#nourishnotpunish Archives – Wild Lyons Wellness

But First, Breakfast

Alright all you matcha drinking, coffee demonizing influencers. I am sure at one point you have been told that coffee is bad for you.

And at another point were told to drink your coffee with some nutrient-void nut juice or black on an empty stomach to boost metabolism.

The controversy about coffee is wild and one of the most frequently asked questions I get.

“Can I drink coffee? Is it good for me?”

I don’t know. Can you?

Well I am happy to report, coffee is good for you. If done right.

Where can coffee drinking go wrong tho?

Coffee is only supportive AFTER a meal. On an empty stomach it will elicit a harmful stress response that then cause a blood sugar shit show and impacts your adrenals, hormones, metabolism and digestion.

Let’s take a look at how this plays out.

You have naturally fasted all night for 10-12 hours.

At this point your body needs fuel. I hear all you fasters. Yes, it does. You are not better than anyone for being able to skip breakfast. Give it some time girlfriend 😉

Fasting in and of itself is stressful and causes your adrenals to pump out stress hormones and cortisol. Your body thinks it’s in a famine, it is scrambling for resources to keep you alive the longer you wait to eat. A drop in blood sugar is the absolute biggest stressor on the body hands down.

Let’s add more fuel to the fire eh?

You now have that morning coffee on an empty stomach. Caffeine also causes cortisol to rise. You are now in a chronic stressed out cortisol risen state, depleting your body of minerals contributing to further stress on your system.

This is when the cascade of effects begin, your blood sugar is impacted, your adrenals are working over-time, your body can’t make hormones and your digestion can’t function because they are not priorities when trying to survive, and your metabolism is wrecked.

You have now set yourself up to be riding the blood sugar rollercoaster all day.

Eating a balanced meal prior to coffee will put out the stressful blood sugar fire and allow your body to view coffee as helpful rather than harmful.

Next time someone hands you a coffee first thing you know better and can now confidently say, “But first, breakfast.”

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.

Diet Mindset v. Nourished Mindset

What’s the fastest way to burnout? OBSESSING about food, your health and your body.

I had a conversation with a friend over the weekend and we were discussing how the biggest downfall to everyones health starts with a stressor. We asked each other when shit hit the fan and we both had the same realization.

It started when we became obsessed with our bodies, the food we ate and put constant pressure on ourselves to look a certain way. This is a theme that pops up with almost every single one of my clients.

Girls going on atkins, low carb or becoming vegan at the age of 9! Please, if your daughter is doing this, it’s a HUGE red flag.

One day you are just sitting by the pool, eating a hot dog and freeze pop happy as a fucking clam and the next you are analyzing every imperfection in your body and trying to find every way to “fix” it.

The healthiest people are the ones that have never dieted or had poor thoughts and feelings around their body and the food they eat.

Dieting and negative thoughts around food and your body are on the TOP of the stress scale.

Why? Because every single day you are bombarded with fake social media bodies and people judging you or telling you you should look, how to eat and what not to eat for “health.”

You are constantly thinking about food and your body from the time you wake up until you go to bed.

My life’s mission and why I created this page and my business is to help you understand your body better and see through the bullshit you are being fed.

If you were to die tomorrow what would you see? Certainly not all the times you obsessed about the way your body looks or the food you ate or all the fun you missed out on due to it.

I see my husbands smile, all the amazing adventures I have been on, my cat laying in the sunshine, all the incredible memories I have made and the thousands of women I have helped. Not that time I starved myself for the sake of loosing 20 pounds.

It’s one thing to want to want to live a healthy confident life, it’s a whole different story to be destroying your body and giving up joy for external validation.

What age were you when you first started having negative thoughts about your body and food?

Stressed is desserts spelled backwards: How sugar is medicine for your hormones

Alright, who’s the asshole that decided to make sugar the bad guy? You fool.

Clearly these people do not understand basic physiology (especially female) and how sugar is utilized in the body or have any desire to help people understand WHY their cells are not using sugar well.

Sugar = energy baby!

And hold your horses. I’m not saying to go pound down a chocolate cake, box of cereal or a donut from costco. Not all sugar is created equal.

But I will tell ya, there is nothing wrong with you for wanting sugar, you are not a sugar addict.

Crave chocolate before your period? That is your bodies desire for magnesium and energy. See? Our bodies are so intelligent. Listen.

It’s funny how lost we get when the stress of life takes over. Funny, that is when we should be listening to our bodies and taking assessment the most.

As kids we always had bedtime snacks, we ate 3 meals a day and 2 snacks, we wanted sugar and comfort foods during times of stress.

Now we think we should get some badge of honor for skipping dessert, avoiding fruit and honey, fighting the urge to have that chocolate, skipping a snack before bed (even tho we are hungry).

A badge of honor for downright starving ourselves of what our bodies need. In the name of what? A society driven perfect body?

Over it.

Sugar is medicine if used appropriately.

As mary poppins would say, “A little bit of sugar helps the cortisol go down, helps the cortisol go down”

What you are told is causing your health problems vs. What is actually causing your health problems

Girlfriend. Listen up. It’s not that simple.

Eliminating dairy, sugar and meat to try and fix your symptoms is LAZY.

You heard me. It’s lazy. It likely won’t solve your issues but certainly puts a nice sparkly bandaid on them for the time being.

Well that is, until these eliminations stop working and you are eliminating hundred other foods or jumping from one diet to another in hopes of finding relief and #health.

Then when all fails you finally go hire someone to help you after you have completely ignored the signals and signs of what your body is telling you it ACTUALLY needs (hint hint everything on the right).

Do you really think your body is telling you to eliminate 3 of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet for the sake of your health? Give me a break.

Acne? Eliminate dairy. Insulin resistant or diabetes? Eliminate sugar. Inflammation and hormonal? Eliminate meat.

If you work with a practitioner and their solution to your problems is eliminating food groups and macronutrients without putting proper assessment into anything on the right, they are LAZY.

These blanket recommendations are wild, are you sick of them yet?

99% of your problems will be fixed simply by:

1. Eating a traditional nutrient rich diet
2. Ditching processed, PUFA filled garbage
3. Getting enough sleep, sunshine, and joy
4. Eliminating negative self-talk and toxins
5. Getting stress in check and living a simple life
6. Always supporting digestion and minerals

And for the love of whatever you believe in stopping obsessing over everything that goes in your mouth and every symptom you experience. Your body is always evolving, changing, being exposed to things, adapting and finding homeostasis. It’s OKAY to have symptoms. Congrats, you are human.

Due to the overwhelming amount of bullshit on the internet being fed to us and sold to us on the daily it has become impossible to actually listen to our bodies and understand what they need and are craving.

We would rather starve ourselves of our own innate needs and then continue to deprive ourselves by now eliminating dairy, meat and sugar – the three MVPs that we were given on earth to keep us thriving.

The Harsh Truth: Nobody actually gives a shit about you because they are too damn worried about themself.

Stop letting the fear of what other people think about you determine your life.

I know. You are thinking what the heck does this have to do with nutrition.

Well everything.

A lot of the reason we as women are so sick is because we have lived our lives caring so much about what others think.

All of the diets we have been on. All our poor nutrition choices. It all comes down to how we look. We see someone on social media that appears to have it all with a “great” body so they must be doing it right.

We have been sold that certain diets will promise us great skin, beautiful hair and thin figures for centuries.

I mean hell, in the 1920’s we were told the cigarette diet was the way to go and there were no repercussions.

Just like any diet nowadays, we are only told all the good, we are promised we will be thin goddesses with glowing skin, tons of energy and it will fix all our problems in life and we will live forever!

Because being thin will make you happy right? Being thin does not fix your health problems, your stress levels, your toxic relationships, honestly it fixes nothing about your life or your health.

And truthfully, ALL diets, this desire to be thin and look a certain way out of fear of what other people will think is destroying our hormones, guts and metabolism. If diets worked there wouldn’t be so many.

You are too afraid to go out with friends or see family because you put on a few pounds or you have some acne on your chin or maybe your hair and skin is not up to your standards.

Whatever insecurity you are struggling with. I can guarantee whoever you are with has just as many or more insecurities (even if they won’t admit it).

Stop letting the fear and anxiety of what other people think determine your life and stomp your joy, because truly, they don’t give a shit about you and once you fully understand this, it’s so freeing.

Be honest with yourself, is everything you are doing out of fear of what others think? Or are you truly doing it for your own joy and happiness. This includes the diet that you keep, the decisions you make around money + relationships, and where you put your energy.

The less fucks you give the more you will truly live.