Health Burnout, Self-Care, and the Power of a Balanced Life for PCOS

Life can often feel like a tightrope walk, the delicate balance between health, self-care, and responsibilities teetering on the edge of overwhelming. When I was first diagnosed with PCOS, the lack of information and guidance pulled me into a spiral of health burnout. This podcast brings you along my personal journey, as I grappled with my diagnosis, found balance, learnt to build a healthy routine, and navigated lifestyle changes.

What if you could find a new perspective, one that encourages you to shift from the weight loss fixation and acknowledge the complexities of PCOS? A crucial turning point for me was realizing that the information out there was far too narrow, focusing primarily on shedding pounds. I decided to return to school, gain more knowledge, and today, I share my wisdom with you. We explore the importance of balance in your diet, lifestyle and mind. I discuss the challenge of finding restaurants that cater to your needs, and the importance of building a repertoire of healthy meals. I also share the importance of mindset and celebrating small victories, as well as the role of reframing in transformative processes.

But it's not all about what you eat, it's also about what you consume mentally. The information overload can often lead to health burnout. How then, do you sift through the noise, and unfollow accounts that do not resonate with you? This episode invites you to reflect, to understand the cyclical nature of engagement, and to prioritize self-care, especially for those with childhood trauma or perfectionism tendencies. We discuss my personal experiences with fitness and treating myself as a priority. Tune in and discover how to navigate the complexities of living with PCOS, the importance of self-care, and the power of a balanced life.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:37

Welcome back to an Amber A Day, the Functional Nutrition Podcast. I'm your host, amber Fisher. Today we are going to do a listener suggested topic. I'm going to read to you what she wrote in. It was Allison who wrote in this topic suggestion, but I really resonated with it. I thought it was great.

Speaker 1: 0:56

Over the last year I've been kind of dealing with the same issue myself, so I have some personal experience with this topic and I just want to share what I know, what I've seen work for people, and just some general encouragement. So the topic is how does one deal with health burnout? You spend such a long length of time trying to get your diagnosis in the first place, and then you have to do the work of navigating, changing your lifestyle to align with that diagnosis, and on and on and on, and after a while it can really wear on you, right. So we're going to talk about some of that stuff today, and, yeah, I guess let's just get into today's topic, shall we? Oh, before I do though, you know I have always have a few little housekeeping things the first thing is please don't forget to submit your questions. There is a form that should be linked. Whether you're watching this on YouTube. It should be linked in the description box. If you are listening to this somewhere, check the description and there should be a link to it and there's a space where you can fill out a Google form and ask questions for the podcast.

Speaker 1: 2:01

I am still working on the series where I will answer you guys's questions. Just give me some background information on you. You know what the question is that you have, and then I will give you some advice. I'm really trying to share specific kind of stories of people's health journeys and then what I would do as their nutritionist maybe to help, because I think that's a little bit more interesting than just answering like just singular questions. So give me some background. You know I'm a functional nutritionist. I need the history of everything right. So if you're interested in me doing that for you, please don't feel. Don't forget to fill out the form and thank you to those who have already. I have a nice long backlog of questions to answer when I get around to filming, so thank you for that. I appreciate it and if you haven't already, please don't forget to give me a little review on Apple Podcasts. You'll help me a lot.

Speaker 1: 2:49

We're finally getting to the point where the podcast is starting to bring in a little bit, a little bit of income for me, which is awesome and that's all. Thanks to you for listening and I really appreciate it, because I would love to do more of this. I would love to do this full time. I would love to get a better microphone so you guys can really just hear every little, every little sound that my mouth makes. No, I'm just kidding.

Speaker 1: 3:14

Anyway, let's get into today's topic health burnout. What does one do? So I'm going to read you this, what this, what Allison wrote in, so you can get a sense for what we're talking about here. So she says this isn't as much a question as it is a suggestion for a topic. Have you ever covered health burnout?

Speaker 1: 3:33

I've been on my health journey for over a decade and I'm just now getting answers. I'm getting great information on managing my PCOS, but I'm so burnt out from trying everything under the sun for years that I find it hard to implement yet another health regimen. It's hard to bring the same level of energy to each new potential diagnosis, like taking a whole new lot of vitamins and eating yet another diet can be overwhelming. Even when you finally get the right diagnosis, feel free to use it or discard it. Well, allison, I'm using it because topic suggestions first of all, thank you for the topic suggestion.

Speaker 1: 4:06

Sometimes I get podcast burnout where I'm like what am I going to talk about? How many? How many different things can one talk about surrounding PCOS or functional nutrition? Sometimes it feels like I'm going to run out of things to say, but then, miraculously, I never do so. Anyway, I appreciate the suggestion. It really inspired me, so I wanted to go ahead and get this recorded.

Speaker 1: 4:25

Okay, so what are my tips for health burnout? I have PCOS as well and I have been working on this lifestyle change first getting the diagnosis, then aligning my lifestyle, figuring out what that alignment even looks like for a long, long time. I'll be 35 this year and I was diagnosed with PCOS when I was around 20. So it's been about 15 years. I know some of you have been working on this longer than that, but for me that's a big chunk of my life and when I was first diagnosed, there really wasn't a lot of great information about how nutrition and lifestyle could impact PCOS, whether positively or negatively. Right, that, just that information just didn't really exist. There were a few people talking about it One of my mentors, stephanie Rupert, who, if you guys were into paleo way way back like in 2011, 2012, there was a blogger named Stephanie Rupert and she wrote a book on Paleo for Women and she did a lot of content specifically about PCOS on her blog.

Speaker 1: 5:28

She has a podcast still actually with. It was a real popular podcast for a while. I think it's probably still popular. Anyway, way back then I interned for her and that was, you know, one of my attempts to kind of like gather as much information as I could. I felt like she was doing some interesting stuff with it. That was a little bit deeper level than what I had heard around.

Speaker 1: 5:52

You know, most of the stuff that I had heard about PCOS was just purely weight loss based. It was like lose weight and it might help, but we don't know for sure and we don't know how you're going to do that. You know it's like there just wasn't a lot out there. If you were alive, living with PCOS at that time, you know what I'm talking about. It was just like a no man's land. So there were a lot of these sort of fringe nutrition groups that were starting to talk about PCOS. But you know, and they were on to some good things, but they didn't have, they didn't grasp the full complexity, and that's not totally their fault. The research didn't exist. What's interesting about my journey as a nutrition professional has been that I'm going on nine years of being in this field and the amount of research that has come out since I have already had my certification, already had my master's degree all that stuff has been like amazing. Just a ton of information. So if I didn't stay updated on the research, right like I would still be back in the dark ages, because back then there just wasn't that much stuff. So, from a personal perspective, I started out working on my PCOS completely in the dark.

Speaker 1: 7:00

I didn't grow up, you know, being interested in nutrition. In fact, I had a friend in college I've probably talked about this before, but I had a friend in college and she was really into nutrition. Hi, margo, she was really into nutrition. She, you know, she was like really into eating healthy and I used to be like, okay, you know, like I remember she was gluten free when we were in college and I was like really gluten free and I kind of like roll my eyes at it. But you know, she actually was probably my first inspiration to look into healthy eating and stuff, because from watching her and watching you know, for example, the way that she was able to keep a healthy weight, the way that her skin looked compared to mine, all this kind of stuff, it sort of like started to make sense to me.

Speaker 1: 7:42

I started putting the pieces together, that there might be something that was wrong with the way I was eating and that that might be impacting, you know, selfishly. Back then I cared about what I looked like physically, what might. I was very, very obsessed with my waist circumference, my weight, my, my skin. I had really bad dark circles under my eyes and all that kind of stuff, and so I started gathering back then that maybe there was a nutrition component to all of this and trying to put the pieces together. But I felt like I was hitting my head up against a wall so much because I would try one thing and it wouldn't really work, or I would try a supplement that I heard about and I wouldn't really notice any difference, and it was just like I didn't know how to even address things. I didn't even know how, like where, to start.

Speaker 1: 8:37

So I went back to school to get my master's degree in nutrition, mostly for me. Yes, I had this dream. I thought it would be really cool to be a blogger, a PCMS blogger and podcaster, just like my mentor right, and that was a dream of mine. But I never in a million years thought that I would actually end up doing that. I thought that that kind of thing was like for other people. Success in that field was for other people, not for me. I had to work on my self confidence quite a bit, guys, but you know, I got. I was like I'm going to get my master's degree in this because I want to learn how to understand the biology of this, like the biochemistry of this right, like I really want to understand the deeper components and put the pieces together for myself, because I just didn't feel like any of the books that I read were doing a good job of that. It was too oversimplified, and so when I went back to school, that's what it mostly was for it was mostly for me to figure this stuff out.

Speaker 1: 9:45

Now, around that time, I did start to make some inroads and understanding PCOS, but it was still a little ways away from me to actually incorporate most of them Because by that point I was already burnt out. My search for information had burned me out. So I started working in the field. I started helping others in the field and with time I was able to integrate a lot of these different changes where when I look back now, I completely have a different relationship to food and nutrition and all that stuff than I did way back then. But it was a long road. It wasn't like I learned what I needed to do and then immediately started doing it and everything was great and my period was great and I got pregnant naturally and all that stuff.

Speaker 1: 10:31

No, if you guys know my personal story, you know that I had endometrial cancer. When I was still in my master's program I got developed endometrial cancer. You'll know that I had to go through IVF to get pregnant, partially because of the cancer but partially because I was never able to fully regulate my cycles. There were a lot of things that I learned how to do them with other people, but I still struggled to implement for myself. So I guess the reason I'm telling you that is so that you understand that I get the struggle of being burnt out about health to the point where you can know what to do, but there's a block between knowing what to do and actually doing it. That's something that I still work on to this day.

Speaker 1: 11:13

So these are my tips and advice. This is the stuff that's worked for me and worked for our clients. Truthfully, not everything here is something that I've fully, always 100 percent of the time been able to do, but it's something that I continue to work on and something that has helped me. So the first thing is learning to do things one step at a time. I know that sounds simple, but let me explain.

Speaker 1: 11:41

Oftentimes, when we get interested in a topic if you're like me and you're a little neuro spicy you get interested in a topic and you go down the rabbit hole. You're just like down, down, down down. You gather all the information and it's like information overload. So you have all of these tips, all this advice, all these little steps, all these little things that you should implement. You can get just like almost like overwhelm, where you're stuck knowing all the stuff but not being able to figure out in what order you should implement them.

Speaker 1: 12:15

Most people try to do everything all at once. So they hear that they should eat more protein, more fiber, they hear that they should eat this many carbs. They hear that they should eat a Mediterranean diet and a low glycemic diet and that they should exercise this many times a week and do this much strength training. So they're like Monday, that's it, eat my protein, I'm eating my fiber, and they go through the whole list and they get like a week into that and maybe they feel pretty good, but they're emotionally drained and exhausted and they are like, yeah, I don't know that this is worth it. Sure, maybe I feel better, but I'm so overwhelmed. I have no time, energy, space for anything else in my life. Got no energy for my family, got no energy for my friends. Got no energy for my hobbies. I spend all my time meal planning, meal prepping and exercising Right. That's what it can feel like when you're at the beginning of this and you try to do it all at once. So a better approach is actually to follow the one step at a time rule, and that looks different for different people because we all learn at different paces and we're all starting from different places.

Speaker 1: 13:20

But an example of this would be you know, I just talked about protein, fiber, mediterranean, low glycemic and exercise and then strength training, right. So these are all things that we know will benefit PCOS. Instead of trying to do all of them, pick one or two things and really focus on those first. So always my suggestion of like the first thing to start is either getting enough protein or switching to like a Mediterranean diet. I think those are both two good places that a person can start and you'll have a lot to do with just those two things, because if you're coming from a place where you're not eating that much protein, you got to do some mental work to think about okay, well, like, where am I going to add protein? How am I going to get it Like? I'm going to have to cook it right and all that stuff. So that's one.

Speaker 1: 14:05

A Mediterranean diet, on the other hand, doesn't require as much protein, although long term you would want to raise your protein levels with it, but it does require, you know, new groceries and a different concept of what foods we prioritize versus don't prioritize. Side note, if you didn't know, I do have a podcast on the Mediterranean diet that tells you how to do it, if you want to do it, by the way, and I have some modifications for PCOS in there, anyway, so either one of those are good places to start that have pretty good outcomes as far as like, just those changes can make a difference. It's not going to be, you know, your entire life changes by tomorrow, but over the course of maybe three months you will notice substantial changes in your body from implementing those things, and those are things that aren't easy to do, but it is just one thing you have to focus on. Once you feel like you have a grasp on what you need to do for protein, for example, then it starts to become a little bit easier to plan out your weeks. The way that I always do it with protein is I think about how much protein I need to eat and then I divide that up by how many meals are in the week and that's how much I buy at the grocery store, and then I just buy like veggies and stuff to go along with it. Right, I don't do anything complicated, I don't follow complicated recipes, I just like season things differently and cook them. So you start being able to plan your meals a little bit easier and then it starts to become second nature to you to eat that much protein.

Speaker 1: 15:40

You start getting used to eating a lot of protein and you're like you know, at first you're kind of like full and you're like, oh, so much protein. But then, after a while, you start to crave it, you start to want it and you're like, yeah, this is good, right. So give that at least two weeks. I would say at least two weeks. Usually, most people need about a month, though, of doing something different before they're ready to move on and add something else. So give yourself a couple of weeks, give yourself a month.

Speaker 1: 16:07

Wait until you've done a few things. Number one you've been implementing that regularly, steadily. Number two it doesn't feel incredibly hard anymore. It might feel challenging, but it doesn't feel like you're having to drag yourself to do it. It's more starting to become a little bit second nature to you. The other thing you want to wait for is the development of a repertoire, and what I mean by that is oftentimes, when you're starting a new diet, you don't have a lot of recipes to choose from, because you haven't tried enough things yet. So you start out and you're cooking very simple things, or you are cooking the same thing over and over again, because you just don't know what to do and you haven't experimented yet. So there's an element to changing your lifestyle where you first have to implement it and get used to the structure of it and then you have to start expanding it and fitting it more into what you like and what's going to be sustainable long term.

Speaker 1: 17:37

So if you think about your daily life, with how you eat now, you probably have some go-to recipes. You probably have some go-to restaurants right when, like, if you need to make something quick, maybe you're making I don't know, my thing that I always make when I need to make something quick is spaghetti. You have a restaurant maybe that you go to like I go to Kava Chipotle a lot. Okay, so if you are busy, you know you have a place you can stop. Maybe you go to Chick-fil-A, whatever it may be. So you probably have already a repertoire of things to choose from.

Speaker 1: 18:10

When you're stressed, when you're overwhelmed, when you feel like putting more effort in, when you feel like putting less effort in, etc. What you are waiting for with the food is to get to that place, but with the new structure. So the first step is to build the structure where you are consistently eating the amount of protein that you need to eat. The second step is to start experimenting with new recipes or new sauces or new herbs or new spices and trying things in different combinations so that you can say, yes, I loved that, let's add that into the regular routine. No, that was disgusting. I'm never eating that again. Okay, same thing goes for restaurants, fast food places.

Speaker 1: 18:51

You would be surprised at how many fairly decent options exist at most restaurants and even a lot of fast food places. It is out there. The trouble with fast food places is typically not the thing you're craving, right. So you're like you're there, you're tempted because you want to get I don't know. You want to get the chicken sandwich, but instead you need to get the grilled nuggets with the fruit cup or whatever it may be right, in order to get what you need, or you need to not get the fries or what have you. So that part is tough, but the options do exist so that when you are in a hurry, you can grab something.

Speaker 1: 19:32

The other part of the repertoire is trying new places, trying new things that you haven't tried before when it comes to restaurants, because a lot of people have like their standard go-tos and they need to branch out. For example, if you have a Kava or some sort of Mediterranean food restaurant in your area, like Greek food or something like that, those can be great places to get a quick meal that is going to meet your protein requirements. I really like Kava. Chipotle is a good one too. Free birds like places like that that make bowls, you know. So if you've never tried places like that or what have you, those are good places to start building your repertoire with. So you got to try different stuff and start to build that.

Speaker 1: 20:15

But that whole process there that I just described does not happen in a week, it doesn't happen in two weeks, it doesn't even happen in a month. Minimum, I would say that something like that's going to take three months. Because they always say like it takes 28 days to build a habit. I think that's BS and I don't, you know, maybe you agree with me, maybe you don't. I think it takes 28 days to build habits the wrong word. It takes 28 days to build a routine, but it takes a lot longer to build a habit, because to me, a habit is something I do subconsciously or without having to think about it. I don't have to put emotional or mental effort into it. That doesn't happen for me until it's been at least three months. Maybe you're different, but so, month one, get the structure. Month two, start expanding. By month three, you likely will have a set of recipes that you know you can rely on and restaurants that you know you can rely on. If you're in a pinch, then, and only then, should you start adding something else. At that point, you can choose to add from one of three categories.

Speaker 1: 21:28

With PCOS, we talk about the pillars, or I talk about the pillars there's diet stuff, there's lifestyle stuff and then there's activity stuff. I usually recommend switching around because I think it keeps it fresh. You start off with diet. I'm biased. I'm a nutritionist. I think that's the most important thing. You start off with diet. Don't stress yourself out about exercise at that point. If you feel up to doing some little short walks, trying to build a little bit of a habit with some walking, or there's something that you're already doing that you like, keep doing that, that's fine. That shouldn't be too intense, but don't put a lot of pressure on yourself for that. Stick to putting the pressure on yourself when it comes to the nutrition piece.

Speaker 1: 22:08

Then, once it's been three months, pick from a different category. Maybe this is the time when you're like okay, I'm really going to start investing in my activity level, you're going to start implementing strength training, or maybe this is when you start really doing guided meditations that you've been meaning to do, or what have you. There's different categories to choose from, and I think it helps if you switch around, which I think is probably one of the things on here in my notes here. Switch it up. Yeah, that's one of the things I wanted to mention is that if you change the direction in which you're working on your health from time to time, it keeps it a little bit more fresh and it prevents too much burnout because you've given yourself time and space.

Speaker 1: 22:56

I think the most important piece of this is the next thing, which is focus on the big picture. Okay, because it still is going to feel overwhelming to you If you're saying, okay, I'm going to work on this for three months, but you're feeling a whole lot of guilt and pressure about the fact that you're not doing everything else. You know what I'm saying, so you have to zoom out and look at the big picture. I always tell my clients think about how long you lived in a state of not feeling good, hormones, not balanced, all that kind of stuff. Think how long that lasted in your life. It's probably going to take a long time hopefully not quite as long, but it's going to take a long time for you to reverse that or to get to a place where you're not feeling that way. Rome wasn't built in a day. It doesn't happen overnight. I know that can be a little bit sometimes for perfectionists hello, I know you. But sometimes that can feel hard to believe. It can feel like if I don't do it all now, I'm never going to do it. That's not the case.

Speaker 1: 24:04

The biggest change is a mental one, because it's the difference between thinking about yourself as like wow, I'm really doing a good job creating a habit with my protein, like I am on the right track, I'm making changes, I'm doing something I wasn't doing before and this is something that's positive for my body. I will get to the other things when it's time for me to get to them. That is a much different mindset than being like, okay, I'm working on the protein thing, but God, I'm not doing the exercise. I'm really not doing any mindfulness, I'm still not eating enough vegetables and I'm not getting enough fiber. I'm never going to get all of this. Like, how am I going to do all of it? Do you see what I'm saying?

Speaker 1: 24:43

It is a mindset shift, but it's the same action. You're doing the exact same thing on a day-to-day basis, but it's how you feel about yourself while you're doing it that separates those who are going to be long-term successful from those who aren't, because those that are long-term successful, they have hope and optimism and positivity maybe not every day, but they try to keep that mindset of like. You know what I am making changes. Every day is a new day. I'm not going to put a ton of pressure, guilt, shame on myself, because I'm just taking it one step at a time.

Speaker 1: 25:18

Everybody moves at a different pace here too. So, when it comes to PCOS nutrition, there are the fundamentals, there's the three pillars, the things that I've been talking about. That are important, but if you grew up eating only frozen pizza and fast food and candy and so does, it's going to take you a lot longer to get to a PCOS friendly diet than somebody who was raised relatively healthy. But let's say they ate a lot of whole wheat bread, sandwiches and yogurt cups and things like that, and they were eating fruits and vegetables, but maybe they just the ratios were off, okay. So everyone starts at a different place. Don't put the expectation on yourself that you are going to be going at somebody else's pace.

Speaker 1: 26:03

Zoom out, try to see the big picture. How good am I at that? I have my good days and my bad days. So I get it. I know, I know, but that's something that, if you ever get in that space where you're like this is all I've done so far, or I've tried this and I haven't even stuck with this If that's where you're at mentally, just remember me, remember me talking to you right now.

Speaker 1: 26:27

Zoom out to see the big picture, because what I'll tell my clients too is like sometimes people beat themselves up about they went on vacation or that it was the weekend and they kind of like fell off their plan or whatever. And they're like man, I just I couldn't even stick with this. And I've paid all this money and I still can't stick with it. And I'm like look, zoom out, think about what you would have done on a vacation two years ago, before you ever started working on your nutrition. What kinds of things would you have eaten? How would you have felt? How much would you have drank, all that kind of stuff? And look at what you did this time.

Speaker 1: 27:01

I can almost guarantee you that the choices that you made were at least slightly different from what you would have before, because now you know your body better, you probably drank a little bit less than maybe you would have before, or you drank something different than what you would have before. You probably ate a little less I don't know dessert, or a little less of this or that than you would have before, because these things start to become so unconscious, so subconscious, they start to become so second nature that a lot of people don't even realize that their nutrition, their relationship to nutrition, has changed, but it has. And now this is some advice for those of you who are like, yeah, well, that may be some people, but I still go on vacation and I still, you know, I'm like it's a creeper. All I'm out there, I'm doing what I want to do, whatever. So the other piece of advice that I always give is try to see everything as an experiment. So this is another reframing thing, right? We're all going to have times in our life when we do get burnt out and we're like, nah, I'm not dealing with this right now, I'm not thinking about this, I'm on vacation, I want to enjoy myself. I'm not thinking the single thing about what I'm eating or drinking.

Speaker 1: 28:14

Sometimes we go through phases like that. I always say that is an opportunity to use yourself as a little science experiment, because what's going to happen is that, now that your brain has turned on to the idea that your health issues are connected to how you're eating, now you're going to notice everything. Now you're going to start noticing things you didn't notice before. So, even if it's exactly the same as what it would have looked like two years ago, your response to it is going to be different. That looks different for different people, right? Sometimes we get a little caught up in the guilt and the shame because we're like gosh, I knew this was going to make me feel bad and I still did it right. Or we are just feeling like we're not doing good enough because we didn't make better choices on vacation or whatever. But the reality is that even just that awareness that I ate this and I feel like this, that is change. That's positive change to your health, because that awareness is going to serve you later. It's a motivator and if it doesn't motivate change, right, this second, it will motivate change down the road.

Speaker 1: 29:23

Zoom out big picture. Six months from now you might be like, oh yeah, I really now I've connected enough dots, I've run enough science experiments. I know that when I eat this, I feel like this, and I've done it enough times that now I'm ready to really stop doing that. It may take six months, it may take a year, it may take two years, right, like, just depends on you. I've lived this. So I spent oh God, I'm embarrassed to even tell you how long I spent like particularly with dairy.

Speaker 1: 29:53

Okay, I had a really bad dairy sensitivity back in the day. How many times did I have to test for myself? When I eat this, I feel this when I eat this mama's on the toilet, you know what I mean? Like I had to do that so freaking many times, so many times, before I finally was like, first acknowledged it, like yeah, yeah, this is what's going to happen. And then I was in the phase where it was like yellow Sorry, that was like a cringe you millennial word, but you know so it was like, okay, well, only live once, so might as well enjoy it. And so I'd be like yeah, I know this is going to happen, but I don't care. So now there's awareness, right. And then it moved on to the phase of I know this is going to happen. I don't want it to happen, so maybe sometimes I won't do that, maybe sometimes I'll avoid that until finally it got to the point where I was like, okay, I don't like feeling that way, so I'm not going to do that. And I gave up dairy for a long, long time and guess what? I can eat dairy again. And now I don't have stomach issues because it took me years, but I finally was able to kind of like go down all the phases about. So that's just one example.

Speaker 1: 31:06

But whenever you discover something makes you feel bad, even if you can't pinpoint exactly what it was, but you know it had something to do with what you ate or how you slept or whatever, whatever, that's experimenting, that's gathering information and data is what drives change, in my opinion. So you know, ignorance is the enemy of lifestyle change, because if you just stay ignorant about it you can be like, nah, that's not happening. But once you start noticing, once you start realizing, that's when you're going to start getting the urge, the internal urge, your body, pushing you to be like, hey, we noticed this, let's not do that anymore. And again, everyone at their own pace, zoom out big picture. Okay. So what are some other things that we can do here when we're dealing with health burnout? There's a few things on my list here, so I'm trying to figure out what order to say them in. I guess I'll just go down the list. So another one that I think is important is to allow yourself breaks.

Speaker 1: 32:15

Like I said before, anything that you have to do day in and day out, forever and ever, feels very hard. It feels like a prison sentence, right? When you think about your PCOS nutrition, you're like, oh my God, I've got to do mindfulness. I've got to sleep really well, I've got to do. I've got a strength train twice a week and I have to eat enough protein every day forever, for the rest of my life. Yeah, that feels hard because of the drudgery. And then you start dreading it and you're like ugh, can I just not? Yeah, you absolutely can just not. It's your choice. It's always your choice. What you do Doesn't matter if I say this is right or this is wrong or this is what you should do or shouldn't do. At the end of the day, you're the one in charge of what you eat, what you put in your body, how you move it, all that stuff. It's always your choice and it's always your decision. And I don't mean that in like a patronizing kind of reverse psychology way, I really mean that it's your choice at the end of the day. Like there are plenty of people with PCOS who never do a thing about it, they just like live with it and they're like this is just my fate, right?

Speaker 1: 33:22

But you are listening to this podcast, so I know that at some level you want to change. You want it to be different. You have hope that it could be different, cause if you didn't believe that it could be different, why would you be listening to me? You know what I mean. Not very many people get this far into an Amber Fisher podcast. So here you are, you're listening.

Speaker 1: 33:45

There's an element of you, whether it's conscious or subconscious, that wants change and wants to have a different experience of health, their body, their hormones, all of that stuff. So it's working under the surface. Let it work under the surface. And if that means that sometimes you need to let it work under the surface while not engaging in the surface level changes, then that's what it means. So what I mean by that is the second that you become aware is kind of not to put a Christian reference on you guys. But you know, like the Garden of Eden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, whatever once humanity turned on and they knew about good and evil and all that, there's no going back. It's the same thing with nutrition Once you know that there's something that needs to change, whether you know what it is or not, there's no going back, you know. And so now that you know under the surface, in the subconscious part of your brain I don't actually have like data to back this up, I think it probably exists, but anyway, this is what I've noticed In the back of your brain. You're working on that. Your brain's doing all the little connections and it's mulling it over, it's ruminating on this thought, it's coming to conclusions.

Speaker 1: 35:11

All that can be happening under the surface while you're still eating the exact same way, live in the same way, yada, yada. And if you've ever been like, most of us have gone through weight loss at some point. So I'm gonna use this as an example. But you know how you can be like I'm gonna start a diet on Monday and you can do that like a hundred times and Monday comes and like maybe you do it for like breakfast or you know, sometimes you get further than others. Maybe you get a week into it, maybe you get a couple of days into it, maybe you don't even make it through the day, whatever. Maybe you never start at all. But then all of a sudden, there exists a moment when suddenly you're like ping no, this is really it, and you actually have the motivation to like, follow through. You know, let's not think about what happens at the end of that. Maybe we regain whatever. But you know, I'm talking about that feeling of like this is it. Now I have not just like the subtle motivation, but I'm really like like my time has come, like the stars are aligned. This is the moment. So it's the same thing with lifestyle changes. It's working under the surface. Your brain is weighing out different options.

Speaker 1: 36:22

It's grieving too. There's a grieving process that comes with realizing that you have to eat differently than other people and there's no timeline on grief, right? We never tell people who, like, have had a loved one die that they need to get over it and like, move on with their life within this certain amount of time. We never say that. So it's the same thing with, like, nutrition change or any kind of lifestyle change. Your mind just needs the time that it needs to grieve. It needs the time that it needs to work through all that stuff and then the stars will align, it will be your moment and you will start. So allow yourself breaks if you need them, and allow yourself time.

Speaker 1: 37:03

I think it's very similar to that whole weight loss process. Like, you may have some false starts, you may think this is it, this is my moment and it's not really your moment, but every time that you kind of start again, you have that hope, you have that trust, you go forward. Every time you do that, you're changing the way that your brain understands your cravings, your cues food, nutrition, all that stuff. You're building pathways. So, like, the neurons in your brain are connected and they run in loops, right, so they like to do the same thing over and over again. Your brain loves habits and this is why anxiety is such a like and annoying thing to deal with, because when you have anxiety, then that becomes your normal and your brain, like, is always looking for something else to be anxious about. And so, in order to disrupt that, you have to, like, do some major hard work on training your brain into different thinking patterns, right. It's the same thing with health and nutrition. Like it's always gonna be, your brain's gonna wanna take the easy way out. Your brain's gonna be like, ugh, let's not, let's just get some fast food. Right.

Speaker 1: 38:14

But every time that you make the opposite choice, you are stepping down that path. Think of it like a path through the woods. It's really overgrown and you don't even know at first if, like, no path even exists at first. Right, you have to clear it yourself. So you're stepping on this tall grass and you know, when you step on some tall grass for the first time, it kind of like it comes down, but then it might come back up a little bit. But let's say you make another choice again and you keep treading that same path. Eventually grass doesn't grow there anymore. Eventually that path becomes wider, eventually that path clears out and becomes easy to walk and you're like, okay, this is just the path that I go down and the other one starts getting overgrown, right. So if your brain has gone down the familiar, easy, less challenging pathway, it's not a bad thing. That's just your brain doing what it's designed to do. But every time you make a different choice for your brain and you start building that new pathway. You're building that new pathway, so it's okay either way.

Speaker 1: 39:22

So much of this is mindset and reframing. So allow yourself breaks if you need to. Sometimes I find that, like with any kind of health journey just allowing myself a mental break of even like a week or two or however long it needs to be. I come back refreshed, recharged. So typically I will plan times off from just life in general, if I can. I'm like really lucky to be able to do that, since I'm self-employed, but you know vacation time or whatever, and I don't stress about what I eat on vacation.

Speaker 1: 39:57

I'm at a place in my life where I feel like I make good enough choices the majority of the time that when I am on vacation, I can just kind of do what I want, and you'll get there too right. But yeah, I don't stress about it too much. However, I naturally do make different choices than I would have years ago. Like years ago I probably would have had like spaghetti with like like I love spaghetti bolognese with like no meat you know what I mean Like just like no protein. Or like I would have had just like macaroni and cheese as a meal God, I love macaroni and cheese, but I wouldn't do that now because I don't want to have diarrhea and also I don't want to have like my blood sugar dip in like two hours and have to eat a snack. So I would change it. Even from what I'm craving, I like always add things to it or whatever, but I don't worry too much while I'm on vacation. Those are like subconscious habits and changes that I make.

Speaker 1: 40:48

So it's okay to allow breaks. If you think about a break as an opportunity to rest and to disconnect from your internal mental struggles, then it can be really rejuvenating in a short period of time. But if you think about a rest or a break as a failure, then it never actually rejuvenates you. And that's the hard part, because I think, as someone with anxiety and perfectionism issues, it has taken me a long time and a lot of therapy to be able to allow myself to take breaks and not actually stress about it while I'm taking the break, but maybe me saying it will help you. So build it in One suggestion that I have for breaks, though and this can sometimes help you relax a little bit more make a list of all the things that you need to do when you come back.

Speaker 1: 41:45

So, even if it's something like you're like duh, but write it down, so write down. When I come back I go to like schedule stuff out. So I'm scheduled for this workout class on this day, I'm scheduled for I don't know I'm gonna walk 15 minutes on this day, like, write it down, schedule it out, because whenever you write something down it activates a part of your brain. That's a little bit more logical. So, even if it feels a little silly, do it anyway. The other thing I would suggest is to have a meal plan ready to go for you Day one when you come back from your break. You have, depending on how long the break is, either you've already bought all the groceries or you have your list so that you can go get those groceries. You know what meals you're making and you just get down to business as soon as you come back.

Speaker 1: 42:37

Because you're prepared, don't go on a break. Well, I never say I don't. Wanna say don't completely, because sometimes it can be okay, but it can help. I guess it can help with getting back in the swing of things if you're prepared in advance for getting back in the swing of things. I find that people often like they go on vacation. They don't so much struggle on vacation. It's the couple of weeks after where they're kind of like they're like false, starting trying to get back in the game.

Speaker 1: 43:03

And a lot of it is lack of prep. Because if you start eating a certain way after you've been on vacation, you're gonna be hungrier, you know you're gonna have cravings, are gonna come back up, you're gonna be more tired, like your body kind of has to go through that phase of like readjustment and it's hard to think when you're in that state. So if you start in the morning and you don't have a plan for dinner by the end of the day, you're gonna be like, ugh, nah, we'll just do it tomorrow, do it tomorrow. So you gotta kind of be like prepared in advance. I would even say like meal prep on a day when you're still kind of like you know, don't say okay, I'm coming home from vacation on Sunday, on Monday I'm back on it Like no, take Monday meal prep, go get fast food, just relax. Get prepared Tuesday to start over. You know what I'm saying. Or you start fresh and I'll start over, okay, so that's another thing. Breaks are okay from time to time. The other two things are number one unfollow.

Speaker 1: 44:06

This is like everybody's a little different with their relationship to social media, but I do find that, like Instagram for example, can be a very saturated place. Now I am a content creator, as you know, on Instagram, so I do a lot of content. Some's better than others, but I produce a lot. And because I talk about PCOS so much, the algorithm thinks I wanna hear about PCOS all the time. So my whole feed is PCOS and I can tell you guys, just like as a person I'm not interested in all that all the time Like it's a lot, it's overwhelming. First I get this person saying this, then I get this person saying that, then I get this tip and that tip and on its own, it would all probably mostly be good information. Everybody like oh yeah, that's helpful, but in a row like that, just like over and over, oh my God, it's too much. So I have burner accounts. Okay, I have an account where all I see is gardening stuff and I have an account where all I see is pole stuff because I do pole fitness. So I have various burner accounts.

Speaker 1: 45:07

My TikTok doesn't get hardly any health content, even though it's like my business TikTok, because I've trained that algorithm. I'm like don't show me health content. I make enough myself. I don't need to see more of it. But if you're following like 30 different influencers who talk about PCOS, it's just gonna be too much. Pick your favorites and stay following them, and it's okay to unfollow the others.

Speaker 1: 45:29

Now, if you find that you're getting a lot out of it, or like seeing PCOS content keeps you motivated, then that's fine, do you? But I think it's okay. You have permission to unfollow people who make you feel bad about yourself, who are just too intense, who you know. It's just okay to kind of like cut back on all that stuff. And I know, and you know, feel free to unfollow me if you need to. But I know from being on the content creator side that this happens to people.

Speaker 1: 46:00

People are very cyclical and they do things at the same time, and so there are different times of the year where those of us in the content creation sphere will have more unfollows than follows, will have more, will just have more like more engagement than others. So, like the spring time, beginning of the year, we tend to get a lot of engagement. The fall back to school time, we tend to get a lot of engagement. Summer and winter. That's when we lose followers and stuff. Maybe other people are different, but that's what goes on for me, because people are cyclical and over the summer you wanna relax, you wanna go to the pool, you wanna go on vacation, you wanna go to the beach, you don't really wanna think about I don't know. You don't really wanna hear more PCOS information, and that's okay. So if you already feel like you've got a good resource for the information that you need, stick with that resource. Stick with that resource. Stick with that person.

Speaker 1: 46:53

Unfollowing can also be helpful, because different nutrition professionals have different opinions. There is no one set like list of this is exactly how a person with PCOS should be treated, what the advice should be. What have you? There are some consensuses amongst most licensed professionals, but you're gonna find lots of ranges of variation of what people say. My opinions on things are my opinions, based on the research that I've read, based on my experience, and all that and other people's are gonna be the same, so you may resonate more with one person than another. That's okay.

Speaker 1: 47:24

Unfollow the people you don't resonate with, just kind of simplify things or streamline things, because I think when it comes to mental overwhelm and overload and health burnout. Too much information is it almost like adds to that tax that your brain has to do, like you're already having to think about things right, and then you get all this new information and you're like, oh, I need to incorporate that too, or I should save that for later because I shouldn't look. You know, the information will be there when you need it. You can go seek it out when you need it. It doesn't need to like hit you in the face every day. I think it's just that contributes to health burnout almost more than other things at least for me it does.

Speaker 1: 48:02

When I start seeing a bunch of PCOS content, I'm like I can't do this. I mean, like I have a couple of people that I really admire and I like their work and I think you know, and they inspire me and I watch their content, but other people I just, you know, I just don't watch it because it's too much, it's TMI, okay, the last thing that I wanna say and this is another mindset thing is allow yourself to be a priority. What do I mean by that? A lot of us with PCOS are coming from places where we've got childhood trauma or we have perfectionism tendencies or we're a little bit type A, but there's a lot of that going on in the PCOS community and people like that tend to have. You know, there's some eldest daughter syndrome going on for a lot of us, right.

Speaker 1: 48:49

So people like that tend to struggle with putting their needs first. They tend to believe at like a deep level that they are not as important as the other people in their life. They're not as important as their kids, they're not as important as their family, they're not as important as their work. What have you? This is something that I majorly struggle with, especially since becoming a mom. And then in my work, I feel very indebted to my work. I feel beholden to it, sometimes Like I need to put more my energy into that because it's important work that I'm doing.

Speaker 1: 49:22

Right, and you may feel the same. Maybe you're a nurse or maybe your doctor, or maybe you're this or that. You may feel like I have a lot of responsibility to show up for this. If you're a mom, you may be think I have a lot of responsibility to show up as a mom and so there's nothing left over for me at the end of the day, like I'm getting the crumbs. But that's how it should be. I'm not going to do the gas mask. I'm not gonna do the gas mask example. You know what I'm talking about in the airplane, but you can't pour from an empty cup.

Speaker 1: 49:59

I mean, these are cliches for a reason, but it's true though, because if you reframe this and put yourself as the priority, then what magically happens is suddenly you have more energy, and when you have more energy, you're more clear. You can see things for what they are a little bit better. And when you're more clear and you can see things for what they are, you realize that, with your kids, for example, that they need quality time with you, but they don't need every hour of the day with you. If you can give them some really good quality time every day, it's okay. If it's not all day long, right With your family. There's probably some places where people might be leaning on you a little bit more than maybe they should and they could pick up the slack a bit more. Right, because sometimes what happens is we think other people need us so much so we end up doing it for them, and then they sort of lose their own agency or they get lazy and they start letting you do it for them, and so it can become a vicious cycle. So there are probably places where you can pull back a little bit and find that, wow, they're actually capable of doing that themselves. Your family is going to function better. Your immediate family is going to function better if the person at the center of it which is usually the mom, the wife, the mother, whoever when that person is energetic, clear-eyed, in a good mood, like all those things. And that is only going to happen if you truly treat yourself like a priority.

Speaker 1: 51:40

So how do I do this in my life? Well, I am very dedicated to my fitness endeavors, so I have not every evening of the week, but a good number of the evenings of the week I'm going somewhere and doing something. So I am going to. Lately I've been taking salsa dance lessons, bachata lessons, I do pole dancing and it's a lot to fit into any schedule. All the classes are at night, unfortunately, but this is something that makes me feel good, makes me feel really happy and makes me. It's also good for my body, good for my PCS. It's like a two-for-one, but it really puts me in a good mood and I'm not willing to give that up, to sit at home more and potentially, you know, in my head I'm like, oh, if I stayed home I'd be more present and I have more time. Blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1: 52:33

But what's the reality, guys? When I'm at home, I'm not super present all the time. Right, I'm on my phone or I'm watching alone. Do you guys like to watch alone? We're Indian matchmaking. That's my favorite show. I'm watching TV, you know I'm distracted by what have you cooking, whatever?

Speaker 1: 52:53

And I find that even though I spent a couple hours in the evenings going and doing these things that are really good for me, I still seem to manage to have time to spend time with my son, quality time with him, still have time to cook. You know I have to be a little bit more judicious about when I cook and prepping and things like that, but I make it work because this is so important to me. It makes me happy and me being happy is really important to me, and that wasn't always the case my life. I'm not spent a very large chunk of my life putting my happiness as a priority. My happiness was like down the list of things that was important and my responsibilities were a lot higher. But now I'm switching that up and I find that actually like I end up doing a lot of the things that I was afraid I wouldn't be able to do, just because I'm in a better mood. So that's how that looks for me.

Speaker 1: 53:46

It may look like you know. It may look like cooking what you know you need to eat, even though you're gonna get some complaints from some picky eaters in your family. You wouldn't believe how many of my clients are like they won't make the changes because they're like my kids complain or my husband complains, like, okay, so I know, that sucks, you know, but like this is about you and they can get on board, they can have, they can cook some spaghetti and put butter on it and eat on the side. They can have some mashed potatoes, like you know it's, it's.

Speaker 1: 54:22

There are a lot of ways that our mind starts to kind of like block us from making changes because we're afraid what other people are gonna think, what are the people gonna say, and we don't feel confident enough in our worth as a priority. So when those kinds of things, those kinds of complaints from family or whatever the picky eaters, whatever when they start to get in the way is because we don't feel confident. We don't really believe that we deserve to be a priority. We don't believe that we deserve to be the best version of ourselves. We believe everybody else deserves that and we're there to support them and if we get around to it for us, great. But it probably won't happen, right. So mindset shift.

Speaker 1: 55:04

But maybe this podcast will give you the the little spark that you need to remember that you being a priority is not selfish and it's not wrong and it's actually probably the best thing that you could ever do for yourself and for your family. So, yeah, allow that to be true, allow yourself to believe that you deserve more, because you do, and if that means spending some of your hard earned money instead of on this or that. But maybe you hire somebody to come clean your house once a week or something, or you pay for some factor meals that are pre-made, or you know green chef or HelloFresh or something, so that you can take a little bit of the pressure off yourself with this or that. Or you ask your partner to step up and do this or that, or you know I get it. I mean I've read Fair Play, but, like you know, people can. People will often surprise you if you believe in them, that they have the capacity and then you believe in yourself that you deserve to not have to do everything for everybody else. It might surprise you.

Speaker 1: 56:13

So that is my Health Burnout podcast. I hope it helped. Like I said, I wouldn't call myself a complete expert in doing all of this. This is stuff that I still struggle with myself, but these are things that have helped clients, have helped myself in the past and you know you may resonate with one thing more than another, but hopefully you resonated with something. If you got all the way to the end, if this podcast was helpful for you, let me know. You leave me a review and tell me, or you can send an email to the podcast or fill out the questions for him. Whatever, I'd love to know if this, if this type of content is helpful for you. If you prefer more of the sort of informational stuff, yeah Well, I'll let you guys go have a great day. I'll see you next week.