Talk2Tamara
Hosted by therapist and coach Tamara, Talk 2 Tamara creates space for the conversations that often go unspoken. Drawing from her life as a mother, wife, and member of the Orthodox Jewish community, Tamara explores real stories, complicated questions, and the moments that shape who we are. This podcast is about naming what’s beneath the surface and making room for deeper understanding, connection, and growth — because some things deserve to be said out loud.
Talk2Tamara
Survival Mode Is Making You Sick — Here's How to Heal | Adina Erez Explains
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Your body never stops talking to you — the question is, are you listening?
In this episode, I sit down with Adina Erez, CEO of Bleu Glove Concierge, who blends evidence-based medicine with a whole-person approach to healing. We talk about how chronic stress, grief, and "survival mode" show up in the body as real physical symptoms — from Crohn's disease and IBS to burnout and emotional eating.
Adina shares the hard truths she tells patients every day: that hunger is a life force, that compassion (not perfectionism) is the real healer, and that you can't expect anyone else to be on your team if you're not on your own. We get personal — I open up about my own diagnosis with Crohn's after losing my mother, and how "the body keeps score" became more than just a phrase for me.
This is a conversation about medicine, but it's also about grief, self-abandonment, and finally coming home to yourself.
🩺 In this episode:
- Why the same diagnosis can lead to completely different outcomes
- The link between grief, trauma, and autoimmune disease
- Why hunger is often the first thing we ignore
- Compassion vs. perfectionism — and why one heals and one harms
- Learning to be okay with not being okay
- "Are you on your own team?" — the question everyone needs to ask themselves
💙 About Adina Erez & Bleu Glove Concierge:
Bleu Glove is redefining what healthcare can be. We bring expert medical care to patients at home, in the office, in our clinic, and virtually, while partnering with businesses and healthcare organizations to provide comprehensive corporate medicine, occupational health, medical clearances, and wellness solutions. Personalized care. Exceptional medicine. Wherever you need us.
📱 Instagram: @bleugloveconcierge
🌐 Website: Bleugloveconcierge.com
🎙️ Find Tamara:
📱 Instagram: @talk2tamara
🌐 Website & all podcast platforms: https://tamaragestetner.com/
If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it, and don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more real conversations on health, healing, and being human.
#TheBodyKeepsScore #GutHealth #CrohnsDisease #HolisticHealing #MentalHealthMatters #SurvivalMode #SelfCompassion #TalkToTamara #BleuGloveConcierge #EmotionalHealing #WomensHealth #Burnout #TraumaHealing #ConciergeMedicine
Follow Tamara on Instagram @Talk2Tamara, subscribe on your favorite podcast platform for new episodes on relationships and personal growth. Watch new episodes on Youtube and visit my website for coaching and 1:1 support.
The body is fascinating. It's absolut I every day I learn more and more and I see more and more and I'm humbled. And when I think that the body keeps court really is what that what it means is the body's communicating. The body is constantly communicating. And the challenge is that most of us have forgotten to listen.
SPEAKER_02You know, like my blood work and everything, like your body is screaming. Like I'll never forget the phone call. I was just like, okay, just tell me like what medication should I should I go on. Hunger is a life force.
SPEAKER_01It really is a life force when a baby's born and knows when it's hungry, it stops when it's full. Right. Um, it's not ashamed about being hungry or wanting to be alive, and I think that it just says so much about our generation. Like we're really in survival and we've lost that, you know, ability to like be in our life force. You can't expect someone to be on your team if you're not on your own team. And I think that that's really what it comes down to. Like, I ask people, like, are you on your own team?
SPEAKER_02Hi, I'm Tamara, a therapist and coach that's exploring relationships, emotional health, faith, and real life challenges that many of us were taught to keep private. Together, we'll talk honestly about the questions, the struggles, and experiences that many of us carry quietly and finally give them a place to be spoken out loud. You are listening to Talk to Tomara. Hello and welcome back. So today's guest has sat across from me personally and told me things about my own body. So Adina is a PA who still orders the labs and writes the prescriptions, but she also asked the questions that most practitioners never get to. What have you been carrying? I'll share my own story as we get into it. Welcome, Adina, and thank you so much for being here.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for having me. I'm so excited that we're finally doing this.
SPEAKER_02I'm so excited. This is gonna be awesome. Yes. Yes.
SPEAKER_01I think there's a lot of important things that we get to like talk about and connect over today.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. So you describe yourself as someone who genuinely loves medicine, right? You're not anti-medicine. Let's just like set's just set the bar for that, right? The diagnostics, the puzzle. So most people expect a practitioner who loves medicine, but also does the holistic route to have turned away from traditional like medicine. But that's not your story. No, is it?
SPEAKER_01So why don't you tell us like a little bit more about that? And it's interesting. I actually did not set out to become a holistic practitioner at all. And I don't even consider myself a holistic practitioner. I want to explain more about what we do as we go, but I really just set out to become an excellent PA. And I'm a nerd. I love medicine, I love physiology, I love diagnostics, I love putting together the puzzle pieces. Um, that's always, since I'm a little kid, that's always been just such a passion of mine. I'm naturally curious. Um, and I generally enjoy figuring out why something is happening. And that's, you know, in initially what drew me into healthcare and wanting to be a PA in the first place. Um, I think after like thousands of patient encounters, um, I graduated PA school in 2012. So I've been doing this for a long time. Yeah. Um, lived many lives, and I started like noticing something that I couldn't ignore. Like two patients would come in with the same diagnosis, um, you know, same um same thing going on. They would give the same treatment, and one patient would get better and one patient wouldn't. And, you know, same treatment, same diagnosis, similar lab work, and just totally different outcomes. And that fascinated me. Um one thing that medicine has really taught me is just, you know, an appreciation for just how complex and nuanced humans really are. And um very often, despite what we learn in school, is that humans don't read the textbook. Um, they you know, something will show up and completely, you know, unexplainable or completely needing a closer look. And I think that really what I'm trying to say is that people show up as whole people, you know, they come in not just as their diagnosis, they don't come in as their autoimmune thyroid condition, they come in as a whole person with stress, with their relationships, with grief, with habits, with their life stories. And the deeper I looked, the more I realized that if I wanted to truly help people heal in a genuine, real, lasting way, um, I needed to really understand not only the physiology of what was happening, but the person living inside that physiology. And so today I very much practice evidence-based medicine. I order labs, um, I, you know, prescribe medication, I treat diseases, I use GLP ones, I refer to specialists when needed. Um, I believe deeply in good medicine, I believe deeply in science, but I've also learned that symptoms don't happen in a vacuum. Um, sleep affects hormones, stress affects the sympathetic nervous system, relationships affect the nervous system, emotional health affects physical health. Everything is interconnected. And what I love about my work is that I get to bring all those pieces together. And I think that I get to be both a clinician and a detective. And just when we bring the whole person and we look at the whole picture, I think that that's when healing really starts to happen.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so like there's a lot of times that I feel like, you know, with my own health journey, is that they would put band-aids on top of the problems, right? And for example, like when I had Crohn's and we'll go into it, they gave me steroids for like six months. And um I blew up from it, I was uncomfortable, my face was deformed, and the minute that I went off of it, the symptoms just came back. So it was kind of like this thing of, you know, we're practitioners where they don't know really what the issue is, so they'll just prescribe the medication and not really get to the root of what's going on. So it was only like when I took matters into my own hands that I was like, okay, you know, there's a deeper thing happening here that I need to figure out what's going on. And and I think that, you know, one of the things that when I came, when I came to you and you said to me, you know, like my blood work and everything, like your body is screaming. Like I'll never forget the phone call. I was just like, okay, just tell me like what medication should I should I go on? What should I do? And you're like, you need to figure out what's going on with you. Like this is not, this is not the crowd. I was tough on you. I was like, you were tough.
SPEAKER_01I was like, I think I think that I sense that you had you were brave enough to go there. I think I think it takes a certain courage and bravery. You know, it's it's sometimes that just we're we're on autopilot. Like, okay, like I don't feel well. Let me just, you know, go through my life and and and put a band-aid on it because I need to function, I need to survive. And when we get to that point of like I call it leveling up, when we're ready for that next stage of like, you know, taking off the next layer of ourselves. Um, it does take a lot of bravery and courage to say, why do I feel like this? What's here? Do I have the courage to go deeper? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Do you think people need to reach like that breaking point for you to be like, okay, like I want to go deeper? Like, does a crisis have to happen for people to look to look at that? Such a good question.
SPEAKER_01Um I'm painfully honest, so I want to say not necessarily a rock bottom or a crisis, but you know, your things work until they don't, you know, and most of these things, they're coping mechanisms, and our coping mechanisms work for us until they hinder us. And I think that it takes a certain self-honesty and a certain sometimes crisis or just an eye-opener to go deeper because it makes sense. It works until it doesn't. Right, right.
SPEAKER_02And I think that for a lot of us, especially women, um, we are in survival mode a lot of the times. Yeah, it's like probably 90% of like our lives. Yes. Right. But I don't even think that we realize it at the time. We're just kind of going and doing and going and doing. And then like one day you wake up and you know, you're depressed or you're anxious and you don't really understand like why what's happening there. Yes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yes, like very much. Um, I think that's, you know, probably exactly like 90% of the patients I see, they're not necessarily having massive traumas or major crises. They're just in survival mode. And, you know, I always say like the when we're in survival mode, like the first the basics go, right? Like hunger, feeling our body, you know, like a lot of mothers will come in and they don't even know what they're feeling. They don't even know when they're hungry, when they're full, they're just really trying to function. It's not a crisis. They're just, they're taking care of their kids, they have jobs, they're managing so many different the operations of their household. And um, so often they are, you know, their their knees are the first to go. And it's not a crisis, it's just a a a call, you know, to go deeper and and kind of come back into the body. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So it's also really interesting to me because, you know, you have a business in your um, you know, in Woodmere, we we could say the location. Yeah. And um, you know, it probably just started as people coming for strep for strep cultures and you know, flu tests and things like that, right? So when do you know, like, to ask those questions, you know, or are people resistant to it? And they're just like, just give me, just give me the medication, let me go.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, such a good question. Um so I really do both. I really do both. And I I think, thank God, I do have a certain intuition of knowing when to go there and when not. And very often it is just strap. Very often it is just an irrefection.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, obviously, it's not always, you know, a bumpy deeper. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01When a mom comes in and she has strap five times in eight weeks, um, I sit her down and I'm like, okay, what's going on? And very often that's the body saying, I need help, like, I need more, I need support. So my intuition does guide me of like knowing, like, you know, if somebody's ready to hear something or ready to go somewhere. And sometimes we just let it be. And like there's compassion in that too, of being like, okay, like, you know, it's fine. It's it's good enough. I think that compassion is such a piece here. Like sometimes when someone comes in survival mode and we'll have a discussion and they're very open about it, and they'll say, like, I'm just doing what I need to do right now. And I think that my job is just to say, like, that's okay. Like, you're doing your best right now with the tools that you have, and I'm here. You know, sometimes it's just that's enough. Um, I'm learning that very, very much. And I think compassion in all this to ourselves is really everything, and and really the greatest healer, I think.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. That's so interesting. Like, can you expand on that more? Like, why is compassion healing?
SPEAKER_01I think compassion is healing because so many of us live in this survival mode and we live in a lot of self-judgment, perfectionism. We're trying to do so many things, our lifestyle, we're quite like it's it's it's a rat race. It's really a rat race. And, you know, especially, you know, I'm a mom, like we we we always want to be better parents, we always want to be better wives, we always want to be better, you know, for me, a business person, um, a better PA, um, a better entrepreneur. And I think that it works until it doesn't. Like, sometimes excellence can there's a very fine line between excellence and perfectionism. And I think that um huminous and compassion allows us to kind of stay in excellence. And, you know, perfectionism is that voice that says, like, you're not doing it enough, do it better, it's not enough. And it actually doesn't serve us very well.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And um, when we bring in compassion and humanness and say, like, I'm doing the best with the tools that I have, the body starts to relax and gets out of that sympathetic overdrive and just like it can be. And when the body gets into that parasympathetic, it can be mode, right? We call it rest and digest. That's when healing starts to happen. Digestion happens, the brain fog disappears. Um, we can be more in our bodies. That's the optimal place that our nervous system is supposed to be in. So I feel like they really are all interconnected. When we're living in constant judgment of ourselves, we're living in constant pressure, that sympathetic nervous system. The body can't do what it's meant to. We start to get bloated. Um, that's very often when I see Crohn's developing. Um, very often we see inflammatory bowel issues. Yeah, the body can only sustain that for a certain amount of time. Um and so very often, compassion and just being with what is can be so healing.
SPEAKER_02Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. So um, you said, for example, like people don't show up with, you know, things that just happen in a vacuum, right? Like an autoimmune disease. So for me, for example, you know, my mother died and it was a very traumatic 12 years of her of her cancer. And um, right after she died, it was about six, it was about six months after I got diagnosed with Crohn's. But it took them a long time to figure it out, but that's when the symptoms came. Yeah. And so I know that like it's not normal to be diagnosed with Crohn's at a late age of 35, usually, like it happens like much, much younger. And they told me, the doctors, that like it was brought on by a big stressor, that you always have it in your body, but like it comes, it comes it comes to the surface. Yeah. So when when did that, let's say, for example, like stop being an observation and start being like the lens that you practice through? Like, you know, it's like I went from doctor to doctor to doctor, and nobody said it to me the way that you said it to me.
SPEAKER_01So I think that we talk about this idea a lot, and you and I have spoken about this when we say like the body keeps the score.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, the body is fascinating. It's absolutely I every day I learn more and more and I see more and more, and I'm humbled. And when I think that the body keeps score, really is what that what it means, is the body's communicating. The body is constantly communicating. And the challenge is that most of us have forgotten to listen. And um I see this so often, especially in inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn's and colitis. There's something with the gut. There's a lot of studies that show that the gut and the brain are very connected. Depression very often is very linked to the stomach. And what we don't release stays inside of us. And so very often a big stressor like grief, loss, trauma will trigger, you know, and and even, you know, if it's not an inflammatory bowel disease, but more of an irritable, like IBS, IBS, yeah. All you know, very astronautic Jewish thing. We're not big, I I, you know, it was a little woo of me, but we're not what we don't, what we don't let out stays in. And I think that um the body keeps score, the body's trying to communicate to us. And so what happens is you went through a grief, you went through a big loss, and your body was feeling that pain, and maybe perhaps like it needed to be expressed or it needed to be processed, and your body didn't know how. And so what happens is that you're in this prolonged sympathetic nervous system state, and that basically affects your, you know, immunity. And so, what Crohn's is it's an autoimmune disease, and the body basically starts to attack itself. And so for you, it ended up in your stomach. Um, and I think that really it's just a message, just your body communicating and saying, Hey, I'm not okay. I need more support, I need more holding, I need you to see me, I need more processing. Um, and I think that really what makes a good diagnostician is just, you know, asking the right questions, but also listening to what the patient might not be saying. So, you know, when someone comes in and all of a sudden they're diagnosed with Crohn's, I would say, okay, well, what's going on in your life at this time? What are you feeling? What are your relationships like? How's your eating? How's your sleeping? Um, you know, what was your childhood like sometimes? A lot of a lot of things behold since childhood, they're coping mechanisms that we developed as kids that are just no longer serving us. And it's basically just our our body's way of telling us that it needs attention. And again, that does not mean that every symptom has a physiological cause. Sometimes sometimes you're just tired. Sometimes fatigue is anemia, exactly. Or sometimes um waking is hormonal, and sometimes joint pain is autoimmune, um, and sometimes anxiety is physiologic, a very fast thyroid. Um, but I believe, and I believe deeply in evidence-based medicine. And one of my first responsibilities as a clinician is making sure that there's nothing physiologic going on. We do all the testing, we do a good, thorough exam, we rule everything else out. But once we're done that, we ask the bigger question like, what else is the body trying to tell us? And um you brought it up, so I'll if it's okay, we'll go there in your case. Yeah, there was there was something that was very glaring to me that wasn't being addressed. And I think that it really started this beautiful journey of you like really getting to meet yourself. And it's been such a privilege and honor to watch it.
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna ask my question and then we'll do this. For specifically for Jews, right? Ashkenazi Jews. Yeah, right. I don't think there's one Ashkenazi Jew that doesn't have a stomach issue. Yeah. Right. It's like, oh, okay, you have IBS, you have Crohn's, you have whatever. It's very popular. And I think that as from people, we have a lot of stress in our lives that's different than people who are not religious and not and not Jewish. Um, just because of the way that our culture is, right? Like we have, we have a lot of children.
SPEAKER_01We have We make a Thanksgiving dinner every Friday.
SPEAKER_02We make a Thanksgiving dinner, right? Um financially it's it's very stressful. There's just there it's just the way that our culture is. And so do you think that there is a link there between the reason why so many Jews develop these? I do, I do.
SPEAKER_01Um I do. And I think especially like there's you know, I remember when I was going into PA school, I didn't go to a Jewish school at all. And every, every so often, like very often, they'd say like this, you know, this is prevalent in Ashkenazic Jews, Ashkenazic Jews, and it was so yes, very like constantly. And in Mimi, I I thought a lot about this, and I've done my own research as well. And I think that like this is definitely a little woo-woo, but it's something that I I do believe that even culturally, we're not um we hold a lot in culturally, especially Ashkenazim. Like, if you look at Spartan, they're definitely more vocal. Um, even the way that they celebrate samhas, they're louder, they're they're less inhibited. Um, we hold a lot in, and it's almost like praised a little bit. Like, and and and there is something about, you know, decorum and you know, not airing everything all the time, but I think there's also something about release even to ourselves, saying our own truth, um, being with what is, you know, being okay with not being okay. Um, and I think that yeah, like very often the body keeps core when we're holding stuff in, the body's communicating. Sometimes things need to be released, they need to go, they need to be expressed. Um, and it's okay to not be okay. Right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think that's a really important point. Like it's okay to not be okay. I actually tell that to my clients all the time, right? Because we just think that we have to have the solution to every problem, right? We're gonna figure it out, we're gonna, you know, we're just gonna do the thing. But sometimes there is no solution to the problem. Sometimes it just is, right?
SPEAKER_01I think very often there is no solution to a problem. Very often, especially like as a parent, that has taught me so much, right? Like I can always fix things as much as I want to. Yeah, I can always fix things for my kids, but I can be with them in the not okay-ness. And I think, you know, we spoke about you spoke about losing your mother. I also experienced like a big loss. I lost my brother a few years ago, and that changed so many things about me and taught me so much about grief and life because in death, like, right, it's not reversible. You have to kind of just, it is.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it is.
SPEAKER_01And even just getting to that point of acknowledging that it is. Yeah. And what do you do when something isn't okay, when it's not okay in the end, when it's not a happy ending? How do you learn to be okay when something's not okay? And I think that that has that realization has not only like brought me into my own humanness, like, right? Like I was the one who was highly successful doing everything, carrying everyone, and inside just feeling so much grief and and not okay. And I it got to a point where I had to learn to be okay with not being okay. And I think that that has only made me a better practitioner because people come in and I can't always fix things. Very often we can we can we can help and it's a process, but just being able to sit with someone in the not-okayness, I think is very often 50% of the healing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, we're so afraid sometimes to be with what is and say what it is. That's the scariest part sometimes. And just having someone next to you, like witnessing the not-okayness and witnessing, like, I know you don't feel okay right now, and everything isn't okay, but we're here together, we're here in this moment. And so often that is is so incredibly healing. I see that time and time again in my practice.
SPEAKER_02I think also because like we are always in this world of like technology, and and we're always just like, we have to be on all the time. So when you when I tell a patient, for example, to sit in their feelings, to sit in the uncomfortableness, they run away. They're like, No, they're like, I would rather like just tell me what to do, right? Yeah. And I'm like, you do nothing. You just you just sit with your feelings. And they're like, do nothing? Like, I have to do something with it. Like, where do I go from there, you know? And I'm sure that when people come to your office, they're like, just just give me, just give me a Xanax, give me, give me something, you know, to numb to numb numb the pain. And I found for myself on my own journey is that, you know, anytime I try to numb things, I try to just mask it. It always just came back in a in another in another way, in another capacity. And sometimes it even came back worse, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So um, you know, going back to my own story of like the Crohn's, it's like I didn't come to see you until like a few years after I was already diagnosed with Crohn's. And you know, it took me a long time to even get that diagnosis. But what I'm trying to say is that I tried to numb it by this medication, that medication. What what ended up happening is I ended up in the hospital every other, every other month, every other thing. And you know, when you ask the deeper questions, that's when the Healing started. It didn't start because I took a different medication. Yeah. Right.
SPEAKER_01It just so And I think I just one caveat I want to say with that is that I do believe in medicine. Very often, I medicine is the biggest gift. And I like to get clients to a place where they're workable. So like I use SSRIs all the time. I use benzodiazepines like Xanax, Clonopin all the time when they're needed. The goal is to get, we we don't want to numb, we want to get to a per up a place where we can actually be workable with the feelings and what is and go a little bit deeper. So I really like to incorporate both, but there is such a place for medicine. But again, I think that we're we're living in a gener a generation of just real constant burnout. We we're not meant to live in this constant, sympathetic fight or flight state. It's literally like driving a car with your gas, with sorry, with your foot on the gas pedal the entire day and then trying to just do everything all the time. There's no time to recover and there's no time to refill the tank. And so what happens is that, you know, we're living in this state of severe burnout. So the thought of like going inside and feeling feelings and being with what is just feels so overwhelming because that would mean we'd have to feel everything, right? So in order to feel like, oh, what's here, um, that means I'd have to feel all the things that I don't want to feel. I still have to function, I still have to take care of my kids, I still have to like that that thought to so many people, it just feels too overwhelming and too scary. And so I like to just do what we say like small, tolerable, gentle steps to kind of getting ourselves back into our body. And it's interesting, I find, especially with women, like hunger is so often the first thing to go. Um, even just not again, not major traumas, like just regular moms who are raising kids and also juggling careers, and they're just they don't even know when they're hungry, they don't even know when they're full. I do a lot of work with like, you know, emotional eating and GLP ones, and I think the most fascinating thing is that people come in and and you know, it starts off as a conversation of I want to lose weight, I'm not happy and my skinny. And you know, 20 minutes later we're talking about like it's never about the food. It's about you know relationship. Yeah, their their marriage, their um their childhood, you know, their a toxic friendship, or just feeling like nothing they do is good enough. And it's really never about the food. Food is such an easy target, it's a place to go to say, like, you know, it's an easy um scapegoat. And, you know, I always say the way we show up with, you know, food and relationships is the way we show up in our lives, and very often we're depriving ourselves, we're holding back. Um most women come in and they're they're not eating all day because they're too busy, or you know, they're just from childhood, they're just trying not to eat and they have totally lost touch with their hunger. And that always makes me sad is hunger is a life force. It really is a life force when a baby's born and knows when it's hungry, it stops when it's full.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01Um, it's not ashamed about being hungry or wanting to be alive. And I think that it just says so much about our generation. Like we're really in survival and we've lost that, you know, ability to like be in our life force. And so that's the first thing I try to work with. Like, let's get into our bodies. Am I hungry? What am I full? We start at the very basics, and what happens is something really beautiful. Women get to meet themselves the first time, like underneath all the food noise and all the obsessive and all the, you know, hating myself, what's really there? And um, I think that's probably the most meaningful part of the work that I get to do, even, you know, even in other things like chronic pain, um, Crohn's, colitis, when we go underneath the symptoms, when we stop focusing on the pain and we focus on like what's deeper, we really I get to see people meet themselves and it's just really the most beautiful thing.
SPEAKER_02Do you get especially, you know, the hot topic these days is GLP1s and Ozempic and peptides and whatever? I don't even know. Like all the all the things, right? Do you get a lot of resistance? Um, you know, I would say especially maybe in our in our community more, the Ozempic culture is really Yeah, it's it's gotten to me like I just see it as like out of hand, right? I mean, women are walking around looking like skeletons. Um, that's just my personal opinion. But regardless of that, like, you know, if they'll come to you and you're asking all these questions, they're like, you know what, forget it. I'm just gonna go to my doctor and he's gonna prescribe it for me, and that's gonna be that. Like, I don't need to, I I don't need to figure it out my um myself. So do you so do you get that a lot, or do you get women that are like, you know, I actually really want to work on myself? Like, which one is this?
SPEAKER_01So I think it's such a qu and by the way, I think about those empacculture all the time. Like I really do. I stay awake at night thinking about this. Um, you know, on one hand, it is scary. We want our our daughters and our girls to see, you know, the bell curve has totally shifted. Oh, yeah. Um, especially, you know, in the five towns. And um I really try to practice with integrity. And there are people that I'll turn away and say, you know, I don't think you're a good candidate. Oh, interesting. What what I do think that nobody really talks about enough. And if you if you haven't lived through it, you can't understand it, is that I see people who really have spent years fighting themselves, fighting their bodies, um, really meaning what?
SPEAKER_02What is it?
SPEAKER_01They're living just in constant body dysmorphia, disordered eating. Um, and I think that it's not even so much the weight loss, it's the shutting off the food noise. What we've learned is that hunger is more in the brain than it is in the stomach, right? There's a hormone called leptin that feeds back from the stomach into the brain that shoots off hunger. And very often, what for some women, especially like the, you know, they're either from childhood or even just to manage stress their daily lives, they're emotionally eating. And so they really are not in touch with their bodies at all. And it's this constant, like, food noise. People will come in and say, I'm thinking about it all the time. I'm thinking about how I don't like how I look, I'm thinking about um when I'm gonna eat next, and they're they're torture, they're not in their lives. And so what we do is when I microdose a small dose of a GLP1 and can kind of turn off that food noise, then the cool work is that they can kind of see what's there. And very often it happens on its own. Very often they'll be like, oh, I learned this about myself, or oh, this was happening in my marriage and I didn't even realize, and now I can get to fix it. And like I think that this part is not spoken about enough. Yes, we need to practice and use GLP ones with integrity, and everyone really has to do it with integrity and you know make their own choices, right? But at the same time, though, for someone who is living in constant, you know, emotional pain from like this food obsession and hating on themselves, it is literally a game changer. What I try to do is really um, I use neurofeedback, and so it's basically neuroplasticity. So, what we're doing is where a woman comes in and she really has no relationship to her body, no relationship to hunger, we basically use the medication to kind of rewire the brain and its association with hunger. So, because we're kind of turning off the food noise a little bit, we have every patient on a specific food plan and a meal plan to make sure they're getting all their nutrients and to make sure that they're eating regularly. And we kind of start from the basics, like a hunger scale, like how hungry are you? And like it's a little bit of work, which is why not everyone wants to come to me. Right. Um, it's not the easy way out. And then they slowly right start to like, oh, I woke up hungry, and then they get scared, and I'm like, no, no, no, that means that you're alive, your metabolism's working, it's a good thing. Yeah. And um slowly but surely they really they actually learn their hunger again and they get back into their bodies, and um, then we slowly titrate them off the medication so that they the brain can actually see, oh, I can do this on my own. And so we're rewiring years of disordered eating and women who literally are like what I what I find so much is we're living in a a generation, like we're almost like not on our own team. Women are fighting themselves. We're pushing ourselves past the point of what is, you know, doable. Um, we're not listening to ourselves, we're not listening to our boundaries, we're not listening to, you know, like even just even with raising kids, like something will not feel right as a parent, but everyone else is doing it, and how many parents are giving in, or um, you know, we live in a culture where like conformity is not really um questioned. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And a lot of things of like should, like we should do this, or we should, you know, and not really like what do we want? Yes. Because it's feels selfish. It feels very selfish to want certain things, right? And desire certain things. Um But what do you say about the fact that like you know, and this is just something that I've heard, people are ashamed to say that they're on a GLP one. Like, what what is that that's going on for people in on an emotional level? Um, you know, because we used to like back in the day, we used to talk about, oh, I'm on Weight Watchers, I'm on this diet, I'm trying this crazy, you know, fat juice, juice cleanse. But when it comes to GLP ones, everyone's like hush hush about it and nobody says.
SPEAKER_01I think it's fascinating and it's actually it makes so much sense. I think that as a society, we we like to do things the hard way. Like, how often do you like hear, like in a, you know, with a group of friends, like, oh, like I worked so hard, I I made this from scratch, or I did and and there is such beauty in that if you can do it in a massive rain. But I think like almost like we believe that like it's shameful to like take help, or it's shameful, like when someone will come in and tell me that and they'll be like, I'm really suffering, I am miserable in my life, like, but I can't do it. I if I feel like ashamed, and I'll be like, well, how else is that showing up in your life? Like, do you not take help, do you not ask for support? And and they start to cry usually and say, Yes. Like that is, I think that it is not anyone who has been on it can tell you, like, if you're doing it right, it's not magic. You still have to do the work and you still have to relearn, like, to be in your body. It's a tool. And I think that what I would like people to know is it's okay in the right setting to accept help and it's okay to accept support. Not everything has to be so hard. I tell my patients, like, life is hard enough. Yeah, like we don't, we don't need to make things harder, and it's okay for things to be a little bit easier. And again, I want to just say a disclaimer like for the right patient, for the right candidate, for the person who fits the bill, yes, there are a lot of people that I turn away who it's not for. Right, right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there I I hear that a lot where people are saying, like, oh, it's the easy way out. It's then, and I could tell you from experience that, you know, all the surgeries that I've had and everything, like, it is never the easy way out. Like, there's always a trade-off for what like you're doing, right? So even with uh GLP1, you know, um people can have the side effects of like nausea, you can you can just like not feel great, you know. Obviously, then you have to tweak it and you have to you have to go back. And it's like there's a there's a job to be done. It's not just like take it and now I lost like 50 pounds tomorrow.
SPEAKER_01If you're doing it right, then yeah, it's work. It's rewiring, it's relearning how to eat, it's learning how to eat. Like I have my patients on three meals a day and two snacks and protein and fat. There's no bad foods, we incorporate everything that's very important to me. Um, a healthy body can digest all foods. And um, yeah, I think but also even even if it is the easy way out, why is there shame to that?
SPEAKER_02Like, why can't we have the help? Like, like I I I don't need to go make like yogurt from scratch, or I don't need to like I'm I'm perfectly I accept the fact that that is not my strong suit and that that's fine. I can go to the I can go to the store and buy it. I don't need to make the sourdough, you know. Like I have my daughter do that for me. So, you know, it's just like there's so much shame around so many things in our lives. And I just think that just like kind of like what you said, like we hold the shame in our in our bodies, and we just kind of need to be like, everyone needs to chill, like everyone needs to stay in their lane and not judge and not put shame and blame and just kind of like let people be.
SPEAKER_01Compassion, I think life is hard enough and life will will kick you in many, many ways. And I think that when there is help and something can be easy, it's okay to receive and accept that. And um, it doesn't mean that you're not building resilience, it doesn't mean that like life will life will do that to you. Nobody gets out exactly. And I think that um when someone's really suffering, I think it's okay to know that like you can receive support, you can receive help, and this is just a tool. And when tools are available, it's important and okay to accept them and receive them.
SPEAKER_02So you said, Adina, that healing isn't about becoming like a different person, right? So a lot of times people think that, you know, they're gonna go on this whole healing journey and they're gonna be, you know, version 2.0 of themselves, which you know, like for me specifically, I think that when I turned 40, um, you know, that was like kind of like the journey that led me on. I started my fitness journey, I started my health journey, and my emotional, my emotional health journey, my mental health journey. Um, and so, but I for me personally, I don't feel like I changed in a way that I was never supposed to be, right? Like I think like this was always the version that I was meant I was meant to be. And so for so for so for a lot of people, they feel like, oh, it's scary to go to go there because then they're gonna be different. They're gonna be judged as like something different. Like, why are you not doing the things that you were doing for 15 years? Like, why are you all of a sudden different? So when you described yourself as like coming home, right? To to who to who you were, what is it, what does it actually mean to you and what does it feel like when somebody gets there?
SPEAKER_01It's such a good question. I think that this is really kind of like my core like value of like why I do what I do and like help like if if I could say anything about what I do, it's that I hope I can help women come back home to themselves or any people. It could be men. Um I think that we like I what I see as a society is that we're like almost waging war against ourselves, like we're just we're pushing ourselves beyond you know what we can physically do and can capably do. Um we stop listening to our bodies and we stop listening to ourselves. And we stopped listening to our emotions, our needs, and uh we've spent years trying to outrun parts of ourselves that we haven't, you know, wanted to face or be with. And I think that coming home and healing, it should be gentle. It should be, you know, it's not always linear, it's a process. But I think that um it's getting to have the safety and compassion and humanness to just uh be with what is, accept the parts of yourself that you may not always like, but maybe serving you in some way. Um and I think that coming home to oneself is really just acceptance, like accepting that I'm doing the best that I can right now with the tools that I have. Um, that I am made up of so many different parts, and each one of them is there to serve me. Yes, there are things that I can do better, and there are things that I want to do better, but in the bet in the wanting to do better, I'm still okay as I am. Um I bring God into this a lot, like the same way that I feel like Hashem loves us and he sees us. Like I try to, you know, give that to my patients, and also my my greatest hope is that patients can see that within themselves. Like home yourself is not a scary place to be. It shouldn't be. And I think that so many people come in and like they're scared, they're scared to feel, they're scared to be. Um, they're feeling all these physical symptoms because their body is scared to feel the emotions of what's underneath. And I think that if we can work to make the body a safe place and we can work to accept the parts of ourselves that we've been trying to outrun, our bodies become safe, we become safe, and then we become, you know, gentle, compassionate to all the people around us, and it's just a beautiful cycle that keeps on giving. Right.
SPEAKER_02When how long does it usually take for people and is it different for everybody like to get to that place? Like for me, it took it took a long time. And I think I went like, you know, up and down, and I'm still on the I'm still on the journey because I think it's a lifelong journey. But when do like at what point do you see with your patients like actual change?
SPEAKER_01I know this is not a popular answer. I don't know if it ever really ends because when you're there's always another deeper layer to uncover, there's always another part of yourself to, you know, better or explore. Um, I think that there's no time frame, everyone's different. Um, and some people have more resistance than others. Yeah. And um, some people also, you know, like it's it's not gonna be as intense or as they don't need to hit a rock bottom, or they don't need to, like, they're coasting and they're fine. They just want to do a little bit better. I think that for everyone it looks different, but I my my core belief is that like that really is kind of why we're here. Like we have an ishama, we have, you know, it's here for a purpose. There's always another layer to uncover. Um there's always different parts of us that, you know, need improving or more compassion or more, you know, space holding. And I I I don't know that it really ever ends. I don't always I think that it can be gentle. I don't think it has to be intense and painful, but I think that like being alive means growing and working and discovering, and it's actually really beautiful. It's a beautiful process. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um so there's two, there's two points of that. So when you're not, if you are a person that like is not looking for that growth or that, you know, kind of just wants to stay in their in their box, yeah. Is that like, are they not living the human like existence? Like they're just no, they very much are.
SPEAKER_01And I it's funny, I some of my close friends are very much like that. Like they're they they're good. Like they they're content they're growing, they're content, and and I love being around them. I love that energy. Like they're they're they but also those people very often have a certain acceptance. Like, I'm good, I accept myself. Really, the pain and the struggle comes from the lack of accepting ourselves, right? Like the fighting ourselves, the lack of compassion for ourselves, the the unacceptance of our humanity. So I think that it doesn't have to be that way for everyone. Some people are content, they're good. Um, they're working on being better mothers, they're working on being better people. Um, and I think that is beautiful. It doesn't have to always look intense and scary. It can be gentle and um contentness, I think, you know, for some people is a goal. For others, you know, it's not.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And I think that you have to be true to yourself. Like, yeah, am I actually content here? Or is it that that's what society is expecting me to be? And that's probably like a whole other conversation. But my other um question that I had for you was that we are in a society where it is we're very results driven, right? Like we, if like I'll never forget, like, because I went to every nutritionist like my entire life, you know, it was always like you get on the scale, and if you lost like 0.5 pounds, it was like, okay, why did you not lose the pounds? Like what happened, like, where is that one pound? Yeah. And even now to this day, I'm like, I need to see that number. Like, I even you know, I was like, I was like, why is that number? I was like, I need to see that specific number. Why? Why do I need that number to make me feel good about myself, you know? So I think that it's such a culture of that that like we are results driven that we just want the results. We don't really care about the other stuff, you know? Just give it to me.
SPEAKER_01I really try to live my life. Um, and I really I try to parent like that, and I also in my practice that intention driven, not results driven. I think the results inevitably come, but the intention is so much more important because we can't always control outcomes. Like I think that results living your life in a results-driven mode is you know, setting yourself up for pain and um disappointment because we really can't control outcomes. We can't, we're powerless in so many ways, right? God runs the world and there's so many things that we can't control. What I can control is my intention. What I can control is um my acceptance of myself. And uh what I can control is just the way that I step into things. I can't necessarily control how other people are gonna act. I can't necessarily control what's gonna happen or what won't happen, but I can control the way that I show up. And I think that that is such a calmer, you know, I I always say like it's it's a nervous system regulated way to live. I do my best and God does the rest. And and I think that, you know, it's funny. I know it's very ironic to say, but even in the office, when people do have weight loss goals, it's not always, you know, if they didn't meet it that week, I'm like, okay, what went on this week? Like we find the wins, we find the way to make it work, we find the way, you know, the weeks.
SPEAKER_02They'll say, yeah, but I want to be that number.
SPEAKER_01No, because I think at the end of the day, self-compassion always wins. Self-compassion always it always comes back to that. When you can have compassion for yourself, the number on the scale matters so much less. It's never about the number on the scale. The number on the scale is just a symptom. It's an external measure of self-worth. But when there's actual real self-worth and real compassion and real self-acceptance, the other things don't hold so much space. They don't take so much value. Do you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So how do you know when you have that? When you have that? Like how did you get to a place of that?
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh. It's something that I'm still working on. It's something that I think I'll always be working on. Um, I am naturally, you know, I I definitely strive a lot for success and external measures, and I'm very driven. And I think that I know that is my constant work of just um self-compassion, humaness. Um, I think that definitely going through grief and loss helped me confront my humanness, like, right? Like there were, it got to a point where, you know, I was successful and I was doing everything, and then this big thing happened in my life, and I couldn't be, I couldn't go back to the old person who was, and I couldn't necessarily function the way, you know, in in intense grief and in intense crisis, I couldn't be the person that I had that I was in the past, and I couldn't like maintain that level of like ambition, success, drive. It wasn't serving me anymore. And so I Had to find a new way. And so what happens when you have to literally discover yourself again? And um I found that once I accepted my humanness, and again, it's always a work in progress and accepting the parts of myself that um I didn't always want to be with and I didn't always want to see. Um, I think that that has expanded me. It's been the biggest gift of my whole life. Um, I feel that my life has changed in the sense that once I accept my own humanness and I have compassion for myself, my relationships changed. I'm able to see the humanness in others, I'm able to s have compassion for other people. When someone sits in my office, um I see them as a whole person. Um and so the results and the outcomes matter so much less. It's the experience, it's the journey, it's the things that you learn about yourself that are so much more valuable.
SPEAKER_02Wow. And with that, Adina, I think that was like extremely powerful. And like I was just like so happy to listen to it and and see it and feel it from feel it from you. Um because like we are all on this journey. Like we're really all on this journey.
SPEAKER_01I say we're all walking each other home. We're really all walking each other home. Like we're really like we're all fellow travelers and we're all side by side together, yeah.
SPEAKER_02But like, and we're not, we're not not on each other's team, right? We are, yeah. But a lot of times we think like, you know, who's gonna judge me, who's gonna look at me, who's gonna, you know, and and just like be kind to each other.
SPEAKER_01And I think even more importantly, you can't expect someone to be on your team if you're not on your own team. And I think that that's really what it comes down to. Like, I I ask people, like, are you on your own team? Because what you're doing is not like you're not on your own team. Like you're you're pushing past all of your like you're doing what you can't do. You're not listening to your hunger, like you're literally fighting your body. Are you on your own team? So, how can anyone else, right? We get into this victim mode, right? Like, I'm like, but are you are you even on your own team? And I think that's like it's a powerful question to ask. Like, am I on my own team?
SPEAKER_02I love that. I never I never thought of it that way.
SPEAKER_01We abandon ourselves a million times a day. We abandon ourselves.
SPEAKER_02It's like it doesn't matter about me, but like, is everyone else good, you know? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I think, and again, and I always say this like the goal is not to be selfish, but when you are constantly giving from an empty cup, it's not real giving. And I think that like the biggest thing we can do for our kids and for each other is like fill me and then use that outflow to like bring light to the world. And I think that it starts with being on your own team. And you know, it's it's the micro abandonments, like saying yes to something that you just can't do. You know, how often do we do that? I do it all the time. And or, you know, um, pushing past just a little bit more, you know, like or it's it's really stepping back and and believing that, again, it's not it's not outcome driven, it's intention-drivered. Who, like at the end of the day, who am I? What am I about? That promotes so much more excellence than perfectionism will ever roll.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. It's so interesting. Just like the last point that I that I was thinking about is that I remember, you know, after I lost the weight, I, you know, went on to the next thing. And I remember coming to your office and I was like, okay, so there's peptides here for my neck. I need to, I need to tighten my neck. And you were like, okay, you're like, your neck looks fine, but what is going on? Like, that's not a that's not a neck issue. That's like an in an in here issue. And that like made me just confront, you know, that we are people that just we we don't really dig into like the real issue, so we'll just go to the next thing, right? So it's like, okay, great, I lost the weight. I've been wanting to lose the weight forever. Great, I lost the weight now, next, and then next, and then next, and then what point does it end? You know, what was it like for you when I said that? Like, I was like, no, but it's it's just my neck. Like I I just want it to be tighter, you know? And you're like, is it really? Like, and what's gonna be after the neck? You know, it's gonna be the next thing and the next thing. And it's so true because I I even see that with my weight, my weight goals is that I had a number in mind. And once I reach that number, I'm like, ten more pounds. I want to be 10 more pounds, and now I'm at that number, 10 more. And like, at what point do we do we stop doing this? Do we stop living this like running and chasing and and you know, wanting all these things?
SPEAKER_01At what point do we say, I am enough?
SPEAKER_02I am enough, right? I should just love me for me because I exist.
SPEAKER_01And that's I say that all the time in the office. Like, you're enough. Like you have to believe you're enough.
SPEAKER_02Right. But you are enough. Right. With that, Adina, I think I would like to end. Is there is there anything that you want to tell people, like from one thing that they can get they can take away from this conversation?
SPEAKER_01So many things, such a good conversation. I think that um I think that I just want to offer a message of hope that I think that so many of us are living on overdrive, um, we're living in burnout, and it it doesn't need to be that way. I think that like with slow, small, intentional, coming inward, um, finding ourselves again so much as possible. And um meeting yourself is really the most beautiful thing you can do in this world, and then using the light that you've discovered in yourself to give to the world is just the ultimate. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02And is there any place that they can find you? Are you on social media?
SPEAKER_01I own yes, I own Blue Glove Concierge B-L-E-U. Um, we're on Instagram, I don't we have a social, I think we're on TikTok. I don't know what we're on, not even sure. Um but yeah, check us out, check us out. And um, we have a website, bluegloveconcierge.com and um telehealth now, right? Yes, we do telehealth, we do IV um trips, we do all kinds of concierge medicine, we do corporate medicine for businesses and home care agencies. Um, we have a full healthcare company.
SPEAKER_03Amazing.
SPEAKER_01Um and yeah, it's just I really am so grateful to the community and I really love what I do, and it's just an absolute privilege. So thank you.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for being here. Really, this was this was incredible.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Thank you so much for joining. Um, if you would like to find me, I am on Instagram at Talk at Talk to Tamara. Um, you can find me on all podcast platforms, and my website is www.tamoragastetner.com. Thank you for being here.