short period of time, like a 30-day dopamine detox where you're sort of fasting from a substance or a thing that was overstimulating your brain and falsely raising your pleasure scale. And for me, it was a much longer journey where I was. slowly but surely self-reflecting on my reliance on various substances and coping mechanisms over a period of a few years. This started for me in 2020 when my parents had COVID and they got

very ill from it. And that experience rocked my world. And I was also left with these questions of why did this virus specifically hit my parents so hard? And we learned a lot during that time about some of these metabolic and inflammatory factors and preexisting conditions that could contribute to why someone would have a worse outcome than someone else. And my parents had many of those preexisting conditions and factors. And so I think it forced me to be in closer relationship with my parents as well as my family dynamic and the things that got them to that place in their health in the first place. And I realized that a lot of their situation, and their health issues could really be traced back to dynamics in our family and certain reliances

on substances and food and certain codependent ways in which they coped and isolated themselves in a way. And I was like, okay, I'm seeing these patterns of codependency in my family. And I'm seeing how these perhaps put my parents in a place where they were quite vulnerable to this terrible illness. And yet I didn't necessarily see the same things in myself because I was like, well, I'm young and I'm healthy, and when I got sick, it wasn't all that bad. And as I continued to enter a deeper relationship with my parents and myself during that time, I started to question how I also had this pattern play out in my life.

All of a sudden, I started to see these patterns and ways in which I, like my parents, was avoiding certain things or isolating myself or relying on certain things. substances or coping mechanisms to avoid feeling and even living my life. And I had a really big wake-up call. I was insulin resistant. My doctor told me that I had insulin resistance. I was sort of on my way to a PCOS diagnosis. I had several markers and my cycles were getting longer. And so I had that in the back of my mind. But I was like, again, I'm young, I'm healthy. I can just fix it. And then I had this experience where for the very first time I had to travel for work and I didn't get to bring my partner with me and I also was not able to utilize cannabis, which was one of the substances that I realized

I was a bit codependent on. And during this work trip, because I didn't have weed and I also didn't have my partner, which was my ultimate codependent coping mechanism, quite like my parents' dynamic that I was realizing, I for the first time, had to face this backlog of emotions that I had been running from for a very long time. And so on this work trip, as I was kind of withdrawing from cannabis, which I think the jury's still out on if it's a true withdrawal or just like an emotional withdrawal, perhaps, but I was flooded with this grief that I was not willing to see prior around my mom's condition and her illness. my mom has Alzheimer's and it was made much worse by her COVID experience. And I realized during that

trip, okay, my partner's not here to soothe me or to do the work of making me feel better and I used to reach for him to do that. I can't smoke, which I would usually do to calm myself down and have a state change and distract myself. And as I felt all of these things come up, I also started to feel a different level of joy and presence. And I was able to call my dad and say, hey, I'm really sad. and I realize that I'm sad for the first time, but also I love you, and I'm here with you, and I want to talk to you about how I'm feeling about mom, and I want to deepen our relationship. Being willing to face those difficult emotions, instead of continuing to turn to the substance or the person that I was quite codependent on to avoid, started to bring me into this new level

of consciousness and being, and from there, I just started to audit everything in my life. I love it. Okay, so where did you start then? Like the audit, you're making these connections. Are you alone in this hotel room at this point making these connections? I was staying at a friend's house at the time. And usually my partner would stay with me and I would have that person around. And luckily, the friend that I was staying with was a really good mirror for me and knew how to hold space. And so she was just letting me cry and being like, I'm here to listen when you're ready. But I'm also not going to try to fix it for you. She wasn't willing to be codependent with me, which is really important. And even my partner, for the first time, I would be calling him crying and saying, I just need you to come. Like, you should just come. I need you to fix this. He, for the first time, had to say to me, no, I'm not coming. You can do this on your own. And I'm not even going to be here on the phone while you cry right now because you need to go cry.

And that took a lot of strength from him. And that was at that root of codependency for me in my relationship and the part that he was playing because he was willing for a long time to be the fixer. And that's the dynamic of codependency that one person is kind of the fixer or the people pleaser. And then the other person is the one who is looking to someone else to fix things for them. Both sides of this kind of trace back to different childhood wounding. But it was very clear to me that we were both participants in it. And as he had the strength to say no, I also got stronger because I had to face things for myself. So I got home from that trip and I was like, okay, I'm doing this. I'm not going to use cannabis anymore because

I can see that it was really hard at first, but there's a reward here where I, for the first time, kind of feel alive again. And yeah, the pain sucks, but the pain also leads me to the fact that I also have more of an ability to feel joy and to feel curiosity and to feel all these other things that I was numbing with the substance that I thought was making me, quote, happy or reducing my anxiety. And so I think once you start this journey of being honest with yourself, and so I saw, okay, I had this maladaptive relationship with cannabis, what else in my life might I have a bit of a dependence on? And I started to audit and I thought, what are the other things where if I went on vacation and I didn't have access to them, I would feel like crap.

Oh, I love that as a question to ask yourself. It's a great way to get at what are the things I'm reliant on. Totally. And you can even look at it in the sense of once I touch down somewhere, what am I rushing to get for my Airbnb so that I can have my creature comforts? I wanted to challenge myself to get away from the things that made me comfortable as much as possible. And so I thought for sure coffee, when I'm at an Airbnb, I'm planning how I'm going to postmates my coffee or where I can go in the morning in the closest coffee shop. And I also realized later down the line, when I was ready to see it, is that another thing I would make sure I had at my Airbnb was snacks, really fun, hyper-palatable processed food snacks, like always needed my cookies

and my chocolate. And at that point, I don't think I ever went a day without having some kind of fun treat, which is totally fine. But for me, I just realized at that point in my life, I was replacing other things with that. So when I smoked less cannabis, I was drinking more coffee and I was eating more sweets and processed foods. And so it kind of like taking out one thing just made the next thing that much more apparent and visible. And so I started my journey with coffee because I said, you know what? Who am I when I take everything else away? And I wanted to know who that person was for the first time in my life. I suddenly had this curiosity. And again, I think it was very much fueled from realizing that my parents got themselves in that situation because they

never really got a chance to ask themselves that question and to meet themselves and to understand what their bodies needed and have that deep relationship with themselves. And they are so my teachers in this lens where the things that they didn't have opportunities or tools to access, I made a promise to myself that I would. And so, I, quit coffee, which was horrible and terrible. When I interviewed you last, I think you were like 10 days into your quitting coffee journey. Was I? Yeah. And I did a podcast interview? Bless me. So the first 30 days was really terrible for me. And I think that that's very normal when you're moving away from any substance that was giving you a bit of a dopamine boost. And since then, I've learned more about

the science behind it. I told you I interviewed Dr. Ana Lemke for my podcast. And she explained that whenever you're going towards a substance or a thing that is giving you this hit of pleasure, your brain actually has to compensate by bringing you back below your baseline to a state of pain. And that pain actually feels a lot stronger than even the pleasure we're getting from that thing initially. And so I realized, yeah, no wonder I'm feeling so terrible after I quit coffee, my brain is actually adjusting its baseline state of dopamine. And so right now I am in a dopamine deficit state. and I will be until my brain decides, okay, I have enough nutrients or strength to make the

neurochemicals to bring it back up to a new happier baseline. And so I just had to kind of thug it out for that period of time. And the really cool thing that happened is that because our bodies are so beautiful and want to help us and are on our team, once I created the space by taking that thing away, even though it was difficult in certain aspects, I found that my brain naturally led me to be curious about and crave some activities that were going to help me level out other brain chemicals like serotonin and oxytocin. And so I found myself wanting to be more social all of a sudden. I found myself wanting to call a friend to get a hit of happy chemicals naturally because I was feeling like crap from the dopamine detox from the coffee. I found myself, real,

that, hey, if I just take like five walks a day, it helps and makes me a lot happier while I'm in this no coffee withdrawal state. And so I started doing all of these things naturally that helped me be happy through a pathway that required a bit more work, but was leading me to a truer happiness. And that is also mirroring the work of Dr. Onalemke, where she says that really the way in which we can feel sustainable happiness is if we go towards small bites of sort of manageable pain, because then our brains, again, will seesaw and react by giving us a state of natural pleasure on the other side of it. And so, yeah, calling a friend that you haven't talked to in a while and maybe getting through those first few minutes of awkwardness might be uncomfortable at first.

It might be a little bit, quote, painful. But then we get the pleasure of the connection after doing the work to be present and have a conversation with them. Or taking the walk or do the difficult exercise routine, again, might be hard and painful at first. It sucks. Your heart's beaten. You're sweating. Your muscles hurt. You're fatigued. And then afterwards, your brain gets to give you that gift of adjustment and gets to be a little bit happier. I started to enjoy doing hard things because I trained myself in the opposite way. And yeah, then that led into my journey with hyper palatable foods and experimenting with my relationship with food. Talk to me about the hyper palatable foods because I think with dopamine, we often go to alcohol, we go to other

substances, we go to social media. I don't think people have made the connection with hyper palatable foods as much on the dopamine addiction side. So I think this was a bit of a natural path for me because growing up, I think many families experience addiction or, again, codependency. I almost see addiction and codependency as a very similar dynamic or codependency. even at the root of addiction. But I think many families experience coping mechanisms and you witness growing up in your family, your lineage's particular coping mechanisms. Growing up for me in my household, my parents never drank, they never did drugs, they didn't gamble, but they did turn to food as a coping mechanism. And this wasn't just like, oh, they're going to like eat a bag of

chip sometimes. This was like my mom really struggled with her relationship with food. Growing up, I was taught that our diet starts Monday, but today we're going to eat everything in the house. And it was to the point where my mom would be like, let's just chew some food and spit it out. And like very, very, very disordered eating behavior and like food addiction, really. And so that was what I grew up with. And so naturally, I also sort of turned to food as a way to soothe. And I think that's natural in a way. of course our bodies are going to want to lower our cortisol levels with carbohydrates and salt

and food is going to help us regulate our nervous system and food is so beautiful. But I was certainly turning to it in the sense of, okay, I don't feel good. I'm going to go eat a box of cookies or I'm going to seek the thing that is the most stimulating to my brain so that I can kind of numb out for a second, the same way and the same intention I was having when I was using cannabis or drinking a whole bunch of coffee to be productive and get my worth through my productivity. It wasn't this healthy, happy relationship, and it was the intention around the way that I was reaching for food. I always knew that that was part of my experience with food. I always knew that I had episodes of binge eating. That was very much a part of my journey. And I always thought

that it was my fault. Like, I thought that something was just wrong with me, and that's why I was binge eating. But then I learned about hyper-palatable foods and how the way in which ultra-processed foods today have this very magical combination of sugar, fat, salt, and flavor, it really does light up the brain in this wild way that humans have not experienced. And there are teams of food scientists out there that are making sure that food lights up our brain in that way. And that could be really fun when you're having a delicious snack once in a while, 100%. But for me, because my brain was in so much pain all the time is like the best way I can put it, because I grew up with a lot of pain inside me and kind of never learned how to cope with my emotions in a healthy way, I had a

brain that was way more likely to reach for those things on a way more consistent basis than other people. And it wasn't my fault that they were made to be so addicting. And so learning about hyper-palatable foods actually really helped me to release a lot of the shame that I felt around binge eating because I was like, oh, this is happening on a brain level. And with awareness and with a little bit of reworking my relationship and my why around why I would perhaps try to take a break from some of these foods, I was able to reset my brain's pleasure response to food through this experiment I did with no hyper-palatable foods. So I said, you know what? For the next two months, I am going to try to just eat food in its natural form. I'm going to have some meat and some broccoli

and some sweet potato. And yeah, I'll make a pesto to go along with it or something, as long as it's just made with some real food. But I'm not going to go for the high sugar, high fat, high salt, and flavor combinations. And I'm not going to do any processed food just for a few months and just see how I feel and see if it changes my relationship to food. And so I did that for a while. So that meant I wasn't having any refined sugar either, although I was eating copious amounts of carbohydrates in the form of sweet potatoes and fruit and all the things. But I just wasn't doing refined carbohydrates. And I found that not only did my urge to binge eat go away, but I had a very similar response to what happened with cannabis and coffee. It was really hard the first 30 days.

A lot of emotions came up. It was like another layer of emotions was unearthed. I had to feel. I had to sit with myself. I had to replace the urge to grab those hyperpalable foods with hard things like sitting with my emotions, journaling, crying, calling a friend. It was just this deeper pathway to learning how to be with myself and develop a relationship with myself. And after the 30 days or so, a plain sweet potato started to taste really freaking good. And I started to appreciate the natural flavors of food. And I also just started to have a much more neutral relationship with food where I wasn't demonizing it, nor was I putting it on a pedestal. I wasn't looking for every single meal to be the most delicious

meal ever, or I wasn't looking to food as like a reward at the end of the day or something to cope with. I was just like, food is great and food is good. And it's also just normal and nothing. And I was able to have the sense of neutrality around it because my brain wasn't quite as activated by it. And it really helped me with my binge eating. It really helped me even with my journey around reversing my insulin resistance because at that point I was also putting that personal responsibility and that honesty towards my health journey and saying, okay, I got to take care of this thing. And I found that it helped to change my hormones. I really believe that it helped to reset my leptin levels and my appetite. And it was such a huge catalyst in my health journey.

And now I'm able to eat hyper-palatable foods in a very moderate way where I don't have that same, again, like charge around them. Okay, I have so many questions. When you're in the 30-day period or the 60-day period or however long it took you to reset that relationship with cannabis, with hyper-palatable food, with caffeine. Was alcohol part of this at all for you or no? I was never a drinker. It never lit up my brain. And I think that's why we're all so unique because some people, like alcohol is the thing that just lights him up. Yeah. And for some people, food, my husband, food does nothing for him. You can give him a hyper-palatable food and he's just like, I just don't care. Food is just feel to me. I'm like, that's so foreign to me. Yeah, but he loves alcohol.

So it's a totally different, and I don't know if that's genetic, if that's epigenetic, but you've got to find your thing. When it comes to wellness, you're going to get the best results by focusing on the big needle movers. A lot of us spend a lot of time trying to optimize that last 1%, which creates a ton of stress and it actually doesn't help our health that much. At the top of the needle mover list, sleep. And one of the best ways to optimize your sleep is to optimize your mattress, which is why I love avocado green mattress so much. First of all, this mattress is so comfortable. I have the one with the pillow top, which is medium firm, and it's just a dream. I miss it when I travel. It's better than even the fanciest hotel beds. Having a mattress that supports your joints and your body and feels good is going to help you get more sleep and better quality sleep. But then, on top of that, avocado mattresses are made with certified organic cotton wool and latex, and they are made safe and green guard gold certified. They're also Okotech certified, which is the gold standard. I look for it in any mattresses, sheets, or towels that I buy, which means the materials have been rigorously tested for harmful substances. You can actually look for the Okotech standard 100 label right on the product,

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interesting than scrolling. Christina Aguilera taught me to sing. Shan Boudrum's Art of Master's Art of Master's in Sex Appeal class. It's 10 out of 10. There's menopause classes with leading doctors. There's script writing with Mindy Kaling. Literally, you name it, they're on masterclass, and it is such a good way to get off your phone, but have something that's like not quite as long or hard to get into is a TV show or a movie and that it just keeps you entertained and interested, and you are learning. There are over 200 classes from the world's best, all for just $10 a month when billed annually, and you get unlimited access to every class on the platform so you can learn at your own pace whenever you want on your phone, your computer, or even in audio mode, like a podcast.

If you're looking to stop scrolling and start consuming entertaining content that makes you feel excited and helps you learn, Masterclass is it. And the best part, every membership comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can start learning risk-free. Right now, our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. That's 15% off at Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. Okay, so when you're in this period where you're resetting your response to these things, how did you do? deal with the cravings when they came up. I'd love if you have any mindset shifts or herbalism shifts or any specific tactics you could share. I would share that electrolytes were extremely helpful for me

during this time. Quitting cannabis, quitting coffee, and reducing or eliminating my hyper-powitable food intake for a while, I got really intense headaches with all of those things. And I think because my body was trying to come to a new place of homeostasis and it was taking a lot of energy in order for my body to do that and to transition from one norm to a totally new norm and baseline. And there was a lot of different neurotransmitters and chemicals changing. I think that takes a lot of nutrients on the body's end, including electrolytes. And so that presented for me with a lot of headaches. And I found that when I would really go hard on the electrolytes, the headaches got better. Even the cravings got better. And my stress levels were lower. So cannot recommend those enough. And I think for sure the craving aspect,

it was all mindset. I had to really remember the why behind why I was doing this. I had to remember that a truer version of me was waiting on the other side and I couldn't wait to meet her. And I had to really envision her. And I actually did an exercise that my, I have this lymphatic therapist. And part of what she does, she's very intuitive and she teaches you how to talk to your body and how to talk to your organs. And one thing that she recommends is that you host a funeral for yourself and you invite all of your organs to it and you see which ones want to speak during the eulogy and you talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly of the thing that you're letting go. And so she started this with me when I was quitting caffeine. And she said, listen,

you got to get your body together. Let's do it together. We're going to visualize everyone coming. Which organ wants to come up to the podium and speak for the eulogy? And I was like, ooh, my brain really feels like it wants to come up. While you're doing this exercise, you might feel like it's kind of BS and you're like, how do I know my brain wants to speak? And it's just tapping into this inner child that is willing to use your imagination because whatever comes up is what's meant to come up in that moment. And even if it is your imagination for whatever reason, it's helpful. So I thought, okay, my brain feels like it wants to come up. I'm just going to go with it. And my brain came up to the podium. And so I said, the good and the bad, the ugly from my brain's

perspective of caffeine. The good. It helped me to be really hyperproductive. And in many ways, that created safety for me in my life. That created financial safety. That gave me a sense of self-worth when I didn't have many other things that I could hang my hat on for that self-worth because I didn't learn that in my childhood. That gave me X, Y, Z. Then I said, the bad. Okay, that it's pretty hard on my adrenal's that I'm hitting the coffee this many times a day. It's making me focus on work and productivity so much that it's taking away from my relationships and a few other things. And then I said the ugly, which was what would happen if I never took this chance of stepping away from the substance and meeting myself without it and how much I would regret

that if I didn't just try. And then I had other organs weigh in. My adrenals came up and they were like, I'm so glad we're doing this. I have nothing else to say. Let yourself have fun with this exercise. And then you complete the funeral. And for some reason, that really helped me. And I did the same with hyper palatable foods. I even did this visualization of what would this person who is not so dependent on food look like and feel like. Would they want to be more active? Would they be able to eat food for nutritional value and think about recipes in a new way and get excited about food for other aspects other than just being reliant on it? And I imagined this person who was on the other side and really visualize stepping into her shoes and like even how she felt walking around my

kitchen. So I did a lot of visualizing and a lot of funerals and just spent time with myself acknowledging how hard this all was. Did you ever backslide on the journey? With caffeine, yes, I was a year free, and now I have caffeine once in a while. That's not backsliding. That feels like a re-frame. I think to quit, quote-unquote, to come into a right relationship with these substances, it certainly took a period of abstinence in the beginning.

And so I had to be a bit more strict with myself in the beginning to solidify the change and to prove to myself that I could do it. And I, as a human, had worth and value without these things and could be with myself without these things. And so I feel like I needed the year of no caffeine to really feel good about myself without it. And now I can use it in a healthy way. Same with hyper palatable foods. I have cookies and ice cream all the time. My inner child needs those things because it just makes her feel happy. but I don't binge on them anymore, which is really shocking.

Even my husband, like the other day, he said to me, I have not seen you binge eat in so long, and it's the wildest thing because he's known me for 13, 14 years now, and he watched me really cope that way. It's wild what happens when you have a period of abstinence. And at that time, I would tell myself, or I would see it as some people are abstainers and some people are moderators. Right now, I just need to be an abstainer. And maybe one day I can be a moderator.

Do you have any advice for figuring out what are coping mechanisms? and what are just pleasures in our life that we should be including, that we should be enjoying? Yeah, I think about it like this. So some of the things that I bring with me to an Airbnb now are, for example, a hot water bottle because I like to sleep with a hot water bottle on my stomach because it's comfortable and comforting and just helps me sleep. And if I didn't have that hot water bottle at my Airbnb, I wouldn't be in emotional distress if I couldn't sleep with it. And I wouldn't maybe have a mood swing or an angry moment or I wouldn't be emotionally affected necessarily by not having that thing. I could go a few nights without it or the whole trip without it. But I felt that

when I didn't have cannabis or if I didn't have coffee or if I didn't have all these snacks stocked at my Airbnb, I would notice that I would be emotionally perturbed. I would be kind of unwell because I didn't have that thing that was bringing me pleasure. And I heard on a rich role episode where I think he interviewed Dr. Annalemke, he said that addiction is a narrowing. of what brings you pleasure. And I realized that I was so specifically dependent on these things to kind of keep me in this artificial place of feeling okay. And if I didn't have them, I was not okay. And if I did have them, I was temporarily happy for a second and then I got back to just being okay. But once I went without all of them for a while, I wasn't just okay. I was really content,

really happy for the first time. Well, and that's what I love. I had Dr. Anilomki on my first time. podcast too. And she's making the rounds. I love her. She's amazing. Her research is just so incredible. But she talks about how you're going to find new sources of pleasure in much simpler moments in your life. And that was the thing that actually tipped it for me was that instead of looking for these outsized things to bring me pleasure, the big vacation, the really decadent meal, I'd be able to find pleasure in a simple walk on a nice day. I'd be able to find pleasure in a really lovely conversation that I had because I had reset that pleasure pain receptor. Yeah, absolutely. And I found for sure that once I didn't rely on those very specific things

to bring me pleasure and I had a greater appreciation of everything around me, there was not that narrowing, but in fact a widening of my presence and appreciation of all things, I could see that walk as beautiful. I could see that conversation with a friend as life-giving and fulfilling. And it took a lot less to make me happy. That was when I knew that I had. I needed to work on my dopamine was when the things that had once brought me pleasure started to feel dull. So I didn't notice it in this like, I need this, I need this, I need this. But more just like, I'm out with my friends.

Why does this feel muted? Why does this sex feel muted? Why do the things that used to bring me pleasure not sparkle anymore? Which I think is a great sign. You need some sort of dopamine reset. 100%. When you're a kid, so many things bring you joy just because, they exist, you know, a sunny day, a cloud in the sky. You're looking at it for an hour,

thinking about what shapes it can fulfill and interpreting it. And you get to be an adult and you don't really look up at the sky anymore. And you don't have that appreciation of the little things. And I do find that the less we indulge in those big pleasures and those things that we use to artificially control our happiness. And the more that we just learn to be, the more that we can look up at the sky and the more that we have the capacity to do that. Do you have any different coping mechanisms now, or do you find that you just don't need to, quote, unquote, cope? My coping mechanisms now are what I'd say are very healthy and normal coping mechanism. So I now talk to my friends on the phone more than I ever have in my life.

And again, I think that is a sign that I was struggling with dependence or addiction or whatever you want to call it with these various substances, because again, it's that narrowing of what brings you pleasure. So really those few substances are like working or smoking weed. Those brought me happiness in the past and they isolated me because of that narrowing. And that was a pattern again. I saw in my parents. They were very much isolated. And now because there's this widening, I reach out to more humans and more people and I reach out for connection as a way to make me happy. And not in a way that I'm calling my friends to complain about things or to get them to fix things for me. But I'm just calling to connects because that connection really fills me up.

And I think that is the core human need that we are missing that leads us to that place of emptiness where we start looking for external things to fill ourselves with. I love that you caught out working because I think so many of us give working a free pass, but we overwork not because necessarily there's the demands, but because we derive so much of our self-value, our self-worth, those dopamine hits from our work. and I think a lot of people aren't making that connection. So I love that you call that out. I would love to hear if you have any advice for somebody who's listening and they're like,

I think my dopamine is out of balance. I maybe want to play around with this, but I have no idea where to start. Start with one thing. You gave really wonderful advice on the episode on my show that you were just on. You gave the piece of advice that you should start with what feels most urgent. And I think that that's a great place to start when you're examining the different things that you may be able to take away or reframe your relationship with. What is the thing that you feel like you absolutely can't go without that has a little bit of a

hold on you, that has a bit of control over you? Can you just start there and even get curious? Just start with the curiosity. Don't even remove it from your life yet. That's going to feel too daunting. Can you just get curious about your relationship with that thing and whether or not it's serving you? And there's something that I really like to do when I'm getting curious with myself. and asking myself questions because we spend a lot of time asking our friends questions and having

conversations with our friends, but we don't always sit there and have conversations with ourselves. And that's been a really important tool for me in restoring right relationship with myself, which was really at the core of all of these things that I was experiencing. It wasn't just not being in right relationship with substance. It was not being in right relationship with myself and the people around me. But I started to do this thing where at the end of the day I would lay in bed at night and I would just put my hand on my chest and I would rub my chest like a mom would rub a child's chest. And I would really sit there with myself and it felt corny at first because I wasn't used to doing it.

And I don't know, you just feel a little weird sometimes when you haven't given yourself any love before and all of a sudden you start to do that. I would rub my chest and I would say, hey, I'm here with you. I love you. How are you? Can I ask you some questions? And I do this practice quite often where at the end of the day I ask myself. a question and just like using your imagination quote unquote in that funeral exercise, you can let your imagination guide you or maybe it's the voice of your higher self or your soul, who knows,

but let a voice answer, say the answer out loud, and then turn that answer into a question. So if you're asking the question, hey, why do I want to smoke weed every day? Maybe the answer is because I feel bad when I don't. You can ask, why do you think you feel bad when you don't? or what does that feeling bad feel like? Can you name it? And get deeper and deeper with every question and answer that you transform. And just spend that time and you'd be so surprised at what you find.

Mm. Mm. I love that so much. Do you have any other tools, especially physical health things? Like, I know you have herbs in your arsenal. Did your protein journey come because of trying to satiate yourself so you didn't crave these hyper-palatable foods? for sure. My protein journey just ended up happening at the same time as my hyper-palatable food journey, I think because again I was in a place of finally being honest with myself in a whole new way.

And when you are, things in your life just start to fall into place, even though again it's hard. And so they sort of overlapped, but naturally the protein piece became quite helpful in that satiation part of not having the hyper-palatable foods. Because I realized, hey, a lot of times when I'm reaching for this hyper-palatable food, I'm either hungry or I'm nervous. system dysregulated. Again, it's a maladaptive coping mechanism. I am feeling some sort of pain or discomfort, and so I'm reaching for this thing. And sometimes we can help to pad a bit of that nervous system dysregulation by simply eating food consistently, especially eating protein consistently. Feeding yourself consistently is a tool for nervous system safety. It's very important.

And so not only eating a very high protein diet at the time, when I first started, I was doing some muscle building. And so I had to eat even a bit more protein than what I eat now. I was eating 30 to 50 grams of protein at breakfast and then 40 grams of protein at three other meals and snacks throughout the day. So I was eating very high protein. And what happens when you do this is your brain actually gets this hit of gut peptide hormone, something like GLP1 actually, you can promote within your body the secretion of just by eating high protein and high fiber meals. And for people who aren't making the connection between the news and what we're talking about culturally and GLP1, can you explain the OZMPIC connection there? Yeah, sure.

So some of glutide, an active ingredient in some different medications like Ozempic or Manjaro, it is a very strong synthetic form of this beautiful gut peptide that we make as humans endogenously. And it's manufactured in a way that it doesn't degrade as quickly as our own GLP1. So of course it's a much stronger form of this gut peptide hormone. and it's in our system for longer when we're taking it as a medication. But again, it is something that we produce endogenously in response to so many different things, in response to a high protein, a high fiber meal, in response to something like green tea, that even increases your endogenous levels, in response to different herbs like cinnamon and fenagreak and genton. And so there's many pathways where you can encourage your own release of this hormone in a lesser way and thus reap the

benefits of feeling not only more satiation in terms of your food, but also feeling more safety in your brain, because this is a satiation hormone. And when we are not satiated, and when we are seeking, the brain is saying, I'm not safe, so I need to seek. And what we even see with people who take GLP1 agonists like Ozempic is that they have such a level of gut brain safety that not only do they not have food noise as they describe it for the first time in their life, but they also end up not craving as much alcohol and all of these other amazing things. That safety piece is very important. It's a huge function of this peptide. And so when we eat a high protein meal and high protein consistently throughout the day and we mimic at least some of the release of that hormone,

our brains also feel safer. We also want to seek less. We also have better nervous system regulation because we're not in that state of feeling unsafe. And for me, it also helped me a ton with binge eating, again, which I always thought was my problem that I just had to willpower myself out of. And all of a sudden I said, oh, my goodness, it was a mix of not eating enough protein and being satiated and hyper palatable foods that were messing with my brain. And just by eating the high protein diet, that was half the battle for me because I didn't have to willpower my way through it. I actually felt satiated.

That's wild. Okay, talk to me about nervous system regulation for a second because I do think that is a really important part of not spiraling when you're doing something like. eliminating these problematic things from your life or taking a break from them. Do you have any other things that you have learned about nervous system regulation that you can share? Yeah, there's a lot of things I've liked about nervous system regulation. A lot of the nervous system work that I've done has involved parts work, internal family systems. I feel like you must have had a guest. We had Richard Schwartz on the podcast. Amazing. He was the founder of IFS.

Incredible. It's really a wonderful system to help you develop a relationship with yourself and all of the parts of yourself because we all have these different parts that exist within us, such as our inner child, our inner teenager, our inner manager that I talk about who comes out when you're on a podcast and you've got to perform. And sometimes some of these parts get more air time than others. And again, as a coping mechanism essentially, so if we are the child who learned that in order to receive love and be good, we must perform, we probably have a really dominant manager who takes up way too much space and comes out as this part that stuffs down all the other parts. And so, of course, that creates a lot of dysregulation

within our nervous system because we are not able to fully express as our authentic selves, and we are not seeing different parts of ourselves that have their own emotional needs. We're only seeing ourselves as a fractionated being, essentially, and not deeply witnessing and being in right relationship with ourselves. And for me, nervous system regulation has really been about fostering a true relationship with myself and not only talking to myself, like I said, but learning to be with all of my parts has been a really important tool. So I realized for me that my inner child was not getting enough airtime. And so she was the one who was kind of coming out and playing a big role in these dependencies that I had by saying, okay, you know what,

you're not going to stop working, we're going to smoke a whole bunch of weed. We're going to do this and dissociate because it's too much for us. It's too painful for me to constantly be ignored and for you to always be in work mode and addicted to work and all these other things because that was definitely part of it for me too and still a struggle. I very rarely get genuinely excited about skincare, but this is one of the most innovative products that I have come across in years and I'm so obsessed with it and I've been telling all of my friends to get it. So now I need to tell you guys. Here's some science first. Your skin isn't just getting older. It's being actively broken down by something called senescent cells. These are cells that have stopped functioning but refused to die.

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And when they ask you where you heard about us, please make sure to mention the show. That is branchbasics.com and use code Liz Moody. I want to sit on that for a second because I do think one of the things that I love about you and I love about the journey that you're on and the wisdom that you share is that you share the real science of these physiological things that you can do. You're sharing like if you eat more protein, you can have this impact in your body that is an endogenous ozempic-like effect that will turn off these cravings in your brain. And alone, that's not going to do the job.

and you need to be talking to your inner child. You need to be figuring out what your nervous system wants and needs. I think a lot of people try to do one or try to do the other, and then they don't end up in the place that they want to be. Absolutely. Absolutely. And just giving your inner child the space to kind of throw that tantrum in a real way can be life-changing.

Actually embodying that archetype of that child and letting her stomp her feet around the room. I'm really annoyed. We're doing too much work. Or I'm really upset about that thing my friends said. And I feel really left out right now because my friends are hanging out without me. And just letting her have her air time and whatever way she wants to come through or he wants to come through or they want to come through. That is the most important thing that you can do. Because I think a lot of our patterns of dysregulation are learned in our childhood, are learned at that original age. And so going back to whatever age that feels like for you, how However that child wants to express, maybe she's only two. And so she wants to flail her arms around in bed because that's what a two-year-old would do. But if she's 10, she wants to verbalize it. She wants to walk around the room. She wants to write a really angry poem and be super dramatic. So it's just figuring out and really taking the time and the care to get in touch with what age that child is and how she wants to express is so life-changing.

Another thing you can do, one of my best friends, Nina Pissero, is such an amazing practitioner. or she's an FDNP, and something that she does with her clients to help them have more regulation and safety within their nervous system is she invites them to try to do certain daily tasks as if they're moving through honey. And so she says when you do your skincare routine, pretend like you are literally moving through honey and you have this sticky substance on your hands and you can't rush through it and you can't pull at your skin and just try to get the next step done and forget about it. Take that time. and go as slow as you possibly can.

And maybe it's just your skincare routine. And then maybe the next week, you also brush your teeth like that. And then maybe the next week, you do that when you're making your morning coffee. And you just add this slowness into your life at whatever pace feels comfortable. Because when we first start to slow down, it can feel very uncomfortable, especially when we get our worth from maximizing our time and being hyperproductive. And it's just playing and trying. I love that so much. I'm going to try. Have you tried it? Yes. I love it, especially when you're doing it,

washing your face and doing your skincare routine. It's touching yourself with so much love. The slowness and the presence that it takes helps you to actually like touch your face and touch your body like you're touching somebody that you love. And we don't do that. Maybe when we're getting a massage from our partner, you can feel that love and their touch because they're going slow. But how often do you self-massage? How often do you give yourself that physical touch that's so regulating also to your nervous system in an intentional way. We often touch ourselves unintentionally or subconsciously when we are trying to regulate and stimulate our vagus nerve. On a podcast, I find myself holding my own hand a lot. And that's one way that we do this. And we're looking to stimulate our vagus nerve and calm ourselves down.

But this is a way that you can do it with true intention, not just as a COVID mechanism. Well, and there's research around how your brain can't tell the difference if you're hugging yourself or somebody else is hugging you. And so it is really powerful, the active touch. And especially we're also lonely. I think many of us aren't getting the touch that we want in our day-to-day life. And so knowing that you can give a little bit of that to yourself, I think, is really beautiful. Yeah. Okay. So you're on this dopamine journey. You're regulating your nervous system. But you also mentioned you reversing your insulin resistance and PCOS. Did you realize that while you were going through this dopamine detox?

Yeah, you start to peel back the layers of the ways in which we lie to ourselves unknowingly. And once you peel them back in one way, hey, my relationship with caffeine isn't as healthy as I've been telling myself, you get to be more honest with yourself and more accountable in other areas. As I talk about this three-year period of my life where I made all these big changes since I've seen you last, it's funny how they all overlap because when you get to the root of it all, which I think is, again, having a real relationship with yourself and really being honest with yourself, so many of these other incredible things happen as a consequence of that, not just quitting the things, but also being like, all right, now, what do I have to do to be at my

best? And so I got used to flexing the muscle of being honest with myself through limiting certain substances that weren't good for me. And that led me to be honest with myself about, okay, it is really time for me to address this insulin resistance piece that's been looming over my head, just got another blood test, and my fasting blood glucose is 115, that's not great. That is diagnosed pre-diabetes. And my doctor is amazing, Dr. Gabriel Lyon. She held a lot of space for me for many years because she had been telling me to build muscle and do all these different things to lower my blood glucose. And I told her, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm walking. Yeah, yeah, I'm doing Pilates. I got it, but she could see that I wasn't really experiencing real change and my labs were the same.

And instead of pushing me and saying, well, you have to do this or using fear-based tactics of, you know, if you don't fix this now, it's going to turn into this. She would continue to hold the vision for me. And all she would say to me is, you're an athlete. You got this. She would just see me as the person who already did the thing and made the changes and speak to me in that direction. And she just waited for me to catch up with that vision. And that's the kindest thing that anyone can do for you, friend, mentor, doctor, practitioner.

That is witnessing true right relationship. You don't tell the person I guilt them into doing something. You hold the space for them to become the best version of themselves. And she knew that you can't tell someone something. They have to get it themselves. It has to hit them in the face. And this year it hit me. And I started to wait train.

It was a very grueling process because I did not have a lot of muscle on my body. And it was a shock to my system to start building muscle. And it was embarrassing at first because I felt like I didn't know what I was doing. And I continued to muscle through and remind myself that doing hard things is how we make a difference in our lives and how we experience true pleasure, came back to the science. And I just kept at it. And I ended up building beautiful muscle mass on my body. I ended up changing my body composition to where I had more muscle mass and a healthier ratio of muscle mass. And I also ended up through that and through other strategies like eating a high protein diet, eating more complex carbohydrates, eating more simple meals, more of those

bland hyper-powitable meals with real food and high fiber. I ended up also taking different blood sugar balancing herbs, insulin sensitizing herbs. All of these things combined helped to resensitize my cells to insulin so that I could actually get the beautiful carbohydrates I was eating in my meals into my cells, that glucose where it needed to be. And I was able to reverse my insulin resistance and get my fasting insulin and my blood glucose down into a very healthy range. And my health looks very different today than it did two years ago. So you went from being pre-diabetic to having no signs of pre-diabetes. Not a single marker. Can you give us three things, if anybody listening wanted to have that same journey that they should do first? Yeah, number one is

fiber and protein. You really got to hit both. And start with one. It's just too complicated to try to do both. Start with one. Start with especially making your breakfast a high protein meal. Because after you're fasting all night because you're sleeping, your body is the most sensitive to that bolus of amino acids in your first meal. Your muscles are sort of primed to intake those amino acids. And you're going to have the best chance to have a muscle protein synthesis response to the protein in that meal. if you can just start your day with 30 to 50 grams of protein, which sounds daunting but can totally happen through a few eggs and some chicken sausage and some kale on the side and some berries or some Greek yogurt or a protein shake with a bunch of fruits and veggies, you can get to that 30 gram

mark. If you can just start with that and then start to incorporate protein into the rest of your meals, you are going to set yourself up for healthier body composition, healthier muscle tissue and you're going to be able to build more muscle from the exercise that you're doing. And the muscle piece is so important because muscle is the most insulin sensitive tissue on our body and it acts as this sink or this suitcase that we can dispose of excess glucose in the blood within. And so when you eat a meal that's pretty rich in some amazing carbohydrates, when you have muscle, your body is able to put the excess glucose from that meal into your muscle tissue so that it's not hanging around in the blood and it's not causing high blood sugar.

and so it's very, very protective. And the way that you ultimately get to building muscle is obviously resistance training. So that would be number two, but you need the protein in number one to support the results of that resistance training. They work better together. And obviously the fiber as well that I mentioned in number one, when you eat high fiber plant foods, you are not only going to delay gastric emptying, which is another thing that's something like GLP1 does, and blunt the glucose response that your body displays in response to that meal. You are also going to be naturally eating foods that are fiber-rich and probably also rich in other things like polyphenols. For example, blueberries are so rich in these beautiful polyphenols, these colorful plant pigments.

And what those polyphenols do is they modulate our gut bacteria. They create a healthier environment for the gut bacteria that's really beneficial for our inflammation levels in our metabolic health. And they create an environment that's not very hospitable to pathogenic bacteria that could create inflammation and contribute to metabolic disease. So the fiber piece, yeah, it's good for you metabolically because you're not going to have as high of a blood sugar response to a meal, but it's causing you to go towards these foods that are doing so many other things in your body in terms of that inflammatory cascade. Number two is the resistance training, of course.

And then number three, I would say circadian rhythm. There's really a wonderful relationship between the health of our circadian rhythm and our metabolic health. And so even if you just, what you do, cirque walks in the morning, you just align yourself to the natural photo period of the day by getting natural sunlight in your eyes first thing in the morning. That could even be opening a window if you're in a really cold climate and you just can get yourself out there. Open that window. Drink your coffee in front of the open window so that the glass isn't blocking the light getting into your eyes. but also eat your meals in a way that aligns you to the photo period of the day because meal timing is a really wonderful predictor of circadian rhythm and way to reset your circadian rhythm.

Can you explain how we can do that? Yeah, so you would want to ensure that you are waking up within the range of around the time that the sun comes up, right? That's the photo period. That's the daylight period of the day. And for me and for many folks, I know, we do best when we eat breakfast within 30 minutes to an hour of waking up because otherwise the body can start to dip into our reserves to get some fuel. And that is an energy intensive process and a stressful process for our body. So it can increase

our cortisol to sort of delay meal time if we are in an already stress state. If you're someone who's low stress and has an amazing life and stress management technique, fasting could probably be great for you. But for most people, I find it's better to eat as soon as you wake up. And of course, that added benefit is that you're eating in alignment with the daylight. And you want to do just eat your meals and snacks throughout the day. In traditional Chinese medicine and even in Ayurveda, our digestive fire is said to be highest when the sun is the highest in the sky. So you want to maybe have your biggest meal at lunch. And then you want to have another snack and dinner maybe right before the sun sets. And then once the sun goes down, you want to try to stop snacking

if possible. This doesn't work for everyone because, again, depending on stress levels and where someone is at with their hormones. Some people might actually do better with a bedtime snack that's carb fat protein balance so that they can get deeper sleep and start to repair some of those stress hormones. But most people do well cutting off their meals and snacks at the end of the day and fasting until the next morning. And then let's get into the specifics of the resistance training. Are you doing that every day? How often? No, no, no. Again, it depends on the other stressors in your life. It's so individual and dependent. It's hard to get blanketed advice, but essentially you want to at least strength train, let's say, three times a week. For me,

that's a really magical number. For a lot of women, that's a magical number because you're not resistance training every day to the point where you're actually creating more stress for your body and never giving yourself a chance to repair. You're creating the perfect amount of hormetic stress, which is stress that actually makes us stronger because you're dosing it. So three times per week is my cadence for resistance training. And when I first started and what I still do now, I really just pick four exercises. You don't have to go to the gym and do every single machine and do what everyone else is doing and overcomplicate it. And let me try this new thing today. Just pick four exercises. A squat is really good, maybe a single leg deadlift, a lap pull down,

some pushups, just four exercises. Every time you go to the gym, do those same. four exercises, increase your weight each time. If you can, maybe one week you are at five pounds and you're at that five pound weight for two or three weeks and then you feel like you're ready to go up to 10 pounds. And you progressively overload your weight like that, but doing the same workouts, it doesn't have to be overcomplicated. You will get the result if you continue to go up and weight and if you continue to perfect your form and that mind muscle activation. And when you just pick four exercises to do, your gym session ends up being like 30, 35 minutes. And I find that that's so helpful because it means that you're always leaving a little something on

the table. You're leaving yourself a little bit hungry to where you're walking away and saying, yeah, I could have done a little bit more. And what that does is that makes you excited to come back the next time and get that thing that you left. When I overexhaust myself and when I go too hard and I try to push it and I spend an hour at the gym, I leave the gym and I'm like, I never want to go back to that place again. This sucks. This is terrible. You train your brain to be like this is a miserable activity. But when you do just enough to where you feel it, but you get to challenge yourself saying, I think I could have done more, it becomes a game. You gamify it. And you want to come back and you want to get stronger and perform better each time. But you just don't overdo it. If somebody's

listening and they're not sure if they're near that insulin resistance place, maybe they aren't able to get labs, they're not able to run those tests, is there signs they could look for in their body? Yeah, if you feel really tired after you eat, that's a huge sign that your body may not be utilizing carbohydrates effectively on a cellular level. You want to be energized by your meals. A sign of a really healthy metabolism, healthy metabolic health is that you eat and you're like, who, that just gave me that burst of energy that I needed. If you're eating and you're getting theitis and you're sleepy after your meals, or you're eating and you're always craving something sweet as soon as you finish your meal, that was my biggest thing when I was insulin resistant was that I would finish a great meal. I would eat more than enough, but I would need to have something sweet. I would need to finish my meal with a bite of a cookie or chocolate. Those are two anecdotal slash also scientifically supported signs that you may have an issue with utilizing carbohydrates properly. And can you explain to me the connection between PCOS and insulin resistant? So PCOS features two main mechanisms that are happening on a cellular level. So on the one hand, the person is experiencing high levels of testosterone. That person is also

experiencing usually higher than normal levels of LH or loutenizing hormone. And what happens when you have chronically elevated blood glucose in response to your meals is your body is going to send out more insulin to help get that glucose into the cells. And over time, those high levels of insulin and the high levels of blood sugar always circulating around. over time your body becomes insulin resistant, which means that your cells aren't able to sort of hear the insulin as well as they once did, because insulin is like this key that opens up the door and gets the glucose inside the cell. When you're insulin resistant, the cells aren't getting the message, and so we can't utilize the carbohydrates. And this means that you're left with

hyperinsulinemia, so high levels of insulinin consistently. And in response to hyperinsulinemia, the ovaries actually start to produce more testosterone, more androgens, which is the main feature of PCOS. And because of that high level of androgens produced in the ovaries, you then begin to experience things like poor follicle health, longer cycles, hercetism, and ovulation, all of these different features that we see in PCOS. The lutenizing hormone piece is also there. We're not too sure if it's necessarily a direct result from the hyperinsulinemia, but there is some part of that metabolic hormonal picture that's causing high levels of LH. and when you have high levels of LH, your body never gets the LH spike.

So usually you'd have pretty low-ish levels of LH before you ovulate. All of a sudden, your LH spikes. There's this surge, this demarcated surge that the brain recognizes, and it says, oh, time to ovulate, we got the spike. When your LH is high all the time, you might have a little spike, but it's not enough to give the body the signal that something changed. And so you either don't ovulate, you might have inovulatory cycles, and thus you may have trouble getting pregnant. You could have later ovulation, which leads to those longer cycles.

And so you really want to get to the core, obviously, of the blood sugar regulation and balancing your insulin levels to lower that testosterone. And you also want to work with your LH levels, which is also usually kind of a consequence of stress and low progesterone as well. And so there's one study where researchers looked at women who had PCOS, and they gave them 1,500 milligrams each of ginger and cinnamon. And they compared that to metformin. And so they found that the cinnamon was actually equal to metformin in terms of reducing insulin resistance, but that ginger didn't have an effect on the insulin resistance. What they did find is that somehow ginger helped to regulate the levels of SPSH and LH, and so it fit that missing component that we see in PCOS with the LH.

I love that study so much because it's two forms of kitchen medicine that you can utilize in your own kitchen to support your hormones and PCS. When you think about strength and resilience, like your ability to feel energized, to recover well, to stay strong as you get older, what do you think that actually comes from? Most people say working out are good nutrition, and yes, of course that matters. But there is a biological foundation underneath all of that that most people are completely overlooking. I have been diving deep into this lately with the team at timeline and what I've learned has genuinely shifted how I think about my own health. Every single movement that your body makes

every step, every workout, every muscle contraction depends on energy produced at the cellular level. And at the center of that is your mitochondria. Here's the thing that nobody tells you, certainly nobody told me. Starting around age 30, our mitochondria naturally become less efficient. More get damaged, more become sluggish. And over time, that is, impacts your energy, your strength, your recovery, and your resilience. Most of us respond by pushing more. We're like noticing these things and we're adding in more protein. We're trying to fix it with more supplements. We're trying to do harder workouts. And those things do help. But timelines research suggests that we also need to be supporting

the cellular machinery underneath. And that is exactly what their supplement mitopure does. It contains urolithin A, which helps your body clear out damage mitochondria and support healthier ones so that your cells can produce energy more efficiently. Because this is happening to your cells, it's going to impact your entire body, your immune system, your muscles. One study found that taking mitochondria increased muscle strength by 12% in four months with no change in exercise routine, it's going to impact your energy, your sleep, your skin, your cell health impacts all of this, and uralithin A keep.

your cells healthy. Timeline has done over 15 years of research and testing on this one product, Eurolythine, which, by the way, most of us lack the gut bacteria to synthesize naturally. That's why many of us need to supplement it to get the benefits. This has become a staple supplement for me. It is my top way to support how I want to look and feel as I age. Support yourselves and how you age with mitopure gummies from Timeline. Visit Timeline.com slash Liz and save up to 39% on your mitochondrure gummies. That is timeline.com slash Liz. The number one rule of habits is to make the things that you want easier and the things that you don't want harder. Yet so many of us want to eat healthier, but so few of us actually take the steps to

make eating healthier easier. That's where Marley Spoon comes in. What I love about this company and what's different than all of the other companies out there that are doing like stuff in the same arena, is that you can customize your choices based on the effort that you want to put in. So if you want them to send you ingredients, so you can make your own 20-minute meal and get into your chef energy, they'll send it to you to all be in perfect portions so you'll eliminate waste. Great, that's sorted. But they also have meals that you can just heat up. They have ready-made breakfast, which is always such a tough time of day to get a healthy meal

in. They have grab-and-go snacks. Everything is made from farm-fresh produce with high-quality proteins, and you can select by dietary preferences, including Mediterranean diet, which is the top diet that doctors on this podcast recommend. Also things like gluten-free, dairy-free, low-sodium, anything that you need. The food is so good and it's so gourmet feeling like you feel like you're at a nice restaurant. We're talking like chicken Milanese with a crunchy cucumber arugula salad or everything bagel salmon with truffle chive potatoes. My favorite recent meal was the creamy lemon chicken

tray bake. I had one of those moments where I looked at my plate and I was like, wait, I made this and so quickly, like so easily, it's just so little effort for so much reward. Marley Spoon just makes eating well feel easy instead of stressful, and honestly, that is everything. This new year, fast track your way to eating well with Marley Spoon. Head to marlyspoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. That is right, up to 25 free meals with Marley Spoon. That is marleyspoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody.

So remember to get the offer in there. MarleySpoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. How much is 1,500 milligrams? I always wonder when people are like, cinnamon is this or ginger is this. I'm like, if I'm drinking a tea, am I actually getting benefits? If I'm adding cinnamon to my smoothie, am I getting benefits? So a teaspoon by weight is 5 grams. And so 1,500 milligrams is 1.5 grams.

So if you're using cinnamon powder or ginger powder in your smoothies and food, that's usually a better way to get a higher dose. And in herbalism, when we're creating a plan for a client that involves food-based medicine or we even want to put something like aschaganda in their food, we're always going to go in powdered form and make something like energy balls that have nut butter and aschwaganda powder so that they can get that higher therapeutic dose. And so I would always recommend using like a teaspoon and powder measuring it out. That'll give you a really great dose.

If you're looking at capsules, it's harder because, you know, you're going to need to take a lot of capsules to get to 1,500 milligrams. What about tea? A tea bag, you're not really going to get all that much. It's not going to be quite as concentrated as a scoop of powder. Okay, but what about your teas? I mean, it depends how strong you make them. So technically, yes, if you're doing a loose leaf tea, you're going to get more because you can take a scoop of that, a teaspoon of that loose leaf tea, put it in water and concentrate it. But in tea bags, there's just really not all that much herb in there. What I always love about your teas is that you tell people to essentially make a decoction on the instructions of your tea bag.

So if you're making a loose leaf tea, if you're listening to this and you're making especially an herbal tea, because I feel like it would get kind of bitter with an actual tea, a green or black or white. But if you're making an herbal dazine, you want to steep it and have it covered while you're steeping it significantly longer than you think to actually get the benefits. Can you speak to that? Well, this is secretly an herbalist. You don't really know you for context. You're the first teas that I found that actually say that on the bag. Thank you. Yeah, I know it's my teachers really got that into me. But yeah, essentially, when you are

making a true medicinal tea, it is more of a decoction because you really need time and heat. And you also want to preserve again by covering all of those beautiful phytochemicals that are in the tea. You don't want them to escape through the vapor. So to make a strong tea, you not only want to use enough of that herbal material, which is why a loose leaf tea is always preferred because you can actually get enough in the pot, but you want to cook things for a period of time where you're bringing it to a boil and then you're lowering it to a simmer and you're letting that water really concentrate down so that you're getting a true extraction of those ingredients. Okay. You've built this multi-million dollar business, which is like so cool. And I'm just in awe of you. And I think it's phenomenal.

Your products are insane. And the success, even just since I last saw you, I feel like your business is just skyrocketed and it's been such an incredible thing to witness. But you also have all of these things you're doing on your health journey, on your emotional healing journey. and I'm listening and I'm like, how does this all fit in to the same day, into the same week? So I want to start by giving the caveat that I have a neurospy brain. So when I was younger, I was diagnosed with ADHD. It's definitely a part of who I am and how I work and I embrace it and I try to work with it. And what I learned through a friend from a doctor named Dr. Laura Gouge is that folks with ADHD have this interest-based nervous system.

So we are really good at hyper-focusing on things that we're. we're interested in and we're not so good at focusing on things that we're not interested in. So I actually lean into being a bit neurospicy and I try to really respect and honor the ebbs and flows of my interests. And so if one day my brain is just in CEO brain and I'm like, you know what? I'm having all these ideas, high level ideas for my business and for whatever reason I'm able to get so much work done in this corner of my life and responsibility, I just go full gas and give am I all that day until that part of my brain is like, ah, we're not interested anymore. And then the next day, if my best friend calls me and needs to cry on my shoulder about a guy,

I can actually be present for her because the day before I got a whole lot done and front-loaded my work. And so I try to lean into that and I try to keep in mind that I cannot be everything for everyone each day. I have a big life. I want a big life. There are a lot of people who rely on me and need me, I need me and I rely on me. And I also have to realize that I can't be there for all of those people and things every single day. And I sort of have to pick and choose and realize that if in a seven-day period or one-month period, I was really good at this thing this day and I showed up for this thing this day and I rocked it at being a wife this day. And even within a 24-hour period, if I can kind of break it up like that, that's enough for me. And I have to just realize that that's

how I work and just respect my body in that way. So I would just say that because it's too hard to try to do it all. It's too hard for me to try to be an amazing wife and an amazing friend and a CEO and a dog mom all in one day. Some days I'm asking my partner, hey, can you take the dog for a walk this morning? I really have this meeting and I got to be on CEO mode today. Some days I'm with my friends and I'm being really present with them. So it's just trusting and honoring that and having that relationship with yourself where you're like, I know I got me. And I know that if my energy is calling me somewhere, it's for a reason. And so that's how I like to live. You've been on such a health journey since I even last sat down and did a podcast with you. How has that impacted your relationship

with your partner? And do you have any advice for somebody who feels like they're on a journey and they want to take their partner along with it? But maybe they're having a hard time bringing them. The beautiful thing about relationship is that when one person gets healthy or the other person gets healthier as a result and not as a direct result because you can't force someone to do the things. You can't bring them along for the seminars and have the information sink in. You can't do all of the health habits for them, nor can you force or guilt them into doing it for you. It's never going to stick if it's not coming from a place within them. And the best thing that you can do for someone else is be an example for them and hold the vision for them, which is kind of what I talked about

earlier with my doctor holding that vision for me. Just holding that vision for them and trusting that they're going to get there in their way and granting them the autonomy that you want others to grant you is so powerful and just creates a pathway for them to do the things that are best for them because they say, oh, look, someone believes in me. And someone's not believing in me because they think I should do things their way. They're believing in me to figure it out my way. How exciting is that? Just like your partner can become unhealthier as you become unhealthier, just like you're the reflection of the people that you hang around and your bad habits can rub off on them, I think your good habits and your strides and your experience of personal growth can also rub off them in a very similar way.

And all you can do is dedicate yourself to your work and your growth and let that blossom and create the space for everything else to grow around you. So what's happened with you and Nick? It is amazing to see how me just focusing on myself and becoming, genuinely healthier mentally too and not relying as much on him, how much that's freed up his time to figure out who he is and do all the things that he needs to do and how much it's inspired him. Because I think in many relationships, women are the leaders. Typically, we look at, you know, the masculine is the leader and the protector. And in many ways, Nick is my absolute protector. There's certain things that he provides in our partnership that

I cannot energetically provide. But I think women are the leaders when it comes to the tone that we set, the actions that we take, the goals that we have for ourselves and for our families, we're so powerful. And so I think that as I've made these strides and as I've grown and just had more of this growth mindset, it's really bled into him. And he's followed that lead and he's been inspired by me and in awe of me. And the more that I grant myself the autonomy to go after the things I want, again, the more I travel and come here to L.A. and get my work done and work towards my goals and changing the world in my way, the more he's like, oh, yeah, I'm going to be. to find that thing too. I'm going to do that too. And we've both been able to really get healthier

together. Heltier together. There's never been a sense of like you on this rocket ship and him being left behind or in inequality or you wanting him to make changes that he's not making or any resentment around that. I definitely think when I was operating from a place of how I was operating in every relationship in my life of not seeing and not actually witnessing and not actually being in right relationship. And I was only seeing him for what I thought he should do and not actually witnessing him for who he was and what his body's wisdom was telling him to do and what he needed. I for sure was like, why don't you take the supplement or why don't you drink oats straw tea with me? Or why don't we go to the gym together? You should be doing this. And for sure, like tried to push my habits on him.

but maybe what was good for me wasn't good for him. And maybe it was creating more stress on him to have those expectations. I think I just learned along the way once I started to witness him, once I started to really heal the root of my codependency, which was again, like, seeing things for what they could do for me versus being in relationship with myself and others and doing that work myself, I began to be in true relationship with him and was like, ooh, his body is so wise. look at what it's telling him to do today. Or, ooh, I notice the way, like, when I just remove myself from the situation, the food choices that he makes are amazing.

The stuff that he naturally cooks for himself, like, that's what his body needs. He's clearly thriving. You take yourself out of the equation and things self-correct. We try to put ourselves in things so often in metal and say we know what's best. And it's actually, like, you removing yourself and just witnessing and letting things bloom, that is the magic because your witnessing helps things happen. So for homework assignment, I feel like we've talked about. a lot of different things.

And I feel like you gave us some really actionable tips for our dopamine detox, all these different things. Could you just give us one thing we haven't talked about yet that you think would benefit everybody if they started doing it as soon as they turned off this podcast? Along the lines of the theme where I'm starting to go more towards the nervous system and relationships as a way towards health rather than going towards food or supplements, even though those are beautiful tools and beautiful ways in, I really, really think the core more so exists in our nervous systems and our relationships. I think that's how

we're going to get ourselves out of this chronic health crisis. I would say the one thing that people can do after this conversation is go towards difficult conversations in your relationships. Do not shy away from them because I read this book called What Are You Doing with Your Life by Krishna Marti. And it said that we only learn about ourselves in relation to others. You cannot learn about yourself and about your proclivities and neuroses and maladaptive coping mechanisms alone on an island where everything is fine and dandy and great and you never have to interact with another human. The reason that essentially like 90% of our problems come from other people is because we are social creatures and other people are how we grow and learn about ourselves.

And so of course your relationships are going to have some sort of conflict because they are your ultimate mirrors and teachers as to where you can get stronger. better and healthier. And so go towards that conflict, approach it in a healthy way, a balanced way, where you are ready to talk about it with an open heart and do so from a lens where you're willing to, A, take radical personal responsibility for anything within that conflict that could be attributed to you where you could have just done a little bit better, be humble about that, but then also be prepared to uphold your boundary, your worth, notice where you get angry, and notice where that person might be putting something on you that is not yours to take and be willing to say, actually,

that's not mine. I can take responsibility here, but I will not take responsibility here, and I need to defend myself in this way. And I think both of those things help you become a better, more humble person, but also a person with stronger, self-esteem, self-worth, boundaries, confidence, and make your life better because you're just spending less energy on relationships that are stressful. Go have one hard conversation. I love that because it also brings us background to the dopamine thing.

Doing things that are hard is going to bring more real satisfying pleasure into our lives. So I absolutely love that. You brought us all the way home, and I so appreciate it. Can you tell us a little bit about your company, your podcast, anything that you want to shout out? Yeah, sure. My company is called Organic Olivia. It's my online apothecary of all of my formulas that are a culmination of all of my work and experience over the last like nine years now that I've had this company. And the formulas are very close to my heart.

we have something for anxiety, for digestion, for sleep, for focus. So we have a lot of different formulas in there. We have something for everyone, and we can totally make your listeners a code if you're down for that. Oh, I would love that. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do like Liz Moody. Yeah, that's perfect.

Liz Moody, and we could do 10% off. Oh, thank you. What would you start with? If you are on a similar insulin resistance PCOS journey, glucose bitters is actually, it was born out of my journey. So I was taking all of these different herbs in powdered form and count. capsule form that were insulin sensitizing glucose balancing herbs. And then I was also taking vinegar separately before my meals because pre-meal vinegar is really wonderful at helping your cells uptake those carbohydrates more effectively. And in herbalism, we make vinegar tinctures. So I was like,

what if I just tinctured all these herbs and then got two birds with one stone, glucose bitters was born. So it has all the herbs I use in my journey with the vinegar. You just put it in some water before meals and it really helps with that post-pranial glucose response. And then And if you are someone who is extremely stressed and overworked and you are trying to get your circadian rhythm on point and reset your HPA axis, adrenal recovery is my adaptogen blend. That like got me through my bookwriting process. It really did. It was really helpful. I'm really happy to hear that.

Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. And the great thing about adaptogens is that they help align you to your circadian rhythm. So if you're someone who's trying to wake up earlier, you might find that it actually helps you to be energized at the right time and to, you know, kind of reinstate that sort of pattern. So yeah, adrenal recovery. And then my podcast is called What's the Juice, kind of instead of what's the tea. We're trying to squeeze the juice out of every topic. And my Instagram is Organic Olivia. My brand is Shop Organic Olivia. Love it. Thank you so much for all of

your wisdom. I always love our conversations. It was really beautiful. Thank you for the space you created for this conversation to come out. I hope you had at least one light bulb moment in this episode, if not many, about your own coping mechanisms and dopamine disregulating activities that you may need to detox from. I am really vibing the idea of a Liz Moody Pod community dopamine detox, so I will think on that. But in the meantime, send this episode to a friend and do one with them. You will feel so much better. It will just bring a sense of sparkle and joy and pleasure back into your life. And it'll also give you that willpower, that willpower, that ability to say no to things that you don't want to be consuming at that moment, whether it's

snacks or sweets or your phone or just anything that you feel like is not serving you, doing a dopamine detox will rebalance you so you can have a better relationship with those things. If someone shared a link to this episode with you and you are new to the podcast, welcome. I am so glad that you're here. If you are not following the podcast, you need to do that. Otherwise, you're going to miss out on all of our future amazing episodes. And guess what? I know a lot of you who are listening right now, up to 50% of you listening right now,

are not following the podcast yet. What are you doing? You want to go to the main podcast page. That's the one that lists all of the Liz Moody podcast episodes. You want to click the word follow under the logo on Spotify. And then there's a little follow with a plus sign button on the top right of that same page on Apple Podcasts. Also, if you are an OG, if you've been following the podcast on Apple forever, you're going to want to go to that page with all the Liz Moody podcast episodes and click that little button in the top right and click turn on automatic downloads because they've had an update and they're hiding various episodes in the feed and it's very, very annoying. So go to that little button in the tap right, click turn on automatic downloads.

The pod will keep showing up in your feed. Everybody will be happy. You will not miss out on any new episodes. They'll show up every single Wednesday and every other Monday. And we have so many good episodes coming up. We have the ultimate financial advice episodes. So that was you guys writing in all of your financial struggles. And then we have an expert coming on to give you specific advice about those things.

It's going to be so good. And then we have another one about the neuroscience behind manifestation with a Stanford professor. That is going to be phenomenal. Oh, we have so much good stuff. So make sure that you're following. and I love you, and I will see you on Monday for the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast.