Reclaiming Compassion: Empowering Women Through Transitions with Ellie Kempton

Dr. Mindy  

I Gary setters on this episode Have I got a conversation for you. So I am bringing you Ellie Kempton, who is the founder of simply nourished. And I love the statement she says that at her very core, she is a lifestyle architect empowering women to reclaim their wellness. She also happens to be a registered dietician, as you will hear, she’s now working on her PhD in behavioral therapy. And most importantly, she has a wealth of information in helping women navigate the lifestyle we need to create as we go through transitions. So there was some really important highlights that I want to emphasize to you all that you may find actually life changing in this conversation. This word transition, you know, we can look at transition as being hormonal transitions like through menopause, we can look at transition as from, you know, a mother’s lens as her children launch into the world and she becomes an empty nester, we can look at Job transitions, there are so many transitions that women go through in their lifetime. And in those transitions are incredible moments to recreate yourself. And I can tell you, as you will hear in this episode, as a woman who has been going through a lot of transitions in the last year, I am learning more and more about myself in a very, very bumpy transition. Transitions are not always smooth. And I know a lot of you are experiencing that in your own lives. And I honestly as a society in the last, you know, couple years with the pandemics so many people are breaking open paradigms changing their life and transition is at the forefront of this. So what I’m excited to bring to you is this beautiful conversation that Ellie and I had, about how do we bring the softness, that as women we are so good at and is so necessary and that our hormones demand that softness? And how do we use that too, as strength as we transition into new parts of our life? And we even go into how do you go within to get to know your own voice? We talk about how do you project out into the world, this new version of you? How do you create a daily practice about building a life that is unique to you, that isn’t built around pleasing those people around you, but is actually centering yourself, and hearing your own voice so that you can live a life that is built on your terms. It is an incredible discussion. And I think you all will find not only a lot of inspiration from it. But what was beautiful about this with Ellie is that she’s got the biochemistry background. So we we go in and out of a philosophical discussion and morph into a cellular discussion and what our hormones are doing and saying to us, it’s, it’s unreal. I really thoroughly enjoyed this discussion. And I’m excited to bring it to you. So Ellie Kempton, enjoy

Dr. Mindy  

a Dr. Mindy here and welcome to season four of the resetter podcast. Please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself. Again, if you have a passion for learning, if you’re looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Enjoy.

Dr. Mindy  

So let me just start off by telling you welcome to the resetter podcast. I always literally feel like I’ve just invited you into my home. And there’s gonna be no small talk. We’re just diving right into the juicy, Pete’s bits of information that everybody needs to hear, but a lot of what women need to hear. So thank you, Ellie for joining me.

Ellie Kempton  

I’m so honored. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Mindy  

So I here’s where I want to I want to start with a few things that you mentioned before we started recording and there are two words that have stuck in my head. One, you’ve mentioned transition, and I want to talk about that because I can tell you as a 53 year old woman, I’ve been in a lot of transition in my life in the last couple of years that probably would have happened even without the pandemic. And then I want to talk about this word disruption because transitions can be disruptive.

Ellie Kempton  

And if you allow them to disrupt yourself, there’s like a new version that can can emerge. So I’m learning to embrace the word disruption that when my life feels like it’s being disrupted, there’s actually an opportunity that is emerging. So can we start with those two words and what they mean to you, and how you’re teaching women to not only transition into new versions of themselves, but to disrupt, perhaps a life that isn’t working for them? Absolutely, this is something that I just delight in opening up a conversation around, because it’s not a conversation that’s being had. And that’s not a conversation, it’s almost something we hide from. Transition is something that we don’t talk much about, especially when it has to do with, dare I say hormones, right, which are, you know, turns out, there are superpowers turns out to change our inner landscape, day to day, minute to minute. And so transition to me is an invitation, it’s an invitation to create expansion, because you are literally allowing yourself, to reclaim your agency over what comes next, you’re giving yourself permission to possibly kind of metabolize and release what no longer serves you. And it’s also permission to be open to something bigger, that’s more aligned with you than you thought possible. And in just my own story, and in my own just career in the functional medicine space, I find that when you’re in transition, it can be so scary, because you sometimes don’t know you have to be okay, not knowing you have to be okay, asking questions, being curious and creating an environment for yourself to just have space to be in the unknown. And that is scary. I know, through my own coaching, I’ve just been, I’ve been scared of space, it’s not something that we are empowered to take ownership over. So I have just kind of made it my mission to make transition be something that I talk about quite a bit, but invite women into a conversation around so that we can put on our wellies and dig through the mess of the transition together and find the message and find love what is what is on the horizon for for this beautiful, gorgeous woman that I’m sitting across from and, and empowering her to take ownership over it to. And I think that’s the piece that I think is missing. If I’m going to be honest with you around in the wellness industry, I think you and I are just entrenched in a cacophony of noise around what your next step looks like as though you can’t trust yourself. And when I’m helping someone in the midst of a transition transition, I really want to put them in a position where they are building so much self efficacy and empowerment that they then feel ready for whatever transition comes next. Oh my gosh, I feel like were you just sitting in the therapy session I just had an hour ago. I know because I was having the same therapy session.

Dr. Mindy  

I was literally just with my therapist talking about all the changes in my life, and how I’m I’m really cognizant as things are changing to find myself that I think as women, we have been so conditioned to think about everybody else to constantly put everybody else’s needs ahead of our own. That one of the things I’m learning with my menopausal journey and being a 53 year old woman is that I now for the first time, I’m getting enough space for mothering. I’m getting enough space for my practice. I’m getting enough space for my business, to be able and probably even from my menstrual cycle, if I think about it, to be able to ask myself, What do I want? And in that asking what I want, I’m finding that there’s a muscle there that I’ve really got to exercise that I have not exercised. And I think that’s why transitions get messy is because we if you transition into a new phase of your life without asking you yourself, what do you want, you can just go into another transition of what the world wants you to do. So how do we how do we make sure a transition is our

Ellie Kempton  

own? Oh, I love that. Well, we all happen to have our internal GPS system. I like to Hot the goddess positioning system. Oh, isn’t that so cute. But I think of everyone that I work with as goddesses. So I really like to talk all the time about tapping into that deep GPS system that we are all fully equipped with. No one is without their inner GPS. And that GPS system is what we feel. What we feel is deep information about what needs are met, and what needs are unmet. And that is what enables you to create an environment where you’re not just trying to do the right thing, which which inevitably ends up falling into you following someone else’s direction instead of your own and then you’re living someone else’s life. But when you are following that inner GPS system, you’re listening to those inner whisperings which are always redirecting you, always pivoting you telling you to turn left because right no longer serves you. That’s when you know that you’re coming back into alignment with what is actually meant for you. And it is your story that you are going to step into. And I have felt intimately what it feels like to own someone else’s story. I’ve been a high performance athlete, I love checking the boxes, I love making sure that I’m doing the right thing. Even if it’s misaligned. And when I begin, I’m on my mission, I think we’re all on our journey towards this place. And not even you know, we’re in process of, of listening to that inner GPS system, I have found that the things that are in store for me are so much bigger than I thought possible. Because they’re always a a reflection of what my inner wisdom not my induction doctrine ation is, is taking me towards

Dr. Mindy  

what what was your sport that you played? I was a swimmer. Ah, oh, yeah. So here’s what’s interesting, because I, I’ve really had to undo my the conditioning of my athletic brain. Because the athletic brain, you learn to override the pain, you learn to shut out the noise and you and if you do it at a high level, you learn to listen to a coach. And if we take that example, and we apply it to the world today, there are so many women that I see that are living lives that are creating more pain, and they’re listening to voices that society has set up like you should do this not that and in that we have completely lost ourselves. And so I resonate when you said you were an athlete, I was like, oh, yeah, you’ve have that athlete brain. And that is a tough one because we trained it to not listen. And so I’m curious, your thoughts on that? And I also want to add a second part to that question, which is, we live in a patriarchal society, do you think that women have not been given the freedom? I know we’re free, but have we not really been given the emotional freedom to express our own unique selves in this society?

Ellie Kempton  

Well, I will. So much I want to say about that second one, but I’ll double click on the first one, because it is very much a part of my story. And I see it in the lives of so many women that I serve, which is this admiration for numbness, it’s as though we lose ourselves in this badge of honor of pain, or just persistence or grass or busy name, your drug of choice. It’s like, we create this, almost this amplification together talking about it, you know, instead of empowering each other by just celebrating each other, we’re always one upping each other with what’s what’s hard or what hurts. And, to me, that message is what creates some of this disconnection between our inner knowing our inner GPS. So I very much understand that and the very best way that I have found to put people back in a space where they start to and it’s a process it’s taken me years to put myself in a space where I am back in touch with good being good emotions not being labeled as good and UNK and discomfortable emotions being labeled any which way it’s just embracing the wholeness of putting everything on a kind of a similar platter and navigating it all through the lens of just information not not not a leverage point. And when I do it, when I do life like that, I have a different definition. And of happiness, because I think that’s what we’re all trying to get towards when we’re getting our way through life. And we’re creating this environment where hard equals good. We’re always out to get somewhere. And I think that’s an outcome driven life. And what I want to put women back into is a process driven life. That is this fluid, kind of splashy, splashy move movement towards this place where you kind of allow yourself to be uncomfortable, but you don’t. You don’t idolize it. Yeah. And then you allow yourself to be comfortable. And you pause there. I think we’ve gotten so out of touch of being comfortable and, and even just at ease, that we don’t even allow ourselves to pause there either.

Dr. Mindy  

Can you give give me an example, if you don’t mind in your life where you are applying that thought?

Ellie Kempton  

Who I apply that thought, honestly, throughout my work day, just day to day, I think I’ve always been the athletes that I’ve been have thought, wow, okay, the more clients I see, the later I work the game know the game. Yeah, I’m gonna win this game. Watch it. Yeah. And I remember actually, just one time working with my coach and mentor just literally dissolving when she said, Will, Ellie, what do you do with space? What is a day off? What is a week off look like? I didn’t even I didn’t have the words to describe because that was so scary. Because comfort meant weakness. And, you know, pleasure meant some sort of inadequacy, like, shouldn’t I? Shouldn’t I be working harder? Can I receive that? Yeah. And so in this space that I’m creating, and trying to nurture in the clients I see and in my own life, is the space where you can fluidly tap into a multitude of emotions and not not create an environment where one is necessarily better. It’s all information guiding you on your path. And and what I think we’re falling prey to you mentioned the patriarchal piece, and is that debilitating to us? I think what has happened, and I’ve thought about this a lot, I see it in practice, I study it a lot. I’m actually getting my PhD right now in behavior design. So I’m really studying humans, like, you know, animals in the wild. It’s so fun. The wild Oh, we are Yeah. And what I think about is the fact that a lot of our systems for success and kind of modern modern day success are set up around structure and structure is a very masculine concepts, yes, that the power that we have the capacity to tap into requires both those feminine qualities of fluidity that I just referenced, and the masculine structure to hold in power. Yes. So I like to describe this, this beautiful polarity between masculine and feminine like a fishbowl with water in it, you’ve got to have that structure piece. But it doesn’t have to be a cement block, like we’ve been taught, it has to that’s what suffocating, it can be thin glass. And then within it is the feminine fluidity that holds life and energy. But it’s got to be contained by those masculine structures. So when I’m building out, I like to call myself a lifestyle architect where I really help women architect their lives and architect their days, I notice when somebody is talking to me about the architecture of their day, and they’re bringing in blocks of cement. And then they’re going to do this at this time. And then they’re going to do this at this time. And if if they feel this, they just take this that is a very kind of a masculine, overly predominant masculine way of approaching it. And I I back them up and I say, whoa, whoa, what would it look like? If you gave yourself I don’t know, the option to feel your way into what what sounded good to drink for tea instead of just telling yourself ashwagandha tea at 10:30am is right to drink.

Dr. Mindy  

Yes. This is this was exactly what fast like a girl, the book I just launched into the world was all about was taking something that was allowing both men and women to succeed at health, something that became so popular as intermittent fasting, and give it that fluidity. And it’s been really fun to watch women step into it and experiment with it. But I will tell you that you know, we get hundreds of 1000s of comments on our socials every week. And there’s a there is definitely a subset of both men and women but a lot of women that are like just telling me what to do. Just Just tell me what to do. And I think we are at a point where if we’re going to invite this feminine back into our healing process. There is no one size fits all. There’s nobody that can tell you what to do. There’s just you starting to understand what feels right for you. So I love this glass fishbowl idea is really, really important. And, you know, I’ve done some research on matriarch patriarchal worlds. And I think that to me, the patriarch just represents like power. It’s like a structure that has power over you. So in the example you just gave, it’s like, people wanting a cement block, tell me what to eat, tell me what supplements to take, tell me how to fix my hormones. Like that is still a very patriarchal power position. Whereas the matriarch to me is more about nurturing. So it’s like, how do you nurture yourself into a better life. And if I look hormonally at the transition that happens to us after 40, we really lose our neurochemical armor. And all of the stuff that’s not working for us comes up, and is there for us to be revealed. And I really, that is a pivotal transition moment. So how do we use this construct of menopause and I just want to point out that menopause has the word pas in it. It’s just, it’s there for a reason. It’s there for a reason. Yeah. So if you could, if you had a stadium full of 60,000 women in that hormonal transition, where that neurochemical armor is coming off, and you could inspire them, and give them some ideas on how to transition through that in their own unique brilliance, what would you say?

Ellie Kempton  

Oh, I know exactly what I’d say. But first, I’d grab the biggest megaphone I had possible, so that every single woman in that stadium could hear me and I would say, the very first thing I want you to do is become your very best friend, watch yourself, watch your patterns get really up close and personal, really get curious about yourself, because what you just described to me, is when that armor comes off, and you don’t know yourself, the really scary moments come when you feel so like the, there’s no nothing that you can turn to that meets needs that you don’t even know about. Right? If you you are in a space where you have so little self awareness around both clinical patterns and emotional patterns, then that’s a really kind of scary place to be, which is where some of those reactive tactics and overhauls come from that are spoon fed by the wellness industry, in many cases where it’s like, okay, yeah, just tell me what to do, I’ll just do it, because I don’t know what I actually need. So I’d say self awareness becomes your most powerful tool I have I give my clients of, he’ll love this. A little homework assignment, I caught the bug book. And it comes from Jim Collins, it’s not my idea, but I kind of take it a different way. And I basically have them write their day observing themselves as though they’re a bug. And what this does is it allows them to take the shame and the criticism around their daily patterns, and just they’re narrating their lives. They’re just telling me what they do, what they like, what they don’t like, what they eat, when they’re hungry, what they eat when they’re stressed. But they tell it through the lens of them being a cute little bug, a little ladybug, or whatever. And when you do this, you create an opportunity for a little bit more, not only permission of what comes next, but so much more compassion for what you’re feeling. And you give yourself the opportunity to create enough space. That’s the thing where this pause comes in, as the healing comes in the space, right. And so that narration Yes, it’s a cute little homework assignment. But I’m helping my clients zoom out a few lenses and go up a few levels and look down and see what hasn’t been metabolized. Because when I look at the different transitions through our 20s, and our 30s and 40s and 50s. I say, you know, when you lose that emotional armor, I love how you put that what ends up happening is you start to confront old patterns that weren’t ever addressed. Or, you know, you’re, you know, aging isn’t linear, it’s cyclical, and so you’re spiraling back to things that you were able to armor yourself against. And without that armor, it’s a really intimate, very raw space to be, but it’s a space where you can get really familiar with yourself through the lens of with with the ultimate goal to build a relationship back up with yourself with value Yeah, yes, that’s what I’m in the business of doing. I’m putting women back in relationship with their body. Ah, it feels like a stretch for some women, to, for me to say there’ll be their best friend, but we get there. And so that that narration tactic is where I would start,

Dr. Mindy  

do you think that grief is a necessary ingredient to the transformation process?

Ellie Kempton  

1,000%

Dr. Mindy  

I was, I was afraid you were gonna say

Ellie Kempton  

yes. And you know, I didn’t I didn’t pull on the thread you gave me earlier on. You said let’s talk about rupture. It’s not adjacent to grief. I think reef is a really powerful way to MIT. I love this word metabolize. I probably overuse it because I’m a dietitian. But I love this word metabolize. Because what it does is it allows you to release things that no longer are in alignment with you at a soul level in many cases. And so I think some of the most transformative, radiance surges forward that I see women encounter, come after a deep rupture. I love this term rupture before radiants. You rupture, you grieve, you lose. And you allow that pivotal moment of grief. And it’s not even a moment, it’s a wave that comes and goes, there’s no five step plan to grieve. That wave is going to continue to make space for so much light to come through.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, I I’ve told this story on my podcast before, but last year was my grieving year. And it was our second child was launched into the world, I closed my clinic, a lot of people who are meaningful in my life moved away. And I was left to just sit with myself. And that was so scary. And fear turned into grief. And I really just, I had a really good friend that just said to me, go into the grief, sit there, don’t numb it, don’t try to change it, try to listen to it. And I spent almost, you know, several months just in a incompletely grieving state. And it is really powerful when you allow yourself the freedom to do that. And then keep asking yourself, what do I want to emerge? What do I want to emerge. And when I look at some of the statistics on menopause, like the most common time for a woman to commit suicide is between 45 and 55. And 70% of all divorces that happen over 40 are initiated by women. I what I see in those moments are women that are trying to make a change without a toolbox to be able to do it. And I’m not saying every woman should have stay in their marriage. And you know, but I feel like what I have a new lens on menopause, that it truly is an opportunity to, to sit and with ourselves and say, what is working, what is not working? And where do I fit into this next version of myself? And if we do that, as a culture, I think we’re going to see women who age as these wise elders of our community, because they were given that opportunity to do that. And so I’m curious, your thoughts on that, or anything you would add to that, but I really am like, My heart hurts when we’re only looking at menopause through the lens of HRT, or we’re only looking at having the conversation that a menopausal woman is a little crazy in her brain like this. We don’t want to miss this moment. This is our moment.

Ellie Kempton  

Yes. And what if we looked at that grief and that sorrow or sadness, or even when I was talking about before that uncomfortable things, as part of the human experience, and we allowed ourselves to human with one another over a because maybe, maybe that sadness and that sorrow is is literally it allowing ourselves to feel it is allowing ourselves to identify the tools that need to be in the toolbox? Because we’re so jump quick to jump to the toolbox. We’re so quick to create the

Dr. Mindy  

patriarchal that. Yes. Right that yes, I’m used to living in a world that has structure and you’re now asking me to unstructured myself to find myself what how do I do that?

Ellie Kempton  

Exactly. And believe me, I am the biggest culprit of in my moments when I am still, you know, living off of the high of just having a fixit kit, which the highest short lived because it always feels you at the end of the day. I will I want someone to just tell me I would be that one on your social page saying okay, Mindy, just tell me what to do. But I will Say that, that place of allowing that that sadness to not only create stillness, and maybe a little bit of silence, which is scary, too, I’ve heard you talk about, you know, even writing your book and that, that stillness and that silence can be so scary, because it’s super scary. Yeah. But that’s the traveling professor. That’s the that is the informant for not only how we show up in our next step, but how we empower the woman beside us to show up to.

Dr. Mindy  

Okay, so that’s another key thing that you just said. And I will now be like, fully transparent about my own journey and launching fast like a girl out into the world. I’ve just been nonstop travel. And I hit a point in the last week where I’m like, Okay, I need to pause, like, I can’t preach one thing, and do something different. And it’s really scary as a powerful woman to say, I cannot do this anymore. And yet, each time I’ve been trying to articulate that to the people closest to me, the reflection I’ve gotten back, is Thank you. Because when you stand up and say that you’re giving me permission to stand up and say that, so that that concept has actually got me thinking about the term feminism, and how feminism is a bit how the feminist movement is a bit of an aggressive like, we can do anything a man can do. And we we can, when we allow softness into our life as well.

Ellie Kempton  

Yes. So softness is receptivity. Ah,

Dr. Mindy  

okay, expand on that, because I think that’s what we’re missing. We’re trying to make it one or the other. But we can be more powerful if we embrace the softness. So talk a little I love this idea of receptivity and softness. What does that mean?

Ellie Kempton  

Yeah, so to me and of course, I my working definition as I just live the human life, that swirly and twirly, and you learn as you go with the softness, because my instinct is not to be soft. I want to win. Are you right me, me softness to me has been trained since I was a little girl that it is weak, yes. But when I’m receptive, and when I’m soft, that is where I actually receive what not only wisdom, which is if you talk about the power of the journey of the woman, it’s receiving wisdom, not only from others, but most importantly from ourselves. You actually receive that wisdom. But you’re also remain curious. You’re curious, you’re ready for me to when you’re curious or ready for expansion when you’re certain you can tract. And don’t get me wrong, you have to be you know, there are this goes back into the polarity of masculine feminine, the fishbowl, you need a certain amount of certainty. But I look at softness, as remaining curious in all situations. I’ve started this practice for myself lately, where I wake up and I just asked myself a few questions about what the day holds instead of what used to be my MO, which is my greatness journal. Here’s what I’m certain right, be great. There’s right. There’s

Dr. Mindy  

my affirmations out and do my vision board like that is so patriarchal, yes, it’s really interesting.

Ellie Kempton  

But that curiosity that questioning that softness, that receptivity, it’s always going to be opening your aperture up to what is available to you, and a softness for me when anytime I break and i i You know, in many cases, it’s forced but when I allow myself to be soft, softness comes before a surge. It just is amazing how much that softness allows me to sink into myself and and tap into those whisperings that knowing that GPS system we talked about. And modeling that softness. I’ll tell you I have a tribe of mentors. I think women in mentorship is so powerful. And my mentors model softness so well, when they say they don’t know or they ask really good questions. It’s all about there. They’re not throwing out answers or giving advice because advice is brittle. It’s very context dependent many time Where’s questions are so expansive, and that comes back? I think when you ask questions, you’re you’re telling the other person years, your remaining soft, your remaining receptive. And, I mean, I geek out to the level of being the little biochemist that I am I think, man, even at cellular level, when the cell is not receptive, you could give it all the most invaluable information in the world. But it’s going to fall on deaf ears, you’re not going to receive it.

Dr. Mindy  

Oh my god, that was that was so brilliant. I was asking, I’ll just back up a little bit on a on a situation that happened to me a couple of weeks ago, I was on the diary of the CEO podcast, very large podcast, and it was a three hour interview. And at the end of it, he asked me if you could just design a workweek for a man versus a woman, what would it look like? And I had never really been asked that question. And I, of course, I’m thinking of it through the lens of hormones. And the answer I gave was that I feel like the patriarchal and again, I’m not, I don’t, to me, the patriarchal just means a rigid structure that hasn’t really been working for women, I feel like the seven day work week is actually works well for the male hormone body and the male a male hormones, but that women really would do better with like a monthly workweek, and an honoring of a recovery week before the week before our periods or in a menopausal situation, you would just, maybe you map it to the lunar cycle where there’s a Recovery Week. And so I started to explain this to friends post interview, and so many of my feminist friends said, that is going to make women look weak, what you just said, is going to make it sound like women can’t do the workload that men can do. But if we flip that, to your analogy of receptivity of like a cell, and the cell has to be open and soft and permeable, for it to invite hormones in for it to invite nutrients in. And when it’s rigid and inflamed, you can’t bring any nutrients in and toxins can’t get out, then that doesn’t work for anybody, but especially the female body. So how can we bring a new flavor to the way in which women even approach work that allows for softness, when we are trying to perform at the level we’re trying to perform at to keep up with the success patterns that has been created by the patriarchal world.

Ellie Kempton  

That is something that I am really grappling with, in my own, just tiny but mighty team just in the rhythms that we work within, but in my own life of really standing up for my rhythms of work, because I really do follow a cyclical pattern in my creativity and my production, which is newer to me, but life changing. And the way that I would approach this is the way that I actually approach and go with me on this, I approach and empower my clients with gut issues when they go out to eat at dinner parties, where anybody can eat, seemingly, everybody can eat anything. And instead of equipping them with the whole laundry list of things that they can eat, and you know, they’re sorry, they can’t eat them, which only brings negative attention to their situation, and people feel sorry for them. I equip them with the most powerful sales pitch for what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and why it’s changed their lives. And before they know it, they’re coming back to me saying everyone wants to do what I’m doing. Like, you know, when you approach this, this dichotomy, this difference in work schedule, because you’re leveraging your own innate zone of genius. And you’re, you’re coming to the table saying, watch what I can produce when I’m in the power phase of my cycle when I am literally cranking out creative energetic vibes Just you watch what comes out of me. But when you when I tap into the rest and the integration, and the pause, you’re gonna see me come back to the workforce ready to run through a brick wall. That’s right when it’s, you know, when it’s, that’s right, advertised like that. I think there’s so much that we apologize for as women navigating our cycles. And I want to put that a completely different spin on that and say, Watch me shine when I allow myself to work in synchronicity with the rhythms of my body you won’t even believe what’s about to happen.

Dr. Mindy  

That’s it. That’s it. Yep, that’s it and that is power. There’s we can do more when we honor the softer side of ourselves. So I 1,000% agree with you. And I it’s taken me till my 50s to really see that and it’s taken the journey through menopause, to really ask myself You know, questions i for the last 10 years as I’ve been going through this process, and then really defining a new version of myself that really works for this new map of hormones that I have one and because of your your health, background and medical background and clinical understanding the human body, I’m curious what you think about this statistic that I keep hearing coming at the forefront, which is 80%, of all autoimmune conditions happen to women. And I know we can say, well, it’s beauty products. And it’s this, and it’s that, but if we go to the root of what autoimmune conditions are, is it’s the body attacking itself. And I recently have some new ideas around that, that I think we turn on ourselves a lot, because we’re not honoring ourselves. And so we get stuck in the production of the world. And we start to feel like we either can’t keep up or we were exhausted, or we don’t know ourselves. And instead of saying, hey, I need to rest, hey, I need to love on myself, we turn on ourselves mentally. And if we turn on ourselves mentally long enough, we eventually turn on ourselves physically. What are your thoughts on that, and on why autoimmune conditions happen to more women than men?

Ellie Kempton  

Two thoughts. Number one, I think you are spot on, there’s such a powerful analogy there that I think really translates at the biological level. I mean, you read anything about applied psychophysiology. And when you when you are constantly thinking about yourself in a critical way, there’s no way that warfare is not going to be taken on on your own biological system. And I also think I’d go as far as to say some of that criticism is such a deep reflection of our inability to celebrate ourselves, our inability to rest in this space of enoughness, and install winds into our neuro chemistry. And, dare I say, brag about things that we are so proud of, we’re always creating a situation where what we are and who we are is not enough. And that does create this deep inner immune turmoil. And so I think not to say that teaching women to celebrate themselves is going to be the antidote to autoimmune conditions. But if we can create an environment where we not only know what it looks like to pause and take and receive going back to that receptivity, a sense of pride and self efficacy and agency, I have no doubt that that translates to biological protection, and, and preservation. It’s so it’s such a great, you know, it’s catabolism to always be in the space of criticism. And so, when I look at a women’s women’s physiology, just at a biological level, I think there’s a big argument that you could make, that just our heightened sense of awareness creates that immune stimulation, right? That’s one way I described to clients, I say, you know, we are, we are hardwired for fertility. And with that comes a lot of heightened sensitivity to our environmental cues and toxins and all of that. Yeah. But what would it look like to leverage that and use that heightened sense of awareness, awareness, to celebrate more things than anybody else? Because you’re more aware of them?

Dr. Mindy  

Yes. Well, I always say we have a we have a wider emotional spectrum because of our hormones. And actually, you you bring up a really interesting point is the human body is programmed for two things, both men and women, the number one is survival, our body will always prioritize survival over anything else. But as women, we have a number two, which is reproduction. And in that reproduction, if you just think of our body parts, in order to reproduce, there has to be an invitation in to us, there has to be a sense of what is right to come into us. And in that we have a heightened psychic ability, which I actually think is estrogen I think estrogen gives us because if you look at ovulation, we’re at that estrogen is at her peak. And I believe that estrogen has been given a bad rap that we that the world tends to think of estrogen is what makes us emotional. But I’d like to rebrand estrogen and say that her superpower is that you are keenly psychic and intuitive when she comes in, and it because you need to be to make the right decision for you. and who you’re going to reproduce with? And right, go ahead, I can tell you oh, I’m

Ellie Kempton  

freaking out. It’s no accident. I say this to clients as I draw out for the 100th time, which I love. My cute whiteboard over here has seen the female cycle 1000s of times. And it’s no accident, I say that the height of of estrogen coincides with the beginning of ovulation. Right? Yeah, that mental acuity around the time that your libido is firing up, means your brain is being bathed in mental acuity. And so you have the bandwidth and the fortitude to make big, amazing creative decisions. And I fully agree with that, that the fact that our biochemistry is designed to make sure that when we are ready to reproduce, we are also at the height of our capacity to think for ourselves. Yeah.

Dr. Mindy  

And, and I think that estrogen is an is an extrovert that she makes us go without, without outside of ourselves, because that’s what she’s trying to do is scan the environment for reproduction. And when that goes away, during menopause, it’s an invitation to stop looking outside yourself for the answers. As estrogen diminishes, you now have an opportunity to go within. And when we look at even things like and I’m not anti HRT, but when we look at this, like continual discussion about we need more estrogen, we need more estrogen, I would agree we need age appropriate estrogen. But the goal is not to bring back the estrogen of 35. The the goal is in the 55 and 65 year old body to learn to navigate your own life and your own mind with a more internal lens, not an external one.

Ellie Kempton  

Yes. And how cool is it that we have the capacity to always do to revisit that convergence between the outer and inner knowing because the more consistently and bravely and precisely you follow that inner knowing the more precise and beautiful your outer world becomes? Yes, it’s a reflection of that inner knowing, right.

Dr. Mindy  

And this is, these are the kinds of conversations I want to crack open for women to have. And yet we the context around menopause has been, you know, you get emotional, you get depressed, you’re, you know, you’re gain weight, you’re not sleeping, it’s all very external driven. And what’s not being had is Yeah, but you get intuitive, you start caring about yourself a lot more than you care about everybody else, you have a whole lot of wisdom that life has provided you so you have an internal knowing that you might have not had in your younger years, there’s so much there. And I feel like the way we’re going to amplify this message that you and I are talking about is by gathering women, and helping women have these discussions and supporting each other, as opposed to sometimes what we do as women is we either feel in competition with other women, we get together and we bitch with other women, what would it look like especially after 40 If women got together and shared conversations, like you and I are having right now and supported each other on this incredible transitional journey inward, which is really what menopause is. So talk to me a little bit. Again, these are ideas that have been floating around in my head. And it’s so fun to talk to somebody who sees it through a very similar lens. But how do we create a society where women are nurturing women through the menopausal journey?

Ellie Kempton  

Well, it starts with making bragging, socially acceptable. So I will say I actually every conversation I start in my one on one sessions and any group environment, I have this gorgeous community of women who are from around the country, and we gather once a week for a call. And they there they have been trained to know that they may not engage in the call until they brag about something that they could not be more incredibly proud of. And then they get to celebrate one another. So before I know it, my chat feed has just exploded. It’s I love just hundreds of women just literally loving on each other singing their song of significance, and really building each other up because we as women, we require one another to achieve our own greatness. And when one woman wins, you step into that vibration. And so I want the women under my care to own their brilliance and to inhabit the full landscape of their potential. And sometimes you need for a while for someone else. We’ll still be giving you those prompts. So when I’m studying what one of my biggest fields of focus right now is on the power of self efficacy for behavior sustainment. And what I will say is when women are, are given validation externally about their greatness, they start to internalize it, and then they start to own it, and they start to really take it and, and run with it. It’s like they you pass the baton to them.

Dr. Mindy  

Yes. So Oh, my gosh, you just brought up a really interesting thought that I have been doing with the women in my life, when a woman does something spectacular, that I’m in admiration of, instead of what I think the younger version of me would do, would be like, Oh, they’re so spectacular. This, I’m not that. And so I kind of again, turn on myself. But the more the Wiser version of me is now saying, Let me tell the women that, and I’ve had more fun going to women in my life that I really admire and saying, You’re amazing, like, I love this about you. And you just watch a whole woman soften. So if you look at how we can support each other, how do we verbalize to each other, something that we admire in them, and like you said, then we are stepping in the vibration of that. And I would love to see a world where when when you see a woman when it is your when and then you go and you compliment her, then you’re now even more in that vibration and and working in alignment with her, I really want to help me create this, like, I feel like you and I are thinking so similarly, and I really hope the women hearing this is like it, if we’re going to make a healthy change for ourselves, we have to start to verbally express what we admire in other women. And we have to stop the shaming, the guilt, the the torment we’re giving ourselves in our own brain often because we see another woman succeeding.

Ellie Kempton  

Exactly. And to me, it starts small. I think that is such a powerful, I think because it has such a ripple effect. We don’t have to take this on all ourselves. I mean, take that example that I just gave where my prompt is, hey, something you’re proud of, and then love on someone else, that I don’t have hundreds people in my call, they are all loving on each other so much more because it just started with something tiny, and very approachable. And so what I would encourage just everyone listening to practice and start with is literally just make it a point to text a friend randomly about randomly amazing things. Tell her tell one of your friends why they are literally rocking your world today. And don’t let it be for any reason I think we wait for there to be there has to be, you know, an invitation or somebody has to do something spectacular. That is amplifying and I’d say exacerbating that idea that we have to earn celebrations we have to know each other’s respect when you just showing up is it is a powerful move in and of itself and be present for the world. Because the world depends on you is the message we want to give each other right. So agree. And so I think it really doesn’t mean it’s amazing what it feels like to get that random text. I have a group of girlfriends which I’m sure you’re not shocked to know that all my best friends are in their 50s and 60s. Just Of course, they’re my daughter’s. And we just have this random loving, amazing text thread where everyone just somehow you’ll you’ll randomly get a love note from one of them for no reason. And I cannot tell you the impact it has on my day. I am so ready to do that for someone else. I think it starts on that microscopic level. But I think for the cultural shift, it’s about really making this conversation because conversations I think also have an even more powerful amplifying vibration to this. So having this conversation, bringing it up and saying like how, how are you feeling empowered, you know talking to people in your life and getting a pulse on what’s lighting them up and what’s making them feel ready to take on and own their magic for the day. And really empowering them in that is something that also creates any a big ripple too. I know just I know when I hear women talking about this, I feel so lit up to keep the conversation going. So I think that’s a powerful move to but unfortunately I also think we missed the boat when when young when girls are young, I think at the ripe old age of 10 years old, young girls are being indoctrinated and social media is not helping No, no, this disempowerment and this competition and this jealousy and and then you couple on top of that women not knowing their cycles, and it’s just a rubber band ball of a mess. Well said, I think it starts there.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah. One other thought that I have on everything we’re talking about, and you’re a lifestyle experts. So you have a background in nutrition like you, you get this, and is that when we are not taking care of the food we eat this not prioritizing sleep when we’re not to nurturing ourselves, we become even more disconnected. So even though everything we’re talking about, I think is this powerful amplification of what the world needs from women and what women how women can thrive in this world. I also strongly feel like the the worse our diet is the the more we skimp on sleep, the less we’re exercising all the foundational ideas, the harder it is to tap in to who you truly are, and to hear your own internal voice. Do you feel do you? What would you say on that? Do you think junk food pulls us away from hearing our own internal voice?

Ellie Kempton  

Well, exactly, I think that’s a brilliant way to describe it. Because at a cellular level, if we go back to that receptivity piece, you create biochemical dysfunction that is hard to rise above emotionally, when your physical standards are not met. So as much as I never want to create an environment where someone’s inputs need to be perfect. In fact, I typically in practice, folks focus more on the outputs, how are we detoxing? How are we metabolizing life um, I do think that there are some standards, some base information nutrient requirements that the body needs to depend on for safety, you described our basic needs being you know, to be safe and to reproduce well, nutrients your body recognizes creates an environment of safety, it recognizes that and notices what it is. And it’s almost like, Okay, I’m home, I feel safe, I nurtured and nourished. So that is very important. And for me, I think just being very consistent about the basic fundamentals is important because when you’re basic, when you’re supplying those to the body, you can then create the space, your body needs to do some of this more abstract, fluid, emotional work that we’re talking about. So the physical needs being met is something I really do tap into. I just think sometimes, there’s this notion that if the physical needs are met with deep perfection, you will come back to life and feel quote unquote, happy all the time. Yeah,

Dr. Mindy  

yeah, no, I think of us as channels. You know, we are downloading information from you know, whatever you want to call it, universe, God, however that works for you. Plus, we’re hearing signals from our body. And we’re getting downloads from what our cells and our organs want. And the more we eat food that is filled with toxins. The end, the more polluted our bodies are, the less we can hear those messages as clearly. So if there’s I understand, like, there’s this, the diet culture wants us to be rigid to be able to lose weight. I’m talking about how do we allow women to express themselves in their own individuality. And I feel like we have to stop polluting our bodies in order to hear what our individual needs are. At the basic level. That’s the power of good nutrition.

Ellie Kempton  

I love that what I hear you saying is when your inner can communication, avenues are open, when when channels of communication are open inside, they become more clear and precise on the outside. That’s right. That’s right.

Dr. Mindy  

Bingo. That was it. I love it. Okay, last question. And this one’s gonna be an easy one for you. And I asked it to everybody this season, which is what’s your self love practice? You’ve, you’ve alluded to a few things here. What’s your daily self love practice? And I’m gonna let you brag about yourself. What’s the superpower you bring to the world?

Ellie Kempton  

Hmm. Well, my I did allude to this. And this is where I do really work to practice what I preach on my megaphone, which is just that deep, daily practice of self awareness, because tomorrow is just so unforeseeable and so specific, that I just know I’m going to need every bit of today’s lessons to become her. And so I’m just gathering all the field notes and watching myself with deep compassion and maybe a few giggles and also working along the way as I build that awareness to just nourish and nurture my inner child. That’s my self love practice and it’s just it whenever I tap into it, it doesn’t let me down.

Dr. Mindy  

I love it. That’s amazing. Okay, and superpower, what’s your superpower? You know, my

Ellie Kempton  

superpower sounds lame, but I’ll explain a my superpower is to make really complex things approachable and really yummy and palatable and bite sized. I think in the world of academia, that means like reading a research study very simply. But what I mean is, I love to take things like the swirly twirly hormones and gut function, and adrenal wellness and all of this and just make it something that you can’t wait to tell your friends about. But even better, you engage in it in a way that is so aligned with you and your ability to be powerful. And I just think in my own wellness, journey, Nutrition has been made very unapproachable. And it’s been downright almost kind of repulsive, because it’s been too complicated, and unsustainable. And I’ve just made it my mission to make complex things simple.

Dr. Mindy  

Do you know that 90% of our guests say that’s their superpower?

Ellie Kempton  

I love it. Yeah, you’re to make trackmate amplifiers.

Dr. Mindy  

Maybe that’s it. I never thought of it is something that I was attracting. I thought of it more as I think the art of communication is taking the complicated and making it simple, because then we know how to move with that information. And so yeah, yeah. Oh, that that was amazing. So how do people find you, you have some really cool things you’re up to? And I just want my audience to know that that’s a resource if they feel pulled to it.

Ellie Kempton  

Awesome. Yeah. Well, I have a private practice. It’s located in Denver, Colorado, but I work with women all over the country. And the best way to be in touch with me is through an online membership I have called the table. And the table is just that gorgeous community of women who know how to brag. And these women are falling in love with their bodies as I give them bite sized approach to very complex topics. So the table is dedicated to four topics across the calendar year and the my hope and my heart behind building it this way is that women have different trailheads that feel most aligned so coming into the table in a space where you know, your pain point and your deepest desire is being met alongside women who see you and hear you and cheer you on.

Dr. Mindy  

Amazing. Well Ellie this was such a delight. I feel like if you and I had gone out to lunch this would have been the conversation we had

Ellie Kempton  

for sure for sure. I’m gonna pin you down next time you’re in Colorado we can just keep this conversation going do it I’ve got goosebumps from sell the soul. So thank you for opening up this conversation and, and amplifying it.

Dr. Mindy  

So grateful for you. You too. 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.