Our roadmap for what to do about it.

Jordan: Oh my goodness. Welcome to the Happy Hormone Gut Gals. We are so excited. This is a really big deal.

Michelle: It is a really big deal. We have been trying to do a podcast for, I don't know how many years, 5, 6, 7 years. and we started and life got in the way and we're trying it again. We're gonna do it this time. Yep, it is. Now, it's a priority. So we are excited and welcome.

Jordan: This is really filling my bucket. So I'm really excited.

Michelle: You'll learn about us over the next few podcasts, I'm sure. But we thought this was the most important thing we could talk about right now.

Jordan: Yeah, we just wanna jump in. Yeah. And Michelle, what is that question? What's the number one thing we get asked?

Michelle: The number one question we get asked, why am I gaining weight and why can't I lose the stupid stubborn weight that I've been putting on for the last year and it won't come off.

Jordan: It's a very good question.

Jordan: It is. And I hear you. Yeah. We've been there. We can absolutely relate to that. Here's the thing, if, if the answer to that question were simple, then the diets that we see everywhere would actually work.

Jordan & Michelle: Yeah. Right? Yeah. I mean the old, the old adage, of calories in, calories out.

Michelle: It would work, right? Like Everyone in the world that's been struggling with weight gain would be skinny at this point and all of us middle-aged women would not suddenly be starting to gain weight, if you were eating the same thing and moving the same way year after year there would be no gain of weight. So what do you think's happening?

Jordan: Michelle? Do you have some stats in the diet industry that I know you wanna talk about?

Michelle: I do. So if this whole thing was working, if all of these diets were working, then there wouldn't be a 58 billion dollar US diet industry right now. Ooh. Yeah. $58 billion, with a "B", dollars being spent on people trying to lose weight, so something's not working if that's how much money we're spending.

Jordan: If you look at some of the statistics around obesity in particular, like the CDC, they report between 1999 and 2017, there's been an increase in obesity from 30% to 42%. The CDC reports that between, 1999, 2000, that timeframe, and 2017, so almost 17 years, the obesity prevalence increased from 30% to 42%, and I'm pretty sure there was a lot of diets that went out there between those 17 years. So the prevalence of severe obesity right now, has increased from 4.7% to 9.2%. And what comes with that are obesity related conditions. What they're saying now are those things are heart disease, stroke type two diabetes, and even certain types of cancer. Unfortunately, these are among the leading causes of preventable premature death. The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the United States was nearly $173 billion in 2019, and unfortunately, the medical costs for adults who had obesity were roughly $1,800 higher than medical costs for people with healthy weight. So there's kind of an industry happening here.

Michelle: Yeah, I mean, it, it's, the statistics are pretty unbelievable when you start thinking about it. And yet, think about all of the diet books that people have tried over the last, 20 years and yet still we're seeing this increase in weight. So it's interesting. , if you really think about it, and this is what we're gonna get into today, is, what we really know is that weight gain and obesity are a manifestation of an interplay between nutrition, what you're eating, genetics, how your microbes and your gut are working, and then what you're experiencing in your environment. And all of that comes into play when we're talking about increasing weight, not being able to lose the weight that you have. All of those things.

Jordan: Right? It, it's not just about willpower, it's not about calories.

Jordan: What we want you to know first and foremost today, is to take a deep breath. We know that you've tried everything and we know that it's frustrating. Like I said before, we've been there. What we are here to do is to teach. Different approach and we've actually made it our mission.

Jordan: So really big, big, big hugs. Big hugs.

Michelle: Let's talk about what weight gain is. Wikipedia defines weight gain as simply an increase in body weight. So, that body weight could be in terms of muscle mass. We've got a lot of bodybuilders out there.

Michelle: Muscle mass also increases weight. but we wouldn't consider, a bodybuilder, overweight, or obese.

Jordan: I know I'm interrupting you, but what's funny is I used to be in that world, we'll, we'll get into that later. Most bodybuilders would be considered obese, according to their BMI.

Michelle: Exactly.

Jordan: A lot of people don't know that.

Michelle: Yeah. So the other place you can increase your body weight is by fat deposits, by increasing the size of your adipose tissue, which is where your fat is stored and then the other thing that people don't really think about is excess fluids. You could just be retaining a lot of water. Or what we're really gonna get into is inflammation. It's interesting, even Wikipedia describes weight gain as a "symptom of a serious medical condition".

Jordan: It's not a stand alone, it's a symptom. And frankly, that's exactly how we think about it too. You're not overweight my friend. You're inflamed, you're simply inflamed.

Jordan: Okay, so what the heck is inflammation? It's kind of almost becoming a buzzword a little bit. So let's unpack it. What we are going to be talking about today is internal inflammation, not the pain or the swelling that happens if you twist your ankle. What we are gonna be talking about is when your body encounters something like a virus or a toxic chemical, it activates your immune system.

Jordan: What happens is your body sends out inflammatory cells and cytokines that trap those viruses or chemicals and starts healing the tissue in chronic inflammation, your body continues to send those same inflammatory cells. What could be causing this response? Here's the deal. Things like chronic invaders that our conventional medical system doesn't recognize.

Jordan: Things like mold, mycotoxins, heavy metals, parasites, combine this with our standard American diet of trans fats, processed foods excess sugar, and CAFO meats Quite frankly, you have the perfect storm. So when the body is in this chronic cycle of trying to heal itself and trap these invaders, you get inflammation. You're not fat. Your body is simply trying to protect you.

Michelle: Good point. So let's break this down even more into acute and chronic inflammation. What Jordan was talking about when you twist your ankle and your ankle swells up that is considered acute inflammation and that is important.

Michelle: You want that to happen because you want your ankle to feel better. Your body's gonna send out the immune system to go in take out any of the bacteria that might have happened to get in there when you twisted your ankle, it's gonna try and heal the tissue. That inflammation is really important. It actually breaks down tissues that are, not working very well and it rebuilds it.

Michelle: That's how important your immune system is and it can't do that unless it inflames that area so that all of the white blood cells can get in there and do that. So that's really what inflammation is. I means it's the same thing if you cut your leg, your leg is gonna swell up; there is a potential that you had bacteria in there if you used a knife or a stick or whatever it was that cut your leg. You want those cells to destroy the bad stuff.

Jordan: The one thing that I wanna make sure that we discuss here about inflammation, so we understand it, is that we, have inflammation to thank for our evolution. It's what helped save lives. It got rid of the acute, the immediate, the short-term problems.

Jordan: It provided that inflammatory response that was needed to defend our ancestors against pathogens. But what we are here to talk about is the chronic, the low-grade inflammation. That one does not have a lifesaving role. It doesn't serve us and it really, it doesn't help us. It doesn't protect us.

Michelle: That's part of the problem, right? Is that chronic, inflammatory state that we are in because all of that inflammation that you see on the outside when you sprain your ankle or get a cut, that's happening on the inside. You just don't see it. If you have a parasite that is attacking your liver, let's say you're gonna inflame that area so that you can get your immune system in there and try and get rid of that parasite. You just don't see that because it's all happening on the inside of your body. In 2008, they created a new word to describe the sort of low grade inflammatory state that actually changes your metabolism when you have this sort of chronic low grade state going on, it changes how your metabolism works. Metabolism is what keeps your weight in check, for instance. And that word is Metaflammation.

Jordan: Metaflammation.

Michelle: Metaflammation. It is, basically, "meta" "inflammation" that's sort of pushed together and combined, so it's metaflammation. You started seeing that word in a lot of the research and the literature somewhere around 2008. So it's been around for a while, but it was the first time I had ever heard of it.

Jordan: Is this another one of those made up words orconditions like IBS or would you put it in a different category?

Michelle: I would put in a different category only because it's trying to describe, I mean, the literature has realized, and the researchers have realized that, that this chronic low-grade state that we're in is a thing now.

Michelle: And so they had to name it and that's what they named it.

Jordan: Okay.

Michelle: The connection between weight gain and your metabolic pathway imbalance. That's been in literature since like 1983, so a long time. People have realized that there's this connection between inflammation and your metabolic pathway. And so what they've shown is that the immune system actually induces insulin resistance, so think of that as diabetes that leads to metabolic syndrome. In other words, inflammation from your immune system is driving this metabolic syndrome. And so here's a pro-tip: anytime you hear the word syndrome, it describes a set of symptoms that puts you at risk of disease.

Michelle: Think of IBS, that's irritable bowel syndrome. So the risk of disease comes from a set of symptoms, and those diseases from metabolic syndrome are things like diabetes, which I already mentioned. Coronary heart disease, fatty liver.

Jordan: As you can see here, the weight gain, it's usually never by itself, and you're probably here with other things as well. It's never just the only symptom that a person has, and this is our personal experience as well as what we've seen in clients over many years going to have body. Chronic fatigue or insomnia? Personal favorite. Just kidding. Depression, anxiety and mental disorders. Definitely. Just kidding. But we'll get into that more on the podcast because that's my realm.

Jordan & Michelle: It's happened, right? It's happened literally.

Jordan: Gastrointestinal complications. Things like acid reflux, diarrhea, constipation, weight gain or weight loss. Here we are again. Mm-hmm. And with these things also comes frequent infections, sinus infections, asthma, allergies, autoimmune disease, hormonal imbalances, PMS, PCOS, painful periods.

Michelle: One of the things that I really love telling people, which always gives me some side-eyed glances is PMS. Just because it's common doesn't mean it's normal. Same thing with like all the symptoms you get from menopause.

Jordan: Bingo. Just because it's common. Just because we've accepted it as a society, doesn't mean it's normal.

Michelle: Yep, exactly. All these things are inflammation.

Jordan: It's all inflammation. Here's the kicker though. What makes it hard for our bodies to deal with all this internal stress we've been talking about... external stress. If you find yourself overweight and you're frustrated by that and nothing's working, it's likely that you're thinking, I gotta go harder, I gotta do more. I gotta be harder on my body, not so our modern lifestyles have us working super long hours already, and then if you're trying to lose weight, you've probably added in some maximum intensity, heavy hitting workouts, and you're probably staying up later or getting up early to get those workouts in, especially if you are a mom, a busy, working woman. And what research has shown is that this chronic stress, both the physical that I talked about and the psychological is correlated with weight gain. On average long-term cortisol levels, cortisols are stress hormones, that is elevated in obese individuals and in particular, it's related to increased abdominal fat mass.

Jordan: This suggests the vicious cycle where increased gluto-corticoid action, obesity and stress interact and amplify each other. Michelle, you have anything to say here?

Michelle: Yeah, so research has shown that chronic stress and stress can be either psychological or physical, that's what Jordan was really just talking about that is correlated with weight gain and so on average, what we see is that long-term cortisol levels, that which is the stress hormone is elevated in obese individuals. And it's related to an increase in abdominal fat mass, which is your stomach, really. You've, I'm sure noticed people walking around with bigger stomachs that's related to that stress hormone, cortisol. All right. So what we end up with is this vicious cycle where you get stressed, your cortisol increases, that leads to more weight gain, that leads to more stress. And so then you're caught up in this like weird stress cycle that's just keeps increasing your weight.

Jordan: And it's kind of, it can be never, it can be never ending. I actually found a study that says that the World Health Organization correlates these chronic diseases and inflammation as the greatest threat to our, human health. So please remember this is not your fault. Your body is not the problem. It's, believe it or not, it's actually trying to become the solution. It really just needs you more concerned about nutrients instead of calories. This is something that Michelle and I talk about all of the time with our clients and what we want to bring to the world. We need to be counting our nutrients and not our calories. This has way more to do with how we look and feel than what conventional medicine has led us to believe.

Jordan: We also don't blame you for wanting to lose weight either. When we look and feel the best on the outside, that's when we're more willing to create and show the world our magic from the inside. And that's what we're here to do.

Michelle: And that's what we hope, hope to do as we continue on these podcasts.

Jordan: Exactly. That's exactly why we started this.

Michelle: So what can you do about it?

Jordan: Good question. Here's the thing. Chronic inflammation is not something that dieting and exercise is going to fix. Your weight today has nothing to do with what you ate yesterday. This has been building for years.

Michelle: This is something that we tell clients all the time, when you come in and see us, don't expect changes to happen overnight.

Michelle: This is something that has built up in your system literally for years, like Jordan said. We shouldn't expect in this day and age we do, we expect things to happen overnight. We expect information at our fingertips.

Michelle: We want answer right now!

Jordan: We're in the, unfortunately, we're in the lose 30 pounds in 30 days. Right. Culture. Yep. Right.

Michelle: If that worked, then again I would refer you back to those statistics at the very beginning of the podcast.

Jordan: Right. Then obesity wouldn't be a problem, then the weight gain wouldn't be a problem.

Jordan: But also, I'm gonna say it again. Remember, this isn't your fault, our current medical system, it's not teaching us how to take care of our bodies. It's not teaching us to watch out for these symptoms. We're not talking about if you start experiencing PMS, then you likely have some inflammation, some hormonal imbalances, let's address it. So don't be too hard on yourself. Exactly. But here's our list and we're gonna go into each of these. Our list of what you can do. Fight your weight gain.

Michelle: First thing you can do, get to the root cause of what's causing your weight. Think about nutrients to nourish. Change how you're moving. Get rid of the toxic chemicals. Let go of the past, let it go. People make time for breathing, and meditating, and get more sleep. All right, let's start with first one.

Jordan: Michelle. Why do we want people to go see a functional practitioner?

Michelle: A functional medicine practitioner is going to try and figure out what the root cause is to your weight gain, and they're gonna use proper lab testing to do that.

Jordan: But Michelle, but Michelle, my doctor. My doctor checked my blood last year.

Michelle: When I look at a blood test, I'm gonna be looking for patterns. I'm gonna be looking to see how your whole body is functioning and the ranges that I use are different than what the lab is using, because I'm looking to see whether you've got some imbalance and not looking to see if you have a disease. And that's what most functional practitioners are gonna do, is they're gonna look to see how, where is the imbalance in your body and how can we correct those imbalances and allow your body to heal itself essentially.

Jordan: Bingo. Here's another pro-tip that one of the things I want people to understand here, things like candida and parasites, they are a problem and that we, we need to figure them out, but they're not a root cause. We have to see what else is going on in the body to create the perfect environment that's continued for allowing them to grow. There's other things to look at here. Probably the biggest one that drives me batty is hormones do not go whack just because you're aging. It like, funny segue here, it's I'm, Shoot. How old am I? 37. Okay. I'm a military spouse, so I move around a lot. I'm constantly trying to make new friends. It's really hard for me to keep my mouth shut when I am out to dinner with somebody or in a group of other women, and They're joking about, "oh, it's just the way life is. Like, I was a, I was a bitch last week because I was PMS'ing and "oh, my hormone. I'm, you know, I'm perimenopausal. Just, you know, because I'm 42." It's such a frustration for me that women have been led to believe that. you really need as Michelle was saying, you really need to have a plan, a healing protocol, if you will, that is tailored. to your body, something that meets your needs.

Michelle: Right?

Jordan: The other tests that a practitioner could use a stool test, studying your stool, a genetics test. A more detailed blood test, a urine test, looking at hormones in the urine or organic acids in the urine. A urine test to look at environmental toxins, all of those things, it's, there's so much more out there to learn about your body than just blood tests.

Michelle: Yeah. And everybody's body is gonna be different. So, the way my body works, I have underlying genetics and, that is may or may not influence what happens and where, where imbalances could occur in my body. That's one issue. I'm gonna encounter different environmental conditions than someone else and I'm going to eat differently than somebody else. All of those things factor into the particular imbalance in your body and where it shows up. And it might show up in me even if we were doing all the same things differently than the next person. That's why it really has to be individualized to you and using proper lab testing can really help pinpoint where the imbalances are in your body that you can start to turn around.

Jordan: Exactly. The next thing we want you to start focusing on nutrients. We want the goal to be to nourish our bodies. Examples of this: eat quality meats that are grassfed and pastured when budget allows, eat meats that were able to live their lives as nature intended. I said the word CAFO before, CAFO is short for concentrated animal factory operations, I believe, or something like that.

Jordan: Unfortunately, in today's society what is happening is cows were not meant to live on these operations where they're standing in their own feces and being fed grain. They're meant to be grazing, eating grasses. That's why they have multiple stomachs, for example. Hogs combined. Combined animal feeding operations. Thank you. Combined. I thought I saw concentrated. Yeah, it's concentrated. Yeah. Wait. It's okay. Yeah. Anyway. Go Hogs. Were not meant to live in a barn in a crate where they can't even turn. They are meant to roll in the mud and get sunshine and enjoy their lives. So ethical meat is absolutely a part of it.

Jordan: Eating organic when you can with as many different colors as you can. All those different colors, without going down into a deep dive rabbit hole, all those different colors are going to feed your microbiome in a little bit of a different way, and we want to have a balanced microbiome. Think of when we say the word microbiome, think of the probiotics and the prebiotics, that are in there and it's what they're

Jordan: is basically, a big chunk of your immune system. .

Michelle: Exactly. I'm sure we'll get into that in a deeper dive at some point. .

Jordan: Lots and lots. But here we wanted a general overview. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Change up how you're moving. This is a big one for me, so I will, we'll do deep dives in our own personal stories, but I used to be in the body building world and I used to do CrossFit like nobody's business. I thought that this is the answer. Paleo and CrossFit, right? We're not saying that you need to stop exercising, but we think that you should be done with the high intensity workouts. Focus on walking, yoga, lift weights, but in a controlled way. Don't lift weights where you're foregoing technique for speed. These hardcore workouts are only gonna keep causing more inflammation and prolong the healing. The CrossFit games are awesome and I know that they are so fun to watch and the Super Bowl is awesome and it's so fun to watch, but those are entertainment and not everyone has the genetics, the body, the ability to obtain that sort of, Athletic stature, if you will, but I just see so many women trying to keep up with that and to be that and to compare themselves to that and if they can't do it, they're feeling bad about themselves. Frankly, I don't think it works for their bodies.

Michelle: Exactly.

Jordan: It's that excess. It's that you're adding stress. There is such a thing as good stress on your body. That's what exercise is. But the high intensity where you're, you know, for 30 minutes, up to an hour and you're doing that six days a week, you're not letting your body get to the internal inflammation, not letting it relax.

Michelle: One of the other big things is toxic chemicals and Ooh, yeah. And you can encounter these anywhere. You can encounter them in your backyard by spraying Roundup That is glyphosate, that glyphosate has been shown. Look at the lawsuits in California in particular, that it causes cancer.

Michelle: And the reason it does is because it affects your immune system. Mm-hmm. And there's a bunch of other chemicals that are out there that are regulated and unregulated that can be stored in your body. And your body's really trying to help you out by storing that in your fat and getting it away.

Michelle: your vital organs in particular. So I'm gonna jump in and talk about beauty products right now because that's another source of exposure to a lot of these chemicals. But even think about things like plastics. Are you drinking water out of plastic? That can get in your system. BPA, which is what's in plastic, is a huge thing that

Jordan: increases adipose tissue, it gets stored in your fat. That's a huge source. Even if it's BPA free I would have to do some more research, some reading on it. But some things that I keep finding is this something that's called microplastics and how it's in our bodies and it's just now it's a part of our world.

Jordan: It's in our food, it's in our bodies. We're consuming it. And that is obviously, Not what we were intended to deal with. Yeah. But yes, toxic chemicals, and I'm gonna try and not go on a rant here. The government is not regulating the beauty and personal hygiene products that are out on the market. It's just simply it's not being regulated.

Jordan: It is not regular practice to third party test what is being sold and put onto the shelves. This is a big number. The beauty industry in 2022 is at $87 billion. That's even more than the diet industry. That's an enormous number. And unfortunately, they're focused on profit and what sells to give them that profit, not what creates your health.

Jordan: Not all of the chemicals that are used in these products are safe. Here's a kicker. I'm gonna plant a little seed here. Also, remember that not all chemicals are unsafe, and we're gonna talk about this more and more and more when we start to teach about trade-offs. There are safe preservatives out there, thanks to the advantages of science, that are used to prevent the growth of mold, for example. We don't want mold in our hair products, our beauty products. Just like we don't want these toxic chemicals.

Michelle: I'm sure we'll talk about this at some point in more detail, but I've done a couple of tests on myself to see what sort of environmental chemicals are being stored in my body. One of those is phallates, which is found in beauty products. And I am definitely h arboring more than I should. And the other thing to sort of keep in the back of your mind is fragrance. If you see the word fragrance on anything, and it's not followed by essential oil or anything like that, it is a chemically created fragrance that your body can't figure out how to get rid of.

Jordan: Mm-hmm. .

Michelle: So it comes in, it doesn't go out, and if it's not going out, what's happening to it?

Jordan: Your body's carrying it around, hence exactly the inflammation. This is another personal favorite of mine letting go of the past, and every time I say this, I sing Elsa's: "Let it go. Let it go". In my head from Frozen.

Jordan: Sorry, not sorry. Okay.

Michelle: Do you have kids by any chance?

Jordan: Oh, you think? Maybe? My youngest son is obsessed with Elsa and Anna and Frozen and just loves it, so it's constantly in my house and our Amazon Echo is playing the Frozen soundtrack all the time, so , I just can't, It's stuck in my head.

Jordan: You are carrying around burdens that there's a good chance you likely have no idea about, and this is something that I think that needs to be discussed more and more and more functional practitioners are talking about it. But it needs to be done even more. What I'm talking about is things like trauma and unresolved emotions tuck themselves deep into your body.

Jordan: This can be things like generational trauma or gonna get a little woo here from past lives. No child escapes childhood scot-free either. So this isn't, if you're a parent listening, this isn't about, you know, being a perfect parent like, even for the very aware parents, the child brain simply cannot understand and make sense of everything.

Jordan: It's exposed to just out in the world. It has nothing to do with what you do sometimes. So don't forget that aspect, but this is one of the key aspects of healing that is very, very commonly, commonly missed. Something else I wanna say about this. I am also a neuromuscular massage therapist and when I was seeing massage clients, they would, it was a regular practice that people would cry and sob on my table because releasing certain trigger points in their bodies. A flood of emotions that they didn't even remember where it was from, would just come out and it was fascinating, and I loved it. That is a giant part of healing You can't heal physically if you're not working on healing emotionally. And you also, can't heal emotionally if you're not healing physically. And on a personal note, I think that is why I'm here. That is my personal mission. That is my soul's purpose is our souls need to be seen and heard, but we also need to be taking care of the bodies that those souls are in, and that's where the magic healing happens.

Michelle: So really you can't separate those two things. Mm-hmm. As much as we want to,

Jordan: You can't!

Jordan: As much as your doctor just wants to give you a prescription, actually I don't, cause I don't wanna talk bad, but as much as a medical professional wants to just give Zoloft, and I've been there, I've been standing in a room where, upset and crying, and I was asking for an antidepressant and the doctor couldn't even look me in the eye, like they just were not comfortable talking about feelings and emotions But you're right, Michelle, you cannot separate them.

Michelle: Yeah. So what I took away from that is get a massage.

Jordan: A good, a good massage. It has to be, oh my God. I could do a whole, I could do a whole episode on this . It has to be a neuromuscular massage. It cannot be a Swedish massage. Right. It has to be neuromuscular. They go after trigger points, and that's one of my strengths. For some reason, I have like magic fingers where I could find those spots and I would, I would go get them.

Jordan: But yes, things like massages and acupuncture, especially acupuncture is a great one. Yep. I'm gonna mispronounce it. Gi-Gong I believe that's another great one. Yeah. That's another practice that is important and all those things, tying this together, making time for breathing and meditating.

Jordan: Being in that chronic stressed out state is gonna raise our cortisol levels. And when they're raised, what happens is they crash. They have to be balanced, so they're, whatever they're raised up high, they're gonna crash. And this you, it's just, it's a cycle that you can't be in when your focus is for healing and losing the weight.

Jordan: Meditating and breathing can lower these cortisol levels and release what doesn't serve us anymore. My favorite app, I'm sure a lot of people have heard about it, but I really love the Insight Timer app. Love that.

Michelle: Calm is another one that I've been on before, is another one. Mm-hmm. . Those are great apps. But yeah, find somebody something that you can do just to sit and breathe. I can tell you I've done a lot of meditation classes and meditating, and it wasn't until I added this piece in that I could see that healing was gonna happen.

Michelle: was being able to just sit and be present. Even just doing that, and it doesn't have to be a lot of time, start slow. Like even when you're in your car driving down the road, just feel the, yeah, right. Just feel the steering wheel.

Jordan: Don't go through the motions of life. It you don't, meditation doesn't have to be where you're sitting down and you're Ohmm like, that frankly isn't, the only way to meditate.

Jordan: Yep. just being mindful, you know, how does your, how your hands feel on the steering wheel. How, how your foot flexes when you push the accelerator or the brake. And just don't, don't go through the motions. Just be present about these little things that we as humans can take for granted.

Michelle: Brushing your teeth, it's two minutes. Yes. Out of your day, all you have to do is feel the toothbrush on your teeth. Taste the toothpaste. Yep. Just be present in that moment. That's meditating. Okay, exactly, get more sleep. There are so many reasons why people have talked about sleep over the last few years, and essentially the biggest thing that it comes down to in my head is your body has to clean the bad stuff out at night when you're sleeping or whenever you're sleeping, and your immune system needs to get in there and heal the stuff that's left behind. That's really what sleep is doing.

Michelle: And there's a bunch of hormones that happen. There's a bunch of other stuff that happens. . Ultimately your body needs to heal. that is the moment that it does it in. There's a couple of hormones that we can talk through because we're talking about weight in particular. That can get out of balance if you're sleep deprived.

Michelle: One of those is ghrelin, which is called the hunger hormone, and this is the hormone that tells your body that you need to eat more, you haven't eaten enough. you're not getting enough nutrition, you're not getting enough calories to keep the body that you're in alive. That's the hormone that tells it to, to to eat more.

Michelle: And then there's an opposite hormone that's called leptin, and that's the hormone that tells you to stop eating so you have enough nutrients, you're good. Now, stop eating. And if you're sleep deprived, the ghrelin increases and the leptin decreases. So what does this mean? This means that you're going to eat more than you need to fuel your body.

Michelle: And if you're eating more, your body's gonna think you're in a state of time where you need to store. So it's gonna store those nutrients. And where is it gonna store it in your adipose tissue, in your fat cells. So increasing weight because you simply haven't been sleeping enough and you've gotten those two hormones out of balance and, and leptin is actually one of those that I typically will put on a blood test to see, is it in normal range?

Michelle: Because if it's not, then it means we've got a bigger battle. We can definitely get it there. But it just tells us a little bit of insight into what your body's doing and whether or not it needs to recover a little bit more than you think. It's going to

Jordan: Love that. All right. The biggest thing that we want you to take away from today is to remember, this isn't your fault.

Jordan: We want to, make sure that you are offering yourself grace, and also we want to invite you on a new journey with us. the journey that we're gonna go through on our podcast. You're going to see that this is complex. We're gonna try and break down all the information in the diet world and the functional medicine world, nutrition world.

Jordan: We want to break it down into pieces, and our goal is these pieces, we'll help you. None of this is your fault and we are here to help.

Michelle: Yeah. So pick one thing that you wanna do this next week out of all of the things that we've talked about today. And don't start to try with everything. Like don't, just don't do that.

Michelle: Do all eight things that we just said. Life's too busy and you need to set yourself up for success. So, pick one little thing that you can do consistently over the next week, and maybe it's just what we talked about with the meditation. When you're in the car, you're driving to your next meeting, you're driving home from work,, , you feel the steering wheel. Pay attention to the noises that are around you in the car. Don't close your eyes, you're driving. Don't do that. Please don't do that . Okay? But just choose one thing. Just choose one thing. So from here we are planning on continuing this podcast, . That's, that's our number one goal. Because we've tried a couple of times and we haven't made it.

Michelle: So hopefully you'll hear a couple more episodes and we'll continue on with our journey of trying to get you information and not let life get in the way. .

Jordan: Right. Because we're human too.

Michelle: Because we're human too. So, so, all right. Thank you to continue and have you on this journey with us, and until next.