Feel Good Every Day

Someone asks how you are, and before you've even checked, it's already out of your mouth: "I'm fine."

The house could be on fire. Fifty-seven tabs open in your brain, work, kids, everyone's schedule. Still fine.

My friend Dr. Katie Estberg is back on the show. She's a therapist who works in grief, EMDR, breathwork, and somatic healing, and she said the thing I can't stop thinking about: fine isn't a feeling. Go find it on a feelings chart. It's not there.

In this episode:

• Why your brain defaults to "fine," and the split-second math it does about who's asking
• Deciding for someone else that they can't handle your real answer
• What being the strong one costs you: connection, and anyone who actually sees you
• Why "I'm sorry" and "I'm fine" come from the same place
• Your body as data, like the tight chest that says "no you're not"
• Journaling that doesn't require three pages
• How to say one true thing without telling the cashier your life story

You deserve more than fine.

Find Dr. Katie: https://www.instagram.com/magic_overmatters/

Mentioned: Calm Is a Skill

Free Nervous System Reset (guided audio): annievinje.com

You were going to start Monday. Then Monday got busy, Tuesday you were tired, and by the next Monday a whole week had gone by and the thing still wasn't started.

My friend Paige C. Clark is a professional accountability partner with a master's in life coaching, and she said the line I keep repeating to clients: if you could have done it on your own, you would have done it already. That's not a character flaw. It's a missing piece.

In this episode:

• Why motivation gives you the vision but was never built to carry you the whole way
• What Paige calls radical accountability: one-to-one, one-way, and every single day
• Building room to fall off into your plan, so you're never actually off plan
• Why whether you did the thing is morally neutral, and why shame grows in the dark
• Paige's two-day rule for getting back on track
• How one client built a six-month streak by texting her food plan every night
• Fight, flight, or freeze, and thinking like your future self when your nervous system is on red alert

Your worth was never measured in streaks.

Find Paige: Paige C. Clark - https://paigecclark.com/. https://www.instagram.com/paigec.clark/

Book a Feel Good Strategy Session: annievinje.com

Free Nervous System Reset: annievinje.com/nervous-system-cold-page

If you're waking up at 3am, running wired and cranky, skipping breakfast, and drinking coffee before you've eaten a single bite, this one's for you.

Most women I work with aren't overeating. They're under-eating. We were trained to eat small so we could stay small, and in midlife that plan stops working. When your body doesn't get enough food, it reads it as stress. Cortisol goes up, muscle goes down, and the weight you're trying to lose gets harder to move.

In this solo episode:

• The signs you're not eating enough (3am wake-ups, tired but wired, not hungry all day and starving at night)
• Why under-eating hits harder in perimenopause: cortisol, muscle loss, and your thyroid
• Why coffee on an empty stomach keeps you stuck in the cortisol cycle
• Protein, fiber, and fat: what actually goes on your plate, 80/20 style
• Why intermittent fasting often backfires for women (and why I love Dr. Stacy Sims on this)
• Why breakfast doesn't have to be fancy. A protein shake and a banana counts.

You don't have to shrink to be worth taking care of.

Free Nervous System Reset (short video + guided audio): annievinje.com

Rachel Merrill grew up in a church where her body was something to cover up and be ashamed of. She took catechism at 11, minored in religion in college, and has pastors and missionaries all over her family tree. Today she calls herself The MILFy Medium. She talks to people who've passed, and she holds space for grief with a lot of humor and a little sparkle.

We get into how she went from being scared the devil was waiting inside a crystal shop to becoming a medium, a Reiki master, and a love, sex, and relationships coach. We talk about the shame so many of us were handed about our bodies, what happened when she spent time with 100 women who stopped hiding theirs, and why feeling turned on by your own life is a health issue.

I share something I'm still sitting with at 48. After all the yoga, the meditation, and the priestess training, I've been numb in my body for a long time. Living in my head is easy. Coming back into my body is where my self-worth started showing up.

You don't have to earn the right to feel alive in your own body.

Fair warning, this one gets a little spicy.

Find Rachel's upcoming MILFy Medium shows in Arizona and California: Get Tickets Here

Want an easy place to start coming back into your body? Grab my free Nervous System Reset at annievinje.com

You've done the doctors, the diets, the supplements, the yoga. You've tried it all. And you still don't feel like yourself.

In this solo episode, I walk you through what it actually looks like to work with me, and why it has nothing to do with handing you another protocol. We talk about why an hour is never enough to understand someone's whole picture, why the plan that works for one woman won't work for the next, and why stress regulation doesn't have to look like meditation if meditation just isn't your thing.

I also share real client stories: a mom who wanted the energy to keep up with her five-year-old, a client who was able to come off her anxiety medication (and stopped needing her coffee), and a client with Hashimoto's who told me her life just feels easier now.

If you've been waiting until things get "bad enough" to ask for help, this one's for you. Your symptoms aren't a verdict. They're feedback.

Ready to look at your whole picture? Book a Feel Good Strategy Session at annievinje.com.

My guest today is Holly Million, also known as The Shaman Artist, and we're actual birthday twins, both February 1st.

Holly has had about five careers that happened without a single class on how to do any of them. Nonprofit executive director six times over, documentary filmmaker, and for the last 11 years, a professional shaman. She kept that last one quiet for most of her life. This year she turned 61 and finally decided she was done hiding it.

We get into what a shaman actually does, what it feels like in your body when you're carrying energy that isn't yours, why nervous system regulation doesn't have to look like meditation or yoga, and why so many women 50 and older are done playing small.

If you've ever kept a whole part of yourself quiet because you weren't sure it was safe to say out loud, this one's for you.

Have a question or want to talk it through? Reach out at annievinje.com, where you'll also find the free checklist and the Feel Good Strategy Session.

Find Holly at https://www.hollytheshamanartist.com/

Open up your bathroom cabinet. How many of those things were bought to fix one symptom, and never actually did?

I'll be honest, I'm a product person. I've been down the supplement path, the face product path, the hair path, all of it. A few years into doing this work as an integrative health practitioner, I realized the real problem: it's almost never just one thing causing a symptom, so it's almost never just one product that fixes it.

I get into why the wellness industry is built to sell you the next thing, two client stories that show what actually happens when you stop chasing symptoms and start looking at the whole picture, and the one question to ask yourself before you buy the next thing.

Have a question or want to talk it through? Reach out at annievinje.com, where you'll also find a free checklist and the Feel Good Strategy Session.

I met Judith Manriquez through our women's entrepreneur group here in Phoenix, and I've been sitting with something she said in our own session together ever since: when you don't choose yourself, you feel awful, all the time. Not eventually.

This week Judith, a spiritual and intuitive business mentor, joins me to talk about the real difference between self-care and choosing yourself as strategy. We get into why your 40s bring up old compromises you didn't even realize you were making, what it actually costs you in your health, your relationships, and your business to keep putting yourself last, and how to tell real intuition apart from an old trauma response dressed up as a gut feeling.

If you've ever felt like you have to earn the right to rest, to say no, or to just exist without an explanation, this one's for you.

Grab the free Why Am I So Tired? checklist at annievinje.com.

Where to find Judith:

Website: https://www.judithmanriquez.com/

Substack: https://youarethedream.substack.com

I've been doing this work long enough, and I've lived long enough, to know self-worth is the real lever. Not the meal plan. Not the supplement stack. Worth.

This is a solo episode, and it's the most personal one I've recorded in a while. I talk about the moment I realized I'd been auditing myself instead of just living, the wellness industry's endless parade of the next fix, and the doctors who've told my clients their symptoms are just part of getting older. Then I get into my own Chiron wound, the mantras I say to myself now, and why Human Design and Gene Keys became the tools that helped me actually understand my patterns instead of just repeating them.

If you've ever felt like you have to earn your rest, your money, or your joy, this one's for you.

Grab the free Why Am I So Tired? checklist at annievinje.com.

When a naturopath first told me about seed cycling, I thought she was joking. Flax and pumpkin seeds for one half of your cycle, sesame and sunflower for the other half, to help balance your hormones? It sounded made up. Turns out there's real science behind it, and turns out I was wrong to write it off.

In this solo episode, I walk through exactly how seed cycling works: which seeds, which days, and why it lines up with what your body is already trying to do hormonally. I'm also direct about what it won't do. If your nutrition, sleep, and stress aren't already dialed in, seed cycling will not cover those gaps. It's not a stand-alone fix. But for women already doing the foundational work and still feeling like something's not quite balanced, this can be the extra push that gets you there.

I share how I use it myself (hint: it's in my smoothie), what the actual research says about flax and pumpkin supporting estrogen and sesame and sunflower supporting progesterone, and how to adapt the whole thing if you're in menopause and not tracking a cycle anymore.

If any part of this has you wondering what's actually going on with your hormones, the Feel Good Strategy Session is the place to start. Link in the show notes.