Your Body Is Speaking – Are You Listening?

Join me and my guest Amanda Hinman, who shares her holistic approach to helping women overcome hormone imbalances and reclaim their vitality through functional medicine, emotional intelligence, and nervous system support. In this episode, we discuss 

• The connection between gut health, hormones, stress, and emotional intelligence
• How to identify the signals your body sends through symptoms
• Why you need to look beneath the surface of health issues to find root causes
• How you can avoid the "why bother syndrome" that prevents sustainable health changes
• The value in having a personalized approach based on your unique body's needs
• How to eat for hormonal balance rather than restrictive dieting
• Why a shift from a to-do list approach to an identity-based health transformation is vital to your health
• How to use the "alter ego" technique to embody your healthiest self
• How you can integrate emotional intelligence practices to support physical healing
• Why it's important to build proactive habits that increase your capacity to handle life's challenges

Amanda's links:

Join me and my guest Amanda Hinman, who shares her holistic approach to helping women overcome hormone imbalances and reclaim their vitality through functional medicine, emotional intelligence, and nervous system support. In this episode, we discuss 

• The connection between gut health, hormones, stress, and emotional intelligence
• How to identify the signals your body sends through symptoms
• Why you need to look beneath the surface of health issues to find root causes
• How you can avoid the "why bother syndrome" that prevents sustainable health changes
• The value in having a personalized approach based on your unique body's needs
• How to eat for hormonal balance rather than restrictive dieting
• Why a shift from a to-do list approach to an identity-based health transformation is vital to your health
• How to use the "alter ego" technique to embody your healthiest self
• How you can integrate emotional intelligence practices to support physical healing
• Why it's important to build proactive habits that increase your capacity to handle life's challenges

Amanda's links:
Website: https://hinmanholistic.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hinmanamanda/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hinmanholistic
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UC24Q7hA6puPjBSyB9TtzOew 
Free Assessment: https://hinman-holistic.squarespace.com/hormone-health-kit

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction & Amanda's Background
• 5:40 Root Causes of Health Issues
• 10:55 Stress Impact on Digestive Health
• 15:45 Hormonal Balance and Anxiety
• 22:20 Creating Sustainable Health Habits
• 29:45 Amanda's Personal Health Crisis
• 34:15 Healing Journey and Transformation
• 39:45 Emotional Intelligence and Proactive Health

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I always like to invite people to like give your alter ego like that next version of you. If you, if you, were to think of somebody who has like improve their health to the best that you can envision for the next 12 months, what does that look like? Give that person a name, an alter ego name.

Speaker 1: 0:14

My alter ego name is magic Mandy Right, and every morning sitting up and asking myself like, okay, what does magic Mandy do today that shifts you into the perspective of being the version of you who has that health, and how does she navigate the daily experience, the 24-hour zone right?

Speaker 2: 0:39

Welcome to the podcast Emotional Intelligence your greatest asset and key to success. Welcome to the podcast Emotional Intelligence your greatest asset and key to success. I'm your host, dr Jamie Carlaccio, coming to you from the Greater New Haven, connecticut area as an emotional intelligence or EQ coach. I'm committed to helping people develop both emotional intelligence and mental fitness. That is, you'll come to regard problems as situations that help you learn and grow. Eq is a way of being and doing in the world that enables you to develop and sustain a positive relationship with yourself and others, at home, at work and everywhere in between. Please subscribe to this podcast and tap the like button so more people can enjoy the benefits of EQ. And now here's the show.

Speaker 3: 1:28

Hello and welcome everybody to the podcast Emotional Intelligence your Greatest Asset and Key to Success. Thank you so much for joining us. I have a fabulous guest here today. Her name is Amanda Hinman. Hi, amanda, how are you Fantastic Excited?

Speaker 1: 1:42

to be here with you. Thank you, I'm glad you're here, excited to be here with you, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 3: 1:46

I'm glad you're here, so I want to tell our guests something, but first I just want to thank everybody for joining us today. If you are new to this podcast, thank you for tuning in, and if you are returning, then thank you for coming back and don't forget to like and subscribe and share this podcast with somebody, because Amanda has a great message. And first I want to tell you a little bit about Amanda and then we're going to get right into it. Okay, so Amanda is a functional medicine health coach. She's also a bestselling author and the founder of the Hinman Holistic Health Institute. She specializes in helping successful women between the ages of 40 and 60 who are struggling with hormone, mood and gut imbalances to heal naturally and gain back three hours of energy so they feel fantastic again. And that is something we definitely need to talk about, because I think everybody would love to get three hours back from their day.

Speaker 3: 2:48

And what makes yeah so what makes Amanda's story so powerful, is that her path to this work began with a personal crisis, and oftentimes I think crisis is what creates change. So probably a good thing that the crisis happened, because now you're able to do this amazing work with everybody. So when her eight-year-old daughter began experiencing these unexplained seizures, and conventional medicine offered very few answers. Amanda dove into root cause healing, and along the way she discovered her own hormone and thyroid imbalances, and discovered just how connected our physical symptoms are to stress, trauma and emotional suppression. And so today, amanda combines functional medicine, emotional intelligence and neuroscience to help women reclaim their health from the inside out.

Speaker 3: 3:41

She's the creator of the Thyroid and Hormone Solution, a proven five-step framework that has helped hundreds of women overcome Hashimoto's, hypothyroidism, anxiety, weight gain, fatigue, insulin resistance and more, without relying on restrictive diets and medication. That in itself is a miracle, and so Amanda's work has been featured in media outlets and on stages across the country, and her mission is to empower women to step back into their full vitality physically, emotionally and energetically, and I would say maybe even spiritually, because oftentimes everything is connected, including our spiritual well-being and to trust that healing is not only possible but sustainable. And so, when she's not coaching or speaking, she enjoys spending time with her husband and four children and exploring holistic living and helping women transform their health stories into legacies of strength. So again, welcome.

Speaker 1: 4:45

Thank you, jamie. Yes, you know I. Just. Every time you share something, it really inspires me to think about the lives, the women's lives, and the ripple effect. You know, I can tell from my own journey when we can step into a place of empowerment, or at least when I can step into a place of empowerment and change the trajectory of not only my health, my family's health. It, it completely, radically changed our lives. So that's why you know I have such a passion for helping others to feel good.

Speaker 3: 5:17

And you know, I think, a lot of people. So I was at a retreat today and one of the things we talked about was how much stress everybody is under. And you know, the stress is coming from politics, it's coming from economic insecurity. You know it's coming from a not so healthy lifestyle. You know, oh, you're in a hurry. Well, let's just go grab a burger, right, let's just go get fast food. Or let's let's skip dinner altogether. Or I'm too busy, I'm going to sit and eat at my desk and I'm not even going to take a lunch break, or I'm not going to go for a walk, or there's so many things.

Speaker 3: 5:53

And then if people are stressed, they're not sleeping well. And if they're not sleeping well, like you know, sleep hygiene is the thing you know that you help people with. So all of those things are connected. And if we're not feeling good, we're, you know, kind of imbalanced, for whatever reason, we're grumpy, and then so we have, like you say, we have this ripple effect. So the ripple effect is for everything. Right, if you're feeling crummy, that ripples out into how you interact with people and how you feel about yourself, and then, likewise, if you're feeling good, how do you feel about yourself. And then how are you interacting and showing up in the world?

Speaker 1: 6:33

Definitely, and it's funny, I was actually just working with a client yesterday and we were talking about the same dynamic because we all have different angles. I think that we can create a shift around. For some of us, it's understanding the physiology what's going on hormonally?

Speaker 1: 6:50

in my body, like. You mentioned something very interesting, jamie, and it's so relevant, about digestion and our gut health. We know our gut health is so important but yet so often I work with women who don't even realize when they're eating at their desk or skipping lunch or multitasking as they're kind of picking up food throughout, you know, the afternoon. That experience from a physiological perspective is radically different to our gut. We don't have adequate digestive secretions to break down the food thoroughly.

Speaker 1: 7:25

Chances are we're kind of just chomp, chomp, chomp, swallow big, huge clumps.

Speaker 1: 7:29

We're not really using our teeth and our saliva to liquefy the food in your mouth before swallowing, which is what it's intended to be, and all of these things seem insignificant or kind of minor, you know, here and there, but they have really big ramifications when they're just done over and over again. Right, it affects even the immune system, because it will then have these huge chunks of food that it can't break down and it's unrecognizable. So it kind of puts the immune system on hypervigilant alert and that can lead to a cascade of autoimmune dynamics and different sorts of different things that seemingly are unrelated. Go back to exactly what you said simple practices done repetitively, you know, and I think the deeper you know this is what I was talking about with my client the deeper core is really getting to the what are those underlying, maybe even unconscious beliefs that we have not enough time? You know, it doesn't really matter anyway, what I call like why bother syndrome is something that's pretty chronic for the women I support, you know, and there's no fault.

Speaker 1: 8:38

But it's like, yeah, maybe you've tried to change your health and made a little bit of strides but it didn't stick. So it's like why bother? It's not going to be sustainable, right? Or you've worked with a functional practitioner and got a list of supplements and after a while it seemed like this is just me popping a bunch of pills and I'm not noticing a big change. So why bother? Like I'm not saying why bother, as in you know, people are just throwing up their arms, but it's more of like you've tried some things and it hasn't been able to be like tuned, finally tuned into a way that creates habit, where it just happens, where it doesn't require extra efforts and energy and your brain. Just it kind of like you brush your teeth, right, you brush your teeth every day and it doesn't require a efforts and energy and your brain just kind of like you brush your teeth, right you brush your teeth every day and it doesn't require a ton of energy and effort, it's automatic.

Speaker 1: 9:31

That's what we get to create is like. What can that, what can that look like in the nervous system, to help you put in some routines that don't require a tremendous amount of effort but that are in support of your unique body's balance? So I think it comes down to like finding some customization and some simple, repeatable strategies that will work for each individual.

Speaker 3: 9:54

Right. So you said a lot of stuff there and I was, I'm back. I'm still back on gut health because I know that. You know you see commercials on TV or you see ads for women who feel bloated and so they want to give you a suppository or they want to sell you something to help you flow, but ultimately that seems like a band-aid approach and what I'm hearing is that there's a systems approach and partly the way to get our system working again is a to really look at the interlocking variables.

Speaker 3: 10:32

And also, you know, like you say, we have to develop different habits and so things take time. But you can't sort of fix one thing and expect everything else to get fixed, because everything is working. So you could start eating salads, and but if you're not exercising and you're not drinking enough water and you're not sleeping and you're still feeling stressed, or you know emotional intelligence comes into play here with resilience, and you know really handling life in a more equanimous way. You know all of those things play in. So you might be eating right, but if there's something wrong and you have insulin resistance, or if there's something wrong in in, say, your personal life or your work life, then one thing might not be the quick fix and there is no quick fix, but it sounds like you're saying it doesn't have to be super hard either you.

Speaker 1: 11:30

You are spot on, jamie. It doesn't have to be overly complex. In fact, I think sometimes complexity is a disadvantage. It's oh, it can be overwhelming, it's. I think one of the keys is having a systematic approach that can be customized to your specific body, the the needs of your, your body and your life now, because what your body needed when you were in your thirties is going to be different than when you're in your forties.

Speaker 3: 11:58

Your body changes right.

Speaker 1: 12:03

Even thinking about our roles change right. Our roles as a mom to elementary school kids is different. Your, your son's, going off to prom. It's a different role that you're playing in his life right now.

Speaker 2: 12:13

Right.

Speaker 1: 12:14

Jamie. So, yes, I think the key here is to having some type of a almost like a curriculum, right, we think about like anytime we're growing in education, it's very easy to relate to like a curriculum. But when we think about maybe even a career or an entrepreneurial journey, sometimes you have like stages of okay, I got to learn marketing and then I've got to learn sales, like you kind of know the key steps. I think when we approach our health it's similar. It's like how can I know from a root cause perspective, how can I kind of peel back the layers and understand the signals that my body is telling me? Yeah, I'd like to share, you know and I'm happy to share with your listeners. Yeah, I'd like to share, you know and I'm happy to share with your listeners my free hormone health assessment, because it has you kind of map your symptoms against the top six metabolic hormones to say like, oh, this is what is my body trying to tell me. What am I trying to say without words right Through symptoms? So kind of looking and getting curious about the signals from your symptoms.

Speaker 1: 13:14

Then, taking a look at nourishment we all know food is important. So what nutrients specifically? Right, rather than having kind of a general broad sense of the paleo diet versus the keto diet, versus all these different things. Well, if I look at my body, what specifically does my body need now in this season so you can kind of be more streamlined? Then we look at the digestion and the capacity to be able to break down those nutrients so your cells get the full benefit of them. And then I do a whole comprehensive look at what I call reset your thinking, Because, just as you talked about Jamie, that emotional intelligence piece really drives the nervous system, whether it's going to be in that fight or flight or that parasympathetic and roasted heel. So we look at what are the kind of underlying relationship with stress. Right, stress isn't necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. It's what's your relationship with the circumstances?

Speaker 3: 14:14

Yeah, right, I, I was again at this retreat and I went to a breathwork session and you know we were all literally talking about stress.

Speaker 3: 14:26

And then how do you respond to stress If you're always in the fight, flight, bond, freeze mode and you're, you know, releasing all of these hormones or cortico you know cortisol and and your body's constantly like feeling like it's there's an onslaught of danger.

Speaker 3: 14:47

Then you can be eating well, but the rest of the stuff is still imbalanced. And I like how you talked about how, just listening to your body and getting curious. And then I started thinking it's kind of like when the check, you know the check engine light comes on in your car, it's like you know you need to take it in. You're not exactly sure, but you know that there's a signal, is that something's not right, and so if we listen to our bodies and we actually just pay closer attention, then maybe you know you can start playing detective on some level, right, and kind of like you say, uncovering those root causes. So tell me how you help women with hormone, hormonal imbalance, because a lot of women, especially our age, you know, especially in the 40 to 60 range and even older, all these hormonal changes are crazy making and how do you help people with that? With with a holistic approach.

Speaker 1: 15:49

Well, I'll give you a prime example. So I'm thinking of a woman, darlene, and we were just talking today. So she started working with me about two months ago and at the place when she, when she first connected, she was really struggling with sleeping through the night. She would wake up early around she's like between two and 3 AM every night and have her mind just kind of like go into the day, go into like all the thoughts of what was on her to-do list, what she needed to remember, kind of that swirling you know fast paced, wired but tired type of sensation.

Speaker 1: 16:23

So that was insomnia. She also had put on a couple of extra pounds in the last 12 months, like five pounds, and she's like I just see my body feel less. And she's like I just see my body feel less, you know, less light and toned.

Speaker 1: 16:38

It was just that I can see these changes happening and the overall anxiety levels have increased. And we know that there are correlations with the levels of estrogen, especially as compared to progesterone, that can affect neurological emotional state. So like, for example, when women have changes, it makes a difference. So sometimes we were blaming ourselves because we think like, what's wrong with me? Sometimes it really is a physiological shift that's having a changing effect on the brain chemistry. So part of it was really empowering for her to get some more information and data. So we did some testing.

Speaker 1: 17:14

We look at micronutrient testing, we looked at some hormone testing and I like to use some of the functional labs where it actually looks at like, for example, a micronutrient urine test can actually tell what nutrients are making it to yourself to have an effect, so you can find a metabolite that you then excrete through urine. That's a little bit different than testing blood, because blood will show what nutrients are circulating around the blood supply, which can be useful for sure. But sometimes things can be circulating in our blood but not actually get inside the cell to have a chemical reaction, just like insulin resistance. Right, the insulin can't get into the cell or bring glucose in. That's what insulin resistance means Same thing can happen with other hormones or with other nutrients.

Speaker 1: 18:00

So when we test with a functional kind of looking at what's actually getting into ourselves and having an effect, now there's some useful information to look at for her to again be a little bit more targeted. And this, this woman, darlene, it was interesting because we were very clear of some key foods and nutrients for her to start to build into her plan to replenish her cells capacity. Right, jimmy, you talk about our ability to kind of come with agency, to come with a curious perspective or inquiry instead of a reactive, emotional that takes energy, that makes it worse, yeah, well, and that takes energy so ourselves.

Speaker 1: 18:42

our body has to be able to create a unit of energy, or what's called atp, in order for us to even have the wherewithal to have curiosity in certain situations, right. So she knew what she needed to nourish herself with and then we kind of had a simple recipe plan for her to start to build those in and practice that habit. And she found that after two weeks she was really struggling because she's like I just, I, you know, I just don't feel good about this and she kind of went back to her old way of eating, which was not adequately nourishing, that she was definitely undernourished, but that felt safer for her and so we had a conversation.

Speaker 1: 19:20

It was really interesting for her to tie back the deeper and I'm like, well, tell me more what was going on. And she's like, actually I had been sleeping and I had a really bad kink in my neck and cause I wasn't sleeping well, and then I started Googling what if it's a brain tumor, Like?

Speaker 1: 19:34

again the anxiety, estrogen and progesterone levels were really skewed. So she's struggling through anxiety and she's like what I realized is, and I'm like, well, your nervous system didn't have the capacity at that time for you to start to make changes to your foods, because it was having this physical pain kind of the mental, emotional, anxiety, wandering thoughts of like what if it's a brain tumor, what if it's something worse? So like we get to start before we even really dive in on making these nutritional changes and giving you a full meal plan to follow which is what a lot of people do when they think of oh, I want to change my health, Give me the meal plan and I'll go do it.

Speaker 1: 20:14

Your ability to execute on that successfully depends on the state of your nervous system and your capacity to handle kind of those little bumps and, you know, curve balls in life. Once you get the curve ball of stiff neck and sort of Googling. She didn't have the capacity to kind of stick with this meal plan.

Speaker 3: 20:34

Does that make sense? Yeah, and you know, I hear you talking a lot about anxiety and it's very easy when you don't have enough knowledge and not every right. I mean you, you study this. It's not like we're all born knowing our, knowing our neurobiology and knowing you know our intestinal system and knowing everything. So you know our intestinal system and knowing everything. So you know.

Speaker 3: 20:56

A lot of people understand the fight, flight, freeze, spawn, and people understand rest and digest. Maybe you know the different ways in which our nervous system is like on a teeter totter. Right there's. I got to be careful, there's some danger here and oh, I can be calm, it's okay. But all of that plays into the food, the sleep, the emotional intelligence. You know how are we thinking about and responding to things. If everything's a knee jerk reaction and if I'm not getting the results, I want what's wrong and a lot of times and this is sort of a thing for a lot of people, not just women, but you know we automatically go with what's wrong with me. I must have been doing something wrong or I'm going crazy. Well, we might not be going crazy, but there are things that are going on that are crazy making.

Speaker 1: 21:50

Yes, absolutely. So. It's helpful to kind of have some of. That's why I say let's look at the data right. The data is these experiences are happening physiologically in the body. We know these hormone levels are in a different, shifted place. So what can we offer the body and support and then also build in some like?

Speaker 1: 22:10

So for her, before we really focused on the food changes, it was like let's get these progesterone levels in a balanced place to bring the anxiety down and let's also make sure the first system we're going to build in is to support the nervous system, right. So for her it was to support. What are we doing in terms of taking breathing breaks a couple of times a day? How can we be listening to, even just like from a reinforcing positive beliefs and possibility, listening to? She found that, like we found together an audio book that's a spiritually oriented audio book, one of one of Wayne Dyer's. I love his. Oh, I do too. Change your, change your thoughts, change your mind. So it's like have that be the narrative that's playing in the background when you're washing the dishes or when you're, you know, doing some errands or in the car. Like these are conscious choices that sound simple, but yet they really go a long way to reinforce this holistic picture of what's going to set you up for sustainable, healthy habits.

Speaker 3: 23:11

Yeah, and so it's a choice. It is a choice. I was just having a conversation with someone who's very uncomfortable and wants to change everything, but she's in a reactionary mode. So she doesn't like her hair, she doesn't like her job, she doesn't like her car, she doesn't like her apartment. Those are all external things, and I tried to remind her that there's something going on internally that you need to look at, and changing your hair or getting a different car or getting a different job. Those things are external to what's really happening, and so it is about really kind of looking deeply within. So it is about really kind of looking deeply within and I had mentioned earlier the spiritual component, because for me, that is a core part of who I am and it's how I start and end my day. And I love that you brought up Wayne Dyer he's one of my favorites.

Speaker 3: 24:12

But just the idea of you know, at night, what are you doing before you go to bed at night, right, what are you putting? What are you going to bed at night? Right, what are you putting? What are you going to bed with? A? Going to bed with a good book? Are you going to bed with you know doom scrolling? Or you know TikTok videos or something you know. So what do you you know? So there's putting things into our mind, putting things into our body, and then it's like input, output, right? So whatever we put in, it's going to come back out. And it's going to come out as stress and anxiety and insomnia and poor gut health or, you know, stress related weight, right? A lot of women, when they are stressed, the stress goes into our stomachs and so we gain weight in our stomachs. It's like, but wait a minute, I don't even eat pasta. Why am I getting all this weight around my midsection?

Speaker 1: 25:02

And unfortunately, then sometimes what happens is especially over age 40, women will calorie restrict back on foods or calories, and that's when it's the easiest to lose lean muscle tissue which is the most metabolically healthy.

Speaker 1: 25:22

So instead of especially if you're in that place of you know stress and overwhelm and fight or flight state when the body's going to hold on to what's coming in, because it's perceiving that there is a threat and a danger and I don't know when my resources are going to run out.

Speaker 1: 25:40

So I need to hold on to everything that has a caloric perspective. So it will hold on to that fatty adipose tissue because that's the most calorically dense, but it will sacrifice your lean muscle mass tissue, which is the exact opposite of what we want to have happen from a metabolic health longevity standpoint. Right? I often tell women it's actually, it's actually important for you to eat more in order to release the weight you're seeking, because metabolically we need to retain that lean tissue. And again, but this is where, like education and knowledge, coupled with some specificity of what's happening in your body now and some inspiration, can really go a long way to help women make that different choice, right we do talk about it is choice sometimes we need a little bit more context and reminders to make the choices that are advantageous for our goals.

Speaker 3: 26:36

Yeah, and you know sometimes, you know, we live in kind of what I call a quick fix society, so we want to see things change right away.

Speaker 3: 26:47

But it didn't get this way overnight and so it isn't necessarily going to change overnight. But if you can just kind of keep with it, and then I would say and I'm sure you say this too if you, if you are on a different kind of meal regimen and you're on a little bit of an exercise regimen and you are taking care of all of the other parts of your system with whatever you know, meditation and exercise, and you've got the hormones in check and you go off your diet or you do something, that's okay, right, because you're still building the habits. And so you know, because I can hear the why bother coming out like, well, it's not changed fast enough, I'm still not sleeping right. And you know your client who kind of went back to the thing she knew. It's like you go to. And you know your client who kind of went back to the thing she knew. It's like you go to the devil you know versus the devil you don't know. So there's a little bit of trust that has to happen maybe.

Speaker 1: 27:49

Absolutely, and that's why, in that kind of that fourth step, we really integrate into what I call a new identity. It's like it's you would identify as somebody who's a mom and you will always identify as a right. It's not like that will ever change or be gone for from how you see yourself. Well, when we think about making a health change, my goal, my objective for my clients, is always to have that be a permanent change. It's not like, oh, I felt better for six months and then I kind of things went back to where they were before. It's like no, if we want to change, it's identifying as a woman who is now consistently conscious of our food not perfect, but thought intentional about how I eat. You know, I live my life in a way that set myself up for the routine and for the habits and for the lifestyle. That's going to be building health instead of tearing it down, right, right.

Speaker 1: 28:46

So that's where we get really clear of like okay, what is I always like to invite people to? Like give your alter ego like that next version of you. If you were to think of somebody who has like improve their health to the best that you can envision for the next 12 months. What does that look like? Give that person a name, an alter ego name. My alter ego name is Magic Mandy. Right and every morning sitting up and asking myself like okay, what does Magic Mandy do today that shifts you into the perspective of being the version of you who has that health, and how does she navigate the daily experience, the 24-hour zone right.

Speaker 1: 29:21

It's a very different place than just seeing it as a to-do list of things to do that I'm supposed to do or should do to support my health. But it's not about doing, it's about who might be yes, yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 3: 29:36

Oh, my gosh, I love what you just said.

Speaker 3: 29:38

So, in in terms of positive intelligence and emotional intelligence, one of the sage powers that Shirzad Shamim talks about in positive intelligence is, you know well, there's the empathy power, there's the explore power, there's the innovate, and then there's, you know, the navigate and the activate.

Speaker 3: 29:57

So when we're in the navigate power, the sage power of navigation, you look at your older self, your older wiser self, or the self it's 20 years down the road, and when you're looking at where do I go from here, what kind of decision will be in my highest good and for the highest good of those around me, in my highest good and for the highest good of those around me, you ask that older self and if you can sort of envision who that person is and most of us can, if we just take a moment and really reflect. What would that older self say right now to me with regard to a career shift, or with regard to an emptiness syndrome, or with regard to whatever? You know my body and my diet and, and you know the way that I'm, you know living or not living up to my full potential? What would she tell me right now, or what would he tell me?

Speaker 1: 30:50

Yes, yes, very similar. It's that who am I being and am I? Am I taking that, like you said, that 20 year experience, experience and perspective, future self to really step through that lens? It's so important and it's a game changer. Honestly, that's when things, like I said, we go back to the root of health transformation. That's when you're really changing things at a systemic level for, yeah, a new normal for decades to come.

Speaker 3: 31:21

Yeah, yeah, I love it. I love it. So we didn't talk about the crisis that precipitated all this. Would you like to tell us just a little bit about what exactly happened that even got you on this path, because that obviously was a huge game changer for your entire life and your family, right?

Speaker 1: 31:40

Yeah, and actually it's funny that I love that this is kind of coming as a follow-up to what we were just talking about, jamie, because I in my mid to late 20s always identified as somebody who was very healthy. I was a group fitness instructor, I taught cardio kickboxing classes.

Speaker 2: 31:57

I had 13% body fat, I ate salads and smoothies, so like I'm going to be candid and just be cavalier here, but I thought I was kind of invincible when it came to health, like I've got this buttoned up and dialed in I know what health is right and kind of funny.

Speaker 1: 32:13

Of course that's when life's going to slap you upside the head. Yeah, then I was pregnant with my fourth daughter and discovered I had an autoimmune condition called Hashimoto's thyroiditis and I was kind of just burning through life. I mean admittedly I was, you know, not sleeping well after having three little kids. I was definitely kind of go, go, go. Always that one like jetting to the next thing or the next activity, trying to balance, you know, work and kids and all of the things. Also was happening in my extended family or my family of origin at that time was some really overwhelming situations with a sibling who was going through alcohol addiction and a divorce, and so I was very intimately involved because I was very close with his ex now ex-wife. At the time we did a whole intervention. So I can see now at the time I didn't recognize how this had any effect on my health, but I can see now the stress was a huge factor in precipitating the autoimmune dynamic. But I remember being at the doctor and being told oh yeah, you'll just have to take this medication for the rest of your life and you know once you have one autoimmune condition, you're at a much greater risk for multiple conditions over the coming decades. And I was like what, wait, wait, this isn't. This can't be the case Again. Still no correlation to the stressors in my life, to the pace of the lifestyle that I was choosing and to my body actually being completely depleted. It wasn't giving enough nourishment to handle the demand that I was being placed on it.

Speaker 1: 33:49

And then, a few months after, my oldest daughter, who was eight at that time, had always been highly sensitive. She was a very sharp, witty girl, but she started to develop really severe anxiety to the point of 10 to 15 seizures in a day. And, jamie, nothing brings you to your knees more as a parent to see your child in life-threatening situations. Absolutely Right, I mean, I was. I remember waking up multiple days like talk about cortisol and adrenaline. I was literally shaking with fear because usually within the first 15 minutes when her cortisol levels would spike because it was a hormone surge she would start to seize and so it was such a scary time.

Speaker 1: 34:33

And then we were working with amazing pediatric neurologists and specialists down at Lurie Children's Hospital and they ran all the tests and they were saying you know, sometimes these things are hereditary. Just like I was told with my autoimmune condition, she you know, there's no tumor, there's no discernible like source of the seizures. We will, we can manage this with with medication. She was on four different benzodiazepines, 12 pills a day. A lot of medicine, a lot, yeah, to the point where she was like not my child, like very, very mentally like comatose and like, yeah, and I knew and we were told she would never be able to drive a car. This was just to make it through a 24 period and every fiber in my being is like there has to be another path forward, like this cannot be her future.

Speaker 1: 35:17

That's when I went back to school to study functional medicine, science and spent a couple of years really understanding the interconnected factors of the digestive system and the endocrine system and the immune system and the cardiovascular, all the systems in the body, physiology, how they work together and what are those upstream root cause drivers and mechanisms that create the symptoms that are displayed. So her seizures are just the symptoms of imbalance in her body, right, just like my autoimmune, the thyroid being attacking itself with those autoimmune antibodies. That was just the symptom of imbalance and dysfunction in the body, right. So that led me on again inspiration, new knowledge. That was like empowering. It's like oh, wow, now I can make different choices because I understand the ramifications of some of the lifestyle factors and responses to what was happening. Right, the cool thing is in under nine months she completely healed. I mean we literally changed from a lifestyle perspective, from stress management and kind of you know how she was interpreting and understanding things in her life, and then also nutrition, like kind of looked at all the buckets that I do with clients, right, the whole like kind of comprehensive approach to healing.

Speaker 1: 36:40

She, we know from all of her medication, has been seizure free ever since now. She's just completed her sophomore year on a full ride scholarship at the university of Notre Dame, so she's thriving in life and very well. She's very emotionally empowered, right? She has a skillset to understand, to listen to her body signals, to really tune in and recognize and give her body and her life what she needs to thrive, right? Yeah, so same approach that allowed me to put my autoimmune condition into remission and really navigate a path that allowed. Of course, there's always bumps and you know challenges that come up, but now we have the skills and the tools and the choice to navigate through those and maintain health, maintain really good, high peak performance, so that was.

Speaker 3: 37:28

I kind of feel like it was a divine redirection God had to show me like it's not just the food, it's not just the exercise.

Speaker 1: 37:33

There's more to the story, to live with truly vibrant health.

Speaker 3: 37:38

Right, and I think the key thing is empowerment. Yes, it's really about empowerment, and I have to say I don't want to. We don't necessarily need to jettison Western medicine and Western you know, pharmacological approaches, because medicines have their place. But when somebody's on that much medication at eight years old, it is time to take a look at what's going on and say you're, you're, you're medicating something without actually looking at the root cause. And so, by getting to those root causes, not only did you get off the meds but, like you say, you empowered your daughter, and your daughter feels self determined and, you know, you are able to make different choices and I just, I just love that and I think it's a really, you know, it's a message of hope.

Speaker 3: 38:32

And so, before we close, let's just bring in emotional intelligence, because I know that's part of your whole system. So we've got the gut health going, we've got the hormones, we've got, you know, we've got the endocrine system going. And so how can we also shift into a place of you know, having all you know, really relying on our sage powers again they, you know, we want to be empathic. Relying on our sage powers again they, you know, we want to be empathic, empathetic to ourselves and others, and when something happens, we have to get curious, right? Oh, what's going on here? And maybe I need to read the tea leaves a little bit and then innovate, right? So this is a time of thinking outside the box, and the box often is Western medicine, and so outside the box is let's look at these bigger things going on.

Speaker 1: 39:25

Absolutely. And I think it's about taking a proactive approach. Because if we, that's exactly what they teach in positive intelligence, right Is to do the reps, to do the PQ reps proactively, because that's what gives you bandwidth, that's what gives you the capacity to respond with curiosity or empathy. If we don't take that proactive approach, it's it's really difficult, like I said, when you're, when your tank is on, running on empty, it's really hard to then expect that extra capacity to think in a different way. Right, that's when the body kind of just goes neurologically, it goes into old patterns and old, old habits. So I'd love I mean I personally have gone through the positive intelligence program because that approach is so effective to proactively give you a context of understanding and inspirational pathway to follow, a curriculum and then that proactive practice that will give you increased capacity in all areas of life.

Speaker 3: 40:27

Yeah, and so we're basically training our bodies to to be different in the world, right, you know you talked about who do you want to be, who? What is this self? You know? Who do you want to be? How do you want to show up in the world? And for me, that's the question we need to be asking ourselves is how do you want to show up in the world? Who is that best self? And guess what? You're in charge, right, you're in charge. Yeah, oh, it has been a pleasure getting to know you and knowing a little bit more about how you help women, and all of Amanda's information will be in the show notes if you wanted to reach out and find out how you can get a new roadmap to life. And, as always, I'm available for emotional intelligence coaching and whatever else you might need. And so, thank you everyone for tuning in and, again, like and subscribe to this podcast and Amanda and I will see you at the EQ or the PQ gym. Yes, I love it. All right, take care of everyone. Bye.