Ashley Koff x Mona Sharma | LIVE Podcast Recording

No, yeah, you should.

Honestly, in our world, like, all the noise around, things to do with gut microbiome and stuff like that, he's like my constant teacher. He's like my. My North Star, my real deal that I go to constantly.

Yes, that sounds great. I'll definitely keep an eye out. And he has. He has endo access as his company. Yeah.

So they developed the first company that can actually translate a Dutch test and put it into layman's terms for practitioners to actually understand what to do.

Bless you, sir. Okay, wonderful. That live as well here. We're live on Facebook.

Oh, okay, cool. So the incredible thing we'll close on endo axis is their formulator is an incredible woman who's an herbalist also. So that aspect of trusting in nature and, you know, just working to kind of nourish the female body with whatever imbalances there are is just so key. So, yeah, endoxis. Shout out to them. You can go and find them.

I love that. Okay, I will, I will. That's on my list.

Amazing. All right, let's dive in. We're good, we're good, we're good. We're going to do last sound. Check, check, check, check. We're good to go.

And the dog. You can hear her, right?

We're good. Yeah, I can hear her. We're amazing.

Great.

And smiling. Yeah. Okay, cool. All right, Ashley Kopf, welcome to Rooted in Wellness.

Thank you so much. I feel like this is a date many years in the making, so I'm thrilled. Yes. Thank you.

It's so great to finally meet you and to be somebody's cheerleader online. To meet them in person is such a gift. So we have a lot to dive into today, and I want to talk about your new book that's coming out. But before we do that, I want you to know that this podcast is all about merging ancient wisdom with modern day medicine and how we can all become more rooted and feel more rooted in our health and our happiness. And what I believe is our inner intuition to know that we can heal ourselves. So to kick things off, we always ask, what are two or three things that help you feel rooted in who you are? Your health or your happiness?

Yeah. I would say the first one is definitively nature. And I slept on that one for a long part of my life. I sort of. I didn't really. I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and it's not that there wasn't nature there. It just wasn't necessarily like, what I was going to find. I was more of a Suburban life and, and nature for me is a constant resetter. It reminds me too like sometimes of the seasons or that things are perfect just as they are. You know, like some of those key things I need to be reminded. It's also an enabler of my second thing, which is my dog, which is my time. You know, for me, my dog doesn't, when I take him on walks and hikes, I have a four year old lab. He does not let me like hang out on my phone or like go, you know, do the stuff I might do on my own. Like he literally will like stop and look at me or paw me and be like, be present, like let's do this. And so there's certainly the oxytocin of like petting him or doing things, but they're also just kind of like taking that time, you know, I think is really like really significant. And I would say the other one for me is humor. I think that it's like kind of a little bit of a divergent there. But you know, we can't be stressed, physiologically stressed and be laughing. Yes, we could be scared in a moment and have a laugh come out as like a response, but you can't actually sustain, sustain a belly laugh for like a minute and be in the body and have the body be stressed. So I feel like it just ends up that nature, you know, teed us up with or the, the, the body's ecosystem, you know, with the vagus nerve support system by learning to laugh. And so I just try to find things that are funny or make other people laugh. Yeah.

Yes, girl. Humor, laughter, having more fun. It literally puts you into that, like the feeling of awe and in the moment I think is just as beneficial to our physiology as meditation. So thank you for that one up. It's a big one. And I love that you're doing that in the season that you are in with a book coming out and the busyness. I love it.

And I'll share with you and your listeners may or may not relate to this, but I was like, okay, you know, everybody does those posts. Like, you know, you're in perimenopause when you know, and it's like, you know, this thing this morning, I was like, wait, it was actually yesterday. I was like, you've got to be kidding me. I remembered my estrogen, my testosterone actually. My testosterone, estrogen and progesterone. I forgot a bra, I forgot sunglasses. I forgot something else that I needed.

So.

So this morning, like I get off the plane at, at LAX and You know, I've got, like, five days, I'm traveling, and I'm just, like, laughing at myself. Like, I was like, like, like, how are you going to do this? You know, I had a sports bra, like, you know, so I was like, all right. I did last night's event in a sports bra. I'm like, I don't think I can wear one sports bra for six days. And so I just was, like, laughing all of my way through, like, and I met, like, six women in Target who helped me, like, find the bras and, like, do all. And, like, where. How could. And then where could I put it on? We're all dying, laughing. You know, it was like one episode of the we do not care club. But, you know, if we can't laug, like, where else would we be, Right? You know, So I feel like that's. Anyway, that.

Exactly. Oh, my God. That's a classic, classic story. So brilliant. Okay, Ashley, pause one second. We're just having an audio issue with.

It coming out on my end.

Yeah, I can hear you. It cuts out for, like, a split second. I just want to make sure that it's okay. She's back on now. Yes. Okay. Okay.

Keep all those Bluetooth away.

Thank you. All right, we're good to go. You can hear me?

Yeah, I. I've heard you. Great. Yeah. No, no.

Oh, I can't.

She can't hear you.

She can't hear me.

I can hear you. No, I.

You can hear me, but I can hear her.

Yeah, there you go. Yeah, but we could hear before, right?

All this off. Let's see. Can you hear me now?

I can. Yeah. I can hear you. Yep. Yeah, yeah. They're like, you're in the show. Everyone can see and hear you. Lies. That's right. Oh, I feel so bad. It's. Sorry about that. We're still working. It's not. I think it's not a mind. I think it's on their end. Yeah, I think. Can you speak to her?

Can you hear me?

I can hear you.

You can hear me. All right.

I can hear you.

Can you say something?

Talking. Telling you a whole story about my world and what I'm eating, wearing, doing not. You're not hearing. I'm just send him a text message.

I don't think that was the issue, though. I think it was her phones. I don't think that was the issue, though.

I didn't know if she thinks it's on my end or if it's on. I think they think it's on their End. Okay. I'm not sure if she has a chat if she sees that, but they were hearing me, so that doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Camera solution. I'm gonna go to audio MacBook Air built in. I could look at my EarPods Microtof teams. I don't want to use EarPods microphone. I don't want to use speak. Right.

Say something for me, Ashley.

Yeah. Yep, I'm speaking. Here we go. Let me try this. Is that any better? If we're hearing.

So sorry.

No, we're not hearing. Huh. Maybe try the AirPods microphone. I don't. They haven't told me that they think it's me. I think they think it's them. If they think it's me, I'm happy to try anything, but. Just. Does that make a difference on anybody? Did she check her mic? Because there's no reason that we shouldn't be doing.

Here. Try your mic again, Ashler. Maybe unplug and replug.

Anybody hearing? Okay, let's see. I'll also just.

Now your mic is off. Let's put it back on. All right. Now lets you say something. Now.

I was muted for a second. Okay.

Okay.

Are you hearing me? No.

Yeah.

Okay, now I can't hear you.

Now you can't hear me.

Yeah, but that's okay. Let's hold on for a second. Let's just see.

Yeah.

Let me try my microphone.

We're gonna do this.

Hi.

Hi.

No, no, I can't hear you. Okay, she can't hear us.

She can't hear me. We had it, though.

Now it's unmuted.

Okay. Yes, you can.

I can't hear you. Okay, so now I can't hear you, but that's okay. We're gonna come over to audio. I'm gonna look at. Hold on. I'm gonna go back to what. Because what I had was working.

She's going back and go back what.

I had because that was working. Okay, now I can hear you.

You can hear me and I can hear you.

Oh, my gosh. Okay.

Oh, my gosh.

I'm just gonna take out headsets. I mean, the worst thing that would have. I don't know what we. What. What works and what doesn't, but the worst thing that would happen is we just.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, it sounds good. You sound really great, too. We did it.

I mean, hey, did you not hear me the whole time or was it just.

I did. I did all of a sudden cut out, which makes no sense at all. But we're good to go.

Now, I don't know. Anyway. All right, game on. We got this one.

One day we're gonna get this.

Yeah.

Thing right. Right. All right.

I'm great. I've got a bra, and I'm ready, like, you know, I just want to be clear. Yeah.

Thanks for the real talk, girl. Honestly, with the picture that's being portrayed around what it takes to be healthy as a woman today and the checklist of things that we need to remember, the fact that you only forgot about your bra. Kudos to you. That is a massive win. I'm cheering you on and smiling. Now you're back to being supported.

Yes, exactly. Exactly.

So on that note of real talk, you're a practitioner. You work with people day in and day out. You have written a book. I'm sure you have so many buckets that you need to tend to every day. What causes you to feel uprooted? When do you notice yourself drifting from feeling optimized.

Yeah, well, so I have to be really careful about my social media behavior. I think that I am 52 now, so I feel like at 52, I'm probably better about, like, not needing to be everyone's teacher or not needing to, like, tell people what I think, especially if they're strangers, you know, or that kind of thing. But I think that I have a severe issue with when I see or perceive injustice, and I think that really throws me off course. Like, so when I see things and I. And then I, like, go into problem solver mode and, like, you know, all of that. So. Or I see that my basketball team did poorly, and then I'm like, you guys, like, we got to get this together, you know, so depends. And then I think the other one is that I am. I did not need a genetic test to tell me, but I metabolize caffeine so slowly. And I thought that that was such a great tool for me, and it does have tremendous value at times. But I speak fast, I think fast. And when I'm trying to connect with others, caffeine can be a real problem for me in that disconnection. Or it can be that thing that takes that a little bit of injustice and, like, goes to, like, oh, my gosh, you know, on that part. And another one that came up for me with that is also fasting, like, not eating. And that was one that I just thought at 48, I thought, like, I started to see a belly. That was again. And that was, like, super traumatizing for me. My youth was plagued with being teased and having issues, feeling like My belly was just this huge weakness and something I had to get rid of. So when my hormones started to shift and my belly came back, I was like, all right, I'm going to fast like a girl. I went at it, and I just was not eating, and I was having caffeine, and I was endurance training, and it was a hot mess. So I think that it's really understanding for me now that I have to focus on building my body like that. I have to focus on optimally resourcing it. Otherwise that what will come up is I'll feel really disconnected. Yeah.

I love you for your real talk, because I think people who might be listening, they're looking at us. We work with people all the time, and here we are. We should be advocating for fasting and a lot of it and this. And I'm sure a lot of our listeners, maybe you as well. What a year, man. Like, this year rocked me off my. Everything. Just all the imbalances came up, inflammation came up, emotions, everything. Lots of. Lots of shifts. And fasting for me, if I'm fasting for more than 12 hours, it's like I've had 12 cups of coffee. Like, I'm generally. My adrenals feel incredibly tapped. I'm running on fumes. And so I love that you. You said that because, look, ancient rituals, ancient healing, There's a time and a place for fasting. It is so powerful and profound. We have the science and the data to prove that it is an incredible marker for longevity. But I think that there has to be a season to do it correctly and with guidance. So thank you for bringing that up. And I see you with the caffeine. I'm in the same boat, too. I metabolize it so slowly, and it derails me and social media as well. And this is the catch. And I want to have her on this one as well, because, like you, I'm in love with my community. I'm so in love with supporting people. It's my mission in life to help as many people as humanly possible. But going on social media also derails me, and I get really caught up, whether it's the injustices, the global disasters that are happening, the death, the war, the politics, or even the bashing amongst wellness educators. And I think we need to use these as firm guardrails for our wellness. Moving forward to 2026. That's the year we're going into 2026 to really set boundaries on our health. It's not about all the things that we can Constantly add into our bo. It's also about what we can take away. So thanks for that reflection.

I love that. And I was just actually, I've kind of been pretty public the last couple of days, and even after an experience that I had at Eudaimonia about, like, you know, I think I sometimes forget because I've worked in Hollywood for so long. So I came here in, like, 2001, 2002, and, you know, I just kind of have always thought of people who live in Hollywood as just people. And, you know, I obviously understand that. You know, they, like, the people that I worked with in D.C. like, they have very public Personas, but we don't get to just call people out for their choices. And there's a new. There's a new way of fat shaming people, and that is GOP one shaming. And, like, for some reason, it feels all right. And I'm actually astounded by many of our colleagues, our practitioner colleagues, and I've said this to their face, so, like, if this bothers them, they can come talk to me. But I think that it's, you know, they're. They're talking about people and saying, like, Hollywood is, you know, suddenly so thin. First of all, that's not the case. Like, Hollywood is not suddenly so thin, but there are people in Hollywood who have maybe been in bigger bodies that are in smaller bodies. And some of those, like one of my patients who's really, like, very, very well known publicly, she's battling cancer and has not wanted anyone to know. This is not the right time for her to tell her story. And she is the one that, like, all these magazines and colleagues, like, friends, people that she knows, not friends, but people she knows in the entertainment industry are calling her out for being on a GLP1 agonist and being like, you have muscle wasting, you have hair loss. You have all of these things. And I was like, since when is it okay to, like, like, male or female, like, to just rip apart someone and extra special, if you're a practitioner, like, you shouldn't be talking about what you think is going on for someone, you know, in that space. So I think that, like, not only is the world hard in, like, there's a lot going on, I think we all are dealing with. With our own things, But I just think that when we throw the GLP one into the mix, you know, a lot of people are saying this is triggering for them, and I think that's actually great to notice if it is triggering for you. That's a. You Problem. And I love that for you, like, it is triggering for me, you know, for my 8 year old self to be like, oh, gosh, are people talking about me and my belly again? And they actually are. And they're like, oh, she lost her belly. Or there, here's this, you know, what's she doing? You know, And I was like, okay, then that's a them problem. Like, and it just is, you know, So I think this is a really important, you know, not to kind of bring it down, but I think, like, it is important thing for us to focus on on that part too. Yeah.

If we're finally going to see the shifts that we need to in the wellness industry, this has to be discussed. If we're really, truly in this era of women having their rise, then this is an opportunity for women to really recognize. Where are you criticizing another woman? And put a mirror up. Put a mirror up and reflect that comment right back at yourself. And whatever trigger it's uncovering is the exact work that you need to do before those words come out of your mouth or onto social media, which is even worse. And yeah, it's from my background. It's like it's these emotions that live within the body that cause our imbalances. And we're not talking about that. We live in a world, we want to throw things at the wall to fix everything really, really quickly. There's a time and a place for certain things, but this emotional overwhelm and kind of chronic addiction that we have just by plugging online every single day is something that has to be addressed when it comes to how we heal. So that was really great. We haven't even started the interview yet. Let's dive into some rapid fire questions because I want to get the most out of you that I possibly can today. All right, so rapid fire, here we go. What's the biggest myth that people still believe about weight gain?

That total weight matters for anything as it relates to your health. Total weight is the dumbest number ever. So just discard it. Look at your weight composition. Yes.

Beautiful. What's the biggest myth people still believe about weight loss?

That total weight is. No, I'm just kidding.

I was going to say the exact.

Same thing, but that's a goal. Like that. That should be a goal. We should build healthier bodies. So fat loss, visceral fat loss. Understanding why your body is allocating things or not able to build things, those are great signals, things for us to decode. But the sheer act of setting a goal to lose weight is a is actually an unhealthy goal and really doesn't respect the body as an ecosystem.

The number on the scale actually has no reflection to optimized health, does it? Nope.

I know. Reflection of you actually, like, which is like, you know, for me, as somebody who I remember going to Weight Watchers and I would. I tell this story now, it's amazing to me, like, like 7 out of 10 women in a room will be like, oh, yeah, you walked in the door, you got in a line you could not enter in and sit down until you got on the scale. You got on the scale and you either got hugged and high fived or you got dismissed and you went and sat in your seat and God forbid that you had gained weight. Like, then it was just basically like, maybe like, are you sure you want to be on the program? It was so bad. Like a number. And what if that number reflected like your period that week or you had been strength training or you grew, you know, I mean, any of these things, you know, so it just is. Yeah, it's crazy to me, but yes.

I couldn't agree more. What's the most common mistake people make when trying to improve their health through nutrition?

Divorcing nutrition. From thinking about it as just as nutrients and in particular, giving yourself credit for eating something healthy. Because your body doesn't give you credit until it has what it needs and it can use it and it gets where it. So it's like got where it's supposed to go and it can use it. So an example would be if you go in, you write a paper, you take it to your teacher, and you hand it to the teacher and it's like, I got an A. And the teacher's like, no, you got a D. And I need you to rewrite four chapters, you know, or whatever. Like, it. We give way too much credit for what. What we're like just, you know, just from an ingestion standpoint and with food and supplements, we really have to think about them as total nutrition.

So good. What's one misconception people have about GLP? 1 medications and how they work?

Yeah. That they are a solution. That they're not a tool. And I think that they think that they work like some miracle thing that came down from above. I mean, it really is from a gila monster that was, you know, like every perimenopausal woman is tucked away in a cold, safe space that doesn't want to come out and play. So it was a gila monster. It's the venom there. But more importantly, that GLP1 agonists are biosimilar hormone replacement therapy. They are similar to our own hormones. Our body receives them as our own hormones. They're called an agonist because they help the body work the way that it's supposed to work. The big dissimilarity is our own stay on for two to five minutes. Those stay on for 24 hours for a week. So sep 247 on that part.

They can be therapeutic or destructive depending on who the person is. Right. And how they're used as well.

How they're used. How they're used. Yes. Yep.

What's one piece of guidance that you wish everyone heard earlier in their healing journey?

God. That you're perfect as you are, I think is a big one. Oh. Oh, yay.

A little puffy.

Yeah, that's all good. We got the zoom going on today. We're good.

Yeah, she's 12 weeks. I'll show you after. Sorry about that. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. You have. Oh, good. No, no. One piece of advice that or one thing that I wish everybody would hear. I mean, I am just going to keep double, triple and quadruple. The number on the scale just doesn't matter. Like you, like literally doesn't tell us anything about you.

So here for that. What's one diet trend that keeps coming back even though it doesn't support true long term health?

Well, we could use, I think if we talked about calories in, calories out, or like the calorie amount, I think we could prob hone in on that because that even plays into fasting on that part. I mean, certainly what types of calories we could get into. But you know, we really have to dive into. There are four pillars of better nutrition, quantity, quality, timing and balance. And that's going to be how you optimally resource the body.

Brilliant. All right, going deeper. Let's dive deeper into all of the symptoms that we're hearing from not only our clients, but just online. This idea around food noise, the idea around the changes that are happening in our physiology, the fact that we are feeling hungry now, our hunger cues are different now, fullness, weight has shifted. Things are happening that, you know, ultimately are impacting our weight health long term. And for a lot of our women, a lot of our listeners, a lot of these symptoms, they happen overnight or we're hearing that, you know, the diet that used to work with me, it doesn't work anymore. The workout protocol, it doesn't work anymore. My body just isn't responding the way that it Used to. So what's actually happening when it comes to weight health hormones when this occurs?

Yeah, I love the question. I will say to all women, and I'm including myself in this, that it doesn't happen overnight. And I think what happened for us is that we lived in different decades of our lives and different stages of our lives band aiding or not paying attention to signals that our body was sending. And sometimes that was intentional. You know, if we had a treatment that we chose to go through for fertility or needed to go through for cancer or whatever it was, that had a significant impact on our body, and that wasn't like a time period that we then get to just be in a new time period. That's part of our story in that. That's in the fabric that we have to unpack to be. To look at how we personalize a recommendation at any stage. So what's happened for most women is we've been suboptimally resourcing our body and gotten real good at it. Like, we love to multitask. And we're like, okay, if we can multitask, which we've also learned isn't better for us, I'm sure magnesium can just multitask. And it was like, no, no, actually, like, instead of giving our body 10 units of magnesium, we gave our body four units of magnesium. And we sat back wondering why we had cramps or why we have, you know, constipation or why we're have a difficult time falling or staying asleep or, you know, many of these other things. It's because the body, if it only has four units of magnesium versus 10, it's going to emphasize your heart pumping, right? Or it's going to emphasize. And it's not going to build bone, you know, wherever else magnesium is needed. So. So I think the suboptimal resourcing that happens has created this foundation that is very ripe for hormonal shifts. And what happens when our sex hormones shift. So it diminishes their impact in our body to call them sex hormones. But for right now, testosterone, progesterone, estrogen, we'll call them sex hormones. When our sex hormones shift, they throw our digestion off course. And what happens, I think, with a big aha for me, was that our weight health hormones exist in the lining of our digestive tract. And they are, you know, they're impacting our digestion and are impacted by it. And then they're also trying to be deployed in a system through our vagus nerve and our bloodstream. And so when we look at that, that shift is going to physiologically change how that works on that part. And if we're not paying attention to it, this is a time where we've got to double down on optimally resourcing and that begin. You know, you can give your body all the nutrients it wants, but if your digestive system isn't able to break it down, absorb it, deliver it where it's supposed to go, eliminate toxins and eliminate waste effectively, we're not going to end up, you know, where we're, you know, in a successful place with those nutrients. So I think what's really happening there, even though it feels like overnight, it feels like different things are working, we were like irritating, overwhelming, disrupting our body on, you know, smaller levels with our nutrition choices and our lifestyle choices. And then something substantive happens, you know, where our hormones start to, to play around, like an EKG reading, you know, like up and down and up and down and we're like, oh my gosh, you know, what happened? It was like overnight on that part. And I think that that's the, like, that's more the body being like. So I was whispering and kind of talking to you and trying to send you notes and like trying to respect your boundaries. And now I'm super pissed and I'm just going to tell you and I'm going to scream at you. And we hear the scream and we're like, what do we do? You know, in that part?

Yeah, I want to spend some time on this because it is so, so important for people to understand when you and I meet with a new client, let's say, and we talk to them about how they're feeling, Nine times out of ten, I met with digestive issues. Heartburn, difficulty digesting certain foods, bloating, gas, constipation, diarrhea, you name it, right? And I think we also live in a world where we've. These symptoms are, have become so normalized. Of course we have digestive issues. Right? Of course, it's just normal. Every day it's normal for me to look pregnant by five or six o'. Clock. It's just the way that I've always. Most people that I work with cannot even remember the last time their digestion was completely optimized. And what I love right now in this era of women's health and speaking about the power of hrt, there's not a lot of practitioners who are talking about optimizing digestion and gut health in alignment with an HRT protocol. And this is where I'M seeing people where it's going sideways. Their body is not utilizing the estradiol or the testosterone that they're taking in is coming up with some really nasty symptoms after the good symptoms subside. So can you talk to us about this? When we think about our hormones and the fact that they're lining our digestion, we instantly want to blame ourselves for not doing what it takes to be healthy without recognizing our biology. So can you talk to us about the power of digestion as a primary focus? And this is really what ties into ancient wisdom and Eastern medicine. There's no protocol that's given unless we optimize digestion.

Yeah. And we never get to, like, optimize. We love checklists. Right. We don't get to be like, oh, Thursday, optimize digestion, check. And now, like, you know, everything that's happening all the time is impacting our digestion. I think it's so important. And I want to also tie digestion to detoxification. Because one of the other pieces I think just doesn't come into this whole conversation is if your intention is to balance your sex hormones to get them back into a better balance, and your tool is to use hormone replacement therapy, or if your intention is to shrink fat cells and your tool is to use weight health hormone replacement therapy and to shrink those fat cells, or now if the tool is your goal, is both of those. And so we're going to use them together. When we do that, we liberate toxins and we use up hormones. And both of those have to be detoxified. They have to be in phase two detoxification in the liver. Our liver has to be able to change them over from a fat form to a water form for them to be eliminated. Why do I bring that up? Because risk of cancer, risk of feeling junky, risk of brain fog, like, all of these things that. And even cognitive decline, you know, and diseases of cognitive decline from the brain not detoxifying junk successfully, that is so important for us to understand. So just because we have these tools that we can go on and if we don't optimize our digestion. And so one of the things that that comes to play is digestion and detoxification are very, you know, interwoven in that. And when you think about digestion, I think we really come back to this will deviate from. And I mean, I loved my, like, learning Chinese medicine and like, I've never trained to be those practitioners, but I've loved collaborating with, you know, an Ayurveda and others and like, you know, if I called the body and operating system, they would not be very happy with me. That's not very spiritual. That's not just, you know, it's like there's a lot, you know, okay, but my western self right now is just going to for a second bring me in and say the body is like an operating system. Most of us are probably most familiar with like either an iPhone or a car. But when you look at that piece, you know, we can't like, you can't put gas in the tank, be like, okay, I got an oil change, I put air in the tires and be like, I'm going to rock and roll and go drive on a road trip if the engine is broken, like if the engine's just not working right, you're like, okay, like good luck. You know, it doesn't matter that you resourced it. And so I think that's what, you know, where kind of the rubber meets the road. You know, on that part where we are coming in and you know, we talk about like, you know, are we charging our battery? Yeah, you can charge your battery. But again like, if the system is not working better, it doesn't matter that the battery is charged, right? So there's no way. And in my book I use an analogy of a pizza. And so for me, because I was like, what's something everybody is going to be like, like a little bit like shocked that I'd be like, oh, the solution to weight health is a pizza. But you know, the other part of it is everyone knows a pizza. Crust, sauce, cheese, maybe some toppings. And the crust is our digestion. And I include hydration in there. And that's really important because no matter what topping you use, the sauce is better nutrition, the four pillars. The cheese is the four pillars of better lifestyle choices. Whatever topping you choose has to be built on top of a crust on that piece. And I think that's like, you're so right to recognize that. There's a lot of conversation primarily coming from a certain, like doctors who are trained in a western model where we think about therapies as medications and those medications can come in and do X on that part. And as my 5 year old nephew likes to say, well, you're the backwards doctor because I'm an rd. So he's like, you know, he'll ask me, he's like, aunt Ashley's a doctor. I'm like, no, I'm not. And then I was like, I'm an rd. And he, he's like, well, you're a backwards doctor. And I was like, I like that.

Yeah, love it.

Body first on that part. Yes. Yeah.

Well, it's really interesting. I really want listeners to tap into this. I think that what we're talking about is the exact reason why people lose momentum or endurance or become fatigued with their wellness protocol. Because you're looking at your body and treating it in the here and the now and the season that it's in without addressing everything that it has endured, everything that it has accumulated and resolving that. And that's where Eastern medicine really comes in. And this is what really surprises me. Like, in a world where we talk about integrative healthcare so often, we're not really practicing it, and that's foundational. Right. Detoxification and digestion, to your point, is level one. That's exactly where we start for any healing protocol to work. So thank you for hovering on that. And the second part of that is, I hope our listeners, and maybe this lands with everyone, we start blaming ourselves, right? We've been doing this as women forever. We blame ourselves for our bodies changing, for looking a certain way that we don't want to. We blame our lack of discipline, for the fact that we just fall off this, you know, imaginary wagon that exists in life, the emotional factors.

I'm going to interrupt you for one second. I always love to ask Mona, where. If you could just show me on a human body where the muscle called willpower exists. Like, we don't have that muscle. Right. So I just think it's like we're teaching ourselves to, like, nurture a muscle, you know, that we don't have on that part. I interrupted you. Go ahead. Yes.

No, I love it, though. But when, if we can finally get to a point where we can. Oh, I'm doing it again. I'm judging myself. It's not lack of discipline. I don't need to blame myself for having food cravings. What if it was something biological? So can you talk to us about the biological and the emotional factors that are actually driving the experiences that we have when we're optimizing our health or our weight or our hormones?

Yeah, I think, you know, weight health teaches us so much. So one of the ones that gets no attention that I think is totally going to be in your wheelhouse, especially on the Eastern side of things, is deliciousness. So deliciousness. So, you know, we focus so much right now on, you know, the brain has these receptor sites for GLP1. And if we can just give that, have that medication, go to those Receptor sites, then we, you know, we'll suppress, we'll suppress. We won't feel hungry. Like it's so great. We're not hungry. Like we're turning off hunger, we're shutting down, you know, appetite, you know, et cetera. And that's not better like that. We do not want that for our body. But what's interesting is it also comes out because many of us for a long period of time again, to eat right, to eat healthy, have been making choices that are healthy and are not delicious to us in the moment. And that doesn't mean that the two can't coexist, but I'd rather that we reframe it. Not as healthy. But if we look at how do we make optimally resourcing the body deliciously doable. One of the interesting things to know is like, we actually have receptor sites on our taste bud for these hormones. We also so on our tongue. And we also, when we eat something that's delicious to us, we actually get a better satiety response. And that's what's going to tell us to go ahead and indulge. We also do something really important. We don't have a 47 minute dialogue in our brain with whether or not we should have the donut. We eat it. And if after a bite or two, we're like, okay, was that delicious or not? And then if it's a 7 or later on a scale of 1 to 10, and people all the time are like, oh, well, Ashley, you know, I think ice cream or french fries, like that, does that mean I can just eat them all the time? And I was like, well, two things. First is, no, we still have to look at the quality of what we're taking in and we have to optimally resource the body. But the second thing is, is. And I did this to a patient, she is on an agonist and she told me, you know, all right, I have to confess, yesterday I basically ate two Reese's cups. She's like, I had a little bit of something else. I had a coffee and I had two Reese's cups. She goes, you know, I used to beat myself up for like five hours if I like, and maybe even the next day if I had the rhesus cup. And I said, all right, well, I'm glad that you're not beating yourself up for that. I like that you're losing that. Like, I like that you're having a better relationship with yourself. Here's the thing. I'd like you to go and eat those two Reese's Cups again. Like, she thinks I'm crazy, right? She. I was like, I'd like you to go home and eat those. But instead, after every bite or two bites, I'd like you to do the delicious to me test on that part. And she's like, okay. And so she sends me this text message. She's like, I didn't even get through half of one. And I was like, huh, yeah, there you go. Stop being delicious at that point. And what's interesting is, remember, whether we stay on a medication forever or not, what we're trying to do is actually repair the damage of weight, health, hormones that are suboptimally functioning or, frankly, dysfunctional. And part of that is we're not engaging satiety. And there's a lot of reasons. Part of that food is designed, I want to be clear, to override our satiety. So I understand that the challenge there. But one of the things is we're not leaning into that deliciousness. Right. And we're also not experiencing joy from our food a lot of times, you know, so one of the things that I love and gleams, like, from Michio Kushi's work and other, like, just, like, incredible teachers to me, I also have this guy that makes, like, the most amazing pizza in the entire world. Dan Kluger in New York City and at Moza in Los Angeles, I like that. But when something is delicious, it actually helped me feel full. My whole 20 years of my life, I did not feel full. And yes, I had damaged digestive tract because of the antibiotics, but I also had such a bad relationship with food because I was, like, trying to eat, like, packaged Jenny Craig meals to control my weight in some capacity. And if I just sat and, like, ate, like, I really love quesadillas. If I sat and eaten a quesadilla, I probably would have been happy and satisfied, you know, on that. That's a really big one for us to unpack and lean into. Yeah.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. When my health was at its worst, I was eating ultra processed Atkins food. So, you know, fat free, carb free, this free. And it's like, I just. My entire day was spent thinking about food. What am I gonna eat next? What can I eat? What's. What am I allowed to eat? Like, these insane rules. And I've shared this story before, but when I did my greatest healing, I went back to live on an ashram where I ate more carbs than I had in. But the foundation for Ayurveda is to incorporate all of the tastes on the tongue. Sweet, salty, sour, bitter, astringent, pungent. Right. All of the flavors. And it's like, okay, well, if you include a little bit of sugar or a date or maple syrup or some sort of sweetness, maybe it's a dried fruit into your meal, it actually lowers your cravings for having sweets afterwards. Right. And I'm so frustrated. I had this. Well, I'm so grateful, actually. I was on Jay Shetty's podcast and he. There's this clip that went viral where I said, and my one piece of advice was, eat like you love yourself. And you can imagine the comments were great. I love Oreos. I love pizza donuts. It is. Woohoo. But that's a brilliant share that you shared with that client. Because when you actually sit and stop and if you get in tune with yourself in those moments, is eating that pizza really feeling a sense of joy within you? Do you know that it's nourishing you or is it actually a pure distraction to give you a dopamine hit to distract you from the deeper imbalances that you're not willing to look at? And I think that that is so powerful. Thanks for sharing that example. And let's keep going down into this food noise aspect. What are you seeing that food noise is looking like today? And what does it reveal about imbalances within our bodies? When we think about what our triggers are around food, what is it unveiling within us?

Yeah, well, first of all, the belief, and this is why I think it's like, so inappropriate how we're using who has access to a semi glutide, you know, it's based on a BMI or on diabetes right now. And, you know, they're excited for all these other medical conditions, like, you know, to come up on that part. But the value, I mean, my clients who have. Have had, you know, decades of disordered eating or a decade of disordered eating or someone who has a frank eating disorder. One of the things that we'll have conversations about is that you may have so much more food noise, but you've been exerting so much control over yourself to not eat. So the noise is actually background noise all the time. Like you're actually watching what everyone else is eating and you're saying to yourself, don't do it. Like you can't have that, you know, and. And kind of going through that space. So one of the things that I think that it's doing so that it is so damaging is it really keeps us from being Present in the moment, you know, present at a meal with our kids or present in a, a conversation with friends or even at like if we're having a lunch at work, you know, and everybody's like trying to pay attention to the work meeting and they're not actually like understanding the meeting because half of their brain is focused on what other people are eating or what they're eating. Or as you said, like, you know, maybe I'm not going to have this right now, but you know, I don't want to look. I don't want somebody to think like I'm like one of those gluten free people or somebody makes a snide comment about glutens, then you feel badly being the gluten free. I mean, oh, like it's so much. I remember I was in D.C. like it was, you know, I was working on the let's Move campaign. I'm walking out of my office or I'm walking on my door in my apartment building and I was like, I like was like walking in and out of the door, like back and forth out of the door and I'm like, do I go to the coffee shop and then go to the gym? Do I ooh, I could go get a greens juice and not have caffeine. Do I? Oh, but maybe I should have. Wait, I think I'm gonna get protein. But wait, they have have whey protein and I think I'm better with plant. And I just was like. And like this is like this is me 20 years into being a practitioner and my mind is going, so we're so infobeast. We're so, we're taking in so much information about theoretically what is right about nutrition or what is like perfect or what we should do, what we shouldn't do, like all of these other things. And so I actually think calling it food noise is diminishing it. I talk about infobio just like we just have so much information up there that we have decision fatigue, we don't make better choices. And all of those conversations are negatively impacting our vagus nerve. They're interfering with our vagus nerve being in rest and digest, which actually interferes with our weight, health, hormones being activated and also being deployed. So it's this real like, you know, when you understand how the dominoes play out, we absolutely have to work on the brain part of it. But a big piece of that is, is it delicious to you? Is it satisfying? You can use the rainbow, you can use textures, so many different things on that part to lean into it's really fascinating.

I would say I love it more than anything else when I can take somebody from not eating a food that they've said they would be off of, oh, I can't eat that for so long. Insert carbs or specific types of sugars or whatever it is to eating them, and they actually don't see that they gain weight. And if we pull back just a little bit, this information overload that's happening, and gosh, it's even kind of like it stops me sometimes. I question everything now because of all the information that's at our fingertips. But then when we pull back and we look at places like the blue zones or areas in the world where they live the longest. When we look at areas in the world where they're consuming a much higher carbohydrate ratio diet than we are here, and yet they're still living well and there's no signs of obesity or diabetes or any of these things in that culture. Diet is not the focus. It's around nutrition. It's around just eating real foods every single day. Right. And just, you know, the example of Italy that we all gave. When I go to Italy, I eat all the pizza and the pasta and the wine. I just don't give weight.

Well, like, they live in joy, you know, not all the time. I'm sure that they have, you know, that people have challenges in places, but they live in and they tap into joy, you know, not necessarily. It's not this, don't worry, be happy. Like, you know, fake it till you make it, like, oh, I need to, like, have put a smile on my face or be happy. Joy, you can be wrecked, you can be gutted. But if you have gratitude and you're experiencing joy, you're enabling your digestive system and your vagus nerve, you know, to work better, and you're sort of, you're taking the conversation away from a macronutrient one or a calorie one or, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah, I totally double click on what you're saying. Yeah, yeah.

And just imagine a world where we give the focus to healing our body, to bringing back the resilience that I love is trending right now. If we build the resilience within our body to function and do what it's supposed to do, maybe, just maybe, hardcore dieting and restriction wouldn't be an issue anymore. And I think that that's paramount. And I think that another reason why people are unwilling to even go there. Nope, I'm too scared. I don't even want to try it on is because there's also this phenomena of women who, when they hit their mid-40s or 50s or 60, something happens where they instantly gain weight. They're on the same diet. They're moving their bodies in the exact same ways. I actually talked to a woman last night. She was 47 years old. Her entire life. She's five two. So she was always very petite, maybe 116 pounds or something. And then in her words, or what she experienced is that overnight, I'm 145 pounds now. Nothing works. She eats a Mediterranean diet. She just cannot budge the scale. So can you talk to us about what's happening when women are noticing this pattern, this shift within their bodies and how that is linked? What do you look for first? Are you looking at their hormones first? Are you looking at their lifestyle? Where should they dive into?

Our dear friends Gabrielle Lyon and. And jj, Virgin, would just be like, we'll tell you what's wrong. Like, who the heck cares about 145, 160?

Exactly.

Like, I would like to know. Like, I would like for us to measure your body composition and understand what's going on on that part. So I think that's.

Yeah, let's put that layer. So let's say the number on the scale is matched with the layer of fat around the abdomen or the hips or the thighs.

Yeah, Great. So now what we have is we have a signal, and our job is to decode that signal. And so we go in and we look at digestion in that place. We look at what is going on. You know, we can look at thyroid. We can look at our sex hormones. We can look at. Have you changed? Has anything in your life changed where you're concerned? Considerably stressed. So I was going through this with a client, and she was going on and on. And here, you know, this had happened and everything, and I'm like, putting the pieces together. And she goes, oh, son of a gun, that's my mom again. And I go, oh, do you need to get it? And she's like, no. She's like, for. I have been dealing with my mom for the last three weeks. She got kicked out of this. She had to deal with this. She had to, you know, whatever. And I watched her. Her shoulders are coming up here like this. She's not even breathing right, you know, and all this other stuff. And I was like, ah, okay. Stress about things over which we have no control. So you're putting your body into that stress, stress state. And that makes sense because the Experience of our hormones shifting and being out of whack is a stressor on the body. So then like, so we've gone from if our baseline used to be, we start the day at maybe a level three stress. Like, yes, there were things that would push us to a 10, but now we're starting our day at maybe a 6 or a 7 physiologically. And so just the littlest thing pushes us to a 10. So one of the things I think, you know, I would get in, I would look at that and I would start to, you know, maybe ask a little bit about like, what tapes are playing in your brain right now, like, what are you, what's the should list look like, what are, you know, on that part? And then I do think we have to. There's two sides of that for an optimally functioning, for optimal health, optimally resourcing and optimal functioning. So when we look at the digestion, if things are actually or seemingly working there, then I'm going to lean into optimal resourcing and I'm going to look at, you know, maybe what's showing up here is that because of stress we have an increased need for certain nutrients. One of the reasons I call the RDAs really dumb amounts is that they like, they don't. They're like, we're still using from 1997 the DRI for magnesium and it suggests it's for a 135 pound woman and 166 pound man. So on the day that you happen to weigh that, like, okay, cool, that might be the amount, but we know that's also not to be true. And it also suggests that men have a 20% increase just based on that weight differential. 20% increase in needs. Yeah, because like men have never had a uterine contraction, you know, like, and I'm not saying we have more, but can we just play for equality here? Like, same amount of magnesium. Yes. And then it also doesn't say like, hey, on certain days, like I'm intentionally stressing my body out. So on a day where I do a hiit workout, I'm going to then take a magnesium bath at night because I'm going to do extra work, you know, to, to support that. So one of the things that I think could be dysregulating for this person that might be causing the accumulation of the fat mass there would be that either there is some more days than not we've got some of those dysfunction issues or more days than not we're not optimally resourcing the body and that's starting to catch up. And here's the question, do you take an agonist or not? And I think the question in that space is if we are able to look at and figure out how to optimally resource the body and how to address optimal function and we don't need it, and you can make those choices and we see the results, then you may not need the agonist. But if you feel like, you know, what, the train's left and I am, like, running after it, and I feel horrible, and this is, like, creating a lot of, you know, again, reliving some of my past traumas, any of these other things, then one of the things that I love about weight health, hormone replacement, is we can use it strategically at a low dose to help you get some stabilizing effect. Maybe while we're even figuring out how to stabilize your hormones or while we're figuring out how to do, you know, some of the other work. Yeah, yeah.

It's so good. There's a trend happening right now where, you know, I. I love the fact that people are being taught to become their own expert. There are lab testing clinics opening up left, right and center. People are doing this, you know, crazy baseline lab to understand their physiology, which I'm such a fan for. In fact, I know a lot of my clients, they need to see the physical proof of what's happening. We need to understand thyroid function. We need to understand insulin and hormones and cortisol patterns, and the list goes on and on and on. But even when you get the result of those numbers intuitively, if I were to say that, okay, that's great, we understand these imbalances, but what if I told you that no protocol will work until we regulate your nervous system and bringing it back to a baseline for the protocol to work? And as a practitioner, it's really eye opening because, like, gosh, maybe we're jumping the gun and needing all of these lab tests and all of these biomarkers and really noticing what that is and pulling back one more time. This is a really good segue to dive deeper into these GLP1s and stuff like that as well. If you want them to work effectively and therapeutically in the best ways that science is showing us, maybe understand that there is some work that needs to do foundationally first. So let's shift this over into discussing a little bit deeper, you know, for our audience to understand. We're hearing all these letters, GLP1, G, I, P, CCK, PYY how they influence our hunger and our satisfaction, our cravings, and more. And a lot of us just like, oh my God, there's a quick fix. Let's go, let's do it. Break them down for us.

Us. Yeah, I would love to. And I want to. I'm going to use your word, I want to hover back on something you just said because I think it'll be very important to this future conversation. Labs tell us about your urine or they tell us about your blood, or they tell us about, you know, maybe what's in your saliva, right? And they don't tell the whole picture of function. So one of the things that I like, I think is really important, and this is where I think so much of weight health exists in our zone of expertise. And not necessarily in a physician's zone of expertise, but definitely also not in an AI's expertise. And that is that when you get a lab result back of something that is low or high, the answer isn't that you then do more or less of it. You need to. It doesn't tell us about the function of that organ or the function of the ecosystem. It's a part of the insight. But I will ask people as much about, you know, when you bite into an apple, on a scale of 1 to 10, does it taste sweet when you 8 ounces of water within, do you have to pee within two hours? Like I want to. I want signals from your body. You know, we're taught to look at tongues, at hair, at skin, at, you know, your mood, your energy. And so, you know, just measuring thyroid function, even if you add in reverse T3 and, you know, and look at, you know, antibodies and other things, it actually doesn't tell us about the function. It tells us where to look and where to explore. So why do I bring that up? Up prior to talking about GLP1 and GIP and PYY and CCK and Amylin and oxymodulin and all these other weight health hormones that exist in our body because they are part of an ecosystem. So in the same way that the answer isn't take a probiotic, the answer is, here's what Lactobacilli raminose does, here's what bifido infantis does, here's what Akkermansium mucinophilia does, like understand them and optimize them in an ecosystem. We want to think about our weight health hormones that way. GLP1 and GIP are really interesting because they regulate the type, they help to regulate the type of fat that we make. They also are impacting the location of that fat Mass. They also are involved in bone formation. They also. Their receptor sites in the endothelial, in the blood vessels, lining their receptor sites there. So think about plaque and think about, you know, the function of your blood vessels, your arteries and your veins. Veins, they're on your, your, on your heart muscle. We think probably in the liver, probably in the thyroid. I mean there's. And we know they're in the brain and we know they're in the pancreas. So when we think about GLP1 and GIP what one of the things they have a lot of jobs to do, to switch on and off in two to five minutes. Like so that might be where we. I don't think that we are inappropriately designed as humans, but our evolution has not changed since pre industrialization. When you look at our food system and you look at information and everything else, we are designed with hormones that last two to five minutes that may be suboptimal for our modern day. I just, I want to lay that out there. And as a result, we know that suboptimal function of that two to five minutes. If it's not working for two to five minutes and if it's not getting where it's supposed to go, we definitely have an issue. But one of the reasons that we want to think about a GLP and we could think about a low dose of a GLP1 agonist, or we could think about some of the supplements that maybe help us activate it at a higher level. You know, something like a hop, the amerisate, the hops, you know, and those kinds of things. If we look at those, what they can do is they can help get all of those jobs done in the same way that we might use a little extra testosterone. Maybe somebody isn't, doesn't have no testosterone, but they have too low or not, you know, not. And that's that concept in there. PYY and CCK are really interesting because nobody talks about it like unless you actually have an issue with those that, you know, it's like a genetic or metabolic issue. But CCK and pyy, so something interesting happens when you're on an agonist. Remember, it's that you're on it for a week. Like your body's staying in this metabolically active state for a week instead of the two to five minutes. Well, that means that the great news is, is it's going to all the receptor sites and it's satisfying them or moving most of them. But that means that your own production and your own deployment doesn't have to happen. So it kind of means that, like, not kind of. It means that a whole part of your system is like, in the body is just like, so do I not have to go to work today? And at the beginning, it's great. Snow day, cool. I'm happy I don't have to work. But if it's not working at all, if GLP1 and GIP are being suppressed, Pyy and CCK don't really. They're kind of confused. Do I do my jobs? Do I not? Because I work like I work with these other guys, you know, it's like, do I go to work and just work on my own? Or, you know, how does that happen? And one of the things that we'll see, and it's really important to know is PYY helps to regulate hydration. So when stool comes through the body, when poop is coming through and into the colon, PYY will take a look at that and say, let me just check in on the body's electrolytes and water and does it have what it needs, where it needs? And most of the time the answer is no. And so if it doesn't, it pulls it from the stool. And that's why we end up with dry and hard and difficult to pass, end up with those pellets. You know, it's why I have, as part of weight health hormone assessment, I have people looking at the poop, you know, being like, what's going on? And so when you think about that, you start to understand, like, all the things associated with dehydration. It can mean metabolically we're slower. It can when we're dehydrated, if we have sugar in the blood, it can be more sticky in there. It's more likely to get stuck, cause problems. If we are dehydrated, we might. Our mouth might create cravings. We might think thirst versus hunger. I mean, there are so we might get headaches, we might so many things. And so what we have to look at is, number one, it's great if we can identify the function, what I like to do, whether I'm almost never getting somebody before. And in the planning stages for going on a GLP1 agonist, a lot of times they're coming in and it's like, it's a fait accompli. So now let's deal with the mess. But if we come in, it's like, okay, let me assess your weight, health hormones and understand some of this. And I have. That's a free assessment I have that on my website, but it's clinical. You know, we want to understand how your body works. And then when you come in and do that, you can then say, okay, now I have insights about what needs optimization. So do we do it all before the agonist? Probably not. We probably will use the agonist as a training wheels. And then what we'll do is we'll come in and say, while you're on the agonist, let's make sure we optimize this. Because it is not that if you go off these medications, like any medication, if you go off of it and you have like that, it just, it stops working. Like, if you're off of it, it's not working any longer. So as a result, like, no, duh, if you didn't fix anything underneath, you're just going back to the situation where you were before. You can't expect to maintain the outcomes of, you know, the, of what was happening before. So I'll pause there. But, like, I think that's kind of the big concept around, you know, understanding the medications and our hormones. Hormones.

And again, you can see the good and the bad. But I'm putting myself through a client's lens thinking, wait a second, there's something that I can take that's going to help me feel full faster, feel satisfied for hours after having one single meal. Oh, God, sign me up. Right. And I can see perhaps doctors on the other end giving out these prescriptions without doing the work that you're speaking to today. So this is where, like, I'm such a, an advocate for what you're speaking to, especially, correct me if I'm wrong. These cues that come through satiety and through hunger, we think of them as coming from our brain, but they're actually coming from our gut. They're coming from our gut microbiome. Going back to what we were saying about digestion. If doctors aren't merging the conversation with these products, then what does the future look like for your health and everything that could become depleted?

Yeah, I think, like, so let's go to the person who says, like, I think it's great that I don't. Like, I don't feel hungry all day. And that might, I understand, by the way, that might be an amazing feeling, like, for you, if you have felt a prisoner of those feelings for a long period of time. I want to lean into that. I want to embrace that and understand that you feel so much better than you ever have. And that is what we're hearing. Here's the problem not eating like almost all of us know like omad like one meal a day is not, not going to ultimately you're not going to be able to optimally resource your body that way. That's if you, even if you tried and tried to get in all your protein, all your other like all that stuff it would so overwhelm your system at one time. Like that's not better for you and if you don't and you under resource your body it is going to catch up at some point on that part. And so to the person that's saying that, I also will say like hey, have you been feeling fatigued? Well, you know, come to think of it, you're right, you know, or when was the last time you pooped? Well usually it's like now I'm probably down to like once or twice a week, you know, or like and so we'll start to unpack some of the stuff or you know, I am noticing some changes in my skin or I, you know, I like that I've lost weight but I've got the saggier skin. So you know, we do have to, we have to come at it with full on empathy of and like, like we've, society has just been such a mess for so long in terms of weight and so like we have to understand that part. But I also, there's no person that is only experiencing advantage on this medication like that. Just like you aren't actually understanding your body. So that's for the person, for the doctor. You have to get away from it. I want to be clear, it's not just a GLP1 agonist conversation. You cannot prescribe medications and just say to someone oh go do this. This will fix it. It doesn't. The body's an ecosystem. If you lower cholesterol, you're lowering testosterone, you're reducing coenzyme Q10 that has reduced real problems in a body, especially one that might already be lowering those things. It doesn't make the medication bad. These are pros and considerations. Right. And so within that space, if you're, if you are a doctor or if you are a company that is revenue generating from just selling access to these medications, you aren't then you are just a salesperson. If you are just scripting like on that part and if you are driving, if you are going to be judged by any outcomes or choose to be judged by outcomes or doing what you do because of outcomes, you have to recognize that somebody, they need someone like us to come in and help with the day to day and the optimization. And that includes things like looking at your other medications and saying, like, you've been on this agonist and you've lost X amount of fat, hopefully protected your muscle and bone, but you've lost this. And now we kind of have an issue issue. It's a great issue. I'd love to take you off of metformin. I'd love to reduce your statin. I'd love to see if we need to adjust your ssri, you know, whatever else it is. So I think those things in there really should just be reminding us that these medications are a way in. Absolutely. I love that. Like any hormone replacement therapy is, it's a way in, but it's not. You cannot tee up the medication as a solution by itself on that part.

Yeah, absolutely. We have to think about the body as a network and we often don't do that. And can we just pull back for a second? Like, there's a reason why the health and wellness industry is a trillion dollar industry. It is playing off of our fears, our insecurities, our negative self. Talk to ourselves how we're going to age, right? And we don't glorify aging. We don't look at the beauty and the wisdom that comes with aging. And something that takes quite a bit of time to do with my clients. But I'll do some timeline training with them. So, like, imagine if you could future pace into your body at 100, 110, 120, however long you're going to live, if there's, you know, side effects or health implications that are going to come from these quick fix solutions, will you look back in time wishing that you had started them, or will you look back at in time wishing that you just learned how to nourish your body, learned how to personalize your nutrition and what your care plan should be. Does it take a little bit more work? 100%. But that's exactly why we're having conversations like this. It has to be about the healing and the personalization that comes with it. So let's shift gears into talking about food, which we so often do with our clients. How do you train your clients to structure their meals for satiety in order for their hormones to function more reliably?

You should say, yeah, I wish like. And again, I wish that it was a like. What I'm trying to do is to empower them because we've been so disempowered by information. You know, we've been told as somebody who ate like 20 fiber crackers, before a meal because I just didn't feel like I was, you know, broken in the. In the. In the GLP1 space. And it was like, okay, like, if I have all that fiber, maybe I'll feel full with some six pieces of sushi. Right? And I was like, all right, let me, you know, on that piece. And so I think one of the pieces is actually feeling empowered to realize, like, to. I have a chapter in my book called Shit to Unlearn. And so there's a lot of, like, unlearning in this space. And one of those is like, there's no food that's a protein. Like, there's literally no food in nature that exists as a protein. So we are trying to give your body amino acids. Yes. We need enough protein. So I am going to, you know, make sure, like, with of a lot. Lot of people, I might have to talk about grams and macros where, you know, we're looking at it and say, you know, I understand why you think, like, 8 grams of protein is, like. Is enough for your body at that time period. But the issue that we have is your body showing me signals that that isn't, you know, but, you know, this. This food is marketed as a bar that has protein in it, you know, and you're like, oh, I thought it had protein. So we come back and we look at. So we'll look at some of that. I like to look at new nutrient balance with foods and understand the inherent balance that exists in food. So, you know, instead of, like, getting worried about almond milk versus, say, like, dairy milk or. Versus hemp milk, I just want to know, like, what's in milk? Like, so if you're having dairy milk, you're probably having fat, protein, and carbohydrates. If you're having almond milk, you're probably having some water, unless you're making it, you know, on your own, but you're not. You're not getting much of anything. You're definitely. You're typically not getting, you know, the car. Carbs, and you're getting like, a little bit of maybe 1 gram of protein or something. And then wave.

An almond.

Yeah, exactly. Like milk, you know, might give you a little bit more of this. And so then, like, it's like, then what do we part? You know, so then what else would I like to have, you know, in that time period? And so a lot of it is the. The training is really untraining, you know, is coming back and saying, like, I had a woman who was like, just everyone in her family Would have dessert at night after dinner. And we had a conversation about that that I think was really eye open opening for the whole family. But for her, she always had blueberries at the end. And I was like, oh. I was like, tell me about the blueberries. I'm just curious about you. I'm not coming in. I'm just curious. And she's like, oh, like I would love to have anything other than the blueberries. Like unless maybe it was the blueberries. Like sometimes in the summer from the farmer's market. Like I love those but like I want something sweet after the meal but I don't want to have like I'm just not letting myself have like any. And it was the whole list on that part. So one of the things as we backed up and this is your Ayurveda training. I have a dear friend test masters who very early on, she's just such a super tester taster. And so she just taught me about like completing, you know, whether it was a smoothie or other things and you know, like really, really early on was like, okay, how do you, you know, make the taste buds? And so in, in that space, if a meal doesn't have all of that balance there in the taste, you're going to be feel like something is missing at the end. You know, it's always like, why do we want something sweet after sushi? What could you've had? Salt and you've had, you know, you go through and you're like, oh. Because typically we have, especially if you avoided the rice, you haven't had something that has some sweetness to it. So you know, what if we incorporated that into the meal? So we started to go through that and what ultimately came up for her and the rest of the family is that everybody was really excited about having something delicious to them both at dinner, but also a little, even a little bit more sweet. Earlier in the day I was like, what if, you know, know when we come home from school, like it's like let's make our, you know, whatever it was, you know, sometimes it was yogurt bowls that then had a bunch of different toppings. And I remember her saying, wait, I can have to your point of the date. She was like, I can have a dried apricot. I was like, you could have two. I was like, go on with yourself. Like we can have two here. And so we were, you know, we were talking about that but I was like, you're so active at that time of the day. They were all doing like these activities this is going to be better for you. So in terms of like, like structuring it, I think that, you know, it really is looking at. And I have those four pillars of better nutrition that like, they're not mine. I just look at like, okay, what is the body really asking us for from nutrition? And in that space, the timing, our caloric window is going to matter. The quality is going to matter. So it can use what it's getting and it understands what it's getting. The quantity is going to matter. You can't treat your car. You can't be like, oh, I'm going to fill up the gas tank, tank with three weeks of gas. If the gas only fits one week, that's all you can fill it up and then you come back the next week, you know. And so we have to treat our, our bodies a little bit different and that balance. And I think when people lean into that, they start to recognize, okay, I can reframe and think about it suddenly becomes when I go to, you know, to Chipotle or I go to Sweetgreen, like, what do I actually want to have? Like, okay, like, do I want the chickpeas? Well, if I'm having the chickpeas, maybe I don't have the corn on that side. Like, you know, and we start to, you know, pick, pick through it. And the final piece is I also give them permission to say, I actually don't like that it's not delicious or what was in the version of it wasn't delicious. And that's one of the reasons we use supplements is that I help them to be able to optimally resource by filling in gaps or preventing gaps, you know, using supplements and not just using them, you know, therapeutically. So I think it's just, it's an unlearning that we're doing a lot of times, you know, instead of sort of a training training because. Or maybe it's a training in a new way. But, you know, one of the other things I never do is give somebody a meal plan. Like, nobody wants me to pick for them. Like, I lean into. What are you already doing? I'm curious about why you're making those choices. And then we start to, you know, kind of build on it from there. Yeah.

Oh, that's so good. Yeah. I think you and I have a similar philosophy is just understanding how to build a plate for yourself. And the fact that that has to come from a nutrition or a dietitian is, is crazy. It's how we make our physiology actually function. Right. But to Your point? I'm hearing like protein, of course it's important quality carbohydrates from the earth are essential fat essential to us. And when you know just how to build a plate, it takes away what specific foods you actually need. Right. Yeah. And amen to the. The meal planning. I'm. I'm a weird nutritionist. I eat weird things. Yeah. And I can do meal planning for you, but my God, eat what you love. Let's just figure out the safer options for that. So I'm going to continue to pretend like I just know nothing in this area. What foods would you say support stronger or neutral satiety to appeasing our hormones, especially for the people out there who constantly feel hungry.

Yeah, yeah. I love this one. So what we. And we've answered it. So I think we'll lean into that. If it's not delicious to you, like on that scale of 1 to 10, it really is not going to be supporting satiety. Now the other one that we haven't talked a little bit about or maybe I mentioned briefly, but is there is the hyper processing of food does it is actually happening. So I don't think I told you this, but before I had my career as a dietitian, I actually worked in advertising and I sold sugared cereals. So I was behind the wall. Oh yeah, totally. I was like, you know, 1995, Smart Start Raisin Bran Crunch, you know, like all of these. And I did a really good job and we really messed people up and I apologize, you know. But what I learned at that time is yes, there is an intention. You know, we wanted to be able to make Raisin Bran not just appealing and the crunchiness, but to be able to say that it gave you more energy. Well, it gives you more energy because it had more sugar in it. Right. You know, or, you know, when you process a. When you. There's a term for there. I mean, it's so lovely when you read a label and you're like, oh, and ra. Enriched flour. How nice of them. I think we actually think, you know, I mean, like look like I'm wealthier, you know, for having it. Or we think of like, you know, school enrichment. It's got to be better. For me, it is such a. It's such a marketing term for. We took everything good out of that. We left you with what was cheap and easy. And then we went back into the packaged food and we put some stuff in there that might not have actually existed in the real food and informs that your body might not recognize and in amounts that might not be better, better for it. And here you go. And so one of the things for us to understand that interferes with satiety is what we have done to food, you know, on that part. And that's not to, like, bring us into a space of like, I am not against packaged foods. My life exists. Like, I had a perfect bar before here. I was like, okay, you know, I call it better not perfect, but it's still perfect, right? I was like, okay. Like, I'm not sitting here saying that like that where the rubber meets the road, there isn't an opportunity to have something certain things in a package. But we do have to recognize that much of the packaged food is designed to be really challenging to our satiety, to actually override it. When we have fat and sugar together, and fat, sugar and salt, it overrides our body's like, I'm so confused. I can't feel full. And we, you know, we keep eating, and it might also not be delicious after we keep eating. So I think that when we think about that piece, it's really like honing in on the deliciousness. And then I would say that the other piece of it is there is that nutrient balance that actually helps support our satiety. Because when we have carbohydrates just by themselves and very few foods in nature, like, it's really truthful that nothing in nature is just one macronutrient. But, you know, there are some things like if I had apple juice or if I, you know, whatever, that's primarily just carbohydrate. So with that, that's going to move through so quickly so that the protein, like the body is like, not able to catch up quickly enough to stimulate those responses. So protein and fat can help to slow things down. Fiber can help to slow things down. You know, our need to chew can help to slow things down so that we. Or the benefit of chewing can help to slow things down. So I think that that piece is really key. And then a final one I think most people don't know about is our. The health of our oral microbiome. So our, you know, so one of the reasons that we're taught to look at the tongue or like, if you see white coating on there, or if you, you know, you know, and, or when you were sick and maybe lost a sense of taste, you know, on that piece, you can actually notice. You could just keep eating. Like, so when you're, when, you know, if you have dental stuff going on and you don't have a healthy oral microbiome. I think that can be very significant on that piece.

Yeah, yeah. I'm officially adding, you know, kind of dental wellness category to my wellness plan plan for my clients because I think it's something that should be intricately just connected to our wellness community and how we're speaking to overall health, especially with what we know about the oral microbiome and the gut microbiome. Right. And this is a good segue to this when we think about the gut microbiome. Our gut plays such a crucial role when it comes to our cravings, our energy, our mood, our hormones, our weight, and our. Our inflammation as well. So what are some of your favorite gut microbiome supportive practices that you find to be the most transformative?

Yeah, I. So we're gonna. We're gonna start with the oral because we were just there, which I think is so great. You know, so many people are focused on mouth taping to have us breathe through our nose without realizing that one of the tremendous advantages is it helps us to maintain a healthier oral microbiome.

Exactly.

Curate it. If you haven't, you know, don't have the things in that part, but things like for me, I used a couple of years ago, I had invisalign for a year or two. And I'm so happy because that was creating problems with my oral microbiome because my teeth had like moved so much. So it really helped. But during the time that I was on it, I knew, I was very aware of the fact that my oral microbiome was off like that this was not better on that part. And I really had to double down because we're not meant to have our. Our, our teeth like be covered up and like have like kind of this, you know, stuff in our mouth in that way. And certainly. Yeah. And affecting your breathing and like all of that. So yeah, I don't even want to get into the microphone. I needed the intervention there, you know, Etc. So I think that, you know, on that piece, I actually think. And it really leaning into an excellent practice. Now that's a place for infobesity and for overwhelm. Because I've also said to my dentist, dentist, if you give me one more thing to do, very holistic oriented, then I'm gonna have to start getting ready for bed at mid. At noon. Like, I just like, this is like a whole project on that part. And I travel and whatever, but, you know, looking at those things and also looking at things that maybe historically we've done like mouthwash or mints or other things to, like, band Aid taste in our. To try to change taste and not actually seeing that. We need to get to the place where things are better. So something simple. You know, everybody will talk about water with lemon. We have to be a little careful because that can erode some of the dental enamel. But I like to do chlorophyll, so. Chlorophyll. I'll put chlorophyll in my water. I let my. Are you drinking? Like, come on. Yeah, yeah. Perfect. And so, you know, I'm like, all right, I'm down if my tongue is green sometimes, you know, but it also, like, is, you know, great, you know, from a digestive standpoint. So I think that's key. You'll also notice if anyone was watching on the video, I was sitting, like, this horrible posture year, and I just sat myself up. One of the other things is midsection movement. So, you know, I think, like, Lauren Low rocks. Lauren Roxburgh, you know, I think so. Amazing. You know, moving our fascia, moving our. And really thinking about, like, how do we move the midsection, not moving our shoulders, but, you know, breathing, laughter, all of that stuff so that we can help our body to move. And I think one of the reasons that I really attack the messaging around you should exercise size 30 minutes in a day or, you know, however many much time in the week is that we need to be moving at minimum every three hours. So. And in that time period, I would definitely, you know, add midsection movement. So I think that's a really key one. And then there's a nutrient that I that is called conditionally essential that I think is so essential to our weight, health and to our digestive system in this. In the world that is 20, 20, 26, and that is glutamine, I don't think gets the attention that it needs. I know creatine sounds very popular, has a lot of value to it, but I learned about glutamine in the burn unit and watching it literally save people's lives, as you physically saw on the outside. I mean, it was incredible to see it repair skin and save lives. And we were using crazy, crazy high doses of glutamine. What's interesting about glutamine is it's going to go in. It's the glue. It's that lining of the digestive, digestive tract. And in the lining of our digestive tract is where things are so, you know, metabolically active. So in that space, as, you know, like, that's one of Those places where we can play with a targeted nutrient that might, you know, it might not be that. It might be that somebody was like, oh, I was taking a probiotic. You're like, okay, but, you know, were you taking a probiotic in a house that was leaky, like it was escaping, you know, so there are things that we can lean into on that part. But I would say those are some of the ones that come to the top of the list for me. Yep.

Those are so good. I agree with so many of them. And I hope listeners also are taking this away not as cure alls. Right. I went on glutamine, I didn't notice a difference. But when we think about them as being truly supportive. And I love that you started with the oral microbiome. If you notice issues within your mouth, blisters, dry mouth, lots of residue on your tongue, lines, dots, gingivitis, whatever it is, chances are there could be issues with your gut microbiome. This is where you want to incorporate these gut healing supplements as well. Maybe as a strategy for nourishment, not as a cure all. And I think that this is where we need to look therapeutically. Can you imagine the days where we lived in villages with the healers and the herbalists and everyone curating the things that we needed for our symptoms and having eyes on us? Like, we don't have that. So I understand, understand the need for people to want to grab at these, like, cure all substances, but we have to think them, think of them as being truly supportive. Let's see, I could just.

I had a funny one the other day that like. And I'll, I'll make it quick on that piece, but someone was like, yeah, and I always buy grass fed grass, finished beef, like, you know, and they were like, so, you know, and I was like, that's awesome. So tell me why. And they were like, well, I think like the cow, I think like they eat grass. And they weren't dumb, like, and this wasn't. I wasn't doing it to be like, I know something you don't know. I was really, I just, you know, curious. They're like, well, the cow eats grass. I think it's better for them. And I was like, yeah. And I was like, so let's talk about the grass at the cow eats. I was like, there's like a lot of stuff in that grass. And yes, that grass is a better food. And that's like the dirt. And it was like the whole conversation I said, and at the end of the day, it's to create a healthier gut for the cow. Because one of the reasons that we've had like so much just, you know, inflammation and other things coming from poor quality meat is because the cow itself wasn't healthy. Right. In terms of meat or we are going to have dairy. And it was this whole eye opening experience and I was like, that's why I'm talking to you about nourishing your microbiome. Because I'm not calling you a cow, but I am calling you an animal. And what we need to understand is that if we're trying to make healthy muscle, if we're trying to make healthy milk, if we're trying to make. It's the gut on that part.

Yeah, absolutely. That's such a good call. Out for everything. Right? Like just work back.

Yes.

Upstream, work downstream. Understand all of it, including your food and your supplements and knowing where it all comes from. When we think about, let's just close off on this GLP1 medication. Okay. So for those of you out there who are choosing GLP1s, we're hearing about muscle loss, we're hearing about bone loss. What are the things that they should be prioritizing for their metabolic health?

Yeah. So the absolute exact same things somebody off of a GLP one agonist should be, it's just going to be the delivery system of it and the recognition if you have any benefit from a GLP1 agonist of any dosing at any point in time, you are proving that there was suboptimal function in there. So if that is the case, you even more than somebody who is not using it, needs to focus on all of that optimization. And that optimization begins with your digestion and your hydration. It's around optimally resourcing your body, all of those nutrients, you know, and understanding it and then it's lifestyle choices. So stress, breathing, joy, movement, you know, et cetera in there. And I think that's the biggest point to make is that it's like if we talk to a diabetic, like I like as a non diabetic you still need to be eating for optimal blood sugar. Like this isn't like because you now are using something thing you don't like we don't treat you differently. This is just a tool. But if you are using it, you absolutely, you don't have a choice. You have to and everyone else should be. But yeah, there we go.

Yeah, that's so great. Do you recommend people hopping on a Dexa once a year GLP or not?

Yeah, you know, I think that Dexa, somebody was just telling me about another. I'm going to forget the name of it. Well, embody a little bit different. But there's a new book scan that. There's one that's different. It starts with an M and I can't remember. So embody like the bioelectrical impedance analysis I love. And now you can even do it with a phone. Like there's an app that, you know, you can go and rotate around and be able to do that. So I think looking at bone health, I. Looking at. So the point there is I would like to know your visceral fat. Like that's. And yes, I think we're. I'm tracking with where you were going. And the answer is absolutely the other side of it is, is if you don't have access to that, which that your insurance actually should cover that. But if you don't have access or if you are someone where you're concerned because of your other exposures to radiation like that, this is something that you and your practitioner have decided is not a good choice on that part. We. There are ways that we can get good information without that. But I think your bigger point is I think we should be looking at body or weight composition on at least a quarterly basis. And I think we should be looking. Looking at bone composition at least on. On an annual basis. Unless we're actively doing something to try to repair bone, in which case I think you probably need to go to the quarterly on that too. Yeah.

Yeah. I think it'll also give people who have an addiction to stepping on a state a scale kind of like a new light or new way of looking at their body.

Yes. Once a week, max. On that part, would you agree with that or do you do.

Yeah, yeah, sometimes I'll use it. If people are trying to understand food sensitivities when they see their weight really fluctuate, highs and lows. But outside of that, now, if there's an addiction there, we take a. Take a full break.

Yeah.

And I'm curious with your journey, you've had so much experience. Why did you write your best shot and how does it guide people towards this weight health?

Why at 52, did you write a book like, weren't you done at 30?

It's brilliant, though. A weight health plan for feeling your best I think is brilliant.

Yeah, I think that it. I think for me, I learned about incretin hormones in 2004 after my first bariatric patient. And incretin hormone are your GLP1 and your GIP. And so since then I have known that the secret sauce is optimizing weight health. And that's how I've worked. And, you know, and that's. I've not known all of it. I certainly haven't known all our weight health hormones. And we're learning so much, thank goodness, as we result of the research being done on these medications. But I think that, number one feeling like I was the person to educate practitioners on that, which is a significant part of what I do, led me into, you know, they were then like, well, can you tell my patient this? Or could you tell my patient? And then what it really brought me back to, which really surprised me, was not only did I had all these patient stories that I felt like, you know, over 25 years, shot or not, you know, here's how we can do this. I had my own story. And I never, as a dietitian, as somebody who grew up in a healthcare family, it was never about me. It was always about my patients. I've never shared my own story in my patient sessions. I sometimes would. And what I realized was I think there was a bit of healing that needed to happen at that life stage, but also recognizing that if we don't move people, like, my whole goal like yours is to, to change society, help as many people as possible. And in a weight versus health or weight or health society, one that bifurcates the two of those divorces them, we are not ever going to help somebody feel empowered. And that was ultimately what I arrived at, is that I had felt so disempowered. And I was like, I have the ability to empower people. If we change the way we do this in the world, we have the ability to be more empowered. And at the end of the day, I frankly know, like, this is me fulfilling my life purpose. But I need everyone else to fulfill their life purposes because I need somebody to, you know, come up with a way to like. And it's probably pretty soon like a 3D pancreas or something. I have a nephew, you know, I need somebody to, you know, cure ovarian cancer. I need like. And when we're battling and feeling disempowered in our health and failing, we can't fulfill our life purpose. So your best shot is a very intentional double use or triple use of the word shot. It's like, I want you to have your best shot at fulfilling your life purpose. And I think that's really what weight health is about. Yeah.

So beautiful and so brilliant in so many ways. Because what you're giving people also is a sense of freedom. Back to focusing this intensity that we have around what to eat, how to exercise size, how to, how to be. Well, thank you for that. Just a loud noise blower going by, two seconds. You and I today.

Yeah, that's my mantra for today. I got a bra on. I'm good. Yeah. Yeah.

Seriously, I'm with you on that.

Yeah.

Just one more question and then we'll, we'll wrap it up. And. And three, two.

Someone's running a vacuum cleaner, like, right next to her.

Yeah.

She's like, yeah. Yes. Better, not perfect. Yes.

We have bras on, baby.

Yeah, we got it. Yeah.

All right, coming back. All right, Ashley, for our listeners who might be feeling a sense of. Of overwhelm, maybe by their food cravings, maybe by their food behaviors, weight fluctuations, or confusing hunger cues that they just haven't been able to master, especially as they're navigating hormonal changes, what's the very first step that you want listeners to take away?

Yeah, first of all, that you're not meant to master a part of your body. Like, there's no amount of control or like, well, like, you can't come in and like, just override it. You know, on that page is I think that the weight health hormone assessment or any like, in Totality or some of the key pieces of the book, the different assessments that are in there and also online, that those are going to help you start to learn to decode the signals that your body is sending. And those are going to help you have better conversations with practitioners, maybe find better practitioners and resources for yourself. But I think that that's going to be, you know, it really is about how do I transition to empowerment instead of, like, how do I. I further try to, like, strap it down. You're like, how do I, like, you know, like, break all these and like, just be like, tight, tight, tight. It's like, let's let go and let's look at how can we build up on that part. Yeah.

Oh, that is so beautiful. You can't master your body, but you can master finding the things that bring you a sense of joy. And that could be enough to transition your health as well. I think that's so beautiful. Can you tell me something that excites you about the future?

Well, the really big excitement, and this is my book is like, actually the final thing in a whole, whole system of, you know, and I'm really trying to disrupt a system here, is that I believe we have the ticket to create generational weight health. I believe we understand how our bodies work now. We have to do a lot of work. We have to change guidelines. We have to change how we judge, you know, who gets access to health care and who gets access to being in the army, like, who just uses BMI right now and, you know, some of these other things. We have a lot of work to do, but I think that we actually are at a place where we can create generational weight health. Because for every adult that is able to access and become weight healthy and feel empowered, that's going to trickle down to existing children today. And then those children are also, as they become and grow up, weight healthy, they are going to have weight healthier children. So I think we really, you know, it's going to take a lot for it to all go according to plan, but I'm here, we're doing it, all of us together, you know, so I think that gets me really excited.

Yeah, I love that. And we'll link out to everything below. I am going to be such a big fan of your podcast and I love the refreshing takeaway. Also for people listening, Even in this GLP1 conversation, no matter where you are in your journey, just asking questions, working upstream, working downstream, making sure that you ask the questions so that you feel empowered by your decisions. You don't have to question whether right or wrong, you'll know intuitively that they're meant for you. And I think that the sooner we tie into that, we will be changing the trajectory for health and our future and the future of our kids as well. So. So I love you, friend. Cannot wait to squeeze you in person.

Yes.

Tell us your Instagram handle or if there's another platform where people can communicate with you.

Yeah, I think at this point I'm good. Like, no deep fakes. I think if you use my name, Ashley Koff, or use the better nutrition program, you will find me. And with your best shot, you probably have to go your best shot book. But, you know, in terms of finding it that way. But thank you. And this is just. I'm so. I love your podcast. Thank you for being so refreshing and real. This is just so important for people to have a place where we feel like we can just show up as we are. So I really appreciate it.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. To be continued. All right, I'll end this stream.

Oh, my goodness.