Women's hormones, gut + metabolism

10 signs you are in burnout

You walk into a doctors office with a list a mile long of symptoms, exhausted, and not feeling like yourself for what seems like forever. You are thinking thyroid, adrenals? Worse, cancer?

They tell you your blood labs look great it’s all in your head you are just stressed.

They then proceed with the “have you tried?”

Meditation?
Journaling?
X pill or x supplement?
Yoga?

Have you tried, go F yourself? 😂 As if you are not already stressed enough.

I mean they are not wrong. You are stressed. You are burnt out.

You are also not wrong. There is something deeper going on, you sensed it and your thyroid and adrenals are likely at play. They are always talking to each other. Your body is ALWAYS talking but unfortunately, you didn’t listen to those initial whispers.

There is a lot more than meditation that will get you out of burnout. One of the biggest and often overlooked is nourishment through the food you consume. You need to have the energy to deal with stressors, change your view and have mental clarity around them and become more resilient because lets be real stress will be unavoidable.

Stress registers in the body as a demand for energy and if not given the energy through proper fuel that it needs our adrenals burn out, our thyroid becomes compromised, our digestion sucks, our hormones become wack, we struggle with blood sugar issues and the cascade of symptoms continue.

Have you tried?

Nourishing yourself with a traditional pro-metabolic diet?

Focusing on minerals?

Saying no to people and not putting yourself in bad situations?

Making a career change or move?

Living in alignment with your female physiology?

Addressing what got u here in the first place?

Start here. If you don’t you will just continue repeating the cycle and ending up disappointed when nothing works.

Are you sick of doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results?

Are you managing stress well or do you need to start making big changes for your health?

Your body is always trying to adapt to stressors to keep you alive until it can’t.

Maybe one day people will stop having to ask you “have you tried?”

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.

A self-paced program designed to help you overcome your uncomfortable digestive symptoms without restrictive diets and stressful protocols so you can enjoy food again and live a happier, healthier life. Click here to learn more + enroll.

What Doctors Tell You About Hormone Balance Vs What You Should Actually Do

Period problems? PMS? PCOS? Endometriosis? Acne? Weight gain? Mood swings? Fatigue? Sore breasts? Night sweats? Low libido? Anxiety/ depression? Migraines?

Let’s just put you on birth control, spironolactone, and metformin (the basic bitch package for hormonal health).

Not into that? You head to a holistic doc.

You are told to take DIM, Zinc, Vitamin D, Vitamin C, eat high fiber, low carb and load up on the cruciferous vegetables. You are told to eliminate dairy, meat and saturated fat, watch the salt and eat more PUFA! Start seed cycling and let’s also start you on a HRT cream from a compound pharmacy, why not, it’s natural and bioidentical, no harm right?

WHAT DA?! 🤯Now we are talking about the alternative health basic bitch package.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again, your hormonal issues are not hormonal at all.

Absolutely none of these recommendations gets to the root cause of your hormonal issues.

Seed cycling, nuts and seeds? Talk about a rancid, estrogenic, toxic, shit storm.
DIM and cruciferous vegetables let’s destroy our thyroid and metabolism while we are at it.

Low carb, high fiber? Why are carbs a problem in the first place and fiber? Gut irritation station.

More exercise? Let’s just add to that stress bucket that got you here in the first place.

Zinc, Vitamin D, Vitamin C? Sure let’s just create more mineral imbalances.

HRT? Hormones work in balance with one another and can work against each other.

So what to actually do?

Eat a traditional diet that supports your physiology. This includes eating seasonal – root vegetables and tubers, fruit, honey, grass-fed/ pasture-raised meats (nose to tail), eggs, dairy and wild caught fish.

Address mineral and nutrient imbalances.

You will never heal hormones without addressing digestion and detox. I don’t care if you have zero digestive issues.

Balance your blood sugar, the #1 thing you can do. Eat every 3-4 hours. Combine carb, protein and fat.

You can be doing all of the above but if you hate your life, sleep like shit, have no joy, stressed out, over-exercising or under-eating you simply will not get your hormones in check.

Put in the work girlfriend, it will be worth it!

Are You Estrogen Dominant?

I used to be that girl.

I went to the tanning salon, I was on birth control for 12 years, loved my MAC makeup + perfume, burned those candles, loved the smell of a clean house, drank out of plastic water bottles or tap, cooked on non stick pans, heated up my perfectly counted pre-prepped macro meal in plastic in the microwave (but I was being healthy right guys?), ate all the PUFAs + conventional foods.

No wonder why I ended up with every estrogen dominant symptom in the book! I was not only getting estrogen endogenously but also exogenously with all these external sources.

I also had gut issues galore preventing me from not being able to eliminate estrogen appropriately.

I was stressed to the max depleting my body of progesterone, the most important hormone of them all and the only thing that could keep my estrogen in check.

There are 2 types of estrogen dominance. Straight up estrogen dominance- an excess of estrogen but other sex hormones like progesterone are in normal range and relative estrogen dominance- when estrogen is high in relation to low progesterone levels.

Symptoms:
Allergies/ histamine intolerance
PMS
Dry skin
Infertility
Fibroids, cysts, cancers
Sore breasts
Low sex drive
Difficulty losing weight
Varicose veins/ cellulite
Blood sugar swings
Osteoporosis
Heavy periods
Cramps
Cyclical headaches, migraines + acne
Fatigue
Water retention
Gut issues – SIBO, IBS, Bloating
Anxiety/ depression
Thyroid dysfunction

But Laura, I got my labs and it shows i’m low in estrogen but I have all the symptoms of estrogen dominance.

Welp, girlfriend that lab doesn’t account for all that excess estrogen being stored in your tissues. If your body is stressed the F out cortisol will be high and estrogen builds up in your tissues.

If you feel estrogen dominate but your labs are normal or low, chances are that you probably are.

One thing that grinds my gears, women that are told to take DIM but never address why they are estrogen dominant in the first place or if their detox pathways are open. This is harmful.

The first thing you can do is avoid endocrine disruptors + toxins that are mimicking estrogen in your body then address elimination.

I Don’t Know Who Needs To Hear This But…

What are we doing… Really tho. What the F are we doing.

How many times have you felt guilty for having the white rice, the potatoes, or the bun?

I will never forget the time when I was deep into my orthorexia. I went to chipotle for lunch and they put white rice in my bowl instead of lettuce (I would have even felt “safer” with the brown rice). I was starving so I ate it, the guilt that ensued for the rest of the day was unbearable and because I had the white rice I knew I needed restrict at dinner to make up for it. At this time in my journey, the biggest thing to hit social media was that all white foods were evil including white rice and that brown rice was so much healthier for you. Bullshit.

Why are we so carb phobic that we now replace nutrient-dense carb sources with alternatives that are far less superior and anti-metabolic leading to mineral deficiencies and carb intolerance?

How did we get so lost as a society that we think REAL FOOD, ones that have been consumed for centuries are all of a sudden the bad guys?

Why are we so afraid of sugar that we are replacing real cane sugar found in nature with zero calorie, sugar free, artificial sweeteners that our bodies don’t recognize as food or energy and are destroying our guts?

We are told dairy is terrible and it’s the root of all our problems, replacing it with nut alternatives that are creating oxidative stress and irritating our guts.

What is all this? Marketing, propaganda, and diet culture at its finest.

I mean at what point will we stop listening to this bullshit and start enjoying food again?

I can guarantee you that a person that has never followed these diet rules and just truly enjoys food (all the foods) is a hell of a lot healthier inside and out than someone thats stressin over eating the rice or the french fry.

Oh and incase you were wondering. White rice is the real MVP. It’s easier to digest and trust me, you will be a much happier human adding it back into your life.

The Anti-Metabolic Sh*t Storm

You wake up tired AF from a mediocre nights sleep but get in your 10 mile run upon waking anyways.

You come home and have your coffee on an empty stomach (that coffee you have been craving the whole run).

Then about an hour later you make your smoothie bowl filled with raw veggies and greens, flax seed, soy and almond milk.

You then take a shower and slather your body in toxic soaps and top it off with chemical ridden makeup.

You get busy and don’t have time to eat so you grab a snack bar filled with nuts and seeds to eat on the go because in your mind nuts are better than carbs.

You get home after not eating for hours and maybe slip in your first serving of protein all day…

You see where this is going. THIS IS THE PERFECT METABOLIC SHIT STORM.

And, this was me. I wrecked my metabolism.

From the yoyo dieting to the low carb diets filled with vegetables filled with anti-nutrients and heavy metals wreaking havoc on my digestion and depleting me of minerals, to the over-exercising and under-eating causing adrenal burnout, to the toxic makeup causing an estrogen burden, to skipping meals leaving my body depleted and never feeling safe, to the nuts and seeds causing oxidative stress and cellular damage, to the destructive morning coffee on an empty stomach.

What does all this have in common? Stress!

The biggest offender when it comes to your metabolism is stress, lack of nutrients and energy.

Your cells require lots and lots of nutrients to do their job- that is, every single job in your body. Just reading this right now requires nutrients, energy and nourished cells.

The only way to come out of a stressed out state is to make your body feel safe.

Feed it often, feed it nourishing foods, feed it the RIGHT foods, and stop all the bullshit diets that leave you even more depleted and worse off than you were in the first place.