Well with Arielle Lorre - 232: Overcoming Chronic Stress, Dieting & People Pleasing, While Making Wellness Work For You with Kelley Nemiro

Episode Date: March 1, 2023

Kelley Nemiro transformed her life from one of chronic stress, dieting, over exercising and people pleasing to one of balance and harmony, and she made it her mission to help other women do the same with her platform Wellness by Kelley. She joins the show to discuss how to evaluate whether your everyday choices are working for you or against you, how to be more intuitive with your body, and how to set realistic and attainable wellness goals. She shares about how she overcame an eating disorder and a toxic cycle of dieting and over exercising, tips for how to stop counting calories and macros, helpful supplements everyone should consider and so much more.    Listen to the Balancing Chaos Podcast to hear more from Kelley Nemiro, and go to wellnessbykelley.com to try out a 7-day free membership and see what the WBK Method is all about!   This episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct, or indirect financial interest in products, or services referred to in this episode.   Produced by Dear Media.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Go to your re-sadviseur or sunnycars. The following podcast is a dear media production. Welcome to the Blonde Files podcast. I'm your host, Ariel Lori, and I'm here to talk all things wellness. From how to achieve optimal health and well-being to the best beauty tips and everything in between, no topic is off

limits. I know there's so much information out there, so I'm bringing on expert guests and sharing my own experiences to help you sift through all the wellness stuff without the BS. Enjoy the show. This episode is brought to you by Wellness by Kelly. Hi, everybody. Welcome to to the show. Whoa, that was a little high-pitched for me, but welcome. I have a great episode for you guys today. I am talking to Kelly Namiro of Wellness by Kelly, and I loved talking to her because she is so honest, so cool, and composed, and really realistic about health and wellness. So she's a certified health coach and Pilates instructor. She is the founder of the Wellness by Kelly platform.

And her whole approach to health and wellness kind of derives from her own experience, what she's been through and how she overcame a lot of the common health and wellness struggles that a lot of us deal with today. So she's been down the path of really restrictive dieting, eating disorder, eating way less than she should, over exercising. We talk a lot about that in the episode and how to break up with counting calories and counting macros. I know so many people struggle with this. And I always try to give you guys my experience, but we talked about how she did it as well. And she has some helpful tips on how to break the diet cycle. We also talk a lot about stress

and these kind of sneaky lifestyle things that contribute so much to our stress and our overall wellness and how that can then kind of trickle down to like your gut issues and hormonal issues. And she really helps the people that work with her to figure out exactly what's going on and reach their wellness goals. But I really loved this episode because we talked a lot about the kind of obvious things. We talked about overexercising, like I said, dieting. We talked about hormones. we talked about gut issues, but we also talked about these sneaky things that a lot of us do, that are contributing to our stress and are a part of our lives that can really affect our physical wellness.

So things like people pleasing and perfectionism. And we both talked about our own experiences where in the past we've tried healing certain things and how you can be doing all of the right things when it comes to diet and maybe you're sleeping eight hours a night and you're working out even if it's low impact and you're doing all of these things but maybe you are a perfectionist that can definitely carry over in my opinion to the manifestation of physical symptoms and so we really unpack that in this episode and I think you guys will really enjoy it. I listened back to it actually right before I recorded this intro and I felt like I was just listening to a couple girlfriends talk about

their experiences with health and wellness, things that they've learned. And I really love her practical, realistic approach to health and wellness and, you know, she understands like having a busy life and having kids and all of that. So I think you guys will really love her. her. And if you would like to work with her, you can go to wellness by Kelly.com. You can trial a seven-day free membership and see what the Wellness by Kelly method is all about. So I will add that in the notes below. Again, that's wellness by Kelly.com. And she has coaching. She has meditation. She really has this holistic approach to wellness. So with that, please enjoy Kelly. Amiro. Hi, I'm Caroline Stamberry and I am divorced not dead. Fresh off the back of my divorce,

I'm bringing real stories, real life, real talk on all things that aren't said. Why do we put so much pressure on ourselves for the happily ever after? Does our love story really have to be one great lengthy novel or can we be happy with a book of short but exciting love stories? I guess we'll find out on divorce not dead and lucky me, you'll be joining me for the journey. So buckle up. Welcome, Kelly. you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I'm really excited to talk to you. I think maybe to start, I'm kind of familiar with your story because I've been researching you and delving into all things, Wellness by Kelly, preparing for this episode. But why don't you just introduce yourself to the audience? So my name's Kelly Namiro. I am a certified holistic health coach and a Pilates instructor.

And I never thought that I wouldn't be doing this work. I actually went to USC. and then NYU to get a graduate degree in finance. And I thought that I was going to go home and work for my family's company, which is in gaming and casinos and hospitality. And I got there and I did that for like two years. And I was like, every day I would come home. And I was like miserable. And it's not, you know, it has nothing to do with them.

It was me. It was just like that did not light me up. Like marketing slot machines was just not my thing. Not your passion? Yeah, not my passion. And so I wondered why. It was like bleeding into, I didn't even notice at first that it was bleeding into every other area of my life. And I wasn't taking care of myself as well, all of these different things.

And so finally, as I was trying to like heal some hormone things that were coming up for me, I was like, wow, like you can do this without having to like take birth control and like via on. I mean, I know you've talked about this on your podcast with so many experts, like be on all these different medications. And you can do this in a way that's holistic. And so I went back to school to IIN to get a holistic health coaching certification. I got a specialization in hormone health. I've taken a bunch of different courses. And now my passion is like helping women feel better in their bodies because so many people like don't think that is possible or think that like feeling crappy is a baseline. And they just get used to it over time.

And we don't have to feel that way. I totally agree with that. I think that so many of us have the experience of. of having all these different symptoms and being told that this is like the female condition. Yes. What am I trying to say? And I love people who have gone through it themselves. And I think they make the best healers for other people.

You know, I think that having that personal experience is really invaluable when it comes to helping others through their own, you know, wellness, for lack of the better word, journey. Right. Because when you've gone through it yourself, you're like, I know that this is. is possible for somebody else. And, like, for me, I think that before I went through all of it and learned so much, I didn't know that, like, the things that I was doing in my life, whether it was stress with work, where I struggled with an eating disorder, like, all of these different things, were actually what were the things that were contributing to me feeling really bad. And so I think

so many people are like, oh, this is just, like, my cards that I was dealt. This is, like, what I have to deal with. It's genetic. And it's like, no, like there are things that you're doing in your life that you may not even know. So many people walk around so stressed out all the time that really contribute to all of the symptoms that you're feeling in your body, whether it's the weight gain or the fatigue or the anxiety. There are so many different things that people feel and they don't even know how they're contributing to it. So when you can say, I've come out on the other side and I have not only like the dietary and supplement tools, but I also have like the mindset tools to help you share.

shift your perspective, you can come out it from this really holistic perspective to help other people. Yeah, and I think that another misconception that people are becoming more aware of now is that you heal these things individually. You know, you're maybe fatigued, you're bloating, your period is irregular. And so you try to treat the hormones separately, you try to treat the gut separately, you try to treat whatever else you have going on. And I have had doctors on my show even who have said, like, we are trained in a specialty. Like, so many of them are not trained to treat the body holistically. And I think that, like, it's, it's, when you look at hormones from the picture of a cascade where it's like one foundational thing starts to affect and trickle down to

everything else. So the way that I look at it with most of my clients is adrenals. So if we are in a constant and chronic state of fight or flight. Typically, that's the first thing to break down. And then what that may put pressure on is the thyroid and the metabolic rate of your body and how efficiently and effectively you are producing energy and burning calories. And then that can start to put pressure on your estrogen and progesterone balance. And a lot of times what we'll see is either like women who are super stressed with either an alveulatory cycles, PCOS, estrogen dominance, those types of things because cortisol,

all the stress hormone steals progesterone receptor sites. And so when you can recognize that, like what you said, like it's almost like a compounding effect. And typically it starts with one thing and then it affects everything else. Then you can start to get to, okay, peeling back the layers of the onion and like what is the root cause and treat it from, again, like that holistic perspective. Yeah. And in the past, and this is not a knock on Western medicine at all because, you know, it's so useful in so many ways. But in my experience, I do have people. E-C-OS, and I do have imbalanced hormones, and I know that that is what is leading to these things that I've been feeling lately. And when I have tried to treat it in the past and gone to, like,

my OB-GYN or whatever, you know, they gave you birth control. They gave me birth control. And then when I said, that's not working, they did an IUD. That lasted for about two weeks. It was terrible. And then it was bioidentical progesterone, which did make me feel a little bit better. But then I was bleeding all the time. And, you know, it was treating the bottom. Like you said, it's a trickle down and it was treating the thing at the very bottom. Like the bandaid. Yeah. Low progester. And it wasn't treating maybe the cortisol because I am in fighter flights so much of the time. That's been a struggle ever since I got sober. And I think it's a struggle that a lot of us have because we're just used to this fast pace, this urgency culture that's being available 24-7,

Exactly. Being plugged in 24-7. And you can't, I mean, a Band-Aid is only going to do so much and last so long. Exactly. And then you'll start to feel like the effects of, you know, those symptoms coming out in other ways. Like, so the stress can affect, like you said, your gut. Like, there are so many different things. And so, like, for PCOS, if I was treating someone with PCOS, I would look for a couple of different things. One, inflammation and two, insulin resistance, because those are typically the root causes. when we look at something like PCOS. So it's like when we look at what are you eating, what are you putting into your body. And also insulin resistance can come from what we're talking about with stress. Like everyone, I was telling one of my clients yesterday, I was like, I've looked at,

I think it was like 25 different adrenal stress index panels for 25 different people in the last six weeks. One was normal. One. That tells us. And what does that look at? Because I saw you post about that. But is that the cortisol? Yes. So it's how the night? No, it's throughout the day. Oh, okay. So it's like a.m. and then how it falls throughout the day, what it should look like is highest in the morning and then falling so that in the night you can fall asleep and, you know, you sleep throughout the night and you're not waking up or insomnia, anything like that. And typically the reasons for that are people aren't sleeping. So it's like a chicken and the egg cycle where you don't sleep and cortisol all right. And, and when cortisol is high, you're not sleeping.

And so getting sleep down is like one of the biggest things for healing hormones. And then the other things in order to start to help deal with that is like, how available are you all the time? How many boundaries do you have? Are you people pleasing? Do you struggle with perfectionism? Are you somebody who asks for help with things? Do you have boundaries with your phone?

That was one thing I heard you talk about recently. Hot topic right now. Most people can say, like, I know, like, I am, like, still to this day, like, working on that. It's like most of us don't have boundaries with our phone or emails and stuff like that. And so when we're constantly intaking information and trying to upload stuff into our brain, our nervous system never has a break. And so that's what's going to put us into that fight or flight. And that's why out of, like, 25 different reports, I've only seen one that's normal. And that's why that ends up leading into different hormonal imbalances.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, with the phone, I mean, I don't think that anybody gets to a place where they're like, okay, I've solved it. I mean, so many people, like I did a post yesterday where I asked if people check their phone first thing in the morning. So many people said, yes, I don't know why I can't break it. I try, but I just suck. And I'm like, no, you don't. Like, this is something that we all struggle with. And the human condition, I think, is that we do things and then we get bored. So, like, I'll be really good with something. for three days and then I get bored with it, you know. And it's like constant desire to grow and evolve, I think is maybe the goal. And it isn't like you just reach this static place. But with the phone, I feel like so many of us feel like, okay, well, I'm doing the green juice in the morning and I'm journaling and I'm meditating and I'm working out low impact and I'm getting my sleep. But then we're checking email 75 times a day and Instagram and TikTok and having. this constant stimulation, and that's going to override all of the other things that you do, right? A thousand percent. Like a thousand percent. When we are constantly in the sympathetic nervous

system, it doesn't matter how much green juice you're drinking or like if you're writing in your journal. Because then all those wellness things almost start to feel like a to-do list and they get even, they become more overwhelming than they do helpful because, again, your system's already in that like fight or flight mode. And so if we can be a little bit consistent, again, it doesn't have to be like, I don't think, in my opinion and what I've seen results with. It doesn't have to be this thing where you're like meditating for an hour in the morning and you have all this time, you know, away from your phone. But if you can say, like, I'm going to spend the first 10 minutes of my day away from my phone and I'm going to connect with myself and what my needs are and how I'm feeling that day versus being like, okay, what are the fires that I have to put out? it is so much more beneficial, not only about how you start your day, but how you move through your entire day. And the reason that, like, when you said, like, people were responding to you

and being like, oh, I suck, it's like, no, you don't suck. These devices were meant to keep us addicted to them. Like, that's what they're supposed to do. We're supposed to be sucked into social media and spend more time so we can see more ads. And then as humans, we also have this desire to look out for, not desire, but like this biological need. to look out for danger. Like, that's what we were mentally wired to do. And so checking the phone and the first thing in the morning is like, okay, what problems came up overnight? What fires can I put out? And so once you can start to train your mind, I know you do meditation, like to be a little bit more calm and realize, like, I can trust my past experiences that like 99% of the time

there is nothing like that is so major that it needs my attention right away that I can take 10 minutes to connect myself, it becomes easier and easier and easier over time. Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is that we're addicted to the dopamine hit from the email or the notification or the DM or whatever it is. But I love that. And I've heard you talk about how we can go through our days just reacting to everything if we don't take a little bit of a break to be present, be mindful. And I know that so many people get frustrated with meditation and check out, but it really can help you shift from being reactive to being proactive and being intentional. So how do you fit it into your life? Because you're a busy mom. You're an entrepreneur,

business owner. You're probably busy as fuck. And I know that that's like a big issue that people to run into when they even think about meditation. I think it's a deterrent to the point where people don't even try because they don't even think that they can fit it into their day. It seems like such a luxury to take 10 minutes. 10 minutes out of your day. So how do you fit that in? And how do you stay consistent? So I love this question. For years, I was like dabbling in and out. I was like, oh, I, you know, I meditate. And like, I wasn't like consistent at all. And then a few years ago, I actually hired a meditation coach because I like, I, like, I, need to like get personally I was actually dealing with cortisol issues and so I was like I need to work on this I need to like actually if I'm going to do this from a holistic place like I need to be able to sit down

and one of the things that I didn't know is that the thoughts are actually supposed to be there and so when I heard that I was like okay this is helpful like it's not about getting rid of the thoughts it's about observing them without judgment and that was such a helpful tool in my eating disorder recovery too okay, I can see these things that I'm thinking about myself, but I don't have to make them facts or make them mean something about me. So that's just like a totally separate thing. But in terms of like fitting it into my schedule, like if you were to go on my stories right now, like I was going to record myself like getting ready for today, like doing a little meditation, my son is crawling all over me and I'm just sitting there like breathing because that's how it

looks for me some days. Like when they wake up at 545, I don't have a choice. And it's like if I want to come here and have a clear mind and do something like this, I need to take some time for some deep breaths. And so if he's crawling all over me, it's not like we have to have this perfect space to meditate. Actually, oftentimes, there won't be a perfect space. And it's like if you can learn to calm your mind no matter what's going on around you, whether you're riding a New York subway or you are having a two-year-old crawl over you, it is more powerful, in my opinion, than it is to be like, okay, this is the perfect place and I can get this 11-minute practice in right now because everything is quiet and there's nothing to do. It's like there will be days that ebb and flow. But what I say to

myself is that I have to find 11 minutes. Like that is, I just made it a priority because my health is a priority. And so when I made that mindset shift, like I know that this will consistently help me show up as a better mom, a better wife, less reactive, not yelling at my kids. It will help my hormones. Like, knowing all of the benefits, it allowed me to be like, okay, I can, any day, no matter how busy I am, I can find 11 minutes. Because if I'm scrolling on my phone for 11 minutes, that's not helpful for me. That's the funny thing, though. We'll take probably four hours out of our day. Like, I'm just throwing a number out there. But so many of us will sit there on social media and do whatever we do and the time flies by. And that is time that you could be dedicating towards something like

meditating or journaling. I don't think that all of these are like panaceas. But I think the excuse that there is no time or that we can't do it. It's just get. People have really busy lives. But like you you try to wake up 10 minutes earlier, five minutes. earlier. You can do a five minute meditation or do it in the subway or in the car. That was one thing about TM that I also learned because I also thought like meditating is turning off your thoughts. And TM is like sitting in silence for 20 minutes. And I was like, how can I sit in silence and turn off my thoughts? But then I learned, no, it's about observing. And they taught us that like noise and sound is not a barrier to meditation. You can do it anywhere. And now I do it anywhere. Yeah. Like I've told this

story before, but my husband and I did it, like, and I can't remember if it was the taxi or the courthouse getting our marriage license, like in the middle of New York City. And there's so much noise around us. I've done it on planes, on trains, like wherever. Wherever you can fit it in, when you start to realize what the benefits are and how different you feel when you show up for it versus, like, I can tell if I have gone, you know, for the majority of my day and it's 3 p.m. And I haven't done it yet. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I'm anxious. I'm overwhelmed. And when I do do it, I just show up as a completely like more calm, better version of myself for everybody else in my life. And the one thing that you said about excuses, I really,

really like. Because I think that whenever we create goals for ourselves, whether it's meditating or eating healthier or like working on taking our supplements, whatever it is that you're working on. And we find ourselves continually making excuses. It's just a form of self-sabotage. It's something I used to do to myself all the time, but it's all you're doing is saying, I prioritize this excuse more than I prioritize whatever my ultimate ambition or goal is. And so when you take a step back and you can see it that clearly, you're like, okay, I'm going to stop making this, excuse me, fucking excuse me, fucking excuse. This is ridiculous. Like, I'm getting in my own way. It is kind of an interesting form of self-sabotage because you're, I don't know, it's like you're,

trying to be better but sabotaging yourself to not be better and like not grow or evolve probably unconsciously. It's totally subconscious because so many of those habits are like being on social media. That's just like the one that we keep going back to is so ingrained in us. Like think about how people are standing in a Starbucks line or whatever. Like they just like literally without even being mindful about it at all like open the app and they're scrolling, waiting for their coffee. But what would it be like in terms of like your

piece if you just sat in that line and you breathed for a minute? And like you didn't have to upload new information into your brain. Like what would that be like? Yeah. It is crazy. I mean, I was thinking about that the other day because I was sitting there scrolling. And I'm pretty good. I don't normally do that. Yeah. But I think I was on TikTok. And I was just like, whoa. This is not normal. Like to have just rapid fire. And you're scrolling from one video to a to it's changing and it's so much input so fast. And that's why all of these studies are now showing how they're, I mean, I'm sure you've heard of Doc Aman before. Yeah. He's like done a ton of brain scans on people. And it's like they're showing all of this research that's like, well,

yeah, that's why when we think about social media causing anxiety, it's like as human beings, like think about how we evolved, like all those hundreds of thousands of years ago, we were not taking in even like one, 100,000 of the information we're taking in today, whether it's social media, emails, billboards, like all of the stuff that we. So much stimulation. Exactly. Yeah. And we were evolved to have community and have, you know, tribes around us and like groups of people.

I think on armchair expert, he talks about it a lot because he was like, as he always says, an anthropology major. I don't know if you listen to that show, but he's like, people used to have a hundred close people to them. Like now we probably count on like one hand, you know, if that. Right. And that, it's funny that when we think about like hormones, that's where like the feel good oxytocin hormones come from is like community, people you love, giving someone a hug. Like they say like, you know, when you're with your like little close-knit tribe, like your husband and you're having a baby, like your body is. blooded with oxytocin. It's like the people who you love most. But then the hormones that

make us happy for a second and don't really last are those hormones like dopamine and adrenaline. And that's what we're getting from the phone. Right. And they're so addictive though. So addictive. And so it's like we have to make a conscious choice. Do we want and like there's never going to be, I don't want to make it like there's some unrealistic thing where it's like, you know, we're just going to not be on our phones. We live in modern day society. But how can we make a conscious choice to flood our brains with like the hormones that are going to last a lot longer, like the oxytocin versus the dopamine adrenaline. Like one thing that we did at my house that took some serious effort, let me tell you.

But we did like the phone basket at dinner time because both of us would have some sort of coming back to that self-sabotage excuse of like why. Oh, well, I have to take a picture of the recipe tonight for the website or like I have to answer my boss. And it's like, no, this is so dumb. like do we actually want to be connected right now? Like is that the priority? And so we did the phone basket.

That's a great idea for people listening. I feel lucky because my husband is not attached to his phone at all. I think it's a generational thing, but he doesn't have social media. He, if he looks at his phone, he's checking his email or like checking the news app maybe. Yeah. But he just is never on it. So I'm so conscious of my habits when I'm around him. Right.

So it makes me not be on it. I love that. Which is like, I mean, otherwise, when I'm alone, like, I was just alone for two weeks, I was horrible. Like, my screen time was insane, probably like 12 hours a day, you know, just filling that space, whether it's listening to a podcast and, you know, recording my recipes at night and my dinner and this, that and the other, like, just attached to it. So I want to rewind a little bit because you talked about, you know, your own healing experience. obviously meditation was a piece of it. What were some of the things that you were dealing with? And what were the fundamentals that helped you get to the place that you are now? Oh, this is such a good question. So for me, the breakdown was started. Like I said, it starts for so many other people. It started with my adrenals. And so when I think about the adrenals, I like to think about not just mental emotional stressors, because we all know what those are. We know, like we just talked about the phone for, you know, a long time. And then like emotional stressors, things like, you know, fighting with a partner or what else, like grieving a loss of a loved one, those types things. But then, like, the physical stressors are things that a lot of, like, young women today

deal with. And that was something I certainly was dealing with, not enough food and too much exercise. And my adrenal's started to become shot. Like, I was anxious all the time. I was gaining weight around the midsection. I was losing my hair. I was also trying to go to graduate school and work at the same time. So it was like there was so much stress in my life. that that then compounded over, you know, a couple of years started to put pressure on my thyroid. And I had no idea about any of this at the time. I'm just like, why am I gaining weight when I'm like eating the most minimal amount of calories? Because I was a calorie counter. And like working out two plus hours a day. Like what is going on? And finally, I and then the last piece of the puzzle was my period disappeared. And what the solution I was given was go get on birth control. And so I did that for a few years. And then. My husband and I got back together. We dated in college and got back together.

And I was like, I want to get pregnant. Like, I need to figure out why I don't have a period. Like, this is a problem. Because I knew that birth control wasn't a real period. And I think that a lot of people don't know that. I think there's this really common misconception that if I'm on birth control, like, that's a period. No, you're not ovulating. You're not getting a period.

That's not what a period is. And so once I got off, I saw a functional medicine doctor. And I was like, let's see what's, like, going on with my blood work. Like I want to know because what I've learned over the years and as I become a practitioner on my own is that blood work never lies. Like you get the real answers there. And so I realized I had a real problem with my thyroid. My Tsh was really high. My free T3 was really low, which is your active thyroid hormone.

And all of that was because there was so much pressure from my adrenals on everything else. And so what the body does is it says, we're going to shut down other functions. We're going to shut down metabolic function so that you don't lose weight anymore. We're going to hold on to and conserve everything. every calorie that you eat and turn that into fat to store it until we feel safe again. We're going to shut down reproduction so that you're not ovulating because it's not a safe time to have a baby if you're not eating. And so my body, again, like, was holding on to all this weight.

And so what I had to do was first the mindset work around, okay, how do I shift out of this thing where I feel like in order to be accepted and loved and valued, I have to be thin. That was like the first piece of work that I had to do. It was like really working on my body image. And so that was when I first started working with clients, like really the first piece of work. Because I feel like nine out of ten people I talked to women-wise, like we've all had at least, at the very least negative thoughts about our body all the way into disordered eating and then like a full-blown eating disorder like I was going through. So I had not to interrupt you, but I was talking to therapists on my podcast at the beginning of the week. and we were talking about body image.

And they said that a study showed that the first time women or girls think about dieting is at age five to six. That is devastating to me. Yeah, I know. I remember being about 10 when I was first, like, aware of my body and thinking about dieting, which is crazy as well. But five or six, like we are absorbing all of this, you know, this whole narrative subconsciously. Diet culture is. And I think that a lot of times, like, our own parents and, like, aunts and women, like, female figures around us are also, you know, subconsciously putting pressure on us when they say things, like, I'm fat. And then it's like, when you're five, you're like, oh, well, I don't want to be that.

If she doesn't want to be that, then, like, I don't want to be that. And in order to be accepted and valued and loved, I have to not be that. And so that's kind of what starts to trigger that mindset. And I don't think, I think a lot of people are so unaware that there's so many different things that we consume, whether it's the people around us or social media or mainstream media, where the message is, be thin. And that doesn't mean don't be healthy. Like, I'm not saying the opposite extreme because I don't love that message either of like just eat fast food all day and like live your life. Like, no, there's a balance, but you know intuitively when you're not. giving your body the nourishment that it needs and that it deserves. And so that was the first piece of the puzzle. Then once I kind of moved through that and I started really nourishing my

body on a regular basis, so many things started to fall into line. My blood sugar values started to change. Because I restricted food for so long, my body started to become more insulin resistant, which would it be shopping to people, but like after restricting food for so long, again, that's what happens. Your body rises cortisol and you start to hold on to weight. So blood sugar started to change. My thyroid started to improve. So my metabolic rate improved just with having the right food, timing my meals appropriately, not having 100 calorie packs, but having like real nourishing food, avocados, real protein sources, like all of that kind of stuff. and from there, it turned into leaving my corporate job and managing stress better in that way.

And then the last kind of piece of the puzzle for me was I used to spend, like I said, hours a day working out where, again, that was coming from that desire to be thin. And I don't know why it took me so long to break that habit, but that was like the last thing that I was holding on to. And I didn't realize, again, what a stressor it was on my body. but when I took that piece away and I traded it in for walks and more low impact style movement, it was such a game changer for me. How did you get out of the habit of counting calories? Because I used to be a macro counter. And I know from my experience that that is in your head.

Totally. And it follows you for so long. And I have a lot of people who are still. you know, stuck in that cycle of counting macros, counting calories, whatever it is. And they don't know how to move on from having, you know, those numbers computing in your brain at all times. Totally. And I think that like one thing that I'll say is if you're somebody who's gone through that, like it is mentally exhausting. Like you're sometimes not even like fully in conversations or like present where you are because you're thinking in the back.

background noise of your head, like, okay, like, this apple was 70, and then like, yeah. And it's like, oh, my gosh. So I think the first thing for me was recognizing that calories don't matter. It's not about calories. Like, when I finally, like, learned the real science behind food and that blood sugar is so important. And if you're eating straight carbs and having, like, these blood sugar spikes and crashes versus being like, I'm going to eat, like, six cookies or like six pancakes versus like a plate with salmon and avocado and quinoa and green vegetables like the same amount of calories like the cookies are going to do something completely different to your blood sugar and those spikes and crashes are going to cause your body to hold on

to weight. And the other thing is things that are processed are so much more like your body digest them differently. And so you actually end up absorbing more calories because there's less fiber typically in those processed foods. And so when I learned those types of things through science, I was like, okay, the calories don't really matter. And so I have to get away from that mentality. But then again, like that background noise is always in your head. And so it was like stopping, looking at any sort of packages. I used to use my fitness pal. Like I deleted that app from my phone. Yep. Like no more of that. Like those were the things that I was just like not willing to spend mental energy on.

And like if I did, you know, of course, if you heard somebody who's been doing this for a long time, like you know an egg has 70 calories. Yeah, I could tell you the macros of anything still. Everything you want to know. But when you catch yourself in that and you're like, okay, I see myself calculating. You train your brain to like, okay, I'm going to think about something else. Or like, I know that that's not the way anymore. And so you just move on.

The more that you do that, and I'm sure you've kind of learned this too, the more that you train your brain to move on, the more that you're going to be less likely to focus on it going forward. And it takes time. Like it took me years, but it's effort. It's mindset work. Yeah. Yeah. It is just kind of taking a different action and beginning to override that, that wiring, that pattern.

Yeah. And the more consistently you do it, the easier it gets. I also had Tim Specter recently, and he said, like, with calorie counting, it's kind of irrelevant anyway because the accuracy, like, it's not exact. People think that they know exactly how many calories they're putting in their body, exactly how many grams of protein fiber, fat, carbs, sugar, whatever. But he said, like, the room for error and food packaging and these apps and everything is so I'm sure large, like that you're, I can't remember the statistic that he gave, but it was basically like, like this huge discrepancy between, you know, what is actually what you're actually putting in your body versus what you're tracking. When I say that, and I don't want to promote it as like, I'm, you know, like you need, like anyone, no one needs to lose weight. Like I agree and I agree like with this philosophy of like being comfortable in your body and like nourishing yourself. But when I started to do that and I've seen this multiple times with my own clients too, that was when, when I

started nourishing my body and learning to balance my blood sugar, that was when I actually became the leanest in my body that I've ever been. When I was eating goldfish and like chips a hoi, like 100 calorie packs all day because I thought like I could track calories better that way. Like my blood sugar was out of control and that was why my body, a part of why my body was holding on to wait. Like I just had a client text me last week and she's like, I lost four pounds. and I'm eating more calories. And I'm like, yes. Exactly. Yeah, I had that experience too. And I mean, I was very lean when I was counting macros and like doing BBG and everything. But then it had kind of the opposite effect because I think it was so much stress on my body. And when I stopped,

and I had to stop everything. Like I was so burnt out. I really couldn't even work out that much. Like I would do a lot of walking and maybe some like very light Pilates a couple times a week. And I was like, oh my God, what's going to happen? Because for years, I had been thinking that I had to control everything to look a certain way. Yeah. And I had the same experience where once I was actually able to slow down, and this kind of goes back to the meditation piece too, I had to learn how to like be in my body. And I realized my body knows what it wants and needs. We do have these cues, but so many of us override the cues for so long. So it breaks that trust that we innately have with ourselves.

And I think a big piece of it, and it's like what you're saying too is you kind of have to get that back. And your body knows where it wants to be. Like our body's goal is to be in homeostasis all the time. So if we can listen to that, our body will tell us. 100%. And I think that what I had to recognize, and I think for so many women, what we have to recognize is that, like, that control is coming from a place of fear, that desire to control our bodies and, like, do workouts that are, like, punishing. Like, that's what mine was. I was, like, on the treadmill for two hours.

It's like, did I want to do that? Like, no, I dreaded it every single day. And, like, coming from a place of fear versus coming from a place of self-connection and love, when you can learn to, differentiate that and say, okay, I'm going to come from a place of love. And like, the more that you do that, the more that you learn to trust your body, the more confidence you build in yourself. And then the more your body starts to come back to you and say, like, okay, we're again, like, in that place of homeostasis, like we feel safe enough to, you know, kind of come back to baseline versus hold on to every calorie you put in us. Right.

So what are some essential supplements that have helped? you a lot that help women that you work with. I know that everyone has a kind of different opinion, but I feel like there are some essentials that you hear about. So what are the supplements that you like to incorporate? So I'm going to say one thing that I don't think everybody should be on. A lot of people are dealing with dysbiosis. And so everyone's like, oh, like, what should I get on seed? Like, what probiotic should I take? And it's like, if you have horrible dysbiosis, the probiotics is actually going to feed the bad bacteria, too. So you don't want to. want to be on a probiotic for some people. So that's one thing that's like not a blanket thing. Like

not everybody should be on a probiotic. And you really want to look at the root cause of what's going on in your gut if you're someone who's dealing with bloating. But things that I think that like everybody could be on are things like B vitamins. And there are so many different benefits, whether it's energy, mood, metabolic health, like all of these different things. And most of us run stressed, meaning we're depleting our sources of B vitamins. So like a stress B complex, Thorn makes a really good one. In Omega, omegas are so great for fighting off inflammation. A lot of people are struggling with inflammation.

But even if you want to boost your brain health, boost your heart health, have more mental clarity, omegas are fantastic, just making sure that you're checking the ratio of EPA to DHA and having a three to one ratio. And then magnesium. I think that most people are deficient in magnesium. Again, from day-to-day stressors, it can help with relaxing you, with making you feel more calm. It can help with sleep. It can help with bowel movements if you're not regular. Like, there are so many different things. So if you are somebody who is looking to get yourself more

regular, magnesium citrate is the one you want to go with. If you're someone who is looking for more calm, more relaxation, something like a magnesium malate is probably the direction you want to go. What brands do you like? Magnusium is my favorite. I mean, I have said it before on the show, but I felt like when I added magnesium, it was like a missing puzzle piece because it really helped so many different. Different functions in your body. And again, like, nothing is a panacea. It's not like, oh, you take these supplements and you're like good. But if you are deficient in these things, supplementing with it can really make a difference.

I always like to look at supplements like the cherry on top of the Sunday. Yes. Right? So if you are doing the things where you are effectively using the right mindset tools to start to, mitigate your stress. You're looking at that people pleasing that perfectionism. You're asking yourself, like, how can I step back, take a pause, ask for help, those types of things. If you are working on movement and building lean muscle, if you are eating well. And then you add these supplements on top of that, that's what's going to be like, oh my gosh, this is like a home run. I'm really starting to feel a

difference in my body. But if you're expecting the supplements to do all the work and like I have definitely had people who come to me and are just like, what pill should I take? And it's like, that's not the answer here. Like, there's so much other work that you have to do first. And so recognizing that, I think, is a really important piece too. What are some of the more nuanced aspects of our lives that contribute to either feeling really good or feeling like shit, for lack of a better word, that you think people overlook? I mean, you mentioned, like, people pleasing and perfectionism. So that, I mean, the biggest way I can think of is with my body and, like, like trying to be thin.

But then another thing was like, I never wanted to let anyone down. Like I always was this person. And again, I think as women, we like definitely learn. We had somebody on my podcast with my husband. We had somebody named Natalie Lou come on. And she wrote this book called The Joy of Saying No. And it talks all about how people are,

like we're all people pleased. It's just in different forms because we, especially as women, we like kind of learn to be quiet, be more refined, like cross our legs, don't speak up, like those types of things. And I think that we learn those behaviors early on. And as someone who's like conflict avoidant, I would be like, oh, you like, you want me to come for dinner? Okay, like I'm exhausted, but I'll do that anyways. Or like you want me to, you know, come to this event. Okay, like I'll do it even though I don't really feel like it. And when you do that over and over again,

and like overriding your body's mental and physical requests and desires. Like over time, what you're going to do is burn yourself out and it's going to be exhausting. And so I think that so many of us don't realize that like small things like that that have nothing to do with like what you're putting in your body, how much protein you're eating, actually contribute to how you're feeling because overriding your body symptoms kind of put signals, excuse me, puts off these alarm bells where then you're releasing chemicals and hormones in your body that chemical reactions that are not serving you and that are going to cause inflammation and that are going to keep you in that wired state, even though your body's asking, like,

please, can we just relax one night? So in the beginning we were talking about the trickle down. Yeah. Do you think that this stress and the mindset is kind of the top piece of that? I mean, can you say universally? I'm sure, you know, we all have different lives and different things that we're dealing with. But in your experience and with the people that you work with, is that the thing that you see kind of as the overarching issue that then all these other issues derive from? Totally. I think that even if we think about the gut, right, and the gut health being off, because like a lot of times when you listen to different functional doctors talk, there'll be kind of this argument of like, is it? the adrenals or is it the gut? Like, what's the first place to start? But if you think about what really starts to throw the gut off in the first place, like, typically, it's some form of stress

because your GI system isn't getting enough blood flow to be able to nourish the good bacteria and to be able to digest food properly and put you in that parasympathetic rest and digest to mode. And so, yeah, I definitely think that for most people, it starts with some sort of stress and some sort of mindset. So that's why, like, in the programs that I run, it's that holistic approach. It's like, well, sure, we'll give you the right foods to eat. And people always come to me like, I want a meal plan. Like, tell me what to eat. And it's like, wait, let's actually see what's going on upstairs in your brain first before we, like, talk about what food to eat and, like, all that. Because if you're continually, like, what we talked about at the beginning,

like self-sabotaging and what's going to do. And what's going to do. And what's going to, on upstairs and your brain is like all of these excuses or I'm too busy or perfectionist all or nothing style thinking, then me giving you a meal plan is never going to work because you're not going to actually implement it. So interesting, though, that we would rather focus on the things that we have full control over and things that are tangible than do the work on ourselves emotionally, mentally, whatever it is. And I get it.

It's hard. You don't want to look at whatever. going on. You want to stay distracted. And it really can kind of be the deciding factor, though, in, you know, whether you heal or whether you stay the same. Like, I remember when I was dealing with gut issues years ago, the nutritionist that I was working with was like, we need to look at trauma. And I've had so many doctors on my show over the years who have said, like, you know, GI doctors who have said, like, old trauma. can really affect your gut health.

So you could be doing all the right things, and you could have these active traumas or emotional things that are going on subconsciously that are determining how all of that is going. And I was like, whoa. Did he help you with that? Or did you actually end up going to therapy too? I went to therapy. I was in therapy at the time, but we started dealing with some of the trauma stuff. And it was interesting because we did brain spotting where the therapist holds a pointer

and you follow it with your eyes and you talk about the trauma. So you're reliving it. And you find the area where you start to feel the most activated. So it's activating a certain part of your brain. And the first time that I did it, I went completely numb. And the therapist, like, held me there. And she said, where do you feel it? The only thing I could feel was my gut. It was like, there it is. Who knew? Yeah, 100%. And I think you're so right in that, like, most people don't want to look at it. Most people don't want to push it down. And focus on the food or something. Right.

And that's where we see so much emotional eating or online shopping or whatever we can do going by social media. Go back to that again. Like there are so many things that we do to avoid the emotions because I think that a lot of people are taught when they're young, you know, especially from like the age that our parents. raised us in. Like, don't cry. Like, don't show your emotions. Therapy is for weak people. Like, that kind of stuff. And so we're taught that, like, feeling it is actually not the right route. And so we subconsciously go on living that pattern when, as adults, it actually is better for us to move through it versus to store it somewhere in the body and hold on to it. Yeah, like it's going to come out somewhere eventually. Exactly. Well, tell everybody about your platform, because you really look at

things holistically and you have movement. We didn't even get into that piece so much, but, you know, intentional, slow, controlled movement, you have meals, you have meditation. So you really help guide people using these kind of foundational pieces, right? Yeah. So we, I have a membership program where like that's kind of like the first entry point where people can come in and try out a different way of living and get the new content every week in order to keep you consistent. assistant. That piece of it is so big. I think that discipline in some senses is really a form of self-love. And so checking in with that and being like, okay, I have the new meditation this week. I'm going to do that. I'm going to make this recipe. And having, you know, the blood sugar

balancing meals, like the things that are designed to really balance your hormones, the low-impact movement that's not going to overstress your body into that, like, heightened cortisol state. So that's really the intention behind my membership. And then I have an online course where people can kind of go through the materials, learn about what hormonal balance is. They have we actually order their lab work for them and give them a breakdown of everything that they need to focus on in whichever module, whether it's blood sugar or estrogen or thyroid. And then I also work with people one-on-one.

We have a wait list right now for the one-on-one program. But if you want very specific, detailed information about how to, heal holistically without like all the prescriptions and the band-aids that we talked about at the beginning. That's kind of the way that I do that. So yeah. Amazing. And you and your husband have a podcast as well, right? We do. We do. It's called the Balancing Chaos podcast. And kind of similar to you, we really like having experts in their field come on, whether it's wellness or business and to talk to people and to educate and to allow people to understand that, like, we all live these crazy lives. But when we have a little bit of information from, again, like people who are experts and who

really know what they're talking about, we can start to move the needle more effectively in some of those areas that we want to grow. So, yeah, we would love if you guys came on and gave us a listen. Amazing. Tell everybody where they can find you. You can find me at Wellness by Kelly. Kelly is spelled k-E-L-L-E-Y.com and Wellness by Kelly on Instagram. Thank you. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed that episode. And if you liked it, and if you liked the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe.

It goes a long way, and it's actually the best way to support the show. Also, if you want to see more about each episode, you can head over to the Blonde Files podcast on Instagram. you can go to areaallori.com, and I'm always posting about each episode over on my personal page at Ariel Lori. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.