dieting Archives – Wild Lyons Wellness

5 observations I’ve made during my 5 years in practice as a women’s health practitioner

5 years in practice working with hundreds of women.

Working in this space has been the most healing, not only for my clients but for myself and the biggest learning experience of my life. What a gift it has been to help all the women I have.

I will always remember one of my very first client calls.

A woman came to me because she had lost her period and had a host of symptoms due to over-exercising and under-eating because of her desires to have that perfect body and because of “health,” she thought she was doing what she needed to do to be worthy and healthy.
She wanted her period back. She wanted her life back and most importantly to feel alive again and nourished in all areas of her life.

During our call she started crying and said “You know, it’s just really hard being a woman”

She felt that she was going to lose her identity as the healthy fit woman if she pursued REAL health to get her period and life back.

I still get choked up to this day thinking about that call.

That was the call that I never knew would change my entire trajectory of how I talk to women, how I take clients and how I show up in the world to help people.

From that day forward I absolutely refused to be a part of a holistic health culture that promotes restriction, diets, detoxes, eliminations for symptom management or dieting for weight loss. I’ve seen first hand what it does to women.

Working with women has been challenging but so rewarding. Everyone has a story and I hope I have helped you in some way change that story.

Ready to join a community of like-minded women ending the war on their bodies and breaking free from diet culture? Ready to finally balance your hormones, understand your body, and become your own health advocate? Ready for unfiltered and uncensored wellness talks? Then you’re in the right place! Click here to learn more + enroll.

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We are a generation deprived of nourishment

Since birth we have been fighting our bodies.

We have been dieting and restricting, some of us as early as middle school.

I remember my first time thinking I needed to change my body so I started skipping breakfast and lunch and then binging on processed garbage when I got home from school.

We all have our stories and traumatic experiences we have gone through and our nervous system still gets activated thinking about it years later no matter how much work you have done.

Most of us grew on some form of birth control because we thought that was just what you did.

We simply can’t avoid all the heavy metals we are exposed to on the daily. Our world is toxic.

Most of us have experimented with some form of trendy dieting that we screamed from the roof tops and would have fought to our death that it was healthy that in reality left us depleted and our metabolisms trashed.

We have all experimented with supplements thinking they would cure us of all our ailments cuz Karen said so on Instagram.

Every single one of us is struggling with poor digestive function in some capacity due to the above. Mark my words.

This is all stress.

Stress requires more energy and nutrients to keep our bodies thriving and symptom free.

Our bodies have taken huge hits over the years and we are being told by random experts to eat less and restrict or eliminate foods for todays beauty standards or to “heal.”

It’s coming at us from all angles. But you have the freedom to choose nourishment.

Take a little extra care of yourself, it’s a wild world out there!

***Examples taken from various client’s Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis tests in my practice.

What Is Your Happy Weight?

Raise your hand if you really know your happy weight. I mean really know.

I’m talking the weight your body FEELS it’s best, the weight your body feels nourished, safe, energetic, happy and less symptomatic.

As women we have no idea what our happy weight is.

We have had negative thoughts around food and our bodies since we were in grade school.

We have been restricting, over-exercising, under-eating and starving ourselves for the majority of our lives because society tells us we need to be skinny to be worthy and the wellness industry promotes things like juice cleanses, low carb diets and fasting to be “healthy.”

Our bodies change. We cannot compare our bodies to others, to what we looked like in high school or hell what we looked like two years ago.

The problem is, once you start nourishing your body often and giving your body what it needs for the first time EVER, you will put on weight. Duh.

The other problem is, we think this is a bad thing but actually your body is thanking you for giving it energy, giving your cells life and nourishing it.

In most cases this is just safety weight, weight your body will shed as soon as it feels safe enough to do so.

As soon as she trusts you again.

We so quickly forget how much better we feel. Having healthy pain free periods, the brain fog has lifted, our skin is glowing, our digestion is on point, we have energy and a zest for life again.

Instead you are so laser focused on the scale and regardless of how far you have come on your health journey, you still believe that losing weight is what will truly make you happy.

But will it? No.

Nobody gives a shit if you have a six pack or are skinny if you are boring and no fun to be around because food has taken over your life.

Stop fighting against your body and start working with it. And most importantly give yourself grace during the healing process.

Your best weight is the one where you can live a fulfilling happy life, free from restriction, free from obsessing over every little thing that goes in your mouth and really enjoying food again.

If you have to restrict to keep your desired weight. It’s not the weight for you. Period.

Friends Don’t Let Friends Go Low Carb

Tis the season for sugar detoxes, low carb diets, whole 30’s, paleo, keto, carnivore, intermittent fasting and everything in between.

You’re having a hard time losing weight, you notice carbs don’t make me feel well or you have some symptoms you are trying to fix so hey why not do a reset!

Maybe you try low carb, dabble with fasting or go hardcore keto or carnivore. You only want to reset your body and do it for a few months until a few months turns into a year because you try to come off said diet and you are gaining weight like a MOFO because you are more insulin resistant than ever before.

Here’s the deal. These diets are not quick fixes and come with consequences. You are only getting temporary relief from a problem that needs to be dealt with.

The problem that needed to be dealt with? Your bodies inability to use glucose (sugar) as fuel in the first place due to an under functioning metabolism from mineral deficiencies, stress, under-eating, and under-nourishing your body.

Our bodies, our cells prefer to run on glucose and it will do anything it can to make that happen. If you take glucose away this causes your stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline to rise and use its backup system to turn non-carbohydrate sources into glucose, this is a system that should only be used during a famine. Burning fatty acids instead of glucose causes insulin resistance.

Sure you may have initial weight loss but that weight loss is actually the shedding of super important minerals like magnesium, sodium and potassium, water and muscle. Muscle requires a lot of fuel and energy. You end up with lowered muscle mass and more fat than you had started with.

On top of that your metabolism is destroyed, your hormones suck, your thyroid and adrenals suffer from all the stress and you end up more mineral deficient than you were before, the minerals you needed in the first place that was preventing you from being able to use glucose appropriately.

Nourish your body with real food.These diets are destroying you mentally and physically.

The next time you want to jump on that low carb bandwagon address what got you there in the first place. Check yo’self before yo’ wreck yo’self