Join Patreon to listen to our bonus episode on leptin and PCOS here.
What if everything you’ve been told about PCOS is too simplistic to actually help you heal?
In this episode, I sit down with Ava Nouri, a registered dietitian on my nutrition team who works closely with women navigating PCOS. Her own health journey through fatigue, brain fog, blood sugar issues, and hormone imbalances led her to integrative and functional nutrition, where she now supports clients with the same challenges she faced.
We get into the real spectrum of PCOS, why the conventional boxes don’t fit, and the deeper metabolic and gut factors that drive symptoms. The second half of the conversation unpacks the pro-metabolic movement, what works, what backfires, and why so many women feel stuck trying to make it fit. It’s a raw and nuanced look at one of the most common questions women in my community ask.
You’ll Learn:
Timestamps:
[00:00] Introduction
[06:22] Defining PCOS and why the conventional view misses the mark
[13:24] Insulin resistance as the core driver of PCOS symptoms
[16:23] The role of gut health and microbiome imbalances in driving PCOS symptoms
[23:25] How mineral depletion and excess iron fuel inflammation and worsen PCOS symptoms
[39:33] The pro metabolic approach as a nourishing alternative to restriction and fear of food
[42:49] Reframing the pro metabolic approach for PCOS
[58:09] Finding balance with pro metabolic nutrition by avoiding extremes and trusting your body’s feedback
Resources Mentioned:
Period Repair Manual by Lara Briden | Book
Heal Your Metabolism by Kate Deering | Book
Articles and Writings by Ray Peat | Website
The Feminine Periodical Newsletter | Website
Master your minerals. Harmonize your hormones. Start your mineral journey here.
You can work with Ava one on one here.
Find more from Amanda:
Hormone Healing RD | Instagram
Hormone Healing RD | Website
Hormone Healing RD | Facebook
Hormone Healing RD | YouTube
Hormone Healing RD | TikTok
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Hormone Healing RD podcast, where you’ll get clear, practical guidance for your healing journey. I’m Amanda Montalvo, women’s health, dietician, and mineral experts. After helping thousands of women in navigating my own healing, I know how overwhelming the wellness world can be. This show cuts through the noise with simple research backed insights on hormones, minerals, and what your body truly needs to heal.
In this episode, I’m actually co-hosting it with one of my dieticians that works on my nutrition team, Ava. She’s amazing, and she works with a ton of PCOS clients, so she was the perfect person for me to do this episode with. There’s two main areas we hone in on. One is just all the different areas that we focus on for women with PCOS when we work with them.
It’s, there’s such a spectrum to it. I think we try to fit women with PCOS into these little boxes, but it’s so much more nuanced than that. So we dive into all those areas. And then the last half of the podcast is focusing on pro metabolic and. [00:01:00] We have so much praise for pro metabolic and the movement in general, but then we go into a little bit more nuance with.
Just like the issues we’ve seen with clients, especially clients that have PCOS that are trying to implement pro involved principles and why it’s not working for them. They just come very frustrated. So we get into all the nuance there, which I’m hoping will be really helpful. ’cause this is probably one of the top things that I get asked about now between my core students, women in my community, in this community and in my Instagram community.
So it’s a question I’m like, there’s so much more nuance than I can get into with like a quick response, which is why we made this episode. And don’t worry, I have Amaya with me from this intro because she was not having it and I had to. Finish the bonus episode and grab her, but she’s not, she’s not with me the whole episode.
But hopefully you enjoy seeing her here. Uh, now that she’s happy. But that’s the episode. I hope you enjoy it in my conversation with Ava. Oh, thank you so much for being here. Ava. I am very excited to [00:02:00] cover this topic today. Something we’ve been talking about for like a few months now. I feel like we’ve been going back and forth sending voice messages as we do, just to have this as a resource for the community, of course, our podcast community, and then also for our one-on-one clients.
’cause we’re really gonna be getting into a theme we just see over and over with PCOS. So that’s gonna be very fun. Before we dig into that, ’cause you’re new to the podcast, although you’ve been on my. One-on-one team for almost two years now, which is crazy. Can you tell everyone a little bit about yourself?
What brought you to wanting to focus on women’s health? Yeah. I feel like my own, and first of all, thank you for having me on the show. I’m very excited to be here. I feel like most of us practitioners have our own healing journey that led us to this work and really lights that fire under us to do what we do for other women.
But my journey is, no, it’s, it’s, it’s not really unique. I felt like I was doing all the right things when it came to my health. I was eating whole foods, working [00:03:00] out every day, going to doctors, got into health and wellness at such a young age. But like many people, I still didn’t feel well. And so. When I was in the depth of my own journey, dealing with lingering symptoms, blood sugar imbalances, which we’ll talk a lot about today, I am sure.
Fatigue, brain fog, you know, parasites, hormone issues, gut issues. And I kept getting told that everything looked normal. And, you know, I had my, my PCP told me it was just due to stress so many of my issues. And it wasn’t until I found a functional approach and really started digging into this side of health that I found the answers that I was looking for.
And this is, you know, during my entire journey of being in this space too, which I know is very common with functional practitioners, it’s like we’re learning the things that are supposed to help us feel good and we’re doing all the quote unquote right things, but it’s still not moving the needle. So.
That is how I found my way into the world of integrative and [00:04:00] functional nutrition. And you know, I, I did the whole thing where I had studied nutrition undergrad, went to grad school, you know, got my RD license, got all my hours, but it wasn’t until I got additional training and functional and integrative nutrition that everything kind of clicked.
And that’s the approach that makes me so passionate to get up and do what I do and heal or help other women heal. And so I really realized that like healing is not just about chasing symptoms, which, you know, that’s a big thing. I we’re also, I’m sure gonna talk about today or fixing isolated parts of the body.
It’s kind of like taking that well-rounded approach and understanding how everything connects. And that is what. I am just so grateful I get to teach about and help women do. And so grateful that I get to be on your amazing team to help our client population do that. Yeah. We have the best team and I’m like, I know it’s my team, but like we just have really good practitioners.
You [00:05:00] guys are all so smart and, and I feel like everyone’s just so nice and normal, which I love. You know, sometimes you work with a practitioner and sometimes it’s like, you’re like, they’re so intelligent, but it’s like something is missing. Like, there’s like a, like a missing piece of like, it’s not gelling with like making it practical and bringing it to life and like, how am I actually gonna apply this information?
Like how do you make it real for a person? And I feel like that’s what you guys are all really good at and I’m, I’m very lucky to have all of you on my team. You’re definitely, you and Erin are. Up there with being with me for the longest, and it’s, it’s just been so fun. And this is a topic, like I know we’ve, we have a lot of women that we work with, with PCOS and it’s, it’s not always the main concern.
Like I. I would say a lot of the times it’s kind of like I have this diagnosis and then I have this slew of symptoms as well. And some of them fall under that umbrella and like some of them don’t, but it’s a huge population that we work with. It’s, it’s one of my favorites to work with, [00:06:00] especially for minerals specifically, because I see the biggest changes probably the quickest with this population of like women really like struggling with longer cycles and things like that, insulin resistance.
And then once they dig into like the mineral piece, it’s like everything clicks and they can see changes fast. So I’m always like, yes, this is very fun population to work with. And I’m curious, I think maybe we just start with like defining what PCOS is and then we’ll get into kind of how we define it with our clients and talk about the spectrum and the root causes.
So do you want to go through. What defines PCOS? How can a woman know if she in fact, does have PCOS? Yeah, so if you know you’re listening and you don’t even know what PCOS stands for, which is totally normal, it’s a polycystic ovarian syndrome and it’s a hormone. I mean, I think in the conventional world, people think of it as an a hormonal issue, but with our approach, we really view this as a metabolic disorder, [00:07:00] not, it’s not just about, you know, your ovaries and having cysts on your ovaries, and you don’t actually even have to have cysts on your ovaries to be diagnosed with PCOS in terms of, you know, how, you know, you have PCOS, you know, there’s the Rotterdam criteria, which you have to have two out of these three criteria to be diagnosed in, you know, the conventional world.
But we have a lot of women, I will say, who. They’ve never actually been diagnosed. They just kind of suspect they have PCOS and it doesn’t really change the way that I treat them or you know, the way that I would approach their case. So that’s also something to know, is that you don’t have to have the diagnosis for this information to be applicable to you or helpful for you.
So one of the criteria is having delayed ovulation or you know, anovulatory cycles or this would also be known as the symptom of having irregular longer menstrual cycles. So typically they want to see less than 10 cycles a year, or cycles that are [00:08:00] 35 or more days. Again, I feel like sometimes this one is, I don’t know, I’ve had a few clients I can think of who have like 35 day cycles and they are ovulating and they’re having consistent 35 day cycles.
I wouldn’t necessarily use that as something to. Tell me that they have PCOS, but again, there’s, there’s nuance with everything, and that’s just one of the criteria. The other one is high androgens. And this is one that I, I think a lot of people will use when they aren’t diagnosed to kind of, you know, if they come to us and they’re like, I think I have PCOS, you know, I have the MI have a lot of hair loss, you know, like on my, the hair on my head.
So tism is when you have hair growing, where as a woman you don’t necessarily want it to be growing. So upper lip hair, chin hair, nipple hair, hair on your belly, places like that. And then a lot of hair loss, you know, on your head. Acne is another sign of high androgens. And we’re talking, you know, testosterone, [00:09:00] DHEA.
Di Hydro, DHT di Hydrotestosterone, or even just the symptoms of that. You don’t necessarily have to get the blood work to know that you have high androgens. It could just be some of those symptoms. Again, nuance there though too. ’cause I’ve had clients who have a lot of, you know, they just, like, I, I’ll give myself as an example, I’m from Iran, I’m Persian and I just naturally have a lot of body hair, but I ne I wouldn’t necessarily use that.
If I didn’t have any other symptoms of PCOS, I wouldn’t necessarily call that tism. I would just say that’s just my genetics. And I know I’ve had that question too of like, I have a lot of hair, but like I feel like everything else is normal. I’m like, that’s just probably, you know your body. It’s okay. You don’t necessarily have high androgens if you have a lot of body hair.
And then cysts on your ovaries is one of the criteria. So that’s where you would get an ultrasound and your doctor would be able to tell you if you have those. You can’t necessarily tell without that, but those are the three. You need two out of the [00:10:00] three to be diagnosed. And again, a lot of women that we work with.
They don’t necessarily have the diagnosis, but we would still address these root causes that we’re gonna be talking about today with them. Yeah. And it’s, and that could be something too, where if you’re like, I wanna talk with my doctor about this, it’s Rotterdam criteria, that’s what you would wanna be asking ’em about.
’cause I’ve had so many clients where, because they don’t have cysts on their ovaries, the doctor’s like, no, you don’t have PCOS. But they fit at least two, sometimes three outta the three of the criteria. And it’s like, oh. And again, we don’t, is the diagnosis gonna change anything? Maybe not. But I just think it’s helpful to be conscious of, because what we’re gonna go through now is what, what we, how we, we view PCOS and our clients is how it’s more of a spectrum because there’s different possible root causes and.
Like, I think of like Laura Bryden, you know, like the kind of old school women, which is like, is it old school? What is it [00:11:00] like eight years ago or something? Her period. Repair manual. And uh, that’s like the main one I think of. And there’s a couple books on PCOS that I’ve read where it puts them into like four, like three or four categories where it’s like insulin resistance basically goes through your root cause, where it’s like insulin resistance can be one root cause and like that’s why, that’s what’s driving all of your PCOS symptoms or lean PCOS they call it, with like stress hormones being the main cause and then inflammatory.
PCOS, which is just like inflammation, which I’m kind of like, none of those happen separately. You know? They don’t happen separately. So the way that we view it is that PCOS is really a spectrum and most of our, I’ve never had a client that only had one of those factors ever, ever, because when it comes to women with PCS, there are certain things that are typically more common that you’ll see, like inflammation, for example.[00:12:00]
A ton of women with PCS have this like chronic low grade inflammation and it’s a combination of things. It’s not, it’s usually some IT insulin resistance could be a little bit, could be a lot. It’s also can go back to their gut microbiome because typically women, PCOS, they’re much more likely to have.
More not so great bacteria and low beneficial strains of bacteria, which can cause some inflammation and imbalances in the gut and immune system. And then stress hormones. Typically women with PCOS have higher stress hormone levels, but again, like is that because they have more blood sugar imbalances and have inflammation in the gut?
So it’s kind of, it’s just like you wanna. Keep in mind that it’s, it’s never just one thing. And I think that really throws a lot of women off that are like trying to do research, understand what their root cause is. I’m like, you’re gonna drive yourself crazy trying to put yourself in a category. It’s so much deeper than that.
And then even from there, there’s underlying root causes of each one. So I think it could [00:13:00] be helpful to get into that now. Absolutely. And I, with any condition or any client we see, I know everyone’s so excited to like learn their root causes, but there’s never just one with anyone. There’s never one root cause of one thing.
It’s nothing exists in a vacuum. So I’m happy you said that. So in terms of the areas of concern, we kind of discussed that it’s a metabolic disorder. And so the first thing I think of is, of course, and we talked, talked about this insulin resistance. That is one of the most, you know, it’s the biggest, one of the biggest features of PCOS and.
I think that everyone I’ve worked with with PCOS has some level of insulin resistance. I don’t know if you would agree with that, Amanda. I do. Even like my clients that are leaner or even underweight that have PCOS, I still think they have insulin resistance. Yeah, absolutely. And basically what that means, and I, I think you have a whole separate episode on blood sugar on the podcast.
So if people wanna learn more about that, they should definitely listen to just get more of the basics down. [00:14:00] But insulin resistance is basically when our body’s cells don’t respond properly to insulin. And so that essentially will force your pancreas to need to pump more insulin out to get that signal to the cell, that there’s glucose that we need to bring down in the blood after you eat.
And so that insulin is gonna stimulate cells in the ovary to produce more androgens. And that’s why when we talked about these different root causes kind of affecting one another, high insulin is gonna affect our hormones and vice versa. But. High insulin will also reduce certain hormones like sex hormone binding globulin, and that’s going to increase free testosterone.
So again, why we get some of those high androgens when there’s insulin resistance. But aside from the hormonal aspect of things, insulin resistance is an inflammatory condition or phenomenon that’s happening in the body. And so that’s gonna be contributing to that low grade inflammation that you were talking about earlier as well.
And so blood sugar and being [00:15:00] really mindful of blood sugar balance and leptin regulation is gonna be so important for kind of addressing that insulin resistance. And I know we’re gonna talk about minerals too, which are so important for insulin resistance and a big kind of area that just doesn’t get looked at a ton.
Um, even with, you know, our clients who have come to us working with other functional practitioners in the past, that’s something that often hasn’t been explored deeply and makes a huge difference with our clients. I feel like. So that insulin resistance can lead to some of those hormonal imbalances. It can lead to, or contribute to some of those other factors that affect, uh, PCOS, like an ovulation, um, like acne.
’cause again, that inflammation might show up in the skin, like TM ’cause of the hormonal effects and irregular cycles too. So, kind of like we were talking about, these are all symptoms. And even though all these different aspects are, they’re normally seen as causes, but the bigger question is why, like, what, [00:16:00] what’s happening upstream of these different imbalances of the insulin, resistance of the inflammation to cause these, uh, symptoms and the syndrome in the first place.
And that’s really what we do with our PCOS clients. But did you wanna add anything to that on the insulin resistance piece? No, I feel like that covers it. And then, and even just. That, like these are all layered together. Right. And I also think the gut does not get any airtime when it comes to PCOS. I’m like, I mean.
It’s always, I wanna do a hormone test, which I understand, like I 100% understand why women are like, I wanna test my hormones and I wanna under, like they want to look at hemoglobin A1C, which we do like to see, to see. That’s gonna give us an idea of like, is there a significant amount of insulin resistance present right now?
And then we’re always like, okay, but if we look at your sex hormones, it’s not gonna tell us why. It’s just gonna show us probably that your androgens are high. You could have high or low estrogen. We see [00:17:00] both. And that progesterone’s probably really low, right? And we could probably predict these. So the reason that we don’t jump to hormone testing with any of our clients, but especially the PCOS population, is because we could probably guess what’s currently happening and it doesn’t tell us the why.
And so what we like to do is to look at minerals and the gut microbiome, which are two huge key factors that are gonna affect all the different areas, the metabolic issues. Um, insulin resistance and insulin is just, it’s minerals and it’s also your gut microbiome. And with women with PCOS dysbiosis, just having imbalance in good and bad bacteria, incredibly common.
Not making enough digestive juices, like not really like lower stomach acid production, lower digestive enzyme production. Also very common. I also had so many clients with PCOS have their gallbladder removed. I’m sure you have too. Or just gallbladder issues, some sort of, you know, [00:18:00] inflammation there for sure.
Or like history of gallbladder attacks, constipation, which is a huge sign of gallbladder issues, things like that. Like they’re just not making up digestive juices. You don’t break down your food well. And then that leads to a host of issues in the gut, especially over time. And then you can have not enough of certain beneficial bacterias like akkermansia.
That is one that’s typically low. Yeah. And women with PCS, and this is, it’s like in, it’s important for your gut barrier. It’s important for reducing inflammation in the gut. It helps improve insulin sensitivity. It also supports healthy weight and good metabolism. It’s incredibly, it’s essential and it’s one of those things that we often see as either very low or not even detectable on a stool test when we’re working with clients that have PCUS and other things as well.
Of course. Um, but it’s like, it’s, it’s like we know it, you read the research, you see women, PCOS typically have all these things going on, but when you see it over and [00:19:00] over and over on lab tests, it’s like, okay, this is like. Actually concern. And typically, you know, they don’t having low beneficials, they’re also not gonna be making enough short chain fatty acids, which is huge for reducing inflammation and having a good environment in the gut.
And then we often see lots of overgrowth, which can lead to things like sibo, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, and then histamine issues, which I mean, I know so many people have histamine issues now post COVID. It’s just been such a problem and it’s really like exacerbated a lot of things people kind of already had going on in the past.
And then all of these things mixed together, like I just think of progesterone, like so many of our clients, PCS, like they just have this huge imbalance in estrogen, progesterone. There’s almost always a thyroid component, which we’re also gonna talk about. And they’re like, how can I improve this? Right?
Like, how do I, I’m like, if you have inflammation in your gut, you’re gonna be using the progesterone that you are making when you do ovulate. Or maybe they’re ovulating regularly, but it’s not like a [00:20:00] strong ovulation. You’re gonna be using all of that for your gut. Because your body’s gonna prioritize the area of inflammation over things like minimizing other symptoms that you might have and feeling good in your mood and feeling balanced and like a good stress response and all those things.
So the gut microbiome is definitely a huge piece of the puzzle. Like, we’ll talk about minerals. I think those are foundational, but I do think that it’s like insulin resistance is like the, it gets all the attention and like the gut just gets nothing. Absolutely. And it affects insulin sensitivity too, like you talked about, low short chain fatty acids.
When you have low beneficial bacteria, which is something I see time and time again on the, you know, stool tests of my clients with PCOS, you’re not gonna be producing enough short chain fatty acids like butyrate, and that’s going to impair your insulin sensitivity too, which essentially means how sensitive your cells are to insulin.
You’re gonna need more insulin to get that signal to knock on the door of the cell and actually be able to [00:21:00] regulate your blood glucose levels. So I think it’s a really big missing piece. And when there’s inflammation in the gut, you know, that’s gonna impact other systems in the body too. I also often will see, speaking of the gut microbiome, elevated levels of beta glucuronidase in my PCOS clients as well.
And you mentioned the thyroid piece and you know, the gallbladder aspect of things too. So constipation, poor bile flow is what I think of and that’s gonna impact how we recirculate or. Yeah, I guess recirculate, estrogen, how we detoxify and recirculate estrogen rather. So when you have elevated levels of this enzyme, that shows me that someone is probably packaging up estrogen into a more toxic form and recirculating that in the body because of poor bile flow.
And so that’s where like the inflammation support, the stomach acid, support the bile support becomes really important with these clients too, so that they’re detoxing estrogen properly as well. Because sometimes they don’t, you know, clients with PCOS don’t [00:22:00] always have high estrogen. They just might not have the.
Enough progesterone to oppose all the estrogen. And they might be, they just might have more toxic forms of estrogen circulating too. I’ve never, and like even for my own like health journey, it’s like I did, I definitely had high estrogen, but it was like I did not detox it well. So it’s like, even if, even if I was trying so hard to get my estrogen down, but it’s like it wouldn’t have mattered because I wasn’t detoxing at all anyway, so I would still probably have all the same symptoms.
So th those are, that’s just kind of like an overview to hopefully help you better understand the view of like, okay, it’s PCOS is so much deeper than just hormones. There’s all these other systems in the body that are gonna work together. Nothing happens in isolation. I feel like. I think I say that every podcast episode and then it’s funny ’cause all these areas then affect your mineral status and minerals affect our metabolism.
So I get a lot of flack online. Whenever I say that PCS is a metabolic disorder, I [00:23:00] get people very upset that it’s like it’s a hormone disorder. Me. And I’m like, it affects our hormones. But it’s like ultimately there’s, think about all the systems involved. I mean, yes, your hormones are one of ’em, but like your gut microbiome, balancing blood sugar, nutrient nutrient status is a huge one.
Just layers upon layers. Like that can’t just be a hormone issue. You know, it’s, it’s everything. So one of the big things with PCOS that I often see is that they have very low minerals. There’s different patterns, but. Low minerals across the board is the most common one. And a lot of that has to do with insulin resistance.
And this is another kind of, for me, like, you know, I’ve been doing this for a decade and it’s a part of my own health history, so I’ve, it’s, you know, hits a little different when you’re like, I’ve done a lot of self experimentation and testing as well, and the more insulin resistant you are, even if it, you’re lower on the spectrum, maybe you’re, you have some insulin resistance, but you’re not, [00:24:00] like, at it as extreme, you are still gonna have more mineral loss in the urine.
So you’re, you’re using up more minerals and then you’re losing more in the urine. You’re also using up more when you’re inflamed, like zinc, you know, zinc just like progesterone, zinc’s gonna get used up like crazy. And you’re much more likely to have imbalances in other minerals, especially when your stress hormones are higher.
You’re gonna be using it more sodium in potassium, and then eventually that drives up, that leads to like that soft tissue calcium release. And we’ll typically see high calcium on a hair test and high magnesium, and then the metabolism slows down. But then unless you know what to do to correct this, and you’re addressing those other root causes.
The mineral loss continues, then you get depleted. This is typically where we see people is like they’re in that more depleted state and their minerals and their hair tests are like low across the board and they’re often a fast four, which is like the end stage of stress. Like you’re, you’re in adrenal burnout [00:25:00] and I think a lot of our clients would.
Agree with that and describe themselves as like completely burnt out. And this is so many minerals impact blood sugar balancing as well. So then you’re kind of like, I’m making all the right food changes. I’m super low carb, maybe. Or they’re, they’re like, I tried lowering my calorie intake and working out more and they’re trying to compensate, but no matter what they do, it’s not working.
And so much of it is the fact that they are deficient and that the other systems of their body aren’t working properly. So it’s like when you can address everything together, that’s when everything starts to come back online. Things start working correctly, especially with minerals because they are like little helpers in the body.
They make all these processes happen. Like I did, I interviewed Dr. Nina Marie Ruda and Herb interview will come out before this. So you guys, if you’ve listened to every episode, you’ve heard her and she had the best analogy for minerals and that they, she’s like, it’s like. When you go to a concert and how the [00:26:00] minerals are like the backstage crew that like, make the concert happen.
’cause none of it would happen without it. And I was like, oh, that’s, that’s truly the best way to describe it. And your body will compensate and it’ll try to keep these processes going. That’s when heavy metals off come into play, where they’ll take the place of certain minerals but they can’t compensate forever.
And then the systems just start to get dysfunctional and then a lot of PCOS symptoms get worse. Plus they’ll be like, I have all these other random symptoms that I don’t think have anything to do with my PCOS. Going on as well too. And I would love to know like other minerals that you often see, like we, like zinc, you know, is high or low.
What other minerals are you often seeing on hair tests for clients that are worsening those PCOS symptoms? Well, I think you did a great job of explaining why so many of our clients with PCOS are depleted. But there’s one mineral I think of that usually isn’t depleted in our PCOS clients. It’s actually too high usually, and that’s iron and it’s hard to just [00:27:00] look at a hair test and get a good view of what’s actually happening with iron in the body.
So I always recommend kind of comparing that to blood work, ideally getting a full iron panel and ideally also getting some co-factors there too. Looking at what. Copper is doing in the blood, zinc, vitamin A magnesium, just so we’re getting like a really full picture. But iron is usually, uh, I, I typically see iron overload or excess iron with PCOS clients, and that’s typically because there’s a protein in the liver that regulates iron absorption.
It’s called hepcidin and. A lot of PCOS, I would say most clients with PCOS don’t have enough hepcidin that it, it gets reduced and hepcidin and iron are kind of, you know, when one goes up, the other goes down. And so as hepcidin goes down, iron absorption goes up. So your body doesn’t get the signal that, hey, like we have enough iron, um, iron levels are already high in the body, and so that hepcidin won’t be able [00:28:00] to block more iron, iron absorption as it should.
And then iron levels get even higher. And that contributes a ton to the inflammation that, you know, our clients with PCOS have because high iron is really inflammatory. And you know, the other aspect of iron being high aside from hepcidin is, you know, a lot of women with PCOS have very irregular cycles, very long cycles, so they’re not bleeding regularly either.
I also. A lot of my clients with PCOS have light cycles. Some have short cycles too, but um, more, more so they have light bleeds so they’re not bleeding enough and then they’re also not bleeding a big amount when they do bleed. And so that’s another kind of aspect of the high iron piece with PCOS clients.
I don’t always see excess iron, but I, it’s, I see it more often than not. It’s a lot. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a big one. It’s enough to be like, like for me, it’s enough to, for me to recommend that women with PCOS regularly get their iron tested, because then the gut issues [00:29:00] too, like iron feeds pathogens in yeast.
And so it’s one of those things where it’s like, if it’s, if that is elevated, it’s not just gonna affect your kind of like hormonal symptoms, it’s also gonna affect your gut issues. And like we said, a lot of women with PCS already have. Imbalances in their gut. So it’s definitely a huge piece of the puzzle.
And again, like sometimes I see clients that have PCOS that have very low iron, uh, which, you know, I, I’ve seen like PCOS supplements, you know, recommendation supplement lines and stuff that have iron in them. And I’m just like, I get it. Like, and I think it can be good and sometimes easy to be like, I’m gonna follow this PCOS protocol.
It’s like four women in PCOS, but like, this is why I don’t recommend doing that because there’s, every person’s gonna be different. There’s so much nuance. It’s like, just do your own testing if you can, because that ultimately then you’re gonna know what, what I need, what I don’t need, and you’re not gonna cause [00:30:00] more issues.
’cause the amount of women that I’ve seen come to me taking iron that have PCOS, I’m like. This is a problem. It’s wild. And to your point with the gut issues too, like exactly iron feeds, pathogens, and we could try to get rid of those pathogens or, you know, improve the balance of bacteria in your gut. But if, if you still have high iron while we’re doing that, it’s not really gonna stick.
Probably ’cause that iron’s just gonna feed the overgrowth even more. And the other thing with the gut issues that I forgot to mention when we were talking about the gut aspect is that you don’t have to have gut symptoms, you don’t have to have like, digestive issues to have imbalances in your gut. And it’s, I just started working with a client who has PCOS and she didn’t have really overt gut symptoms, like a little bit of gas here and there, but nothing crazy.
But she knew from like, you know, going through the course, going through your content on PCOS, that like I knew that I, I needed to do a stool test because I had PCOS and there was probably something deeper going on even though it didn’t feel like it. And I thought that was so. Smart of [00:31:00] her to do and so, you know, smart of you to say to people too, because that aspect often gets overlooked.
Yeah. It’s just one of those other symptoms. If you’re like, what other symptoms might I have? That are not overt digestive issues. That could be signs like the mental, emotional, I mean, mental health concerns huge. I think that’s a huge part of it because there’s a, there’s like research out there for women, PCOS that they, like, they’re more likely to deal with anxiety and depression.
I mean, you’re also like, it’s like 10 to 25% of women with PCOS have thyroid issues, which can also very greatly contribute to mental health concerns. But so can gut imbalances. I mean, so many of our neurotransmitters are made in our gut, and inflammation in the gut doesn’t just stay there. That inflammation can also go to the brain.
So I think that that is a huge, huge factor and something to consider as well. And it’s, it’s just really common. Sleep issues can be a really big one. That can be a [00:32:00] sign as well. Anything with the skin, anything. Acne, eczema, psoriasis, anything with the skin is like screaming gut for sure. And I also think even like, like if you have like the hormone concerns like PMS, any like ovulation pain, most of a lot of our clients PCOS, like they also have other health concerns too.
Like maybe they all like other co conditions, like maybe they have histamine issues or maybe they also have PMDD endometriosis. Like we definitely see a lot of those kind of side by side and obviously they can kind of weave in together. Are there any other things that you can think of that could be signs for gut issues that aren’t gut symptoms?
I think you covered most of it. I see a lot of brain fog that improves. Drastically with, you know, working on the gut. And then hair loss is another one that I see a lot that also improves just because that inflammation, like you said, it doesn’t just stay in the gut. It’ll affect so many different systems.
And if your gut, to your point with the thyroid dysfunction too, a, if [00:33:00] there’s a thyroid issue also going on, which like you said, many women with PCOS also have a sluggish thyroid that’s gonna impact your stomach acid production. That’s going to affect bile flow, all the things, but also, and so that’ll make you more likely to have overgrowth start to form in the gut, but that’ll also impact your absorption of nutrients.
And so that can affect any system really. So I see hair loss as well with that, which can be a factor due to the hormonal imbalances that happen because of all of what we’re talking about. But I think it can also just be like, I’ve seen a lot of clients without. Having high androgens or even just non PCOS clients.
This conversation aside, hair loss is a big symptom we see. And gut imbalances contribute to it a lot for sure. And even when it comes to thyroid, it’s like, I mean, I, I think there’s also a very high there population of PCOS thyroid disorders, but also Hashimoto’s specifically. And then it’s like, okay, well this is not, this makes sense to me because of the gut imbalances that are [00:34:00] already present.
Stress hormones are already higher, and those two things together are a recipe for an autoimmune condition to occur. And so it would make sense that then that is like primarily more like thyroid focused. So, I mean, definitely not everyone, but I would say that I see that. Combination a lot. And it was so much so, especially in the beginning of my career that I was like, what’s going on here?
Like, what’s this like deeper connection? And that’s when I was like, oh, okay. So I need to be making sure that pretty much everyone that I work with that has PCOS doesn’t also have some sort of thyroid dysfunction or Hashimoto specifically. And I’m, so I’m always recommending to get your thyroid antibody if you think, if you’re like, yeah, I have hypothyroidism, but they’ve never tested your antibodies, that’s when it’s really, really important.
’cause it would make sense given all the other things happening in the body. Yeah. And that’s where, you know, supporting your gut’s immune system is gonna be huge. And those clients typically have also low secretory iga in their stool tests. And so again, all [00:35:00] connected. And that thyroid piece is so important too, because we need a, a healthy thyroid and optimal amounts of thyroid hormone to ovulate and have.
Healthy regular ovulatory cycles. And that also makes me think of another mineral with PCOS iodine, which I know you’ve already done two podcast episodes on iodine. So if people are interested, it’s like the best mineral that exists. One of my favorite ones, but that is a big piece two eventually with our PCOS clients is really optimizing their thyroid health and their, their iodine status too.
Yeah, I know I, we’ll, we’ll link those in the Sure notes for sure. That and, and there’s a lot of nuance there, and I talk about that in there with like, what do you do if you have an autoimmune condition? And that’s like, we should definitely do a Hashimoto’s episode for sure. That would be a fun one. But those are like the major areas that we are focusing on.
The metabolism, of course, the gut microbiome, insulin resistance, and kind of figuring out where does this person kind of lie [00:36:00] on that insulin resistance scale, you know? And sometimes we have labs for that. But honestly, a lot of it we’re just trying to figure out how are they living, eating, how are they responding to that?
What’s, and like, how do they feel all their symptoms? Labs are helpful, but you’re not a lab value. And I think that’s a very important takeaway and something that I really try to stress to women in PCOS ’cause it’s very easy to be like, I feel like a lot of them, like they, they are like that type A, like, they want to know exactly what’s outta balance, why it’s outta balance, what’s, what’s causing it, what’s the driver and exactly what to do, which is helpful.
We, we want you to know what to do, but it’s what is gonna work for you is gonna be unique. To you. ’cause not everyone with PCOS has the same amount of insulin resistant or has the same background and can tolerate different, like the same exact food. Like there’s no perfect PCOS meal plan protocol, like supplement protocol.
It doesn’t exist because each woman is gonna be completely unique. And then inflammation of [00:37:00] course. And then, and minerals. And minerals are, it’s, it’s the iron component. ’cause iron overload is very common. And when it comes to that, like we do, we definitely have some of our clients do blood donations.
It’s not the first thing that we do because mo again, like we said, a lot of them are depleted, very low mineral status. So they’re not even in a place to think about donating blood. Because when you donate blood, you, you lose a lot of sodium and so it can tank your adrenals even more. And so that’s where we are figuring out, okay.
Are you taking any supplements that have iron? Let’s stop those. And then we do often use nutrients that will bind to iron at meals to lower their iron status that way, because we have plenty of clients that will probably never be a good candidate for a blood donation if they have like pots or histamine issues, you know?
So there’s other ways, but that is a big part of the mineral piece that we address. And then just seeing like how depleted are you? What’s out of balance? I definitely see [00:38:00] a lot of PCOS clients with really high calcium too, on calcium shells that slows your metabolism down and hugely affects your thyroid and how you’re using thyroid hormone.
So that’s like a big piece of the puzzle. Hair test, iron labs. And then the biggest way that we address minerals is we look at how are you living? What does your typical day look like? Are you always rushing? Are you always stressed? Your food intake, are you eating enough? How frequently are you eating?
All those things. And this kind of brings us to our next topic, which I think we should just get into the pro metabolic piece ’cause we’re gonna run outta time. I agree. And I, we were gonna talk about myths of PCUS, but I have already kind of talked about those. I have old PCUS episodes that I did with Emily like a million years ago.
So I think that that, like you, you guys can definitely reference those too. Uh, but a big topic that we wanted to talk about is, this is like a theme we see with our clients, obviously them trying to figure out what’s my root [00:39:00] cause? And then also, hey, I started following a pro metabolic diet and some women, it’s like life changing for.
And we’ll talk about who we think it’s really helpful for. And then we also, I would say like the biggest population we work with is women that we’re already overweight to begin with, that have PCOS. They try to implement pro metabolic principles and then they sometimes see progress in some areas, but other areas, they’re like, I’m completely stuck, and it’s like getting worse.
So do we wanna talk about what pro metabolic is and then we’re gonna talk about what it’s not. So do you wanna get into what it is? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’m sure your audience is familiar. Most, most women in your audience are familiar with the pro metabolic world. And at its core, pro metabolic is a really, you know, nurturing, nourishing approach to, um, taking care of yourself [00:40:00] and nourishing the body so it feels safe rather than restricting.
And it really helps women, in my opinion, like a lot of our clients who have come to us from this place. They’re, they’re not afraid to eat anymore. Which kind of, to my point earlier with my own story, like that was a big thing I had to learn when I was really young is to not be afraid to eat. ’cause the rhetoric we’ve been given, especially women in the age ranges that we see, it’s like skinny is better, less food means you’re gonna be healthier, all those crazy things that we learned growing up.
So pro metabolic is really about like supporting. Like we were talking about earlier with stress, our resilience to stress, supporting the nervous system or adrenals, supporting, you know, our hormones so that we can have regular ovulatory cycles. So giving that the body, those safety signals of like, you’re safe, you’re nourished, we have enough food, you like, have enough to actually ovulate and really be a fertile body, which that’s really a marker that I view of health [00:41:00] fertility.
It’s like, it’s not just the ability to have a baby, even if you don’t wanna have a baby. It’s we, you wanna be living in a fertile body ’cause that body is a safe body. It’s a nourished body, it’s a regulated body. So I think there’s so many pros to this approach, and I know there’s a huge emphasis on thyroid health, which obviously aligns with everything we do and metabolic health.
So supporting your metabolism by, you know, eating nourishing carbs in the correct amounts. Again, so many people are so afraid of carbs. So this is a really great. Approach to not be so afraid of carbs anymore. And then we’ll talk about the nuance with that when it comes to this population, because I think that’s where a little bit of the, the nuance gets lost, but other, you know, really important nutrients to support thyroid hormone conversion.
Like, uh, saturated fats, coconut, coconut oil, ghee, and just eating enough. That’s like the biggest thing that I really love about pro metabolic is like eating enough, eating enough nutrient dense foods, focusing on root veggies and shellfish and fruit [00:42:00] and organ meats, and all these amazing mineral rich foods.
And there is kind of a, you know, especially when it comes to those, the, the people who have insulin resistance, that’s really kind of due to stress and all these like stress hormones floating around in their body. I think it there, it can be supportive for blood sugar balance because. A lot of the times people are getting these crazy blood sugar rollercoasters because they’re not feeding themselves properly and they’re not eating frequently enough.
And so that kind of emphasis on frequent meals, balanced meals frequently throughout the day to avoid those blood sugar dips and spikes that are induced, you know, by stress and cortisol. Um, that could be also a really helpful thing to work on if that’s where you’re coming from. So there’s a lot of great things about this approach to eating.
Yeah, and it’s just wanted to say, ’cause we didn’t mention Ray Pete who like rest in peace, Dr. Ray, Pete man, um, he really created the probe metabolic movement. [00:43:00] And Kate Deering, I would say is the other kind of big. She kind of took all Ray’s work and condensed it down into a really great book. I think it’s called Heal Your Metabolism.
I think I believe it. Gosh, I read that 80 million years ago. I like, don’t remember the title, but Kate Dearing is her name and she kind of took his work, condensed it down and made it digestible because, hi, his, any article he’s ever written is so dense. You’re kinda like, oh my gosh, what’s happening? And that was, it was the start of, I think it, I look at it as like a movement and it’s really is like, we’re, you’re gonna, we’re gonna stop under eating.
We’re gonna stop wanting to be like super skinny. We’re gonna start caring about feeling really good during our luteal phase. Having a good ovulation, making enough progesterone. He was definitely the one that I feel like in the functional space, the focus is always on, like estrogen dominance, we gotta take dim, we gotta take everything to lower estrogen.
And it, he took another angle of [00:44:00] just promoting like. It’s not estrogen. That’s the issue. It’s progesterone and the, and the whole point is that, ’cause we’re undereating, we’re too stressed. We’re always in fight or flight and not most women have like thyroid dysfunction, even if it’s subclinical. Like so maybe your labs are like normal, they’re not terrible, but they’re not optimal.
Then improving all of those things helps to actually support your thyroid function, making plenty of progesterone so it balances out your estrogen, makes you fertile. Can have healthy pregnancies postpartum, go through menopause without a bunch of symptoms. That was kind of like what I feel like the movement was and it, and I think so many women gravitated towards that.
Like I definitely did because I came from tons of like just food obsession and restriction. And it definitely did help heal a big piece of like, I really, you think you’re healed and then you. Go through this whole process again and you’re like, no, I definitely need it a little bit more. And so [00:45:00] I hold it like so near and dear to my heart.
I still consider myself like pro metabolic in so many ways. I just think that, you know, the longer you do this work, and I’ve talked to a lot of other people in this space and they call it bioenergetics now, which I think I’m like, okay, are we like rebranding from metabolic? I dunno. I like the original, I like the roots and I like what it stood for.
And I think it helped a lot of women also, when you have some, a movement like this gets so big and popular online, so many things get taken outta context. And it’s like, I also look at it as like this is a place to begin to heal. It’s therapeutic, right? Eating more frequently, eating more nutrient-dense foods, adding in carbs, approaching your health in a completely way.
It’s, it’s therapeutic, but sometimes it doesn’t mean we always have to like stay there eating every few hours, you know? And. Even like learning more about your cycle and like when maybe in your luteal phase that makes more sense but not really in your follicular phase. [00:46:00] So pro metabolic I think is, it’s so supportive, but I think a lot has gotten taken outta context.
And then because it got so big and there’s so many pro metabolic accounts popping up, it’s, and they’re all kind of saying different things. It’s confusing and it’s like, oh, I’m pro in a bulk so I’m gonna like just start eating like a ton more sugar. ’cause it’s like we shouldn’t be afraid of sugar. It’s like, yes, but also like we don’t need to eat excessive amounts.
And if you actually look like when you at like a lot of what the people in the space were eating, it wasn’t, they were just eating sugar all day. They’re eating very nutrient intense foods all day. So I think that’s kinda like the biggest thing. We’re not bashing pro metabolic. I still consider myself pro metabolic, bioenergetics, whatever you wanna call it.
I like to eat nourishing foods and I want women to not be constantly under fed and in a state of fight or flight. Like, you know, it’s safety regulation, like you said in the beginning. I’m like, yes. I want women to be regulated and nourished. And I think that’s what it does. I think that when it comes to what pro metabolic is not, [00:47:00] and what often gets taken outta context is that it’s not like this free pass to eat as much sugar as you want.
And a lot of what Kate talks about in her book and Ray, they’re always talking about like the n equals one. You’re your own experiment. You have to figure out what is best for you. Like here are some principles and then kind of like, go have fun. It’s like the, I feel like the, that’s always the vibe that I got and it’s also like, just important to consider.
We don’t need to like overeat, you know, that. I just think people were like, okay, I’m gonna eat a ton of sugar. I’m gonna eat a lot more food ’cause I need more calories to support my body. ’cause people started to realize, you know, maybe they. I feel like even I talk about my Master minerals course, like the total daily energy expenditure and I go through like how to assess your nutrition needs.
And so many times people are like, this is so much more food than I thought that I was gonna need to eat. And it’s not that if we’re not there right now, that’s okay. We don’t have to immediately jump to that. But I would say like [00:48:00] the biggest mistakes I would see people make is that they would go from like no carbs or eating very low carb to then like eating a ton of more carbohydrates, more sugar, potatoes.
And it’s like, listen, those are not bad foods and I love carbs if I could never not eat carbs. But it’s like finding the right balance for your body and it, again, most women would start to feel better pretty quickly. Because they would be fed, right? It’s like, it’s crazy how many of your symptoms go away when you start eating enough food.
Wild. You’re like, I don’t have a headache anymore every day. Wow. I have energy. I’m not like, I’m not fatigued all the time. I could do workouts. I just think it’s like people kind of took like, okay, we’re gonna like roots and fruits, meat, lots of dairy, organ meats, you know, oysters, certain seafood, like all like those super nutrient dense foods.
And they’re like, I’m only going to eat these. And then also the other big thing I see, and I talk about this in a few lessons in my [00:49:00] course is they stop working out. I don’t know if you’ve seen that a ton, but it’s like, well, I don’t want stress hormones. I don’t want cortisol, so I’m also not gonna train.
And that combination is typically some for some people. Again, I’m telling you, I’ve had so many clients that are like, it truly healed me and it changed me in a way like that Nothing else has. I also think that that’s probably for, especially with PCOS, ’cause I have seen a lot of women PCOS talk about pro metabolic, and this is why a big part of the reason why I wanna make this episode is ’cause it’s like, well how come it didn’t work for me?
That’s what I hear. I get that question a lot. I tried pro metabolic, I gained a ton of weight even though I was already overweight. How come it did not work for me? And I think a lot of it is just ’cause things get taken outta context. Eating too much food too quickly, and. There’s just like a lot of gray area that we’ll definitely get into.
Yeah. And I think sometimes again, like women like to, this was me for so long, just have rules and [00:50:00] then they like attach themselves to those rules and they kind of lose that connection with their body. So it’s like, I’m doing all the rules, why isn’t it working? But they don’t feel that like, Hey, maybe this one thing that I should be doing doesn’t actually work for my body.
And so there’s again that gray area where not every single thing that this movement is about might work for you and your body in this stage of life. ’cause like you said, it is therapeutic and I. I look back to like five years ago, I’m, I don’t eat the same way five years ago. Do you like it’s so like the way that we eat and the way that we support ourselves and nourish ourselves and the supplements we take, everything we do, it changes throughout our lives.
And so it can be really helpful for a season, like the exact thing that you’re talking about, of like eating really frequently and then sometimes that might not work for you as well, depending on what your goals are, where you’re at. And like you said, the sedentary thing with like stopping workouts. When you eat more carbs, the goal is that you have more energy to [00:51:00] workout and to move your body and to not be sedentary all day.
And so I do see that combination a lot. And that’s. That’s when I see a lot of my clients with PCOS especially not feel as good and they, they start to feel worse is that they have stopped, you know, exercising or they’re not consistent and they’re doing a lot more carbs than maybe they used to. Um, and maybe they did it really quickly, like you said, and then they start to get even, you know, gain even more weight that they didn’t necessarily need.
Or they start feeling worse, like their energy is worse. They start feeling blood sugar spikes, like tired after meals, things like that. And I think that’s where certain things could be tweaked to make it more supportive. Which I think is a good segue to talk about kind of some, some gray area, some nuance with our PCOS clients.
Yeah, because I think, I think some of the biggest things that we see is that, well, I do also wanna mention that there’s no like formal macro recommendation with promet ball as well. I think this is like. [00:52:00] And I would never, I think that there’s no perfect macro breakdown honestly for anyone that it’s just so in season of life.
I mean, I just think about how much that shifted for me when I was like in the pregnant and postpartum season, like breastfeeding. I’m like, it’s completely different than how I was eating before. You know, like, what supports you now? So it’s one of those things where I tend to see people eating like way more carbohydrate and like not eating a protein.
And it’s like, okay, but that is not gonna help balance too much. So I think like if you look at Kate during a lot of what she recommends, um, a lot of what Ray Pete recommended in the beginning at its core, I always thought it’s funny ’cause people would come to me, be like a pro metabolic and I look at their food, I’m like, it doesn’t feel like it.
But like it was definitely more like high protein, high carb, lower fat was kind of their take on it and like what they would recommend. And what I would often see is women eating a lot of fat, a lot of carb, not enough protein. And I think this is the downfall for most [00:53:00] women where they’re like, I’m eating more nourishing foods, but a lot of women undereat protein.
Anyway, so this is, it’s easy to do and this is why it’s like you can’t try to put everything in a box. You have to experiment and see what works for you. I think what women are often like, okay, well then if I want to eat lower fat, like what do I do? Or should I eat lower fat or higher fat, moderate carb?
I just think it’s easier to look at what your preferences are and experiment from there. Like if you prefer more higher fat foods, like you’re like, I don’t want all my dairy to be lower fat. I don’t want all my meat to be lower fat. Like it’s just not how you wanna create and craft your meals. Then maybe you just eat how you kind of naturally would want to eat.
Make sure you’re eating enough protein and lower the carb intake a little bit. ’cause you can’t eat high everything. ’cause then you’re gonna be eating way too many. Calories and too much energy intake and that will lead to the weight gain. And this is like, we’re also thinking more specific to our population that of PCOS clients, that they are already overweight [00:54:00] entering their healing journey.
So they’re not someone that like is underweight and needs to gain weight. That’s like the big delineation that I want to just make super clear here. And like eating more frequently is often very recommended. And again, I think in the beginning it, it can be helpful even for women with PCOS because they often don’t make enough digestive juices so it’s easy to undereat ’cause you get full easily at the meals you often don’t wanna finish.
And so I have had many clients who, like they eat more frequently to start and then once we improve their digestion, I’m like, all right, we’re gonna move to bigger meals. And a little less frequent. Especially because that if you are already overweight, eating so frequently can. Impact a hormone called leptin.
And we’re gonna cover that in great detail in the bonus episode. And that can worsen a lot of PCOS symptoms. And then vegetables. Do you wanna talk about the nuance of vegetables? Erin and I, the other nutritionist on our team always talk about, like, we all have like one thing, like I feel like [00:55:00] I am, Erin would always joke like, you’re the fiber dietician.
Like you love vegetables. I love vegetables. But you know, in our clients with. This history of like being in the pro metabolic space, I noticed that they don’t eat any vegetables. And that is kind of one of the things that I think got lost when pro metabolic got really big. It was like, eat all this sugar, eat all these carbs and no vegetables or fiber allowed, and I just don’t think that’s gonna be supportive for most women.
And so I understand that like the, one of the goals is to eat foods that are easy to digest and absorb when it comes to, you know, this pro metabolic movement, which is why the recommendation is like, avoid most raw veggies and avoid, you know, a lot of fiber, hard to digest foods, but A, you can cook your veggies and make them easier to digest.
But B, a lot of these clients have low beneficial bacteria. They have. Cons, they’re constipated or they have poor bile flow. They have all these different other things kind of speaking to me where I’m [00:56:00] like, this person needs a little bit more fiber. They have high estrogen and so we need fiber rich foods to bind and support this estrogen detox.
And so that’s where the, again, nuance gets lost. I think that vegetables and fiber in general, like beans are another one. And I, I’ll let you talk about beans a little more too. ’cause I know you love your beans. I love my beans too, but again, like that’s another food that I feel like a lot of women who are in that, coming from that pro metabolic space are afraid to eat.
’cause they’ve been told that beans are not, they’re not good for you. They’re not easy to digest, there’s too much fiber, yada yada. And that’s something where these foods can actually be really supportive. For, especially our clients with PCOS, especially when we have, you know, low beneficial bacteria. I often see such poor diversity in the beneficial bacteria of, you know, these clients’ microbiomes and especially when they come from a, a place of eating this way.
And one of the biggest things you can do to support those beneficials is to feed [00:57:00] them with the prebiotic fibers that they need to thrive on. And then you produce more buty and that becomes more anti-inflammatory and that improves your insulin sensitivity. And so that’s a, another kind of myth I guess I, I wanna debunk is that fiber is not bad.
Vegetables are not bad. If you do have a hard time digesting vegetables, you can cook them, you can eat easier to digest vegetables. Like, I don’t, I don’t recommend eating a, a ton of broccoli and cauliflower and cruciferous vegetables right off the bat if you can’t digest them. But there’s things that you can do that.
Make them easier to digest or just choosing the easier to digest veggies and beans too. Like there’s ways you can cook them to make them easier to digest. You can go super. I often recommend, I always recommend going really slowly with fiber in the beginning if you’re not eating a lot of fiber or if you need a bit more because it can be hard to digest and lead to more bloating, gas, whatever it is.
If you do go too quickly or if you do, you know, [00:58:00] add a ton of different sources at once. So slow and steady wins the race with that. But I definitely think there’s a place for fiber and vegetables in the diet. Yes. And I in like, again, you have to think of, ’cause I’m like, it’s a very specific person that I think often does well with all these, putting all these things in place and it’s like if, and that’s why a lot of women with PCOS are like, no, I did see a huge improvement with promo metabolic and I’m, again, we’re not bashing it, it’s just the amount that I’ve gotten this question is like core students.
I’ve gotten a lot of questions about it of like. Do you still support pro metabolic and you know, ’cause now there’s this whole wave of like, like quantum health and that sort of thing coming over and they’re like, pro metabolic makes everyone leptin resistant. And I’m just like, guys, there’s more nuance to this.
And like I have always said, we have to avoid extremes. If you can avoid extremes with your nutrition, then you’re gonna avoid a lot of issues down the road. And sometimes there’s always a [00:59:00] place for extremes. Like I’ve had some clients that, like they were, they could not digest anything. Their health was so bad, they went carnivore and it improved a lot of their symptoms.
And then they’re like, I can’t live this way anymore, so can you help me improve my digestion and gut health so that I can eat all the foods? And I think that’s the ultimate goal, right? Like I remember so many of my clients. Like that. We’re like introducing Promi above principles and they’re like, it’s just so free.
That’s very freeing to be like a lot of these foods make me feel terrible, like vegetables and especially just, I think women overeat raw veggies, like the, like giant salads and things like that. Like I think that those are definitely overdone for sure. And if you don’t have good digestion, you’re not gonna break down that food well and you’re gonna be bloated and not feel good.
So again, it’s like that’s a positive. I’ve also had plenty of clients who are like, I get they, we removed a lot of fiber rich foods ’cause they weren’t breaking it down well, but they were also doing like a ton of bone broth and thing like it was [01:00:00] therapeutic and it was short term. So I think that’s the thing that people are missing, that it’s like you can introduce things, use this approach therapeutically, but then like when we zoom out and look at our health long term, having fiber in is important.
Like, you need to eat some fiber. I don’t think that you should, like, I, I think that there, that’s, it’s a myth to that. Like you should, if you’re constipated, it means that you need more fiber. There’s so much more to constipation. Like we’ve been talking about bile and stuff, and minerals are huge for constipation, but ultimately it’s like if you were someone that tried me, pro metabolic approach, bioenergetics, whatever you wanna call it, and you’re like, you know, I saw an improvement in a lot of my symptoms, but I gained a bunch of weights and now I’m kind of like trying to undo that.
Or if you’re just, maybe you didn’t see an improvement in your symptoms, or maybe it completely worked for you, whichever realm you kind of fall into, it’s, I would really, uh, especially if it didn’t work for you, I’d challenge you to think about [01:01:00] like, is there, did it work for a time and it got me to a certain place and now I need to like adjust based on the progress that I’ve seen and maybe dig into other areas because sometimes it’s like it gets you so far and then you have a deeper imbalance that.
You gotta fix. You know, like if you can’t eat fiber, to me that makes me want like think why is your digestion not good enough for that? Right? And again, thi it’s supposed to support your thyroid, which supports digestive juices. But if you have like an iodine deficiency or a really big mineral balance, or you’re depleted across the board, sometimes you need additional support to like truly rebalance and like fix all the different systems in the body.
So I think it can be very helpful. But this is definitely women that have PCOS or insulin resistance or already overweight to begin with, and then they try to implement that they gain more weight and they’re like I, but they really believe in the movement, which I do too. I really do. They, they don’t wanna be in fight or flight.
They don’t [01:02:00] wanna underfeed themselves. They, they just wanna do what’s right and support their bodies and really nourish themselves. But maybe they’re like, now I feel like it’s not working. It could be because you need a little bit more self experimentation and nuance, like experiment with your macros, actually track your food and see what you’re eating.
We really like the Chronometer app. Well, that’s the one I liked is that, which one do you use? Yeah, that’s the one that I always recommend clients use too. Yeah. And it’s, I think it’s just like also looking at like, maybe I am, maybe eating too frequently is part of it. We’ve literally had clients not change their food intake that much and they just switch to bigger meals and that alone makes a huge difference.
So it really is like kind of going back to the roots of like, I think Ray Pete’s work, and again, I’m, this is my interpretation, but of how he really did believe in that like n equals one experiment into like truly find what works for you. I think that’s like what a lot of people. We’re missing. And if we go back to the origin, the origination [01:03:00] of it, it’s, that’s when you can figure out like, okay, I’m gonna actually make this work for me instead of just giving myself this like arbitrary list of food rules and being like, I have to do this, or I’m bad, or I’m not prob metabolic or whatever.
You wanna kind of like classify it as, is there anything else that you would like, advice that you would give for someone that maybe falls into that category of feeling like it didn’t work for them? Yeah, I mean, you kind of touched on this, but I think the underlying principles of wanting to feel nourished and well fed and have sup, you know, support your adrenals, have optimal thyroid health, produce enough progesterone, those are goals.
And there’s a million ways to get to those goals. And you can do all of that and have it look a little different for you, like you’re saying, because everyone’s body’s so different. So if you are someone who kind of took the. The exact approach that we were outlining earlier and had been eating like you know, a lot of sugar and went from eating undereating [01:04:00] maybe to eating like six to eight times a day.
And let’s say it serve you for a time in your journey and now you’re looking for a different way to support yourself and reach those same goals. I think it’s just important to know that there is a way to do that that doesn’t look the same as it does for maybe all these people on Instagram or you know, the podcast you’re listening to.
And I think that’s why I like the way that we’re kind of talking about this in our approach is that we never really treat two clients as one, because everyone’s living in a unique body and something that works for someone, you know, client A is not gonna work for client B, and something that works for you is not gonna work for me and vice versa.
And it depends on the season of life you’re in, which I think we touched on quite a few times and you know what your goals are too. So, and even like you said earlier, I think you said this at one point of like where you are in your cycle. I don’t eat the same way every single day. Like it’s similar, but I, I adjust and listen to my body.
And that took me a long time to learn too on my own journey. [01:05:00] ’cause I think we’re, we’re taught that, you know, our bodies are these like machines and these robots and like we have to like give it this input. And you know, Erin and I talk about this all the time and I know you do too. It’s like X plus Y doesn’t always equal Z when it comes to our bodies.
And there’s a million different things that affect our health and how we feel. And so it’s not always just input. Equals output. And we aren’t robots, we aren’t machines In this world where everything’s like ChatGPT and ai. It’s like easy to think that we are, but we’re not. We’re humans occupying human bodies and they change and they’re different from one another.
And that’s the beauty of being a human. So if we can kind of lean into that and listen to our bodies and learn to, you know, view our symptoms as feedback, which I know you talk about probably in every podcast episode and we talk about with our clients all the time, I think that’s a good place to be. And I think that’s the biggest takeaway that I hope everyone gets is like, it’s not bad if you look at the roots, it’s like, I still recommend all those things.
I truly do. [01:06:00] Maybe not eating every, I’ve never recommended eating every two hours. I would always give people that were kind of like, you’re not really pro metabolic. And I’m like, I don’t need to fall into a category. And also it’s like health is not a trend. Like you can’t look at it that way. It’s great to like learn about new approaches, experiment with them and like take what you love and leave what you don’t.
And I always say that in, I would say like a lot of my episodes, is like if something that I’m saying does not resonate with you, like please don’t force yourself to try to do it because we all have like this deep intuition and a lot of us can’t hear it anymore because we’ve kind of been like ignoring it or trying to like shove it down and not listen to it for so long and we can lose that connection to our bodies.
But if you still have that and or if you wanna work on nourishing that and developing it more, it’s gonna be like pausing and like if you have a bad feeling about something like yeah, I know that doesn’t really like. Jive with me. I don’t think that’s gonna like fit for me. Don’t do it [01:07:00] the, and listen to that gut instinct it because you know your body best.
And that’s what, who I think no matter what approach someone follows, that’s who the most successful person is health-wise. It’s the person that they don’t have to follow a specific diet or nutrition approach. Like they’re not Provo, they’re not carnivore, they’re not quantum, they’re not whatever. They’re just themselves.
They’re like, Nope, I know what makes me feel good. I know what doesn’t. And a lot of times it’s like maybe they’ve done some testing and they know, you know what, I need more of this particular nutrient or I have this imbalance going on in my gut and I’m gonna work on that. And so they like, they’ll trial therapeutic things, but they’re not like hard and fast like I have to live.
This way and follows specific rules. It’s, it’s fluid, which is I think, the best approach to your health and especially like when it comes to food. ’cause things are gonna change. Like you’re gonna have babies, maybe, I feel like most of my population are moms. You are gonna have babies, you’re probably gonna [01:08:00] breastfeed and then eventually you’re gonna go through menopause and things are gonna change again and you’re gonna, your food’s gonna completely change once again.
So we don’t have to be like tied to one approach and then feeling like a bummed, there’s something wrong with me ’cause it didn’t work for me. Or thinking that there’s something wrong with the approach. I mean there could definitely be things wrong depending on what you’re looking at. But overall I think it’s important to practice experimenting for yourself, listening to, to cues from your body.
Like I never did a lot of sugar. I just like don’t do well with it. I do well with some treats, but it’s like I cannot overdo it. I’ve never been that way, or I could, so again, it’s like I was, I dove deep into pro metabolic, but I was like, this doesn’t feel right for me. So I’m not gonna like lean into this.
Same thing with eating every two hours. If people that know me in real life, I eat huge meals, like massive meals. And so it’s like I would be starving if I ate tiny meals every couple [01:09:00] hours. The only time I ever did that was my first trimester of my pregnancies, and that’s it. So it’s again, like it didn’t work for me.
So you just have to experiment and find what works for you and kind of trust that information from your body. But we’re, we are gonna wrap up because we have to do our bonus episode, and we are gonna dig into leptin and PCOS, specifically leptin resistance and how this is something that a lot of our clients with PCOS deal with and kind of like what are the big signs that we see with it.
And then we’re gonna go through some client examples and tips for supporting optimal leptin levels, specifically when you have PCOS. So definitely check out the bonus episode on Patreon, patreon.com/hormone Healing Rd if you guys want to, if you found this episode helpful, the best way to support the show is by leaving a review.
It helps more women find. This message and feel empowered on their healing journey, or at least that’s our goal. And if you wanna dive deeper and stay in the loop with everything, make sure you’re subscribed to my Feminine Periodical [01:10:00] newsletter. It goes out every Sunday at 6:00 PM Eastern time. And I think that’s it.
Thank you so much for being here, Ava, and sharing your brain and your time and expertise, and we’ll see you in the next episode. Bye.
