Episode 352: Nurture your hormonal, emotional & physical health

Hello everyone. This is Rebecca Green for the Winey Palooza podcast, and I am over the moon excited because I get to talk to Stephanie Ladewig today. Stephanie, thank you so much for being here with me today.

I am so freaking excited to pop on. It was awesome meeting you a couple of weeks ago in person and talking about being on the podcast.

I had the luxury of meeting Stephanie at a Beauty Boost Women Wellness Panel event, and she was fantastic. And I said, I have to grab this lady because I have so many questions. It's so— let me tell you a little bit about Stephanie, and Stephanie's gonna tell you more about herself. But she is a coach, mentor, yoga instructor, and is certified in sound energy alignment, which I can't wait to hear about. And, um, I told her I have way too many questions, so we'll see what we get to. But first, tell us how you got into being a coach and mentor, specifically around hormone health, which is so intriguing. And what experiences did you have that led you down that road?

So as you said, I am sort of this jack of all trades. I love to dabble in a lot of different things, but really I meld it all together to help women get into physical embodiment, alignment with feeling great in their body, with body confidence, their hormones, their digestion, their thyroid, really all of the hormonal systems. And I do this work because I truly messed up my body during my 20s. I was a personal trainer for 12 years, so very much involved in the hustle culture of lift more, work out more, do more cardio, eat less. And at one point I was doing bodybuilding shows. I competed from 2011 through 2017 and my metabolism was an absolute mess. I ended up having subclinical hypothyroidism. I didn't have a period for 11 months. My doctors were doing labs and they were trying all of these things and wanted to send me to a fertility clinic, which I didn't want to do for my family. And then also I had some severe adrenal fatigue. I was constantly exhausted and it was through my own struggles that I really needed to address wellness. And I was realizing everything that I was learning and telling my clients to do in the gym was not serving me as a female. And I had an eating disorder for 10 years. I was constantly second-guessing myself. I was dealing with feelings of unworthiness and that I wasn't doing enough and constantly trying to be perfect. And I said, this has to stop. I can't continue living like this. And I basically got sick of my own crap. So I decided, you know, I'm going to go back to school and go to the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and figure this out for myself and then teach women how to do this from a more aligned place. So that's kind of how I got into all of these different modalities.

Well, and I'm going to ask you an obvious question from everything you just said, and maybe it's not obvious, But if you're majorly restricting your diet, wouldn't that affect your period?

Oh yeah, absolutely. And at one point I was eating 1,100 calories per day. So my 4-year-old son eats more food than that in a day and I'm almost 40 years old. So I was eating 1,100 calories. I was eating 22 grams of fat per day. And when you are constantly restricting, especially the healthy fats, because so many women are thinking, oh, fat is high in calories. There's 9 calories per gram with fat compared to 4 calories per gram with protein and with your carbs. So with that, we're like, yeah, I don't want to have, you know, a tablespoon of peanut butter. That's 100 calories for this teeny tiny tablespoon. And it's like, if we don't have that fat, that fat molecule is the building block for our sex hormones, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. So then we start to impact the cycle. And when your body has so much stress on the system from undernourishment, our thyroid starts to plummet, our adrenals start to go through the roof with stress and cortisol because we don't have that nourishment that we need. And then we don't have enough energy to physically create a life and nourish a baby in the womb. So then our body starts to literally mess around with our hormonal cycles and our menstrual period.

Well, I'm so happy for you that you started to figure out what was going on, because that's not a life that you don't want to live all messed up like that and feeling like crap.

Like I said, it's also the mental component. I'm constantly just feeling like I wasn't in my light. I wasn't operating out of love for myself by constantly beating myself up with these diets that were not sustainable.

Yes, I, I have been living that for many, many, many years, which is part of why I wanted to talk to you. But we're gonna go back to diets. I wanna talk more about our hormonal imbalance. What do you think is the main cause? Let's educate all the women listening.

So do you want me to talk specifically about cycle imbalances or do you want me to talk about hormone as a whole?

I mean, whatever you think is most helpful. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer to that.

So as far as our hormones, I'll talk really about all specific hormones as far as thyroid, adrenals, and sex hormones. We'll talk more broad picture. And if we want to get specifically into menstrual cycles later on or menopause, we can do that. In our brain, you have your hypothalamus, which is your body's control center. That's like the body's thermostat. So it's picking up on any signals as far as your heart rate, your breath, your temperature. It's controlling ovulation, it's controlling your menstrual flow, all of these things. And it's picking up on these signals, and it works in conjunction with the pituitary gland. And the pituitary gland, think of that as the messenger gland when it comes to your hormones. So your hypothalamus picks up on a signal from the body, and then it says, hey, pituitary gland, tell whatever hormonal system the signal that it needs to do its job. So the pituitary gland releases TSH, or thyroid stimulating hormone, to the thyroid. It releases FSH, or follicle stimulating hormone, and luteinizing hormone, LH, to the ovaries for when to signal ovulation or when to start your menstrual flow. And then it also signals to the adrenal glands, hey, there's a lot of stress going on, release some cortisol.

Oh boy.

So when we talk about hormones, we like to think of, okay, there's something wrong with my thyroid, there's something wrong with my period. Oh, I'm super stressed, my adrenals must be a mess. Hold on, let's go back one step to that hypothalamus and the pituitary, and let's start nourishing that system in the brain, because that's what controls the thyroid, the adrenals, and the sex hormones, women are not just having issues with their period, they're probably also having issues losing weight or with their metabolism or regulating stress response. So I like to focus on nourishing and keeping as much stress as possible off of the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland. And what stresses out the HP axis, or that hypothalamus and pituitary? Not eating enough, So too low of calories for too long, not having enough hydration. So making sure that we have enough water coming into our body throughout the day. Lifestyle stressors. So what's going on at work? What's going on with our kids, our relationships, some of our meditation or mindfulness and being aware of regulating our stress. Also immune system challenges. Such as infections that can impact and stress out the body, and then also sluggish detoxification. So that's usually the liver and the gut. So if you're chronically constipated, like, how are you getting these hormones, toxins, chemicals out of the body? They're floating around the body causing stress. So we need to look at all 4 of those things to get all of your hormones back online. So it's really nourishing the brain before it's nourishing a specific hormonal system like the thyroid or the adrenals or the sex those. Makes sense.

I mean, you said so much in that. I think that in talking to so many women, and you'll agree with me, we were back to diet because, and I'll tell you why we're back there. We're all, everybody I talk to, and I'm included, I am majorly restricting my calories, you know, because I want to get to a healthy weight. So I'm focused on that and I'm not the only one because The women that I talk to that are trying to lose weight are significantly restricting their calories. So we're messing up our best, stressing out the HPA axis big time. What should we be doing? Because we want to be healthy, we want to be a good weight, we want to lose weight, but we want to do it right.

And I think the big thing to realize is that we cannot be in a diet phase forever. And so many women, it's like, well, I've been trying to get this weight off for 3 years. And I was like, well, it's still not working. So what are you doing? And what we attempted to do— again, most of the women I work with were high-performing, were ambitious, were highly educated. We are wearing a lot of hats. We're doing a lot of different things. So I know that we are capable and we're smart enough to be able to understand this. But also it's like, well, If this isn't working, I'm not working hard enough. And we start to feel really guilty, and we start to beat ourselves up. And when that happens, okay, if I was eating 1,300 calories, I'm going to drop to 1,200. I was only doing 2 sessions of cardio, let me add a third. Let me extend my time in the gym, whatever the case might be. But in reality, when you are dieting, we want to diet for a limited amount of time to allow the least amount of stress on the hypothalamus and the pituitary as possible. And this is why so many women are coming to me, their libido is a mess, they're super fatigued, they're exhausted. Yeah, it's because you're eating too low of food and nourishment. So when I work with clients, I have this nifty little machine, it's called an InBody scanner, and it tells us how much muscle, how much bone, how much body fat you have to lose. And the amount of muscle you have on your body will determine your basal metabolic rate. And what your basal metabolic rate is, it's the number of calories you need doing absolutely nothing, sitting on the couch watching Gilmore Girls all day long, not moving, not doing anything. For women, when I'm scanning them, they're between 1,200 and 1,500 calories usually. So we cannot go below that basal metabolic rate because that's what you need to just have your heart to beat, your lungs to breathe, for your digestion to go smoothly, all of that stuff. So if you're already there, you're not at a place to diet because what are we cutting from? We cut to 1,000 calories, 900 calories. At that point, I would rather just throw in the towel and give up. So what we have to do is we need to slowly and surely add in calories. Usually it's around 1,800 to 2,000 for nourishment for a 30, 40, 50-year-old woman. We need that much food. And I ask my clients, Have you ever eaten that consistently? And they're like, no. Well, we can't go from 1,200 to 1,800 overnight, so we have to slowly incrementally add in food, but make sure as we do it, we're balancing blood sugar so that you're not packing on the pounds. And most women stay the exact same weight as they go up to 1,800 calories, 2,000 calories plus. And then I say, okay, you ready? Buckle up. Because we're going to diet. Like, you have to prepare your body to diet, because if you were at 2,000 calories and now I drop you to 1,400, that's a 600-calorie deficit we've created every single day. And you're like, man, that was easy. Instead of cutting down to like— I call it poverty macros— when we're in like this 1,000-calorie range of eating, or 1,200, we need to focus on that before it's safe to actually diet.

Wow. Well, I mean, you just, you just busted one huge myth because I'll tell you, probably everybody listening is doing it wrong. But there's a lot more myths that I got to hear from you. So will you talk about more hormonal myths that people are hearing?

Oh, I'll tell you two. There's two that I love and I rinse and repeat these a lot, but we need to hear this and we need to be reminded. First and foremost, we are not smaller version of men. As women, what works for men does not work for women because men do not have any hormonal fluctuations. None. Like, their testosterone pretty much stays the same. They have a circadian rhythm with their cortisol that's going to rise in the morning and fall before bed if it's normal. But with women, we have estrogen, progesterone, testosterone that is changing throughout the month, and we need to tune into that when it comes to our movement, when it comes to our nutrition, and when it comes to really finding body confidence and feeling good in our bodies. So again, a lot of these diets like intermittent fasting or these calorie cuts and things like that, they work for men because men don't have these hormonal fluctuations. And then women try to do them and it's like, no, you're causing more and more stress on the system. So stop. Just let's really tune into what females need specifically. And then my second myth is that you need some sort of medication, whether it's birth control, whether it's Synthroid, whether it's levothyroxine, whatever the case might be for controlling your hormones. Yes, these can be tools, but also there's other options. And I also hate when women come to me, maybe they've had really terrible bleeds and their doctor is like, let's just cut out your, your uterus. Like, what? I'm going to remove a whole organ? Like, what are you eating? What are you doing to nourish your body? What lifestyle changes can you make to move the needle positively in the right direction? And this is exactly why women come to me with these heavy bleeds. They've had an ablation where they remove the lining of their uterus and it all grows back. Or same with endometriosis. What are you going to do, have a new surgery every couple of years? Like, this is crazy. And why are we not talking about nourishment and food and, you know, lifestyle as the quote unquote medicine? And no, I'm not a doctor. And yes, medicine or pills can have a place, but it's not the be-all end-all.

Well, so you're bringing up doctors and we need doctors and we love doctors, but they have their way of doing things. And I don't always agree.

Neither do I.

So, I mean, how— help women advocate for themselves because doctors have like, we're going to put you on Synthroid or we're—

I'm not saying that.

I'm not giving any medical advice on here. I'm not a doctor. But I'm just saying, the doctor's telling you to do X, Y, and Z. Like, how can we advocate if it doesn't feel right for us?

Yeah. And I think that the big thing to really understand is that with hormonal fluctuations, like I said, every single month we are going to have these huge shifts in hormones between the follicular phase, the luteal phase, the menstrual phase. Ask your doctor specifically, when should I have this bloodwork tested? What part of my cycle? Because there are certain tests that can be run at certain times of the month, especially in the luteal phase. Normally that you can see what is going on with these shifts because no one is telling us when to have this blood work drawn. If I were not to advocate for myself and start researching some of these things, I wouldn't be in the place where I am now with a healthy 4-year-old boy that I conceived naturally. So it's advocating for yourself on when to have certain tests and asking those questions. And then also looking into— like, I'll give a really good example for TSH. And this again is from my own research and my knowledge of having subclinical hypothyroidism. With TSH for your thyroid, a normal value is between 0.5 and 4.5. This is what they're going to tell you at a doctor's office. So if you're in between those ranges, yeah, you're good, you're healthy, like nothing's wrong with your metabolism, your energy, whatever. Optimal from my, again, research is between 1.5 and 3. So in my instance, I was at 4.2, 4.3 when I was being tested and they were telling me I'm normal. But if I were to go over 4.5, Okay, go on levothyroxine or Synthroid. Like, that's not acceptable to me because I'm going to leave that doctor's office feeling completely unheard, completely unseen, overwhelmed, and confused. So it's like, can you please run an entire thyroid panel? Like, run a TSH, a T4, a T3, thyroid antibodies. Like, I want the full picture. Tell me everything. Not just a TSH, and find out, like, you can Google optimal ranges because the normals are very, very big.

I mean, I didn't know a lot of what you just said, so I mean, that's fantastic to know. And I had no idea that your blood work depends on what part of the month with your cycle you're in. I didn't know that at all.

Yeah. And you can also dabble with functional medicine. There's a test, it's called the Dutch test. You'd have to find a functional doctor to run this. But with a Dutch test, you essentially are testing 11 vials of saliva throughout the entire month and comparing estrogen and progesterone and mapping out an entire month as opposed to one draw. So there are tests out there like that, and I've used a lot of these tests with myself to kind of optimize and figure out exactly where I need to be. But I will refer my clients to get these tests that they need so that when we are working together, we're seeing big picture things. And it's all really dependent on my client's budget, where they want to go for testing, if they want to do blood, if they want to do saliva, like with a Dutch test. But there's so many other options out there that a lot of people don't talk about when it comes to hormones.

Yeah, no, I mean, I'm learning. I told you I was going to learn so much today. And I think that like if you're, if you're just starting out and you're struggling, you're saying it sounds like blood work would be a good place to start.

Well, honestly, to me, I can just say like, this is a really great place to kind of talk about estrogen dominance because this, this happens a lot. I would say 90% of the women I'm working with, they're in their 30s, their 40s, their 50s, or they've already approached menopause. And this is also applying to them. But during the follicular phase, which is the first 14 days or the first half of your cycle, that's when estrogen levels rise. And estrogen is a growth hormone. So that's what grows the lining of your uterus that you're going to bleed out when you actually have your period. So if you're starting to see cramps, lots of breast tenderness, bloating, if you're gaining weight around the ovaries where estrogen is produced, lower belly, butt, thighs, and it's kind of stuck there. All of these can be signs of estrogen dominance. And once we ovulate, right at that halfway point of our cycle, we release an egg, and the follicle on your ovary becomes a temporary endocrine gland, meaning it produces hormones. And the hormones that this follicle creates is progesterone. So estrogen levels rise the first half of your cycle and progesterone levels have to rise the second half, and those two need to balance each other out. Signs and symptoms of low progesterone, it's a lot of spotting. So if you're seeing like old, like brown blood prior to your bleed, that can be a sign of low progesterone. And also progesterone keeps us really calm and grounded. So if you're getting anxious or crying or mood swings before your cycle, that can definitely be low progesterone. But most women fall into this pattern the closer and closer they get to menopause because we are essentially running out of eggs. And if we not ovulate, then we do not have a follicle that produces progesterone. So our estrogen rises and rises during that follicular phase, but now we have no progesterone to balance it out. So many women are telling me how terrible their periods are and they're starting to despise their period. And instead of having blood work, do we really need blood work to like confirm that? You could. But if you're falling into these symptoms, these signals with your body, you probably have estrogen dominance, especially if you're in 30s, 40s, 50s. At the same time, What is going on with that hypothalamus and the pituitary gland? Is your detox pathways open? Are you pooping every day? Is your gut bloated? Are you inflamed? Do you feel like you have heartburn, gas? Like these types of things that tells us about your detox pathway. Are you eating enough? Is your blood sugar balanced? Are you hydrated? Can you manage stress? Because if I take care of those things and you're still having issues, okay, well, what else is going on? Let's do blood work then. But let's take care of that HP axis first, because most of these things we can sort of discern without labs. You don't feel great, so let's take care of that first. You know your own body better than anybody else. So why do we need that?

Makes so much sense. I mean, you're talking about everything that I hear women complain about, you know, everything. You're touching on everything. Can definitely tell that you know what you're talking about. So thank you. So the women who feel like they need to go to the bathroom more, add more nutrition to their lives, can we give them some tips on that?

Oh my goodness. Let's go. Let's talk. About creating a hormone-balancing meal. What do we need like every day? Yes. So first of all, if you're eating 1,200 calories, 1,300 calories, slowly start to add in more food. Add in a handful of cashews, almonds. Like, it's a handful of cashews is like 300-ish calories, but it's not bumping up your blood sugar, which is great. I tell my clients sometimes when they're not eating enough, at nighttime, I'm like, yo, grab your peanut butter jar, just go take some spoonfuls. And as someone who used to binge eat, it would have been like, oh my gosh, like, am I really eating spoonfuls of peanut butter? Yes. Yes, I am. So first and foremost, start slowly adding in food. And if it feels weird, aim for fat because you'll feel tremendously better with your cycle and with your hormones. But I always love to have a healthy fat So 1 to 2 tablespoons of some sort of oil, olive oil, avocado, MCT, adding in nuts, avocado, something along those lines for fat. I even use like real butter. Like butter is great. Like I love butter. I also add in a protein. I find I feel really good with around 30 grams of protein per meal, which can be really difficult. For women to hit. And I typically tell my clients, aim for 2 scoops of collagen per day. That gives us around 20 grams of protein, and we can easily throw that in our coffee. And that actually helps heal and seal the gut wall if you're actually having digestive issues with that detox pathway as well. My favorites are Aloha and No Cow. Those are my favorite bars. There's anywhere from 10 to 17 grams of fiber. Which that also helps you poop too. And then I also add in a scoop of a protein shake, and that will give me around 60 to 70 grams of protein per day. And then I just have like my lunch or my dinner with some meat or eggs or whatever. And prioritizing that protein is huge for muscle recovery and for keeping us full. And then I also always add some sort of fiber. So lots of green veggies, green veggies, especially the cruciferous ones. So broccoli, cauliflower, kale, arugula, Brussels sprouts, those things contain a compound called DIM, DIM, that actually binds to excess estrogen and gets it out of the body in the liver. So that, that also supports your cycle. But also these vegetables contain loads of fiber that actually feed the beneficial flora in your gut. So making sure that you have fiber from veggies, or if you're not a really big veggie person, add in chia seeds. 2 tablespoons have 8 grams of fiber. Flaxseeds, which also have anti-estrogenic properties, 2 tablespoons have 4 grams of fiber. There's all sorts of like powders that you can add to shakes or water. So adding in fiber, all your healthy fats, and your proteins. If you have that every single meal throughout the day, we've stabilized your blood sugar. And we're not eating loads of carbs. We're not, you know, eating in a way that we're like, it's like bird food, right? It's very, very nourishing. And then if you want a carb, pick another carb, add that. If you want a glass of wine, have a glass of wine. If you want a cookie, cool. If you want a half a cup of quinoa, have that. But we don't need multiple carbs per meal. So if you have at least those 3, the fiber, the fat, and the protein, you are golden throughout the day. You're going to feel really good and not be wanting to snack all the time either.

That's really good because, you know, it's interesting with the peanut butter, the avocados, the butter, the oils. I, you know, I can get concerned about how many calories are in them. Yeah. So you're saying eat them? Eat the food!

I'm eating anywhere from 1,800 to probably 2,500 calories a day. And people are like, what?! I don't do any cardio. I don't do any crazy things, but it's not healthy. It says milk syrup.

So most people are listening and they're not watching you. So if you're watching Stephanie, you know that she's thin. If you're listening, you don't know that— I'm shocked at how much you're eating with how thin you are.

Oh, but you have to eat. And then a lot of women, as I'm adding in food, they're like, oh my God, I'm not losing weight. Give your body a chance to chill and feel safe, feel nourished, and now we'll cut or we'll do this diet. But it doesn't— it can't be forever. It can't.

Yeah, I hear you. I'm listening.

Yeah.

Do you care if vegetables are raw or cooked? Are one of them better for you from those green vegetables?

Yeah, so the only time it really changes is that with thyroid conditions. So if you've been diagnosed with hypothyroidism— hyper, hypo, Hashi's, Graves', any of those things— there are compounds in cruciferous vegetables called goitrogens, and they will actually disrupt thyroid health. So they are actually better when they are cooked if you have a thyroid condition diagnosed. If not, to me, it's like I would not avoid them entirely because the benefits outweigh, like, the negatives. And are we ever going to get fat from eating broccoli or arugula? Like, no, we got other bigger fish to fry. So that's like being super nitpicky. I don't do that with all of my clients, but again, if there's some sort of diagnosed thyroid conditions, cooked, like, green vegetables are typically better than the raw ones.

Okay. I never would have guessed that, so I'm glad I asked.

Yeah, I can't do—

Oh, interesting. That's it. I'll watch for that.

I'm glad, because if we were on a podcast and you had a Quest Bar right beforehand and that happened, it probably would not be good.

Thank you for warning. No, we've been eating Aloha Bars, so I'm really glad you said that. Yes, they're so good, everybody. They're so delicious.

Yeah. If I could get sponsored by Aloha Bars, girl, let's do this. Like, let's do it. Okay.

Aloha. I hope someone's listening. You need someone listening to us. We love that one. That's our favorite.

Yeah, mine too. And I literally, I do 2 scoops of collagen. I don't do coffee anymore. I do cacao. I'm like obsessed with cacao. But 2 scoops of collagen, that's 20 grams of protein and a little Aloha Bar for breakfast. And hit the gym and that's it. It's super simple, easy to like be a mom and work full time and do all the things and eat healthy. Like it's a bar and 2 scoops of protein powder. Like it's not difficult to get it in. So it's just tweaking little things.

And I love what you're teaching us and I'm going to back up to coffee.

Mm.

So you switched from coffee to cacao. Is that for like the health benefits of it? Is it better to do that versus coffee?

I had some severe adrenal fatigue, especially postpartum. And a lot of it I found was from my own, like, childhood trauma and some unworthiness that I was feeling and this need to constantly go and do. And I would just run myself to the ground. So some of that had to be unlearned. But also, I remember at one point I was doing, like, two, like, Panzer Monster, like the energy drinks, like the sugar-free ones, and, like, 4 shots of espresso from Starbucks sometimes. Like, it was wild. It was wild. I don't know how I even functioned at that point. So I was like caffeine overload. And, you know, caffeine can sort of smack the adrenals in the face. So what I like to do is I like to add either a protein, and I find the collagen works really well, 2 scoops. It's like, that's a protein shake. In your coffee. So very simple. I also sometimes add MCT oil, which is a derivative coconut oil, and you'll see a lot of Instagrammers or like bloggers talk about MCT oil and their benefits. It's like the Bulletproof coffee because when we add fat or protein to coffee, the caffeine is not absorbed as quickly, so it kind of draws out the effect of caffeine in the bloodstream, and that will really kind of tell the adrenals like, okay, this caffeine isn't just going to slap you in the face and then you're going to get anxiety an hour later when you don't have it. Nice. But yeah, I've kind of just slowly started to switch over to cacao.

Okay.

So cacao, and if you don't know what it is, I can go into it if you like.

I would love to learn about it.

Yeah. So, so cacao, I actually use Kakao with a K. It's K-A-K-A-O. That's the brand that I really resonate with. But in general, it is classified as an Amazonian plant medicine. So it is like a ceremonial plant that the Aztec and Mayan cultures use from Central America. And the reason why cacao from these countries is considered ceremonial is that's really the only place in the world where it's natively grown. So most of our chocolate these days is coming from Africa. So European settlers, when they came to South America, they brought chocolate over and then started to grow a lot of our current chocolate supply in Africa, but it's not native to Africa. So for it to be considered a plant medicine, it has to be grown in the Amazon. So with cacao, it's again like this really rich hot chocolate, and there's actually 8 grams of fiber in a cup of cacao, which— and some, some caffeine, but it's very minimal. It might be like 40 milligrams per cup. But it's considered a feminine medicine, like a plant medicine, because it's a heart opener. So think about as women when we get our period, or when we're emotional, we want chocolate. There are actually a lot of different compounds in cacao that open up our bliss molecules and actually create these feelings of joy in our brain. But also it contains loads of magnesium, which is really calming for the nervous system. And we share, and it's such a beautiful experience because we all get to hold space, whether it's good, it's bad. Whatever you might share. But it might be something wonderful that you're celebrating, and then the person next to you might have had their dog just die, and then you're crying and you're laughing together. And it's such a beautiful way as women for us to connect in community that we don't often get. So I have my own practice every morning where it's like, what's on my heart today? Let me sit down and be really intentional with this. And like, what can I do better? What do I need to be happy today? And I take a second to really ground in, and it's really beautiful. It's a really beautiful practice.

Well, I hope Chris listens to this because I'm so thankful that she brought you into my life. I just think you're amazing. You have so much goodness to share with us, and I have to ask you more. I know I'm keeping you so long, but I know.

No, really, I, I love this. Ask me some questions.

I'm having fun. And I'm going to report back to you.

Yes, for sure. For sure. I'm excited for you.

So sound energy alignment. Okay, I'm going to be honest. I don't like— teach us like, what is it? How do you use it? I so want to hear about this.

Yeah. So I feel, I feel with my life in general, I again was doing all of the things. I got my hormones back in check, my adrenals, my thyroid. You know, all of this. And we can be whatever number we want on the scale and we think that we're going to be happy and we can be really healthy in our physical body. But then it's like, what? What am I missing? And that's sort of what happened for me. Like, what else do I still need to feel really fulfilled and be— I call it the lighthouse. Like, how do I just show up with this authentic joy and love every single day? And I realized that I grew up with a father who was an alcoholic my entire life. He overdosed on fentanyl when I was 13 years old. Like, this doesn't feel good, and I need to release all of these layers that don't serve me anymore. So in doing that, I was also a massage therapist, which was very— I took it from the physical body of Oh, this muscle's tight and there's a knot here, but also what trauma, what energy is stored in the body from these feelings of either childhood trauma or bullying or relationships that are not working or whatever. Why are we holding ourselves back and what is actually stored in the body? Because the body can remember these things. And I found adding in cacao Adding in Reiki, adding in sound healing, which is really like sound baths, like the energetic alignment is playing different frequencies to get us into this really relaxed state where we remember who the F we are. And at the end of it, we are stars. We are the universe. We are love, God, spirit, universe, whatever you wanna call it inside of each and every one of us. So if something doesn't serve that opening of our heart space, of us showing up in love, it's got to go. And sometimes it works really well to be really comfortable with somebody and their energy to say, hey, let's get really quiet, let's tune into like this sound or this energy and let's pull that in. And I work with that a lot of times with clients where it's like we've done all the work. We've got you really healthy, but also like, what else is still going on? Because this shouldn't feel like work. You should want to lead with love every day for yourself. And if you're not, why? So taking that extra time to really get quiet, to breathe, to meditate, that can feel really weird, but it sometimes works better when you have someone lead you through that. And I love incorporating that into my coaching.

I mean, I 100% agree, and I don't think people realize how amazing that can be and how shifting that can be. And I know that you have helped so many women, and if this is a hard question, we'll pass, but is there someone, obviously no names, but is there a client that sticks out that you can share with us how her life changed with your help? Because I think people would love to hear that. There's probably a million.

Our power is in our vulnerability. And when you can tell somebody and meet them where you're at, like with a coach, like, hey, you wrote up this program, you told me to do X amount of cardio or this amount of calories. Being really realistic is huge. I had one client, she's actually a nurse practitioner. She's a very, very sweet woman. She's a pediatric nurse practitioner. And she came to me and she was eating probably around 1,400 calories per day. And she wanted to lose 15 to 20 pounds. And I said, okay, girl, like, let's cut as much as we can. But once we get to that point where your body doesn't want to do anymore, we're going to start adding calories. And we added in calories and she lost around 10 pounds during the first round of dieting. But after that, she started to really notice, like, I'm still not happy. Like, what's going on with my children? What's going on with my marriage? And she started getting into the energetic work and seeing a Reiki practitioner and detox baths and all sorts of fun little things that were really keeping her going. But I also was referring her for some of these tests, and she ran a lot of her sex hormones, her adrenals, you know, things along those lines. And she found out she has Graves' disease, which is autoimmune thyroid. Disease. She ended up having loads of food sensitivities to things that she would never think of. And also she had MTHFR, which is a gene mutation that changes how she detoxes in her liver. And she was like, oh my gosh, like, this makes sense. I'm almost 50 years old. I've never known I've had this at all. Like, thank you so much for sharing all of this experience and kind of leading me of where to go for certain tests or blood work so that I can really give my body the nourishment that it needs because she wasn't metabolizing her vitamins appropriately to be able to detox. And as a young woman in the medical field, she had no idea to even look for this stuff. Wow. So it's been really, really cool to watch her. I've had women, they've been trying to get pregnant and they have endometriosis, and then they're like, I just had a baby. I'm like, oh my God, I love this. Stuff like that. It's just so, so rewarding to not just be about the scale and, like, that number.

And I know that a lot of women listening do not feel— the word I'm thinking of is balance. They don't feel balanced in their lives with work and personal and, you know, just juggling everything. I mean, what is your recommendation to these women to just have more of a balanced life?

And I think so many women, we overcomplicate it. We overcomplicate What do I have to do to feel better in my body? And we go on Instagram, we start Googling stuff, and all this crazy diets and all this other shit comes up and it's like, whoa, I am overwhelmed. I have a mentor. Her name is Megan. She's my breathwork coach. She always tells me, Steph, soften, breathe, drink some water. Just when you're stressed, soften, breathe, drink some water. And What that really means to me is what is the thing that I have to do right now to feel 1% better? It might be drinking a glass of water. It might be taking 3 deep breaths. It might mean I need to get out of my house and outside for a walk. It might mean going to the gym, eating more vegetables, eating more fat, whatever the case might be. But become addicted to being the best version of you. Because it's fun and you want to show up for yourself, for your partner, for your family, for your kids. And I have these moms who are like, now my kids are working out with me, they want to work out. My— I had a girl send me a picture of her two kids in their little rain suits walking yesterday in the rain, like, we're going out for our walk today. Like, that's what it needs to be as moms, not doing this crazy bro science diets. Like, it doesn't work. It's unrealistic. So what do you need right now to be better, period? And do it because you love it.

I, you know what, I'm looking at it every day as a challenge. Like, what am I going to do right today for myself? And it's working for me. I like looking at it as a challenge every day.

And what's funny is I think that so many women, it's like, well, when I hit this point, I'm going to be healed. I'm going to be the best version of me. And I'm like, who are you, Jesus? Like, no, we always have stuff to work on. That's the point. That is the point. We're supposed to want to be better. And when I get there, I'm going to do something else. Yes. Today I'm like, you know what, I want to learn how to play the guitar. I've had a guitar for 20 years, I've never done it. I'm going to go take a lesson today. And that's what I'm doing. That's my 1%. And it could be fun, but it, it's like I've dialed in like the workouts, the nutrition, like I'm good over there, but like, what, what do I wanna learn? This will be fun.

I love it. Somebody asked me what I thought the purpose of life is. And you know, you don't know where things come from, but I just blurted out like, I think we're supposed to become the best version of ourselves. And that's like you said, it's ne— We're never gonna like, we're gonna always be trying to achieve that.

And like, for me, it's like, oh my God, thank God that like all this stuff happened with my dad. I don't get to repeat that with my sons.

Oh yes.

Like, this is why I had a little boy. I get to teach him the right stuff to do.

And I love that.

And like, I get to again be this lighthouse, but we can't be a lighthouse if we're not real. If we're not like, hey, I'm struggling too. You know, I share my struggles so that other people are helped. That's our power. That's our superpower. But we can't live in this bubble that we think we're perfect all the time because it's not real.

And, and that's amazing to tell everybody because everybody has struggles, every single one of us. Yeah. So I've asked you a million questions. I told you I would. Is there anything that you want to end with that I didn't ask you or that you wanna leave people with?

I think in general it's just, again, really tune into yourself, learn to trust yourself, lean into— I call it the divine feminine. There's never going back, there's always moving forward. And if we continue to move forward wanting to be the lighthouse— and when I say the lighthouse, I mean I am just standing here in my freaking glory, taking up all the space that I need and being big. I am not too much for this world. I am just right. And when we do that and we're leading in love with our food, with our movement, with our breath, with everything, all of the choices that we make, we are not— I call it like the blow-up gas station guy. It's like that blow-up guy that you have at the side of the road that's waving all over the place. Look at me, look at me. That's not good energy. But a lighthouse, it just stands there and the boats come to that. Be that person that's like, I'm walking into the room because, and I'm gonna act like I own it cuz I, I'm the shit. I am it. I am here for all of it. And when we lead with that energy, it's great. It's not that we're too much. It's not that we need to get smaller to fit into this world. Stand with your chest up tall and just go for it and stop second guessing. And get curious about what, you know, you need to feel your best. And it will come to you, but it takes a little bit longer, and that's okay. You know, it's very easy to just say, here's my calories, here's my workout, here's this, bam, bam, boom, I'm good. No, it doesn't work like that. Life does not work like that. And I always tell my clients, I love you. I am listening. If anyone needs me to hold space for them, I love you and I'm listening. Meet me where you're at with complete vulnerability because I've probably heard it before.

Uh, tell everybody listening where to find you because they're probably gonna wanna hold space with you.

Yeah, so I do a free 30-minute discovery. It's on my website. It's awakenalignedcoaching.com. Every time I build a protocol for someone for their nutrition, for their workouts, for their movement, it always looks different. Someone coming with hypothyroidism and estrogen dominance is going to look different from someone with major gut issues and adrenal fatigue. So I want to meet you exactly where you're at because there's no broad-based protocols. It's very individualized with what I do. It's really helpful to have that one-on-one FaceTime interaction with people, and you can always hit me up on Instagram too. It's just my first and last name, Stephanie Ladewig. I host retreats. I'm doing a Sedona retreat in September. That's a women's retreat, which I'm super stoked about. I hold monthly retreats at my house where we do cacao and sound and breath and community. I cook lunch for everybody.

It's amazing.

And it's just super, super fun to show up in different arenas doing exactly what I love. In life. So if you need help with anything, the energetics, the spiritual, the physical embodiment, I'm here for it all. So let's connect.

I hope that a lot of people reach out to you from this, and I would love to share your retreat information and stuff that you have coming out. Like, send me stuff and I'll share it, because I, you know, I told you, I think you're wonderful. I love what you're doing. I have no doubt that you're helping a fun people.

And if you go to that Awakened and Aligned Coaching, you'll see a tab that's events. All my events on there too. I like to have some really fun intimate groups, like usually 8 to 10 women. Like, it's, it's a small little gathering, but it's fun. A lot of fun. I'll send it to you for sure.

I will find your events. I will certainly be there. I'm going to bring some friends with me, and this is going to be amazing. And I'm So honored that you spent all this time with us and shared your amazing wisdom with us.

Well, I'm honored to be here. It was a lot of fun connecting and having real conversations. And, you know, it's always great to meet people where they're at, for sure.

Well, thank you so much. This is Rebecca Green, and I want to remind everyone to spend every day laughing, learning, and loving. Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, Please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. While you are there, leave a review. I love to hear your feedback. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.

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