In this week’s episode, Dr. Priyanka Venugopal shares how she went from being stressed out and overweight to getting her health back. She shares some actionable tips anyone can use to learn to trust themselves again and why this is so important in your health journey.

For the resources from Dr. Venugopal mentioned in the episode, please visit her website.

Watch the episode on YouTube

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

CONNECT WITH CHERYL

Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts! 

21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight 

Avaline Wines, Tested and Clean, Sugar Free

Drinking Ketones

Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life 

Clean Beauty 20% off first order

DIY Lashes 10% off 

NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow

Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life

Facebook

YouTube 

Pinterest

TikTok

Amazon Store

The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear

The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto

Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode

Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide

Cheryl McColgan:
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Heal Nourish Grow podcast. Today I am joined by Dr. Priyanka. We had this little discussion before we started today. I could pronounce her last name, but I didn’t want to risk messing it up. And she is a board-certified OB-GYN turned health wellness coach. I’m excited for her to share her background with you because a lot of people that listen to this podcast are interested in. Obviously health and wellness, but sometimes specifically weight loss. And she definitely has a great short story to share with us about that. So Dr. Priyanka welcome. And I’m excited for people to hear about your background.

Priyanka Venugopal:
I’m so excited to be here, Cheryl. Thank you so much for having me. And yeah, you can call me Priyanka. Priyanka just on its own is just fine. Dr. Priyanka or Dr. Priyanka Venugopal. Either way, I will respond to all of those names.

Cheryl McColgan:
Great. So, if you could just tell people about how you had some struggles, I think even going back to when you were a child with your weight, and I’m guessing that, you know, maybe family background had some things to do with this. So if you could just share with people all about that and then kind of how you, how that followed you into adulthood.

Priyanka Venugopal:
Yeah, absolutely. So my story, I kind of want to almost start backwards. Right now I am a mind and body health coach for high achieving professional working moms who want to hit their dream body goals while living their real life in a way that feels simple and sustainable. And the reason I’m so incredibly passionate about that for high achieving women is because of my own story. I have been that high achiever again as a physician and as a working mom, really that human that wanted just to do more, be more, like create like. basically want more achievements in my life. And I would say that probably from a really, really young age, that was a lot of my story. I was just the high achiever, the girl in the front of the classroom, like raised her hand and won every single eight plus in gold star. And it really served me well for many years of my life. Obviously it got me into medical school and through residency. But also what happened along the way is a lot of my own. self-concept, the way that I thought about myself, my worth and value was really attached to accomplishment. And, you know, where this over many, many years led to was having a very good on paper life as a physician. I had a very supportive partner and two like very cute and loving kids who drive me crazy half the time. And I also weighed a little over 200 pounds. And this was as this was back in 2018, 2019. And, you know, between you and me, if you have tried to lose weight, you have probably a long history of trying to lose weight, and that was me as well. I have been on that roller coaster for many, many years where I tried every single thing. If you name it, I have probably tried it in some capacity, and it would work until it stopped working. Calorie counting and points and macros and exercising at the gym, I did it all. I would lose a lot of weight, and then I would always somehow gain it back, and then some. And that was kind of where I was a few years ago, where I was feeling like I had this good on paper life, but I just felt really heavy in my body. And ultimately I felt really frustrated because I was like, I’m a smart person. And yet this is one area of my life that I just can’t seem to figure out. And that was when I discovered a podcast like this one, and I discovered coaching and the real massive benefit of understanding our mindset, our perspectives of our life and how that was influencing and informing the way that I was losing weight. So over about a year and a half or two, I lost a little over 60 pounds without counting points and calories. I’ve now kept it off with ease for many years. Now I teach other high achieving working moms to do the same.

Cheryl McColgan:
Yeah, that’s one of the things I loved about reading your story in your background is that You know, you’re speaking the language of almost probably every woman that’s out there listening to this is that they’ve tried so many things and that it has been a challenge to usually keep the weight off. Usually many people are like you, they can lose it, but then it tends to come back on. So I’m really curious. I am guessing that the mindset piece was a big part of this, because when I work with people, I find that there’s, well, I guess it’s really three things. The two things are more physical, but the mindset is huge. and that’s sleep and stress and you going through medical school and living that life of a perfectionist. I’m just curious to hear how that works into your

Priyanka Venugopal:
Yeah.

Cheryl McColgan:
paradigm now of how you like to work with people.

Priyanka Venugopal:
Yeah, you know, I think that what I didn’t know many years ago that I now know is that there are some really specific reasons that we’re able to lose weight and not keep it off. And I think what I remember, I mean, like one of my most vivid memories is right before I got married, I wanted to lose some weight and I was like willing to do anything because I wanted to lose weight quickly. So I was eating like those hundred calorie oatmeal packets and going to the gym six days a week because I was like my wedding day. I want those photos. I want like every angle to look to look reasonable. And so I was willing to, I call it like grit and grind. I was willing to muscle through for the short term, like kind of a strategy that I was willing to put up with simply because I wanted to hit my goal weight so fast. But then what happened the day after my wedding was, I’m like, I’m not gonna eat those 100 calorie oatmeal packets anymore. I don’t wanna go to the gym six days a week. And so not surprisingly, when you have a strategy to lose weight that you don’t love, you’re going to eventually abandon it. So. I feel like that was actually one of the biggest lessons that I had to learn and this is so crazy, but I used to think I have to hate my weight loss process. It has to be so hard because weight loss is so hard. I had been taught weight loss is so hard and I didn’t realize that I had been implementing strategies that I hated and so no wonder I didn’t stick with them. And so that’s really one of the core fundamental things that. I had to learn and it was really beneficial that, you know, with medical school and residency, I understood the science of fat loss, that actually counting calories and points and macros is not the most effective way to burn fat. And I had just been kind of on this diet train for so long that I didn’t, I didn’t realize that. So I think that was actually kind of the perfect time for me to… bring in like my medical background to understand the science of fat loss, but then also married to a strategy that I love, which is now what I do. I, I really think that when you know why you aren’t able to keep it off, you’re able to better solve the problem. So the very first thing for me was I never had a strategy that I loved. I was willing to do it until I lost the weight, but I wasn’t willing to do it forever. So that’s the very first thing. And then the second thing that I, have uncovered for myself that I think maybe, some of your listeners will maybe resonate with is, you might even like the way you’re losing weight, but there are going to be moments that come that you don’t feel like following through. It’s like, you know, it’s like, I don’t want us. I don’t feel like it, right? And so really understanding that we can kind of grow the muscle of following through when we don’t feel like it without deprivation. was another key element for me. I used to really mix that up. I used to think that forcing myself to follow through on something meant I was restricting myself or depriving myself when in fact, it was just me practicing the muscle of discipline. So it’s so crazy how we can sometimes mix those two, discipline and deprivation, because again, diet brain and diet, the diet industry has forced women to lose weight with deprivation. So we had to unravel that for… you know, to solve that and then understand that discipline is totally different. And then the last piece, and this is one that was really hard for me to fold in, was having a routine auditing process. I mean, again, I’ve lost weight all the ways, but I never had folded in an evaluation process that really looked at what’s working well, what’s not working well, what do I want to do differently for next time? And I think that again, High Achievers, shy away from evaluating their weight loss results or really their goals and how they’re hitting their goals because of how they’re going to talk to themselves when they mess up. And that is really where I think coaching can be so deeply impactful.

Cheryl McColgan:
Yeah, that’s really interesting because I feel like, you know, high achieving people do that in all other areas of their life, right? That’s how they’re usually high achievers is they are evaluating like how they got to this goal, how can they do it better, what’s working for them, what’s not. And yet that’s the one area that they want to avoid probably because you said body image or just the way that you’re going to talk to yourself if you’re not doing it quote unquote, perfect or well, right?

Priyanka Venugopal:
Absolutely. And I think also like one of the differences is, you know, I at least remember for me evaluation or like auditing how I was doing was kind of built into the way I went to school and the way that, you know, we’re kind of raised at your work. You have evaluations and in the, we’re in at school, like exams and final exams and board exams for me was a natural way to evaluate. But I think because I hated exams, I hated tests. I hated having to prove myself with a grade. I kind of developed a contentious relationship with evaluation. I didn’t know they could actually be the most loving act for me hitting my goals. And so it’s not surprising. I think high achievers, they do it because they have to do it in certain areas of their life. And when it comes to personal body goals, it just doesn’t feel fun. They don’t know a fun way to evaluate their work. And so not surprisingly, we don’t even think to do it when it comes to hitting body goals, but it’s such a necessary step to, I think pushing you to figure out what’s not working well.

Cheryl McColgan:
Yeah, that makes total sense. And before we talk about, you know, kind of what you use to evaluate, because I’m really curious to hear about that. I kind of want to go back really quick to one of the things you said that you had been implementing so many strategies that you actually hated. So I’m curious to find out, you know, when you’re working with people, do you find some common ground where certain techniques seem to work? pretty much across the board, or do you have to work with people more individually to help them find those things that they love to use? Because what you love to do for your weight loss, somebody else might hate that paradigm. So how do you work that out with coaching? Is it very individual, or did you find some commonalities there?

Priyanka Venugopal:
You know, it’s I love that question. It’s actually a little bit of both. So I think it’s important to know and understand again, the science of fat loss is fairly universal for most human bodies. The way that our body burns energy for fuel is across the board, unless you have a metabolic disorder, it’s generally across the board the same for humans. So we’re either going to get energy from a sugar source, a protein source, or a fat source. And One of the things that most humans have done, particularly because of the modern industrialized food industry and the kinds of like fun packaging and all the snacks that are available is most of us that struggle with our weight and struggle to burn fat are sugar burners. We’re used to eating a lot of flour and sugar and processed foods. And so our body has simply just because of the kinds of foods we’ve been giving it has forgotten is the kind of like the nice way of putting it. We’ve forgotten how to burn our fat for fuel. And so that’s one, I like to think of it as like one universal tool that we can all have in our back pocket literally all the time is when you take a break from flour and sugar, you’re forcing your body to learn or learn again, how do you burn your fat for fuel? And this is actually a very, very effective measure that anybody can incorporate. I like to call it like a tool you can have in your back pocket. You could be traveling around the world, be however busy you want to be. And simply taking a break from highly processed foods is going to make you a fat burner, which is amazing. That being said, I wanna say this with a caveat, that sometimes you can hear this quote unquote no flour, no sugar craze that has taken kind of the weight loss industry by storm. You can turn that into just another diet, like keto, no carb, juice cleanse. Like you can turn. I would say you can turn any tool into a weapon and no flour, no sugar, unfortunately, I think can be very easily turned into a weapon. Like I’m not allowed to eat flour and sugar. And so I think that that’s where the individualized piece is so important and what I really love working on with my clients. I actually work in an intimate small group with my clients. So what’s so amazing about having kind of intimate small group settings is you can kind of. learn a little bit from different people’s approach. It’s not a one size fits all. There are some core foundational skills that I think everybody can benefit from, but at the same time, we can play with what would it look like to have sunflower and sugar, or maybe somebody wants to be 100% really strict with it, or somebody wants to have it all the time. You’re going to start to pick up on trends when you. kind of give yourself the freedom to, I really think about it as like playing and experimenting and also know that there’s a science to fat loss that is fairly universal. I like to say, that’s my long way of saying both. You know, I think that there are certain skills that are important across the board, but we have to individualize it for what’s going to work for us in our life that really fits in with our family for it to be sustainable forever. Otherwise, you’re going to have the situation that I had, which is like, the day you hit your goal weight, it’s like, I’m gonna go back and I’m gonna eat all the things again. Like, you’re just gonna gain it all back.

Cheryl McColgan:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And that’s the same way I like to think of it. I mean, I personally tend to do keto low carb and that’s been the case for the last seven years. But I think that’s because it works for me and I don’t I don’t miss those things as much. But there are other people I think across the board what I think is like you hit it off the nail on the head with the processed foods like eliminating processed foods as much as possible eating a whole foods diet, whether that includes potatoes and rice or It doesn’t, I don’t really care. As long as it doesn’t include the things in the grocery store that are in a box that are highly processed, you know, all that stuff. So anyway, I completely agree with that. And people lose sight of that sometimes because they’ll be...

In this episode, Narado Zeco Powell and I talk about metabolic flexibility. You can find Zeco online on his Instagram and at the Matter Over Mind podcast. If you’re curious about the tool he mentioned, Lumen, you can find it at this link. Use HEALNOURISHGROW at checkout to receive $50 off.

Watch this episode on YouTube

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

CONNECT WITH CHERYL

Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts! 

21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight 

Avaline Wines, Tested and Clean, Sugar Free

Drinking Ketones

Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life 

Clean Beauty 20% off first order

DIY Lashes 10% off 

NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow

Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life

Facebook

YouTube 

Pinterest

TikTok

Amazon Store

The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear

The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto

Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode

Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide

Cheryl McColgan:

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Heal Nourish Grow podcast. I am the founder, Cheryl McColgan, and today I am joined by one of my old friends, Zeco Powell, and he has a podcast that I was on quite a while back, and we have known each other on social media now for a couple years. He does some awesome work, and so I can’t wait to share his story with you today. Zeco, welcome. And if you could just start by telling people. how you got into what you’re doing today, because you have a very interesting past about how you grew up and how you became sort of interested in all of this health and wellness stuff. So I’ll just let you kind of tell a little bit about your story, how you got into this.

Zeco:

old friend. That’s an excellent introduction by the way, because I’m like old as dirt. So thank you so much for letting the audience know when you’re talking to your butt. But yeah, so I grew up in Montego Bay, Jamaica, and my history is a little different than most people. Like I wasn’t overweight, but I was underweight. So growing up, I think I was 17 years old, five foot 11, and I weighed about 113 pounds, right? So imagine what underweight

Cheryl McColgan:

Wow.

Zeco:

I was at that time. So when I moved to the US, and this is when I moved to the US, is first I actually weighed myself, right? And when I was here, I started to get interesting in weightlifting, because I was a skinny kid walking around. So I started weightlifting, eating more, and then I eventually would gain weight. You know, I would gain weight, lose weight. I mean, I’ve been over 200 pounds before, did not drop back to 150. And I got to the point where it was becoming dangerous, because it wasn’t just about… you know, health anymore is just how much weight I could gain, then I feel like, like body dysmorphia, right? Like I gained this weight, but I’m like, I’m not happy with myself. I ain’t start losing this weight again. Right away. But it really, when you look at it, I’ve been like healthy, or semi, I’ve been fit all my life, not healthy. I was fit, but wasn’t healthy. I saw that asthma, I had eczema issues. I mean, you look at me, I look good, you know, and, but you would never tell that I have all these problems. And this is something I tell people that We see people in the gym and we say, oh, this person looks so good, but that doesn’t mean they’re healthy. That’s why you shouldn’t actually strive to be like somebody else because you don’t know what they’re struggling with. So anyway, fast forward to about, let’s say, five years ago, my asthma was really, really bad. And it was bad to the point to where days I couldn’t work. I have to go home, lay on the couch. I mean, I’m completely dizzy. I feel awful. And the last time I, one of the times I went to the doctor, he said to me, I said, hey, Doc, look. because they put me on more medication. They kept increasing my medication. I said, there’s something I can do outside of this medication, right? I’m gonna take your medications, but now you have me on pills and Advair, plus my butyrol I’ve already been taking, and I’m not getting any better. I’m only in my 30s at this point. And he said, no, well, you know, you could try to eat better, and that’s about it, you know? And I was like, okay, no, this can’t be it. There’s no way this can be it. I’m too young to be on these medicated pills, and I know what’s gonna happen down the line, right? So I started reading books from like Dr. Stephen Gunter, Dr. Mark Hymer, listened to podcasts like Ben Greenfield and the Model Health Show. I mean, I just started ingesting that stuff all the time. And I started hearing these fantastic stories about how people change their, turn their health around. And I’m like, you know what? I can do these things. And so when I started learning about, you know, lectings and learning about the guts and learning about all these things that I just never, all I knew was calories, right? I want to lose weight, I eat this many calories, I want to gain weight, but most of the time I gain that many calories. I eat that many calories, right? So when I got to that point, I started making those changes because I’m Jamaican, I’m naturally skeptical. I don’t believe anybody. I’m like, this guy just write books because he’s trying to make money. But something interesting happened. I started feeling better. I started like having more energy. I became happier, like just naturally. I’m like, there has to be something to this. So at that point, oh, by the way, King Killa Killer, I started breathing better too. My allergies were starting to go away a lot of things that I thought my eczema my skins all cleared up I mean those things started to happen. It made me more interested. I’m not okay How can I learn more so I started studying get my certifications and fitness nutrition and personal training and you know and everything weight management It’s not a learn a lot and then when I was in the gym training clients. I started to realize that People were enslaved to the same things. I were they didn’t know a lot of things that I knew they people we talk about calories but we don’t know the connection between our health and our weight. We don’t know how to actually eat to have a healthy gut. We don’t know how to, the activities and the lifestyle changes like getting sunlight, vitamin D, and walking and digestion, like all those things play in our health. So from the moment when I started feeling better and I started studying on my own, and then I was working in the gym, it just became a purpose to learn as much as I could possibly learn. so I can help others on their journey.

Cheryl McColgan:

Zeco, this is why I think you and I get along so well, because we both love to dive into the research and just constant learning. And before we go on to kind of more about how you work with people and how you got into that part of it, because you have so many certifications now at this point, I want to go back to something that you said about how you started really feeling better and you felt happy, which is knowing you now, it’s hard to imagine that you are never this, you know, this bubbly personality that you have now. can actually be attributed somewhat to some of those things that you’ve learned. So what were the actual, I like for people to come away with like actionable things, like from this podcast, right? So what were those things that you changed in your diet or in your exercise or whatever it was? Like you said, you were starting to listen to Dr. Mark Hyman and Gundry and all these wonderful people that focus so much on nutrition. What was it? that you change that you feel like attributed to all of these wonderful health changes that you experienced.

Zeco:

Oh, it’s so many, but I can really give some few things that we can already do. The first thing was that it wasn’t even a nutrition thing. It was people. It’s the people that surrounded me, they weren’t supportive. They weren’t happy people. I was waking up to negative energy consistently. So that’s one of the things that I changed. I was huge having the right people around me. The second thing was sleep. My, when I read the book from Sean Stevenson, can’t remember the name of it now, but it’s on sleep. One of the top books on sleep in the world. And I learned so many habits to improve my sleep. Something simple, the alarm clock. Stop waking up to ang, ang in the morning and have a nice wakening in the morning to keep my cortisol levels low, right? my sleep hygiene, like learning that from the morning, getting sunlight and the other habits, you know, reducing caffeine at certain points. And then what I do at night, prepare myself to go to sleep, even by adjusting how cold my house is, right? So I can, my body can naturally produce melatonin, resetting my circadian rhythm, like that’s a fantastic book. And I learned those things and I made sure I wore my fitness watch to track my sleep quality. And I could tell if I woke up and my sleep quality was bad, I didn’t need my watch to tell me. I could tell just by how I felt. But if my sleep quality was awesome, I would look at my watch and be like, oh, yup, there we go, sleep quality is good, right? So that was my next thing was my sleep. And then that was nutrition, which is this is very specific to each person and we know that, right? But understanding what nutrition was important for me, fasting is the first thing. And I believe that everyone, every adult, should have some type of fasting protocol. Unless you’re maybe on the weight or maybe have certain health issues, that’s a different conversation, right? Let’s say most of those should have some kind of fasting protocol. But this is the problem I have with people. They hear fasting and they say, oh no, fasting is bad. Or some people say fasting is good. Fasting is a tool. And it’s a tool that should be used properly. If you’ve never fasted before, you shouldn’t go on OMAD and eat once a day. That’s just stupid in itself, right? You should start off with something simple. And what I do is I knew that I didn’t have the ability and yet to fast for 14, 15, 16 hours. So what I would do, I started with 12 hours of fasting. I would stop eating at a certain point because I knew that if I ate at a certain point, it interrupted my sleep. So at least three hours before bed, I stopped eating. So that would be traditionally around seven o’clock for me. And then initially I wouldn’t eat till about seven or eight o’clock the next morning. That’s it. That’s how I started. And over time, as my body became adapted to that time, I would increase by 30 minutes. I would increase by an hour. Now, something that’s happening, on top of cellular autophagy, we know it’s a benefit to fasting, but something on top of that we’re not paying attention to is that it’s also teaching our body to burn fat for fuel, AKA ketosis, right? It’s a natural habit. It’s a natural, it’s a natural, it’s a natural, it’s something that body does naturally. And I’m lost words right now. It’s something that the body does naturally. So you’re training your body to run on fat for fuel. So that, it’s a hangry feeling, get a Snickers. No, if you’re hangry, you shouldn’t get a Snickers. You need to change the way you’re eating. So in between the times that you don’t have glucose for energy, your body can use ketones. And fasting is important. But again, you have to slowly build yourself up to that. Now after fasting, I have to start learning what diet was important for me. So as I was fasting and I would slowly increase how much fat I eat, decrease the carbs that I would eat, then my body would not only be better at burning its own body fat, but also the fat from the food that I ate, which led me to become more metabolic and flexible, which is the reason why most people struggle to lose weight because they don’t have a flexible metabolism. Their body doesn’t know I don’t have enough glucose. Let’s switch over to burning fat. I’m in fat, let’s switch over to ketones. That’s a little story we can have as we go through the podcast, right? But essentially those are the four things. So the right people around me, improving my sleep quality, fasting, and then also slowly getting rid of the crappy food in my diet and start to increase. the healthy fats that I ate and eating more clean carbs so my body could be more metabolic-effective.

Cheryl McColgan:

And that really leads into a good conversation because everybody that is familiar with this podcast has heard me talk all about fasting before and about keto, of course. But two things that I know about you that maybe you could expand upon a little bit. One of them is you like to talk about metabolic flexibility a lot. And so this is something that I’m obviously very interested in too, but I would love to hear about it from your perspective, because there’s a tool that you use a lot and there’s a certification that you have with them called this tool called Lumen and basically it measures the acetone in your breath to tell like if you’re in fat burning mode or not. So it’s a great tool for people to use for that. And then the second part of that conversation is how do you use those concepts of metabolic flexibility as you start to work with people in your coaching? how do you relate to them the importance of that when people, you know, they’re not us, they haven’t done a deep dive into all this. So I’d love to hear how you explain it to them in a more basic way, because there’s probably some people that are listening to this right now that are like, metabolic flexibility, wait, this is the first time I’m hearing of this, or, you know, sometimes hearing it from a different person explained differently helps it land better. So if you could just talk a little bit about the tool that you use and then how do you work with your clients to get that concept across in a really, comprehensive way.

Zeco:

Definitely, definitely. This is something I’ve spoken to many people about and it really comes down to really just understanding the human body. So a lot of times we will see someone and we say that person eats whatever they want and they can’t lose weight, right? Or they can’t gain weight, sorry. They can’t gain weight. So they eat a lot, they eat a lot, they can’t gain weight. But their body has the ability to break down the foods that they eat because you take that person and put them in a different environment. So let’s say somebody is from the Caribbean, they eat a lot of carbs. and you take them and you try to put them on a diet where they eat a lot of fats and not enough carbs, their body is not going to have the ability most likely to break those carbs well and that comes down to not having the gut enzymes and I’m not going to get into all the science there. So essentially, most humans are born with a lot of amylase which is the ability to burn down, to break down carbs very well. It happens very easily. So some people say, well that means we should eat a lot of carbs. No, no, no. That’s not what it means. because carbs is used for quick bursts of energy and that’s why the body has that ability. Now, if you eat a lot of carbs, the body’s very efficient and it’s gonna say, you know what, you’re not giving me enough fat in my diet. So I don’t need to really have the ability to burn down, to break down fat very well. I’m gonna create more enzymes so I can break down carbs well, right? So then what happens is when you eat fat, The body doesn’t utilize it very well for energy. And what the body doesn’t utilize, it stores. So that’s why we say, you know what? I only ate a thousand calories today, but I’m still gaining weight. Why? Because the food that you’re eating, your body cannot break it down well, right? So what we want is that sweet spot. We want to have the ability to say, if I eat carbs, my body can break it down. If I eat fat, my body can break it down. Right? That’ll be another example. Have you ever met someone who, and this is for the audience or for you, Cheryl, if you wanna answer, who been on, let’s say, a high carb diet for a long time? And low protein, for example, right? Because you...

This episode is all about hair loss and some recent trauma that made it even worse. I’ve started to try to figure out the cause and have been implementing some new practices to try to make it better. 

Future episodes on this topic will include hair loss experts, things I’ve tried, what’s working and what’s not.

Things I’m trying so far:

iRestore (has a 12-month money back guarantee)

K18 Repair Mask and Hair Oil

Collagen

MSM

Watch this episode on YouTube

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

CONNECT WITH CHERYL

Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts! 

21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight 

Avaline Wines, Tested and Clean, Sugar Free

Drinking Ketones

Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life 

Clean Beauty 20% off first order

DIY Lashes 10% off 

NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow

Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life

Facebook

YouTube 

Pinterest

TikTok

Amazon Store

The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear

The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto

Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode

Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide

In this episode, Sheri Geffreys and Gina Gallagher share their healthy journey stories. They have an interesting past together! They were close friends in high school, went their separate ways and eventually found each other again on Facebook and rekindled their friendship. It turned out they’d each had a unique health journey that led them to seek out alternative healing methods. 

Learn how each of these women found relief and healing and eventually founded a company to help other women find better health products. Visit them at Yonder Food.

Watch on YouTube:

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

CONNECT WITH CHERYL

Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts! 

21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight 

Avaline Wines, Tested and Clean, Sugar Free

Drinking Ketones

Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life 

Clean Beauty 20% off first order

DIY Lashes 10% off 

NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow

Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life

Facebook

YouTube 

Pinterest

TikTok

Amazon Store

The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear

The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto

Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode

Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide

Cheryl McColgan (00:00.897)
Hello everyone, welcome to the Heal Nourish Grow podcast. And if you have been listening for a while, you might have noticed that I have been a little bit absent and some of you know that I moved out to Utah. So the podcast has been on a little bit of a hold, but we are back and I am excited to kick off being back on the air officially with two lovely women that I have with here with me today. And that is Gina and Sherry, and they will get the privilege of me being.

maybe slightly rusty, but I think it should all be fine. So welcome to both of you. Before we get started, I’m just going to share with the audience, I think, I don’t think I’ve ever had actually two guests at the same time on the show before. So that’ll be really fun. And these two ladies have been like best friends since high school. So we’re going to hear all this really interesting backstory between the two of them. I’m gonna let Sherry start. So Sherry, if you’re watching on video, hopefully their names show up, but Gina has the lovely dark brown luscious.

Sheri Geffreys (00:30.303)
Thank you.

Cheryl McColgan (00:58.505)
hair and Sherry has the lovely blonde luscious hair, which we’ll get to later in the podcast, probably why that is and why I’m mentioning that. But Sherry, why don’t you get started and just tell everybody a little bit about your health journey and how you got interested in being in this space and sharing your story.

Sheri Geffreys (01:17.582)
sure, yeah. I mean, I mean, like you, you know, what happens in life is sometimes we have a very, you know, serious health scare. And that could also be the biggest blessing ever. Because for me, it was, you know, when I was 30 years old, and I was on maternity leave from a corporate the corporate world. And while I was pregnant, I felt a lump right here. And they just, oh, it’s probably just your thyroid, no big deal. You know, we’ll look at it when you

you know, like maybe three months or so after you give birth. Well, right after my son was born, I just, you know, you just kind of feel in your gut, like something’s not right. Like it’s way big. I went in there like immediately after he was born. And two weeks after he was born, they diagnosed me with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. And I had to go immediately into chemo and radiation. And I had to bound my breasts from stop from breastfeeding. And it just like hit me and I didn’t know anything, you know, cause I wasn’t really.

studying the natural health space or anything. So I just didn’t know anything and I just went into it and it scared me because my brother had that same exact cancer, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and he got a secondary cancer from all the harsh treatment, the chemo and radiation. He got, by the time he was 25, he got like a, like from the radiation here, he got like a cancer in his glands. And then he ended up passing away. So he had, that already happened. So I just went into chemo radiation. I was freaked out.

And as soon as that was done, I just did a deep dive into natural health. I said, I have to change my genetic expression. I gotta figure out how to get this stuff out of my body. I need to change my life because I’m a mom now and moms are warriors, you know? And so I needed to be here for the long haul. And so that’s when it started. And that was like, I just needed to do things. You know, I went back to college, took photography as a hobby and I dove into natural health. And so…

And then all these blessings started to birth from that. You know, I really like you, Cheryl, cause I know about your health journey. You know, getting rid of carbs was really, you know, one of the best things I ever did. Sugar and carbs and just a really clean, healthy diet. I would say I probably eat, I would say close to paleo with full fat dairy kind of, kind of way of eating. And it suits me. And I’ve done a lot of work with functional medicine doctors. You kind of learn about your own body and self.

And, you know, I made homemade bone broth to help nourish my body. It has a lot of trace minerals, a lot of collagen in there. I added more collagen to help rebuild my body from all that chemo and radiation, destruction. And then also make regular detoxing, you know, hot yoga, sweating it out. Um, far infrared, hot Epson salt baths. You just like regularly put the toxins out and regularly put the nutrients in, you know, and it just.

changed my life, you know, my energy went up. I was just like, wow, my ideal weight went into place, you know, all these things, like I wasn’t trying to be trim and, you know, look my best, I was just trying to feel my best and have the best health. And then by doing that, all those other benefits come along, you know? So, you know, and so now it’s been, you know, 24 years and I, you know, I’m healthy as a horse, you know, I…

You know, it’s just like, I’ve hardly ever get sick. I mean, I can’t even, I think once I got a cold, like once in the past 15 years, you know, and I just, I feel so good, you know, I am so grateful for having cancer and going through that because it’s really educated me. And I love to talk about it with people like you, Cheryl, and you know, all of us in the space, it’s just a beautiful thing on how we’re helping other women, mostly, and men, you know.

stand beside them through their health journeys because it’s real, it’s real. I mean, if you don’t take care of yourself, it catches up to you, you know, in one way or another. And it’s amazing how powerful food is, how food and nutrition make a huge difference. Yeah, and sunlight and you know, a lot of things. Yeah.

Cheryl McColgan (05:22.813)
Yeah, Sherry, wow. I mean.

Cheryl McColgan (05:27.325)
Yeah, we’ll go more into that. And before we move on to Gina, just a couple of follow up questions there. First of all, I’m so sorry about your brother. And my family is strongly affected by cancer too. I don’t know if that’s in my bio in the about part on my website, but that probably should be. Because again, you said, and hearing your story now, I feel the same way, like a lot of similarities in our backgrounds. But.

To kind of follow up, so you said that’s been quite a long time ago now, which is awesome that you’ve been cancer free for that long and look amazingly healthy, like just really vibrant. Can you kind of go back to that time and just for people who might be experiencing something similar, you said you kind of did a deep dive into the research. You started just really trying to take care of yourself a lot better. What were maybe some of the very first things that you implemented and things that you thought were the most helpful?

a critical stage of healing from cancer. So now you know you’re 20 some years out and you’re still doing all these healthy behaviors. But in that first year after the diagnosis and you found out these things and you were dealing with the chemo and the radiation, what were some of the things that you found most helpful?

Sheri Geffreys (06:37.354)
Gosh, reading, you know, reading a lot of books on natural health. It’s interesting because, you know, when I was like in high school, I remember I was, I was, it was really into this one book called Fit for Life by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond. Talked about food combining and natural health and, and I, you know, and, and now that this cancer happened, it really, you know, cause I was never, I was a kid. I never really stuck to it. I always had a, you know, like in the corporate world, let me just paint a picture. I get it.

get ready, go to work, on the way to work, go through the coffee drive-through, get a cafe mocha loaded with sugar and whipped cream and a chocolate chip scone warmed up and I’d eat that every day on the way to work. I’d work like a maniac and about three o’clock, I’d eat lunch, come home, you know, eat dinner, have a glass of wine and never exercise, never get any sun, never get any fresh air. And, you know, I changed. And so I really implemented those natural health, even that I learned a little bit in high school.

Um, what I craved, it was interesting. My body, I could feel my body craving healthier choices, you know? So I would, I read a lot. I immediately just started eating more like buying organic fruits and vegetables, understanding. Um, I tried to go a little bit like no meat, but I couldn’t do that with myself. You know, I learned about so many things. Like I’m a type O blood positive. So I don’t know. They say that that’s a kind of more of a meat eater, you know? So I.

So like I said, like I figured out for me, the paleo with whole fat dairy works for me, and it was interesting too, cause when I got rid of all the carbs, I always had a mucus issue, like sinus infection, mucus issue. And when I was a kid, the doctors would say, oh, you have, you’re allergic to dairy. No, I’m not. Cause as soon as I got rid of all the carbs, all my mucus went away. I have never had an issue and I have never had a sinus infection and I eat.

Cheryl McColgan (08:25.474)
Yeah.

Sheri Geffreys (08:30.922)
High quality, you know, like I love raw dairy. Raw dairy has so much more nutrients in it with enzymes and all that stuff. So I have like heavy cream raw dairy in my coffee every morning. I mean, you know, I eat high quality aged cheeses and you know, I have no issue with mucus, you know, it’s just interesting, you know. And I think reading different from different functional medicine type experts and different podcasts and you learn, I learned from people like you Cheryl, like what’s worked for you.

I’ve learned from functional medicine doctors, it’s just really doing that deep dive and it’s evolving. I’m still learning because I’m just going through perimetoposal and that’s been a whole other world. I’ve gotten my arms around, I’m starting to feel amazing again because I started to go down the hill and I realized my hormones were done. So now I’ve raised them back up with bioidentical hormones, getting my iron back up because I lost iron from the.

Gina Gallagher (09:10.862)
I’m going to go ahead and close the video.

Sheri Geffreys (09:27.038)
peri-menopausal phase because I went to heavy bleeding. I’m like, what’s that about? And you start feeling different. So I’m feeling amazing about that. You just learn. And everybody’s different. Everyone is so different. I even have the MHTFR gene mutation. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that. But you have to take methylated vitamin B. You have to stick with folate vitamin B options and not folic acid. And so I got that back balanced and that…

Cheryl McColgan (09:45.357)
Mm-hmm.

Sheri Geffreys (09:56.726)
And when you have that gene mutation too, you don’t detox as easier, as easy as other people. So you really have to make sure you’re doing a lot of regular detox stuff. Like I do, I’m back doing hot yoga, which I’m thrilled, cause I literally sweat buckets, like buckets. And I mean, I drink water like this much. I put the trace minerals in there and everything. And when I’m done with class, I’m like, I’m so happy. I don’t know how to explain it. I’m just feel so good.

Cheryl McColgan (10:01.069)
Mm.

Cheryl McColgan (10:14.509)
I’m sorry.

Sheri Geffreys (10:25.95)
because my body just needs to detox and it doesn’t detox as easy as other people because of that gene mutation, which, you know, and it’s great because like the functional medicine doctor that I go to now, you have to, you see, you don’t put your health in one person’s hands. It’s in your hands. You’re the director of your health, you know? You use a whole team of health avenues between individual people like you, Cheryl, where I learned from.

and functional medicine doctors, and my own experience in nutrition, and you just put it all together. So when I go to see my functional medicine doctor, I co-collaborate with her. Okay, let’s check all the blood. She knows a bunch of stuff I learned from. And I tell her, okay, I also wanna check this. I also wanna do this. Are you familiar with this? And then, you know, we work as a team. So you really have to trust yourself. You know, you have to be the center of your own health. Like be your own director, you know? So, and that’s important.

Cheryl McColgan (11:20.637)
Yeah. And I think nothing points that out more. Absolutely. Nothing points that out more obviously than you, you know, you didn’t wait three months because you felt something was wrong with your body and thank goodness you went right away because you just never know how quickly those processes go on. Um, and we’ll have to come back to the hot yoga at some point, because I feel like you must be like my long lost Twitter or something, because I actually taught hot yoga for years.

Sheri Geffreys (11:24.326)
Yeah.

Sheri Geffreys (11:29.447)
Mm-mm.

Sheri Geffreys (11:38.73)
Hahaha

Sheri Geffreys (11:42.014)
That’s what I’m saying. Cheryl, no, I think you might be my sister or something.

Gina Gallagher (11:47.054)
I’m going to go to bed.

Cheryl McColgan (11:48.353)
We have to ask our, well, ask some parents what’s going on here. But anyway, I think it’s a good segue and a good break that we’ll go on to Gina’s story. And then at some point I’ll have you two kind of go back and forth a little bit with like some of your like kind of way back history, because I just think that would be kind of entertaining for people. But Gina, it would be great now if you could please share some of your health journey. And then after that, we’ll kind of go into how you guys know each other.

Sheri Geffreys (11:54.314)
Ha ha

Gina Gallagher (12:05.461)
Yeah.

Gina Gallagher (12:14.262)
Sure. Yeah. So I, as a child and into my teens, suffered with getting chronic bladder infections. And so I was constantly being put on antibiotics. I have a condition called interstitial cystitis. And a lot of people don’t know what that is, but it’s basically…

the lining in your bladder is super sensitive. And so you’re more prone to get bladder infections, but you can also feel like you have one when you don’t. And so in my early 20s, I had a urologist who just put me on a daily dose of antibiotics and it just destroyed my gut. So between dealing with the IC and now the gut issues, I was just a wreck.

Sheri Geffreys (12:46.582)
So in my early 20s, I had a urologist who just put me on a daily dose of antibiotics and it just destroyed my gut. So, me dealing with the IC, now the gut issues, I was just a wreck. So I had to, you know, be my own advocate because…

Gina Gallagher (13:06.35)
So I had to be my own advocate because it was just destroying me, the antibiotics. So I kind of took matters into my own hands as well, especially after going to a urologist and them wanting to prescribe a medication that is now off the market because it destroys people’s livers.

Sheri Geffreys (13:14.358)
It was just destroying me, that antibiotic. So I kind of...

In this episode, I talk about my unintended hiatus from the podcast, what I’ve been doing the last six months and what to expect from the podcast going forward. My intention is to be back to weekly episodes with great health and wellness information and I hope you’ll continue to be along for the ride.

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

CONNECT WITH CHERYL

Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts! 

21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight 

Avaline Wines, Tested and Clean, Sugar Free

Drinking Ketones

Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life 

Clean Beauty 20% off first order

DIY Lashes 10% off 

NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow

Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life

Facebook

YouTube 

Pinterest

TikTok

Amazon Store

The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear

The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto

Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode

Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide

Cheryl McColgan (00:01.038)
Hello everyone, it’s Cheryl McColgan, the founder of Heal Nourish Grow and I am welcoming you back today to the Heal Nourish Grow podcast. I have been on a bit of an unintended hiatus and before we just jump back into kind of business as usual here on the podcast, I thought I would just do a quick episode just to kind of reintroduce you to the concept. Tell you.

where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing, why I didn’t announce a break because number one, I didn’t know I was going to take one. But just to sort of tell you how things will be going from here on out and let you know what has changed in the Heal Nourish Grow world. So anyway, I actually recorded an episode about maybe five or six weeks ago. I’d have to look back.

And is this kind of intended to jump back in, but then I really wanted to get, you know, kind of everything lined up again, get some more guests lined up for you, which I have a couple coming up that I think you’ll really enjoy. But on to what happened. So basically I, last summer we made a very sudden decision to sell our house in Cincinnati. It sold very, very quickly.

And then we went on what I like to call the Vega Bond Tour. And if you’d like to learn more about that or read more about that, there’s several pieces of our adventure over on the website at healnourishgrow.com under the travel section. But basically, since both of our kids are away at school, we decided, okay, let’s take advantage of this housing market, sell this big house that we don’t need anymore, and we can both work remotely. So we basically just went on the road for a few months and spent…

month at a time in a few different places. We started out by getting our kids back to school and then we drove across country and our first stop was staying in Big Sky Montana for a month in a little fishing cabin on the Gallatin River and then we were in Sedona for a month in October and really we intended to do this through about March or April of this year, 2023.

and then be back in Cincinnati. Or we thought, well, maybe along the way, we’ll look at some real estate and see if there’s somewhere else we wanna be, but we pretty much fully intended to be back in Cincinnati. Well, there were other plans in mind for us, apparently, because we ended up really falling in love with a house that we found in the Salt Lake, Utah area. We love to snowboard, and that’s one of the things that we were enjoying about the idea of being able to travel.

Um, you know, for a month at a time is to stay in some different places that were snowboarding locations. Cause normally we only get to snowboard once or twice a winter, maybe three times. But we have to travel to do that because as you know, Cincinnati is not exactly the hotbed of ski and snowboards area. So, um, so that’s something that we enjoy and we figure while we can still do it. Uh, why not be actually close to it and be able to do it anytime. And we just happened to do it in the season where.

In Utah, this was the most snow they’ve ever had like ever in history in this, in the mountains now down in the city, there was a lot of snow too, but mostly it’s in the mountains and so, uh, you know, not everybody had to deal with that amount of snow all the time, but it’s like 900 inches in the mountains for the year. So it was a pretty epic snowboard year. So if we ever were going to move, this was a good time to make that decision. And so what happened with the podcast was I was, I had done really well of.

pre-booking a whole bunch of episodes and I was actually took all my equipment. You can see my mic here. I had all the equipment on the road with us. I continued recording episodes while we were in those various places I mentioned. Uh, but then once we bought the house, we closed on at the end of November. And so of course, you know, all the fun stuff that comes with that. I had to get our stuff out of storage, coordinate, moving all of that from a distance and then once it got here, of course, unpacking and all of that. And then of course we were snowboarding.

And I thought, well, it’s a good time to just take a break from it anyway. But what I realized was I should have at least, you know, put up a quick episode and announced that because what’s probably going to happen at this point is that everybody that found the podcast will just assume that. It’s no longer updating because I w I had never said that it was a podcast. It was like in seasons or anything like that. So it was just, I was putting out an episode every week for 63 episodes in a row, so everybody had pretty much had come to expect that. So.

I’m thinking that now what may happen is that it’s going to be a kind of build it all up process again. Although if people are like me, I have a lot of podcasts in my list that I noticed haven’t been updated in a long time, but I just stay subscribed just on the off chance that they are do something like what I just did and that they might come back to the airwaves. Um, but so anyway, that’s sort of the explanation of what happened. And then

Also in my new house, you can tell right now I’m in the guest bedroom, um, which is not an ideal. Hopefully that sounds okay. Cause it’s going to bounce around a lot more in here than it did in my previous little nice, um, I had the little studio under the stairs. If you were here in the beginning and you heard me talking about that, it was literally in a gun safe that we, we had bought this house and it was just there. And it was a little spot under the stairs. Reminded me of Harry Potter. And so I would record in there, which was nice cause it was a small room.

And then since we’ve moved here, I just haven’t found a really good place. I still don’t even, I don’t have a place, um, where I have even my own office. So it’s, it’s really been kind of a struggle to figure out like where to be and how to be the house is very open. And of course, Peter has to be on the phone all day with his job. And my job is very quiet for the most part, except for when I’m recording the podcast the rest of the time, I’m mostly writing, so, um, I have to kind of find a part of the house away from him with a door.

And so that’s turned out to be our bedroom, which is not the best situation. Cause I prefer to be at my desk and prefer to have my nice big monitor where I can work. But for now that’s the situation and we’re figuring it out. I’m thinking about actually starting to go to a coworking space more often. And I actually was really excited because I just found this one. That’s kind of like an incubator for entrepreneurs, which is really cool.

And I have to apply, so I don’t know if I’ll get in or what all the stipulations are, but they actually have a professional podcasting room. So that would be very cool. So I could go there, you know, maybe once or twice a week, it would get me out of the house and give me interaction with other entrepreneurs. They also have a mastermind every month. So that could actually be pretty cool because up to this point, um, it has just been heads down working and haven’t really made any new friends or met people here. We have met our neighbors briefly. And.

did have our real turn as wife and one of the neighbors over for a little cookout at 4th of July. But other than that, I really haven’t met anybody. So if you’re listening to this, you’re in the Salt Lake City area, you’re into the great outdoors, skiing, snowboarding, eating good food, living a low carb life, then definitely get in touch. But until then, I’ll just be, you know, trying to stay focused and keep up with work because we do still go back and forth to Cincinnati a fair amount. And so of course that also…

kind of affects the amount of time that I have to try to interact with people out here. So that’s really kind of the update. I also have been thinking about doing this for years and I’ve just never done it. But the more that I run across different people’s ideas and other people that are in this space and kind of what they are talking about and what they’re doing, I do realize that there is, I feel, a space.

for my voice, it’s not the same as everyone else’s. And so the thing that I’ve been thinking about doing is finally producing a kind of a getting started with keto program. So instead of just individual coaching, which I’ve done over the years, it would be actually an online program where anybody could take it. And several hours worth of video and kind of information and all of that kind of good stuff. And so.

I’m thinking about putting that out in the world. It’s always scary. All of this is very scary. I’m also going on YouTube more, which is very scary because, uh, I’ve avoided it over the years because it’s the probably of all the social media platforms. It is the most aggressive with kind of trolls and people, um, criticizing you and making rude comments and stuff. And I’m quite a sensitive soul. So I always kind of wanted to avoid that, but I’m seeing now.

The need for it more and more. Instagram up to this point for so many years has been my main social media platform and I’m just finding myself really frustrated with Instagram lately. So I’ve always appreciated YouTube over the years for the information that it offers and the people that do longer form content on there. And so I think that I will be doing more there.

And some of it includes the podcast. So from the very beginning, I’ve done the podcast in video, even when I’m doing solo episodes, just so that it lives in more than one place and so that people that enjoy that format or happen to be familiar with me from YouTube can just listen to it there if they prefer, or if you prefer this format, like I do, I listen to all my podcasts, like when I’m going out for a walk or working out. So I like to have them on audio only as well. Um, but some people do like video or they just have it on the background. So even if they’re not watching.

They’re just, you know, their YouTube is what they’re familiar with. So that platform will be more popular. So some of it I will share here on the podcast, maybe as well if it’s relevant. Um, but then there’s a lot of other stuff that I’m going to be sharing on there. That probably isn’t best suited for the podcast format. So if you like YouTube, or if you just want to hear what I’m up to, I would definitely go subscribe to me on YouTube. I’m Heal Nourish for Everywhere. So basically any social media platform you go to, that’s what you look for.

Um, but so if you go to youtube.com slash heal nurse, grow, pull up the channel. And so all of my recipe videos are there. There’s some yoga videos from way, way back. Um, if you, I’ve never mentioned that before I’m a, uh, actually E R Y T 500 registered yoga instructor, which basically means that I have over, uh, gosh, what is it over 500 hours of training? I actually have over a thousand, uh, hours of yoga training.

And then I have at this point about over 5,000 hours of teaching. So I do have some yoga videos on there. I don’t really do as much of that anymore, but if anybody ever tells me, Oh my gosh, we need that. I would totally be open to it. I’ve thought about recording some more of that content. Again, YouTube’s a great format for that because it’s pretty visual. And, uh, what else is on there? It’s a few other random videos. Um,

But that’s kind of the thing that I’m going to be doing more of over there because I’ve been having, so I, the, one of the episodes that’s coming up is going to be kind of about hair health and things that I’ve learned recently and the hair problems I’ve had. And if you’re watching this video right now, you can probably see, I actually left this on purpose. I have a ton of fuzzies little hair where my hair is, um, hopefully growing back, cause I had some hair trauma recently. And so one of the episodes I’m going to tell you about that. And I have decided, I think I’m going to share that on the podcast. Cause I think it can be useful for people. Uh,

So it’ll be kind of about this hair growth journey and that won’t be super often and I’ll always put something about hair growth in the title. So if that just doesn’t interest you, you can always skip over that episode. Uh, but I’m also thinking about having some, uh, experts on about that too, because it’s not just hormones. It’s not just, it’s not just aging. It’s not, uh, you know,

the word that we can never say on YouTube so we don’t get bad. You know, it’s not just illnesses or viruses or whatever. There’s a lot of things. It’s like just even mechanical stress or things that you do to your hair like highlights and stuff that people, I mean, especially when you’re younger and you have a lot of hair, you don’t think about as much. But then maybe when you’re a little older, you have to start thinking about these things more. Or maybe you always say, oh, I keep trying to grow my hair long, but it won’t grow. Well, you know, it’s actually growing out of your head, right? Because like you can see that right now with my hair, with my highlights, like it was actually grown out of my head. But the question is.

does that translate to length? And there are some reasons that may or may not happen. There’s also some reasons why you may or may not be losing hair. Like you could be breaking off or it could be just falling out of your head from fallout from like some of those things I mentioned, hormones and other things. So if this is a topic that interests you, I am going to have something about that occasionally coming up. And then of course the podcast itself is all about health among us. So, you know, that I personally am into very low carb keto lifestyle.

But really what I like to promote for anyone is number one, you do need to find something that works for you, but don’t delude yourself into thinking that cakes and donuts and cookies and you know, that kind of, everybody would agree that that’s not good for you. I think that’s almost universal. So the program that I’m thinking about doing is actually more around eating whole foods and just into making healthier choices, not necessarily have to go all the way to keto. That’s just what works for me. It’s the way I like to eat, but it’s not what everybody.

has to do, right? But you should be making steps, intentional choices and steps towards a healthier eating style. And that’s really difficult for a lot of people. And it takes time. It’s like, gosh, I’ve been at this really practically my whole life. My whole adult life has been some version of, of learning more about eating and learning more about healthful foods and, and just kind of being on this journey and transitioning throughout life. Like there’ll be times where you need certain things and there’ll be times where you might feel like you need cookies or cake and that’s okay.

Um, you know, as long as you’re not diabetic or battling a major health problem, there, there’s room for these other things in your diet besides just quote unquote keto foods. And it also always kind of cracks me up, you know, occasionally when I’ll have people, um, subscribe to my newsletter and then they’ll unsubscribe. And I’m kind of thinking in my head like, well, is it cause the rel, there’s always awesome recipes in there. So I’m always thinking like, well, gosh, everybody eats, maybe they don’t cook or maybe

They just think, oh, it’s a keto quote unquote keto recipe. So I don’t need...

Dr. Alyssa Dweck is an OBGYN with a special interest in female menopausal and sexual health. She has co-authored several books and been on two morning shows. Dr. Dweck also regularly contributes to several magazines and professional publications.

Today’s discussion walks through age-related fertility and female health issues. Understanding that fertility takes time is important. Dr. Dweck recommends figuring it out by your early thirties and creating a plan with your gynecologist. She also references using cryogenics to freeze eggs, to save them from aging until you’re ready to begin the process.

Toward the end of the conversation, we shifted to perimenopausal and menopausal health. Even though it may sound scary and overwhelming, it’s something that should be explored and discussed with your doctor to make the transition as smooth as possible.

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

Watch the episode on YouTube

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

CONNECT WITH CHERYL

Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts! 

21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight 

Avaline Wines, Tested and Clean, Sugar Free

Drinking Ketones

Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life 

Clean Beauty 20% off first order

DIY Lashes 10% off 

NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow

Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life

Facebook

YouTube 

Pinterest

TikTok

Amazon Store

The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear

The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto

Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode

Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide

CONNECT WITH DR. ALYSSA

Website: hellobonafide

Dr. Laura Brown is a naturopathic doctor who uses a holistic medicine approach. She has a variety of skills but pays special attention to the inner workings of the gut microbiome, one of the most important parts of our bodies.

This discussion was interesting because Dr. Brown talks about the connection between mind, body and spirit and how all of these work together for a person to be healthy and whole. When a part of the body is out of order or functioning incorrectly, it can throw off everything. Treating people holistically instead of traditionally means choosing to go deeper into the why and how of the body.

This is an important topic because many people put their bodies through stress, unhealthy diet or workout habits, and generally not taking care of themselves. Using this knowledge to change habits and find ways of healing, like eating whole foods, exercising and getting enough rest are key to creating ultimate wellness.

Our free Ultimate Wellness and Happiness workbook can help with these things!

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

Watch the episode on YouTube:

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

CONNECT WITH CHERYL

Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts! 

21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight 

Avaline Wines, Tested and Clean, Sugar Free

Drinking Ketones

Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life 

Clean Beauty 20% off first order

DIY Lashes 10% off 

NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow

Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life

Facebook

YouTube 

Pinterest

TikTok

Amazon Store

The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear

The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto

Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode

Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide

CONNECT WITH DR. LAURA
Website: https://southendguelph.ca
LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/DrLauraMBrownND
Book: https://amzn.to/3EAjk1q

Deb Erickson is a master neuro trainer, the founder of the ICAN Institute and the creator of the ICAN Neuro System application. She has devoted years of her life to the retraining of the brain and has researched numerous neurological methods.

Today’s episode involves a discussion of Deb’s foundational years that led her to found the ICAN Institute and the neuro training tools in use today. We also cover how neurological devices can affect weight gain and loss and how to do so in a healthy manner.

Deb is an inspiration and someone who shares methods of opening up and learning why you have mental and emotional limiters. She describes how to be at peace with these so you can grow and move forward.

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

Watch the episode on YouTube:

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

CONNECT WITH CHERYL

Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts! 

21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight 

Avaline Wines, Tested and Clean, Sugar Free

Drinking Ketones

Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life 

Clean Beauty 20% off first order

DIY Lashes 10% off 

NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow

Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life

Facebook

YouTube 

Pinterest

TikTok

Amazon Store

The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear

The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto

Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode

Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide

CONNECT WITH DEB
Professional Website: ICAN Institute
Personal Website: deberickson.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/icaninstitute
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Deb-Erickson/100008786070440/

This episode is the follow-up to my first New Year’s goals podcast episode earlier in December. After learning how to space out your goals and tackle them one at a time, I’ve got another method to tackle your goals in the new year.

Today we discuss what I call “The Five C’s.”

These are consistency, commitment, choose, community, and connect. My bonus “C” is clarity. All of these are keys to create habit change through mindset and daily choices.

Everyone needs these things in order to be successful in implementing goals and habits. These keys can make the difference between a short-term changes and habits that actually stick in the long term.

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

Watch the episode on YouTube

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

CONNECT WITH CHERYL

Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts! 

21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight 

Avaline Wines, Tested and Clean, Sugar Free

Drinking Ketones

Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life 

Clean Beauty 20% off first order

DIY Lashes 10% off 

NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow

Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life

Facebook

YouTube 

Pinterest

TikTok

Amazon Store

The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear

The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto

Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode

Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide