Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hello, my little sugar cubes. Welcome to the fitness manifest podcast. If you
Speaker 1 00:00:07 That's a resort to do
Speaker 2 00:00:10 Side effects might include motivation, empowerment, giggles, enlightment inspiration.
Speaker 0 00:00:17 Welcome to the fitness manifest podcast. My name is Teresa SNO. I'm a personal trainer teaching you how our bodies work, how to incorporate new healthy habits and how to reach fitness goals with longevity in mind. On today's episode, I have hall Brook. She is the founder and CEO of live nourished. She's a certified functional medicine, nutritional counselor, and she has been featured on Fox 21 fitness and nutrition expert. And she overall, she's just a really smart lady and has such great points and knowledge that I'm super excited that she's here on the podcast to share just her, her information, her knowledge, and give you guys advice. So welcome to the child.
Speaker 3 00:01:03 Thank you for having me. It's wonderful to be here
Speaker 0 00:01:05 In case some of the listeners haven't heard or know what functional medicine is. Can you kind of explain what, what are the foundations and what is it based on?
Speaker 3 00:01:15 Yeah, absolutely. So functional medicine is, well, you could also kind of title it, lifestyle medicine. It's the idea that what we eat are stress levels, how we sleep are the best medicines that we have available to us when it comes to healing, everything from fatigue or an ankle injury to cancer. And then what we say is functional medicine is root cause medicine. So a lot of times people end up sort of playing whackamole with symptoms. They've got eczema or acne or fatigue, where they have gas and bloating. And so they just kind of try to, you know, play whackamole with the symptoms instead of going and figuring out where all of that is coming from. So another way of saying it is, um, you know, you, you don't wanna turn off the fire alarm when there's still a fire in the kitchen. You wanna go find the fire and put it out. That's what we do with, with functional medicine. What is the root cause of what's going on in our bodies?
Speaker 0 00:02:07 I love that, cuz I feel like at least with the American health system, it's all about, let's just put a bandaid on the symptoms and never really investigates and heals that, like you're saying that root cause of why you're having these either hormonal issues or bloating or you know, just things that you don't need to be living through and, and dealing with.
Speaker 3 00:02:31 Exactly. Yep. Well said.
Speaker 0 00:02:33 So then kind of talk to me a little bit about cuz you have this philosophy that diets don't work, which I also as well follow, you know, it, it shouldn't be, you shouldn't be confined onto like certain food groups or certain, you know, avoid certain foods or, you know, essentially be miserable when you're eating, you gotta enjoy life and find that balance in that way. Sometimes diets, they, they just fly over that. They're just very restrictive. So I kind of wanna hear your opinion on, on why diets don't work and kind of what you recommend is a better alternative.
Speaker 3 00:03:08 Yeah, absolutely. I have to tell you a quote first. That's so funny from a client who we talked to this morning and then I'll get into why diets don't work, but it just made me laugh so hard that I have to tell you. So we were on a, an initial consult with a client this morning. He wants to lose a significant amount of weight, a hundred, maybe 130 pounds. And I asked him, you know, why did you choose to work with us instead of all of the other millions of diet options out there. And he named three programs that are out there, you can go Google them that have the food come in the box and it's all processed ingredients and they count your calories for you. And he, it was so funny. So to, to quote him, he said, well, you know, I did a bunch of research and I found a couple programs like this.
Speaker 3 00:03:46 And then I started, started digging into them and just the ingredients and some of the stuff in them. I thought, you know, I could start a meth habit and lose a bunch of weight too, but why would I do that? I want to do it the healthy way in a way that that nourishes my body. And I just laughed so hard. <laugh> it's like, yeah, you could start a diet or you could pick up a meth habit and you'll lose weight anyway. Um, obviously neither of those are the way that we wanna lose weight. I just thought that was so funny. So why don't diets work? There's a, there's so several reasons that we all know, but a big part of that reason is the restriction. And it's not a lifestyle. When you start a diet, it's not designed to carry you through life. It's not designed to carry you through Christmas and new year's.
Speaker 3 00:04:28 It's not designed to carry you through birthdays. It's not designed to allow you to connect with your friends over drinks at happy hour. And those are equally important pieces that make us human. So at live nourish coaching, we say food is energy. So that's calories and calories out what every diet on the planet talks about. But what diets miss is that food is also information. So, um, for example, weight Watchers puts diet Coke and broccoli in the same category. They're both zero points because from a calorie perspective, they're both zero or low calories. But when you actually think about what broccoli is doing from a biochemical standpoint in your body and what diet Coke is doing from a biochemical standpoint in your body, one is being registered as food and nutrients. The other one is being a registered as a foreign invader or a virus.
Speaker 3 00:05:19 It's just not the same thing. And so people who are working through a program like that, get this super messed up mindset about what is good and what is not. And we end up eating all of this stuff that isn't actual food. And so then we damage our metabolisms. We damage our immune systems and when we have damaged metabolisms and immune systems, we're not gonna be able to lose weight. So even if we lost weight originally were poisoning our body and we're not gonna lose weight in the long term. So that's, um, energy and information, then there's connection, which I just kind of talked about, which is, you know, food is equally important as connection to ourselves and our friends and our culture and our traditions. And we have to take that piece into account when we're thinking about nourishing our bodies. And then the final one is medicine, which people don't think about hardly ever, but food really is, you know, the fastest way to heal yourself or the slowest way to kill yourself and a diet.
Speaker 3 00:06:13 Doesn't take that into account. A diet doesn't take into account. If you have gut permeability issues, that it doesn't matter how many calories you eat or not, you're not gonna lose weight. It doesn't take into account whether or not your cortisol levels are so high, that you could go to a 500 calorie a day diet and you wouldn't lose weight because your body is trying to hold on to every ounce that it can to help you run away from the saber tooth tiger, which is actually the stress of opening your emails. So that's, that's a, a lot in a bundle, but basically the reasons diets don't work is cuz they don't take into account the facts that humans are doing them that we need balance in our days. And it doesn't take into account the quality of food that we're putting in. And so they just, they don't work. And if they do work in the short term, they don't work in the long term.
Speaker 0 00:06:58 I, I love those points, especially the, the one about saying that it's not tailored to humans cuz diets, they they're cookie cutter programs. They're solutions to the mass general or like you're saying everybody is different. Everybody either absorbs a certain, uh, what is it fact a fraction of like the calories from the food? Not like if I eat an apple, I might not. Yeah. I might not absorb as many calories as you would or a vice versa. Yeah. I think the other thing is like you're saying the social, um, aspect to food that we some tend to forget. Like when we're hanging out with friends, it's usually over lunch or dinner. If we're having a birthday party, there's food involved and unless you really are willing to bring your own, you know, food and containers to these events, that way you stick to either your points or your macros or the restrictions of the a diet, it gets really tiring. And I think that's the, one of the biggest reasons why people quote unquote, fall off the wagon because diets don't provide that flexibility. Like you're saying
Speaker 3 00:08:08 Exactly to that point too, which I think is super interesting and nobody talks about evolution. Whatever you want to call it, our brains are hardwired to avoid failure. So when we feel like we're failing the reptilian ancient part of our brain kicks in and goes, man, if I'm failing, I'm gonna be weeded out of the population is basically what your brain says. And so your brain is gonna do absolutely everything. It possibly can to keep you from failing. And so if you're on a diet and you go to a party and you eat the cake, your brain goes, I failed at my diet and it's that much harder to get back on track to something that you're going to fail. Versus if you go to a party and you have cake and you say, you know, I'm nourishing a connection with my friends. I ate some food before I went to this party. So I don't need to eat everything here, but I can engage and I can enjoy. Then we're not failing. And we stay on track versus our brains, tell us we fail. And now we've taken a hard left turn and we're off the wagon.
Speaker 0 00:09:06 I'd also like to, um, ask a little bit more about what yours tell, talking about, um, how our bodies view like whole foods, as information as nutrients, whereas it'll view processed food, let's say a diet Coke. Or I wonder even like artificial sweeteners or all these additives that you find and like everything bread past sauce that our bodies receive those and, and see it as viruses.
Speaker 3 00:09:37 Yep. Yeah. So the reason fake sugar has no calories in it is because it's not actually a food. It's what we call a molecular mimicker. So the molecule of sugar has a certain shape. We won't go into the biochemistry of that, but it has a certain shape that attaches to our taste receptors and tells our brain that we've just eaten something sweet, sweet things have vitamins and minerals in it. Dates are sweet. They have incredible zinc and selenium and magnesium in them. So when we have something that's sweet, our body goes, oh, that's a food. It starts secreting insulin. And it starts processing like that. Like a food. What happens with Superlo or Asper tame or any of these fake sweeteners is it's not a food and our body doesn't recognize it as a food. So what happens is it comes into our body, our body, our, our taste buds trigger that it's something sweet.
Speaker 3 00:10:35 So our body actually starts to give us an insulin reaction, cuz it's expecting something sweet, which then triggers an insulin response anyway, which is fascinating. People are like, oh, I'm just gonna go no sugar. And then I won't have an insulin response. Nope. You put something sweet in your mouth. Your body's gonna get ready for that. It's not as dramatic as having sugar, but it does do that. So then you actually want something sweet. A lot of times we'll see people, you know, have a fake sugar and then they'll actually end up eating more real sugar than they would normally cuz their body was triggered to think they're getting sugar. That's that's a rabbit trail. Um, but what happens is that fake sugar, isn't actually a food. There's nothing in it that our body recognizes as food or can digest. So we put that fake sugar into our body.
Speaker 3 00:11:19 It triggers our brain to think something sweet is happening. And then it gets down into our digestive tract and our body, which is constantly scanning our digestive tract. We have all these little, um, uh, white blood cells scanning our digestive tract for foreign invaders goes that thing's not a food and calls in the whole army of our immune system to go fight that thing. So we actually now have multiple studies, linking fake sugars and diet sodas to increases in autoimmune diseases because autoimmune diseases are basically a person's immune system has gotten out of control and is starts attacking things that it shouldn't be attacking. Well, why is it attacking things that it shouldn't be attacking? It's because we have an army at the ready that is going after stuff three, four times a day. Every time you put that fake sugar in our bodies. And so an overactive army just like in the geopolitical world and overactive army is gonna go attack stuff it's not supposed to attack. And our body does the same thing
Speaker 0 00:12:19 When you're talking about like it increases the autoimmune diseases. Does that also like, is that an umbrella term to cover also like, um, inflammation or bloating that you, that people will feel and, and recognize in their body?
Speaker 3 00:12:34 Great question. Inflammation is often something that can trigger autoimmune diseases. We'll often see in chronic inflammation as something that is a precursor to autoimmune. What we mean by autoimmune diseases are things like rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto's disease, which is where the immune system starts attacking a person's thyroid disease or thyroid. Um, Crohn's ulcerative colitis, those kinds of things. Those are autoimmune diseases. And what happens with those autoimmune diseases is a person's immune system starts attacking something. It, it wouldn't have before. Why did it do that? Typically what's the precursor to that is we have chronic inflammation, which is an immune response. So, um, if you think about when you cut yourself, it kind of swells up and gets red. That actually is an immune response. That's your, your immune system, sending little guys to that part of your body to fight off infection and to help heal that. So when we have things in our body like cuts in our gut or gut permeability, that's triggering constant inflammation, which is our immune system being overactive. And often that will lead to our immune system attacking something that it shouldn't like joints or thyroid or something like that. So gas and bloating and inflammation are fabulous fire alarms that tell us, oh, there's a fire somewhere. And we need to go figure out how to put it out before it burns down the whole house.
Speaker 0 00:14:06 Ah, so pay attention to you guys, pay attention to when you're feeling bloated. Um, or like she's saying just keep a mental note and like write things down. Cause I feel like sometimes we, we rely on, yeah, I'll remember, I'll keep, you know, an eye out and things happen a million. You're thinking about a million things in the day. You're gonna forget things. It's it's impossible to remember everything. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:14:29 It's impossible. Yeah. If I asked you what you ate for breakfast last Tuesday. No idea. So if we're trying to figure out if that's triggering something in your body, unless we're writing it down, that's such a good point. We have no clue.
Speaker 0 00:14:41 I think I also, well, I also wanna point out cuz I think as if you're kind of in your beginnings of your fitness journey and your health journey and, and you're relying on the things that you see on social media, you'll see, you know, bodybuilders and people that are, have these amazing physics as quote, like the peak of fitness and health and what do they do. They tend to, you know, rely on these foods that have very low sugar, very low carbs, and oftentimes end up being more processed than natural foods. And so we say, oh, well, if they're doing it, it, it should be fine. It should be healthy. Where sometimes you have to remember that body building is not healthy. It's not sustainable it's they are pushing their bodies to their limit so that they can for a week, two weeks, three weeks, max, it's very, very short time. And so rather than thinking, this is the peak of health and fitness to say, okay, well this is what they had to do temporarily to get their body to such drastically low levels of body fat. But if your, your goal is long term health or long term weight loss, it can't be relying on those quick, you know, not quick shortcuts, but these cheat codes I'm gonna call them.
Speaker 3 00:16:00 Yeah. I literally couldn't have said that better. I'm so glad you brought that up. It's not. Yeah. Well said <laugh> I couldn't have said that better. We actually have a client right now. Who's gosh, I think she's mid fifties somewhere, but she actually was a bodybuilder in her twenties and thirties and because they literally starve themselves and dehydrate themselves to get that cut. Look, she's done so much damage to her metabolism that now she's going through menopause and her metabolism is damaged and she's probably not gonna get under, you know, 29% body fat ever again because her body won't let her because she did so much damage. That was so well said. Yeah. Yeah. Instagram is not the goal.
Speaker 0 00:16:44 <laugh> it's nice to look at, but just to look at,
Speaker 3 00:16:46 Just to look at yeah, <laugh> totally.
Speaker 0 00:16:50 Okay. So we, we've been kind of focusing a little bit on just kind of what to avoid, what to keep your eyes out, red flags to keep an eye out. Um, let's kind of transition into what you should focus on instead. So what are like key nutrients that you would recommend that everybody have on in their diet?
Speaker 3 00:17:07 Yes. So if you're gonna make one shift to, I was gonna say Healthify, but I hate that word. So nourish, ay, that's not a word, but I'm making it one, um, to nourish ay, your diet. Yeah. Hashtag trademark. One of the things that you can think about doing is increasing the amount of color that you have in your regular meal by 50%. So if you think about what we kind of call the standard American diet, if you acronym that out, it's the sad diet. Everything is brown and white. We have, yeah, we've got meat, we've got potatoes. We've maybe got rice. We've maybe got a salad. So there's a color, but phytochemicals or phytonutrients are one of the main things that our body has to have in order to function properly. It's an absolutely beautiful thing that our bodies are designed to function the way they're meant to function, but we have to give them the right fuel and phytonutrients are one of that, those main fuels that we need.
Speaker 3 00:18:06 So if you can take what you're currently eating and increase the amount of color that you have on your plate by 50%, do that for three weeks, you'll probably start feeling better. You'll probably have lower information inflammation. You'll very likely lose weight. You'll very likely start to balance your blood sugar and you'll start to see some changes in skin and hormones. That's a super easy one. Um, ideally we should be eating every color of the rainbow every single day. And we should be eating nine to 14 servings of fruits and vegetables every day. I'm a nutrition counselor. Yeah. I know. It's a lot. I don't, that's
Speaker 0 00:18:41 Higher than, than what I have learned or read mm-hmm <affirmative> why do you know like what, the reason why nine versus, uh, I originally thought it was supposed to be three to four veggie and then two to three of fruit.
Speaker 3 00:18:53 Yep. So those are super outdated standards back from, we all learned that in elementary school, um, with the, like the food pyramid, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> so the, um, the CDC has now changed that to my plate. So instead of a food pyramid, it's a plate. And if you look at it about half of that plate should be fruits and vegetables. So that's, that's just our government standard, which is still pretty low. And then if we go and we look at the actual vitamins minerals and nutrients that our body needs, every single one of those colors. So red, orange, yellow, green, blue purple have different phytochemicals, vitamins and minerals in them that we desperately need for our bodies to function. So if we break it down and we look at it from a functional perspective in order to get what we need, that's where we get that number is we're looking at what's coming out of what color and what our body needs in terms of vitamins and minerals.
Speaker 3 00:19:45 So that's where we get that nine to 14, which is way higher than most anybody gets. And then part of that number also comes from the fact that an apple today has 50% of the nutrients from an apple even 10 years ago. So, you know, ideally we would get all of our vitamins and minerals and nutrients from our food, but we just can't anymore because industrial farming and genetic modification, what we're eating now does not have the same molecular makeup and the same, um, nutrient nutrient profile that it did before. So we have to eat more of it. And then we have to supplement to some degree, not with a crazy cabinet of stuff, but there are some things that we're just not gonna get from our food.
Speaker 0 00:20:33 So then kind of transitioning to supplementation. Yeah. Cause there's a lot of misinformation regarding to, uh, how much you should supplement and does the quality of supplements really matter and all this stuff that even, I'm still trying to cipher through everything, cuz it's a lot and it's very confusing. Can you kind of talk to on that point as well?
Speaker 3 00:21:00 Yeah, absolutely. It is a lot and it is so driven by marketing that even if you can dig through all of the nonsense to get to the core of it, it's really hard to sort out what's marketing and what's truth. So I'll boil it down for you. Um, in terms of supplement quality, quality, absolutely matters. Uh, we have a document that I think I sent you a link for your people can download that will walk them through how to find a high quality supplement. But the FDA really doesn't regulate supplements. There are some supplements that have voluntarily submitted to that process, but most don't. So the supplement industry and that includes things like protein powders is massively unregulated, which means two things, a supplement company can claim whatever is in it is in it and not have anything in it. There's a very well known supplement brand.
Speaker 3 00:21:52 That's sold at health food stores. You can Google it if you want to. Uh, it was about five years ago, they had all of their St John's wor recalled because their St John's wart supplement had zero St. John's wart in it. It was all cellulose. Whoa. Yeah. And that's yep. Unregulated. They can do that. And there's, there's no consequence for that, which is pretty crazy. So that means that we have to trust the supplement company to put in it, what they say is in it. And we have to trust them with our safety, which means that whatever that thing is, doesn't have mold bacteria, uh, herbicides, pesticides that can say organic to sell an organic labeled supplement. It actually only has to be 70% organic. So the other 30% can be whatever they felt like putting in it. Um, so that's what that's kind of the, the soup that you're getting when you buy supplements.
Speaker 3 00:22:43 So there's a couple of certifications that we look for anytime we're, we're recommending a supplement and those are the NSF certification, third party that supplement brands can submit to that third party tests every month, amazing company. Um, GMP is another stamp that you can find on the back of supplements. That's really good. Uh, it needs to be non GMO project verified. You can stamp non GMO on anything you want. I can make up my own logo and put non GMO on there. So it has to say non GMO project certified, cuz that is the third party testing. Um, and then there's an Australian version of the FDA that's way stricter than we are. So those are kind of the four that we look for. And we look, we try to look for at least two, if not all, four of those on supplements, which means you can spend a lot of time in the supplement aisle, looking at the back of bottles, trying to figure out.
Speaker 3 00:23:38 So that's a great place to start. If you have supplements in your cabinet, go look and see if it has those certifications on it. And if it, it doesn't, I honestly just recommend throwing them away because you don't actually know what's in it. There's some solid research. Now that shows that, um, the lower quality, uh, multivitamins things from department store, brand names from big box store, brand names, they actually do more damage to our body than they do. Good. So you'd actually be better off just not taking it and getting whatever you can get from food. So quality matters. Um, and we can, we'll send you that link so that you can send that to your people, that guide to help you figure out what to get it and then what to have in your cabinet. So, um, I feel like I talked to a ton of people who either take zero supplements because they think it's all a crock, which when you look at the lower quality supplements it is, or I talk to the people who have a thousand dollars invested in this massive cabinet full of absolutely everything.
Speaker 3 00:24:39 Um, and neither of those places are where you want to be. We don't need a massive cabinet full of supplements. We also need to be supplementing with some things. So if you're curious where to start four things that we recommend that everybody needs. The first one is D three K two. Uh, we do not get enough D three from sunshine. If you work in an office at all, you're probably not getting there. And then even if you don't work in, if open office, if you're a landscaper and you're outside all day, if you live north of the 38th parallel from, uh, October, until may, you cannot get enough sunshine to get enough. D three. So D three is a super crucial one. It's also really hard to overdose. You have to be up around 500,000 IUs of D three to overdose and nobody takes that much.
Speaker 3 00:25:25 Um, so that's a really important one. And then D three has to be paired with K2. That's something that after this whole COVID thing, nobody is talking about and everyone needs to be talking about the K2 is what directs the D three and calcium to bones. If you don't have the K2, the D three helps the calcium get absorbed wherever it is in your system, which means into your arteries and that causes ALO sclerosis or the hardening of your arteries. So D three K two super important combo. That's a great place to start. Another one is B12. We used to think that only vegans and vegetarians were deficient in B12 because we thought it came from meat. But we now know that what creates B12 is actually bacteria that lives in the soil. And so the reason meat has it and vegetarians don't is because vegetarians wash their food and cows don't wash their grass.
Speaker 3 00:26:15 But what we know now is same thing because of industrial farming and cows are no longer grass fed. It's actually five and seven people in Western cultures. So the United States Europe up in Canada that are deficient in B12. So that's a huge one. And it's super crucial for mitochondrial function, which is energy and brain function and all of those things. So D three K two B12. The next one is magnesium. Magnesium is required for 300 plus different functions in our bodies. And 80% of Americans are deficient in it because we should be getting it from our vegetables and we're not anymore. Um, magnesium, I feel like is the new miracle drug. We can fix leg cramps with magnesium. We can fix sleep issues with magnesium. We can fix a lot of gut issues with magnesium. So just take magnesium. You wanna look for magnesium glycinate or magnesium glycinate. Those are the two that are the best. And then the fourth one that we recommend is a phytonutrient supplement that is organic or better than organic, non GMO certified. So that is not a multivitamin. That is a phytonutrient supplement. So that's, uh, like the greens and red powders that you can find. We use juice plus with our company. We love it, but there's a bunch of different ones out there. So those are the four D three K two B12 magnesium phytonutrients that everyone should have.
Speaker 0 00:27:36 I hope you guys wrote it down. <laugh> um, okay. What about like, cuz those, you say those are like the main four. The other one that's super popular that I see everywhere is collagen is collagen. Yeah, I know it has a lot of protein. So if you're trying to increase your protein intake, is that a good source? Like is it absorbable?
Speaker 3 00:28:00 Yes. Is the general answer. You wanna be careful, same thing about the source that you're getting your collagen from. So look for those certifications and then look for the type of collagen. So, um, there's three types of collagen type one, two and three type one and three are best for hair and joints type two is best for joints and gut. So it kind of depends on, on what your goals are. Ideally your body should create collagen on its own as we age our ability to create collagen decreases. But if you're given your body, those basic functional nutrients that your body needs in order to function well, you don't necessarily need to supplement with collagen. You're not gonna hurt yourself by supplementing with collagen. It's a fantastic thing to add in and it wouldn't go in that category of everybody has to have it no matter what.
Speaker 0 00:28:50 So then kind of, uh, going back to the beginning of our, the podcast, yeah. You were talking about how food is, is energy and it's medicine and a big topic right now that I feel is really prevalent, at least in the nutrition space, on social media and just articles and everything that I'm reading everywhere is the connection between nutrition and mental health. So let's kind of transition into that. What's your standpoint in how, what the, what the, what is the connection there? How strong is it and like kind of, let's just start from there and see where the conversation
Speaker 3 00:29:29 Goes. Yes, yes. I love it. This is one of my favorite things to talk about. Um, is there a connection? Absolutely. Is there a really dramatic connection? Absolutely. Um, I'll just throw a couple fun facts at you to get the conversation going. So one of the things that we know is when an embryo is forming and cells start to differentiate this, the cell pod that forms our brain is the exact same cell pod that forms our gut. And, and that happens, you know, as the embryo is dividing, obviously everything comes from two cells, but then it starts shifting off brain and gut come from the same cell pod. So the gut brain access is what we use in the science community to describe this kind of mysterious, but also very easily connectable connection between our gut and our brain when our mental health is off, our gut health is off when our gut health is off, our mental health is off and we can prove that case study over case study over case study.
Speaker 3 00:30:29 And we now have some amazing gold standard placebo controlled research to show that, um, just in your own, as a human, when you're stressed or you're nervous, right brain, we start to get those kind of like in our belly or we can even give ourselves diarrhea. That's a gut brain connection that we can tell, you know, just as normal humans, same thing when we don't feel good, whether it's like gas or bloating or, um, a stomach bug, we usually feel pretty down. So just as a normal human, those are two that we can, we can highlight, but we now have a ton of studies to connect those. So that's your first fun functional medicine fact brain gut access comes from the same cell pod. The second one that is fascinating is 95% of our serotonin is actually created in our gut, in our GI system, which is crazy. So we talk about depression, which is typically a serotonin deficiency, right? We treat it with SSRIs, selective SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Um, that's what we give as antidepressants. What that does is it prevents your body from reabsorbing, whatever serotonin it has created. It does not address the problem that there wasn't enough serotonin floating around in a person's body to begin with. And where does that start? That starts in the gut. So gut health is mental health and mental health is gut health. And I could talk about that for an hour. <laugh>
Speaker 0 00:31:54 So nice. I guess what I'm, what I'm hearing is that influences the serotonin release from your GI system. So then is it because of the processed foods have certain additives or chemicals in them that inhibit the serotonin, whereas whole foods doesn't or is it vice versa? The whole foods promote the S serotonin, whereas processed food. Doesn't
Speaker 3 00:32:23 Great question. It's both. Um, we have, so the precursor to serotonin is trip tofa, which gets a bad rep cuz of Turkey dinners on Thanksgiving. But trip tofa is actually super important. So when we eat nourishing foods that help our bodies create trip tofa, we're therefore helping our guts create serotonin, cuz our guts need trip tofa to convert it to serotonin. So when we put those healthy nourishing foods in there, we're increasing the amounts of serotonin in our guts. When we eat processed foods, not only are we not giving our bodies what they need to create to create what we need, but we're also processed foods. Um, refined oils, processed sugar actually causes damage to our intestinal system. So if you think about, if you're damaging the machine, that creates what you need, even if you then put the good stuff in the machine, I'm now dealing with a damaged machine. So step one is I have to fix the machine or I have to fix my gut so that it actually functions the way that it needs to function. And then I need to add the fuel to the system that will help it function. Right.
Speaker 0 00:33:29 So I guess to kind of put that into layman's terms, let's say you have a car that runs on regular gas and you suddenly put diesel in it, like it's, it's gonna mess up the engine. It doesn't matter if you start putting regular gas again, like the engine's gonna be
Speaker 3 00:33:44 Damaged. Yeah. Precisely well said. So I have to fix the engine before the actual gas will make it work right again. Yep.
Speaker 0 00:33:53 Does that, what about the connection between like the food Rylan and um, leptin? Cause I know that if, if you're not eating enough, you're really restricting your calorie intake. Your body is gonna produce more grillin so that it, you know, encourages you to stay hungry and to eat more, essentially eat more. Yeah. And then same thing with leptin. If you're losing a lot of, um, body fat, your body's gonna kind of freak out, bring the alarms and, and it's not gonna be receiving that amount of left. And then again, it's gonna increase that grilling level.
Speaker 3 00:34:27 Yep.
Speaker 0 00:34:28 What, like in those circumstances, are these changes? How like reversible is it? So let's say somebody had a really restrictive diet. They had all their body was ringing all these red, you know, sirens. How, how is the process of kind of restoring their metabolism and you know, is it a process that like once you hurt and damage your metabolism, like you're stuck at a certain level or can you completely repair everything and, and go back to new.
Speaker 3 00:34:58 That is such a good question. The answer is, it depends. The short answer is it depends. We have a client who started with us and she's been on a diet since she was 17 and she's in her late forties. Um, so for her getting her metabolism back to a place where it was when she was 17, before she started doing damage, we're not gonna do that. However, we can help her body learn first that it's safe. So safe means our bodies need to know that we're not in a famine anymore. And that the famine isn't going to come back, cuz that's partly what happens when people do these big diet swings in the grillin and leptin kicks in and we, we, we mess up our metabolism essentially is our bodies go, it's a famine. And so therefore I have to slow my metabolism down so that I can hold onto every calorie I possibly can because I don't know when I'm gonna get food next.
Speaker 3 00:35:50 So step one is we have to help our bodies understand that they're safe by increasing that calorie level and then maintaining it for a long enough period of time that those hormones start to balance out and that our body can realize, okay, now we're safe. And then once we're there, then we actually probably take another step and we increase those calories even more so that our body can realize, okay, now I'm safe to start burning. So when someone has been on a diet, since they were 17, we're probably going to gain a good amount of weight back before we can get their body to a place that their body understands that, oh, I'm safe enough now to start releasing fat. And we can do that in a healthy way. Um, so is it reversible? Yes, it's reversible. It is significantly easier to rev reverse the, the, the, with a lower amount of time being on those low calorie diets, the longer you're on a low calorie diet, the harder it is to reverse that. And the more time it's gonna take to reverse that
Speaker 0 00:36:49 And a note to listeners, if you're wondering, okay, well what is my, the amount of calories that I need for my body to recognize it's no longer in a famine and that it's safe to start burning calories. You can try to figure that out on your own through doing some, uh, experimentation. But I would just recommend is fine. A functional medicine like hall or, um, a nutrition coach for nutritionist. That way they can kind of guide you along. And, you know, they'll be able to recognize, uh, the signals your body is, is showing much better in a much faster pace than if you're trying to kind of self experiment. Yeah. So don't be afraid. Ask for help. We're that's what we're here for. We're in this career to help
Speaker 3 00:37:33 Well said. There's actually, this is interesting. I won't, I try not to name names cause I don't throw companies under the bus, but there is a diet program out there right now that's really popular. Um, food comes in a box it's very processed and it starts with an incredibly low calorie number. It's like 500 to 800 depending on a person's body and that per
Speaker 0 00:37:53 Meal per day,
Speaker 3 00:37:55 Per day,
Speaker 0 00:37:55 Per day.
Speaker 3 00:37:56 Oh my God. It's bad. And so people lose a ton of weight, right? Like I starved myself, I will lose weight. Absolutely. Um, but what people should know is that that low of a calorie diet is actually considered malpractice for a nutritionist or an RD to put someone on without having doctor oversight. And the only time anyone should do that, if it's, if someone's dealing with morbid obesity and they're more likely to die from an obesity complication than anything else, but that's a diet program that I could go on Google and buy in the next five minutes. So yeah, to the find a coach or someone who can walk you through it, please find a coach or someone who can walk you through it, cuz you can buy something off the internet that is malpractice for any professional to put you on.
Speaker 0 00:38:45 Yeah. Uh, I think we're about to ready to wrap up this episode, but kind of before we do our, our outros, is there any, um, like YouTube channels, books, videos, uh, courses that you would recommend for somebody that is wanting to learn about how food is medicine and you know, how to, you know, just in general learn more about nutrition? What, what do you recommend?
Speaker 3 00:39:10 Great question. So I would book a free consult with us cuz you can go to our website and do that. Um, there's also a link that I sent you. So it should be in the notes. If you wanna go download our guide to, um, we have a, a gut health recipe book and a supplement guide to help you get started. And then gosh, one of my favorite books, I have a million, um, let me look at my bookshelf, uh, eat fat, get thin by Dr. Mark Hyman. Great place to start. Dr. Mark Hyman is kind of the, the father of functional medicine. Um, he was one of our professors in school. He's incredible. He's a great place to start. Um, yeah, that would be a great place to start book a free consult or read one of his books.
Speaker 0 00:39:57 There you go. Thank you for those. Appreciate it. Yeah. Um, I'll have all of Hallie's referenced, um, material, the books, the quizzes, as well as a link to her website where you can sign up for a free consultation down below in the show notes. So then kind of wrapping things up. We're gonna bring this episode to the manifest challenge. So anybody new listening to this, uh, podcast, the manifest challenge is an action step, essentially, a, a homework that you're gonna practice for this week and it relates to the topic of the episode. So we're talking about nutrition, we're talking about key nutrients. So I've kind of given a hint here, but what is gonna be your manifest challenge? Oh,
Speaker 3 00:40:39 I love that. Uh, try to get 50% more color on your plate.
Speaker 0 00:40:45 So I actually, um, I'll link as well, a little, uh, image. Like if you're like, oh, what colors, what vegetables have, what colors and what else is out there? It has a ton of like the most common ones as well as ones that you kind of forget about that exist in your groceries. So I'll have a, a, an image linked below as well. So you can get started from there. All right. This,
Speaker 3 00:41:09 This
Speaker 0 00:41:09 Is, is such a great episode. I think this is, I don't wanna, I don't wanna be, um, what is it favorist
Speaker 3 00:41:16 Yeah, this is that word favor. Favorist favoritism.
Speaker 0 00:41:18 I don't wanna show favoritism, but I will say this has been a great episode.
Speaker 3 00:41:23 <laugh> thank you. I have had a wonderful time.
Speaker 0 00:41:27 Yeah, well, uh, once again, um, oh, well I would say that the best place to find hall is gonna be her website. So if you're wanting to learn more about her services or kind of her philosophy or what she offers, definitely check out her website. All right. Any last words before we say goodbye,
Speaker 3 00:41:46 Live nourished, choose nourishing every day and nourishing can be ice cream sometimes and that's okay.
Speaker 0 00:41:53 There we go. All in balance,
Speaker 3 00:41:56 All in balance.
Speaker 0 00:41:57 That's it. For this episode of the fitness manifest podcast, my name is coach Theresa and until next time, bye
Speaker 2 00:42:11 Side effects might include motivation, empowerment, giggles, enlightenment inspiration
Speaker 4 00:42:16 With blue.
