[SERIES] The 3 Most Common Mistakes | Ep. 2 of 8

Welcome back to episode number two of this series. Right now we are talking about the most common mistakes that I see women make when it comes to their hormone health journey and honestly to their gut health journey as well. I'm sharing these three areas because once you become aware of them, you can pivot into something more productive and start seeing real progress sooner. So let's get into it. Mistake number one is relying too heavily on supplements. Here's what I see all the time. I see women coming to me taking four or five, sometimes six or more supplements and look supplements can be absolutely instrumental. They can make a big difference in getting you to your health goals, but here's the problem. If you're relying on supplements without taking the time to look at the foundations, you're putting a bandaid on a broken bone. What are those foundations? Those could be things like what are you actually eating nutrition? How well are you hydrating? Are you getting enough sleep? What is your stress look like? If you have been going from one supplement to the next thinking, I've literally tried every supplement and nothing makes a difference. It just might not be that the supplements aren't quality. It could be that you'd benefit much more from improving, for example, your digestion first. Because once you improve your digestion, you're actually able to absorb the nutrients in those supplements. And don't worry, I did this too. I tried all the supplements. And while they can be used strategically, I was definitely using them as a bandaid. Now though, as a nutritional therapy practitioner, I understand how essential, healthy, robust digestion is for even absorbing those nutrients in the first place. It is so critical, but often overlooked. Now mistake number two is under eating. This isn't a formal study, but it seems to me that at least 70% or so of the clients that I work with one on one don't realize that they're actually under eating on most days. This is so common because we've been fed these messages our whole lives like shrink your body, eat a little bit less, no big deal. But when it comes to your hormone balance, especially when it comes to restoring balance to your hormones and restoring your regular cycle, making sure you're getting those nutrients in is absolutely essential. I want to give a quick shout out here to the under consumption of fats. We've seen so many magazine covers talking about low fat diets. A lot of the times I hear gals equating fat in their food with fat on their body, but that is categorically false. Healthy fats are really important because fats are one of the basic building box of your hormones. Your sex hormones are made from cholesterol and cholesterol is found in fat. Again, I lived this mistake. I was in the military for a few years after college and I absolutely minimized what I was eating and I was definitely over exercising. I was absolutely floored when I learned about how sex hormones are made from cholesterol, but again, fat is important for your diet. Do a little audit to see how you are doing. You could even talk to your favorite AI chatbot, give it a little rundown of what you've had to eat today. Ask it, hey, approximately how many calories, how much protein, how much fat did I consume today? Just see, right, is that what you expected? Does it meet the estimated requirements for your body and for your activity level? So get that little personalized feedback. It'll take you less than five minutes. I promise it will be worth it. And let me tell you, I had one client who came to me at age 33. She was really shocked to realize that she wasn't really treating herself as well as she should be when it came to food. Those were her words. She said, I need to treat myself better. I need to take care of myself more. And having this opportunity to record a food journal gave her the chance to see that she really had been trying to eat as little as possible on some days. But that's not what her body needed to produce hormones. And once she made adjustments to her diet, she saw changes in her energy levels and her quality of sleep in the consistency of her mood throughout the day. It will make a big difference with your sex hormone production. Now mistake number three is accepting stress as a necessary evil. Stress seems common. Stress is unfortunately very common, but it's going to be a major obstacle to restoring hormone balance and restoring balance within your digestion as well. Here's what I need you to understand. It's not just mental or emotional stress. That's the factor here. It's also physical stress through overexercising or under eating. It's also stress that's a result of exposure to chemicals or to other sources of inflammation. You need to identify all of these different sources and then make a plan to mitigate where you realistically can. Let me tell you about a client who I worked with. She came to me when she was 26 and she came to me because she had acne. She had daily constant bloating and she had 35 plus day menstrual cycles. She was staying up late. She was consuming a lot of caffeine, which are two things that absolutely contribute to your overall stress load. She was already feeling a lot of stress from her relationship and other parts of her life, but becoming aware of that stress load and taking action, making a realistic plan to chip away at those stressors where she could that made an enormous difference for her. I was taught this myth that a quote-unquote "high metabolism" and moving my body would equal optimal health. Perhaps that's something that you learned too as a young lady. But it's important to know that there is a advice out there that works for people who are feeling good for people who have balanced hormones. But there is other guidance needed for those of you who are working to recover or restore balance to your hormones. That difference is absolutely essential to recognize because health is not one size fits all. So here's your action stuff for this one. I want you to get clear on what's causing you stress. Make a plan to reduce it. Like, because sure, again, stress is common, but it doesn't have to be your reality and start chipping away a little bit at a time. So in the next episode, we are diving into the number one foundation that most of my clients, that most women I talk to, skip entirely. And it's probably not what you think. This foundation impacts everything from your energy to your sleep to your hormone production. And there are some ridiculously easy changes that you can make starting right now. So look, if you're listening to this series, you're here because you're done guessing, and that tells me that you are ready for real answers. This is what I do. This is the work I do every day with women just like you. Book your 45 minute discovery call so you can get clear on the easiest path to balanced hormones and gut health so you can understand which interventions will actually work for your body. And so you can feel really rock solid confident about what the best next steps are for you specifically on this discovery call. You'll also learn more about my coaching programs so you can decide if working together is right for you. This call is for women who are done guessing and who are ready to work with someone who can help them identify and address the root cause of their hormone imbalance. So go to Imhermental.com/goals or click on the link in the show notes and we'll figure it out together. I'll see you in the next one.