248. Why the Original Health Bite is Ending (and What’s Coming Next)

In this deeply personal episode, Adrienne Youdim courageously shares a vivid dream that opened her heart to a profound truth: sometimes, something inside us must die in order for something new to be born.

She invites us to lean into the uncertain, messy space between who we were and who we are becoming—the place so many of us shy away from by filling the silence with busyness or certainty. Adrienne’s vulnerability encourages us all to trust the power of not knowing and the strength found in embracing transformation.

As Health Bite shifts to a bi-monthly rhythm, Adrienne welcomes us to walk this path together—opening a space of growth, healing, and authentic connection. 

If you’ve ever felt caught in that space between, this episode is a loving reminder that you’re not alone.

How We Can Support Adrienne—and Each Other

Our community’s love and presence are powerful. Here’s how you can become a catalyst for this shared journey of transformation:

1. Share Your Voice with an Honest Review on Apple Podcasts. Your thoughtful reviews help spread Adrienne’s message to those who need it most. Take a moment to leave a genuine review and strengthen our community together. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/health-bite/id1504295718
2. Stay connected by following Health Bite on Spotify. Share your reflections in the comments and join the conversation. Your experiences and insights add richness to our collective growth. Follow and comment on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2jwdHPnWJaoBs2ZJe0nnP6
3. Send #LoveNotes and Reach Out on Instagram. Let Adrienne know you’re walking this path with her by sending a #LoveNote or a direct message on Instagram. Your encouragement fuels her journey and fosters the connection that makes this community thrive. Adrienne’s Instagram handle here: https://www.instagram.com/dradrienneyoudim/

Together, we’re creating a space where vulnerability is met with support, and transformation is celebrated as a courageous act.

Transcript

Hi friends, it's Adrienne Youdim, host, creator, and founder of the Health Bite podcast. And I'm here with a personal note and to share some future directions of Health Bite.

The Wake-Up Call from Social Media

So this morning I found myself on Instagram, as I sometimes do, scrolling a bit before I started my day. And the first post that I saw was about the memoir of Virginia Giuffre. She is a former Epstein sex slave who has published a book following her suicide. It is a heart-wrenching and terrifying tale of trauma.

The next post was by a woman in our community, someone who lost her child way too early to cancer. And then all of a sudden popped up a meme with dancing artists and animals to clanking loud music.

And I just had to pause. It made me think: how often are we just scrolling past major life events, not only in other people's lives, but in our own?

The Health Bite Journey: Five Years of Impact

I started Health Bite in March of 2020, the first month of the COVID lockdown. I had started it to support Delbar. Some of you may remember Delbar - it was a line of nutritional bars that I created from grassroots to help support my patients in their journey of health and weight loss.

After several years of working on Delbar single-handedly - we even got it into a supermarket, a local niche market in Los Angeles - I had to close the brand. It was just too time-consuming, too expensive to handle as a loan operator. But the podcast went on.

Over the last five years, I have published 240 episodes. We've had over 70,000 downloads and the topics have spanned anything from health and wellness, practical health tips to a more spiritual, emotional journey of what our hungers represent. I've talked about mindset, mind-body practices, the plight of high-achieving professionals.

And over this time, I've reached and received beautiful emails from people who have been listening or following along on my newsletter about how this podcast has impacted them. And to be honest, impact is my most valuable currency.

My Most Valuable Currency: Impact Over Income

Over the years, I've done so many things, primarily my medical practice, where I see patients one-on-one, helping them with medical weight loss, nutrition, prevention, health and wellness. And I have to say that in the way that I practice this medicine - I don't take insurance, it's cash pay - and particularly with the explosion of GLP-1 drugs, which I was at the forefront of many years ago, I could have, as one patient told me, taken this cow to the bank.

But in fact, it hasn't been a cash cow. It has been something that has supported my other endeavors: Delbar, Hungry for More (the book), this podcast. And money has never been an important currency.

I have been grateful and fortunate to live in a dual income family where at this stage of our lives, my contribution is not critical. I can't say that was always the case back when we started early on. Some of you who listened to this podcast or who've read the book probably already know that I married my high school sweetheart. We started having children in residency back when we needed loans to pay for childcare. But those days are over.

And I can say that my currency of choice, what I truly am driven by, is not finances, but impact.

Questioning Impact and Effort

And so it led me to believe, or to question, to be curious about: what kind of impact I was really making with all of my efforts, one of them being Health Bite?

Over the last several years our growth has been fairly stagnant. But I am also heartwarmed by the fact that we get weekly downloads on the order of three to five hundred a week. And again, I get loving emails from many of you sharing with me what the podcast has taught you and what it has meant for you.

But in my own personal journey and desire to create maximal impact, I have to pause and ask myself if I am spending my efforts in the way that most values my time, and as well as my potential.

The New Direction: Bi-Monthly Episodes

And so I've decided that going forward, starting November 1st, 2025, we're going to scale back just a little bit. And instead of offering weekly episodes, we will go to bi-monthly. I will still drop a podcast the first and third Monday of every month.

It will continue to be mixed with personal messages and insights, as well as interviews with people who are creating change out there in the world. But most importantly, people who I feel are leaning into their own inner wisdom to teach us something about how we can live aligned to our personal goals and values.

How can we continue to acknowledge our universal hungers? Something that I've spoken about widely on this podcast: the fact that we all have a hunger for something more, hunger for something deeper, an existential hunger that can manifest as a physical hunger, emotional hunger, spiritual hunger, and relational hunger.

And how we can dive in, dig deep, lean into those hungers to identify our unmet needs and to meet those needs so that we can show up fully and live lives that are filled with intention, purpose, and vitality.

The Dream That Changed Everything

And so, interesting side note, which is that I had a curious dream this past weekend.

Now, I'm not a dreamer. There are people out there like my cousin living in Israel who dreams and wakens, writes them down, and finds greater meaning. I, on the other hand, can count on a single hand how many dreams I've had and remembered over the course of a lifetime. Now, I know that we all dream nightly - that's just part of being human. But to remember those dreams is something different.

This weekend, however, was a different experience. My husband was out of town. I was sleeping in bed with my youngest. I was having a fitful night of sleep, really catching only minutes here and minutes there. And then at 4 a.m., awakened to a dream that got me so out of sorts that I was done for the night.

The Fish Dream

So this is what happened. In the dream, a huge group of my friends, my family, had all gone down to Mexico - I think it was Cabo. And we were there to vacation and for a celebration that I cannot recall. The dream went on and on, playing scenes of fun and sport and eating and drinking by the beach.

And at some point, I had caught a fish that I brought home to our apartment. I found my husband by the sink and gave him the fish to help prepare. Not surprising because my husband is an incredible chef and just that week he had prepared a branzino. Unlike my dream, or much like my dream, I had brought home this fish, had asked the guy at the counter not to clean it because he always lops off too much of the meat.

And my husband looked at me stunned with this whole fish, asking if anyone had thought to clean out the belly.

So back to the dream: I give my husband this fish. He cuts open the belly, and all of a sudden, a vapor escapes the belly of the fish. My husband takes in a deep sigh, and then he goes limp in my arms. At that point, just as I saw his face turn ashen and his lips turn blue, I awaken with a fright.

Oh my God, I think to myself, something must be wrong. My husband was in a time zone three hours ahead of me and so I grabbed the phone at 4 a.m. and called him. Yes, everything was okay and he was actually boarding his flight to come back home.

But this dream shook me, and I couldn't find myself back to sleep. And I couldn't find myself to keep from thinking about this dream running in my mind over and over again.

Unpacking the Dream's Meaning

I thought to figure out what this dream actually meant, but I was too afraid, not wanting to hear if, God forbid, this indicated that there was something wrong with someone in my family.

Finally though, after 48 hours of stewing with this dream, I decided to turn to our trusty friend, Chat, and to ask ChatGPT whatever this dream could mean. I pulled up Chat on my phone and I typed the entire dream without any speculation, just stating the facts.

And then within seconds, Chat replied: "That's a very evocative dream, Chat told me. Let's unpack it through a few possible lenses."

The Fish as Symbol

I took a deep breath and scrolled down. Chat told me that dreams about catching fish often represent bringing something hidden from your unconscious into awareness - that catching of insight or wisdom or intuition. And that a fish can symbolize nourishment. I think Chat already knows what my gig is, but also creativity or emotional depth that I've drawn up from within myself.

Chat further told me that by bringing this fish home to be cleaned and prepared, it suggested a readiness on my part to process and integrate this new insight into my daily life. It actually said, perhaps I was ready to, quote, "digest something meaningful that I've discovered or achieved." Again, Chat must be listening to my work.

The Vapor and Transformation

When my husband opened the fish and what I believed was a toxic vapor that escaped from the fish's belly, Chat told me to reframe this vapor as something that could symbolize fear of what happens when some buried emotional truth or unconscious material is released - suggesting that perhaps there's something beneath the surface, something in my life, something in personal growth that feels both necessary to confront but also potentially destabilizing once it's exposed.

The loss of breath or the gasp, she suggested, may point to themes of shock or loss of vitality or fear of something under the surface that may threaten a harmony that is currently in my life.

Fortunately, Chat told me that while this vapor signified in my own mind concern about his health or well-being, that sometimes our dreams can point to a more internal dynamic. And that perhaps this, quote, "death" signified the need for something in my life to die in order for something else to be reborn.

And that I should really lean into these ancient symbols of life, mystery, transformation. Recognize that maybe the opening of the belly, which is the seat of instinct and emotion, could actually mean that it was allowing for something that was not toxic, but rather a vapor that represented spiritual energy or creative potential that could change everything.

Death of the Masculine Archetype

And Chat asked me to integrate this powerful interchange. What Chat also suggested was that perhaps what was being killed or what was on the threshold of death was actually the loss of some part of me. And it speculated, funny enough, that this part of me perhaps was the masculine part, the doctory part, the in-charge part of my archetype. A part of me that I am fully and unapologetically aligned with.

And that perhaps letting go of this masculine energy would allow for something else to come forth - more feminine energy, a part of me that reflected more creative, inspirational and spiritual space.

The Framework: Understanding Our Four Hungers

Now what's funny is that in my work in Resilient Minds - and I'm currently running a group of high professional women through eight weeks of mind-body practices through the program I've created, Resilient Minds - and I talk often about the practices that allow us to still the cognitive part of our brain, that decision-making in control part of our brain, to allow for our inner wisdom to shine through.

Some truth that is deep-seated within us that is wanting to come out so that we can explore greater alignment with our true north, our inner wisdom, our deepest goals and values. And that in order for that to happen, there has to be a level of faith and surrender - words that doctory doctors like me don't often talk about.

The Four Hungers Explained

What's also interesting is that just yesterday, I was speaking to a group. I gave a talk to a group of participants in the Malibu Palisades Chamber of Commerce. And I explored for them my four hungers, my framework for understanding hunger. And I shared with them the four hungers:

Physical hunger - that desire for nourishing food, or the other ways in which we can nourish ourselves, like sleep, like movement. Kind of the physical and concrete ways that we can support our health and well-being.

Emotional hunger - the part of us that yearns or longs for more validation, or comfort, or reassurance that our inner world is valued and seen.

Relational hunger - that part of us that desires attention, connection, affection, and intimacy. The hunger to recognize and to acknowledge the bonds that remind us that we are not alone.

And finally, spiritual hunger - the part of us that yearns for purpose, meaning, and belonging, to a connection to something bigger and larger than ourselves.

And then I added that perhaps this spiritual hunger also pointed to the places in our lives in which we needed to let go, with faith and with surrender.

Living the Message

And so, I feel like there is a message that is trying to make itself known for me personally. And how curious and almost comical it is that I can be teaching these frameworks and talking about them and being fully in the seat of a place where I need to recognize that hunger for myself.

And so I'm going to honor that place and recognize that perhaps it's time to take a back seat to my doctory doctor self, the cognitive frontal lobe part of me that seeks to control, be in charge, be an expert.

Don't worry if you're a patient - I'm not planning on leaving my medical practice. But I am planning to contemplate potential pivots in my life. And so that first pivot right now means that I need to create a little bit more time and space for these ideas to evolve and for me to explore. And again, in order to do that, I need to scale back on some of my activities.

The first scale back will be for me to shift into a less frequent cadence with the podcast. And as I said, beginning November 1st, I will be dropping into two times a month as opposed to weekly episodes.

How You Can Help

What I ask of you is to help me. If this podcast has been a value to you and has created impact, which again is my number one currency, show me that impact.

Go on to Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and write us a review. Tell us what you love about the podcast.

You can also send me a personal message. So many of you have done that through the years. I've received hundreds of DMs through social media and emails through my website, thanking me for the impact that I've created. I absolutely love that.

But as you know, in order to grow anything, we need to be public facing. I have never monetized this podcast and I don't intend to, but I do need to create impact. And the only way in doing that is to grow the show. And one way we can grow the show is by getting heartfelt testimonials in the form of reviews. This allows us to be seen and heard more widely and more broadly.

Gratitude and Moving Forward

And so with that ask, and with immense gratitude for sticking it out this long and listening to this convoluted episode, I give you my thanks for five years of your attention and your ear, and for something that I hope will grow and evolve in a different way and format. However that format will be, is yet to be seen.

I'm wishing you all a heartfelt, joyful week filled with love, intention, clarity, and vitality.

And I'll see you again on the next episode of Health Bite, November 1st.