There are many different ways to go about healing. What I am going to share in this blog post is some guidance that you can apply to your situation, but please know that you don’t have to follow this exactly. I think it’s always important to listen to your intuition and what your body is telling you it needs. I often see that many women are disconnected from their bodies and can’t tap into this right away. That may not be the case for you, so make sure you don’t quiet your inner voice just because I’m saying this is a good way to go about healing. Always listen! The more we listen, the stronger she gets and the more we suppress that inner voice, the harder it is to hear her. Most of the women I work with have been suppressing that inner voice for so long that it can take time to hear her again, but she is there. No matter where you fall on that spectrum, I hope this information is helpful. Let’s get into it!

Identifying Your Main Concerns

One of the most important steps on your healing journey is to identify what exactly it is that you want to work on. We can have many aspects of our health that we eventually want to work on, but what is it that you’d like to see changes in over the next 6 months? When we try to work on too many things at once it can become frustrating and confusing. For example, I often work with women that want to work on fertility and trying to conceive (TTC), but they also have gut issues and want to lose weight. We can absolutely work on all three of those eventually, but as far as what would make more sense physiologically, working on gut health first, then weight/body composition, then fertility would be the most realistic. There are many supplements for gut protocols that you would want to avoid when TTC, so doing stool testing would be frustrating. Putting yourself in a calorie deficit to support weight loss is a stressor and typically not a great idea when working on healing the gut. Picking a realistic order of main concerns will help keep you focused and happy while healing.

Establishing Your Nutrition & Metabolic Baseline

Once you know what you want to focus on, now it’s time to establish your nutrition and metabolic baseline. This will help you meet yourself where you are, rather than trying to skip to what is the most optimal when it comes to food or comparing things like your basal body temperature to optimal ranges.

Step 1: Food & Mood Journal

Tracking your food for 3-4 days can give you a lot of information. I like to have clients also pay attention to their mood before they eat, after the meal, and reflect on digestion (any bloating, gas, bowel movements, etc.). You can complete this tracking however you want. Pen and paper without tracking calories or macros is totally fine. If you want to use a food tracking app, I really like Cronometer. The goal is to get a handle on the following:

• Are you eating enough? I have a post on this here. You do typically have to track your food using an app so you can understand how many calories you are taking in, but if that is stressful for you, you can just do a written food journal and follow the rest of the steps.
• How often are you eating? Meal frequency will depend on the person, but one thing I look out for with clients is if they are spreading their food out or if they are eating most of their food around one time of day. Why does this matter? It can impact digestion, blood sugar balance, and stress hormones. The most frequent pattern I see is eating the majority of their food at the end of the day. This can make it hard to break it all down since digestion slows at night time and lead to less optimal sleep. Making sure you are having breakfast, lunch, and dinner and not cramming it all in at once is a great way to reduce stress on your body.
• What is your relationship with food like? Do you enjoy the food you’re eating or does choosing what to eat stress you out? I personally think enjoyment around our meals is so important and not talked about enough. When we enjoy what we are eating and aren’t stressed every time we eat a meal, this supports so many aspects of our health. So often I see women stressed out, worrying they are not eating the right thing or aren’t sure how many protein, fat, and carbs to have, etc. If you haven’t looked at your relationship with food and find that food brings you stress, I would work on that first. You could be eating the most optimal meals but if you’re stressed about food and not enjoying it, that won’t support your health.
• What’s your appetite like? Are you hungry when you wake up and throughout the day? Many women are taught that hunger is bad, but it’s actually important marker for our metabolism and hormones. If we are never hungry, it’s often a sign that our body is stressed and stress hormones are suppressing our appetite. Overtime, this will cause our metabolism to slow down, which then impacts all the systems in our body. A slower metabolism means our brain gets the message that we have less energy available, which means everything slows down: digestion, detoxification, hormone production, etc. This then leads to symptoms and hormonal chaos. We want to have a healthy appetite and wake up hungry. Concerns can come up when you are hungry soon after a meal, but this is often remedied with changes in the size or composition (how many protein, fats, and carbs/fiber) are in the meal.

Many times people come to us saying they don’t have any concerns around their nutrition and they are doing all of the things, but then we do some food and mood tracking and find easy things to experiment with that actually make a big difference.

Step 2: Basal Body Temperature

Our basal body temperature or BBT is a priceless measurement for our health. This is our temperature first thing in the morning before we get out of bed and starting moving and eating. Because it’s done this way, outside factors like food, movement, etc. do not impact the measurement. This temperature gives us insight into our metabolism for that day and if you’re tracking overtime, you can see improvements in the long run as well. I like to use it both ways.

Day To Day Information From BBT

You first want to start by taking your BBT for at least a week to gather your baseline. If you happen to ovulate the week you start taking it, you will likely see it increase and then stay higher. Pay attention to where you are in your cycle when you start taking your BBT (more on that in step 3). Once you establish your average BBT for a week, you now know what your norm is. From there, if you wake up and your BBT is below your norm, that’s a sign your body might be a little stressed. This is where some simple investigating comes in handy. Your temperature can go down if you didn’t eat enough, exercised too intensely or your body needs more time to recover from that exercise, got less sleep or lower quality sleep, or experienced some mental/emotional/physical stressors. Having your temperature go down isn’t a bad thing. It’s important to understand that our bodies are constantly compensating and responding to stress. It just lets you know that you may need to take it easy that day. For example, if you started a new exercise routine and your temperature goes down the next couple of days, you may want to incorporate more rest days (at least to start). Then you can test it out again and see how your body responds.

Long Term Information From BBT

When you monitor your BBT daily or almost daily for months, you can see how your metabolism is improving overtime. If you start out with a baseline of 96.0F and then after 6 months notice that your BBT has been closer to 96.8F, that is a huge win! Your metabolism is clearly improving. While optimal BBT is around 97.8F, the increase still needs to be celebrated and letting you know that something you’re doing is working.

Learn more about optimal BBT levels in my free Healthy Period Starter Guide. Just remember, if your levels are not optimal, you want to focus on small improvements toward optimal rather than negating any improvement at all, just because your levels are not in the optimal range.

Step 3: Cycle Tracking

I love functional lab testing because of all the data you get, and I look at cycle tracking the same way. Tracking your cycle gives you SO much information about your health and hormones. It is a great way to know if you need to make changes or if what you are doing nutrition/lifestyle-wise is working. Here are some helpful aspects of your cycle to track:

Cycle Length

This is the number of days between day 1 of your current period and day one of your next period. A normal cycle length is between 24-35 days. It’s important to find YOUR normal.

Period Length

The number of days of bleeding is your period length. If it is longer than seven days this typically means that you did not ovulate and is considered abnormal. Less than 3 days likely means low estrogen.

Heaviness of period

This is the amount of blood lost during your period. You can measure this in tampons or if you use a menstrual cup use ml. Your average menstrual cup is 30ml. 80ml of blood or 16 fully soaked tampons is considered a heavy period.

Pain

There are a few different types of pain during your period. This is important to track because it indicates inflammation in the body. Note any pelvic pain, cramping, tender breasts, migraines, headaches, low back pain etc. Some pain is considered normal, but debilitating pain is NOT normal.

PMS Symptoms

PMS symptoms are a great way to evaluate your stress and hormone balance because these symptoms are your body’s way of communicating with you that there are imbalances. Make note of symptoms such as excessive cravings, irritability, headaches/migraines, acne, etc.

Learn more about tracking your cycle and the different phases of your cycle in my free Healthy Period Starter Guide.

Step 4: Reflecting On Digestion

Paying attention to your digestion is another priceless marker of health. One of the first things I want to know from a new client in regards to digestion is how often they are having bowel movements (BMs). We eliminate toxins, estrogen, and excess minerals/metals in our stool, so not eliminating at least once a day is a big red flag. This is often a sign that digestion needs support.

Then it’s helpful to understand how to classify your BMs. Typically you want to fall between a 3 and 4 on the Bristol Stool Chart most of the time. If you are a 1 or 2 this can indicate constipation. If you are a 5, 6, or 7 this typically symbolizes loose stool or diarrhea.

​Paying attention to whether or not your stool floats is helpful for identifying if there are any issues digesting fats along with the color. Having a high stool frequency more than 4 times a day is another thing to look out for. Ideally, we are having 1-3 BMs (depending on the person), that do not float, are brown, and easy to pass.

The other aspects of digestion include bloating, gas, and any reflux symptoms (burning, coughing, indigestion, nausea). These would be important symptoms to make note of and monitor for changes/improvements. I often have clients that say they have no digestive symptoms or concerns around gut health, then when we really get into the details of their digestion, we see little things pop up that can warrant further investigation or give insight into other concerns like period pain, hormone imbalances, thyroid health, etc.

Incorporating Lifestyle Foundations

The last area you want to assess are what I call lifestyle foundations: sleep, stress, movement, and light exposure.

Sleep

Most people need 7-8 hours of sleep a night. This will change depending on the season of life you are in, but looking at how much sleep you’re currently getting and whether or not you wake feeling rested or have a hard time getting going in the morning is helpful to understand. The times you are sleeping is also helpful. 7 hours of sleep between the hours of 10-5 is going to be much more restorative than 7 hours of sleep from midnight to 7am for most people. Think about if there’s anything you’d like to improve with your sleep and one small change you could make to get there. For example, if someone is not waking up hungry and has many signs of hormone imbalance and a slow metabolism and they are sleeping from midnight to 7am, I would consider having them try going to bed at 11 or 11:30pm to slowly get closer to a 10pm bedtime.

Stress

Looking at your mental, emotional, and physical stressors is helpful for understanding what kind of load is on your body at this time. This can help you better understand things like a low BBT, poor digestion, hormone concerns, etc. Sometimes we are so used to being in a state or stress we don’t even realize we are stressed. Even if you can’t necessarily get rid of these stressors, it’s helpful to recognize that they could be impacting your health and to have grace for yourself.

Movement

Looking at whether or not you are getting movement in throughout the day is another big one. I find people that are more active tend to have better posture and less physical stress on the body. We aren’t meant to be in the same position all day long. When it comes to exercise, figuring out the best exercise for your body is helpful. I love strength training because of all of the hormonal and physical benefits. How often you do it and how intensely really depends on the person. When it comes to exercise, I like for people to feel better after their session than they did going in. That’s a sign it wasn’t too stressful on your body. You can also pay attention to your BBT and appetite as well.

Light Exposure

Are you getting outside? I think spending more time outside (even if the weather isn’t great) is one of the best things we can do for our nervous systems and overall health. Getting light in your eyes first thing in the morning and spending even 30 minutes outside a day can make a difference in your circadian rhythm, which impacts our digestion, hormones, gut microbiome, detoxification, sleep and so much more. Are you inside all day? If so, what’s one way you could spend more time outside and get some fresh air? I personally always go for a walk in the morning (with my baby and dogs) and eat one meal outside (typically lunch). I also found this to be much easier clean up with a baby, which is always a win. Those two things each day guarantee I get at least an hour outside even if I spend the rest of the day working. We often go for a walk after I shut down work for the day and spend time playing in the backyard. Some days are crazy and this can’t always happen, but making an effort means we have more time outside most days.

I want to stress that it’s not about being perfect in all these areas. That is not realistic for most people. It’s more about assessing where you are now, what could be impacting your main health concerns, and what small changes you can make from there. I find most people do better in the long run when they make changes slowly, which often comes as a relief. Trying to do too many things at once often increases our stress and doesn’t support our health in the long run.

If you want to learn more about our healing framework that we incorporate into our 1:1 coaching check out this podcast episode! If you want to read part 2 on this topic, you can find it here.

reminder: i’m currently taking on 1:1 clients. if you’d like to explore what it would be like to work together and if we are a good fit, fill out this form to get more details!