The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Organic Olivia AKA Olivia Amitrano On Wellness That Works, Insulin Resistance, & Routine Optimization
Episode Date: July 6, 2023#586: Today we're sitting down with Olivia Amitrano, better known as Organic Olivia. Olivia is the Founder & CEO of Organic Olivia & has bootstrapped her self-funded start-up into a $14 million dollar... burgeoning empire with the goal of healing the holes in healthcare and empowering individuals to take autonomy over their health. Today Olivia tells us her story, from how Organic Olivia got its start, to how she's evolved as a business woman and person since beginning her brand. We dive into her autoimmune disorder diagnosis, and how she evolves her wellness and nutrition to fit her current lifestyle needs. She also gives us tips and tricks about prioritizing your health while not becoming a "wellness addict", how to retrain your mind and body, and how to be patient with your body in all phases of your wellness journey. To connect with Olivia Amitrano click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts Bosstick click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE To subscribe to our YouTube Page click HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential Use code SKINNY at organicolivia.com to receive 15% off your purchase. *Offer valid for 3 months beginning on 7/6/2023* This episode is brought to you by Nutrafol Nutrafol is the #1 dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement, clinically shown to improve your hair growth, thickness, and visible scalp coverage. Go to nutrafol.com and use code SKINNYHAIR to save $10 off your first month's subscription, plus free shipping. This episode is brought to you by Cymbiotika Cymbiotika is a health supplement company, designing sophisticated organic formulations that are scientifically proven to increase vitality and longevity by filling nutritional gaps that result from our modern day diet. Use code SKINNY at checkout to receive 15% off your purchase at cymbiotika.com This episode is brought to you by Vitaclean Vitaclean is a triple-filter, Vitamin-C infused aromatherapy shower head that removes toxins from your shower, prevents product buildup in your hair, and calms skin irritation. Go to vitaclean.co and use code SKINNY at checkout for 20% off shower heads and starter kits. This episode is brought to you by The Farmer's Dog It's never been easier to invest in your dog's health with fresh food. Get 50% off your first box & free shipping by going to thefarmersdog.com/skinny Produced by Dear Media
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The following podcast is a Dear Media production.
She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire.
Fantastic.
And he's a serial entrepreneur.
A very smart cookie.
And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride.
Get ready for some major realness.
Welcome to The Skinny Confidential, him and her.
Aha!
Both of my parents getting so sick with COVID, that's when we started to realize,
oh, people with poor metabolic health have worse outcomes.
And both my parents were massively overweight my whole life.
I also was very overweight as a kid.
And I just realized, like, I could easily go down their road if I don't do something now.
When I had to stop smoking for those two weeks in January of last year,
and I had a lot of grief come through about my mom, I was just like, what happens if I just
never process this? Like, who am I going to be if I just keep all of this stuff in? I really need
to start facing life. I really need to start facing hard things, hard emotions, get in the
gym, do the things I don't want to do. Like, what could my life look like if I just went towards all of this pain that I'm avoiding?
Oh my God, I am so excited for this episode. I have been wanting to interview Organic Olivia for so long. I feel like we've been DMing for years to get her on the show. And finally,
she is here. Organic Olivia. She is the founder and CEO
of Organic Olivia, and she has bootstrapped her self-funded startup into a $14 million business.
I mean, this is an empire. She has a goal of healing the holes in healthcare and empowering
individuals to take autonomy over their health. This episode, I learned so much. We have a lot
of very wellness-y people on this podcast, but this episode, I was so much. We have a lot of very wellnessy people on this podcast,
but this episode, like I was taking notes.
Olivia is going to tell us about her experience with autoimmune disease,
and she's going to explain insulin resistance,
which was super interesting.
We're going to talk about wellness routines
in your 30s, wellness addiction.
We're also going to talk about traditional Chinese medicine,
retraining your body and brain, how to be proactive in your life, pain versus pleasure, and herbs. We even dive in
to comfort zones. So grab your notepads and let's learn all things wellness from Organic Olivia.
This is the Skinny Confidential, him and her.
What is that like to be a wellness influencer and to have this pressure of everyone watching
you and looking for you as a resource for advice? Yeah. And then going to get that test and feeling
like this isn't where I want to be. So the thing was, for years, I knew that my metabolic health
was creeping towards a dangerous level. And in many
ways, it was the fact that I was a wellness influencer and entrepreneur and was so busy and
so focused on work in my business that was driving that because I just wasn't taking the time for
myself. And I think when I started as a wellness influencer, I didn't make it about myself or my
looks, right? I just made it about the herbs. I was in school to become an herbalist. I made it
about the education, you know, spent so many hours a day writing blog posts, it about the herbs. I was in school to become an herbalist. I made it about the education, spent so many hours a day writing blog posts talking about the gut microbiome and acne
versus talking about my body and aesthetics and here's how to use herbs to look good.
So in many ways, it was fine for a while because people weren't like, okay, I expect her to have
this perfect body or whatever. She's giving me advice about my skin and autoimmune disease. I
don't need to look at her like this person that needs to be perfect. But it definitely got to a point where I was like,
OK, I don't feel like I'm practicing what I preach and there's something wrong here.
And that's when I started seeing my doctor, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, who you guys have had on the show.
And she was like, listen, I know you're doing everything right. You're taking all your herbs.
Like most of your lab markers are good, but you have far too much body fat and you don't
have enough muscle and you're insulin resistant and your blood sugar is creeping up.
You are in the pre-diabetic range.
So you need to start making some changes and you need to start caring about your aesthetics
essentially because that's what's going to get you to where you need to be metabolically
for longevity, for your aging and for your brain yeah it was it was interesting because i think people
sometimes people would make comments about it most of the time they would just kind of respect
that i was giving them so much free information and just kind of take it but it definitely got
to me at times because what do you mean comments like they would just be like sometimes people
would say how am i supposed to take advice from you when you're when you don't look the way that
you know you should look or whatever it is and i i get that to a degree right it's like taking financial advice from a poor person i'm not trying to be
mean but it's just honest it's like you know like i get like there's but i also don't agree with you
because people have different iterations and different chapters in life and if you if you
don't acknowledge them especially as a woman because you stay consistent as a man.
Well, not all men stay consistent,
but you'll say that.
But I, on this topic,
I think that, again,
we do things and learn things on this show
that keeps me accountable.
Like I do the thing.
I don't just like,
I don't just wake up every day.
I'm like, hey, like I'm fine.
You know what I mean?
Like we put in the work.
Yeah, put in the work.
I don't, I mean,
it's like such a touchy subject these days,
but yeah, we're putting in the gym,
like every single day, you know, we're going and eating right and doing all the things. It, putting in the work. I mean, it's like such a touchy subject these days. But yeah, we're putting in the gym like every single day.
You know, we're going and eating right and doing all the things.
It's not easy.
But yeah, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon's been on the show.
And we've talked all about this on that episode.
Yeah, I think it's because, again, when I kind of started being on the internet over 10 years ago, I was on like Blogspot.
It was more that I had really severe IBS and I had really severe acne.
So that's what I was trying to heal.
And that's what I was looking
for this information for. And I went viral on the internet for my acne videos. So it was never
really about my looks. And I was so focused on that part of my journey and, you know, eating
organic and eating a healthier lifestyle that I didn't realize you can't eat 10 organic cookies
and still be good. Like I was just kind of focused on certain parts of it and my skin and all that
stuff. And then I kind of had this second health journey, which is now, which is kind of my insulin resistance journey and my weight,
which has been really nice to share because to your point, it has shown people that it's not
linear. You're not just the same forever. You have waves and you can have different issues come up,
even if you're a quote expert. I just had a very similar journey with my implants, so I get it.
You get them and then you want them out. So I get it. You get them and then you want them out.
So I get it.
You're so allowed to change your mind.
I like to change my mind.
Yes.
I know you're going to talk about this, but I've been thinking about it a lot.
So the internet is still relatively new in a lot of ways.
And I would argue that people like yourself and Lauren are like kind of,
maybe not first generation, but second or third generation creators, right?
Like when Lauren started putting content out on the internet, the term influencer didn't even exist. It was like a
new thing. Like what the hell is that? Maybe same with you. The reason I'm going down this path is,
and I tell this because I have younger sisters all the time. When you're in your early twenties,
like before you hit your thirties, it's really easy to kind of maintain, stay in shape. We've
had a lot of young people on the show and they give this fitness advice. I'm like, well, as I've gotten older, I look down sometimes like, oh,
shit's not looking like it used to. I have to put in the work. And I think we're also one of the
first generations to kind of start that early and then age up and be like, okay, now I have to do
different things because my body just doesn't respond the way it used to when I was 22 years
old or 23 or 24. Does that make sense? Yeah. And I think one of the topics that's popping
that I know we're going to talk about is building muscle as you get a little bit older.
Because for me, it was always so easy to keep body fat off until I started getting into my
mid-30s. And I'm like, okay, now I got to maintain muscle or else I just can't get the fat off.
Yeah. I think we also just become more sedentary. I didn't realize when I was in
college and I'm running from class to class or
even in the beginning of my entrepreneurship journey where I was packing boxes myself,
right? Like I'm literally packing my supplements into boxes, taping them up, taking them to UPS.
As things kind of went on and grew and got bigger, I just became way more sedentary and I lost a lot
of my muscle mass. So I think it's not necessarily that our metabolism changes in our 20s and 30s,
it's that our habits change. And I just realized things got a lot more convenient.
I started to outsource things, even like washing the dishes or meal prepping. And even that,
there's actually so much energetic output that comes from those little tasks. And now I'm very
conscious of how much I move in a day and even doing things like chores. That's helpful.
That's important. I think at you know, at Dear Media,
we have obviously a lot of women that work here
and we do these hot girl walks.
I don't know if you've heard of those.
I love that.
But I kind of want to-
Do you do the hot girl walk?
Once in a while, I do the hot,
I join the hot girl walks,
but I want to start talking also to the team
if you're listening to like implement
the hot girl, like lift weights a little bit.
Because to your point-
The hot girl lift weights?
The hot girl lift weights.
Because I think to your point,
listen, I'll say it. People become become what is said in sedentary and they think that the walks and the food and this is enough but it's not enough yes
and i'm not saying that to be rude i just know how this works because i've been a weightlifter
my entire life like your muscle mass and your growth decreases as you get older and older and
it's why you see so many old people when they fall and hurt themselves and break their hips. It's why they fall and die, right? They have no muscle
and no structure to hold them up. And I don't think a lot of young people, and I'm going to
generalize women, especially because it's just not as normal as men lifting, realize how important
it is to just, it doesn't have to be crazy, but a little bit of weightlifting here and there to
build muscle is going to create so much longevity for you. I don't care about, not even necessarily
the way you look, but longevity, health, your health span, you know. Yeah. Hot girl lifting or weight?
Whatever they got to do. He said hot girl lifts weights a little bit. Yeah. Hot girl lifts weights
a little bit. That's a really good. That's catchy. Because we got the hot girl walks down at this
company. But I was saying once in a while, you know. But I agree with you. And I think that it
needs to be emphasized, especially in the wellness world and especially as an herbalist. Even in the herbal world, my schooling was a lot about plant medicine and these plants can do XYZ
and you can create this protocol for someone in this formulation. And for so long, I really did
think it was just about the herbs. And I have a supplement company, right? Of course, I believe
in them. But at a certain point, I started to think about this huge piece of our muscle and
how it is an active organ and how
important it is for our brain health as we age, not just being able to wipe our own ass one day
and be mobile, but actually our brain health. And for me, a big catalyst is my mom. She has
really advanced Alzheimer's disease. My parents got really sick with COVID. My mom actually almost
passed from it and was on a ventilator. And after that, her Alzheimer's got really bad. And that's when Dr. Lyons sat me down and said, okay, now you really see your mom's
condition firsthand, right? And she said, for every inch that your waistline grows in your
20s and 30s, your brain actually shrinks. And this is when you have the opportunity to prevent that.
And that was my huge wake-up call. I'm sorry to hear that. But I think it's an important
conversation because I think when you breach this topic or go into
this subject, I think sometimes, especially as a man saying this, you get pushed back
thinking that it's for an aesthetic.
Yeah.
An aesthetic is a byproduct of feeling healthy and feeling good and doing these things.
But it's not what I'm saying because I have an older dad too.
And he was not lifting for a while.
And I was like, hey, man, you got to take care of yourself.
I saw a lot of his friends kind of getting sick and going.
And I don't think people realize how important it is to maintain solid muscle structure as
they age, not only for their body, but for their mental state of mind and so many other
things that you just can't get from a solid diet and a couple of walks.
You should still do all the herbs, all the plant medicine, all the stuff you can do.
You have to kind of maybe think about implementing that as you get older. Yeah. When you look at Olivia before talking to
Dr. Gabrielle Lyons to after, tell me what your day-to-day looked like before and what it looks
like now. Well, it's funny because I started with the walks and she was kind of like, all right,
it's not enough. It's not enough. And I would do walks intermittently from time to time or
do a little something and try to just be active and get the 10K steps. And most of my day was
spent really just at my computer, just working away at my business, just kind of like hold up
in my house, maybe taking a few walks, eating like quinoa, thinking that I was getting protein
from quinoa, definitely overeating and also binge eating.
That was that was also a big thing for me that protein helped me so much with because Dr. Lyon taught me about the concept of protein prioritization, which is this phenomenon where animals will instinctively feed all day and not stop until their protein requirements are met.
So we'll feed on carbs because even a carbohydrate rich food
is gonna have some protein in there
and the body recognizes that.
So it's like, I actually need way more of these cookies
that have one gram of protein
so that I can meet my protein requirement.
So yeah, beforehand I was eating the wrong foods,
overeating, definitely binge eating at night
and letting the stress of entrepreneurship
totally just kind of take over my life
and keep me sedentary.
And now my mindset is so different in the sense that I learned to go towards pain. I learned that
there is no greater reward than putting your body through a really difficult challenge because
that's what's going to get you the result that you want. And it's going to train your brain to
actually be able to handle challenges in your regular
daily life with a lot more resilience and grit.
Now I go to the gym three times a week.
I learned to take up space.
I literally take off my shoes in the middle of the lifting corner with all the guys.
And we'll get up on the stand and start doing step ups and Bulgarian split squats.
And I'm...
Oh, those are the worst.
They are the worst. But I love them so much. And I'll be split squats. And I'm. Oh, those are the worst.
They are the worst, but I love them so much. And I'll be grunting and I'll be in pain and I'll be messy and gross. And I have learned to absolutely love it because that is so much more powerful
than a walk or cardio or all the things that I grew up thinking were going to get me
the metabolic health and body that I wanted.
Were you more plant based before this whole revolution?
I was plant based for a while.
I even did like the medical medium diet.
The celery one?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Where it's like you just eat raw fruits and vegetables for 28 days and you're not allowed
to have any oils.
Is that like a reset or is that an actual diet?
No, he tells people that it's this diet to heal all of these chronic illnesses and autoimmune
disease because he says that all of these illnesses are caused by latent viruses in the body.
And the only way to kill those viruses is to eat raw vegan, essentially. And my health was
just declining more and more. And now, I mean, I have protein for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
I ordered three sausages, two hard boiled eggs and a little chia pudding this morning for
breakfast. Like I pound back the animal foods and I feel so damn good.
There's like a real, I mean, we're obviously not the only ones talking about this right now,
but more, you know, we do this all the time, more and more people and a lot of women are coming on
and talking about this topic, how they've started adding in animal proteins. And I think for years,
I mean, during the seven years, it was a lot of the opposite. It was like these cleanses and these
things to, you know, not like fad diets, but what
are the things where you like feel like you had to, I guess it's called a cleanse where
people were like doing things because they had these conditions.
You did it with me when we first started the Skinny Confidential.
That is a TBD, TBT, TBT.
Yeah, that was kind of gross.
Those cleanses really get things going.
But no, but I think it's interesting because I'm seeing this pendulum swinging.
And as hosts, we've been getting some pushback here and there from people that are maybe
still plant-based or of the vegan community or are not ingesting animal products.
But there's also at the same time, this flood of different people coming on saying,
I've done these things and my life has either improved by X, Y, or Z. And I just think it's an interesting observation
for us on the other side, because a lot of people I think are confused. They're like,
well, is it plant-based or is it meat or what is the answer?
It's both. It's got to be both. My thing is plants and protein, because you absolutely need
plants and fiber, especially when you're eating so many animal foods, to shuttle away cholesterol
and make sure that your cholesterol is not going up. You need fiber in order to help your gut produce short chain
fatty acids so that your gut lining has the proper integrity and stays intact and you don't get leaky
gut. So you it's like fiber is going to do more for leaky gut than something like bone broth.
Well, so plants play a huge role. And I think you have to have a perfect balance of both. And
unfortunately, for a long time in the wellness world, it has been very black and
white, this or that carnivore or totally plant based.
And the truth about wellness is that it's not sexy.
Like the actual way to health is not sexy.
It's not a clickbait title.
It's the tiny consistent things we do each and every day.
And that's not sellable or marketable.
Yeah.
The carnivore people aren't going to like me saying this either, but I think that that is not right either.
No, here's the thing.
There is a lot of people,
I think, that have addictive personalities
that instead of drinking or doing drugs
are picking a diet.
Okay, and that's like evangelicalizing it.
Yes, so they're making it
like almost like a religious...
Or evangelist.
Yeah, like it's like evangelicalizing it. Yes. So they're making it like almost like a religious.
Yeah.
Like it's like almost like a like a sexy way to package an addiction.
Yeah.
This is what I've this is my observation.
It's just what you said, though.
It's not all all something all it's that's too intense.
Yeah.
I feel like it's it's right to just sort of pick and choose what works. And sure, like eat extra protein and eat plants.
But people that are like, you can only eat testicles.
Yeah.
Or you can only eat meat or you can only eat plants.
There's a little bit of an OCD addiction there, in my opinion.
I also think people are just way too hard on themselves.
So like life is hard, right?
You talk about the struggles that you're going through with your mother, like, you know,
people have tough relationships, stuff with children. Life is already hard and they make
it harder by saying, I have to stick to this very particular strict diet. And if I ever go outside
that diet, I'm, you know, I've done wrong. Right. I think that. I think they're also lied to by the
people selling those diets. Yes. Well, the cortisol is just, it's not good for you. I mean, you know, it's like
the stress hormone in your system is not good for any kind of longevity. Right. And so you may be
doing all the right things, being so stressed about a diet and you're just completely killing
all the results that you're getting in the gym or whatever else you're doing because
your stress hormones are all whack because you're too strict.
I see it as there's a lot of people out there with chronic illness, more than ever. It's exploding.
There's a lot of people who are suffering and a lot of people who are suffering with
gut issues specifically or things like autoimmune disorders that stem from their gut issues.
So of course, they're going to notice that, hey, when I cut out certain foods or when I
eliminate this entire food group, I'm starting to feel better.
And then they're going to find someone out there who has 80% of the story,
right? Who's saying, I've found the thing. This is how you're going to totally cure and heal your
body. Just come with me, follow me. And that, you know, essentially vulnerable person is going to
believe that because they're struggling, right? And they don't have a practitioner to guide them.
And they're just going to the internet, just trying to grab onto whatever they can.
And they're going to find that, yes, by eliminating plant foods, perhaps by eliminating fiber for a period of time, they end up feeling a lot better.
Their colitis flares go down, their IBS flares decrease, their acne gets better, and they think
this is the diet forever. But the reality is they probably have a dysbiotic gut microbiome
that when they are eating that plant fiber, it's producing the wrong types of end
products. Instead of producing the happy short chain fatty acids, it's maybe producing methane
if they have SIBO, for example. And all of their symptoms are coming from their gut bacteria and
the way that the gut bacteria are metabolizing those foods. So it's not the foods that are the
problem. It's the gut bacteria. And unfortunately, those people aren't working one on one with a
practitioner who can test their gut and tell them that and slowly help them to reintroduce those foods and treat
the imbalances. We talked a little bit about thyroid. Yeah. Speaking of imbalances and a lot
of women especially are dealing with thyroid issues. Yeah. What have you seen in your line
of work when it comes to thyroid hyper, hypo, Hashimoto's, all the things?
Yeah. So when it comes to just hypothyroidism where there's not that autoimmune component,
in traditional herbalism, we would see this as a cold and damp tissue state because back in the
day, right, people didn't have blood draws and labs to look at and TSH to read. So the way that
people would treat someone who was presenting as hypothyroid back in the day is that they would
say, okay, this person has cold hands and feet. Their digestion is very cold. When food is going
in, it's not going into a warm digestive fire with logs that are burning. It's kind of sitting
there. It's fermenting. They have slow gut motility. That's the constipation aspect.
And even their personality might have this lack of vigor and fire where
they're feeling depressed because that's a huge symptom of hypothyroidism. So traditional herbalism
would treat that in a way where they would see that person needing warming and invigorating herbs
that now we know have these mechanisms that not only energize the person, like adaptogens like
ashwagandha, not only energize the person by rebalancing their HPA axis and tonifying
their adrenals, but these are also anti-inflammatory herbs that are taking care of those underlying
chronic inflammation aspects that are preventing their own thyroid hormone from either converting
to the active form or going into the cell, which is what we talked about earlier, where
T3 can go
reverse. And then in other aspects, like if you wanted to look at it in Western terms, a lot of
hypothyroid disorders are either chronic inflammation, again, stemming from gut health,
or a lot of the times it's stress because we have this HPAOT axis in our body. It's not just the
hypothalamus pituitary adrenals. It's also
the ovaries and the thyroid. So the brain is constantly telling the thyroid what to do.
Any kind of endocrine or glandular issue is always stemming from the brain because the
hypothalamus in the brain is what's perceiving the stress in our lives. So if the hypothalamus
is like, hey, I'm chronically in fight or flight mode, I'm constantly stressed about this relationship in my life or trying to survive working three jobs or
whatever it is that we're perceiving as stressful, it's going to downregulate the rest of that axis
ending with the thyroid. And it's going to tell the thyroid to produce less hormone or it's not
going to convert the hormone properly. And that's the same with hormone imbalances. Even the ovaries are just doing what the brain is telling them to do. It's not the ovaries that
are the problem. Often it's the brain. So in a holistic sense or as an herbalist, a lot of what
I would do with someone who has hypothyroidism is look at the stress in their lives. How can I
support them with herbs to help increase their resilience in the face of that stress? So again,
that's adaptogens like ashwagandha.
That's why studies show ashwagandha can actually normalize thyroid hormone for some individuals.
But also that's looking at how can I make them more resilient, period. Weightlifting is a big
one. It really changes the way that you perceive a challenge and thus the way that your brain
perceives stress in general. Is that weird that I also feel like for me,
cold plunging is what
you just said about weightlifting. And I know you're going to tell me that you're going to
tell me you don't like cold. I don't. I know. I knew you were going to tell me that. I knew it.
That's why I brought it up. It's fine. It's a hormetic stressor. I am addicted to it. I love
it. I think I saw on your Instagram that you said you don't like cold. I don't love it. Go for it. Tell us why.
I mean, basically in Chinese medicine, you want to do every single thing that you can to preserve your yang qi, right? Your warm. Because as we get older, you look at people that are much older,
they're cold, they're more tense. They would be that cold tissue state that we see in herbalism
where it's like, okay, there's not enough fire and circulation in that person. Older people have circulation issues, cold hands and feet.
They're very wiry. So as we get older, we get colder, period. We lose our digestive fire. We
lose our metabolic health, our metabolism. And so in Chinese medicine, you want to preserve that
fire as much as you possibly can, especially if you're a woman, because exposure to cold will
enter certain channels, including the womb, essentially. So you want to keep cold out of
your womb because often, you know, for example, when you have really heavy cramps, a heating pad
is helping because it's helping to bring warmth and blood flow to that area so that your body's
not... This sounds like good birth control, though. Yeah. I'm hitting in the cold. Sorry, Olivia.
I need some birth control.
But it's also everyone is so different.
And it is a hormetic stressor, right?
It's like a little bit of stress is really good for an organism.
So you're not sitting in a cold plunge for two hours, right?
You're doing it for maybe five minutes.
So it's essentially a little bit of an exposure to something that's less than optimal that's
helping you become stronger as an organism.
I actually have a question about this really quick, and I feel like you're the perfect
person to ask.
Why, though, when I get hot, I get inflamed, but when I get cold, I tighten up?
So I think that's why I'm so attracted to the cold.
Yeah.
I mean, people can have inflammation that's of a cold nature or of a hot nature.
So again, someone with hypothyroidism, they're not going to have heat symptoms.
They're going to have cold hands and feet.
They're going to have circulation that's stuck.
They're going to have digestion that's just sitting there.
There's not enough fire and heat or stomach acid in Western terms to convert that food
and actually digest it.
So their inflammation is going to stem from cold.
Your inflammation perhaps may be of a hot nature.
Everyone in herbalism has a different constitution
and tissue state.
And so in an intake with you,
I would ask you questions about your mood,
your sleep, when your symptoms arise,
what they feel like in your body.
Do you have redness in your skin
or do you have dullness in your skin?
And we would look to see if you're someone
who has more of like a heat-based inflammation
and perhaps apply a little bit more neutral or cooling herbs for you.
Whereas someone who's just very cold and has just like no fire, no lust for life,
we're going to warm them up and give them lots of cinnamon and heating remedies to move things.
I'll give you something to think about.
I'm not going to, I know I'm not going to convince you on the cold on this episode,
maybe another time.
But one of the benefits of doing cold periodically, not all the time.
You're not going to sit there for five, ten minutes.
I always tell Lauren that's overkill.
But if you did like a couple times a week, maybe two to three minutes at a time,
what it does when you get out, one of the best things after the cold is to let your body naturally heat itself back up.
Because what it's done is it trains your body to be able to heat back up when it gets cold. So for me, because I've done it for a while,
if I get cold, now my body's used to heating back up and I can heat up real quick. So what is it,
the yang chi? Yeah, your yang chi. So I think it's a way to kind of stimulate your body coming
down in temperature and then being able to self-regulate itself back up to get warm again.
I think classical Chinese medicine would say that you're using a lot of your reserves. You're pulling from a lot of those
reserves to get your body to heat back up afterwards. And those are reserves you're
going to want later in life. If I die. You know what? Hey, I can hear both sides of the argument.
That makes sense. If I don't make it to 100, I'm going to call you up and I'm going to say you
were right. I shouldn't have got that. And And again, it's really just tradition. And all cultures kind of have this concept. You'll
hear Eastern European grandmothers say, don't sit on the cold concrete. Don't let your back or your
butt or your kidneys, it's going to get into your uterus. You don't want the cold in your uterus.
And in Chinese medicine, again, a lot of the ways that acupuncturists will treat infertility,
for example, is having the person not eat cold foods and take warming herbs and use moxibustion on, you know, the uterus area. So, you know,
all of these cultures have this. And one example that my acupuncturist would always give me is,
you know, when you get in the shower and your period stops, like you'll be washing your hair
and like when you're in the shower, you don't really have your period. You're not really
bleeding. That's true. Yeah. So water is yin. Water is cold. Even if it's hot water,
water by nature is a yin substance. And it's hitting this point in your head where we want
to keep covered with a hat. You want to keep your head warm all the time to preserve your yang chi.
So a yin substance is hitting this point on your head and letting a lot of cold in your body. And
that cold is stopping the flow of blood through your uterus. So that's why when I go in the cold
punch with my period, I'm just kidding.
Well, here's the thing. I'm just going to fuck with you.
I would just not
cold plunge on your period.
That's great.
I don't cold plunge
on my period.
Okay.
I don't want to,
I mean, I guess it wouldn't go
because that's hitting
my thing on my head,
but I mean,
I'm not cold plunging
on my period.
I wonder if that stops
the mood stuff too.
I'm just kidding.
Yeah, okay.
Calm down everybody.
But it really is just
this concept
and this traditional thing.
And I really do respect tradition
because it got people here
for thousands of years.
And there's got to be something to it.
But I also don't discount
that if it works for someone,
it works for someone.
I'm going to report back in 70 years.
70 years.
See if I make it.
You're going to say you're right to someone?
No, I said I'm going to report back.
I don't know if you're going to say
you're right to someone.
I've never heard you say that.
No, I like having these conversations because I think this is, again,
like cold, sauna, all these things are becoming more topics of conversation. Everyone's talking
about them. And we've definitely talked about it on the show many times. I mean, if you think about
longevity, people in China and Asia in general live for a really long time and they will never
order ice water at a restaurant. They will always order hot water. Kids are always eating porridges.
It's amazing the results that I've seen in kids, for example, with asthma because in Chinese
medicine, stomach is the mother of the lung. So the stomach needs to be strong enough and warm
enough to actually feed and nourish the lung qi. So a lot of times kids who have asthma early in
life, they're doing a lot of cold milk and cereal for breakfast and
some processed foods and just switching them over to oatmeal, warm cooked foods in the morning can
help dramatically with their asthma because of that stomach lung relationship. That's why my
grandma's always yelling at you to not let the baby get cold. My grandma's fully Japanese,
full Japanese. Exactly. And she always yells to not let the babies get cold. She even gets mad
if it has a little zipper. No, she gets mad if there's the little snaps. And she always yells to not let the babies get cold. She even gets mad if it has a little zipper.
No, she gets mad if there's the little snaps.
Yeah, because there's wind that gets in.
And wind is also very harmful.
I mean, there are certain opportunities in life that we have to build and preserve our
yang chi.
She's like 97.
So maybe you're right.
So when you're a baby, that's one time when like keeping your baby warm, you're giving
them the best chance to preserve their yang and their zhen chi, which is going to carry them through digestion and growth for the rest of their life.
But also right after you give birth, you actually have a chance.
You have this opening of this portal, essentially, right?
These channels.
And you have a chance to rebuild your yang chi and get more warmth than you for those 40 days. So that's why also in the Japanese culture and the Chinese culture,
or even the Mayan and now Mexican,
Colombian, et cetera,
cultures that stemmed from Mayan medicine,
there's this period of quarantine after birth
where for 40 days, you keep yourself covered.
You keep the windows closed.
You don't shower.
You don't go outside.
You maybe do a ginger sponge bath
just to clean yourself,
but you don't let cold or wind in
and you preserve that warmth and eat soups for 40 days
well and your young she's probably a little whoa my young she is not i was like i went out to dinner
like two days after i gave birth and i am not one to follow with that so do not take my advice
go zip yourself in a sleeping bag and do fucking ginger scrubs i am not a lot i listen i am about
balance you're good at the no shower
part i am at the no shower part i was gonna say that i don't let anything hit my head ever barely
i'm not a big hair washer i'm just not i don't like i think that my hair looks better when i
wash it like every week and a half love Sorry. You gotta do what works for you.
I went and got a facial from a friend in San Diego the other day and she hadn't seen me for like eight months and she was putting my hair back for me and she said, what are you doing
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maybe two? And I can't think of them off the top of my mind, but four
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Enjoy.
I first tried VitaClean in my guest bathroom. So I wanted to just test it out and see how I felt
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That is when I knew I needed to bring my VitaClean shower filters into our room too.
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investing your money and your time into like a 10 step skincare routine, or you're very serious
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Intermittent fasting. No. What are your thoughts on that? Go wild. My biggest thing in life is now preserving your muscle tissue and also,
again, protecting yourself against unnecessary stress because especially women, we have enough
stressors. I think men's bodies are different.
I think that a lot of the studies that are done on intermittent fasting were done on men. And I think that because of women's physiology and biology and because of how sensitive we are to
signs of famine due to our biological drive for maximum fertility, that any period of,
oh my God, there's not enough food, there's not enough fuel, I need to now tap into my reserves is going to stress us out. Even for me, like on, I've worn
a CGM before because of my high blood sugar and insulin resistance. And I noticed that when I
would wait too long to eat in the morning, when I would kind of have that hunger and ignore it and
get into the hanger and get around 10 a.m., 10,30 a.m., my blood sugar would actually start spiking
because I was going into a state of stress
and I was having this high cortisol moment
where the cortisol was good essentially
because it was liberating some of my glucose stores, right?
And helping my liver to produce some glucose
and release some glycogen.
But that on a hormonal level,
that cortisol was just only furthering
my HPA, OT,
axis dysfunction and the other things that I had going on.
So what time do you eat in the morning now,
especially if you're weightlifting and what do you eat?
Within 30 minutes of waking up.
And if you take a thyroid medication, you have to wait an hour, of course.
30 minutes of waking up?
Yeah. Yeah. Within 30 minutes.
What do you do? do shove an egg in your
mouth five eggs you eat that's a guy that's so gabrielle right is that gabrielle lyons that's
what she said 30 grams well i'll do yeah i'll do like i'll do two eggs three egg whites a little
bit of sausage some fruit or like some chia pudding i try to get fiber in each meal so i'm
really liking chia or some beans or something like that it's so hard to eat right when I wake up for
multiple reasons. But eggs are easy because they go quick. Having kids and make, I got to like do
all my morning routine. It's just protein powder and water. That's what I'll do. You know what I
might do though? I might just get like hard boiled eggs that you can buy. I think those are harder to
eat than the regular because you have to chomp the whole thing. I mean, I do hard boiled eggs
just because I don't like the extra fat. You don't eat the full yolks?
So I see egg whites as like a protein supplement, right? Like it's essentially,
why are you eating protein powder? Because it's a whole lot of protein and not a lot of carbs and fat. It's just very economically good calorie speaking, right? Or like energy speaking.
So I see egg whites as this extra protein supplement where I'm getting it from whole
food instead of using a protein powder. Not that I don't use protein powder, but I just kind of like to add
some extra egg whites to my breakfast meal because they're so little, they're easy for me to just get
down and swallow. And I'm just bumping up that number. And for me, I will binge eat at night if
I don't eat more than 30 grams of protein in the morning. So are you just doing like almost body
weight or in grams of protein per day? just about i mean when i was in my
weight loss phase i bumped it up because you're in this catabolic state where you're breaking down
your own tissue so you need to eat a little bit more than your body weight and protein when you're
in a caloric deficit so what specifically because our audience is going to want to know and how
recently did you implement that so i was in my like fat loss muscle building phase from like
september to let's say what month is it now?
May. So until like April, I guess. So what were you eating detailed? I was eating 140 grams of
protein per day because my ideal weight for my height, I'm like five two. So my ideal weight is
120 pounds. And what does that look like? Tell us exactly. You said five, you said two eggs and
egg white in the morning. Yeah. So I would do-
A lot of people struggle to get the protein in.
Yeah. I would do two full eggs, three egg whites, one or two sausage links,
and then a whole bunch of fruit on the side. Or I would do some leftover carb. I would roast a lot
of squash because squash is high in fiber. It's also high in water. So it's a very high volume
food and you can eat a lot of it and feel super satisfied for not a ton of calories or carbohydrates.
So I would have like squash with my eggs, for example, and I would just drizzle a little
bit of hummus or a little bit of pesto.
You know, I'm not a masochist.
I'm not just going to shove plain hard boiled eggs down my throat, although I've been known
to do that.
But I'll dress it up a little bit and add some nice flavor and whatnot.
So always eggs, sausage and fruit or just
eggs and fruit or eggs and squash from the night before, even eggs and rice from the night before,
whatever I had to just make sure that it was protein, fat and carbs. And then I would just
eat a lot of leftovers. I would just meal prep a whole lot of chicken thighs, asparagus, squash,
Japanese sweet potatoes. I would throw those in the oven and just have like a vat of 10 of them in my fridge. And I would do a lot of mini meals as my snacks throughout the
day because people are like, oh my God, what can I snack on? And I definitely have a lot of snacks
too. Like I love cottage cheese. Low fat cottage cheese is an amazing way to get a high protein
snack in. A little bit of like pumpkin seed butter or tahini on a rice cake. Put some cottage cheese
on top with some blueberries and cinnamon because both blueberries and cinnamon are great anti-diabetic
foods. They actually help to resensitize your cells to insulin. So I would try to
incorporate these medicinal foods and spices as much as I could. But I was just constantly
snacking on some chicken and sweet potato throughout the day. And I just learned to
love it. I think a big part of it for me, especially with my history of binge eating, was learning
how to enjoy simple foods to actually retrain my brain and reset my dopamine sensitivity
a bit because I was so used to eating hyper palatable foods.
Like it's very unnatural, essentially, like what we have access to in the pinch of a pinch
of a moment.
That's not a phrase.
But, you know, we have so many foods that are packaged that
are very high in sugar, fat, salt, and flavor, right? That's the magic combination that lights
up these dopamine receptors in our brain. And throughout the last year or so that I did go on
this weight loss journey, I also went on a little bit of a dopamine journey too because I was
looking at what am I getting from food? Where else am I getting this dopamine hit from other substances? And I just did this whole kind of life edit and
looked at all of these ways that I was seeking outside of myself and seeking pleasure in a way
that was actually bringing me closer to pain. That totally makes sense. It's almost like you
retrained your taste buds. I did. I did the same thing in Austin the other morning. I was in my kitchen
eating deer for breakfast.
I don't like that.
If you would have told me
that I would be eating deer
like two years ago,
I would have been like...
Venison.
Venison, yeah.
I'd be like, what?
Venison's delicious.
But it's so much protein
and I enjoy meat now.
And two years ago,
I would have told you,
no, I don't enjoy it at all.
So you almost do retrain
your taste buds.
You have to. Don't you notice too now that you eat like that that it's sometimes when i get bombarded
with stuff with a ton of different flavors in it i actually like it kind of like shocks my system a
bit because to your point i don't think it's so natural that we like evolved with all of these
flavors that abundance right it was like we grew up with we evolved with simple food so now i'm
much more sensitive to it like i eat something like oh my god this is like it grew up with, or we evolved with simple foods. And so now I'm much more sensitive to it. Like I eat something like, oh my God, this is like, it's too much. Yeah. What are some other
dopamine things that you had to cut out? Are you talking about like alcohol? Are you talking about,
I mean, obviously sugar, what? Yeah. So for me, alcohol never really lit up my brain. I can take
it or leave it, but cannabis was my thing. Like I was just really, really, really into smoking weed.
And I did that, like as I built my business, I started smoking when I was like really, really, really into smoking weed. And I did that like as I built my business.
I started smoking when I was like, I guess, 18, like around the time I started my blog
in college.
And I smoked every day until I was 28.
And I'm turning 30 now.
So I realized that, hey, this is an issue.
And I'm relying on this as an emotional crutch.
And I think that in our society, it's not seen that way. It's this recreational medicinal kind of plant.
And there's a lot of work being done to destigmatize it and very rightfully to get
people out of jail who are there because they were selling weed. And now we have all these
dispensaries and it's a terrible situation. So I don't mean to add to the stigma around cannabis.
But for me, the way that I was using it, not ceremonially, not in a way where I was respecting the plant, not in a way
where I was listening to the plant when it was like, you got the message that I needed to give
you. I'm done with you. Stop. I was using it as a way to dissociate and get away from my emotions
and get this dopamine hit. I heard Rich Roll on a podcast once describe addiction as a narrowing of
what brings you pleasure.
And I noticed that all I really wanted to do was hang in my house and smoke weed. I isolated myself further and further. And that was kind of the catalyst to what got me on this journey because
I had a period of time where I couldn't smoke for like two weeks. And all of a sudden, grief and all
of these emotions that I was stuffing down for years hit me all at once.
And I was like, oh my God, I've been numbing myself for 10 years. It's time for me to just
raw dog life and face it. So I quit cannabis in January of last year. I quit caffeine in April,
which was wild, wild. Cause I really wanted. Forever or just like you're done still?
I mean, I'll have it once in a while, but I don't want to go back to needing it.
And I just was on my bachelorette,
so I drank it on my bachelorette
because I was like, I'm going to enjoy.
But I try to really,
usually I have a rule where it's no two days in a row.
I try to not do it twice in a row
because then I just snowball.
So I quit caffeine
because I just wanted to experience my brain without it.
What are my baseline happiness levels?
How do I face
life when I don't have caffeine to grab when I'm feeling a little bit sad in the morning or I feel
like I need to be productive? How would I work in a different way if I didn't have that push on my
adrenals to just go, go, go? Maybe I would find a more creative flow. I just wanted to experience
my body without substance. And then I quit, quote, sugar in September when I started my insulin
resistance journey. And I thought I was addicted to sugar, but then I realized I wouldn't sit there and just
eat a bowl of white sugar. That's not appetizing. So I can't be addicted to sugar. I'm actually
addicted to hyperpalatable foods, which is when you combine sugar with the fat, the salt, the
flavor and all that. So I guess I more so quit hyper palatable foods for a period of like three
months from September to November, December. I just ate like whole foods. I just, again,
roasted sweet potato, fruit, bananas. If I wanted something sweet, I didn't cut like carbs or cut
like fruit sugar out of my diet, but I just ate real food for a few months and boring food. I
really did it therapeutically and it changed my
brain and I started to be able to enjoy simple things and like sitting in the backyard without
my phone. What was the, I mean, you mentioned your mother, but was that the catalyst to have
this huge life change? Because I think a lot of people listening to like, okay, easy for you three
to say you're doing these things. You're, you know, working out in the gym, you're eating,
trying to eat right. But like, I always think there's like a catalyst that people need in
their lives in order to say, okay, I'm hitting the reset switch and starting to implement better choices
for myself. Yeah, I think for sure it was my mom. And again, just both of my parents getting so sick
with COVID, that's when we started to realize, oh, people with poor metabolic health have worse
outcomes. And both my parents were massively overweight my whole life. I also was very
overweight as a kid. And I just realized I could easily go down their road if I don't do something now. And then, yeah, it was essentially
when I stopped when I had to stop smoking for those two weeks in January of last year.
And I had a lot of grief come through about my mom. I was just like, what happens if I just never
process this? Like, who am I going to be if I just keep all of this stuff?? I really need to start facing life. I really need to start facing hard things, hard emotions,
get in the gym, do the things I don't want to do. What could my life look like if I just went
towards all of this pain that I'm avoiding? I think that's a really solid perspective to have.
I think we've got into a place where people sometimes go the other way, right? Where it's
like, oh, that's tough. I don't want to face that. And then I think what I try to point out with Lauren
on the show all the time is like, at some point you're going to face it. But to your point,
it's going to rear its head in a really ugly way potentially if you don't deal with it earlier.
I think it was like what Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger say, when there's a problem,
they found that it's better to just solve it as soon as possible than to let it linger. But we do the opposite, right? Yeah. And I think that we try to avoid pain by going towards pleasure.
And I did that for so long to the point where pleasurable things didn't feel good anymore.
I was just smoking to feel normal. I wasn't smoking to enjoy it. Or I was just eating sugar
because we're like eating chocolate because that's what I did. And that's just the tool that I had at
my disposal. I wasn't enjoying it. And I just felt like I was so numb to life. And I was going through a lot of
depressive episodes, too. I would have this major, major depressive swing like clockwork every three
months or so. And since I've kind of gone on that dopamine journey and taken a bit more control of
my life and started to go towards
pain, which is a much healthier way for your brain to process than going towards pleasure.
I haven't had a depressive episode in maybe like eight or nine months. It's wild. I've never,
I've always had depression. Always. What has your experience been with your relationship
with your phone? You mentioned something about you being outside and being off your phone. What is there? Was there an unhealthy relationship there?
Yeah. Yeah. I think that it's like a brain that seeks pleasure will try to seek it wherever it
can. Right. It'll try to get that dopamine wherever it can. So you take it was kind of
like this journey of, OK, I took away the weed. OK, I took away the coffee. OK, I took away
the hyper palatable foods. Now I'm grabbing my phone a lot. Now I'm shopping a lot more. I was like, the root is still there.
So I just started to, A, once I stopped doing the other things, once I stopped overstimulating my
brain with caffeine every day, because I think I'm just really sensitive to caffeine, it became
a lot easier to put the phone down and just be with my own thoughts because I wasn't on overdrive.
Because I think that when I was consuming caffeine every morning and my brain started to go crazy and
I was like, grab the phone. It's to do list time. It's like you almost need a tool or a device in
your hand that matches the speed at which your brain goes. Like I couldn't even write in a
notebook because the thoughts were coming too fast. So not having the caffeine helped me to just slow
my brain down a little bit. And that helped me to feel more comfortable not being on my phone as
much, even though it's still very hard. And I would say that that's the final addiction that
I'm kind of struggling with. That's the one thing. The final boss.
Yeah, it's the final boss. But I find that spending time with people really helps. And
that's really what I need more than anything is more connection with humans. I know that there are studies like the rat park study where they when they enriched a
rat's environment with other rats and, you know, kind of made this amusement park,
this social amusement park.
They did not want cocaine.
And I think that that's kind of like the last thing that over the years, as I used work
as an addiction, I was like, no, I need to build my business.
I can't hang out with people.
I can't have fun.
I'm just going to sit in my house and smoke weed after that long day of work and just
isolate myself further. I think I actually took myself away from people for a really large portion
of my 20s. And after COVID and after everything that happened to my parents, I was like, wow,
people are actually all we have. And that's been a beautiful antidote as I've been kind of weaning
myself off the other things. It's weird, though, because if you look back on on on your 20s, it's sometimes some people would look at it and say you isolating
yourself got you to where you are. Yeah. But and Tony Robbins always says that sometimes where
something gets you to where you are is not what's going to take you to the next level. And you have
to almost switch it. And it's like you have to almost be grateful yes that
you isolated yourself because it got you to where you are but it's maybe not going to serve you for
your next stage in life i love that imagine if they gave humans a bunch of cocaine and said you
can go to amusement park i don't think it would work the same way as the rats would be like i'm
gonna get on the ride imagine if we gave you cocaine humans are the world can you imagine
him on cocaine humans i love it no
the cocaine would not we can't be trusted to run the world because you can't be trusted on cocaine
we did the rat study and the rats didn't do it but humans i feel like cocaine you honestly you
want cocaine my friends are gonna be like what'd you talk about on dear media i'm gonna be like
cocaine i um i have not done cocaine because i'm self-aware enough to know god i would go to the fucking moon with that stuff yeah you know but see it's like maybe you're like
me we have this addictive personality that's why i don't do cocaine because it's laced with baby
locks i um i know what can happen to me in certain situations why i've been with the same woman for
so long i just like to be in a box regulated stuck trapped i, trapped. I'll be in the box with you if there's no cocaine.
I don't want to be around anything that lets me live life on my own devices. I just want to be
right here. Insulin resistance. This is something that I think a lot of people deal with and they
don't really understand it. Give us a kindergarten level explanation of what it is, how we can
implement practices into our day to
support it if we have it, and how to get tested for it. Okay. So on a kindergarten level,
insulin is like the key that opens the door to our cells and lets glucose in. So essentially,
we eat glucose every day in the form of fruit, in the form of sweet potatoes, in the form of bread.
All of those things break down and turn into simple glucose.
And that glucose goes into our blood so that it can travel into our cells.
And once it gets into the cell, it gives us that beautiful energy.
It helps us do the things we need to do for our day.
If glucose can't get into the cell because the cell can't hear the insulin, right? So it can't hear
that there's a key there that opens it up to let the glucose in. That glucose hangs around in the
blood and all of a sudden we have high blood sugar. And over time in your labs, you'll find
that your blood sugar, as you become more insulin resistant, as you have more time of that blood
glucose hanging around and causing inflammation of your tissues in the blood
over time you will have fasting blood glucose that's 90 95 100 110 and that perspective what
is a healthy level a healthy level is 85 or below in the functional range and then they try to put
you on metformin yes which i mean metformin also has a time and place. There are certain people that are simply a not going to take herbs or make lifestyle
changes and need a medication.
And there are certain people that might not have access financially to certain herbs and
lifestyle changes that also need a medication.
So if there's going to be someone out there who's going to keep eating the standard American
diet and doing what they got to do, metformin is a wonder drug.
But we're speaking to the people who are in the wellness world and have access and financial privilege to herbs and all this good stuff. And we can do things
differently. We can kind of take the natural metformin, let's say through diet and herbs.
Okay. So keep going. So if it's 100, 110.
Yeah. So that's where you become, once you're above 90, essentially like the 90 to 115 range,
you're considered pre-diabetic okay and that is where
you have a chance to really reverse that pre-diabetes once you're above 115 and you're in
that type 2 diabetes range you can more so manage your condition and sometimes you can reverse it
with with diligence you know you're kind of using your diligent diet as your drug right and you're
dependent on that but mostly once you have type 2 diabetes,
you can manage it. But a lot of your listeners who are just insulin resistant or who have PCOS,
and they haven't been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes yet, they've just been diagnosed with
PCOS. So they're just insulin resistant and they're in that pre-diabetes range.
That's where you have this beautiful opportunity to resensitize your cells to insulin and also to
build muscle because muscle is your
disposal site for that excess glucose. I'm going to ask you a stupid question. How long,
maybe there's not a specific answer to this, how long can you stay in that pre-diabetic insulin
range? Some people can stay there for years. And I think that that's a lot of women in their 20s
when they slowly start to notice that they're getting puffier, that their periods are getting
longer and more painful, that they're starting to have chin hair growth, that they're... All of
these symptoms of PCOS that come up in your 20s when you start to experience insulin resistance.
You have time.
Yeah, you can be insulin resistant for, let's say, 10 years before you go into full-blown
type 2 diabetes. But sometimes you're in that range and you have all these unexplained symptoms
and you're gaining weight. And now when you eat carbs, you're really sleepy, even though before you could totally
process carbs and be fine. And your doctor is saying, oh, well, you know, your blood glucose
is normal because really the functional range of prediabetes is like 90 to 115. And the functional
range that you should be at is 85 or below. But most conventional physicians, if you're in the
90s or even the early hundreds,
will say, oh, you're pretty much normal. You're fine. It's like when men get their testosterone
measured, like, oh, you're in the normal range. But the normal range is not the ideal range,
I would say that. Yeah. Yeah. You can also look at your fasting insulin. It's not quite as accurate
because it's going to be somewhat reactive to the meal that you ate the night before and the time
in which you ate. But for me, when I was very insulin resistant before I lost weight,
before I saw all of these changes and built muscle,
my fasting insulin was like 11.
And Dr. Lyon was like, we need to get that down.
And then halfway through my journey, it was at a seven.
And now it's at like a four, which is ideal.
I like to see it five or below.
And do you have to wear one of those glucose monitors to figure out what it is daily? Or is it just a blood test every two months or so?
You can just get a blood test. You can also look at your HbA1c. That's a really powerful marker
because HbA1c is going to give you a snapshot of your glucose for a three to six month period,
let's say mostly three months. And so if your HbA1c is 5.7 or higher, you are considered pre-diabetic. So you want to be below like 5.6, 5.7,
but you can just get that taken. Yeah. You can get your blood drawn every three months. You can
look at your fasting glucose. You want it to be 85 or below. You can look at your HbA1c. You want
it to be 5.7 or below. And you can also ask your doctor to test your fasting insulin and see if
that's five or below. I'm going to ask you another question because I know a lot of the audience
sitting there, there's like, I'm never going to do a test. And some of
them are saying that. You highlighted some of these. What are some of the symptoms or things
that you would notice if you were insulin resistant? Yeah, you're going to be really
tired after meals. You're going to eat a meal that's rich in beautiful carbohydrates like fruit,
even healthy carbs. You're not eating cookies and sugar. And instead of it giving you energy,
you're going to feel a crash. You're going to feel the itis after your meal. You're going to feel heavy and sluggish and not have energy.
You will notice that you're gaining weight more easily over time. You're going to feel like your
quote metabolism is slowing down. But in reality, you're actually just not able to utilize glucose
for energy and you're probably a lot more tired and thus more sedentary. And you can also notice
hormone imbalances. Insulin resistance
is a huge driver of hormone imbalances in women because what happens is when you have more insulin
over time because you're insulin resistant, so your body is like, okay, let's increase this
because the cells can't hear us. We're just going to send more insulin out and hope that the cells
open up to get this glucose in, your insulin is high over time.
And chronically elevated insulin tells your ovaries to start producing testosterone instead of estrogen and progesterone, and especially instead of progesterone.
So all of a sudden, women start to get symptoms of PCOS, where they start to have androgenic
acne, which is like these angry kind of like the chin and cheek pimples.
It's a very specific type of acne that comes from androgens. They also start to have head hair loss as well as body hair and
chin hair growth. So you'll have kind of hair loss around your crown. That's really indicative of
high androgens because the ovaries are producing testosterone and you'll get a lot of chin hair.
You'll have thicker body hair growth, waxing. You'll have to do it a lot more often and you'll
have longer cycles. So instead of a 28 day cycle, you're now going to have to do it a lot more often. And you'll have longer cycles. So
instead of a 28-day cycle, you're now going to have a 35-day cycle, a 40-day cycle. You might
have symptoms of infertility. You might have cysts on your ovaries. And you might have poor follicle
health. And you might also not be ovulating because as your ovaries start to produce more
testosterone in response to high insulin, your body also produces more luteinizing hormone.
And you need your luteinizing hormone to be low throughout the month and then high in a
big spike when it's time to ovulate because that is the LH surge that signals your body,
hey, there's this big demarcation. But when you have high insulin, your LH is high all the time.
So your body never even sees that demarcated spike and it never ovulates. So you can have
anovulatory cycles that can be a cause of ovulates. So you can have an ovulatory cycles
that can be a cause of infertility, or you can just not ovulate and not get your cycle for years.
Quick break to talk about one of our favorite partners. This has been a game changer for our
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So what are like five things that you would do if you were insulin resistant?
Number one, build muscle. A lot of times insulin resistance comes from simply
not having enough muscle tissue on your body because muscle is the most insulin sensitive
tissue that the body makes. It is going to be the dumping site for all of that glucose in your diet
and it's going to help you actually metabolize it and use it as fuel. So you have to start building
muscle before you even start trying to lose weight.
If you are overweight and that's part of the picture, you want to start gaining muscle.
And you can do both at the same time, but you want to be in the gym, resistant training.
Number two, eating enough protein because that's going to support not only the growth
of that muscle, but perhaps the loss of fat at the same time because you can eat less,
but still eat enough protein to maintain your muscle mass.
Number three, you're going to want to utilize insulin sensitizing herbs.
So or medications, right?
That could be metformin if you want to go the Western route.
If you want to go the herbal route, that could be something like berberine, right?
People, you hear a lot about berberine.
That's kind of like a natural metformin.
I don't love berberine.
I think that there's more effective
herbs. For some people, it's great, but I see more success with other insulin sensitizing herbs like
cinnamon and ginseng and gentian and fenugreek. Those are some really great ones that not only
help your cells become more sensitive and aware of insulin, but they also help to increase your
body's endogenous JLP1 levels,
which is what ozempic actually does. So those herbs kind of have a twofold action.
You're also going to want to take walks after meals. That's number four, because any sort,
even a 10 minute walk after meals can drastically lower your postprandial glucose spikes,
which lowers your inflammation and helps, you know, again, continue to reverse insulin resistance. And another great thing you can do is take vinegar
before meals. Vinegar has not only been shown to slow the conversion of starches that you eat in
your diet to glucose, so it kind of slows the post-meal glucose spike from carbs, but it also
helps your cells and muscle tissue utilize glucose from your meals more effectively.
Did you make your bitters product because of your insulin resistance experience?
Okay, so you would use this.
You just gave it to me.
I just tried it.
You would put it in a tea or water before you eat.
Yeah.
So what I was doing is I was taking the herbs in this formula separately in capsule form.
So I was taking a whole bunch of capsules of all these different herbs. So much work. And I was also taking vinegar before meals because the acetic
acid and vinegar, again, is so effective in that twofold manner. As an herbalist, I was like,
we love vinegar tinctures. Herbalists either tincture in alcohol, vinegar, or glycerin,
which isn't quite as effective for tincturing. So I was like, I could just tincture all of these
herbs and extract their phytochemicals into a base of vinegar. And then all I have to do is take a dropper of that and
you get 500 milligrams of the herbs in just one dropper. And you always do it before you eat?
Before I eat a carb heavy meal. So if I'm eating, if I'm having like a low carb day,
if it's like a rest day for me and I'm not really eating a lot of carbs, I don't need to take it.
And this is the one that has the same ingredients or similar ingredients as Ozempic.
Talk to me about that. Yeah, I wouldn't say similar ingredients.
Yeah, explain what you mean by that. So Ozempic is...
Things are going to fly off the shelves now.
Essentially, Ozempic, Wagovi, Manjaro, all of the different brand name drugs have the same
active ingredient, which is semaglutide. And semaglutide is a synthetic version of a gut peptide hormone
called GLP-1. Now, the beauty of Ozempic and Manjaro and all of these drugs and why they
work so well is that this synthetic version not only stimulates our own GLP-1 receptors in a
really strong way, but the synthetic version of GLP-1 doesn't degrade quickly the way that our
own GLP-1 degrades. So it stays in your system a lot longer. So people who take Ozempic are full
all day long, never have food noise, never have cravings, never even think about food,
because what GLP-1, this gut peptide hormone, does is tell you, hey, I'm satisfied. I'm satiated.
I'm full. I don't need to seek for anything. We're good. We're not hungry.
So people who take Ozempic, they're not hungry all day long. And also what GLP-1 does is it
lowers glucagon. It increases insulin release. It lowers postprandial blood glucose. It has all
these beautiful metabolic effects too, right? This hormone that we make that is now available
in a synthetic form. What herbs can do is stimulate the production of our own GLP-1
to a lesser extent than taking a synthetic version of it. But it still happens. There's still this
effect that you're experiencing. So what people notice when they take gluco bitters is that
their cravings are less. It's not the zero cravings that Ozempic gives you where you can't
even look at food, but their cravings are a lot less and they're able to tolerate,
okay, I can have one bite of dessert and be done right there.
This is really weird.
You're not even going to believe me.
I just had two of these in my tea, maybe three because I'm intense.
But I swear to God right now, I am not hungry.
It's amazing.
It really does help with your appetite.
I'm like not even joking, bullshitting.
And the last time I ate was,
I don't know what time is it? I actually want to look at this. It's 420.
Yeah. And I ate at, I want to say one o'clock. So it's about time for me to be hungry again.
That's the beauty of GLP-1 stimulation is that it's a gut brain axis peptide.
That is weird.
So it actually gives you this feeling of gut distension, essentially.
It activates your enteric neurons
and your intestinal nervous system, essentially.
And it gives you this feeling of fullness or distension.
And it literally quiets your brain noise.
So because you just took glucobitters,
you're feeling that,
that feeling's not going to last all day.
You're going to be hungry for dinner.
Someone who takes Ozempic
is going to never be hungry, essentially.
That's why they lose so much weight.
But it really does help. And when you take it before a meal, you're able to have much better portion control because you do have less of those hunger cues and you do
feel more satiated from less food. Peter Atiyah was saying that when you're on Ozempic, and I'm
not a scientist, so this isn't going to be eloquent, but he says that you're losing muscle,
not fat. So that's the problem because people says that you're losing muscle, not fat.
So that's the problem because people are not hungry. So they are not eating. They're not
eating protein. So again, they're experiencing this massive, rapid weight loss that they were
never able to experience with any other drug. And because of that weight loss and also the
metabolic effects of GLP-1, they're experiencing improvement in their type 2 diabetes and their insulin resistance, which is beautiful. But unfortunately, in the long game, at the end
of that road where you've lost all of this weight and a lot of it is actually muscle that you've
lost because you're in a catabolic state and you're not eating enough protein to protect your
lean muscle mass, you get off the drug and your body fat versus muscle tissue ratio is in a worse place than
when you started, even though you're smaller. So you're actually going to be less sensitive
to insulin once you get off the drug because you have less muscle mass. Muscle mass is the long
game. I said this one time and people did not like it. People don't like it. I mean,
I think people don't like to hear that there could be this miracle substance that they can take and
it solves all of their weight loss issues and their aesthetic issues. But what I keep trying
to tell people and having people like you on the show is it's really important for people to
consider what the long-term effect is on anything you're doing to your body. And that can go for,
if you add too much meat, if you take all the meat away, if you're taking Ozempic, if you're taking too much alcohol, all these things, they have a
compounding long-term effect. And I think when I look at people that struggle in life, it's people
that make short-term decisions time and time again. They don't think like, okay, I got to
make a long-term decision for my health, for my family, for my life. And so I try to be like a voice of that
reason when I say like, listen, I know that many are finding success with this kind of thing,
but what does this look like in two, three, four years if you've lost the majority of your muscle
mass? It's a great point. And also there are certain scenarios where something like Ozempic
can be life-saving for someone. So I have a friend who's a registered dietitian in an inner city, and some of her clients are on Ozempic. And these are people who are working
two to three jobs, have no idea, don't have the time to meal prep high-protein meals, don't have
the funds to just buy a bunch of supplements and try all these different herbs. And for them,
their blood sugar is so high that they're at risk for chronic kidney disease. Because
even though we think of blood sugar and insulin resistance from an aesthetic perspective, there's also
the number one thing that high blood sugar harms is the tiny blood vessels in your kidneys.
There's merit there and that's different. I'm talking to the people that are 20 to 30 pounds,
maybe overweight or where they don't want to be, and they're diving into this. Because I don't
think they're understanding if you lose 20 to 30 pounds of muscle, how hard, I mean, you know, your weight lifting up. How hard it is to put it back
on. And people get so focused on what the scale says and they don't realize when you start adding
muscle, the scale is going to go up even if you start to get leaner and look better because the
muscle is going to weigh more. Yeah. But when you lose that amount of muscle in that period of time,
it is so fucking hard to gain it back, especially as you age. And that's the problem with yo-yo dieting.
And that is also what I watched my mother do my entire life.
She would go on crash diets.
She would lose a whole bunch of weight and then she would gain it back.
But she'd gain back just fat, even though she just lost muscle.
So she would constantly put herself in a worse and worse place than when she started.
And I used to do that with her.
I was at Weight Watchers in sixth grade and was like, oh, great.
I can just eat this little amount of food and my weigh-in is looking great
and everyone's praising me for it. And it's really sick, the like yo-yo dieting industry.
And even just what's happening now with Ozempic, where it's people that are using it just for
weight loss, not for a medical need. And they don't realize that they're on another crash diet,
essentially. Well, we're very good as humans of kicking the can down the road and saying,
oh, like when that happens, I'll solve it later. But I keep trying to tell people,
like, I mean, you know how hard you're working in the gym now. Oh my God. Yeah. It's not easy to go
do this. And as you get older, 40s, 50s, 60s, trying to put that muscle on, if you lose too
much of it at a young age is going to be really challenging. A woman who's in the gym working out
to failure, like max weight, like to failure, every set can put on an
average of 0.5 pounds of muscle a month. That's not a lot of muscle. And that's going to the gym
three times a week and killing yourself to do that. So it's you can lose that a lot quicker
than you can gain it. Yep. Before you go, what are let's do five because tens a lot five wellness things that you do that are
non-negotiable. Now, I would love for yours to have some herbs in it. Like maybe you put cinnamon
in your coffee, whatever it is. But also like I'm sure you scrape your tongue. Give us all the like
little things that you do. So I would say number one is I do a lot of nourishing infusions. So I
think like multi mineral supplements are all the rage.
And I love my peak electrolytes and my Kinton minerals and whatnot.
But plants are the original multi-mineral supplements.
So a lot of the times I'll take some dried nettle or some dried oat straw
and I'll fill them in a mason jar, pour hot water over them,
close the mason jar, let it sit on the counter overnight.
And the next morning you have an incredibly magnesium, calcium, silica rich infusion of all of these minerals.
That is so cool. It's nettle and what?
Nettle and oat straw. I can't with you right now because-
What the hell is oat straw? Here's why I can't with you right now.
You, three years ago, I had trouble getting you to drink water and now you're like,
oh, what brand of nettle is it like i never heard of oat straw so is it do you have a tea that we can do that with
i don't you know i should i should have one i gotta do a tea i should have one but honestly
it's something that mineral tea i don't even want to commodify it because all you need to do is just
go to an herb store and get oat straw like you don't even need that's overwhelming i'd rather
just buy it online so can you make it cute and like we probably have some old oat straw
yeah i don't like i'll go to an herb store and get oat straw like or you can you can just order
it online i think lauren buys those those things for just yeah but i need to know that it's non-g
non-gmo and that it doesn't have pesticides and organic and i feel like if you just made one
that's called like mineral tea well for now mountain now, Mountain Rose Herbs is a great supplier.
Okay.
They're a really good supplier.
They have organic herbs.
You can get-
Well, you send me the link.
So what does it do?
Go ahead.
It's like the straw-like kind of grassy part of the oak plant.
Oh, no, no, no.
I'm saying what does it do?
Oh, it's just packed with minerals.
Everyone's yelling at me saying,
you idiot, you should know what an oat straw is.
I don't know.
No, in order, essentially like the magic of it
is that you're leaving it on the counter overnight
to steep.
So you're doing boiling hot water.
You're pouring it over the oat straw.
When you have a mineral rich plant like that, you need two things, heat and time to kind
of crack open the cell walls and get all the minerals out.
So you're leaving this overnight infusion on the counter.
You're waking up in the morning, you're straining it, and you're just getting this massive infusion
of bioavailable plant-based magnesium, calcium,
silica, and more. So it's all in your hair is amazing. So I get that probably I swear has to do with that's a secret, a beauty secret. Yeah. A huge beauty secret for sure. And it's also great
for kids because it's delicious. It's a really, you know, benign, non-toxic, nutritive plant.
It's like eating oatmeal, essentially. It's another part of the oat plant. And because kids
need so many minerals for their growing bones and teeth, it's a great way. You can just put some honey in it, give them,
you can do it chilled for kids. It's really good. Yeah. Love that. Another non-negotiable for me,
because of my long history of digestive issues is taking digestive bitters before a meal.
So this is an herbal one, but it doesn't even have to be herbal. I do have a digestive bitters
product in my line, but you can use any sort of bitters.
Green tea is a bitter.
Dark chocolate is a bitter.
Technically, a long steep of chamomile tea is a bitter.
Any sort of bitter plant that you're ingesting before your meal is going to essentially
stimulate your bitter taste receptors on your tongue.
And it's going to start this digestive cascade that tells your body, hey, it's time to produce stomach acid. It's time to release
digestive enzymes. So instead of even taking a digestive enzyme or an HCL supplement,
this is nature's top down way of telling your body, hey, it's time to eat. And this is what
people did for so long. They would have like a bitter digestif before their meals or like an
aperitif, like the Swedish bitters is a good example. People would have like endives or bitter greens as a starter for their meal. People have been
doing this for centuries. So I have digestive juice in my line. That's like my bitter spray,
and you can just spray it on your tongue. And glucobitters is my digestive bitters formula
for people with insulin resistance. Got it. So if you have insulin resistance,
do this one. Yes. But if you don't, you can use your spray. You can use digestive juice.
Yeah.
Also bitters because of the stomach acid release.
They help to prevent gas and bloating.
Really good for when you're traveling.
Just like a good hack to have in your purse.
Another non-negotiable for me, I would say is nervous system regulation.
Again, going back to the HPAOT axis, everything is going to be off if your
hypothalamus is perceiving stress and you're letting your body get into that state of fight
or flight. So I think just having a really good toolbox that I can draw from where I know, okay,
you know, it's nighttime and I'm starting to spiral a little bit, I'm anxious or I'm wanting
to binge eat or whatever it is, and realizing that I just need some time to be with myself and ground my nervous system,
whether that's taking a bath,
whether that's doing some breath work,
whether that's doing some self massage
and actually like feeling my own body
and being like, hey, you're good.
You're here.
Like talking to myself.
Those things I think are-
Enjoy it while you don't have kids.
Air replaceable.
Exactly.
Enjoy your self massage.
Exactly.
Fucking bath and your red light therapy.
I have to squeeze at the fuck in. It is so annoying in the morning. I'm just being honest.
Enjoy it. You know what? I appreciate the honesty. And I think that it's like you said, it's if I
didn't have that isolation in my 20s, I wouldn't have what I have now. Got to be grateful for it.
And if you didn't have this time of like, oh, no, I don't have any time for my routines. You're not going to have your beautiful babies right by your side, you know,
growing up with you. I'm hanging on by an oat straw. Yeah, the kids kind of derail a few things.
You know, what's what's what's your other ones? Number four is there's this stretching video that
I do. You guys can look it up on YouTube. It's called Jessica Smith Doms, like delayed onset muscle soreness. It's this 26 minute stretching video
from this very nice woman who's like Frenchie is in the video. I am obsessed with this video.
I need so much stretching because of how much tension I hold in my body and also because just
like my fascia gets really tight and I'm stressed out and I'm at a desk all day. And also I need
stretching for my emotional health. I think it moves a lot of emotions.
I will do that video at least every two to three days religiously.
How long are you guys here for?
Till like tomorrow morning.
Oh, you guys, next time you come here, I have this woman. Her name is Kata and she does flossing
and it's fascia stretching at the road. And I am so addicted to this situation. I will feel pain in my body and
I will go see her and immediately regulates your nervous system. I'm going to go look at Jessica
Smith Doms. It sounds like it's the exact thing she does. Well, it's not necessarily like some
crazy body manipulation. It's just this really lovely guided stretching video where I always feel like a new
human after I'm done with it you're kind of like swinging your leg at one point you're just you
know it's it's normal like flossing because okay thing is gentle it's not it's not like intense
I'm not like in this crazy it's it's gentle fascia stretching yeah I just think people don't stretch
enough period yeah like how often do you intend like there's so many other wellness routines and
like kind of things that we would productively fill our time with versus stretching we don't stretch enough, period. Yeah. Like how often do you intend? Like there's so many other wellness routines and like kind of things that we would productively fill our time with
versus stretching. We don't take it seriously. Here's the thing, too. When you're weightlifting
like you and I are. You have to. The synergistically, especially as a woman,
it's so important to stretch it out, too. Yeah. Because you will. I mean, I think that I can tell
like a difference even in like this. It sounds, how the muscle shows up when I'm stretching. Yeah. Go ahead. And number five, I would say non-negotiable. I take
an adaptogen every day. I have two adaptogen blends in my line. One is called adrenal recovery,
which is for people who are more so like overworked, you know, moms who are like at the
end of their rope. It's just a really nice rounded blend of adaptogens. And then I have an adaptogen
blend called ThyroPro, which is for people who have hypothyroidism.
So it's like a specific thyroid-based adaptogen that helps with the stress piece of thyroid disorders.
It sounds like I need to try the thyroid one.
I think we included it, right?
Or do we do adrenal?
Or should I try adrenal?
I'll take the adrenal.
Okay.
Okay, yeah.
Do not touch my bitters.
But I just love adaptogens.
Adaptogens are really beautiful plants
because they're like, you know,
a lot of herbs can also have side effects
just like pharmaceuticals.
But adaptogens are specific
because they're non-toxic
and you take them in food-like doses.
So they're essentially nutritive
and they increase your non-specific resilience
to stressors.
They basically help to regulate the feedback loop,
which is your HPA axis. And I think that in our modern world, everyone needs an adaptogen.
Can we do a giveaway and a code for the audience?
Absolutely.
Okay. Can we give away like all your favorites, like a big organic Olivia basket?
Yeah. Let's do a big box. We can do like our bestsellers and then also my favorites.
Definitely get the glue, the glue clove bitters.
We're going to do glue clove bitters. We'll also do our digestive juice.
Like I just love a good digestive bitters.
We have peace juices, which is like a spray formula for anxiety in the moment.
And a whole bunch of mean magic is like our hair formula.
And then, yeah, let's do a code.
We usually do 10% off, but no, no, no.
We can do 15 with you guys.
Amazing.
Let's do code skinny.
Okay.
And then to win the Olivia, organic Olivia basket,
all you have to do is follow at organic Olivia, right?
Yeah.
Organic underscore Olivia because I was taken.
Organic underscore Olivia on Instagram.