Postpartum Weight Loss, Perimenopause, & Building Strength for Women’s Health

Today I'm going to take you behind the scenes to a vulnerable look at the Last year, about 14 months of my life where I have been working towards losing weight. Last summer after having my second, I wrote an article about how I'm losing 50 pounds after two pregnancies without counting calories. And it was an incredibly popular blog post. So I had outlined the fact that I had two kids back to back. My daughter was born in May of 2023 and then I got pregnant when she was three months old with our son, who was born the day before her first birthday in May of 2024 last summer. And in both pregnancies I gained 40 pounds. But the issue with the second pregnancy, obviously second pregnancies are harder on the body in general. But I would say that also because of only having three months in between the two pregnancies, that it wasn't enough time to replete my nutrient stores. It wasn't enough time to support my muscle mass, rebuilding my muscle mass and probably my bone health as well. I went into my second pregnancy about 10 pounds above where my pre pregnancy weight was because of only having that three month window. So this second recovery process, now that I'm about 15 months postpartum and this second recovery process has been a lot harder and I'm still working towards improving my body composition, regaining my muscle mass, supporting my bone health. Because of the fact that our muscle and bone health both peak in our 30s, I just don't think that there's enough that's factored into the amount of muscle that is lost during pregnancy and then how much harder that is postpartum when, especially if you're having kids later. Not that I was late late, but you know, now that I'm at the point that my body will naturally start to lose muscle if I'm not doing things to compensate for that natural shift, that it just becomes that much harder and we have to be that much more diligent as far as supporting our overall health. So I'm going to take you behind the scenes to exactly, just as an open conversation of what I've experienced In the last 15 months, things that have worked, things that haven't worked, and what I'm doing moving forward. But the one thing that I do want to start with is the fact that we need to drastically change the way that we think about weight loss. Most people think I just need to go on a diet to lose weight and then they don't understand how much food is impacting every single cell in their body. So it becomes Easy to say, oh, I give up, because the changes in the scale aren't happening fast enough. And then they miss the larger implications of changing their diet. Right. I call this the weight loss illusion, where the diet industry has trained people to only connect their food intake with the number on the scale. So most believe that weight is the only true improvement that occurs as a result of changing dietary intake. So then when that doesn't happen as quickly as they would like, or it is happening, but because they're only weighing themselves on the scale and they're not actually factoring in the fact that muscle does weigh more than fat, it seems like they're not making progress when they truly might be. So then they give up and they go back to their old habits with missing the fact that nutrition plays such an important role in supporting every single aspect of our health. So we want to think about one not obsessing over weight loss, not making it, like, so obsessive that you're cutting down to 1200 calories a day. You're hardly able to go out with your friends and eat. You're doing like a special K diet or avoiding all fruit or something extremely extreme, and instead thinking about it as a way that you want to support your body composition and changes without going into an enormously large calorie deficit that slows down your metabolism so much that then leads to more yo yo dieting. So this is extremely common, and a lot of women that go through our programs is that they have had a history of yo yo dieting. And when you actually measure their caloric expenditure based on their age and their gender, caloric expenditure will be less. Oftentimes in women who have done diets where they're drastically cutting their calories for a certain period of time because it slows down the metabolism and it throws off hormones and other aspects of our overall health. So we want to approach this in a way where it's actually supporting our health and not taking away from. I remember a client that had gone through My Food Is Health a few years ago who said, before My Food is Health, I would have done literally anything to lose weight, regardless of the hit that my health overall took. Meaning that if she did a diet that left her feeling extremely bloated and constipated and drastically reduced her energy levels and made her health actually worse, she would have done it in order to lose weight. And so we want to think about it in the opposite approach, that nutrition should be supporting our overall health as our number one goal, and also in a way that supports our metabolism so that we're not just trying to lose the most amount of weight in the shortest amount of time possible, that then the metabolism takes a hit and then you regain the weight and then you're not able to sustain those, those changes that you've made. So this requires a game of patience with which isn't always the easiest, especially in today's Ozempic era. And this is not to make anyone feel shame around the idea of incorporating Ozempic into their routine if, if that's what works best for you. If I'm being 100% honest, some days I'm like, should I take Ozempic? And then I, you know, I get to the point that I'm like, no, I am not taking Ozempic. But I feel like a lot of people are tempted to be like this, maybe I should. And I'm not saying that that's for some people, it's absolutely can be helpful. But in this era you have to like, continue to stay the course if you want to use nutrition and lifestyle as your way of optimizing your metabolism and getting to the body composition that you're working towards. And that requires patience and staying the course and continuing to bring yourself back when you start to self sabotage. And so this has happened to me many times throughout the last year of like self sabotaging where it's like, oh, it's not happening fast. I'm not seeing the results fast enough. And especially as a dietitian who's leading, I mean, I have led tens of thousands of women in the last 10 years not only for improving their weight, but their overall health. And so sometimes I have this imposter syndrome where I'm like, maybe a lot of nutritionists and influencers that talk about health online, they'll typically lose their weight very quickly postpartum. And so I think that the experience that I have had is that it's, that has not been the case for me, that has not been my experience. And I've tried to talk myself out of sharing that so many times because I have had this complex of saying, would me talking about not being at my pre pregnancy weight still 15 months postpartum, take away from the confidence that people have in our nutrition programs and maybe, but I still think that it's important to be honest and transparent and I would rather be honest in that journey even if it means that, you know, people feel less confident in order for you to feel less alone. Because I do have extreme confidence in the approach that we take. And I think that it's an unhealthy thing that we naturally gravitate towards people who like have a six pack on the Internet and then are teaching other people how to have a six pack on the Internet purely based off of their experience, which also, you know, is like their genetics and other factors that just because you have a six pack doesn't mean that you're a nutrition expert and doesn't mean that you have great programming, great advice, or that you really know what you're talking about. And so it's just an interesting world that we live in where sometimes even though I have all the experience and the credibility and the knowledge base that I do, that there's a part of me sometimes that's like, oh, but that person with the six pack abs, with no nutrition credentials and no experience is something that I'm jealous of. I don't even want to say. I mean, maybe it is jealous. So anyways, I'm sharing this with you to just help you understand that I think everyone at some point struggles with feeling like it's not happening fast enough. What else should I be doing? And it's important to stay the course. So this is something that I'm so I've lost about £40 in the last 15 months, which I feel great about, but I still have that, that additional last 10 pounds to lose in order to get to my pre pregnancy weight. And it's not even about necessarily getting to the pre pregnancy weight as much as it is about wanting to go into this next phase of my life at 35 stronger, more confident and in a stronger foundation, knowing that perimenopause is approaching and the better your health is going into this from a weight standpoint, from a blood sugar, from inflammation, from a gut health, all of it that directly impacts your hormones and it will impact the amount of symptoms that you're experiencing. Perimenopause. And so many women that we work with that are going through perimenopause or menopause in our programs, you know, they're experiencing their body feeling out of control, where it's like their body is changing a lot. And especially in perimenopause, because hormones are all over the place, you're experiencing a lot of symptoms. And so nutrition and lifestyle factors can drastically offset a lot of those symptoms because of the way that it's mechanistically able to lower our inflammation and lower blood sugar, which impacts our hormones, hormones, and supports our microbiome, which impacts our hormones and how the body is totally interconnected. And so thinking about this is that, of course, losing weight is in some ways about, you know, feeling confident in your body. In another vein, I would say that the messaging that you can have health at any size is fairly misleading because the research continues to show that the more visceral fat that you carry, especially the more fat that you carry around your abdominal area, the more inflammation, the more inflammatory cytokines that that fat is releasing, which are close to those important organs which increase your risk of things like heart disease and other serious conditions. So when we think about it that way, like, it actually helps to support our overall health. But then I'm trying to go into this next phase of my life with a strong health foundation and feeling strong, also knowing that after 30s, your muscle and bone mass starts to go down, and I need mine to be great so that I have the independence and I'm not frail in a state of osteoporosis when I'm 60 and 70 years old. And I do believe that that starts in the here and now, in the choices that I'm making today. So it's a much larger conversation than. Than just, like, how you look in your genes. Although I do, I will say that just going through this experience in the last year has made me care more about how I feel in my jeans. Like, I feel good. And there were times that, you know, especially just going straight into another pregnancy, that I was like, oh, I don't even want to get dressed in the morning. Like, it doesn't feel good to not feel good in your body. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with saying that or admitting it. So my point in saying this is that my goal is to go into this next phase strong and focusing on all the other factors that weight impacts, knowing that our body is interconnected, and the fact that I'm not trying to be as thin as possible, I'm trying to be as strong as possible. Like, I'm not trying to be the leanest ever, but I'm trying to build muscle and have more strength than I have in the past, not only for myself, but also to, you know, be a role model to my kids. That's something that I care a lot about. We live and breathe the lifestyle of the being collective, and my food is health and being bridged. Functional nutrition. Like, my husband's friend that came in town a few weeks ago, and he looked at our pantry and said, your pantry is so boring. Which I don't think so at all because we have so many. Like, we make optimal treats and other Things within the bean collective recipes that are so fun. But we live and breathe the lifestyle. Not to the point that we live in a bubble and we don't have fun or ever eat things that aren't organic and those sorts of things. But my point in saying this is that I do want to be a role model for my kids as far as like, I love when I'm working out and they are in the area that we have like the, the treadmill and some of our weights, it's like glass doors. And sometimes the two of them will put their little inflata couches in front of those two glass doors and they watch me work out and they cheer for me when I'm working out. And so it's like those things that I want to see them see me be strong so that they know that it's possible for themselves and that making healthy choices is just ingrained in them. Not in an obsessive way, but in a way that they don't have to learn for themselves in their 20s and their 30s and their 40s. I just think that most of the women that go through our programs, like, they don't realize how many things that they're learning as adults that are because of what they didn't learn as kids and because of all the messed up messaging that exists within diet culture and within our healthcare system. Completely ignoring the role that nutrition plays and no one educating women at all on the transition of perimenopause and menopause and how much nutrition plays a huge role in that. How much nutrition plays a huge role in preparing your body for pregnancy, how much nutrition plays a role in supporting your postpartum health. I mean, even today there's like there was no discussion really around nutrition at all in my doctor's appointments when I was pregnant or postpartum outside of like, we just wanna make sure you're taking a prenatal. And then when I would ask questions about a prenatal, since I'm a medical advisor for the prenatal company called Wenatal, I'm a medical advisor and formulated the prenatal and also am an investor. So I would just ask questions to the OB GYNs to just like see what they had to say. And every single one of them said, all prenatals are created equal, it's fine to take whatever prenatal, which could not be further from the truth. So my point is that even the, the information is lacking today, but a lot of times the reason that we're having to relearn these Things and retrain our brains into being consistent, into not self sabotaging, into having a positive mindset is because of the things that you're unlearning from so many years of like diet, culture, indoctrination, essentially. Okay, so all of that to say, my first recommendation is that you don't have to be an overnight success. And I think sometimes the overnight success pressure is what leads people to get off track once they haven't seen the overnight success. So be patient. Know that if it happens in two years and you're continuing to build strength, that's a great thing. Like, it does not have to happen in two months in order for it to be deemed a success. So I believe that, you know, that long game, it's all about playing the long game, creating these habits that are the most sustainable, that aren't extremely restrictive, where you feel like you're just eating 1200 calories of broccoli and chicken every day until you can no longer take it, and then you binge eat and you go back to regaining all of the weight that you lost on your chicken and broccoli diet. So my focus has really been on improving body composition, focusing on muscle, fat and bone health instead of just weight loss alone. Thinking about my health holistically, supporting hormone balance, especially if you're a woman in a hormonal transition, this is important. You don't want your hormones to take a huge hit with a extremely caloric, deficient diet. So we want to support our hormones, we want to lower inflammation, support our energy levels, and then number three, not tying my worth to the scale. So weight is really just one piece of health. And I think for so long, women have been made to believe. I was just talking about this with even like my grandma's generation, that it's like at that time, even the goal was to be thin and eating as little as possible was the name of the game. And it was like weight was health, essentially. And I cannot tell you the number of people that I have worked with that are a very healthy weight and a great body composition that are not the picture of health. They have so much inflammation, they have so many gut issues. And I'm not saying, like everyone that has great body composition is experiencing this, but it's not just about how you look, it's also about how you feel. And so sometimes when people come into our programs, like they've done so many calorie counting diets and diets that focus on just how much you're eating, portion control and that sort of thing, and so that might work for losing weight, but it's not necessarily going to help you drastically improve your symptoms, drastically improve your labs, and holistically improve your overall health. So we want to think about feeling good in addition to looking good. And good can be the standard that you create for yourself. Takeaway number two that I've had is that it's okay if life transitions change what you're prioritizing. So I think that, you know, this is a stage in life where it's very chaotic. Life is very full. My bucket is very full. And there is, you know, really not a lot of independence because of, you know, kids being so young. Time is flying. And I will have, you know, like, even nights where I've been working all day and was with my kids in the morning, and then throughout the day, since we have our nanny that comes to our house while I'm working. And so I'm able to see them, like, in between things throughout the day or at lunch or that sort of thing. But then I'll get to the end of the day and my husband Johnny will say, like, you can go to a yoga class or go do something. And of course, self care is so important, and I am doing my best to figure out the ways to prioritize that. But, like, I don't want to miss out on a lot of dinners going to a yoga class, because I know that time there's not a lot of years that we have with them this young and at home. So it might sound silly, but that's how I personally feel about it. And so when it comes to you, it's like, think about the things that really matter and that are priorities for you and don't, and then work around them, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. So when your bucket is as full as it is, especially with, like, kids being young and managing so many different things, I'm not gonna, like, take three hours to sit down and plan out all of our meals for the week. That's where the Being Collective saves me, because the Being Collective, one of our nutrition programs, helps to plan out the meals. You know, we plan out your meals for you, my team of dietitians and I. And then I just take the template from the Being Collective and I modify it for us so that then Johnny can take it grocery shopping and we can tag team that experience so that I'm still able to get dinner on the table in a way that feels really aligned with where I'm at in my life without feeling like it's Adding more to my plate. So instead of feeling like it has to be 100% perfect, figuring out where you can be flexible is the name of the game. Because if you are trying to approach it from a place of perfection, often that leads to doing nothing at all. Where you're like, okay, I'm gonna go on the plan when I can do it perfectly, and then I'm gonna go off the plan and then I'm gonna wait a year to get back on the plan for me to be able to do it perfectly. And really the goal is to be able to integrate this into your daily life so that you can make it your lifestyle, regardless of how busy you are, by saving you time, helping you be more efficient, helping you incorporate the meal prepping, which really is a game changer in order to continue to work towards your health goals. Also, because in these hormonal changes, like I, I know that I still have about 10 pounds that I'm trying to lose. And I'm also doing a DEXA scan to better understand my muscle to body fat composition differences. But especially when you're looking at using food to support your overall health, fueling your body with whole food ingredients to help to decrease inflammation. Like we want to be doing that as often as possible in order to support these transitions in life. So that again, you're thinking about it as more than just the number on the scale and you're thinking about how you're showing up in your day to day life. Like if you feel good in your body. Okay, Takeaway number three is the importance of a health audit. So I was recently speaking to a woman who was saying how she's doing everything right and nothing has been working, that she feels like she's trying so hard and for as hard as she's trying, that the effort isn't equaling the results that they should, or at least that they used to, that like her body is changing and so it's just not as responsive to the things that used to work. And I talked to her about the fact that like, instead of allowing yourself to feel discouraged that you, you're doing literally everything in her mind and there's no room for improvement, which is, you know, sometimes something that people report other people, you might be able to recognize things that you have an opportunity to work on. But I think that it's very effective to do a health audit. So thinking about what am I doing really well and then where are my areas to be optimized? Because despite how perfect you feel like you are eating, if you still can't lose 10 pounds if your blood sugar or inflammation markers are elevated, if you're still feeling extra depleted, if you're extremely fatigued and brain fogged and having constipation and not able to sleep at night, like there is opportunity for improvement. I also talked to someone recently who said that she has prediabetes with that she's able to manage the prediabetes with her diet. And I said, well, have you ever thought about trying to tweak things even more so that you can reverse your prediabetes instead of just feeling good with staying where you're at in a pre diabetic state? Mainly because as a woman ages, insulin sensitivity will typically go down because of declines in estrogen. So the declines in estrogen will lead to more insulin resistance over time. So a person, if you have Pre diabetes at 45 and you just continue to maintain that same diet and lifestyle that you that's keeping you at the same place, that will eventually likely lead to worse blood sugar outcomes 10 years from that timeframe. So I said, can I challenge you to think more about, like, how can you go backwards and make tweaks in order to do that? And she said, I'm eating so well and it's working. It's keeping my blood sugar at the same place so it's not continuing to go up and up from a hemoglobin A1C standpoint. And so I said to her, if you are eating a diet that is contributing to prediabetes. Now, of course there are various factors, but what I will say, generally speaking, in the thousands of people that I have worked with, many of which with a focus on blood sugar, is that there are likely still opportunities, there are still opportunities to move the needle. And a health audit can be a great way for you to really be honest because sometimes we give ourselves maybe too much credit, more credit than we deserve for some of the habits or approaches that we're taking with our health. So I did an audit for myself. Where I want to walk you through. I last year when I wrote the article about how I'm losing 50 pounds, I wrote out a list of things that I was prioritizing this upcoming year. And so I took that list and then I created a health audit to say on a scale of 0 to 10, here's what I would rate myself at so that I can see my greatest area of opportunity. So you can use this audit, if you would like and make it your own. And some of it might come down to, like, what your Personal goals are. So number one, letting hunger and fullness cues guide me. I have not been counting calories. I am not interested in excessively counting calories. I'm definitely calorie aware but not counting. So I gave myself an 8 out of 10 for really tuning into hunger and fullness cues in order to manage my portions in that way. Number two, never skipping meals or eating protein bars for meals. I gave myself a 7 out of 10 because I definitely do. I don't have necessarily meals with protein bars, but definitely do with snacks. And I do at times skip meals. Not often, but it does happen. And if there's a meal that I'm going to skip or that I end up skipping, it's typically going to be lunch because I have meeting to meeting to meeting. And so that's an area of opportunity. Although I would say that that is more rare that I'm. I'm that jam packed. Number three, hitting my protein goals. I gave myself a nine out of ten. I feel like I could almost give myself a ten out of ten because I'm doing well there eating nutrient dense whole foods. I give myself a 10 out of 10 because we really like that is the foundation of all of our meals. And I am not tempted at all by things like fast food, processed foods, those sorts of things. Processed foods meaning ultra processed foods. Measuring healthy fats. I gave myself a 7 out of 10. Measuring healthy fats. You know, the fats can really add up up. And not that you want to be thinking obsessively about calories because you also want to think about all these other properties that and how food can help with them, but the healthy fats, they do add up. So like if you're just, you know, like pouring a whole thing of extra virgin olive oil into your pan when you're cooking your vegetables at night, like that could be an opportunity to start measuring those out in order to just like factor in those unnecessary calories. So measuring healthy fats. I gave myself a 7 out of 10 mainly because I often catch my husband not measuring healthy fats before adding them to the pan. Not eating directly out of the bag was another one and I gave myself a 7 out of 10. Not eating directly out of the bag is such a great way to try to keep your portions in a portion aware state. Getting enough sleep? I gave myself an 8 out of 10 mainly because James is still waking up at least once a week. And so I'm not like getting as much sleep because of that. But I generally really prioritize sleep. So most Nights I put my kids down and then I'll do a few things like hang out with Johnny for a little and then I'm going to bed very soon after putting my kids to bed. So I definitely do a good job of prioritizing sleep overall. But I gave myself an 8 out of 10 because I still am waking up in the middle of the night with James sometimes limiting alcohol to one glass per week. 10 out of 10. I'm very consistent with that. 10,000 steps per day. I gave myself a 9 out of 10. I actually went back and looked at my Garmin data from the last six months. I wear an aura and a Garmin and I am interested in comparing actually the data for both and sharing that. But I average about 9,000 steps per day for the last six months. So I gave myself a nine out of ten. Modeling very healthy habits to my kids. I would say 10 out of 10, meaning healthy habits. Also encompassing having a positive relationship with food, not like talking about weight, calories, other things that are going to create a negative relationship with food within your kids. And enjoying occasional treats like a chocolate chip cookie from the bean collective when McKinley and I bake together. McKinley loves baking the chocolate chip cookie recipe from the Bean Collective. And now that she's two we, she's having added sugar sometimes. And so I gave myself a 10 out of 10 for that. So moving forward, I want to go through how I'm going to make some shifts in order to continue to optimize my body composition, because that is a goal of mine, to dial things in further. So just to note, not all these things are going to be relevant to weight loss. It's also just about comprehensively supporting my overall health, knowing that it takes up to two years for a woman to recover postpartum. So I want to think strategically about supporting my gut health and my hormones and that sort of thing. So one getting more strategic with exercise. I'm switching up my exercise routine. So instead of doing I was doing like a strength Pilates, which not that I'm not doing it anymore, but I'm doing instead strength training at home. I do better like doing classes out of the house, but I'm trying to actually do more strength training exercises with Peloton's app, and I've really been liking that. And also I have noticed that it's not just about the 9,000 steps per day, but it's really about the intensity of those steps, which I'll get into more in future episodes. But my goal is to increase the intensity. So walking three times per week at a 10 incline on the treadmill at a 3.0 pace for 20 to 30 minutes is my goal. So that I'm also getting my heart rate up and more of that zone two exercise, becoming more dialed in with my portions and really like, honoring my hunger and satiety cues, which we work on a lot in the Bean Collective. And My Food is Health, to be honest, focusing on antioxidants, polyphenols, and fiber sources at every single meal, working on my gut health more intentionally with supplements and identifying food triggers. I have a few lingering symptoms from pregnancy that I'm still trying to figure out. And so my goal is to work on my gut, knowing that gut disruptions can lead to a lot of various symptoms, from skin health to changes in bowel movements to, like, more bloating after meals and that sort of thing. So I'm trying to listen to the symptoms that I'm experiencing and then develop a protocol in order to address it instead of just, you know, accepting that as my new norm. Doing nutrient deficiency testing, which also looks at gut health needs. So this is the test that we use in My Food Is Health, where everyone that signs up for My Food is Health, we ship this lab in the mail so that you can test all of your nutrient deficiencies. This is definitely an area that provides more of that, like, personal insight. Testing body composition, because bone health peaks in mid-30s and muscle health does. And I truly believe that muscle loss during pregnancy is drastically underestimated. So I want a really clear picture on not even just the number on the scale. I honestly rarely weigh myself, but I want to better understand what that composition looks like. Running a full panel of conventional markers. This I am overdue for. This is something that we recommend doing every single year. And because of being pregnant, I have not done it in a while. And so I want to get a great pulse on that. The full panel. When I say full panel, I mean all of the markers that we list in my lab guide, where we're looking at cholesterol and LDL cholesterol, but then going a lot deeper, looking at, like, your APOB and your LP and then other markers of, like, inflammation and other things in order to get a full picture. So a lot of times people don't have access to these labs, which makes it harder. And then on top of that, I feel like we're in an era where people are overly depending on lab information that's like, AI interpreted and not enough on the roadmap that needs to be created from the Actual conventional markers. So fortunately, because I create people's protocols and my team of dietitians creates protocols for people who go through our programs, it makes it easy for me. But I do want to add the caveat that if this isn't your like day to day job, that I would not only recommend running a full conventional panel, but also working with someone who is very knowledgeable, who can create a specific protocol for you that will help to expedite your results so that you're not trying to just like go in a million different directions and then like change what you're doing every two weeks because you're trying something new. Continuing to embrace nutrition with joy and without rigidity, that is super, super important to me. I grew up in a household where my mom, I never saw her step on a scale, I never heard her talk about calories. She was just a big believer in using food as medicine and to. She made all of my meals when my parents took me to the functional medicine doctor in 2005 and helped me really understand how, how food can heal the body. And that is something that is so important to me because I want that to be the foundation for my kids as well. Optimizing my heart rate variability levels is also something that I am going to dial in on. So that's mainly because I care about stress resilience, knowing that that impacts overall hormone health. And I am tracking this on my OURA ring. So I've been wearing an OURA ring for about eight or nine years. I started wearing OURA ring when it was like in beta testing many, many, many years ago, before it became a, an enormous company. And I was obsessed. Like I had all my, my clients at the time wearing them and tracking their heart rate variability because heart rate variability is an incredibly important measurement of our overall health. I also love tracking my cycle. So that's another factor is that tracking my cycle and better understanding the different phases of my cycle between the follicular phase and the luteal phase, which we'll talk more about in the show. But being able to track that information and really get a pulse on that. Your cycle health is a measurement of your overall health. And especially when you're going through these hormone shifts like I am, if it's postpartum or perimenopause, where your body is just fluctuating, this can be super helpful and a great indicator of your overall hormone health. So that is what I'm focused on moving forward. And I feel actually like very good about where I am. I feel like I'VE made so much progress, and I'm very much looking forward to continuing to challenge myself and see the progress over time. I'm excited to continue to share my journey with you as well, because I think that there's just so much nuance within this conversation and being able to approach it in a healthy way is so incredibly rare, but also very important. So I'm excited to continue to take you on this journey with me. And I also want to just say that if you're in a place of feeling discouraged or like it's not working, that I want to just reiterate the importance of not giving up on yourself. So just because you haven't found the right approach that works for you doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. This is especially true in this information era, where we have access to so much information through books and podcasts. And sometimes the greatest levels of transformation will come through your personal reflection, which is why I would really encourage you to do that health audit that I walked you through, that I did for myself. So do that for yourself in order to really see where you're at and where the opportunities are. And maybe you need mindset shifts to help to support you in increasing your accountability. Maybe you need to better understand exactly what's happening with your body. Maybe you feel like you eat pretty healthy, but it's not working like it used to and you need to up your game with being more intentional. And so wherever you're at, as far as what you need, only you know that. And so reflecting on that is something that I would absolutely encourage. But I want to just let you know that I am here to support you and to remind you that you are fully capable of optimizing your health, of getting to a weight where you feel super comfortable and hopefully focusing on getting stronger, not thinner, getting stronger, building more muscle, building more bone health to support your overall health and aging. So again, health is not linear. It is not a direct path. It's important for us to embrace these ebbs and flows as I have been doing and I'm going to encourage you to do. But again, just a reminder that you are more than capable. You are strong and you are entirely capable of showing up for yourself, getting stronger and feeling more confident in your body. So thank you for tuning in today. Please subscribe and leave a review. If you're really enjoying the show, I am super honored to have you here. If we can support you in optimizing your health and going deeper with achieving your health goals, feel free to check out our programs@beingbrigid.com and I will see you in the next episode.