How Liz Urbina Healed Her Gut, Found Her Power, and Broke Generational Cycles

Hello, heroines, and welcome back. I hope you guys are poised to have an awesome week, and we're gonna start it off on the right foot with my friend Liz Urbina, who is here to talk to us about health. Always an important topic, especially when we're going through challenges, difficult times. I think we tend to forget to take care of ourselves because we feel like we have so many other things to do. And it's actually probably the most important thing we can do. So Liz, welcome.

Thank you, thank you, Alexandra Niel. I'm super happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

You're very welcome. So let's just start off easy. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Yeah, so hello everybody, I'm Liz Urbina. I am a I'm coming from an engineering background, so I spent 22 years of my life practicing engineering in 3 different continents, not even countries, like way many more countries than that. And I shifted in the past 5 years. I pivoted into like a very, very different field. I am now dedicated to help women over 40 to heal their gut naturally with nutrition. And I love, I love, um, one of my favorite quotes is from Hippocrates, you know, father of medicine, and he said the gut is where all disease begins. I like looking at it the other way around and saying the gut is where true health begins. So, and it's my passion and it always started on me. So I guess that's the next, the next piece we're going to talk about.

I was going to ask you next. So how did you, because that's a big pivot to make, right? To go from engineering into health. So take us through that a little bit. Yeah.

And what took me there, like for most of us, right, is our own pain, our own life experience and the PhDs we acquire all over the years. So mine, you know, during this period of my life, like, trying— I, 15 years ago, I just moved from Europe into Canada and started, you know, with my small family. My son at the time was 4 years old. My husband started working away from home, and I was a single mom Monday to Friday, and I was starting my own— rebuilding my own career in Canada too. And so full-time working mom, you know, plus all of the things, trying to keep the house out of fire. And of course, I was not taking good care of myself. I actually thought I was loving myself. Every time I was like coming back from work and thinking, okay, what's for dinner? And just stopping by the closest, you know, grocery, like the cleanest thing I would grab was stopping at the grocery store and grab like a frozen meal and a pre-made salad kind of thing. Like that was like the cleanest thing. But most of the times were actually, you know, the tacos, the pizza, the, you know, all of the quick fixes and comfortable foods. And, um, I, of course, my, all my weekdays ended with one or two glasses of wine because I really felt like I deserved served it after a crazy— another crazy day. And a lot of caffeine was keeping me alive. You know, the typical, I guess, survival mode of this time and age, women, professional women. And even though I was struggling with my health, like, it was showing. I never struggled really with being super overweight, but I was 15 pounds overweight at the time. My skin, I had a lot of skin issues. The doctor said, don't worry about it, you know, just take the antibiotics, just take this, just take, just, you know, all of the quick fixes again. I had a lot of digestive issues. Bloating was like my thing to go. Actually, I would be asked consistently if I was pregnant, and I have a very painful, funny story about that. Because bloating and constipation were my daily struggle. Like, I would go over a week without having a bowel movement. And again, I thought that all of those things were normal. That's what I was told by my doctor anyway. Just take this sludge and go once a week and that's going to be fine. You know, and I wasn't really connecting any of the dots until I wanted to give my son a little brother or little sister. That's when, you know, one year passed, two years passes, and I'm like, Hmm, this is weird. Like, I actually conceived my first child very quickly. Within a couple of months, I was pregnant, right? So why? I was not expecting anything different. Now it's 2 years that has passed, have passed, and I'm struggling with this. Of course, my periods were a mess. Like, you know, all of the things and Really, the day that I walked into the clinic, the fertility clinic, and I heard the words secondary unexplained infertility, that was the day that I was like, OMG, what happened? Like, I asked my own body, what the heck happened? Because we, we were fine. Like, I knew I wasn't born like that, right? So literally my ovaries were— had aged prematurely. I had ovaries that looked more like for a 50-year-old woman. And that didn't happen by, you know, by chance. That happened because of my choices. And that was one of the hardest things that I had to accept and I had to take responsibility of. So just remembering now my telling my son who was like crazy about how the idea of having a little brother, little sister, telling him that that was not gonna happen. That was one of the hardest things. Because I had to own it, you see. So, so that was the beginning of my, I guess, my, my first of all, full awareness of, oh my gosh, my choices matter. And the second piece was acceptance, right? Accepting the reality that I was living in. And I feel like You know, everybody now, I know everybody says around there, out here in the personal development world, well, that those are actually two things needed to make any change. We have to first become aware, right, that something needs to be changed. And secondly, we need to accept the what is. But here's the thing, and here is where, here's my invitation and what happened to me and what I help other women do now is acceptance doesn't mean settling. Acceptance doesn't mean, you know, releasing, like giving up, giving up, and to even feeling our very best no matter our age. And I am now 47. This happened when I was 34. And one of the things that I literally lived perimenopause early in my life, right? So I hear all the time all of these women talking about all of the pains and aches and how inevitable those things are. And I'm like, wait a second, they are not inevitable. They don't have to be your normal life. You don't have to suffer. This is just another stage in our beautiful life, and it can actually be very beautiful and empowering if we give our body what it needs. We just need to listen. So that is where, you know, the third piece actually comes in, is taking personal responsibility. And that's what I did, literally. So yeah, I see you wanted to ask something.

Yeah, no, that's okay. I was going to ask you because there's a difference between fixing the physical, but there's also fixing the mental, right? The mindset that goes along with— because the mindset influences the decisions that we make, it influences the foods that we eat. So how do you go about changing the mindset from one that does not serve to one that does?

I love— one of the things I love telling my clients is that It's actually not coming from me. It's a quote I read somewhere. I forget where I read this, but it says that one of the ways people give up their own power is by believing they don't have any. So I was one of those women who found all of the reasons why I could not make the changes. I am way too busy. My family is not going to like it. My son is not going to like it. And I was like, I was the cook at home, and I was not about to start, you know, catering for everybody's preferences. So I was like, okay, if I'm— if I am going to change, everybody has to come with me. And it was actually one of the best decisions I made. It wasn't easy. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It wasn't easy, especially because I was on a lot of trial and error. I went through the science, like being like, I have this engineering mind that, okay, I need to really understand because there's a lot of noise out there and fad diets and do this and this is the healthy thing and go carnivore and go, you know, all of the different contradictions. And I was like, okay, I need to understand the science, understand my body, and come up with ways of creating the change so that everybody enjoys it because the only sustainable change you can make is if you are actually enjoying it. So that's the, the, I guess, the, the trajectory that I had to go through. And I came up with, you know, the ways of creating like my family's favorite dishes, but now I started creating them in a way that was more supportive. To everybody's health. Like, my husband was struggling with fatty liver and prediabetes at the time. And, you know, high cholesterol, all of the things. All of those things went away. My son had also skin issues with 5 years old. And the doctor said, oh, don't worry about it. He will just live with that. Just put some lotion, and that's it. That went away when we started changing the way we eat it. And by change, what I mean is just finding foods that are closer to how nature makes them, how nature actually provides us— nature actually provides us what we need. And what happens is that we are living in a society that is pushing us away from those things and move— and actually making us choose more and more other things. Like the other day I was at the movies, and this is another funny story. I was at the movies with my son, who's now 21, and his girlfriend. I know, weird date. But we're at the movies sitting down eating our popcorn, and then, you know, ad after ad before the movie with all of the you know, the new chocolate flavor, the new soda flavor, the new snack, whatever it is, right? Like all of those things. But what really took me like, oh my gosh, again, was that the next ad right before the movie was go to the doctor and ask for Ozempic. Right? And I'm like, I look around and this is a room full of girls and men, young men in their 20s and 30s. And the message these people are receiving every day from everywhere is, it's okay. Stuff your mouth with everything and just go to the doctor and take the next pill and that's gonna be fine.

Right? And the crazy thing is, that's how— that's what keeps the machine going all the time, right? Because you make the wrong choices, you go to the doctor, they give you a pill. It doesn't fix the underlying issue or the background of what's going on, but that makes you age faster. It means you're going to be dependent on the system that's going to give you more pills as you age. So it's— so I want to, I want to just go back to what you said, because you said for you it was— you had to make a big shift, and you said you were a single mother, and that shift must not have been easy to make. So what were some of the— what was some of the inner dialogue, some of the conversations you had with yourself that helped you to reprioritize? Because I'm assuming there had to be a level of reprioritization in the things that you were doing every day to get to the point where you started making better choices. And the reason I'm asking is because I think for a lot of the women in the group that are going through this challenging time, it can be very easy to ignore because we have so many other things to do. Exactly.

So unfortunately, it is our human nature that sometimes we have to hit, or most of the times we have to hit rock bottom in order to, right, wait for life to force us to change instead of us being proactive. My hope is really that I help women start making, taking the steps before life forces them. So for me, the force was I really wanted to have another child. I didn't want to take the infertility diagnosis as an answer, and I started looking for alternatives. And looking for alternatives to get pregnant, I found my first mentor in nutrition. Because funny enough, when the time I went into her office, I was expecting her to ask me all about my hormones and all about, you know, all about the things. And the first thing she asked was actually, Liz, are you pooping? And I'm like, What does this have to do with getting pregnant, right? I had to fill in all of this questionnaire about, okay, how often am I going? We're going to do some stool tests for you. We're going to do— right? And I'm like, and how are you sleeping? How is your energy? And I was not asked any of these things in the one entire year I was undergoing fertility treatments. Right? So it was, it was definitely a different approach, but it, it was the one thing that increased my awareness and start and help me start seeing, oh my gosh, my choices in the past 10 years have been quietly creating the reality that I am living today. So some of the, some of the dialogue that was going on in my, in my mind, well, the first block I had was I don't have time, right? I am way too busy. Like, I was waking up at 4 AM in the morning and going to bed at 11, and how am I gonna even make it work so that I have to cook, breakfast, lunch, and dinner for myself and my son, at least during the week, and make it all work with everything else that's going on. But what I discovered— well, here is another quote I love: when we fight for our limitations, we get to keep them. I was fighting very hard for my limitations, but because I wanted really wanted to have that other child, then I started fighting for what was possible for me. And I created those possibilities. So I created the time. I created the time to prioritize because now this was a priority. So here is where we get hung up, right? Like, I have no time. Well, we got the same time that everybody else. It's all about what is important for you. So when you say, I didn't have time to make a healthy meal for myself and for my family, what you're really saying is that was not a priority for me. Period. Right? It's as simple as that. So reorganizing my priorities was necessary for me to start doing this. And here is a question I ask my clients. Like in the most loving way. How many hours do you spend daily watching Netflix or going on your social media, right? Like those are time sinks for everybody, including myself. I have to consciously, consciously block things that I know are time sinks for myself. So that is— those are things that we all need to do if we actually want to make it to our priorities in the right order. And so another thing I had in my mind is another dialogue, right, that I had in my mind. And one of those things I was fighting for is, okay, well, maybe it's my genetics. Maybe it runs in my family. Maybe it's I'm destined to this, right? But here is the one— here is what helped me get over that. Well, first of all, I had already one child, so it, it wasn't really my genetics. And then again, with my mentor, I learned about something called epigenetics. Yes, we do— we are born with a genetic charge that comes from our ancestors that we cannot change. That is a fact. But how those genes express, which genes express, meaning what actually, whether we are, we are capable of taking advantage of our weaknesses, of our strengths, and not expressing the weaknesses that we have because we all have them. That depends on the information we feed our entire body, mind, body, spirit every single day. I didn't know that. When I understood that, it was like, okay, another piece of the power piece, power cake I was taking back to myself. There was actually a lot like, and this is something I tell people who tells me, You know, cancer runs in my family, or diabetes runs in my family. I tell them, you know what? Only 5% of cases of cancer and diabetes are actually because of our genetics. 95% of them are actually because of our lifestyle, our choices. So you choose, you choose what to believe in, right?

And I think that's where the rubber meets the road, is because we may not feel like we have a choice, but there is always a choice, whether it's unconscious or conscious. It is a choice. So I like what you said earlier about Being aware, because the more aware we are, the more we can capture those subconscious thoughts or voices or stories and begin to switch those with intention and with conscious thinking.

Exactly, exactly.

So before we came on, we talked a little bit about relationships. And I know you haven't had your own experience, but you mentioned in your family there, there has been, um, there is a story of divorce somewhere. What did you learn from what was modeled in that situation that is helping you or that has helped you in your own relationship?

Yes, yes. Actually, I feel there's a lot of, there's a lot of connection between that story. It was my parents who went into a very traumatic divorce situation. And I feel that shaped a lot the, my choices going forward. And also how I was creating my own family then. So first of all, I was 15. I was a teenager when, and it was like a very, it was on Christmas Day of out of all days that my father, it occurred a great idea to my father to come home with his new partner, I guess, and into our family house and say, I'm leaving. So that was disastrous. Like, that was like, after that, my mom went to bed and I didn't see her getting out of bed in maybe a year. Like, he was into a full depression. I am the middle of 3 brothers and sisters. Actually, I have a younger sister, 12 years younger. So she was 5 when this happened. No, she's 3 when this happened.

Yes.

So I literally had to take care of her. I became her mother because my mom went to bed. My dad left, and he left even financially. So there was no— my older brother, he had gone to another city for university. And there I was with my mom and my little sister, with my mom in bed, my little sister. I was in high school, about graduating from high school, about to start university with big dreams, but having to take care of my little sister and my mom. And find a way to sustain us financially. Like, I had to find a job part-time and, you know, all of that, figure out how to send my sister to school. And it was nuts. And on weekends, then it was this game of, okay, my dad wanting to come to take my sister with him. To spend the weekend with him and seeing this huge argument around it, in front of her. So then I became this protective sister who, I didn't want my sister to be, you know, in the middle of the argument, like one pull one arm from one side and the other arm for the other. So it was this pressure of protection that I had over my sister. And that really took a toll. That really took a toll on me. And one of the things I always said, well, the day, the day I marry or live with somebody and create my, my own family, I don't ever want my children to experience this kind of situation. Like, I lived my dad speaking badly about my mom to me. And the same comment coming the other way. I'm like, what are you doing? I had to then, you know, after all of those years, even after I got married and had my own child, I had to think and stress out about who to invite for my son's birthday party. Is it gonna be dad or is it gonna be mom? Because they could not get along in the same room. You know, like, I don't think parents ever, um, realize this damage, you know, this collateral damage. And I was 15. I was not like— I understood, you know, what, what was happening. I understood people break up and, you know, this happens, but it was just the way it happened. So I cannot even imagine the level of trauma my my sister has because of this, right? So, so then, you know, my mom was always the stay-at-home mom. She would, you know, do everything and anything to keep my dad, you know, happy at home with nice meals and, you know, the laundry and everything. And when that left, chaos. Like, she didn't know what to do. Like, she didn't know how to find a job. Like, she had literally never, never worked, right? Like, so the second thing that that put in my mind was I never, ever, I'm going to depend on a man for meeting my basic needs. I have to be a financially independent woman. So going to school, getting my degree, and getting like the most, the best job ever was like non-negotiable for me. Like, I need this financial security for myself and for my kids when I have them, right? So, and so I, but I still I'm the kind of woman who loves, you know, putting together the nice meals, and I, I would take care of that part too, right? So I guess I spoiled my family in that way. So, but those, I, I would say those two things were the two things that shaped the way I run my, my future self and who I am today.

You know, the, the two things that you mentioned, I think I looked, I saw my parents get divorced when I was 21. And it was weird because it felt like everything I had been taught about relationships, about marriage, about love, about people being together, like somebody just threw a grenade in there, and it like, all of a sudden, everything that I knew to be true was no longer true. And I look at the situation that my boyfriend's in with his former wife and the chaos that the situation that your parents were in, um, very similar. So it's not easy to keep the peace, but stepping aside and thinking about it in terms of what is best for the child or the children, it takes ego out and it allows, from what I've seen, parents to show up from a place of really parenting and from a place of loving and supporting their children versus a place of having to be right and wanting to be right, which always is going to cause conflict.

Yeah, exactly. I agree 100% with you. It's, it's not easy, but you know what? I've seen it happening. I have one of my best friends. She, she got divorced with two young children. And it's actually the ideal divorce situation. I could, like I said, if I ever have to happen to go through this, this is the way I would do it. Like, Like you said, the well-being of the kids was paramount, was above and beyond the whether I'm right or wrong. And, you know, the friendliness that they— like, I guess because also the situation was not— there was not another man or another woman. Like, they were smart. And this is something— actually, this would be like the third thing I would I would, I took away from my parents' situation. And this is something that I talked to my, to my sister, this actually recently, probably they shouldn't have waited that long. Their relationship was gone way before my dad came over that Christmas. So to say that he was leaving, so they should have you know, being mature enough to see that and take the steps before all of that happened. And so that's what, of course, I'm not nobody to judge, but that's my learning is like, okay, if I ever feel like my marriage, my own marriage is going that way, I wouldn't wait until, you know, I, I've I fall for somebody else, or I, you know, or there's, I feel there's somebody else on the other side to just make the decision and just take, cut things with the, in the, you know, in the best way possible.

Yeah. And my parents did it that way in that they always put our interests before theirs. It also helped that my dad at the time was living here in the US with my brother and I, and my mom lived in France. So there, there was no risk of the two of them coming in contact unless they chose, they chose to. But the underlying thing was always, let's do what's best for the kids, and then everything else will sort itself out. So I agree with you that it's possible. It's easier when both people want that versus when only one person wants to make that happen, like with anything else, right?

Exactly.

But Liz, thank you so much for being here and for sharing your wisdom.