Dietitian's Explant Story: How Breast Implants Destroyed Her Hormones at 26 | Gina Worful

I bet my boyfriend wishes that I looked like her. That next day I said, I need to go explore getting implants. My body started to change, and it started taking a really big toll on my health. Then I started actually losing control over my food. This rash spread all over my arms, all up my legs, and my body is trying to get my attention.

Today I have Gina Warful, and she is going to explain how explant surgery healed her relationship with food. Hi, Gina. How are you?

Hey, Dr. Roberts. So good. Thanks for having me here.

Well, recently we touched base, and we both live in Austin, and we thought this would be a great conversation. Now, Gina is not my patient, but she's had explant surgery, and she wants to share how explant surgery helps heal her relationship with food, which I'm interested in learning more about.

Yeah, implants, I didn't realize would actually. Getting them would actually take me on a very personal, transformational journey. And having implants actually ended up becoming one of the hardest but best decisions of my life, especially when I got them out, maybe just so that I could rewind back to getting them when I first got them. I think we're all kind of influenced by. By what we're taught in our conditioning. And I remember being very healthy, but I saw this woman who had implants, and I was like, that's what I want. If I just had that.

The physical appearance.

The physical appearance. And I was like, if I just had that and everything would be good.

And how old were you?

I was 26. Okay, so I'm 36 now.

Okay, 26 years old.

Yeah.

And was that really the first time you thought like that?

Yeah, it really was probably the first time I felt like that. I remember being at a party and I saw this. This girl who. She was my age, and. And I said, is your body. Is that natural? And she said, no, I have implants, and I love it. And I remember this thought that went through my head that if my. I bet my boyfriend wishes that I looked like her.

Oh, wow.

And I remember thinking that. And that next day I said, I need to go explore getting implants.

Wow. So that's a very. A click run. That's a programming type behavior that you didn't have before that just happened.

I would imagine that my whole life there was probably this fixation on trying to be good enough and what that means and what that really looks like and doing my best. I'm a dietitian. And so we're very. Do the right thing, eat the right thing, be the Picture of health. And so, yeah, before I knew it, I was really just going to a doctor, to a plastic surgeon to consider implants. And before I knew it, I was signing papers and it was like, push me right along into the shuffle. And before I knew it, I was scheduled for surgery.

Well, all too often I hear that there's a little bit of right away buyer's remorse because they're either too large or they felt too rushed, or it was like an experience that ends up being a little more than advertised. Do you remember that after having surgery, what it was like?

I think I was too afraid to honestly ask myself that question because I did it, it was done. And so there wasn't the lingering in the back of my mind of, could there be more health risks to this? But ignorance is bliss when you're 26 and you don't really want to know. And I'm just kind of like, well, everybody does it. So so many people do it, it must be fine. But lingering in the back of my mind wondering, could this create health issues for me? Is this really, was this actually really right for me? And not really wanting to face the truth of those questions. And unfortunately, my body started to change and it started taking a really big toll on my health for sure.

So for everybody listening, so we're super clear about this, I'll explain it this way because I get asked about implants and whether I let my teenage daughter have implants or my wife or all these things. And so once you've decided you're going to do something, it's very unlikely that someone else is going to convince you otherwise, especially maybe at that younger age where opinions seem to matter a lot less. And from an informed decision making standpoint, because I think about it now, it's very hard to explain to a young person the risk benefits associated with an implant. Because for everybody listening or new listeners, especially if you don't know my background, my background is in cancer reconstruction. So I used to have to explain breast implants to women who had been diagnosed with cancer. And I found that exceptionally difficult because there was so much information being given to them. I was often the last person they saw in a given week. We'll say they started having their appointments after this diagnosis and they're just getting basically information like a fire hose. And it's very difficult to take all that in. And often I would see them. It seemed vividly to me that I would see them on Friday afternoons. So they'd gone all week through these appointments. It may have been with the different medical doctors about potentially chemotherapy or radiation therapy. And they'd come to me at the very, very end and learn, you know, if they were having a mastectomy, what could I do for them as a reconstructive tool? And for every listening, you should understand carefully that implants are not going to go anywhere in the United States. They're going to still be used. They're going to remain the dominant form of reconstruction because our country is so big. And I'll explain. So I always did microsurgery and reconstructive microsurgery for cancer patients, which means I would take tissue and hook up the blood vessels to that tissue all over the body to repair or restore or fill an area where the cancer surgeons remove cancer. And so in the breast, we would take the tummy tissue and revascularize that underneath the blood vessels to the sternum. And that was called a deep flap reconstruction. Now that took a lot of training, a lot of resources. I worked in big medical centers. How our country, and we're in Texas right now, for everybody listening, the country of Spain fits in the land mass of Texas, Just to put everybody in proper perspective. So it takes four hours to get to, to Dallas from where I'm sitting basically right now. Texas takes literally 10 hours to drive across from where I am right now. If you're going to get a cancer reconstruction in a small hospital, the most likely form of reconstruction is going to be an implant based reconstruction because they don't have all those resources and they don't have the plastic surgeons trained and experience as I was in those types of other techniques. And so that's going to be offered to them. And the discussion then revolves around is that acceptable. And if people don't want to travel outside their community or don't have the resources, then that's going to be the main predominant option. And so I get asked all the time, is this going away? No, it's not going away. I think the more appropriate, you know, question or from my perspective, what should be done better is making the informed decision process as clear as, as possible. So now make it a little bit simpler. When you put an implant in somebody, it's like getting a splinter caught in your fingertip and not being able to get it out. It's going to sit there and it's going to bother you. You may not know how much it bothers you, or you may pick most of it out, but if you leave a little bit in there, it's still going to bother you. And I operated on Someone yesterday who had had their implants removed but not the capsule removed, which is your scar tissue. Now think of like if only part of the splinter is removed, you still have some in there. So when people argue about capsulectomy and all these things which are deemed unsafe or what have you, a capsulectomy is safe. I've been doing them for almost, I don't know, better part of 30 years. And safe explant surgery should be the norm, not the worry. And I shouldn't have to reoperate on people to remove their capsules that weren't taken out the first time because about 29% of patients still have bacterial contamination on X plant. So how do we get all that resolved and help people make better informed decisions and especially our younger people. I mean being young is definitely not easy. And image problems and the social media world, oh my gosh, I can't imagine being a young person. I have a 17 year old daughter and a 20 year old son and I, I just, I can't imagine being young like that now. Especially a young woman.

Yeah.

And trying to understand that you're 36 now.

36 now.

And you did this when you're 26. Imagine being like 26 now?

No. Oh my gosh. Just. I only had what was outside of me to understand like what does it mean to be a woman and to love my body. Like I had no concept of that and no understanding of that. But what is amazing is that I, I TR believe that life will throw us the circumstances that we need to learn the lessons that we need. And so I didn't understand what loving myself really looked like and felt like until I went through this experience.

So how did that, how did that change over time? Because obviously you said you, you got so unwell.

So. Yeah, so I got, so I got the implants and was like, well, I did it. Not even going to think about it. But what's interesting is, you know, some people, I'm sure you see people who, their health is like, they notice a big difference. For me it was very slow and ways that I wouldn't even think was related to my implants. And so I really started gaining weight and like inflammation. And if I look at pictures of me back then, my face was like round, it's like round, my cheeks are red and I had like all of this inflammation. And so I started doing labs and when I did labs, my hormones were so low. My doctor was like, it's like you're in menopause, you don't. Your hormones are low. I could tell my body just felt like it was inflamed and I was gaining weight and I could not figure out what was going on, especially because I was the health expert. I should have this figured out. And so I was trying harder. I did a food sensitivity test and all these food sensitivities early on.

Early on.

Well, no, it wasn't, it was probably about three years in.

Okay.

I had, I had my implants for four years and I had about three years in, I started noticing my health really shifting.

That's pretty quick.

Yeah, yeah. And so I thought something was wrong with me. And so I did a food sensitivity test and all these food sensitivities lit up like a Christmas tree. You know, all these, they all came back positive. A lot of them did. And so I tried to grasp onto my health by trying harder. So I started fasting and doing elimination diets and exercising really hard to try to like get back into it. But I'm, I'm sure you would know a lot more than I do that a body that has a lot of inflammation probably won't lose weight very easily.

So one of the main things we see, you said hormones. Now you didn't say which hormones, which. But when they say you're going into menopause in your 20s, that's not good, that's not normal. And that usually means your sex hormones are really suppressed.

Yes.

And I imagine your thyroid was not working properly.

That's right. They were all low.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So when you describe inflammation the way you're describing it, and I presume I'll make, I won't make this assumption, but the diet of a 26 year old usually is not as on point as it should be. But you're a dietitian.

I was eating really healthy and so then I started.

That's really bad for everybody listening.

Well, yeah, so I was eating really healthy and then so I thought maybe I need. So then I really started going into the extremes of doing like cleanses, detoxes, fasting, exercise. And so because I was trying so hard, then I started actually losing control over my food. And, and none of it was getting to the core issue. And so I was trying harder, losing control over my food, restricting more, losing control over it. And it actually probably what to me felt like a crisis of like, the harder that I try, the worse my body is getting.

Did every time you eat, you get sick?

I never got sick, but I continued to gain weight.

So you're making the association with every.

Time when I was trying harder, like When I was fasting more, restricting my food more, and then I would lose more control. And so it was, like, trying harder. And then my health was getting worse and feeling like, how am I going to get out of this? And what actually was, I'm so grateful that my body actually changed in a way that made me think differently. And I started getting this little rash on my arm. I showed you a picture of it, how this rash spread all over my arms, all up my legs. And I went to the doctor, and I was like, what is this rash? And she said. She did a biopsy. She said, it's not an infection. It's just whatever the scientific name is for basically general inflammation. And she said, let's put cortisone cream on it to make it go away and come back in two years if it's not gone. Come back in two years if it's not gone. And I'm like, oh, you want to suppress.

Oh, my.

The one thing that my body is screaming at me like, hey, something is wrong here, and you want to suppress it and say, come back in two years? Like, my body is inflamed and angry and telling me that there is something wrong. And that rash that was ferociously spreading all over my body was the thing that I was like, okay, this isn't just about the way that I'm eating. My body is trying to get my attention. And that's when I came across more things around breast implant illness. And I started looking into that because.

This is quite a while ago.

This is. Yeah.

So the. I mean, the. The way I think about this now, I mean, this is not unusual in terms of presentation. I think the timing's a little bit unusual because it's so early, but I've had people right away start having problems, and, you know, everybody's immune system reacts differently. Certainly there's some work that's been done as it relates to bacterial biofilm and contaminants and things like that that really stimulate immune system activation. So that may have been a component, but we don't know that now. But what you describe about weight gain is very consistent with the GI tract. So the largest amount of immune tissue in the body is around the GI tract. So this bloating, swelling, all the. The gi. You know, symptoms make sense. And then when people put on weight, it's super simple. Like, especially in photos that I get of patients see in their trunk, so their torsos will get bigger and bigger and bigger. And if many times my clients are moms, they've had kids it's very easy for them to put on more weight. And that swelling around the tissues in the GI tract especially, that's where we'll kind of hang out. And because they've had kids, it's harder to actually appreciate. Now, you were a young person, so it wasn't hard to figure out things were changing.

Things were changing for sure.

Yeah.

And I didn't know what it was. But when I started kind of looking more into breast implant illness, there one I thought that the information was quite compelling. And I don't know, maybe you. You might have more perspectives on this, but I don't know of having any autoimmune disease, but I felt like if I continued to have those implants, that eventually I would end up with an autoimmune disease. It just seemed like my whole body was so angry.

So this is like circa 2014, 15, 16, right? This is that time frame.

Yes. 2015. Yes. Okay.

So that's very. That's when I kind of became problem aware myself. I operate on a cancer patient, and that patient just wanted to go flat. And I always took those operations in. In the same. We have this protocol I've been running since I was trained where you take everything out, including all the scar tissue and send it off. So the pathologist make sure somebody doesn't have recurrent cancer because it's a cancer patient, make sure it's not infected because there's an implant in place and she had an E. Coli infection that we didn't know about. There was no evidence on any of the lab tests or anything like that. And I got that information back. I was like, oh, this is. My sister passed away recently of breast cancer. And it was kind of an awful thing. I was like, how did I miss that? The long story short is that patient put me on some Facebook group for. For explant surgery. I just had people start calling my office, for example, and everybody at my office is like. At that time was like, what? Why are they calling to have implants taken out? Dr. Witzer went out because at that point, I did reconstructive surgery. We did breast reconstruction predominantly with the deep flap. And then we would correct breast cancer reconstruction problems with implants because I had a lot of experience doing that. So it was not a common request to have, you know, for explant surgery. But that's when I became or started becoming problem aware of it because that was a infection. Then I thought, okay, how many people, maybe you included, really had an underlying infection? That was totally the issue. And then how does that happen? So for everybody listening, there's really three ways implants of any variety get infected. They get infected if the surgeon gets handed something that's contaminated. So upon removal of the packaging and it's contaminated somehow. So that's before we ever get it. And then the second would be on placement. So we place a device and somehow we contaminate it either through handling or placement into the, the position on the body that's really uncommon, those first two examples. The third, by far the most common way is something gets in our bloodstream. So we get a infection. It may be a cut on the skin that gets infected. It may be we get a pneumonia or kidney infection or something. Bacteria gets in your bloodstream and your body can take care of that, but your body can't take care of something that gets stuck on an implant. Can't really remove that because it's not your tissue, it doesn't have a blood supply. Now some of those little bacteria are bad, bad actors, particularly Staph epidermidis, which is found on our skin and Ketobacterium acne is found on our skin as well. Those two readily produce biofilm, which is basically like plaque on your teeth is the original biofilm. It's just little groups of bacteria hanging out together and they can protect themselves and make it harder for your body to get rid of them. So those could get stuck on implants. And when we looked at seven hour consecutive explants, 29% of them had bacterial contamination on PCR testing. That's a lot of fancy terms for. Yeah, that can happen. And the, the way it happens is, as I mentioned previously, the most common. But you wouldn't know that if you didn't check for it. So I imagine when you had your explant at that time, if they did testing, it was pretty rudimentary, if they did any at all.

I don't think so.

Still being done commonly today. That's, that's the, the unfortunate aspects of this. Like things are not being looked at carefully. It's because it's a cosmetic procedure that we're talking about. So there's a lot of, I, I don't, I won't say shortcuts in general, but something that's done for a fee for service, cash only procedure is going to be, you know, commoditized. Right. So especially in young people. So it was, it was quite different for me because the youngest people I ever saw were, I saw a 24 year old with breast cancer. But to even, you know, see me you had to pay a fee because of where I worked. And so I didn't see a lot of young people. I never really did augmentation at a. With a young person's kind of. As a patient. So it was very different. I always found it very difficult to talk to young people about cancer because it's such an overwhelming topic for them. And then putting a device in a young person, equally very overwhelming topic to try to explain and get them to understand. I was very much not interested in having those conversations because I couldn't. I didn't feel good about them. So it's, you know, you have the operation done, you're not feeling well, you're trying all these things, none of which are working. And this sounds like what I've heard many, many times. It's kind of spiraling now. So then you. How did you find any information about breast implant illness in 2016? And let me guess.

I actually had a friend post on Facebook. She said, you know, I'm normally very private with my life, but I need to share this. And she said, I just finished, I think chemo and radiation for breast implant associated lymphoma, which, you know, you read in the fine print that it's like 0.0001% risk. And I saw that, and that was the first thing that I ever saw somebody post about issues with breast implants. And I messaged her and I said, you know, I don't think I have any issues with my breast implants. Do you think that that's a really serious thing? And she said, here's some resources, some Facebook groups. Get them out as soon as you can. And I scheduled surgery, and I had my surgery a month later. And that was, yeah, it was really the Facebook groups that had a lot of resources for me to start learning from and thinking from differently. And it felt compelling enough for me. And it'd be like, I just need this out of my body now.

Yeah, it's disappointing that that had to be the route. And it's. That's incumbent upon us, you know, as a. As a specialty. I testified at the hearings in 2019 that were specifically about breast implants, that we would, you know, devote resources and try to provide research to help better understand the problem. And some of that's actually come to fruition when I was president of that research foundation, funded work for that. I would not say that it's completely elucidated all the different aspects of the problem that you're talking about. And then I think research that has been put Forward now explains better, like the role of bacteria and how that's part of it. But once again, it still goes back to like, you're not going to remove this as an entity from the landscape. The. And I get asked all the time, is saline more safe than silicone? Well, the shells are exactly the same in terms of materials. That's simply a filler change. And so when there was the moratorium and saline was the device that could be used, you can imagine I've taken out a lot of saline devices. It's really no difference in terms of. Of the symptomology or what we see, you know, afterwards. You know, we are very aggressive about preparation before surgery with our methods. And I wrote a book about it so that, you know, everything's really transparent, which is funny now people in town actually copy what I do, which is great. I guess as long as they're helping me by, you know, yes, copy me, it's fine. The understanding of someone's personal genetics and their personal toxicity burden, I think this is a little confusing. So for everybody who was trained allopathic like me, very little time was spent understanding toxicity outside of probably bacterial toxicity in the form of endotoxin. So there's fungal toxins, there's environmental toxins, and those are not getting less prominent in our lives. They're getting more prominent in our lives. And the heavy metals, which I think I probably had more concern about that. And I. I do still more so in my clients who, like, overheat themselves. Like Lauren Bostic, who had a implant that was leaching chemicals into her system. So the, you know, analogy would be put the plastic water ball in your car and it gets overheated. And then the phthalates from the actual plastic, because phthalates make plastics firmer, leaks into the water. You drink the water, so you increase your phthalate level, which is a huge problem as it relates to women and their hormones because it's an endocrine disruptor. So there are all sorts of these things that contribute to, you know, how bad, you know, someone is feeling. And I always say that, you know, the. The breast implant is playing a role in this huge chronic inflammatory process, but just a role. So obviously, you know, it was playing. It sounds like a big role in your. So, like, you explant and then what. Knowing what, you know, like, obviously about nutrition and things. How did you get back on track?

It was definitely a journey that I. That I didn't anticipate. But what I will say is I got the implants out and About a week later, my rash was about 50% gone. Like, it was soft. It was pale. It wasn't so, like, inflamed. And so I was like, oh, my gosh. It took. It took time. It probably took over the course of a year to re. For everything to rebalance out in the. In the rash to completely go away. But within a week, it was, like, not so angry and inflamed. And one of the things that I think a lot of people go through is having the courage to do the surgery, because what is going to be on the other side physically, what's going to happen? And that was something that I was really afraid of, but not really knowing what to expect. And I remember my doctor telling me, you know, give yourself. Give your body some time to heal. But after I had my surgery, I realized probably, maybe like a couple weeks later, that my breast tissue is very distorted. And I thought, okay, is this just the healing that needs to happen? And I called my doctor and I said, you know, is my body going to look this way? She said, describe it to me. And I said, it's very tight. And she said, oh, that scar tissue, that won't go away. That's just how. Okay, you're probably. It's probably going to be that way. And I was really devastated hearing her say that. That for me, I lost everything that I thought made me a woman. Not only did I no longer have this chest, but my breast tissue was distorted, and it was really bad. And everybody felt so sorry for me. It was like, oh, that's the worst thing. I just can't believe this happened to you. Which really, like, drove home the pain of the situation I was in. And my dad took me out for a walk. And, you know, I try to put on a good face for my dad, and I'm in this healing. And he's like, how you doing? And I break down crying, and I'm like, it's so bad. It's terrible. Like, no one's gonna want to be with me. I just like, I'm never gonna be with any. I'm never gonna have a husband. I'm never gonna be in a relationship again. My dad was the only person who looked at me and said, do you know how amazing of a woman you are? You are so incredible. You are so kind. You love people. You care about people. Do you see how amazing you are? And that's what you hold as a standard of what you deserve and what an amazing woman you are. And it was the first person that, like, showed me and let me feel what does it really feel like to be an incredible woman. And it was the first time, I think, ever that I really connected to this feeling of really loving who I was and searching for it probably in other places and implants and diets and all these things. And I went home that night and I had a truce with my body and I really felt how much I really loved who I was. And I had a truce with my body and I was like, body, it's okay if you don't change in the future, it's okay if you never heal, you know, it's okay. And I really made that like that truce and that acceptance and being grateful and appreciative for my body for all that it had been through on this journey. And what was so interesting was within that week I noticed myself, notice myself in the mirror for getting in the shower and my body had healed so much and I was like, okay, I don't want, I don't want to get excited. I don't need my body to change. I love you. I'm here for you. And my body continuously healed in that place to a really good place. And I called my doctor and she's like, I can't believe that your body healed. And not that it really needed to, but it was so interesting. Maybe my body healed by chance, maybe it was random, but I started to learn, you know, some of the research by the HeartMath Institute where they look at how your emotions impact your physical body and being in a state of fear, releasing cortisol, affecting your body's heart rate variability in a way that does not favor healing and emotions like love and appreciation lower cortisol, improve heart rate variability, get your body into a coherent state. And so I'll never know if my connection to like really deeply loving my body had an impact on my healing. But for me it was a really big leap forward and for the first time ever, really feeling and appreciating who I was as a person, that I never would have had that lesson if I never would have gotten my implants and went through this challenge. I think I would have always felt like that 26 year old girl who never felt good enough. And I got to really feel that. And what was amazing is I realized that all along my body, when I was so angry and so frustrated in this moment of like a crisis that my body won't change, my body was actually speaking to me that was like, hey, there's something wrong, there's something off, there's something in me that doesn't resonate with my body, whether it's a food or an implant. And I started to look at my body through that lens of how is my body always communicating to me? And what if my body was so perfectly designed, so perfectly designed that when it's unhealthy, it's trying to get back to health in the best way that it can, whether it's inflammation or whatever's happening. And I also started to see everything from that perspective. So I, as a dietitian, always had this perspective that food cravings were a bad thing. And I started to realize my body is creating cravings as a way to seek pleasure to make me feel better. And I started to trust, like every communication from my body, whether I was gaining weight or I had inflammation or I had a rash that my body was signaling to me, or I was having cravings. And instead of trying to suppress those signals like the cortisone cream, I saw it through a new lens that I never had before, which was my body was speaking to me. And that's how I started to rebuild trust with every signal in my body. And a big part of that was with my food. I started to feel my actual hunger and my fullness and rebuild trust with it and my cravings. And it's so interesting, the more I tuned inward to those signals, the more my body, I knew what my body needed and continuously got healthy. And this time from. From a place of love. And so the contrast of being naturally rested and healthy in my body from a place of love and listening to all these different ways our body communicates with us versus before, it felt like my body was the enemy.

That is very well said and illustrated. The. The hardest. Well, you've done the work now, but one of the harder things, if not the hardest thing, is to do some, I would say, self work or mindset shift or however you want to think of that as it pertains to you personally. There's a lot of trauma, typically, it seems that I find in our patients. And that's not that this was a traumatic event that led you to get an implant placement or anything like that, but it was a relationship that you had with yourself and the kind of healing it takes. Like those. I find the most power in those stories where there's been this evolution of themselves, where they, they do feel like no matter what, they're more than enough. And that's, that's when I've seen probably the most powerful changes. And I still see people stuck a fair amount, as you would imagine. And that shifts a lot of energy our way. Most of it's not very positive energy, but certainly, you know, that is the hardest, hardest part. I mean, surgically, I can do all the things and take care of it.

You know, something that I've really realized when I look at women is that the sexiest, most beautiful, sexiest women are not because they got to this size and this size and everything is perfectly boxed and shaped, but they're the women who radiate self acceptance.

Yeah, they. It's interesting the. The kind of, the influences and, you know, when I. I see that, of course everything gets sent to me, you know, and I'm just like. It's exhausting the. The effort put into and a certain appearance, when in reality it's not going to or doesn't resonate with you, it has to work with you. And knowing what I know now and trying to make sure we inform and educate as much as possible, that's a tough path.

And it can also be one of the most challenging but extraordinary paths. And I know it can be so hard. But for me, it was the greatest lesson of my life of really feeling and loving who I am, loving, inhabiting the body that I'm in, not because I have to, but because I know what it was like to be on the other side. And I love being in my body. And it was really hard to get here, but I think I had to be faced with going to the depths of losing what I thought made me a woman, what I thought made me sexy and really finding, like, who I am. And maybe this is. Believe whatever you want, you know, this isn't a religious thing or belief thing, but one of the things I deeply feel is like my soul was here to learn this lesson of loving the being in this body. And I needed those experiences to feel that and to know that. And it took a lot of courage. And I'm so proud of myself that I did. One of the lessons that I learned this from actually, was I've been learning this dance, this dance called zouk. And it's Brazilian. And so many of the instructors are Brazilian. And boy, there's nobody like a Brazilian who can inhabit the body that they live in. And. And I remember seeing this Brazilian teacher. She's very, very curvy, big curly hair, and she does this dance for everybody. And you can tell that she's not performing, she's just enjoying her body. And she said everyone wants to feel sexy. And being sexy is a choice not to perform for anyone, but to feel how good it feels to be and live inside of your body. And it was so beautiful and it was so sexy that I was like, wow, I want curves now. Where right before that I was like, oh, I actually want a small body and an athletic looking body. And then I saw her inhabit her body and I was like, wait, I don't want that. I want those curves. And I realized almost instantly I could change my preference based on a simple choice. And so maybe it would be easier to decide why not love and inhabit the body that I'm in. And that's a lot easier to make that choice, to find it sexy, rather than trying to actually change my body, that it's in a way that it's not. And it's just beautiful to see. Brazilians inhabit their body in all different shapes and sizes. And their sexiness is their radiance that they're fully rested. Many of them are rested in, in who they are and in their bodies. And it's very inspiring.

Absolutely. I think that, you know, certainly the say the cultural norms are always shifting around and changing and I think, you know, currently fewer and fewer young people drink, which is great. And from an acceptance standpoint, I would, I would, you know, certainly, you know, what advice would you, you give to a young woman who's, you know, concerned about appearances and trying to fit in and all these things that seem incredibly important at the time, but ultimate just being used, the most important thing it is.

But you know, even though at the time my decision to get implants wasn't a good thing for my body, I also learned a lot of lessons that I needed too, that I was ready for. And so even though it is so hard that our younger generations are being exposed to things and we want them to love themselves and do the best that we can to send those messages, there's also like, I trust that everyone is going to get the lesson that they need, I hope in their lifetime. And sometimes that comes through making mistakes or making decisions and realize, wait a second, I could have just loved my body all along.

Absolutely. Well, this has been a great discussion. I'm glad you were able to share your experiences with us. If folks want to learn more about your program, where can they find you?

Sure. I have a lot of different free resources around connecting with your body, listening to it, coming into harmonious relationship with your food on masteringmindfulness.institute and I share lots of free things on Instagram. Gina Warfel.

Awesome. Thank you so much. The information I share on this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It should not be considered medical advice and does not establish a physician patient relationship. The concept may not apply to your individual circumstances. For personalized medical guidance, please consult a qualified healthcare professional. I disclaim any liability for decisions made or actions taken based on the information provided in this podcast.