“Your Body Is Designed So Intelligently”
This special Ask Me Anything episode is about working out, menstrual cycles, hormones, fasting, and weight loss.
Dr. Stephanie is a doctor of chiropractic with a special interest in metabolism, body composition, functional neurology, and female physiology.
She’s been featured on Thrive Global, of the Huffington Post, has over 3.5 million article reads on Medium.com, and has helped thousands of women lose weight, regulate hormones, and get off medications with her signature program, The Estima Diet™. You can hear her every week on her podcast, Better! With Dr. Stephanie.
Dr. Stephanie is changing the conversation around health, fitness, sex, intimacy, longevity, parenting, mindset, and pursuing excellence.
Her life’s passion and mission is blending modern science with ancient wisdom to empower women’s health and healing.
In this podcast, Ask Me Anything, we cover:
- About the dawn phenomenon: abnormal early-morning increases in glucose
- Can fasting help you burn fat and lose weight?
- The health books that we recommend reading
- Which supplements menopausal women should be taking ASAP
- What to know about your cycle after a hysterectomy
- Advice for moms: what to teach your daughter about menstruation
- How you can burn fat without losing muscle
Why is my blood sugar high in the morning when I eat a low carbohydrate diet?
The dawn effect could be affecting your blood sugar. At night when you’re in a fasted state, there hits a point where your body registers that glucose is going down. So, your body will dump stored sugar into the bloodstream to keep the brain well-nourished. Ketones are only fifty percent of the fuel for the brain. For fasters, this can be frustrating. In the morning, you have these counter-regulatory hormones increasing like cortisol and epinephrine. These hormones are designed to release glucose into the bloodstream so that you have energy. The body does this from an evolutionary point of view. All in all, it’s a temporary effect, and it does not continue over time.
How long does it take for the weight to fall off with fasting?
It depends on your age, lifestyle, exercise, stress levels, sleep, and how you are fasting. First, you need to focus on your mindset and give yourself more time than you think. You will not get where you want in a week or a month. Yes, you can make progress in a month, but sculpting the body you want and reducing fat is a long-term game. If you are losing weight too fast, it could be the muscle you’re losing. Remember, many different things go into losing weight with fasting. Our body is so intelligent; when it stores extra weight, it’s saving your life.
What should you do when you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back asleep?
Are you seeing the sunrise in the morning, and are you seeing the sunset at night? Also, it would help if you got outside in the middle of the day without sunglasses on. That way, you can work on your circadian rhythm. Also, turn all your lights off at night and create a nighttime routine that does not include scrolling on social media. For instance, Dr. Mindy uses an infrared sauna and a PEMF mat at night. If you wake up in the middle of the night, you should look up and to the right for about a minute. Then do the same thing on the other side. This tactic will stimulate parasympathetic activity. Another thing to try is 4-7-8 breathing.
What are the best supplements for menopausal women?
Every menopausal woman needs magnesium! Luckily, magnesium can be a massive help for sleep. That’s one of the reasons why Dr. Estima will take magnesium both morning and night. However, before you think about supplements, you should do great work with your diet, stress, fasting, and minimizing toxins. If you are doing a low-carb diet, an electrolyte supplement can be essential. Dr. Estima is a fan of LMNT. You will be dehydrated when you wake up in the morning so LMNT can be a huge help. Remember, you don’t need to take a supplement if you don’t want. Instead, you can put salt in your water.
Do I still try to figure out my cycle after a hysterectomy?
Women have been cycling from the moment their period starts. Just because you have a hysterectomy doesn’t mean you’re not still cycling. Yes, you need to pay attention to your cycle. How you pay attention to your cycle will be the next question. When estrogen is low, and progesterone is low, you may need more testosterone. Tune into your symptoms and shift your lifestyle when necessary. Many women will naturally cycle with the moon. The full moon is ovulation. We don’t give nature enough credit for how synergistic we are with it. Overall, tap into nature’s rhythms and discover how intimately connected you are with it.
What should I teach my daughter about her cycle?
It would help if you taught your daughter about the variations of her cycle. If your daughter has an irregular period, a doctor may suggest getting on a birth control pill. Sadly, most doctors don’t talk about the risks of taking the birth control pill. Eventually, that woman will be in her thirties looking to have a child. Unfortunately, she hasn’t had a period in decades, so it may be difficult to conceive. There needs to be a conversation around taking the birth control pill and how it’s normal to have an erratic period in your teen years.
Dr. Stephanie
It’s better than diamonds you don’t need diamonds you need magnesium. morning and night. Like I love to take magnesium a little bit in the morning. And I backload a lot of my magnesium in the evening.
Dr. Mindy
resetera is Dr. Mindy here and I am on a mission to teach you just how powerful your body was built to be. This podcast is about giving you the power back and helping you believe in yourself again, let’s jump in. On this episode of The resetter podcast, I bring you something totally different. And I cannot wait for you guys to listen to this conversation. This is an Ask Me Anything with Dr. Stephanie esteem ah, and it came out of your requests. So let me give you a little background on Stephie and I and our synergy in how we approach women’s health. She and I did a podcast episode I think about a year ago, she came on to our surgery center podcast, it is no doubt one of the top performing episodes we’ve had. So if you haven’t gone and listened to that one, we literally went through the whole menstrual cycle talked about how you should work out how you should fast how you should eat, we went like day by day. So go check out that episode. But then I went on her podcast and has same thing her audience loved what we were talking about. You all loved what we were talking about. We’ve been on Instagram together. And people have asked us over and over again to come together and answer so many questions that women want to know about how to look at your lifestyle and time it to your hormonal needs. So in this episode, we just we literally asked you all for for what questions you wanted to answered. We got over 100 questions. We tried that you’ll hear us I mean, we tried to answer as many as we could. But there’s definitely a need for more. So in this episode, you’re going to hear us talk about working out and how we can time that around our cycle. How is women she isn’t 44 I’m 52. So you can kind of hear the difference of ages and how we approach our workouts. We talked about hormones in general. And there was a really good question, somebody asked about what she would what a mom should talk to her daughter about hormones, which led into the emotional ebbs and flows of hormones that as women we should be aware of. Of course, we talked about fasting and how women should do it. We talked about weight loss, we talked about protein, what types of protein, you name it, like we went down so many different paths. So this was a totally different podcast experience for me. If you guys love that, love this conversation, please leave a review. If you’re not following Dr. Stephanie astma, follow her on Instagram, she has a great podcast called the better podcast. And this is actually our both of these, this interview is going out on both of our platforms. And you hopefully know that my number one tenant for women right now is we need to come together and support each other. And this is what Stephanie and I did in this conversation, I know you’re going to benefit from it. So absolutely, from the bottom of my heart, enjoy this conversation. And no doubt there will be more like this. Let’s talk about hormones. So what I’ve noticed in working with so many women, is that we really don’t understand what our hormones do for us. And we also don’t understand how our body makes hormones. So I want to give you a little bit of an education here, there is making the hormone which happens from the connection from your brain to your ovaries, there is metabolizing the hormone which happens in the liver and the gut. And then there’s using the hormones, which happens at a cellular level. So in order for you to be hormonally balanced, you need to have all three of those pieces working well. It’s not enough just to throw a hormone at your body. You’ve got to help it through those three things. So this is why I flippin love Organa phi is harmony product because they know this when they put this together. They have prebiotic fibers in it which is amazing for your estrogen alone. That’s the set of bacteria that breaks down estrogen. They put in support like Chasteberry and Maka to help you make progesterone which you guys hopefully know how much I love progesterone how much I miss her since I’ve gone through menopause. Progesterone is that hormone that calms us. So Organa phi has figured that out and they’ve put in nutrients that will help you make more progesterone so you can feel calm. They’ve also put in nutrients that support the liver. Help with a little cleansing of the liver so you can break estrogen down. And they have a lot of green fibers in there, which will help you make testosterone. So they literally when I saw this product, I looked at it and and was shocked at whoever was behind it knew their hormones. So you need to make hormones, you need to break them down, and then you need to use them. And harmony is going to help you do that. So really excited about this product and what it can do for all of us out there. But most importantly, it’s going to help you thrive as a woman on so many different levels. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Dr. Stephanie
This is going to be fun. We are I you know Mindy and I we are doing an AMA I will welcome you to my podcast and I know that I am going to be on the reseller podcast. So this is this is going to be fun. We’re gonna see how
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, it’s really fun. And for me, this is a first and I love collaboration like collaborating is my jam. So this is really exciting.
Dr. Stephanie
Yeah, and we should just quickly on the origin story of this, I was doing some I was doing like an Ask Me Anything on my Instagram stories. And someone was like, Can you and Mindy, please do something together? And I was like, Oh, that’s so nice. And I was like, Mindy, I’m getting with you. And you’re like, I’m up. I’m up. Alright, let’s do it. And so as you said, collaboration, and I love you know, I always get a lot of positive comments about the podcast that you when you are on my show. I actually think it’s in the top 10.
Unknown Speaker
Same with us. Same with us. Like you were on mine. It was like, like, women came out of the woodwork.
Dr. Mindy
And it’s I think it’s in one of our top 10 as well.
Dr. Stephanie
Amazing. Yeah. So I’m happy that we’re doing this again. And then you know, if you all love it, so on the better podcast and on the resetter podcast, if you love this, then tell us and we will we will, you know, maybe make this a little thing. Who knows how it how it’s gonna go?
Dr. Mindy
I love it. Yeah, sounds good. And I also want to say that when we decided to do this, you and I both went to Instagram and said, what questions do we have? And when we got there, I was like, I wonder if we have a handful of questions. Wow, we have so many questions. We are not at a loss for questions.
Dr. Stephanie
No. And you know, I was saying I was saying to your assistant before we started recording. I was like, I was really surprised that we didn’t get the what breaks your fast question. But man did we get? We got so many questions on fasting muscle building, you know, menstruation, like how do we eat according to our site, like so many great questions. So I’m really excited. We have a lot we have very intelligent, I would say, yeah. Listeners and followers. So they’re asking really, really great questions.
Dr. Mindy
Agreed. Agreed. I love it.
Dr. Stephanie
So let’s get into the first one, which I thought was really interesting. And I thought the way that we might do this, and I think we were already talking about this in the pre chat is like we can just sort of banter like we’ll answer, you know, the questions, we may or may not have, you know, the same answer for some of them. And that’s completely fine. I think that, you know, you and I are very aligned on on many things. But of course, there may be some extra color that I may add in a certain way or some extra color that you may add in a certain course, which is great. I think so too.
Dr. Mindy
That’s the part of a good discussion is bringing new information to a topic. So I love it. Beauty.
Dr. Stephanie
All right. So first question, and I’ll lob this to you. And then I’ll I’ll chime in. So one of the questions was, why is my blood sugar so high in the morning when I eat a low carbohydrate diet?
Dr. Mindy
Oh, okay. So this is one that I have seen in hundreds of 1000s of our fasters online and it really the statistical answer, I should say, or the clinical answer is something potentially called the dawn effect, where when at night, you’re in a fasted state. And they’re hits a point where your body read registers that glucose is going down. And so the liver dumps stored sugar into your bloodstream to keep the brain well nourished. You know, we love ketones, they’re great, but they’re only 50% of the fuel for the brain. So when you wake up in the morning, I think it’s a great sign because that liver is releasing that stored sugar. So I actually look at it as a positive sign. But for fasters it’s, it’s frustrating. And I also think you could think fasting isn’t working for you, but it absolutely is.
Dr. Stephanie
Yeah, I completely agree with you. I think that we do have to consider the dawn effect here. So of course, the dawn effect, just as a little by way of history was first notice in individuals with with type one diabetes, where the insulin that they were taking, let’s say the night before, wasn’t sufficient to, to, let’s say counter regulate the glucose that was being released in the morning. And of course, when you think about your physiology, in the morning, you have these cells called counter regulatory hormones that are increasing like cortisol and epinephrine and norepinephrine. And those are designed to release glucose into the bloodstream so that you have energy to, you know, from an from an evolutionary point of view, go and hunt, you know, take care of the children, you know, gather and hunt and cook and all the things. But it’s also observed in individuals who are following a low carbohydrate diet. And again, when you think about when your cells are primarily burning fat for fuel as they would when carbohydrates are dramatically reduced, we have to also consider the muscle cells, right, so the muscles necessarily don’t need glucose in, you know, overnight, but in the morning, they will and muscle cells at will. And I’ll say, as you mentioned, the brain always needs some base level of glucose. So you can run on ketone bodies, as you mentioned, but glucose is the molecule of life, there’s always going to be a requirement for some base level of glucose. So this is often referred to as like adaptive glucose sparing where you’re basically sparing the glucose that you have in the system for the brain. And the idea here is that the the lack of glucose uptake is happening, you know, in the muscle cell, let’s say, is happening for a beneficial reason. It’s not it’s not a harmful reason. And I think that one of the things that we can look at in context, if this person is is concerned with that number, is also to look at her HB a one C, which is sort of the, you know, the three month let’s say, average of glycated end products, or the the average level of glucose that you’ve had, essentially over the last three months. Yeah, so all that, you know, all that sort of like preamble to say that it is very normal, in a person having a following a low carbohydrate diet, or someone who’s fasting, or which is the same, essentially the same thing. You’re restricting carbohydrates and everything else, to have higher blood sugar, blood glucose in the morning, what we do need to sift through is whether or not that’s harmful, right? In a type one diabetic, you can make the argument that yes, that’s harmful. But in the in the situation where a woman or a man is following a low carbohydrate diet, is that harmful? Or is it just an adaptive that adaptive glucose burn that we were talking about? Yeah,
Dr. Mindy
yeah. And the other thing, I would say, in fasters, what I see is it’s a temporary effect, it does not continue over time. And then the other part of that the application part of that that I really like is this is where, if you’re concerned about it, I really would put a CGM on and start to look at what’s happening at two three in the morning. That, to me is so fascinating when you see blood sugar going down, and then there’s a spike at two or three in the morning. And there it is, that’s the body starting to release. So yeah, super interesting. But you’re right for a type one concerning but for the majority of people, I think it’s a temporary effect.
Dr. Stephanie
And then the CGM is also going to give you other insight in terms of how your blood glucose and insulin dance, you know, happens over the course of the day, like you’re gonna see, you’ll see the spikes at 2am. As you mentioned, you’ll also see, you know, the variability in your response to stress in your your postprandial glucose spiking out how long it actually takes you to get back down. So I think that when we look at and this is something that we’re all guilty of, we tend to will focus in on one thing like this is not perfect, why but you have to look at it, you have to zoom out a little bit and look at it in context, if you slap on a CGM, you’re seeing that 2am change, but also what’s happening when you do start moving around or working out or you know, you’re presenting or you’re eating a meal, like what’s happening to your blood glucose in those scenarios. And then with that context, you can deduce whether or not you are in a good or bad you know,
Dr. Mindy
position. Yeah, yeah, yeah, huge fantasy gyms.
Dr. Stephanie
Love that. What’s the next one you want to go to?
Dr. Mindy
I you know what I want to go to because this one is there’s so much to talk about. And it’s asked I get asked all the time, how long does it take for the weight to fall off with fasting? I will let you go first on that one.
Dr. Stephanie
I’m going to give the the worst answer. So this person who asked is going to hate me but the answer it really depends. Yeah. It depends on your age. It depends on your physical. You know your lifestyle like how active you are how much general movement like that non exercise Activity Thermogenesis You’re getting through the day like just general putting puttering around and walking, of course structured workouts as well. Like, are you a cardio bunny? are you lifting weights, what your, you know, your stress levels like what your sleep is like all of those things, in addition to fasting is going to be a big determinant in terms of when she says weight loss. I also am like a stickler for language. So I’m assuming she’s talking about fat loss. Like she’s not talking about reducing her bone density or reducing the size of her brain, right? We’re talking about your brain. Yeah, the adipose it, like she’s looking at reducing overall adiposity on the body. So I think that the first thing I want to say, and this is kind of more of a mindset thing, and this has just been my own experience with fasting coaching other practitioners is every there’s so much bio individuality, and you have to give yourself way more time than you would like. Yes, we always are like, oh, you know what, I’ve been doing this thing for a week, you know, it’s not working. I guess, fasting doesn’t work for me? Well, it’s, you know, in the same way, I remember one of my mentors in chiropractic, he said, this beautiful thing. Shout out to Dr. John minority, he was saying, you know, when you are have, you know, you caring for a patient, and you have been caring for them, let’s say for six months, and at the end of the six months, you know, they say, Doc, I feel better. And then would you ever say to them, which adjustment was it? Right, which was the one adjustment that helped you out? No, it wasn’t the one, it was the cumulative effect of going to the chiropractor, you know, I don’t know, one time a week, two times, whatever it is, you know, you’re going to the chiropractor for this program, you’re doing your rehab, you’re doing your stretches. It’s the same with fasting, it’s like, you’re not going to get where you want in a week, in a month. And I’m going to say, you know, you can make progress, you can make progress in a month, you can make progress in three months in a quarter in a year. But sculpting the body that you want, and reducing overall adiposity is a long term game. Yep, that we see so often is, and I see this all the time in the online space where I’m just like, don’t I roll like, just, you know, respect everything. But sometimes you’ll see sort of experts say, Oh, you can you know, drink, I don’t know, lemon water, and you’re going to lose 40 pounds in the next two weeks. Like I would never want to lose 40 pounds in the next two weeks. Because that’s all muscle like that’s because like, that’s because cachexia So, I guess my I’m not fully answering this, because, you know, I, you know, I’m a doctor, but I’m not her doctor. Right. But I would say that, it really there’s a lot of different things that go into losing weight when fasting. What do you mean?
Dr. Mindy
Maybe? Yeah, too many variables, for sure. So, let me start with the mindset. The first thing is that I would love to redefine what extra weight means and why it’s there. I really, our body is designed so intelligently, that when it starts storing weight, we want to villainize it. But literally, that extra weight is saving your life, it has to find a place to store extra glucose store extra hormones, store toxins, and it does it around the back of your arms, your belly, your glutes, and it and it’s doing that instead of putting it around the organs. So let’s start with Thank you intelligent body, I appreciate you storing there. Now let me see what I can do to go after the storage. Now with that, if we’re going to use fasting as a tool to me, the first step is get comfortable compressing your eating window, get comfortable with like a 13 hour fast, where you’re and then you’re eating. What would that be 11 hours and slowly work on condensing down that eating window elongating the fasting window. When you get to about 15 hours of fasting, then my question to you would be are you getting into ketosis? Are you seeing signs that you’re getting into making ketones? If you’re not, then you got to do the there’s like 20 million different check boxes that you got to think about, you got to think exactly what you were saying, how’s your sleep? What are you doing workout wise? How’s your food, like we’ve got to go and that’s where the bio individuality really comes in. And for everybody. It’s a little different. Now, if you say I’m in ketosis, but I’m not losing weight, then my next step would be if it’s a woman, are we are we fasting according to our cycle, because if you’re fasting at the wrong time, you’re actually harming your body, causing your body to hold on to more weight. So make sure you’re fasting to your cycle. If she says, I’m fasting to my cycle, then I really go to toxicity. We’ve got to look at plain toxins out. So I like to step it out in that fashion. But it starts with not chasing a number on the scale and understanding why the extra weight is there in the first place and then creating short little steps that and hurdles that You got to get over to start to see where we may drop off of you with fasting. Yeah, well
Dr. Stephanie
said and like that permission in that grace to say, I’m going to give myself a really long runway for this. Yeah, like I’ve budgeted three months, but I’m just going to like double or triple that, so that we can, because you’re also in that journey, there’s going to be everyone also thinks about, you know, weight loss or fat loss as this sort of linear journey, like, I’m going to lose one weight this week, and then next week, I’m going to lose one pound, and then I’m going to lose one pound that week after, and it’s not like that, sometimes you’ll lose four pounds in a week, and then nothing will change for two weeks, and then maybe another pound will, it’s very nonlinear, it’s very, it’s very, sometimes very disorganized, or it can appear disorganized to our sort of linear brains that are really, you know, designed to see things in like a stepwise fashion. But you’ll notice over time, the net net again, like, which is the one adjustment, which is the one fast that, you know, that created the change, it’s the accumulation of the healthy behaviors and habits that are going to get you to where you want to go. And this, this, this applies to fast if it’s weight loss with fasting or using a tool like, you know, maybe a ketogenic diet or, you know, or otherwise, it takes a really long time. And I you know, just I’ll throw this in, and we can, we’ll move to the next one. But I often have women that I’ll say, like I’ve been working out, and I don’t understand, like, where’s the muscle? And it’s like, you know, how long it takes to build muscle? Right? Right. Yeah. takes a really long like, you know, years to build mature muscle. Yep. So I just can’t say that.
Dr. Mindy
And I also want to just point out if if it’s a woman that asked this question, which I’m thinking it was that if you start fasting with your husband, your brother, your male counterpart, they’re going to drop weight very, very quickly with intermittent fasting. And we are more complex than that. So also make sure that you’re staying on your in your own lane and creating your own fasting journey for weight loss.
Dr. Stephanie
Yes, yes. What are the health books that you recommend? Or that you’d like to read? Dr. M. Dr. Pels,
Dr. Mindy
oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh. I’m like a book hound. I cannot get like not get enough. I don’t even know right now. I would say that it really I’m in mindset, I go through phases. So I can’t just tell you one. Right now I’m absolutely 100% obsessed with the brain. And mindset. So currently, one of my favorites is effortless. Have you read that book? No. Greg McKee. Greg McEwen, I think his name is and it’s all about living life from an effort effortless place. I’ve also been geeking out on Dawson Church’s books, he has mind over matter and the bliss brain. So I’ve been diving deep into that. I would say yeah, I would say when it comes to books, this is pretty funny. As an author of health books, I’m like, I go slant towards the mindset and the brain books for inspiration, and I devour more of my health information, fasting keto, in, in podcasts and PubMed articles, and then conversations like this. So I will say that my absolute favorite book that I think every woman needs to read is rushing woman syndrome by Libby Weaver. So if you haven’t seen that, I would definitely, definitely do that. I have, you know, one book that actually really changed my life years ago was a book called Living in the light by Shakti go in which, which is a book about visualization.
Dr. Stephanie
So I’m making notes as you’re talking. Yeah, I
Dr. Mindy
have a really eclectic book behavior. But I have books all over my house, I have I sit down, I don’t always read them cover to cover. Sometimes I just pick them up I read pieces of So too many to really, to highlight one specific one.
Dr. Stephanie
I tend to agree with you. I like the I think even when we’re talking about nutrition and weight loss, you know, one big pillar that nobody like it’s the elephant in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge is how we actually relate to ourselves, how we view ourselves and our worth. So of course I’m going to give a shameless plug to the menopause reset Great.
Unknown Speaker
Betty body I’m sorry,
Dr. Stephanie
no, no, I’m going to shamelessly plug it you should also pick up the body to your point around mindset, I I just finished actually just interviewed Gabby Bernstein. Her book. Happy Days is fun. nominal. And she talks about this principle, I guess, in psychotherapy, or in psychology called internal family systems that we have all of these different parts to us, we have like the protector part, and we have the, you know, the little it’s kind of like the inner child who’s really scared and then like, you know, the the beast that can come out to sort of protect that inner child. So I had, I thought that that was in reading that book in preparation for a conversation I loved. Dr. Shefali. His radical awakening, I think should be required reading for every woman. And then Nicola paras how to do the work, I thought was really good, in terms of just becoming aware of are just becoming consciously aware, I think so many of us sort of, like wake up, you know, and we’re asleep through that. I mean, we’re, you know, we’re awake, but you know, we’re, we’re not conscious of the thoughts that we’re having, how the past shows up in the present. And I thought it was a really good book on increasing your awareness, becoming aware of how to interact with yourself, when you get when you get activated and triggered and how to reparent yourself and the inner child like I thought those were, those have been books that, you know, that I’ve read in the past couple of years, but I thought were just exceptional. Yeah,
Dr. Mindy
the other thing I would say is that how I use books is maybe different than just, oh, I need the information in my mind. So and this might be why I gravitate to these mindset books, I have a morning ritual, I get up, I make my cup of coffee, and I sit in the same chair, I call it my thinking chair. And when my brain is just sort of in this Daisy place, that’s actually when I read. And the idea that I have behind it is that you’re not in high beta wave brain state, yet, you’re a little more in that alpha kind of state. And that’s when you can get information into your brain in a better way. I do the same thing at night, I’ll pick up I have a couple of books that I’ll read, even if it’s a paragraph before I go to bed, as opposed to sitting and looking at Instagram, before I go to bed, I will take pull out a book, get into bed, and I’ll read one or two paragraphs if I can make it that far. And then I have that positive information going into my brain as I’m going into a sleep state.
Dr. Stephanie
And when you’re in bed, do you make sure that those are mindset books that you’re reading? So you know that they’re going to be a positive? Like, you’re not going to read like a horror? No, no, like, or something like yeah,
Dr. Mindy
oh, you know, the one book that is like changing my world. And I’ve read it 1000 times, but I always come back to it is letting go by David Hawkins. And whenever I feel like I get into bed and the mind is racing, like Oh, tomorrow, you got to do this. And today, this didn’t go well. I read letting go. And I don’t know what it is about that book. But it like instantly I can feel my whole body relax, and then boom, I can fall asleep.
Dr. Stephanie
I have I have like four or five books sort of piled up on my nightstand. And I have the same thing. I’ll kind of pick them up. And I’m I pick off where I’ve left off the last time but I don’t necessarily do them in order. Now the one of them that I have started Rereading is Man’s Search for Meaning Oh, Frankel Yes. And it’s just, you know, when when you think about the horrors that that man lived through, and the the perspective that he had, like, you know, if he can do something like that, and maintain a positive attitude and hope for the future, you know, living in Auschwitz and living through Auschwitz, and the several concentration camps that, that he survived through, and then the aftermath, like how he, you know, how he took that information, and lived his life after and that other I think that that’s, again, another incredible book, and I’ll pick it up and it’s so heavy, heavy, but I’ll you know, again, like read a page or two, as you were saying, and then I’m like, Okay, this is this is,
Dr. Mindy
that book, when we first went into the pandemic, I had read that book already two or three times. But we did a book club in my reset Academy. I was like, we’re gonna we’re coming back to this book, because look at this man had a worse situation than any of us are in right now. And look at what he did in that situation. But the reason that book really is so good, and everybody should read it is he literally goes through the day to day like, how did he stay alive? What did he do when he went back to his room and people were dying? And he talks about how the people gave up and they had no purpose? It’s it’s a classic. I’m so happy. You said that one. Everybody needs to read that. Yeah. Okay. Okay, I’ll throw one at you. Well, let’s let me Let’s go to sleep. Because this is another one I’ve been working on mastering the question is what do you do when you wake up in the middle of the night and you can’t fall back asleep? But I want to also add into that do you have rituals or Around sleep and how to get a good night’s sleep.
Dr. Stephanie
Yeah, I have hard, I have sort of hard and soft rituals, let’s say in the evening. So I always try to especially now the weather’s getting, you know, really nice and I try to get some evening sun. So I like to get early morning sun, like for me sleep starts, you know, in the morning, it does like getting early morning light, you know, you were saying you have a thinking chair, or you have like a little cup of espresso, I go outside, it doesn’t matter. I mean, I live in Toronto, so we have like, full on winter, it’s cold. And then we have beautiful spring, beautiful summer. So it doesn’t matter what time of year I always go outside. It’s usually like, if you’re watching this on YouTube, it’s like with a tank top like I’m wearing now. And if it’s in the winter, I don’t last too long. But you know, in the summer, I’ll stay out there, listen to the birds and all that. And so I like to get that low solar angle, sun, like I’m trying to get to the sun for a variety of reasons that we can certainly unpack. But of course that revs up the stimulates, you know, you you stimulate the retinal ganglion cells in the eye, which connect directly to the Supra cosmetic nucleus, which is sort of the center clock master clock, if you will of the body. And that sort of Rev things up, it helps you sync your circadian rhythm, if you will, to the sun. Yeah. So I do that. I try in the evening to get sun set light as well. So I try to get that and that low solar angle, like in the morning, you know, we always hear about blue light is bad. And it’s true. That’s true. Blue light is bad, but it’s bad in the evening. It’s actually really important in the morning. Yeah, we need to have that green and blue and like really, sort of powerful light in the morning. And then in the evening, I try to get sunset light. So you know, you know in Canada, and sometimes that’s at four. Oh, God, you know, like, again, you’re
Unknown Speaker
already sick. Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Stephanie
But you know, now it’s, you know, now it’s it’s light until, I don’t know, six o’clock, maybe. So I try to get that sunset light. And then again, for that reason, right, so now you’re getting like the red light, the orange light, which is signaling to the body, you know, like their sunset, you know, we’re trying to not inhibit the release of melatonin, which is what the blue light does what you need in the morning. You want to be sleeping in the morning. Yep. So that’s what those are sort of like my hard rules, if you will, like getting sunlight specific times of the day. And then I would say the other sort of hard rule that I have is like no devices of any kind. So typically, I will shut off you know, sometimes I can’t always do this. You know, there’s some I have a deadline that I have to meet I have I’m in front of my computer, but I definitely have glasses on in the evening. But I tried to shut down all work by six or seven o’clock. Impressive. Yeah, that’s an for me, I have you know, I still have young kids. So they’re home at that time. So it’s important that I’m prioritizing family time with them. So maybe that’s, you know, walking or we were playing were my younger one is into puzzles right now. So like more puzzle a little bit, that kind of thing. So those are some of the rules that I sort of set around electronics. Like you said, no Instagram in the evening, I really try to I find that the more I’m on Instagram, the more negative My mood is. Hmm, that’s interesting. I have found the longer I spend on it, the the crappier My mood is, so I generally will try to go on, let’s say in the morning, or I try to, like update my community in terms of what’s happening in you know, in my world, but I try to get on once and then leave it. I mean, there’s some times where I find myself like, I’ve opened my phone and I’m suddenly on Instagram. I don’t know how that happened. Like, it’s automated. I found it and I’m like, What am I doing here? happens to me. Yeah, so I’m trying to be a bit more conscious around that. And then let’s see any other rituals like I try Oh, the other big thing I do is I try to make the outside my inside of my home look like the outside again trying to like sync with the sun. So in the wintertime Yes, we have dinner by candlelight because at that point, it’s dark. And in the summer, you know we’re up late or we’re having dinner a little bit later because it’s later it’s it’s you know, the the sun is is you know higher in the sky for longer so I tried to you know, no lights on when it’s dark outside, you know, especially from up above. And I tried to be in complete darkness in the bed as well like so blackout blinds that kind of thing.
Dr. Mindy
Wait, wait, I just I don’t want to let this comment go by you have dinner in candlelight.
Dr. Stephanie
Yeah, so in the wintertime when it’s like I was saying to you know, it gets dark at like, four or five, right? So for having dinner like my family usually has dinner around five or 530 It’s completely dark outside by that point at some point in the sort of dead of winter, if you will. So don’t turn the lights on. I try to meet all the lights off and we have dinner by candlelight and it’s this beautiful kind of like a little romantic yak you know kind of thing so it’s nice for the kids and then we have and then The only thing I’ll do when it’s dark is I’ll have those little night lights that you can plug into the, you know, the floor, like it’s a plug in the floor. So again, the light is coming from below, not above and then you know, that’s also just so that we don’t fall down the stairs. But all the lights typically in the house are off other than, you know, like night lights that will illuminate like the hallway, let’s say are the stairs.
Dr. Mindy
Oh my god, I’m gonna do that. I love that. I love that. So do you then my guess based off of what you just said is you don’t wake up in the middle of the night? Not really. Yeah, not really. Yeah. And remind. Remind me how old you are.
Dr. Stephanie
I am 44 Double fours. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker
Oh, double fours. Yeah. Well, let’s let’s chat when you’re 54.
Dr. Stephanie
All right. Yeah, I’m still cycling pretty regularly, like no hot flashes. Yeah.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, you probably you probably because that’s what I’ve noticed is that when I play with all the principles that I need to be in alignment with my perimenopause, menopause hormones, when I’m really spot on with my lifestyle, I sleep great. And if I fall off cue with any of it, then I’m waking up in the middle of night. So a couple of things I would say on this topic. I agree with you about light if I am waking up in the middle of the night, actually, the first thing I think to myself is, did I see the sunrise today? Did I see the sunset? Did I get out in the middle of the day? Right? So I start with light first. And oftentimes, you know, what’s the hardest sometimes I’m not getting out in the middle of the day. And like so now I’ve put into my routine, at least a 20 minute walk at around noon, if I can do it, so that I’m out without sunglasses on getting that direct light, just trying to get my circadian rhythm. So
Dr. Stephanie
I like that I’m gonna take that and use that. I don’t do that. I mean, I’m work. I can look up and I’m like, oh, it’s three.
Dr. Mindy
Right? Yeah, yeah. And and I think where I was fooling myself is like right now we have it we live across from a beautiful rose public rose garden, and I and I’m looking outside, I’m seeing the light, but it’s not really full fully registering in my brain, so I have to get out and get into it. So light is the first thing. We’ve been also trying to Kitt turn lights off at night, we haven’t gotten into candlelight. But I love that idea. We are actually officially empty nesters for the first time. So we used to be eight o’clock dinner eaters because the kids would come home from sporting events. And this is the only time that we could get all four of us to sit down together. Now we’re eating earlier, we’re turning the lights down. I have a whole ritual around sleep. I’m doing my infrared sauna. After dinner to calm my nervous system down. I have a PMF mat that I go from there to the PMF mat. i My husband knows like no stimulating conversations like we started debating politics and pandemic. And I was like no, no, no, we can’t talk about this at night. Because yeah, for me, I’m really easily wound up. And I had interviewed Ben Lynch on my podcast and he ran a genetic profile on me and he said, Oh, you are quick to make dopamine. You just can’t get rid of dopamine. And I was like, Oh my God, that’s me. So I’ve learned about four o’clock wind Monday down. And so that’s why I have all those different rituals. When I go to bed again, I’m gonna keep going after this because I have had to hack it through menopause. I have a chili pad. I don’t know if you have ever used the chili pad.
Dr. Stephanie
I have used it. Yeah. Do you like it? I did. Yeah. I like I don’t have it anymore. Yeah, but I do. I do. Like I did like it a lot. I think that and for many women going through menopause. It’s like this was the thing that saved them right? Yeah, they get so hot and bothered overnight. Yeah, yeah,
Dr. Mindy
it actually I my thing on chilli pad is it saved my marriage too because I ended up sleeping in another room at one menopause was really bad. And it was like a refrigerator in the room and my husband’s like, I can’t do this. This is way too cold. And once I got chilli pad, we had our own temperatures, we could do our own things that was really cool. As far as that. I also have a weighted blanket. I love weighted blankets. And and if I do all those things on and then read something positive before I go to bed, like I’m really pretty good. Now if I wake up in the middle of night, I’ve done some things around like Vagus Nerve Stimulation where you can and this is came from a book called accessing the vagus nerve, where I literally will like look up into the right for what I think is about a minute as far to the right upper right corner that you can see. And then you go up into the left for a minute and you keep going back and forth and it stimulates parasympathetic activity. I’ve done 478 breathing two in the morning were in through my nose for four minutes hold for seven out through my mouth for eight. So Those are kind of the hacks, the thing I absolutely do not do when I wake up. But I try not to do is solve all my problems. That doesn’t work at two in the morning. And I have to go to think of something happy, do some breathing access the vagus nerve. And if I do all of that, by the time I’m figuring that out, I’m back asleep.
Dr. Stephanie
You said something really interesting around eye position that I just wanted to highlight. And I think that this is why maybe sometimes I noticed when I’m on Instagram, let’s say that I feel like I’m just getting like, agitated when you’re moving your eyes, across the horizon. This is very parasympathetic, you know, so you said up into the, like, the, you know, the far reaches that your superior oblique maybe can, can afford
Unknown Speaker
it, you can feel your eyes sort of like stretching.
Dr. Stephanie
So yeah, yeah. And that that horizontal movement is, you know, it’s, it’s like the pontine I forget the I forget the nucleus, but it’s in the ponds. And it’s sort of at the pontine Maju malaria junction, and there’s a nucleus that my mentor is going to probably send me an email about, like, how could you forgot? Yeah, but it’s in the, it’s in sort of the brainstem, let’s say, and then moving your eyes this way, like, left and right, is actually part of the, you know, EMDR therapy, right? When you’re trying to follow the light left and right is very, very parasympathetic, and allows you to, to calm down. And that’s why the scrolling on Instagram, like if you notice your, like always going up and down. That’s very sympathetic, you know, that I, you know, that I’m movement up and down is very sympathetic in its nature. And the
Dr. Mindy
oh, well, well said, I hadn’t even thought of that. I love that thought.
Dr. Stephanie
Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing I wanted to just mention, when that, you know, that question was, like, waking up in the middle of night, can’t get back to sleep, I think that there’s so much sleep anxiety, you know, around like having to sleep perfectly. And like, we were talking before we started about, you know, how my HRV is sort of, you know, kind of always in the, you know, in the tank a little bit. And I have theories on why that may be but sometimes it’s you know, just taking the pressure off of like, okay, I need to get back to sleep, because even just that thought process is going to be stress inducing, like that I’m not sleeping right now, my HRV is going to be wrong. And so I think, you know, just lying down in bed, knowing that closing your eyes, and you know, you’re not moving your, your body, in and of itself is resting and recharging. And, you know, if there’s one of the things that I usually do, as I, as I’m falling asleep, is I find that I’m like thinking about, you know, things that make me happy, you know, like I’m dreaming about like, whether it’s desires that I have, or it’s a you know, a great memory, like all sort of relive, like a memory, you know, these sort of things can also just help put you in a state of receptivity asleep as well.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah. Yeah, totally agree. What do you what are your thoughts on deep sleep versus REM sleep, because the other thing that I’ve done when I wake up in the middle of the night, is the brain spins to oh my god, I have a busy day tomorrow, I better put myself to sleep. Because I got to, I got to be on point tomorrow. And now what I’ve started to do is say, I just need at least an hour to two hours of deep sleep, I need at least 90 minutes of REM sleep, I know I can get that even if I only get five hours a total sleep. And if
Dr. Stephanie
you’re waking up mid mid, like if you’re waking up at two you’ve probably already gotten most of the deep sleep that you’re going to get for that that night anyway because that deep sleep typically happens in the first half of a cycle and then the non REM tents are the sort of light stages if you will tend to happen in the in the latter half of the night as well. So I would agree with you there.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, but that calms me down a little bit. It makes me go okay, you’re gonna be fine. It’ll be fine. Yeah, but the mind for me at two in the morning spins. So I’ve had to when I wake up, I’m like, Ah, and so I’ve learned all these hacks so that I don’t do that.
Dr. Stephanie
Yeah, I love that. And I think we’re I think we’re all like that, you know, when you’re when you wake up in the middle of the night, your frontal lobes not online, you know, it’s not like the, it’s not like, Okay, this is not a reasonable line of thinking, you know, you’re like, oh my god and like I’m up and now I have this and I have that, you know, so I do agree with you. But I think that there’s a lot of sleep pressure, if you will, and sleep anxiety you know, and that’s, you know, from wearables and from you know, books that have been like this, and we want to say yes, sleep is really really important. It’s the one thing you can’t really bottle right? Yes. So it is it is really important but if you’re not getting it let’s say you’re running you know, you’re going through menopause, let’s say and you know, maybe you don’t have the chilli pad or maybe you don’t have you know, the the hacks that you’re that you’re doing that work for you. I think being gentle on yourself and being open to finding the solution is just going to reduce some of that pressure. You know, that anxiety that sleep anxiety enough that’s going to allow you to sort of drift back off into screen. Yeah, yeah. 100%
Dr. Mindy
agree. Let’s talk about magnesium. Seriously. This is probably the most important mineral we can get into our body on a daily basis. And as many of you know, I have been geeking out on minerals and understanding how it affects our fasting, how it affects our moods, our mental clarity, our sleep, our hormones. And what I’m discovering is that magnesium is the queen of all minerals, we have to start getting this into our body. Unfortunately, here’s the catch. Our soils are so depleted of minerals, and especially of magnesium. And if you combine that with eating processed foods that have been packed with chemicals that depletes our body of magnesium even more, and even if we’re eating healthy, and we are working out all the time, sweating, or we’re fasting a lot, we’re getting even more magnesium depletion. So if there was one mineral, I want you all to focus on adding into your diet, it would be magnesium, it will have the best impact on not just your physical health, but your mental health. So if you’re finding yourself having a hard time focusing, if you are quick to react to stress, if your mind is foggy or your sleep is restless, I want you to try the magnesium and adding it into your diet. And the product that I’m personally using that is just doing wonders for all those things for me and my personal health journey is upgraded formulas, magnesium, it’s just straight magnesium and it has all the active ingredients that you need to be able to get the magnesium into the cell. Now this is the crazy part is just because you take magnesium as a supplement doesn’t mean that the cells are receiving magnesium, which is why I love upgraded formulas products in general but their magnesium is that go to that everyone tells me they notice a difference whether it is in their sleep or their mental focus, this is the go to mineral for really helping you feel your best. So what I also love about upgraded formulas is that they give you guys a discount so today they’re offering our listeners 15% off if you use the code reset or podcast, just go to upgraded formulas.com and use reset or podcast as your code and they will give you 15% off and as always I want to hear how it works for you. So please send me a message and let me know how this magnesium has changed your life. And I know I know you guys are going to fall in love with not just magnesium but all of upgraded formulas products because they have done something special here. And I love when you can take a supplement take a mineral and feel a difference and that’s what this magnesium has done for me and so many of our listeners enjoy
Dr. Stephanie
Alright, so just with the menopausal you know women there’s a question in here around the best supplements for menopausal women do you have thoughts on supplements?
Dr. Mindy
Let’s start with a foundation of a great lifestyle especially when it comes to menopause. And that’s really what the menopause reset was about is giving women five things that she can do to change it or lifestyle as she goes through menopause. So let’s start there. Now having said that, when it comes to some like go twos that I think probably every menopausal woman needs my absolute favorite is magnesium I mean a meta puzzle women should just be like bathing themselves in magnesium and talk about not sleeping if I don’t have my magnesium like my sleep is def definitely off. So magnesium would be up there as a number one for me. And then you’ve got all your herbs you’ve got your Makkah and all that you know Chase tree and things like that. But I feel like if you dial in your lifestyle and you add in things that you may not be getting reason I love magnesium as you can’t get it in your in your food as well. And I even if you’re eating food from regenerative farms, I just feel like we’re not getting it as much. But then you’re going to have to supplement so magnesium is one I would say zinc is another one for menopausal women just to maximize hormone production. So I go to the minerals but I’d really like to see her do great work with her diet and her stress and her fasting and minimize toxins and minimize stress and see if supplements are needed then
Dr. Stephanie
100% agree. I think the the supplement, as the name suggests, should be supplementing all of the other things that you’re doing. So I when I was at when I was sort of thinking about this question, the number one thing that I put as well was magnesium I think that you know it’s better than diamonds. You don’t need diamonds you need magnesium morning and night. Like I love to take magnesium a little bit in the morning. And I backload a lot of my magnesium in the evening. And that actually, you know, coming back to that sleep question. The other thing I do in the evening is I take some magnesium. Yeah, yeah. Because I find that it really helps there’s, and then the, I think if there’s, you know, when we think about being a minimalist around supplements, like magnesium would be there. If you are someone who’s doing low carb or keto, or you’re just training hard, I think that an electrolyte supplement is really important. So I I don’t know if you use or know this company, but I really like element lm t. Yeah, absolutely love them. Because when you wake up in the morning, you’re going to be a little dehydrated, I always take a little element in the morning. And then that also helps with you know, just the body to hold on to water because if you’re doing low carb Of course, you know that and of course, if you don’t, I’ll just say this because there’s always a comment when I talk about supplements, like you don’t need to take that you can also just do salt in your water. Yes. But element is there’s like sodium, I think there’s potassium. I think there’s some magnesium in there and I’m forgetting the fourth there’s for the better and
Dr. Mindy
yeah, I think it’s the three of the three of the biggies yeah in there for sure. Yeah, we our community uses element all the time. Because when you fast if you’re not putting minerals back in, you’re really depleting yourself. So you know, it’s fun. You know what I like element because they have so many different flavors. So like literally before this interview, I decided even though it’s early in the morning, I was like you know what, I had an early dinner I’m going to break my fast early. So add a little piece of gluten free sourdough bread. I put some almond butter on top of it and then I sprinkled the chocolate salt element on top that is genius. And a little bit of ghee It was so good.
Dr. Stephanie
Oh my gosh, you’re giving me life right now. I didn’t even think to put it in my like to drizzle it as a little thing on Yes, food.
Dr. Mindy
I do it on cut up apples and I’ll put nut butter. I’ll put some like goat’s cheese and then I’ll take some of the the chocolate salts the what I love.
Dr. Stephanie
I love the chocolate too. Yeah, I love this. These know the watermelon. Oh my gosh. Watermelon. Yeah, really
Dr. Mindy
good. Yeah. And then you know, the mango chili one and all of those. Yeah, those were meant to be mixers. Rob told me. Oh, no way. Yeah. So you put them in club soda. And then you put like tequila or vodka in there and you mix it up, so that you’re now getting the electrolytes that are being pulled out from alcohol. And it adds taste to it. But he literally made those as mixers.
Dr. Stephanie
Genius. I haven’t. I’ve always just been drinking them in water. And now I had like a new way to use them. I use one or two of those sticks a day. I love that. Yeah, there you go. All right, let’s get to some of the cycle some of the cycling questions. Do I Okay, so there’s a girl a woman here? Do I still try to figure out my cycle after a hysterectomy? I thought this was a really good question.
Dr. Mindy
Oh, gosh, I have so many thoughts on this. And here’s what I will tell you. So the first is I think we can never lose sight. Whether it’s a hysterectomy or post menopause, we can never lose sight of the fact that as women we have been cycling. From the moment our period started, we have been in this rhythmic hormonal groove. So just because we’ve removed you know, I don’t know if she had the her ovaries removed from a hysterectomy. But just because organs haven’t been removed, doesn’t mean we’re not still cycling. So the answer is, yes, you need to pay attention to your cycle. But how do you do that becomes the next question. And you can do that for me, I can tell you as I’m 52. And just when I think I’m going to go into menopause, all of a sudden my cycle gets regular again. And so I’ve learned to know when estrogen is low when progesterone is low when I might need more testosterone I’ve clued in to my symptoms, and then I can shift my lifestyle accordingly. The other and I’m curious your opinion on this. The other thing we’ve talked about in my community with a lot of postmenopausal women is the fact that we for our many of us naturally cycle with the moon. So full moon being ovulation. So like if you take like the way I teach fasting, if a woman who had a hysterectomy one thing you could do is just enter look at what I recommend for ovulation for fasting time that with a full moon and then follow the cycle of the moon.
Dr. Stephanie
Beautifully said I would say the exact same thing and that’s actually part of the you know in the Betty body I talked about that. So you know we talked a lot about like you’re in your reproductive years. These are the each week that you need to eat this way. During this way, you know, etc. But if you’re someone who is no longer in your reproductive years, meaning that you’ve moved into menopause, you still are a cycling being just by nature of being a woman. So I think that the moon or the lunar ebbs and flows are a beautiful way to still modulate the way that you are training and eating and your stress. And even, like, I notice, you know, I, you know, I don’t always pair up with the moon, you know, in terms of like ovulate is full moon, and I bleed on the new moon, like a summer I, like, you know, depending on the length of the month or whatever, sometimes I’m a little off. But I think that it’s a beautiful way to start noticing in how the moon affects your energy, because I always have way more energy around the full moon, like, that’s usually the time where I’m like, gosh, I’m like, up and I’m cleaning, and I have so much energy, and I have you know, and I’m rearranging the furniture, and that’s usually the you know, the time I’m like, oh, it’s it’s the full moon. That’s why
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, yeah. I actually think on that topic. We don’t give nature enough credit for how it how synergistic we are with it, whether it’s the moon, whether it’s, you know, just what cortisol levels that change when we’re out in nature, the microbiome, so I love that. And as women, I think we intuitively know this, that we’re connected to these cycles, but we don’t have enough discussions about them. And we don’t, aren’t taught that by our doctor. And we’re definitely not taught that in our sex ed courses, you know, class at 14 years old. But if you start to tap into the nature’s rhythms, you’ll see how as a woman, you are so intimately connected with nature’s rhythms.
Dr. Stephanie
Yeah, I love that. And to your point, if the woman still has her ovaries, we also want to just like if she doesn’t have the uterus, let’s say, of course, we know that the ovaries are the things that produce the hormones, and the uterus is, you know, the the thickening of the endometrial lining, and then the eventual shedding of it. So she still has her ovaries. There’s still going to be those hormones that are going to be produced, but there’s going to be no endometrium. No, no endometrial lining to shed. So Right. We want to be. And I don’t think that was clear in the question. I’m not sure if she still has her Yeah, cervix either. But I would say that the lunar cycle would be the best way to sort of just anchor yourself. So looking at the different phases of the moon, anchoring yourself to that. But also, if you do still have your ovaries know that you can still have some of those like PMS type of symptoms, you can still run estrogen dominant or androgen dominant, let’s say, depending on the activity of the, or the balance or lack thereof, of the hormones coming from the ovary. So wanted to just make sure
Dr. Mindy
that we Yeah, I think that’s super important. We even have one a case in our fasting group, where a woman had both her ovaries and her uterus taken out, her doctor said, you’re going to be in full menopause within three months. And a year later, she was still making hormones. And it went on for almost two to three years before she fully went into menopause. And he was shocked. But this got me thinking that when you pull an organ out, you don’t, what we don’t realize is you don’t get all the tissue out, like there can still be some of that that tissue in there and the outer part of the ovary, the thecal cells, those are making these hormones. So if you pull out the Oregon doesn’t mean that there’s not a little bit of production that can still happen, especially with a clean lifestyle.
Dr. Stephanie
Beautiful, beautifully said.
Dr. Mindy
I have one I have one I want to make sure wait since we’re on cycle. And I love this question. My daughter just started her cycle, what should be something I teach her that most people
Dr. Stephanie
aren’t? This was a good question. I’m glad. I’m glad that this was asked. I think that when when a a young woman starts cycling, one of the things that I don’t think is discussed enough, is the variations that can happen in her cycle in the first call it like let’s say she’s 12 or 13, let’s say in the first five years of her cycling, and I think that this is true for any skill, right? Like you are, you know, you start learning to ride a bike, you’re not just gonna be you know, you’re not just me doing BMX tricks, like you got to learn. You got to learn how it goes. Right. So I think that it’s especially true for teenagers. That there you can look a little bit at times, a little PCOS II, like you can sort of look a little bit androgen dominant, and that’s really just your body, you know, just to develop the normal developmental process. And the reason why I bring up that one specifically, is that it’s so often that let’s say a girl starts menstruating, she’s 13 Or you know, whatever it is 12 1314 and then A couple of years later, she’s like, Oh, that’s weird, like I have these anovulatory cycles or have these really heavy bleeding, and then she goes to her will say allopathic physician, because you might not necessarily think like, I’ll go to my naturopath, you might go to, let’s say, your medical doctor. And this is usually the time where she gets a prescription for the birth control pill, it’s like, well, you’re 1718, you’re probably going to be sexually active, if not already, and you have this wonky period. So here’s something that’s just going to fix that. And of course, we know that that’s incorrect, it doesn’t fix anything, there’s just some aberrant, you know, modulate, like some just some variations in her cycle. That’s, that is equivalent with her age. So I just want a lot more moms to be aware of that, because your daughter is going to come to you and say I’ve had the I haven’t had my period, let’s say for a month, you know, you take the pregnancy test, it’s negative, and then you know, the next time she gets it, it’s really weird that it’s erratic. And then they go to the doctor, and it’s like, well, you should probably be on the pill. And that’s not what’s happening. It’s just sort of a, I see this so much, so much with my, my teenagers, like these teenage women were the moms like we didn’t know, like, we went to the doctor, and they gave us the pill. And, you know, they, and this kind of bridges on the topic of informed consent, but we don’t actually talk about the risks around taking the birth control pill, because there’s never any game plan to get her off of it. It’s just always like, well, you’re at now you should be on the pill. And then we on the other side of that, then we’ll have women who are in their, let’s say, mid 30s, that have been on the pill, since they were 16 or 17, they want to have a baby now. And then they don’t have their period, because they essentially haven’t had it for decades. And they’re like no one told me. So that’s something that I really feel very strongly about, I think that there needs to be a conversation around a informed consent. And if you’re going to take the pill like, you know, love you and like no matter what, right, right, take the pill, if that’s what you feel is the right decision for you right now. But also be aware that there’s risks, and then just have an understanding going into those years where you’re 1516 1718, where your period can be a little bit of a, you know, it can be a little bit erratic. And that’s just very normal.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah. So well said. And what I would add on to that is, I look at it like, like, when you’re creating, walking along new grass, you know, you have to create a path, where eventually you can see where you would go and walk every day on this piece of grass. It’s the same thing when the hypothalamus, pituitary and ovaries are first learning to communicate through this amazing chemical system, they don’t quite have their rhythm down. And to your point, it can take five years for that rhythm to really happen. So if we come in with any form of birth control in that first five years, you’re really disrupting and manipulating that natural cycle, and the body may not know what it needs to do. And then on the backside, when you are trying to undo that, because you want to have a baby and you’re 29 years old, that can be very difficult. So I think birth control in those early years, it needs to be so well thought out. Now, the second thing I would say that this is a big, big mission of mine right now, is I feel like we need to have conversations with women more about how if you look at our hormones, we are meant to be a little emotionally wild is what I’m going to say that we aren’t our hormones because they’re coming and going makes it so that our emotions are going to be coming and going and all of us are going to experience emotions differently. But I feel like we don’t aren’t given the platform to be able to be like I’m teary today, or I’m irritable today. And instead we go I’m pmse and we kind of blame it on our hormones. But you know you’re teary because of those hormones or in ovulation when you’ve got tons of estrogen and you’ve got this surge of testosterone, you’re your frickin rock star and you’ve got great mental clarity and drive and go ask for a raise go handle that conflict during that time. So I have a 22 year old daughter if I could go back and give her advice at 13 when she started her cycle I would want her to understand these hormones as they are ebbing and flowing and how to work with them and when to nurture them
Dr. Stephanie
and you bring up a really good point around like shame and really accepting our physiology I think that when I was when I was you know a new men straighter will say like I was new to the club, like the worst thing I could ever imagine was like, bleeding through, you know, my pad or, you know, having someone like someone passing me a pad someone seeing me, you know, take a pad, let’s say and go into the washroom. And I love what you’re saying, because there’s, at least in I think it’s changing now, because of the work that you’re doing the work that I’m doing, there’s many others that are trying to bring awareness to the natural state of a men straighter like what she looks like and how this impacts her brain, how this impacts her body, how this impacts the way she thinks. And if we can really start removing some of the shame and I love what you said around like asking for a raise around ovulation. Like, if you can start planning your month around your cycle, how much better would we be
Unknown Speaker
oh my gosh,
Dr. Stephanie
how much happier, like, I’m going to do a podcast recording like I’m in, you know, I’m in my pre RV literary week right now. Like, I am happy to be chatting with you. Because I’m like, people, I love people, you know, and like next week, not so much, like, a bit more into me, you know, that’s what happens, like, we become just a little bit more introverted. And you know, that week before your period, you know, things are annoying you and things that you know, you’re agitated, you’re teary as you were saying. And I think if we can just begin to accept that we’re not men, you know that we’re not these like, you know, smaller archetypes of men with like pesky hormones, that we are women. And we have a different cycle, a different hormonal composition and honor that those, you know, different constituent like those different hormonal landscapes, I think will be so much happier. And that’s what I want. Like all the teenagers, like all the moms with daughters who are listening to this, to share this with their team like to listen to it with their teenagers, and then start having conversations around expectations. Because I think that one of the best things you can do as a mom, or even the dads that are listening, you know, if you have that relationship with your daughter, one of the best things that you can do for them is to kind of let them know what’s around the corner, like expect this to happen. Because when it does happen, you don’t misinterpret it, you don’t misinterpret it as something’s wrong with me, I’m teary. Something’s wrong with me. I’m emotional. It’s like if you as a mother or caregiver can say, Honey, this is what’s going to happen, you know, around this pre bleed, like the week before you get your period, you may feel like this, so that when the time comes, that she’s not misinterpreting her experience as something is wrong with her.
Dr. Mindy
Hmm. So well said. Yeah, you just elevated my thoughts on that. And this is really, again, why conversations like this is so important. And one of the ways I use it my own life and through my menopause journey, is I let the people around me know like, Hey, I’m it’s the week before, you know, I’m supposed to get my period. I’m very sensitive. I’m super Terry, I don’t want to go out. I know there’s a great party to go to on Saturday night with all our favorite friends. I don’t want to go on sit on the couch and I want to eat carbs and I want to watch Netflix. And the more I’ve been able to explain that they understand where I am a little bit better. And I think that’s it’s all in the in the Linguistics of this and being able to communicate at a deeper level with each other. But we but instead we’re not given that we push I think that week before our cycle is such a misunderstood week. And we we villainize it we bitch about it. We don’t take care of our health in it. And we plow through it. But really, we need to be nurtured. We need to nurture ourselves and slow down. When when I first I don’t know if you track your cycle on a clue app. Yeah, I do clues I use actually. Yeah. Okay. So the first time I started doing that, at 43 years old, which cracked me up that that was when I first started doing it. I was like, Oh my gosh, you know how it has a little cloudy thing it shows there and like where are your moods are I’m like, I need to share this with my office staff. I need to share it with my kids. I need to share it with my husband and be like, if you just want to know what’s going on with me. Just go ahead and go to my clue app. And you’ll you’ll know where I’m emotionally at.
Dr. Stephanie
Yeah. And I that week, you know, I wrote about this in my book. I know you’ve you talk about this a lot as well that week before you get your period I think is a is a sacred week usually like we in like modern societies like oh, she’s on the rag or Oh, she’s PMS thing or whatever. derogatory, you know, sort of slang that there is to denote that but this is usually and we talked about this when I was on your show. This is usually when you know you’re probably getting a little bit more irritated with your partner, maybe your friends, maybe jobs bothering you. But that is really a message from your body to say that there’s Miss alignment here. You are more you are exquisitely sensitive in this week to be able to pick up the areas in your life where you’re not aligned. And so I talk about sort of the week before Your period and then into the bleed week like these two weeks are so important in terms of problem solving. Because that week before you get your period, you’re like, Okay, I can see what the problem is. It’s my relationship with my husband. Like, there’s some tension, there’s like unresolved residue that’s still there from three months, the fight we had three months ago or whatever. Or I can see what the problem is, this job is sucking my soul dry, right. And then when we move into the bleed week, we’re now we’re shedding we’re getting literally shutting the realigning we’re getting rid of we’re making space. This is where we can now problem solve. And I think I might have said this on your, on the receptors podcast. You know, I when when guys say like, Okay, I’m going to have a think about it, you know, like, I’m going to think about it and I’ll come up with a problem, we need to bleed on it, we need a problem because as you bleed, you as you shared, you will be able to come to the decision that is best that is most aligned with what what it is that you should be doing.
Dr. Mindy
Oh my gosh, I love that, that that I’m gonna noodle on that one all day. The other thing I would say that I learned about my own self, when I started to really dive into the hormones that were coming going is the power of testosterone, and how we really get it in big doses for about four to five days. And then it’s then it chills out. And I feel like if I had known that, in my younger years, I think I could have had better conversations with my husband about like my libido, and like, hey, guess what, it’s day nine and day. 11? Yep, I’m gonna be chasing you. You’re that’s so good. So good. But instead, you know, I didn’t realize that my libido may have ebbs and flows, according to my hormones. Instead, it was like, I compared myself to my husband, men are getting testosterone every 15 minutes, they’re kind of ready to go. And then I started to sort of feel like what’s wrong with me? And then once I understood when it came in, I could I could definitely be like, Tiger it.
Dr. Stephanie
Yeah, Tiger. And the other thing that I think is important for women to also know about testosterone. I mean, we talk about it’s like, famous for libido. And it’s true, as you were saying, it’s like, I’m chasing my, my husband around the kitchen counter, like, I’m like, You’re it like, and I’m and I want it right. So there’s there’s that and then, you know, in addition to that, you’ll see like, increased sensitivity of the clitoris. So you’re gonna, your orgasms are going to be more powerful. But the other thing that I think is important around testosterone is and I had this conversation with Sarah Godfried, who I know, you know, well, and she said this really beautifully. And I’ll try to paraphrase what she said it was like it was, it gives you a sense of your it’s, it’s like a sense of your personality. You know, it gives you that, you know, you were saying before, like ask for the raise, you know, like you, you you take more risk, you know, you are much more forward, you’re more open. And I think that one of the things that I think women lose, or they they realize that they’ve lost maybe if they’re not, you know, lifting weights or doing some of the things that can maintain testosterone levels, is as we age, our you know, our proclivity for taking risks, our ability to be open, begins to shrink, like we have testosterone receptors in the brain. So I think it’s really, really important to note that testosterone, yes, libido, and sex drive and orgasms. And that’s really important as well. But it also has a profound impact on our personality. And I think that, you know, things like lifting weights, and I know that there’s some questions around fasting and lifting weights and stuff, which I will maybe we can jump to next. But I think that trying everything that you can to maintain muscle, let’s say as a proxy for maintaining healthy testosterone levels, not only will help your sex life, which is important, but it’s also going to help your brain and your personality and the way that you show up in the world.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, yeah. And very good point. I have to say that in my late 40s, the first my first real understanding of testosterone was when I stopped craving working out. I was like, I and I’ve, you know, I was competitive tennis player in college, like, I’ve been an athlete my whole life. And it was like, Why do I not want to work out like I would crave working out my whole life except for now in 4647. I don’t want to work out. That’s when I realized, oh, it’s because testosterone is low. So motivation and drive is also a biggie that I think we don’t talk about enough with testosterone.
Dr. Stephanie
Yeah. Speaking of which, there was let me find this question was around muscle. Here it is. How can I burn fat without losing muscle?
Dr. Mindy
Oh, okay, well, I’ll give you my favorite fasting protocol around this. And then I’m curious to hear what you say, I think you’ve got to, you’ve got to have find a really good balance between autophagy and mTOR. And my favorite hack is to actually be in a state of autophagy when you go and work out. So, you know, typically fasting wise, that’s about 17 hours, but everybody’s a little different. You go into your workout in a fasted state, you then go in and do like a strength training workout. And then after that, when you come home, your protein load, and you break your fast with protein, specifically 30 grams of protein to hit that amino acid sensor. And I have found that that that on the days that I’m lifting weights, is what will lead me out, but allow me to maximize my my muscle growth. The second thing I’ll say is that, and I will tell you again, as I age, I’m starting to really wrap my head around this more is that protein, protein, protein protein. I think in the Keto world, in the fasting world, we villainize protein a little bit because we’re like, oh, it spikes your blood sugar. But it’s really such an important macro. And if you’re not getting enough protein, you’re not as good at not only building muscle, but you’re not going to burn fat as much. So we need to make sure that we’re looking at your protein load.
Dr. Stephanie
Yeah, I love everything you just said, I would agree with that. wholeheartedly. I think that, you know, I’ve had I used to, and I’ve done this for decades, trained first thing in the morning, right? Because it was just the only time that it fit. Like it was the only time that I could kind of get it in. And I’ve had a couple of schedule changes recently, where now like right now I train five days a week. So I do two. And this was another question. So I’m answering this at the same time, I do two lower and I do three upper. Just because I’m trying to as women in general, we are weaker upper, like we’re weaker in our upper body. And I remember this from practice, like I remember, you know, we would do a test like an intake for a patient. And I would say, Okay, we’re going to test your leg strength, we do a wall set, we do like balance, proprioception, and then I would get them to do toes only push up, no knees, which is, you know, they would call it the women’s push up, which is like, oh, yeah, I get like, I get like a little like nervous tic when I hear that because I can’t, it’s like it’s not push up. It’s just a push up on your knees. Like it’s not a woman’s push up, I do push ups on my toes. So I would specifically say I want you to push up on your toes. And most women like I would say, I don’t know, I’d have 100 women that I would see like 95 of them could only do one, and then with that very poor form. So I have for decades trained fasted, as you said, and then I would, I would do a protein and a carbohydrate bolus right after. So that would be like the 30 grams of protein as you were saying, we want to we want to.
And you and I would say that it’s 30 grams of animal protein. Yes, yes. So like to like, you know, some I would say, like two and a half, maybe two to two and a half grams of Leucine, you’re going to get with like a 25 gram, let’s say serving, so you’re going to get about three grams of that with with 30 grams. So you’re, you’re you’re stimulating muscle protein synthesis, which is you’ve just broken down like the gym is where you break down your muscle tissue. And then you want to build it up afterwards. So it’s gonna go through its own reparative process, but you can amp that up by giving yourself protein right after, yep. And carbohydrates. Your muscles are very receptive post training, specifically, though, so lifting weights, specifically, to take up the protein and to take up the carbohydrates, because what carbohydrates do, you know, they’re anabolic, but they don’t, they don’t create new muscle protein, what they do is they prevent muscle protein breakdown. And if your goal if you were a 40 year old woman, 50 year old woman, 60 7080 year old woman, your goal, one of your primary goals around your house should be to preserve muscle tissue. And the way that you do that, and even grow it if you can, right. And the way that you do that, of course, is to have a net positive muscle protein synthesis. So you do that with a protein bolus. And I like to also add in the carbs, because that that prevents the breakdown of muscle proteins. So that would be what I would say, is what I most typically do. Now just I’ve had a couple of schedule changes, where I can’t work out in the morning, twice a week now. So now those and that today’s just happens to be one of those days, like every Friday, I will work out around four o’clock. And so it’s an upper body day and what I’ve noticed is I also am getting really great strength gains from that as well, and it’s, you know, my body temperatures a little warmer, I’ve had a couple of meals, you know, whatever it is. So I think that you can absolutely gain muscle in you know and lose fat. Do like doing a fasted workout. But you want to be strategic about pulsing the protein, as you were saying, as well as the carbs and in, you know, we all there’s this talk in the Keto community around as you were saying like villainizing protein, they also villainize carbs, you know, like carbs, or do you want to talk about mTOR, like that stimulates mTOR more than protein is too much carbohydrates, right. So that’s kind of where that fear comes from. But when you are strategically pulsing protein and carbohydrates, you think you can really make some incredible changes to your body composition. So you can reduce the fat like if you’re working out in a fasted state, of course, you’re going to be going through process of gluconeogenesis. But primarily, you’re going to be pulling on the triglycerides, as you know, the fat stores as your source of energy. And then afterwards, in that, you know, 24 to 48 hours, you know, depending on how hard you work, maybe it’s 72 hour reparative process, you can be increasing your protein. And as a woman, as even this is true for men too, we become more anabolic, Li resistant as we age. Yeah, this is where I, I don’t mean to throw shade at other researchers, because I think that a lot of good work. You know, people are doing this from the best of intentions. But this is where I tend to disagree with Valter, Longo and Dan Butner around this like protein restriction as a marker for longevity, because we actually need more protein as we age to overcome that anabolic resistance that naturally sets in. So when I was 25, and I had a 25 gram or 30 gram bolus of protein, I’m going to be much more receptive to that at 25, than I am at 45. So you also have to be mindful that you are over time, you were saying 30 grams of protein, so maybe at 45, you need 30 grams of protein, you know, maybe at 55, you need 35 grams, or 30 grams of protein in order to have the same response physiologically as you had with the 25 grams when you were 25.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, yeah, I actually just would dove into some research on that, that just like we get insulin resistant, or we can get insulin resistant, we age we can get amino acid resistant and those muscles, so you need more as as you get older. So And to your point, I just want to point out, I’m not anti vegetarian. But I do believe that it’s really hard to get a complete array of amino acids if you’re a pure vegetarian. And that’s personally why I eat meat, I spent 10 years as a vegetarian, so I’m not again anti it. But as I’ve moved into my 50s, like meat, and eggs, and all different kinds of animal protein is my jam, it’s my go
Dr. Stephanie
to you can get there with plant proteins, it’s just, you know, we want to be also like you can, you can get to that minimum requirement of that two and a half grams of Leucine in order to stimulate the muscle protein synthesis if you’re vegetarian, but you do have to be mindful of the calories that you have to take in in order to get there because plant proteins are typically a, we’ll call it a less robust source of that full complement of amino acids. So you typically have to have more plant proteins, like the rice or the soy or the you know, pea protein, or whatever it is, you typically have to have more than the 30 grams scoop, you typically have to have one or two scoops. So you also want to take into consideration your caloric intake as well, because that now you’re sort of, you know, maybe doubling in some cases, tripling your calories in order to get there. So you can do it. You can get there with plants, you just need a lot more of them.
Dr. Mindy
And diversity, I just read a study showing that if you are going to try to get all these amino acids, you really need to open up like the diversity of the plant sources that you’re getting it from. Right so yeah, absolutely. 100% agree.
Dr. Stephanie
What do you do for what do you do for I know I was telling them what I what I’m doing right now for training and stuff. What do you do for your exercise regime?
Dr. Mindy
What Oh, my god, yeah, right at 52. It’s been it’s been different. So the first thing I would say is in my 40s, where I about mid 40s, I actually had to stop the extreme working out. And it was just too much cortisol for me. So I was running marathons and you know, lifting weights, so I about 45, I switched to more hiking or walking. My competitive brain has to call it forward movement. Because when I say walking, I feel like I’m being lazy. So I’m like, No, I’m just forward moving today. It’s gonna be good. And then I started adding in a lot of yoga, and using that more as my strength training, doing like a Vinyasa flow kind of stronger. Again, a little more of an aggressive Yoga. But I will tell you now at 52 I’m back In the gym, I’m back doing muscle work. So I would say there’s a combination, I work out five to six days a week, and three of those days is muscle building. I love TRX. I love the resistance type training. One day a week, I’ll do a short hit workout where I’ll throw in some burpees. And I love burpees for some strange reason. I’ll do you know, more of like just a cardiovascular up and down. One day a week, I will do yoga, I don’t do it three days right now. And then I try to sprinkle in my hikes and forward movements in between all that.
Dr. Stephanie
That’s great. Yeah, that’s really balanced. And I think when you’re thinking about, you know, the pillars of exercise and fitness, like, certainly strength is one of them. Right? And, you know, let’s just be honest, like, when you resistance train, like you look better, you know, like, you’re a little tighter, you build up your curves, all those things, like you get the aesthetic stuff, but the strength is there, which I think lends to confidence. And yeah, no, it just, it feels good to be able to not need someone to let’s say, lift something for you, or pick something up, like you can do it yourself. But as you were saying, you know, the yoga and I think is important as well, because one of the things that I don’t think is is talked about enough, is as we age, you know, we have to be careful of like proprioception, like our balance. Yeah, balance and proprioception and mobility, this is really, really important. That’s not discussed enough. And you know, we lose, it’s like, lose, use it or lose it, like your body really will get good at whatever you’re doing consistently. So if you’re not doing something consistently, it’s also going to say, well, this isn’t important. So I’m just going to, you know, kind of dial this back. And, you know, as we age, of course, there’s this, we were talking about anabolic resistance. There’s also if you’re not, you know, training, we also become concerned about around osteopenic, or like some, you know, the brittle, you know, the bones becoming more brittle and more pockmarked and leading to eventually osteoporosis, and then of course, joints degrading as well. So not getting that feedback to the brain about where your joints are in space. So I think that that what you’re talking about with the yoga is really, really important. And I’m right now we’re working, I know you can’t see it, but I’m standing on a treadmill, that, so I’m at my desk, so I do. And I’m not walking right now, because audio, it would ruin the audio. Don’t look. But when we’re not when I’m not recording a podcast, and I’m working at my desk, I’m I’m walking. So that’s how I get a lot of my sort of low level in that forward movement, as you were saying, like, I get my forward movement working at the desk most of the day amazed. But I think that the I would say that if I’m being totally honest, like my proprioceptive work needs needs a look, I got a vibe plate, I got all the thing. I got all the rehab stuff. Yeah. But I got I got to prioritize that. That’s one thing I would work to be improving over the next year for sure.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, the other thing I would say is that, you know, 52, the way I approach workout is so different than 32. At 32. It was I need to work out to be able to keep my weight where I wanted it. At 52. I’m working out for functionality, I’m working out for mental health. So when you start to change eating flip, the reason you’re working out just to your point, like reason I’ve gone back into the gym to start to lift weights is because I could feel after like sitting for so long, my body sort of collapsing, and I wanted more strength to be able to you know, perform normal life. The reason I do yoga is because mentally I feel a lot better after it. The reason I go for a hike is the same thing. So it stopped becoming this weight loss tool and was more a total mental health tool. Overall,
Dr. Stephanie
I would say that that’s a useful tool. Like if there’s any practitioners that are listening to that that’s also a really good, like, you just dropped a lot of goals, I don’t even think you realize how intelligent that was, in terms of, you know, when we when we’re trying to help our female clients, sometimes we want to shift the focus from weight loss to performance. Right? And because a lot I mean, so many women will say I need to lose weight, I need to lose this, I need to look a certain way. And that’s all fine. We all want we want to honor them where they are like, I still want to look, I still want to look good, too. Like I’m not taking that away from you. But when you when you focus the the goal on performance, like how strong can you get how many? How many plates can you put on this barbell? Or how high can we get you on these kettlebells or dumbbells or whatever. I think that that also starts to gamify it and you know, for those of us that are competitive, you and me would be in this group and you’re just like, then you’re like, give it to me, you know, then you’re like I will get to those. I’m going to finish that rack. I’m going to go up to the 20 fives and then I want to go to the 30s and the 40s in the 70s and whatever. So yeah,
Dr. Mindy
yeah, yeah. And that’s why I started calling it forward movement because what I finally got to in my late 40s was, I just want to walk I don’t want to go for a run and my brain was it’d be like, well, that’s lazy. And so then I started thinking I’m like, but I’m, I’m still out in the sun, I’m moving forward, it’s helping the anxious brain, like, there’s so much benefit just because I’m not doing it at the same degree that I did it 32 doesn’t make me a failure. And that, so I renamed it, I’m going for a forward movement experience. And here I go.
Unknown Speaker
Like like walking, it might look like sprinting, I might stop and talk to a neighbor. I have no idea. But I’m moving forward.
Dr. Stephanie
That’s a nice parable for life. Right? I always want to feel like we’re in forward momentum. We want to feel like we’re moving forward. So I love that. That’s great. I love it. Where do you want to go next doc? Well, I’m
Dr. Mindy
gonna actually probably have to cut us off cuz I cuz speaking of working out, I’ve got to go grab a in 15 minutes, I gotta go meet with my trainer. But I love this. And you guys, let us know. Because if you love it, I feel like you and I could do this all day long.
Dr. Stephanie
Man, I just had such a good time with you today. Like it’s so fun. Yeah. And it’s so it’s always such a pleasure. You know, sometimes in private, you know, in private practice, I was really quite aware of this and even more. So now where I’m more in the online space. It’s, you’re not you don’t have the opportunity to see people as much as you might like. So for me, this has just been a joy. So if you, you know, on the reseller podcast on the better podcast where we’re airing these both, we’re releasing these both on the same day. If you loved this, then please let us know. There’s actually we didn’t get to like half of the question.
Unknown Speaker
I know. We got like, we have like 50 more questions. Yeah.
Dr. Stephanie
So we can certainly do part two and three, really, if there’s if there’s interest, so I hope you crush it on your workout. I hope Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, have a great time. And then we’ll see you maybe we’ll do this again. Yeah, I agreed.
Dr. Mindy
Agreed. Thanks. I love this as well. So and you can turn your treadmill on now and Exactly. Enjoy some forward movement in your office and love it. Thank you so much for joining me in today’s episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we’d love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.
// RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
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- Book: Effortless
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Love this, please do it again. At 61 I still noticed the rhythm of my moods, this was confirmed by Dr Mindy. Huge! I will pay more attention to this and use it when I’m making my schedule. Yoga and forward movement are a big part of my self care, thanks for confirming that.
So how do I get my 30 y/o daughter to listen to you ladies?
Hi I wanted to ask a question on “ask me anything but there is njo link
Hi there! It’s a recorded episode called “ask me anything.”
Can I eat pickles on a fasts? I need crunch sometimes and it doesn’t have significant calories so I thought it was ok….