How One Woman Rewrote Her Health Story And Built A Framework Anyone Can Use

In this episode of SHE Asked: Tools for Practical Hope, Anna McBride is joined by women’s health and holistic nutrition coach DeeDee Mehren, founder of Feed MBS Nutrition, for a conversation about healing the body through nervous system regulation and finally slowing - and sitting with - her body.

DeeDee shares her personal journey through autoimmune disease, pregnancy complications, chronic stress, and burnout—and how holistic nutrition, sleep, movement, and emotional healing became the foundation for her recovery.

 Together, Anna and DeeDee explore why healing is not linear, how cortisol and stress impact hormones, digestion, and immunity, and why extreme dieting often does more harm than good—especially for women in midlife.

If you’re experiencing:

• exhaustion
•  inflammation
•  imbalanced hormones
• cycles of restriction and burnout

This episode offers a compassionate, practical lens on what true healing can look like—one rooted in listening to your body rather than fighting it.

🎧 Listen in for a powerful reminder that health is not about perfection, but about learning how to care for yourself with patience, curiosity, and integrity.

FOLLOW DEEDEE:
@feedmbs_nutrition
Visit DeeDee's Website

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Transcript

Hope Without Intention

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Did 2025 live up to your expectations, or are you yet again relying on this year to be your year? From my experience, that kind of hope without reflection or intention doesn't actually create change. For things to be different, you have to sit down and write out what you want that change to look like. There's also a healing process involved. That's why I created the online workshop Rewrite Your Narrative. It's a guided space that invites you to get completely honest with yourself through therapist-led discussion and potent writing prompts. I'm the therapist, I'm also a storyteller and a coach, and I provide the prompts. So stop wishing things were different and join us and watch your written dreams manifest. You can learn more and register at Anna McBride.com backslash writing workshops. And now let's jump into today's She Asked Podcast Conversation. Welcome back to She Asked: Tools for Practical Hope. I'm your host, Anna McBride, and I am so excited that you're here. Today I'm joined by my dear friend Didi, a woman's health and nutrition coach and the founder of FeedMBS Nutrition. Dee Dee's work helps women move away from extremes and towards sustainable nourishment that supports hormones, metabolism, and long-term well-being. And I've gotten to know you, Dee Dee, for the last year and a half. We took a year-long coaching class together. And so I gotta say that one of the things that I really have enjoyed watching you is growing into this version that is really honoring where you are. And I've got to imagine that's helping you with your work with other women. So welcome to She As.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Thank you. Yeah, it's been an honor and a pleasure getting to know you better from our retreats to our coaching to listening now to your podcast. I love how all of us on this woman's midlife can connect and expand. So fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Absolutely. Absolutely. So I'm great you're here for this conversation. On this podcast, we like to begin by telling a story. So I want to invite you to share your story on how your own journey with health shaped the work that you're doing now.

Nine Years To Diagnosis

Food As A Lever: Going Gluten Free

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Well, I do have to start from the beginning. Really, I did have a pinpoint in time where I was rushing through life, just how I am and how I tend to be. And I was pregnant with my first child. I was almost 30 years old. She was born almost a week before my 30th birthday. And she was born eight and a half weeks early out of the blue. Like I had back pain. The doctors kept telling me it was sciatica. I now know it was back labor. I just literally woke up one day and my water broke, and she was born a few hours later. And everything's great. She's 24 years old now, living in DC, living her best life. But at the time it was scary, it was traumatic. She was in the NICU for a month. But the only resulting problem she has is eyesight. Her eyesight was a little affected, so she can't see any depth perception. But all in all, everything was great. But it was a stressful event. And no one told me really why it happened. I didn't really understand. I subsequently had two other daughters, both born early again, but I was on progesterone shots weekly for that. But now I understand, like retroactively, all of this was because when you're pregnant, you need progesterone to hold a pregnancy. And I was living in this state of continually high cortisol. I'm a type A naturally. I'm a doer. I'm a have to perform to feel like I think now looking back at it to get love, feel like I'm deserving of everything I have. So I was always doing, always in motion. And I was in chronic sympathetic state, fight or flight, not knowing this, of course. I was in the advertising world. I worked long hours. I was an athlete. I was doing it all. So my cortisol was always probably chronically very high. And now I know as a nutritionist, when cortisol is high, progesterone goes shy. So progesterone was probably bottom basement at that point. And again, I didn't know this. No one even told me that when they started giving me progesterone shots, that maybe it was due to my cortisol levels. But so I just went about my life. I had two other healthy children, born five weeks early and three weeks early, but still they were healthy. And but immediately following that first pregnancy and birth, I started having the weirdest symptoms. I swear, like the weirdest thing was my feet would feel like they were on fire at work. I worked in advertising and it was really embarrassing because I would feel like I'd have to rip off my shoes because my feet were literally on fire and they would swell and get red. So I went to a dermatologist thinking it was some kind of skin issue. It took nine years, literally nine years, to receive a diagnosis of four autoimmune diseases. I went to every doctor and even had surgery on my ankle because they said that my nerves just, it was tarsal tunnel syndrome and my nerves couldn't flow. So they were gonna expand the room for my nerves that failed. But it literally was a simple blood test where they came back and they said, Oh, you have lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Shogrin syndrome, and severe Ray Nodes phenomenon. Here's a bunch of medications. Go about your life. There's nothing you can do. These are lifelong conditions, they're pretty bad. Here's medications that'll help. And I was like, wow. So that takes me to year like 39. And I kept going for a while and just taking the medications. They made certain things maybe half half better, but not really. And I kept getting bouts of pneumonia. I had severe bouts of pneumonia. I had five times in two years pleurisy that ended me really ill at one point. I would have bouts where I couldn't lift my arms above my shoulders. I would be couch and bedridden for a few days. And then because I'm type A and because I was so hard charging, I would get up and run 10 miles the days that I felt good. I trained for marathons. I did between ages 38 and 42, did five marathons. I had always done like triathlons and races before that too. I love to move. It's in my DNA. I'm not a big sitter, still am to this day. But again, that's that high cortisol. Like I think I'm an adrenaline junkie to some extent. At one point, though, I went to my doctor, and this was when I was about 39. And I said, Okay, I cannot lift my arms above my shoulders. What is going on? And he literally handed me another medication, nothing you're doing. I said, It's are you sure it couldn't be something I'm doing? He said, Nope. Sent me home. And I was so frustrated that I came home and started doctor googling, and I wasn't a nutritionist at this point, and said, Can't live lift arms above shoulders. And then I put autoimmune showgren syndrome. And what popped up was Venus Williams, who's a tennis star. Obviously, I'm a tennis player. So I read her story, and she was dealing with a lot of muscle joint fatigue from Shogren syndrome, and she had gone gluten and dairy free. And I was like, wow, okay, maybe it's something I am doing. And long story short, I went gluten-free. I had been almost vegan in my college years. That didn't really work for me. So I took gluten out of my diet. Because I was a long distance runner, I was constantly eating carbs, thinking that it was fueling my runs. So I lived on pasta bagels, all of the things. And in about two weeks after that, I started feeling a lot better. Like I could lift my arms again. I felt like my energy was slightly returning. And that was like my aha moment where I was like, maybe I do have some control over this situation. Now, since then, it's been 24, almost 25 years, and it's been on a lot more than that. And that didn't cure me of necessarily anything, but it did give me that glimpse of control and sovereignty in my decisions, and the fact that I was responsible for a lot of this. And that sent me on a long path.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Okay. Wow. What a story. One in which that as is common, I think, and for a lot of people, is that we go to these practitioners, doctors, specialists, wanting guidance, wanting to know what's behind it. And so quickly what they do is they prescribe, they prescribe medicine, they prescribe a pill. And you know, there was deeper information that you had to get to. And so it has me thinking, I want to jump into a few questions to understand this. What do you think you had to unlearn about health and nutrition to help you along that path?

Unlearning Health Rules

SPEAKER_01 9:14

I think the initially it was all the basics, right? In my initial stages of the healing journey was, oh, it's food. It's something is I'm eating is and I I started with the basics, and the gluten was the very first thing learning that okay, I could fuel my body a little differently than I was with the traditional pasta before. Because I kept running. I'd qualified Boston Bearath and I was like, I'm not missing this, I'm doing this, but I've been gluten-free ever since. That I just took it out of my system because I tried it, I think, one time after that, and I got had the same exact reaction. I was like, okay, that's not for me. And so initially I was thinking it was these tangible things that I could fix. And it started with nutrition. The next thing was I had been a lifelong insomniac. Again, a lot of cortisol running through me all at all times and the anxious mind. And so I was not a good sleeper. My mom said, even as a child, I was not a good sleeper. And so I had to fix my sleep. So I think I was really focusing on these small tangible things, which are vital for our wellness. And they were things I could control. And when I decided to do something, of course, I'm like, okay, I'm taking gluten out. And I went from massive amounts of gluten to nothing overnight. And that was my new life. And then for sleep, a little harder for me to control. I went and saw a couple of practitioners. So in the meantime, I moved to Canada with my husband who was transferred as an ex, so I was an expat. I had to quit my job. At that point, our family, I had three young children. We moved to Canada. We agreed that we were going to do this. And while I was there, I was like, huh, I can't work. So what am I going to do? As a doer, this is always running through my head. And my youngest was starting kind, and I was like, I'm passionate about health and wellness. I'm going to go to nutrition school. So that's where I signed up for nutrition school. It was took me three years while we were living in Canada to become a holistic nutritionist. So the thing I removed were at first simple. It's gotten much more nuanced and complex. And I've learned so much on the last 25 years.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Yeah. So what I'm hearing you say is that a bit of the unlearning was in terms of what we thought it was just about. And really willing to be more open-minded to explore these things that you were aware were challenges. You just hadn't quite looked at them yet. And I'm talking about the gluten and I'm talking about the rest part. And then even go even further and dedicate your time to really learning more about the field that you're now working in.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Absolutely. And some of my favorite classes in nutrition school, which I absolutely loved being in school learning again, Ayurveda, psychology of disease, the things that were beyond the tangibles. And those are the things that really captured my imagination and got me thinking in terms of deeper healing.

Schooling In Holistic Nutrition

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Yeah. Now you're speaking my language. Yeah. Absolutely. And I feel like just understanding the natural approach to nutrition, the seasonal and as well as fresh, and even going within yourself and understanding the energy behind it. Are things that, as someone who's also studied nutrition in my undergrad years, I never got those concepts. And I feel what I'm hearing you say is that you were open to new ways of bringing other ideas into working with yourself and even with clients. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Absolutely. Absolutely. So I was 40 back then, and I saw that my first 40 years, I did sleepwalking. I had been in this trance of doing, performing, doing, performing.

unknown 13:01

Yeah.

Four Pillars: Nutrition, Movement, Stress, Sleep

SPEAKER_01 13:02

A lot of women I feel fall into that to receive either love or whatever it is, accolades. And I finally was waking up. I was finally looking, taking a step outside of myself and saying, all of this, look at where it's led me. It's led me to being very ill for such a healthy person that always looked, I've always looked at the health picture, but I inside I was falling apart. And just those little glimpses of deeper healing on a deeper level. And as I said, that like the Ayurveda, the Chinese medicine, the different aspects of unlearning what it is to be healthy or what really hit me and started to wake me up and has more led me in this path the last 14 years.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Okay. Yeah. It's it is interesting that the moment we start to wake up to seeing things in a more expanded way, how it can just lead us or guide us along the path that you're on. Another question. So there was a moment when you realized that the old models were not working, right? Diet do it the right way, according to what we all were raised on in terms of how to diet or how to exercise. Absolutely. And so from that understanding, how is it that you then were changing the relationship with your body as well as the way you were going to be working with your client?

Healing Isn’t Linear

SPEAKER_01 14:33

Yeah, it took some doing, I would say. It wasn't an automatic and it's been a slow process of unraveling. I did when we moved to Canada, I think I saw a rheumatologist once while I was there, and the medication thing came up again, and I just was done. I've been medication free from supposedly four uncurable autoimmune diseases since 2012, 2013. The last one that I got off was lyrica, and it was hell. I actually had never been depressed before, and that kind of shot me into a spiral that made me so scared of medication, honestly. So since then, I haven't seen a traditional doctor once, except for a different lung condition that is hereditary that I have. I haven't seen a rheumatologist. I haven't seen anybody else except for holistic practitioners who have I've seen several of them who have helped me on this journey. But truly, I went off all medications and have tried to do it all through lifestyle management. So it's been a long, long path. I have to say that now my blood work shows no rheumatoid arthritis, no lupus, my Rhinodes phenomenon, I don't have the severe version at all anymore. I used to not be able to walk into a store without my hands turning white and my face and my ears going numb. And the only issue I still have is which connected to Shogrent Citadrum, which is peripheral neuropathy, small fiber peripheral neuropathy in my hands and my feet. I don't know, my hands are probably a little redder than most people's, just because they're always on fire a little bit and I'm not wearing shoes or socks, but thankfully you can't see that. Well, those are the that's I'm still determined that I can heal and I'm working on it constantly. I'm trying new things all the time. That's gently unfolded into this tactical, what I call the four pillars nutrition, movement, stress, and sleep. So the nutrition thing was easy for me, to be honest. I know it's a lot of people struggle with it. I found that to be my simplest thing. Sleep. Once I got it, I've been sleeping like a rock star ever since. My sleep score on my aura ring is always like in the 90s. But believe me, I know what it's like to not sleep. But sleep is great. Movement was a huge problem for me. It may still be to some extent, I have to be honest, that recognizing balancing it, balancing, recognizing that my autoimmune-prone body is not meant for marathons or hard charging anything anymore. I gave up my last marathon was in 2016. And since then, I don't think I've run further than four miles. And now it's going from a six-minute pace to an 11. I had to shift my perspective with I actually exercise to manage anxiety. That's that was my tool. I've always done that. So I still need to move every single day, or I tend to get very anxious. So movement has been something that I've changed the relationship with quite a bit. Still a work in progress there. The biggest issue I have, I would say that is the thing I'm working on the last two years is stress and how my body perceives its stress. So I as I said, I always see saw health as these four pillars nutrition, movement, stress, and sleep. And that I saw them all connected with community as the top that we all need in our life. So of this table. But stress has been the biggest learning for me. And I think the final one, and I don't think I was ready to face any of those deep realities until recently. So I think that has been my journey as of late. And it does inform how I show up to other women and how I work with other women. I feel like a lot of them are still on the nutrition part. But if I can slide in without them even noticing some of the deeper stuff and start waking them up on that level and recognizing it's not often seeing food as good or bad or anything like that. It's just how we're perceiving our bodies and what we're perceiving that food to do. So that that's how I work these days.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

That's great to point out those four pillars because not many people have that understanding, right? And we think like the way to change the body is to go straight to the nutrition, straight to movement.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

And we even get those wrong, right? Because we think we're supposed to have the nutrition like one form fits everybody. Absolutely. Even movement, right? Forum that most of us go to is our 20-year-old self or our 30-year-old self. And we're older, so we have to factor that in. So 100%. We completely understand. And I interestingly enough, I think sometimes the stress that we experience that's almost like that static underneath our sense of being, our ourselves, is really this conflict between who we are and maybe who we wish we were, whether that is the old version or a version yet to be experienced, as opposed to being just where we are.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Yeah, and being where our feet are, I think that has been my biggest struggle in my life to this day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Yeah. Wow. Great understanding. So thank you for that. I want to talk about this statement that you have said, I've heard many times from you, is that healing is not linear. Tell me what you mean by that and how. That has come to really hold value for you with your own healing and how you work with your client.

Long COVID, Mold, And Lyme

Nervous System As Root Cause

SPEAKER_01 20:07

I do think that people, again, especially women, put a lot of pressure on themselves and think that one thing's gonna fix it. And then nutrition, I'm gonna go gluten-free and I'm gonna be all better. For me, as I said, I first started with these symptoms at 30 and 54 now. And it has been like this the entire time. I have flares, especially the beginning, I would have what you call an autoimmune flare where all of a sudden I'd be laid out again. And recognizing what those are. Most recently, I had a point where in 2020, with COVID, I think my first bout of long COVID, I have also beyond autoimmune, I have a hereditary lung condition called alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, which means simply that my liver doesn't produce an alpha protein that helps clear your lung of mucus. I I would have no one would have ever known that I had this. My mom actually passed from it because I was, I'm very healthy, right? A lot of people, it's usually diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 50. It's similar to cystic fibrosis, but people are usually catching it later because it doesn't manifest until a little bit later. But it's a pretty severe condition because you can't clear. If you get a lung infection, you have a very hard time clearing it. So in 2020, I had my first bout with COVID. It was a bad year, but my mom passed that right away when COVID started. She had been ill for 10 years with this alpha one. And to be honest, she never even really knew I had it. I didn't, I never wanted to talk to her about it because it was too scary, right? So I knew I had it. And that first bout of COVID hit me harder than probably most people, but I was healthy enough where I got over it, but it left me a little bit thrown under the bus. So that was my first kind of like a big downturn in terms of my health, and I was scared, but I came back out. I came back out a couple months later, feeling strong again. So I was like, the health took a little downturn, but I'm like, I'm gonna build myself up and I was doing okay. Then my second bout of COVID was very long. It was like six months of semi-long COVID where I had a chronic cough every morning. I was a little afraid to speak and do podcasts and any speaking, which I do a lot in my programs because constant throat clearing was an issue. And it was getting in my head for sure. It was in my head that this is how it was. I saw my mom die a slow death for 10 years. And this was it, and this was my story. This was gonna happen to me. And so that was another hit, that second bout of COVID. I came out of that, though. It took a while to get my energy and clear my lungs a bit. It they never got to the point where they were normal. I was seeing a pulmonologist, a specialist, and getting CT scans. And then now 20 last year, 2024, came. I had gotten to a level where I felt decent enough. I was still always showing up to my exercise class, always showing up to work, always doing the things. But 2024 hit in a different way right away in 2024, 2025. I had my dad have a stroke and he had been without his wife for five years and he fell ill, and it was a terrible four and a half, five months of him just a terrible illness with daily just heartbreak, right? So I had that at the same exact time I had a dear family member have cancer. So I was working through that too. And then I had found out that I had been sleeping on mold. Like I was feeling terrible. Like I thought my health was just done. I I was coughing all the time, clearing my throat all the time. And I found out as a middle-aged woman, you understand you get hot at night sometimes, right? So you I we had bought like a cooling top mattress cover that shoots water through the mattress cover. And one day I looked up in my kitchen ceiling and saw a huge wet spot. And I was like, oh my God. So went upstairs with my husband. We pulled the mattress away. There's black mold everywhere under our bed, everywhere, just covered. And I have a Jasper air filter in my bedroom right next to it. Couldn't smell a thing, couldn't see a thing. It was terrible. And so, as somebody know that knows I have this hereditary lung illness, I was just devastated. I was like, oh my God, no wonder I have been feeling so terrible. And my husband, we tease. I say, I'm a canary in a coal mine, you're a cockroach. He could do anything, not feel anything. He's fine, totally fine. Meanwhile, I'm falling apart once again. So long story, but so last year I just said, This is it. Like I was feeling so bad and dealing with grief and dealing with these illnesses. I found out I had Lyme coinfections from Lyme disease. I had all these multitude of health issues, and here I am, this holistic nutritionist, still eating well, sleeping well, moving well, but falling apart. And I knew, I just knew inside myself that it was my nervous system. I knew that was the pillar I was that was totally broken.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

And so it actually did start on Retreat with you, where I had the experience where I asked my higher being or consciousness what was going on, and to rebuild me cell by cell. And it started that day, and every day after that I would sit in meditation and focus on being rebuilt cell by cell.

unknown 25:52

Wow.

From Meds To Lifestyle Management

SPEAKER_01 25:53

So that journey was all of the back half of last year. And I'm here to report that I haven't felt better since before 2020. I feel my lungs are clear. I know my lungs are clear. I had a recent doctor's appointment and she declared me mold-free. I haven't gone back in for a CT scan because I had several cysts on my lungs, and my right side of my lungs were completely full with what they call bronchiactis. But I know they're clear. I don't cough, I don't, I don't clear my throat, I don't it all the things I was experiencing. So that's what I mean. It's a long story, but healing isn't linear and it's not one thing for many people. Many people, and there's so many women who are dealing with what they call, now they just categorize it as MCAS, mass cell activation syndrome. All these women that have unexplained, like autoimmunity, Lyme disease, mold illness, heavy metal toxicity, I know so so many of them because they contact me, but they just write it off as this MCASS syndrome. It just means these kind of clusters of diseases that are hard to deal with. I feel that at the at the root of all of that is nervous system regulation, a hundred percent.

Working With Women Beyond Food Rules

SPEAKER_00 27:04

That's incredible to hear that you almost got like you conquered a lot of these things ahead of COVID, right? And got to the knowledge base and got to that understanding of yourself. And then you went on this rough ride for years, for four or five years, in terms of really not only getting through the bouts of COVID, and also the personal losses. And I think what's interesting to come back to the nervous system, because what I find even in the work that I'm doing is that we don't always think about how the big moments of our life death, birth, health challenges, impact our nervous system. And our nervous system is so central to our well-being, and yet is generally speaking one of the last things we think about. Yep. It was for me. Absolutely. And another follow-up question to what you shared is I think like we can get attached to an idea of what healing is supposed to look like, right? And how it should be fast or permanent. So what would you say to someone who still thinks like that in terms of healing?

SPEAKER_01 28:26

I would say whatever you are in your journey. I've had dear friends and loved ones have gone through excruciating battles. But there is always hope. If you can, I feel, and there's no blaming or faulting, or but there's always that start and that glimmer of that we do have ultimate control. If we can control our vibratory state, is how I see it, to try and raise our vibration a little bit higher, our energy a little bit higher to activate that healing that and being in that parasympathetic state, because that truly is the only time I know that I have healed is when I've been in that rest and digest and heal mode. When I'm stuck in that sympathetic state, it's just ongoing. That's where 2025 was. It was like one thing, the second thing, third thing. I was dealing with a lot. And I'm not blaming myself, I'm not shaming myself, but I know when I look back at it, I was like, wow, was I stuck in that sympathetic state? I was just felt like scared all the time. I remember sitting in the hour with my dad one day and having a panic attack, basically, in that room with him, he was unconscious, but I was having a panic attack and I had to literally leave the room and go walk outside. So for those people that are dealing with so much, and do I empathize? But it if you can sit in stillness a little bit each day and envision yourselves being reborn, rebirthed, that's a great place to start. Or and just giving yourself a little grace.

unknown 29:55

Right.

Strong And Lean: Abundance Over Deprivation

SPEAKER_01 29:55

To just be okay with also not being okay. I think there was a lot of blame for myself and being like, here I am, this person that works with people trying to make them better, and I'm truly falling it apart. And I would feel terrible every single day when I woke up. So that was uh just a very hard reality to live with. And I didn't really share that with a lot of people at the time. I think my husband was pretty much the only one that knew because he'd hear me coughing all day at that time. It was not something I widely shared. I didn't talk about it on social media. I've only recently actually told my children that I have this alpha one because I didn't want to scare them. They saw their grandmother pass. And so I, even though they're adults now, I kept it to myself. I didn't tell my dad either before he passed. It was just something that I was struggling with internally. Again, I just feel like everyone has to heal on their own level, but I do feel that at that deeper level is where healing begins. And it's and I and again, I'm I tell myself all the time, what if I get COVID again? I probably will. Here we go. I've done it once before, I can do it again, is what I just keep reminding myself.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

So I'm hearing a shift in mindset around the healing process, right? We can get easily overwhelmed, we can even get feeling a bit of hopelessness, right? Dealing with chronic illness or even chronic stress, right? And I think that it's important to not lose sight of the part that we can play in our healing process. And as you said, it begins deeper within ourselves and then becomes something that we can practice and then even experience and can carry us through the next thing. Absolutely. So that's great to hear. There's a bit about women that I know that we're not unique this way, however, I being one and you are too, that it would be easy to understand this idea of fighting against our bodies and listening to them. Can you speak to that and the role that played in your healing journey as well as what you're doing with your client?

Fueling At A Cellular Level

SPEAKER_01 32:06

Yes. And I heard your recent episode on that as well. So it was really profound. And this is it's not only a woman problem, but definitely all the women that I work with, it's a constant battle. Mine has been a little different, I would say, in that this need to be busy all the time, this need to be constantly doing, has really formed my entire life. And just really honing in on why that is, trying to have a deeper understanding. I don't think I'm there yet of why that is. I've seen everything from astrologers lately to therapists to to shaman. I was trying to figure out this one critical piece of why I am the way I am. And why is a seeker? I know I am a seeker. I've constantly been a seeker. But I also need to probably just let that go a little bit and just understand and love that part of myself because I haven't really found truly why that is about me. So I've tried to love that part of me and be like, it's okay. You don't need to keep pushing today. You can sit down. You don't need to perform, you don't need to validate, you don't need to do anything but rest. Still a huge struggle, but I at least recognize it and I'm trying to uncover what that means for me. What why I need to be quiet and learn to love myself as I am in that form. It's never been for me, I know for a lot of women, a body struggle, it's a mental struggle of doing the doing. Okay, the constant doing. And I think that is at some level a need for love and appreciation. I don't know where it comes from. Yeah, but trying to get for most people to get to that level of seeing, seeing if you do have a struggle with your body, seeing what is driving, is it anxiety? Is it a need for love? There's always a deeper meeting.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

And that's where the healing opportunity is to be able to better understand why it is that we're fighting against what is, meaning who we are at this point in our life versus who we thought we were, who we wish we were, yeah, were earlier on, and listening to what we need now versus what we may have thought we needed before. I was just listening to something that what my meditation teacher posted recently about rest, and it says rest is not optional.

SPEAKER_01 34:37

I'm trying to teach myself that one for sure.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

Yeah, something to always factor in. Let's talk about your program, Strong and Lean, because it feels like it's a culmination of everything you've been through and what you've learned. So tell me what is it that you think is or was missing from nutrition programs that you wanted to do differently?

Midlife Hormones And Metabolism

SPEAKER_01 35:00

Well, strong and lean is truly it's a lifestyle. So I don't view it as a program necessarily, even though it's a month-long program. Basically, what it is I give people a meal plan. I have 10 different options. So it's as you mentioned earlier, not everyone's the same. Not no one's the same age, same activity level, same sex. I have men and women that do this program. So 10 different options. So it's a kind of choose your own adventure, plant-based omnivore, five different versions of each at different calorie levels, but it's basically fueling yourself at a cellular level. So I say it's an abundance program, it's not a deprivation program. People can choose to cut if they want to, if they want to decide they want to lose that pound or two a week, is all I'm gonna recommend. Based on their total daily energy expenditure, I give them a calculator and they can choose. But truly, for me, what it is fueling my body with the energy it needs for the day. So I'm doing it alongside my group. I always do all my programs alongside my group. It's based on the meal plan. You choose your meal plan, which gives you everything. So you can take that equipment. There's so much noise in nutrition. You don't have to think about what you're eating. It is all laid out. Every single plan has over 100 grams of protein a day, over 25 grams of fiber a day, even if you're on the lowest calorie level. So if you're on 1500 calories a day, you're still going to be getting your fiber and your protein and your nutrients. I try and include it, follow the 30 different plants a week concept. So it is truly fueling you at a cellular level. And it is encompassing my four pillars as almost all my programs do. So the first week, I do nothing but talk nutrition. The second week, I do nothing but talk movement. Third week, it's all about stress. Fourth week, it's all about sleep. And then I create a community. So it's an online community, a closed community where we talk and people post pictures of food or list what they're struggling with. I do a weekly live so they can ask me questions about it as a community. And I've I would say that usually I have about 75% of the signups are from my local Chicagoland area. So I have gotten to know, and they are mainly women, even though this year I do have several men too. I usually have a group of men, but I've gotten to know these women. They I've been in business almost 10 years. There are some that have done my programs every single year, which is my favorite thing in the world. Because as I said, like healing's not linear, health is not linear. Every year we're going to be learning a little bit, something new. You're going to have a new meal plan. I have them in book format. People usually have their books on their counters. So it's truly about becoming healthier together and learning a little bit about ourselves. And how it's changed and evolved over the years is because I've changed and evolved over the years. So I know that where I'm at in my life, I'm in need more protein because muscle protein synthesis just decreases as you get older. And we lose three to eight percent of our muscle mass every single decade, which is essential. We need our fiber to support our microbiome, to support gut health, to promote the weight stability. So I'm doing what I know I need and what mirrors in my groups. And again, it's a community uh program. It's not about deprivation. I try and get everyone to have the mindset shift that this is an abundance program that you get to eat this delicious whole foods. That's basically what it is, right? It's not really all that complex. Every single day, people post, oh, I love that recipe. That's going to be in my everyday. I love hearing that. They're like, this can taste good. I'm like, absolutely. And when movement, we've talked a lot about listening to our bodies and doing what we need to support our bodies at where they're at, not pushing to break. Movement for enjoyment's sake, a lot of people are dealing with injuries. I know you said you were dealing with a recent injury, but how you move through that and how you still focus on becoming stronger and better, no matter the age or stage you're in. It's all the fundamentals, and we're just doing it together to be better and stronger this year.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

So, what I'm hearing you describe is and how it differentiates from, let's say, traditional nutrition programs is that one, this is about abundance and not about deprivation. Two, it's really about enjoyment versus let's just restrict and adhere. Absolutely. The third thing, which I think is really important, is the community and how that's a good idea. 100% because you I come from in this story, I grew up with an eating disorder for decades. And so that was a form of addiction and the controlling of my eating patterns. And what leads to addiction often is isolation, and the opposite of that is connection, and community based programs are far healthier and far more successful than the ones in which we take something off the shelf and just attempt to do on our own. So that's really great. Another thing I wanted to ask you about is you talk about a Cellular level, right? That this is about fueling the body at a cellular level. So, what does that actually mean in terms of how it affects our everyday life?

A Day Of Balanced Eating

SPEAKER_01 40:10

Mm-hmm. One of the things I think that I struggled with over the last probably five years was energy, given the multiple rounds of COVID, everything that I've been through. And so I've really been trying to rebuild my cells. And what I mean by that is basically the mitochondria, the power plants of our cells. If you remember biology from high school, the energy power plants within our cells and what they need. And I'm always trying to experiment to see what that is. I think I've tried every nutrition style out there. From I haven't done carnivore completely. I've done keto. I've done all vegan, plant-based, whatever, but trying to see nutritionally what my specific body thrives on. So that is what I mean by fueling at a cellular level. And for me, I know like something like keto. And I've had several clients who come to me and doing the keto diet. And I always warn, especially women, being very careful about going too low carb because of the effect on thyroid and energy later on. You can do it for the month, but anything past that, I feel like it can do some pretty severe damage to your thyroid health, triggering low thyroid. And in terms of like paramenopausal to early menopause, those carbs, the healthy carbs, I'm not talking the cookies, cakes, crackers. I'm talking real food carbohydrates, actually fuel kind of the need for our bodies to feel safe. So I don't feel that there's any bad food group. I believe it depends where you're at physically. I'm a physically active person. So for me, I know I need a little bit of, I need to hit my protein goals if I'm trying to build muscle, which it has taken me three years to put on three pounds of muscle. Three years. And I work out hard. So that just shows you how hard it is to put on muscle. Like people that worry they're gonna bulk up. I have made a contracted effort to do that. But so I definitely hit my protein goal every single day is one of my top priorities. And I feel good with that. It helps, I can feel my body feels a little safer when it's satiated with protein.

unknown 42:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01 42:11

If I like, and I'm playing an experiment right now, I've always done fasted workouts because I work out early in the morning. Right now I'm trying because nervous system regulation is so top priority priority, a top priority for me right now, that I am going into a workout by doing a half a scoop of protein powder in my coffee and having a half a date. That's what I had this morning. I can't eat, like I'm I just can't eat early. I really, it starts to come up as I'm working out. That's what I'm trying to see if that will put my body in a little more of a nervous system regulation state. So that's what I mean is listening to you as a unique individual and playing experiments. You're N of one, right? What works for me is not necessarily what's going to work for you. What works for me now is a very balanced Whole Foods diet where I get probably 25% of my calories from protein, 35% from fat. And I usually match my protein and my carbs. So I'm not eliminating any photogroups. I'm very balanced. I eat 90 to 95% of my foods from Whole Foods because I know that's what's building me up. Now I'm not gonna say I never I had a protein, I was on a two-hour flight delay last night. So I broke open a protein bar. I'm never gonna say never to anything. I always try and be smart and be realistic about things.

SPEAKER_00 43:30

I think what's interesting, I'm I'm now into my 60s, and so I've had to rethink completely or restructure my eating program, nutrition program, not only because of my age and digestive changes that happen at this stage in my life, but also because I too am very active. And so building muscle or adding muscle mass to my body is never really been as much of a challenge as it's been like doing it in proper proportion so that because fat comes along with that sometimes. Yeah, fat digestion can be slowed down. And so understanding what I can take in and digest efficiently, because I studied a lot of Ayurveda in my training, and they say it's not what you eat, it's what you digest. Absolutely. Right? And so I find like at this stage of my life, is I'm like you focused on protein intake. Yet I I can't digest protein as well as I used to. Certain forms are easier, and so I'm finding my way to that.

SPEAKER_01 44:47

Are you using digestive enzymes? Because that's a huge helper. Yeah.

Leaving Extremes For Structure

SPEAKER_00 44:50

Yes, yeah. I'm learning more about that in order to help me. We can talk. Yeah, uh, I certainly feel being open-minded to all of these things that that I used to try and think, oh, I can just do it through food on my own. Yeah. Or I could just do it through movement on my own. Hence the on my own part. Yeah. Instead of really being open to getting help with that, because as much as I feel like I've been trained and I'm really big listener to my body, I haven't the ability to get below or above the noise enough to be able to really hear what my nervous system needs my body to the digestive process, right? Like I've like you, I've put a lot of emphasis on my nervous system. And I just recently, and I say recently is in the last year and a half, have come to appreciate the impact my nervous system, which has always been like yours at a heightened state, has had on my digestive process.

SPEAKER_01 45:58

Oh, it's a hundred percent affecting your gut all the time. That's where I feel like my autoimmune started because my stress levels ate away and I created leaky gut. And that's one of the components of autoimmunity. Wow. Stress is huge in digestion and gut healing.

SPEAKER_00 46:11

Yeah, that's incredible. I love this program more and more that you're just describing. So let's talk about this midlife hormones and sustainability that you are helping women with. So as you work with women in their midlife, let's talk about what you're what you are finding that they're often blaming themselves for. They should not be.

Grief, Emotion, And The Body

SPEAKER_01 46:33

I think it's the old school, they're eating too much and they're not moving enough. It's still pervasive, even though I think on Instagram the message is coming out loud and clear. Otherwise, I still feel like women are afraid to eat. They'll often tell me, because I'm like, I'm doing my strong lean program, I'm doing the 2,000 calorie level. So they're like, You eat that much? I'm like, oh yeah, I've eaten that much my whole life. But they're like, I, and I'm only 5'4, I'm petite. So they don't understand what is required in terms of fueling, as I said, yourself at a cellular level and fueling your hormones. So again, with my early illnesses, I realized my hormones must have been terrible. If I had my hormones tested, I'm sure they were abysmal. As I said, my cortisol was high, my progesterone was nothing, my estrogen, I didn't have regular cycles. My my vitamin D, which is a pro hormone, because I never ate fat because it was the fat-free 90s, right? Like I was a so fearful of fat. I never ate a fat gram. My vitamin D levels must have been like below 10, I'm guessing. And I realize for autoimmunity sake, I keep mine at 80 right now. Wow. There's just so much in terms of hormones that if we're not eating to support our hormones, if we're not getting that protein and especially in midlife, your metabolic instability, so your blood sugar regulation, I'm still actually, believe it or not, I'm in paramenopause. I'm not in menopause, but I've noticed when I gone to the doctor just recently to have my blood work done, my hemoglobin A1C is up and my LDL cholesterol is up. They're still fine. They're still well within the range. But that's typical of parametopause and menopausal women. We don't tolerate carbohydrates as well. Our insulin sensitivity, our uptake of insulin is not as good as it used to be. Our proteins aren't the synthesized. So it really does require different nutrition as we age to support those hormones. And if you don't listen to your body, what happens is the metal pat belly from the extra cortisol and estrogen malfunctioning and the lowering of progesterone, that kind of no one likes that visceral fat, but that's basically what's happening. And just blood sugar is through the roof. You're going to become erratic in terms of mood. So you want to eat to support all of that. And that's why it becomes so essential. And it's part of the nervous system regulation, too, is to feed yourselves the right things.

SPEAKER_00 48:59

Wow, you just covered a lot of areas. I think that what I'm taking away from what you just said is that so much shifts and change as we move from pre-menopausal through perimenopausal to where I'm at, which is post-menopausal. And that bridge, so to speak, or that moving through those areas of your life is your hormones go volatile. Yeah. And where you end up is something that can be completely different than where you were at the beginning. And that's why it's really important to stay on top of these things so that we actually, as you said, are eating to support our hormone levels. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 49:44

Now that could definitely be a whole extra conversation. We could we could go deep there because there's so much to it. And and it's just very complex. So I know a lot of women are just like, I give up. Yeah, I mean it's overwhelming.

SPEAKER_00 49:58

It's overwhelming. You said this earlier on that there's so much noise out there, and it's in I know in terms of the sciences, it's the youngest of all the sciences, and it changes all the time, particularly given the politics that we're moving through. And just so being able to get accurate information is almost as hard as it is about getting to listen to your body. You can be so misinformed if you're taking your news, let's say, from social media or from one source. It's really important to learn to listen to your body, get the right blood work. 100%. And then find your way to a program that supports where you're at, not where you were. Absolutely. So clearly, hormones, muscle mass, and your nervous system health has changed the conversation that you're having, not only with yourself and your doctors that you're working with, but really your clients, right? So this is a different kind of conversation.

SPEAKER_01 51:11

Yeah, I definitely don't think I was talking when I first started as much protein conversation. And I feel like it is a little tired conversation right now, but it's still so uh understanding more and more about the science behind it as you age. So, like things like that are just a no-brainer for me right now. It's not a questionable. I also saw two parents that stopped really eating protein and like literally were skin and bone when they passed, because that's what I think propelled me to be like, this is not an option. Strength training is not an option. Eating the protein is not an option if you want to be able to have more life in your years than just years to your life. It's essential.

SPEAKER_00 51:50

It's essential. Yeah. And so the nutrition framework that you're talking about that works long term looks like what? Basically.

Community, Connection, And What’s Next

SPEAKER_01 52:02

As I said, fits going to vary per individual. And I'm not, I do even offer plant-based in my programs. Like I used to do a vegan option. I don't know. My my plant-based, it's got a little fish and a little eggs and a little dairy just to get the protein content up. But I do have plant-based options. But for me personally, I can give you an example of my day to show you. My morning, as I said, I'm playing with things. I'm constantly experimenting, although I've always done a fasted workout because I work out at 6 to 7 a.m. Now, with my nervous system being my absolute number one priority and seeing my A1C go up a little bit this year, it never had before. It was always stable. So I'm recognizing, ah, my nervous system, it's not what I'm eating. I don't really eat a lot of added sugar. So it's my cortisol and nervous system that need help. So I'm trying to protect that. So in the morning now, just recently I started, I've always done collagen in my coffee the last couple of years, but I'm adding a half a scoop of protein powder before I go work out and a half of a date. Just a little bit of carbohydrate to take the edge off the cortisol that's pumping when you wake up. And if you go straight, which how well this is how I was doing it with coffee to work out, there's not a lot of blunting of the cortisol. So you're just constantly in that cortisol spike. So I'm trying to blunt that spike a little bit. So that's how I'm starting my day right now. It's hard for me. I like blaffee. I don't like to eat before I work out. So this is forcing myself to try something new. When I come home, I'm usually I shower and get ready, and then maybe an hour later. So it's probably about 9 a.m. A lot of times I'll take my dog for a walk right before I'm ready to start my day. Is I'm doing, I like to start with a smoothie. I find it's the easiest way for me to get in 35, 40 grams of protein. I am doing a whey, a really quality whey protein powder. Levels is the one I use specifically. And I'm using chia and flax and usually a little sheep yogurt for my gut health. I'm doing cauliflower, I'm doing spinach, and I'm doing berries. So I've got 20, 25 grams of fiber. I've got 35 grams easy of protein and it keeps me satiated for about four hours. So I that's how I like to start my day. I know some people don't like shakes in the morning. So if those people, I'm always saying a couple of eggs with some egg whites and some veggies, maybe a little bit of avocado. Uh I try and keep people to not snack. I don't think snacking is very beneficial. Although, like in the afternoon, some days I do need a snack because of my activity level. So we'll usually have a snack if I feel like I need it to get me through. But I'm not a big believer in the six mini meals a day. I feel like if you eat three structured, balanced meals, you should be pretty good to go. So I'll roast like a couple sheet plans of vegetables a couple times a week, tons, any kind of vegetable, and usually like one sweet potato, and I'll break that up between three days to give me a little bit of starchy carb as well. But I'll have a big bowl of roasted vegetables with a port protein source. So it's typically a couple eggs for me, or maybe an egg and a couple egg whites to really get the protein with low with maintaining calorie levels. I do a lot of tofu just because I like it, believe it or not. So I do a lot of tofu bowls. I do a lot of if I have leftovers, I'll eat that. So that plus like a half a cup of Greek yogurt usually gets me to about 30 grams of protein at least. And again, a lot of fiber with all those vegetables. And I'll do like a some kind of sauce that I have, like whatever I have on hand, like a clean sauce of sorts or just avocado. And then as a snack in the afternoon, if I'm hungry, a lot of times I do a brown like during the winter, it's freezing here in Chicago. I'll do a bone broth hot chocolate. So I'll make uh with a cup of bone broth. Some I make my own almond milk.

SPEAKER_00 55:51

Some remember you telling me about that. That's my favorite recipe.

Practical Advice For Discouraged Women

SPEAKER_01 55:55

Yeah, cacao, because it's for gut health. Cacao, I use dandy blend, I whip that up and I put a little stevia in it. And I love it. It's warming, it nourishes me, and it doesn't rise my blood sugar at all because I never want to go into dinner with my blood sugar elevated. I want to be steady, so I don't really snack on carbohydrates very much. And so that's my snack. Or sometimes I have my homemade protein bars that I make, and I'll have some of those. If I need a snack around three or four, then dinner, I usually try and eat around six. I try and eat early so I can I know my sleep score is always better when I eat early. So I usually eat dinner around six, and that is almost always protein and veggie veggies. I like to use things like I don't do a grain too often. I think it's my autoimmune. I used to do autoimmune paleo diet all the time, and I got a got out of the whole grain situation. Occasionally I'll do some rice, occasionally I'll do some oats in my breakfast mainly, but it's usually a protein and a veggie and some kind of healthy fat. And then I always end my day with 88% dark chocolate because I love dark chocolate.

SPEAKER_00 57:02

So it's good to have the yummy stuff at the end, right?

SPEAKER_01 57:06

Yeah, yeah. And I view that as abundance, not deprivation at all. It's as I said, I'm 2,000 calories. I'm not hungry pretty much during the day. I feel good, I feel energized. So that's how I like to feel.

SPEAKER_00 57:20

Yeah. Wow. That sounds like a great framework for your day and something that many, many of us can learn from how we can really build what works for us. I think that's part of this that I'm hearing is the permission to really do what works for you and add more or less, depending on what your hormonal needs are in your life.

SPEAKER_01 57:47

Hormones, activity. There's so many things that come into play there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:51

Okay. So now I want to talk about moving from extremes, right? And moving away from extremes. And you often talk about helping women to do that and toward nourishment and structure. So we just talked about the permission slip, right? Yeah. So once we give the women the permission slip, what do you think that women need to hear or understand in order to move forward with something that can help them be nourished and not live in the extremes?

SPEAKER_01 58:27

I think where that extremes gets you, and when I saw a lot of clients one-on-one, the first five years I was in practice, I probably saw a couple thousand women. And always the ones that were successful were the ones that started again every single day. It was the women that were all or nothing that really struggled. That really they'd have a bad day, they'd overeat, they'd order the burger and fries, and then just I'm no good at this, I'm never gonna succeed. I'm why try? That kind of shame, guilt, spiral thing that we tend to do. Whereas I said, I've had women that have done every single one of the programs I've ever done, and they're just constantly keeping up with it. It's not that I'm like half the time, I'm like, you could teach this program, right? They like the community aspect, but they also know that it's about getting up and doing every day. Oh, I always say open the meal plan. If you feel like you failed last night, open your meal plan. Hit day one, begin again. Again, people let's say, oh, diets always start on Monday. Sure, great. If you're starting over every Monday, yeah, of course you want to maintain some momentum, but at least start over every Monday. Don't give up. It's always a new day. It's never too late. You're not failing. And that's what I keep telling people in my program you are not failing. I just traveled for the weekend and somebody said, I just traveled and I fell off. I'm like, start again today. You're not traveling today, you're home. I am a consistent person by nature, so I don't really struggle with that because I do get up and start again the same way because I'm so connected to how my body feels that I want to feel good most days. As I understand that not everyone is built that way. So just trying to be a little bit more forgiving in terms of that all or nothing, you know, spiral and the guilt shame. There's there's dropping that. There's no need for that, especially as we age, right? Like you do learn that like guilt gets you nowhere. Shame is just something we were taught. It's not necessary.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:21

And particularly in relationship to our bodies.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:24

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's uh there's so much hard there that it can we just be a little bit easier with ourselves and and just eat the next good thing that makes us feel good. And and if you're gonna eat the chocolate cake, enjoy every darn bite, just relish it. And there's yeah, there's no beating yourself up because that's putting your nervous system in flight or flight, whenever which elevates your blood sugar, it's doing you a lot more disservice than any kind of good.

Where To Find Didi & Closing

SPEAKER_00 1:00:49

Yeah, okay. I totally agree with that understanding. We really need to honor and love where we are instead of beating ourselves up about our perceived failings when it comes to a topic that for so many people is so complicated. And our society has made it that way. So learning to really work with ourselves. Now, I want to get to this topic that I just so highly overlooked when it comes to changing our approach to nutrition in the way that you're describing. And that has to do with what's going on emotionally in ourselves. You shared in your story, and we've talked a lot on the side about the losses that you've experienced in the last five years. Most recently, your father, and then you said at the beginning of COVID you lost your mother five years apart. And in the process, you battled a lot with your health challenges, both with COVID as well as the autoimmune things. That had an emotional toll on you. Yes, for sure. And I'm really encouraged to hear that you come around or you are embracing that the effect it had on your nervous system. And so you've taken this more global approach. I myself had a significant loss recently. I'm so sorry. Yeah. Yeah. And so as we think about the topic of grief, that goes right to the core of our nervous system. And I think one thing that we don't do often enough for women is ourselves, is to give ourselves an opportunity. This is where community is really important to hear what we're carrying. Yeah. Talk a little bit, please, about what you've come to appreciate, the emotional stories that people are carrying and the effect that has on their nervous systems and their overall nutritional health. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:53

First of all, I'm really sorry for your loss. I did follow that, and then it's devastating. I have a sister and one of my closest person to me, and we both dealt with this. As I said, I think for a long time, my mom, you know, battled a 10-year illness. It was in her late 60s when she started having the problem with her lungs, and we didn't at first know what it was. And she went from she, this is where I get my a little bit of my DNA from my both my parents were super active, tennis players. They loved to play sports. They were always out doing stuff. And I modeled that behavior from them. I went to step aerobic classes with my mom. She did Zumba. She was the life of the party. She's much more extroverted than I ever was. But overnight she went from Zumba class to not being able to do anything. And it was just heartbreaking for all the plans she had and to watch this slow demise over 10 years of this vibrant woman to lose that. And I think that over that 10 years, I carried it, my family carried it. My dad was the best caregiver in the world, to be honest. He lived for my mom and a best example. So I was blessed with so many things. It was a daily thing. If you've ever worked with somebody with cystic fibrosis, you're wearing vests trying to clear your lungs. I I did a lot of percussion treatments on her back. I'm not a Reiki specialist, but I would try Reiki on her. I would like, that's why I went to nutrition school to help me and my mom. It's why I went. And and you will understand this. I now I look back, but well, I was in Canada. I actually went to an energy healer. And this was just when she was hill. And I had not said mentioned one word to her about my mom or anything. And she said, Oh my gosh, you have so much sadness in your lungs. Because in Chinese medicine, your lungs hold sadness, right? And I knew that hit me at the core and gave me an aha. My mom manifested her illness right after her sister died from lung cancer. Literally right after. So I know from an energetic standpoint, illness is also these traumas, these feelings that we hold. So I feel this journey of grief and holding it in your body and not really recognizing it, not feeling it, not allowing it. And as women, we're just the caretakers. A lot of us are in sandwich generation of taking care of parents and kids. And I see it every day with the age I am at. Oh my God. So many of my friends have parents that are ill. And the things they're dealing with are just insane. I just had a friend that just went just through with the most you couldn't even imagine what she just went through. It was like, and I said, How are you still standing? I really hope that you're giving yourself some love and will stop one day and go see a therapist. Go because it truly is too much. And that's what I realized when my dad passed after he was he never rebounded after my mom died. He was just not the same. He was grieving too hard. And I think that's why he ended up getting ill himself because he was a vibrant, healthy person as well.

unknown 1:06:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:04

So this grieving that we hold in our bodies and don't address. That's what I was doing in 2024. I was holding it all, right? I was the lungs became stifled with holding on to grief. And I wouldn't let it go. In one of my meditations with Derek and with you, the first one, I actually had the vision of why am I sick? It was because I was holding my mom's illness in my lungs for her. And I had to let it go.

unknown 1:06:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:31

And so it was a progression of finally getting into more of a nervous system regulated state where it could let it go. And I couldn't in 2025. Like I was just too heightened.

unknown 1:06:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:42

There was too much panic to go into that state. So when I would never preach that to anybody, they have to come to it at their own time and let yourself grieve, let yourself cry, let yourself scream, let yourself feel it. I think burying it and pretending it's not real. And I still cry over my mom all the time. Usually it's appreciation and happiness of feeling that I was blessed with a good set of parents. Not everyone has that gift, I understand, but whoever may be in your life. So I just the one thing I just hope that women just take the time to be okay with feeling it, sitting and feeling that grief and not bearing it and not trying to pretend that they can do it all. Some things are just way too much. It is just way too much. And you won't see and you won't come out the other side for quite a bit. Looking back at that and seeing some appreciation in it and seeing how what taught me a lot in terms of being able to feel and move through it and try and release that pain. Yeah, I think it's just amazing what we as humans go through. And I know it is to teach us something about what we're made of and what we're capable of on our own.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:57

I couldn't agree with her. I have a bias about this. I really think we're here to heal. That is why we're on earth and through the healing process and the sharing of that experience is how the world heals. And grief is a part of life. Loss is a part of life. I shared with you, grief has been a part of my journey, my life for the better part of 15 years. Lost a lot of family members. And I think the further along I get with it, meaning keep experiencing it, it keeps coming back into my life. I'm grateful that I've been doing the work to help me through it a lot easier. I don't carry it the way I used to, not in my body or my mind. And I am allowing it to surface as it does and honor it as opposed to what I used to do, which was I just would just tamp it down. And so many of us as women, we do that. Do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:58

Yeah, yeah. We need to honor it and we need to full fully feel it. Fully feel it.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:05

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:06

Is and yeah, and it's work. Like you said, like you've done a ton of work. I know how much work you've done, and I'm in awe of it because it's what it takes, though. It really is what it takes.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:17

Yeah, thank you for talking about that. So now let's get to talking about community and what's next. 2026, what you shared, is the year of deeper connection and community. So, what does that look like for you?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:31

To be honest, I don't fully know yet. I'm hoping that I'm putting out that energy and hoping it circulates back to me. I haven't had a chance because I'm in the middle of my program. I just was journaling about this morning. I've been very busy the last few months just doing my program and getting it ready. I have a large business doing it. It's just been a lot of hands-on deck kind of work. But when this is done, I do recognize the fact that I really miss, I don't do, I haven't done one-on-ones for a couple years.

unknown 1:10:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:00

I miss that closer connection. And I I think whether it's retreats, I always like the highlight of my last several years has always been on a retreat state where I'm in that higher vibration, meeting people like you, meeting people that, you know, are doing the work, basically that I really can connect with. So whether that's retreats, whether it's more presentations, I always love talking to groups of, especially women, working with companies has actually been pretty gratifying for myself as well. So I just want to get more hands in the dirt. I want to like actually be in with people in person, doing some things, interacting instead of it's fabulous we have all this technology. But to be honest, if we did away with social media tomorrow, I'd be thrilled. I would love to just sit around drinking tea and talking about the universe, is basically my goal. Yeah, yeah. So I've got to honor that, I feel, and do move a little bit more that way. I don't, again, I don't really have a formal picture of what that looks like yet, but that's my intention. I'm putting it out there for the universe right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:10

Okay. What would I hear in this, Didi, which is really full circle, is it's honoring the doer in you. Okay. When you can embrace who you are and put that in with purpose into what you're working on or doing, I think it's a win-win, right? Absolutely. It's clearly what resonates highly with you as opposed to an electronic connection. And so that's great. That's great. And the universe will bring it to you. You do that. That's how it works. I want to wrap with this question about we have a lot of women listeners, a lot of which obviously are dealing with hormonal changes, the things we talked about in terms of what people are dealing with stress. So if there's a woman out there listening who's discouraged, okay, either with her body not cooperating the way she would like it to, she's tried everything. Yeah. What would you want her to hear right now?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:08

Obviously, she's not alone. There is, I feel like, such a movement right now in women's health, and it's well deserved because obviously we've been put on the back burner. Most medical research studies are all done on men, but that's changing. So I do have hope that there's a lot of good coming. So for that woman that feels overwhelmed, I would say find somebody good that you can trust that you can work with. I'm obviously very knowledgeable. I'm a one-trick pony, as I say. Like I'm I listen to health podcasts, I research health, I've studied health, all the things, but I still have mentors that I talk to. I work with a nurse practitioner on my mold healing. I worked with a functional medicine doctor on my Lyme healing. I don't claim to know it all. And so finding trusted people that I can work with as a team is one of the things that I found was really profoundly helpful. I always start with testing. I did a bunch of testing. Um, even as a holistic practitioner, I think it helped to lead the discussion. And I also feel like this is how I've always viewed my health because especially for women that are in this complex either chronic illness or chronic hormonal struggle. There's so many little things you could do. So I always say, look at it as zoom out. It's a puzzle. You are a puzzle if you're an N of one experiment. Take two pieces this year that you want to fix. Two. Try those. So, like, for example, it's your hormones and your last year it was heavy metals for me. I was wanting to test my heavy metals. That's where I started with. I had my hormones tested. I did a Dutch test, which is the signature hormone test. And I had a heavy metals test because I was concerned that I had, I thought when up before I knew it was mold, I thought it was maybe heavy metals because I had heavy metal toxicity before with mercury. So I was like, I'm starting with those two tests. I'm not gonna let me feeling like crap all the time overwhelm my thinking. I'm gonna start here, take those two things and go up for there. Pick those two puzzle pieces, see if they fit. If they don't, maybe pick two more. Don't try and fix everything at once because you are a very complex puzzle. There's so many inputs there. But just start small, find find a good trusted practice.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:25

Don't do it alone. Don't do it alone.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:26

And don't do it alone, even if it's a trusted friend. I have friends I talk about with all this stuff all the time. Just like anything, as you said, community, we're so much better together. Yeah, and reach out because women have long since silently suffered with all of these issues. I feel like now you can go on and talk about your hot flashes, your dryness, all the things that like were taboo for so long and now everybody's let me tell you what happened last night. Everybody is so open, which is fabulous, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:54

Like we should talk about everything.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:56

We should talk about everything because we learn from each other. What hormone patch are you on? What pedesterone are you taking? That's right.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:02

That's right. So speaking of community, I know our community is gonna want to know how to learn more from you. So, how can people get a hold of you or connect with your information?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:14

My website is feedmbs. It stands for feedmindbody soul, feedmbs.com. I'm on Instagram at feedmbs underscore nutrition. I'm on Facebook at feedmbs, and then I have a few programs. Strong and lean is still up. It's we started as a group a couple weeks ago, but I left it up for people, and some people have started late. And I do group detoxes, I do corporate presentations and then community presentations, and hopefully soon some in-person events.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:42

Wow. Big year for you. That's great to know that's how our people can get a hold of you or your messaging, because that's important to continue this conversation. So I want to thank you, DeeDee, for joining me on the She Asks podcast, where healing meets practical hope. Thanks so much. This has been a great conversation. I love seeing you. I love you so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:05

Yeah, and I hope we can get together soon. I do too. And yeah, thank you for continuing your fabulous work. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:12

Thank you. And to my listeners, until soon, be well.