42: Why Your Wellness Routine Stopped Working: What to Do When You Hit a Plateau

Why did it work… until it didn’t?

You try a new supplement, health gadget, or routine and at first it feels amazing. You have more energy. You sleep better. You feel less puffy, less stressed, more hopeful.

And then suddenly, nothing.

In this episode, Dr. Brook breaks down what a wellness plateau really is and why your body may stop responding to something that seemed to be helping at first.

This is not your body failing.
This is your body adapting.

And when you understand that, you can stop panicking, stop stacking more things, and start getting simpler and more specific.

Inside this episode:

• Why health trends can feel effective at first, then stop working
• The real reason your body “plateaus”
• How the body works to maintain balance and homeostasis
• Why one layer may improve while a deeper issue becomes the next limiting factor
• How fancy tools can never outrun shaky basics
• Why adding more can actually create more confusion
• What Dr. Brook’s 7-day simple reset looks like
• How to gather real data from your body without spiraling

A key takeaway from this episode:

If something worked until it didn’t, it is not time to panic.

It is time to pause, simplify, and listen.

Dr. Brook shares a real-life story of a woman who switched melatonin brands after seeing a Facebook ad promising better sleep. It worked for a few days, then stopped. That did not mean her body was broken. It meant her body adapted and a deeper layer needed attention.

You will also hear Dr. Brook’s own story about trying melatonin while traveling to Norway and how her body made it clear that trends do not get the final say, your body does.

The 7-day simple reset:

For one week:

• Do not add anything new
• Keep doing just one trend or support you are already using
• Tighten up one basic: Go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time, or eat protein at breakfast first
• Track one signal only: Waking in the night, bowel movements, or afternoon energy crash

No stacking.
No guessing.
Just data.

Resources mentioned:

• Body Whispers Journal: A free journal to help you track your body’s signals clearly over time
• Body Signal Decoder: A free tool to help you understand what your body may be trying to communicate

Final reminder:

Your body tells the truth through results.

If something stops working, that is not failure.
That is information.

And information can help you build a better relationship with your body.

If this episode helped you, share it with someone who feels stuck in a cycle of trying more and more but getting fewer results.

🎧 Stay Connected + Explore More Support:

📲 Come say hi on Instagram: @drbrooksheehan

⭐️ If you loved this episode, would you take a moment to leave a five-star review on Apple or Spotify. It helps more women learn to listen, trust, and transform their health.

Transcript

Dr. Brook Sheehan (00:00)

These trends and the marketing tactics can be extremely loud, but our body tells the truth through results. If something worked until it didn't, it's not time to panic and start stacking more or putting something by the wayside and trying more things. It's actually time to get simpler, and get more specific.

Welcome to the body speaks podcast with me, Dr. Brook Sheehan. Join me, on a journey, in discovering how to interpret the subtle signs your body uses to communicate with you - the whispers, the screams, and everything in between. Your body truly holds the answers for your health and wellbeing. It’s time to discover them, together. Let’s dive in.

Dr. Brook Sheehan (00:00)

Hello. Welcome back to another episode. So excited you are going to be joining me here today. I pray you are having a beautiful day as you are listening to this. And today we are going to be speaking about the wellness plateau. "But Dr. Brook, what is a wellness plateau?" I'm so glad you asked.

You know those moments, and I know we've all experienced this, those moments when we try something new. And I'm talking about maybe trying a new supplement, maybe trying a new health gadget, maybe doing a new protocol for our health and wellness to help us either have more energy or to lose belly fat or to balance out our cortisol.

When we try these new things, and it feels like we're having incredible results and we're like, "Oh my gosh, everything I saw about this is true. It does work." And then all of a sudden, nothing. No results. You feel groggy again. You feel puffy again. You feel stressed out again. Whatever it is, you feel that same thing all over again.

This could be within a couple days, a couple weeks, a couple months, or whenever, but this plateau happens. And this plateau happens for a very good reason.

And I'm gonna get into that today.

I use the words like, "Hey, the body started outsmarting you, you can't outsmart it." Right? But there's actual physiological things that happen inside of our body that causes these things to occur. And we're gonna talk about ways to really work through discovering whether you actually need that thing, whatever it is, because we know there is so much noise in this wellness space that tells us we need all of these different things and we get exposed to so much or we feel like, "Wow, that's working for Sally. What if this works for me?" And we try it and we have great results and then nothing.

Before I get into the physiological effects of why this happens in the body, I want to share this story so we really anchor in what is going on here. And maybe you can put yourself in this very same situation. So I've been working with this lady who's been taking a certain type of melatonin. Now she saw an ad on her Facebook account for a different branded melatonin that was, of course, laying out all the different benefits, all of the things that could happen to her if she took this and why that particular product was superior than the one she was taking. So what does she do, like most of us do? She purchased it, which I'm going to give you guys a lot of grace because I've been that person. I've done the very same things that I'm sharing with you right now. And we're going to talk about why this is an issue, but she starts taking this brand new melatonin.

And within three or four days, it just stopped working. She said for three days, she felt like she was getting a lot of good sleep, was doing really, really well. then kaboosh, nothing. Well, what happened?

It's that the body adapted, that the body realized, "Uh-uh, I cannot be tricked. You're not going to trick me into thinking you know better than I do."

So that is that wellness plateau in real life. It's not that that melatonin actually stopped working. It's actually the body adapting, or that first layer improved, but then a new layer became a limiting factor. I share this a lot with patients.

The body isn't just this different compartmentalized machine. This body is a very intricate, detailed, very, very wise masterpiece. And so you may have problems in one system that need to be addressed before an entire new system will even show itself. So maybe that melatonin, while it worked for three days for her, it really didn't take care of some underlying issues.

So it improved the sleep for three days, but then it brought up another limiting factor of other issues. Let's say hormonal issues, why she would be waking up at night, excessive pain in the body, inflammation in the body, all of these other factors that are bigger issues to sleep disturbances that also need to be looked at. It's not necessarily you just go, "Okay, I'm going to take the melatonin and voila, all my issues are going to be resolved." That's not how the body works. So physiologically, what is happening in the body for this stuff to be happening? I'm going to share three different teaching points here. So walk with me through this process.

The first one is, your body is a balance machine. Now I say the word machine very, very loosely, but I want to use it as a word picture more so than you're thinking about your body like a machine, because your body is an amazing, incredibly wise masterpiece. But if we think about a balanced scale, right, you got two scales on either side in this balance machine. Now, when something new pushes it one way, your body will push back to try to stay steady. Do you see what I mean? Like if we add in something on one side and we drop that weight lower, it's gonna cause the one on the opposite side to go higher. So the body is going to push back to try to keep that steady homeostasis, that rhythm, that balance that it needs. So the first few days can actually feel amazing. And then all of a sudden it levels it out.

Your body learns and adapts very, very quickly. And if something is very strong, like in her case, the melatonin, it was working for those three days. And then all of a sudden her body shut the volume down and really worked on trying to balance out that system. "Whoa, there's an influx of melatonin coming in here. That's too much. We have to balance it out in other areas, okay?" This is the incredible wisdom of your body in action, guys. Like this is not something to feel like your body is working against you. This is your body working as a beautiful ebb and flow, keeping everything in balance, in homeostasis.

So the second teaching point is you fixed one thing, but then you hit the next limit. It's like fixing a flat tire on your bike, but then having a rusty chain still. So your bike is better because the tire is no longer flat, but you're not riding as smooth as you can be.

So that trend, that supplement, the new food that you were eating may have helped solve your very first problem, that first layer, but then a different problem became your new ceiling. Do you see what I'm talking about, about the intricacies of the body? And I don't want this to make you feel super overwhelmed, like you'll never be able to figure this out because at the end of this episode, hang with me, I am going to give you a way of really breaking this down and figuring out doing some data mining in terms of your own body so that you can figure out what it is trying to tell you and whether something works and is for you or whether it doesn't work and you should not be partaking.

Third point here, tools cannot outrun the basics, okay? So if your foundation is shaky, no matter what fancy tool you use, and in this case, I'm talking about things like hyperbaric chambers and red light therapies and cold plunges and those things that we are doing as a culture to try to have this long life and this amazing skin in the process, those things are amazing. I am not saying anything ill will about red light therapy, cryoBAs, hyperbaric chambers, all of those are great, but it's not an end-all be-all. Your body still needs steady fuel, blood sugar being balanced, it needs steady sleep rhythms, and it needs steady recovery.

So if you're hyper fixating on all of these tools and trying to do all of these things that culture is spitting at us left and right, and you're not keeping your blood sugar balanced and you aren't having proper sleep cycles and you aren't having steady recovery, like what's the point? So coming back to that melatonin story with that patient is melatonin can help send us a sleepy time signal, but if light at night like blue light or scrolling or stress or blood sugar swings are super, super loud, that melatonin will get drained out.

And I want to share my own personal story just really briefly about melatonin. And I shared this on another episode on the pod before, but it's such a good one. It just made me laugh and chuckle so much because I know these things. I have a beautiful relationship with my body and we traveled to Norway last year and I tried the melatonin trick to prevent jet lag.

And I wanted to try and see if I can sleep on the plane and we'll get there and everything will be okay. My body was like, "Nope, you will not trick me, you will not silence me and you'll take the melatonin and your eyes are going to be wide open because girl, you know better than that." And so this is one of the reasons having this beautiful relationship with my body that I've developed that I don't let trends boss me around.

And I really want to really instill all of this beautiful stuff with you as well, so you can begin to sort through it. Because these trends can be extremely loud and the marketing tactics can be extremely loud, but our body tells the truth through results. And so if something worked until it didn't, it's not time to panic and start stacking more or putting something by the wayside and trying more things. It's actually time to get simpler, and get more specific. So here is what we're gonna do. We're gonna talk about this seven day simple reset. If you feel like you're stuck on a plateau right now, here is what I want you to do.

We're gonna go one week where you stop adding anything new so you can see what your body is actually responding to. Now, when I say don't add in anything new, if you're already taking six different supplements, if you're already eating a certain food or doing certain things, exercises, red light, whatever those things that I just mentioned, if you're already doing that, we're not adding anything new to this mix, okay?

When you start adding in more because you feel like, "Well, I'm still tired and I'm taking NAD and I'm doing this, but I still feel this way," we're gonna make this real simple, okay? Because when you add three things at once, you cannot tell what helped.

Also, your body cannot settle when it keeps changing inputs when we try new things. Okay, so this reset actually gives you clarity and helps you stop guessing. Seven days, nothing new. I just needed to say that again. Seven days, nothing new. You're not quitting everything. You're freezing the chaos so you can see what is actually real and working for you.

Okay, so here is the seven day simple reset that you can use right now to determine what is working for you and what may not be working for you. Keep doing one trend that you're already doing. Just one, not six, not 10, not three, but one. And what you're going to do is you're going to pick one basic to tighten up.

Now, one of the basics you can choose from is either picking, "Hey, I'm gonna wake up at the same time every day," or "I'm going to go to bed at the same time every night." This is all we're tightening, okay? Sleep times, either going to bed or waking up, or having protein at breakfast before you consume anything else. I want you to watch one signal only, one body signal, and that is:

How often are you waking up in the middle of the night? How are your bowels? Or how is your afternoon energy? Those are the three things. Sleep, bowel, and afternoon crash. Pick one of those. You're not picking all three. I just want you to watch one of them. So you're picking whether you're going to bed at the same time, waking up at the same time, or having protein at breakfast, and then you're tracking over the seven days this signal only, okay?

No stacking, no guessing, just data. A shameless plug I do have a Body Whispers Journal that you can download for free that allows you to track this through those seven days. And it's just easily laid out like that for you to do. So why does this actually work? It works because you stop changing the experiment midway through.

We stop just throwing things in left and right because we hear that they work for friends and family, but we don't know if they're gonna work for us. You give your body a steady pattern. You get a clear answer instead of more confusion. And that's all we are looking for. We are building deeper relationships with our body as we go through this process. So if you hit that wellness plateau, this is the way to solve that.

Friend, I pray that this episode was something that you could take away, that you can share with others, and thank you so much for you are curious on what certain body signals mean and what your body might be trying to tell you, I do have also the free Body Signal Decoder that you can get in the show notes below and figure out what is going on in your body. Thanks for listening.

Leave a review if you haven't already and I will see you on the next one.