Identifying Food Intolerances Using The New Whole30, with Melissa Urban

When I am eating a food that is debatable as to whether or not it makes me feel good, I always ask myself, is it worth it? Is it worth it? I know what the consequences are going to be. Is it worth it? Given what I have going on in my life right now, what my stress levels are, like what I'm doing tonight or what I'm doing tomorrow.

If you want to live like you matter, ditch the pills, look great, and feel Freaking amazing. You're in the right place. I'm Dr. Wendy Trubo.

And I'm Dr. Ed Levitan. Welcome to the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast.

Where we empower you to live a vibrant and healthy life by optimizing your structural, chemical, emotional, social and spiritual lives. Hold on to your hats. Hello and welcome to the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. I'm Wendy Trubo. Ed's not here with us today and today we have Melissa Urban, whom I'm delighted to have back on the show because she's an amazing guest and has amazing things to talk about. So she is the co founder and CEO of Whole30 and she's an authority on helping people create lifelong healthy habits. She's a seven time New York Times bestselling author and has been featured by People, Good Morning America, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, cnbc, and of course, the five journeys Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. She's also the author of the new Whole 30 book which came out on August 6th. So first off, welcome back. And second off, congratulations, Melissa.

Thank you so much, Wendy. It's good to be back chatting with you.

Ditto. So, okay, I think we have to start at the basics. For anyone who hasn't, I don't know, you must be living under a rock if you don't know what Whole30 is. But. But if you don't know what Whole30 is, can you spend a moment telling the listeners, what is it?

I always appreciate when people ask me that question because even if you've heard of Whole30, you may have the wrong impression about what it is we actually do. So Whole 30, at its heart, is an elimination and reintroduction program designed to help identify hidden food sensitivities cod create new healthy habits for navigating stress and discomfort and negative emotion and restoring a healthy relationship with food and your body. So we're not a weight loss diet, we're not a detox, we're not a cleanse, we're not a quick fix. We're not even prescriptive in that whole 30 doesn't tell you how to eat. What we provide is a framework so that you can identify the foods that work best in your unique body and use that information to create your own broad, joyful, sustainable food freedom plan in life after the whole 30.

I love what you mentioned about that because there's so much noise around food. And how do you do it?

Right.

And are you doing this? Are you doing that? Oh, I'm eliminating this. I'm avoiding this. But you're really talking about having a relationship to food that allows you to say what works for you and what doesn't work for you and to distinguish the difference.

Yes. You know, I think one of the biggest concepts in health and wellness over the last few years is bio individuality. It's why there are all of these, you know, at home lab tests popping up and all of these customized concierge practices for medicine. And the same goes for diet. You know, you'll hear every dietitian in the world say, there is no one size fits all when it comes to diet. You have to figure out what works for you. And people say, yes, that makes sense, but how do I figure out what works for me? And Whole30 really is the answer to how we help you figure out the foods that do and do not work well in your unique system and then encourage you and empower you to trust yourself to make the choices that are right for you based on that knowledge.

That makes sense, actually. Okay, so going back to the concept, can you talk about what are the benefits of eliminating certain food groups and then gradually reintroducing them?

Absolutely. So it's important to note that we don't eliminate foods on the whole 30 because they're bad or unhealthy. There are no universally bad foods or good foods. In fact, there's no morality when it comes to food at all. What we do is we eliminate foods on the program that are commonly problematic to varying degrees across a broad range of people. So what we say is these foods can be problematic for some, and they may even include foods that you would consider healthy. So let's pull them out of your diet, you know, really strict, for 30 days, and see how the absence of these foods impacts your energy, your sleep, your digestion, cravings, mood, attention span, and all of these various symptoms like allergies or acne or migraines or anxiety or joint pain and swelling. Let's pull these foods out and see what happens. At the end of the 30 days, you reintroduce those food groups on a very carefully contrived schedule, one at a time, systematically, like a scientific experiment, and you compare your experience. So if you eliminate dairy and all of a sudden your seasonal allergies get so much better and your breathing is more clear, and on dairy reintroduction day, all of those symptoms come back. That gives you valuable information about how those dairy products engage with your system and the way they currently affect your health.

I love that you talk around, talk about that. It's not a moral conversation. I say to people, this isn't moral. Right. You're not a bad person. If you eat this, you simply might not feel your best. And if you want to feel your best, these are the foods that aren't serving you as opposed to. They're not. I would say, given how contaminated gluten is with glyphosate, that it's a particular hot button issue. Right. It's sort of inherently bad for you, but it's not amorally bad for you. It's simply not good for your gut microbiome. But that's a separate. That's kind of a separate. My personal pet peeve around herbicides. So, yeah.

Side note, I think what you just said is so important, though, because you are correct. We are not good or bad based on the food that we put on our plate. And we have all. You know, I grew up with my aunts saying things like, oh, you're being so good, you're passing on dessert, or, oh, you're being so bad, I had a second roll. And we really want to eliminate that language. But also with the whole 30, I emphasize that it is okay to make a choice that you know isn't going to make you feel because it's so delicious, because it's culturally significant, because it's family significant. It is not that you should only make choices that leave you feeling your best. It's that you should make conscientious, deliberate decisions, knowing how this food is going to impact you for reasons that only you can answer. You know, is it worth it? If it is worth it, then I want you to enjoy it. Even if that ice cream on a hot summer day on vacation with your family leaves you with a stomachache. If it's worth it, it's worth it.

Yeah. I think that's such a great point. Right? Like, it's. It's a choice as opposed to being victimized by someone saying you have to do something. Or it's. It's. You're not a victim. You're. You're in the driver's seat because you have the data, you have the knowledge, you have the ability to choose. And there you go.

Yes. And. And I want you to feel empowered, to trust yourself, to make. To make the choices that feel right for you in that moment. One day I scream. You may say, nope, it's not worth it. I have a big event, or it's a random Tuesday night, or I want to get up early the next morning to run. In other contexts, ice. Ice cream might be totally worth it. And I want you to trust that you know what is right for you in that moment. And if it's not, if it turns out it wasn't worth it, again, that's not a moral failing. There's just a consequence, and it's a learning experience. And you just build that into the next time you make a decision about ice cream.

I always say to my patients that avoidance of pain is a very huge motivator and that if you don't want to be in pain, don't do it. And if you. If it doesn't cause you pain, then, then who cares? There's no motive. There's no problem here. Right? We're not fixing anything.

Yeah. I, and I really encourage people in life after the whole 30 to keep their diets as broad as possible. There is no reason to continue to purposefully restrict a food or food group that does not cause you issue. So even if the newest study comes out that says dairy is not great for you, if dairy works well for you and you like it, and you like the additional protein and the calcium that it provides, you should keep eating it. There's no reason to restrict unless you have a reason to restrict.

I totally agree with that. Okay, so tell me, people who start the whole 30, what are the common things that they tend to get challenged by when they start it? What are they facing? What are the challenges?

Yeah. So, as you might imagine, because it's an elimination program, you are being asked to eliminate a variety of foods that you probably eat every single day. And elimination programs should always be completed strictly so that you can really get the true experience of comparison what it's like with and without these foods in your diet. So people might look at the list of no added sugar, no grains, no dairy, and they might think, I don't know if I can do that. The biggest thing I would say is that planning and preparation are key, really, for any habit change. But ahead of the whole 30, I want you to think about, you know, what you'll eat for breakfast if you're not eating cereal and what you'll bring for lunch if you're not ordering pizza. I want you to do some meal prep, I want you to clean out your pantry, I want you to go to the grocery store and at least have a few days of meals and emergency food planned. Have a support system, talk to people in your life, tell them why you're doing the program from personal reasons or connect with our online community if you don't have as much in person support because that accountability and that those guidance and resources can really go a long way. And then, you know, it really just comes down to staying connected to your why. Why are you wanting to make this change? And it goes usually so much deeper than like, I just want to feel better. I encourage people to think about why. What would it mean for your life if you had more energy? What would it mean for your life if you had less pain? And usually it means, well, I would have more quality time with my kids. I would be motivated to go for walks or go for a hike on the weekend, which I really love. I would sleep better, which would give me better stress management capacity for the rest of my day. When you really dig deep, those whys can be so intrinsically motivational during challenging times.

So interesting to me because you, what you really just highlighted is that you actually stop and get mindful about your food. And it sounds like part of the process of the whole 30 allows you to disconnect from the attachment. Like the I always eat this or the habitual nature of your food that you step back and go, well, does it really work for me and do I feel good when I do it?

Yes, I like the way you phrased it. There's almost, I don't know that it's a disconnect, but I would say there is a built in pause when you are on the whole 30 and you don't have access to the comfort foods or the alcohol that you would normally automatically reach for as your primary or perhaps only coping mechanism. You are forced to sit with that discomfort for at least a moment and then ask yourself, how else could I make myself feel better in this moment? Right? So you create other healthy coping strategies because the food or drink that you are so accustomed to automatically reaching for just isn't there. And I think that's a really big part of how the whole 30 is so helpful at changing habits. Right?

So you're breaking the automaticity of it, right? Because you might not even recognize that you use that food for comfort or for soothing until it's no longer there. And then you're like, oh, I never realized what a problem it was until I stopped doing it.

That is so insightful. You're absolutely right. I actually had a gentleman, an older man, stand up in one of my early seminars. And he said his biggest Whole30 learning was he never realized how often he reached for sugar when he was in pain. He had this knee injury that was always achy and it started to feel better on the whole 30. But in the early days, he realized how often when he was in pain, he just automatically reached for sugar to distract. And he said that was a huge takeaway for him.

Right. And vicious circle. Right. Because he has pain and then he eats sugar, and then he has more pain, and then he eats more sugar and then he has more pain. So now we're circling the drain. Okay, so I'm assuming people bump up against cravings, automaticity, munchies. What are the strategies and tips that you give people to overcome, you know, especially the early days when they. When they start Whole30?

Yes. You know, very often people have cravings in part because they're conscientiously restricting either their calories or their meals early in the day. Right. So this is like a vicious cycle where you wake up, you force yourself not to eat breakfast, you force yourself to eat a really light lunch because you're dieting for weight loss. And then after dinner, you find yourself starving and raiding the pantry with these uncontrollable cravings because you don't count calories. Restrict calories, restrict meals, restrict portion or meal timing. On the whole 30, you're eating to satiety. Many people do find that factor alone is very helpful for cravings. But they're going to come up, and they may be coming up for emotional reasons, as you just described, than physical. So again, we employ that built in pause. We give people a ton of different mindful techniques to determine whether they're having a craving or they're hungry or if they're having a craving, what might the feeling be behind that craving? And then we encourage people to create distraction techniques. So studies with smokers have shown that the average craving lasts just three to five minutes. It's relatively impetuous. So if you can come up with a list of things to do when you know you're just having a craving and you're not needing to drink water or satiate yourself with real food, what could you do for those three to five minutes in a. In a way that would feel like self care, but would help get you through that craving so that you can then sit through and evaluate? Okay, that came on intensely. What was that about? What was I really needing in the moment? Cause it wasn't the cookie. And help you reflect for future challenges.

That's so funny. I. I used. I don't have a lot of smokers in my practice currently, but I used to counsel smokers who wanted to quit on a few things. One was wait five minutes. And I didn't know that research. I just felt like, you know, five minutes, go get involved in something else. Go do something else. Don't keep your cigarettes in the car. Right. Keep them in the trunk. Don't smoke in your car. Don't smoke in your house. Make certain. So it's so funny that you say that because that's part of what I used to unconsciously just say to people. And I also used to say, you know, you could have a craving because you're just plum hungry. So go have some protein and see if your craving goes away before you open up. But I will tell you, I learned a trick. Our house is too. We have a basement and then there's the kitchen on the first floor and our bedrooms are on the second floor. I have learned if I do not get out of the kitchen after cleaning up, I will go back to eating like second dinner. So I have to get out of the kitchen physically, and then I'm fine if I'm in the kitchen. I'm like a Pavlovian dog. I've gotta eat when I'm in the kitchen. And, and, and so, you know, I get outta the kitchen like, oh, kitchen's clean, we're out. And that's it.

I think that's such a smart strategy. One of my whole 30 team members, Lilou, when she was doing her first whole 30, had the exact same experience where she just found herself automatically piloting to the kitchen around 8 o' clock at night, prowling through the pantry. And so she used to put a sign on her refrigerator and her pantry door saying, kitchen is closed. That sign went up at 7pm every night because she had learned that if she ate too close to bedtime, it really disrupted her sleep. So she put that sign up and it helped her break the habit because when she would pile it in automatically, she'd go, oh, kitchen is closed. I'm going to make a pot of herbal tea. I'm going to drink some water, I'm going to read a book. And she was quickly able to abandon that habit with that strategy. So I think you're onto something.

Yeah, get out of the kitchen. I have patients, you know, especially with COVID people sit in their Kitchen and work and then they nosh and I'm like, get out of the kitchen. Sit anywhere but your kitchen. When, if you're going to work, don't sit there. Okay, so take me through this. I've done the whole 30 program for 30 days. I've done my reintroduction for 15ish days, and I've decided that X and Y work for me. How do I maintain the principles after I do the program? Right, Because. Because as a human, I'm going to be prone to sliding back to my old ways and, and maybe not maintaining it. How do you.

That's very normal. Right. And it's. It would be really, I think, disingenuous of me to suggest that you can change decades of habits and an emotional relationship with food in just 30 days. But there is a program and a whole book called Food Freedom Forever for what to do in life after the whole 30 so that you can maintain your healthy habits and you can continue to feel as good as you want to feel post whole30. So a big piece of it is just approaching these decisions around food from a conscientious perspective. When I am eating a food that is not like, is debatable as to whether or not it makes me feel good. I always ask myself is it worth it? Is it worth it? I know what the consequences are going to be. Is it worth it? Given what I have going on in my life right now, what my stress levels are, like, what I'm doing tonight or what I'm doing tomorrow. You know, gluten makes me break out, which at a Christmas break, when I'm just sitting around my house, I don't care. But if I'm about to go out and do a big media tour for a new book, I'm really strenuously avoiding gluten. The other question I like to ask myself is, do I even want it? You know, we were in Portland a few days ago on book tour, and my husband wanted to go to Voodoo Donuts to get a donut. And I was there and it was like, oh, my gosh, we only get these, like, every two years when we visit Portland. But I asked myself, do I want it? And I didn't. I'm not a donut person. It wasn't doing it for me, so I didn't get one. And I didn't feel deprived because it was my decision. I would have bought one if I wanted one, but I didn't want it. And so those two conscientious questions and really kind of slowing down and continuing to ask yourself in the moment, is it worth it? Do I want it can help you make the choices that are right for you and keep you feeling as good as you want to feel in life after your whole 30. And sometimes, honestly, what it takes is feeling better for you to realize that there's a whole new level of feeling good and vitality available to you. And that's often what happens at the end of elimination. People feel so good, and that is the aha moment where they say to themselves, I'm never going back to the way that I used to eat. Yeah.

You know, it's funny because when I went gluten free, I had no idea. I mean, I got diagnosed with celiac, so I was like, okay, I gotta go gluten free. But I had no idea how many things I was messed up about. Like, my brain didn't work. I was head to toe, my hair was falling out, My brain didn't work. I had anxiety, I had thyroid dysfunction, I had asthma, heart palpitations, everything in the gut. Bloating, gas, diarrhea, constipation, nutrient deficiencies. I was wasting. I had inf. Fertility. Like, I had everything. And I went gluten free, and all that stuff got better. And so it took. There was. It was like turning the Titanic, right? We hit the damn iceberg. I got diagnosed with celiac, and then we had to clean it up. So my family's like, it's just a little gluten. Why don't you have just a little bit with us? And I was like, the most point profound thing I ever learned to say was, I don't feel good when I eat that. Because nobody's going to argue with you and say, oh, you're going to feel good when you say straight up. Up. I don't feel good when I eat that. Not like I'm on this diet or my doctor. No, I don't feel good when I eat this because it shuts people up. There's no more peer pressure when you say them, I don't feel good when I eat that. And you're not being a jerk. You know, it's just like, I don't feel good. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, I think it's so important that if you tell someone who has a chronic, nasty cough, maybe you should stop smoking. People go, yeah, all right. You know, I get it. I understand. But if you tell someone, hey, that shoulder pain and your anxiety and your hair is falling out, maybe you should give up gluten for 30 days and see what happens. That connection is so much harder to make. And these hidden food sensitivities can manifest in so many different ways in the body, in ways that are not the same for any 100 people. So I think it is so important to do that self experimentation and figure it out for you. And that experience alone will make you so much more confident advocating for yourself in exactly the fashion you just described. I know that I, I don't feel good when I eat this, so I'm going to pass. And like you said, no one's going to argue with that.

Okay, so this is not your first rodeo. You've written multiple books. What's different about this book? Why? What's new? Why, why this versus the other ones?

Yeah, so I wrote the flagship book for the Whole30 called the Whole30 in 2014. It was published in 2015 and you know, that was nine years ago. I always knew that that book needed to be updated. Our food landscape has changed tremendously in the last nine. Like nine years ago, cauliflower did not know that it could be pretzels and pizza crust and tortilla chips. We've also had a lot of science updates in the last nine years. We have far more studies and far more high quality research on subjects that are important to the Whole30 program rules. We created a new plant based Whole30 program for people who wanted to do the elimination and reintroduction program but wanted to eat no animal products either as a test to see how well a plant based diet would work for them or because they were vegan already. And so I knew I wanted to incorporate all of these new learnings and all of these new findings into an updated book. And it turns out I couldn't just update the original book. There was so much that had changed, including me and the way I talk about Whole 30 and the tone and voice that I use with my community. It just needed a complete rewrite. So I started from scratch Talking about the whole 30 like I was talking about it for the very first time. And that's how the new Whole30 came to be.

Do you include recipes in the book?

Yes, there are over a hundred all new recipes. Half for the original whole 30 which contains animal products and half for the plant based whole 30. So I really wanted to make sure we updated those recipes as well so that people had new fresh meal ideas. I am currently super obsessed with this tandoori spiced fish with an apple coconut raita on the original Whole 30. It sounds fancy, but you're just using an accessible white fish. These tandoori Spices. And then it's a yogurt based Indian inspired raita sauce. That is so good. You're gonna wanna put it on everything. The flavors are so fresh and bright. And then I think on the plant based Whole30, the Korean inspired noodle bowl is like my go to breakfast in the morning. So it's butternut squash. It uses a super firm tofu. There's tons of veggies, there's a warm vegetable broth. It's just so warm and comforting as we head into fall.

Okay, where would I get the asking for a friend? Of course.

Where.

Where might one, hypothetically speaking, get the tandoori sauce? Like, is it a thing?

You make it yourself at home and it only uses a few ingredients. It's not that hard. It's a, it's a coconut milk based yogurt sauce with like a little bit of shredded apple. And you can also find it in the new Whole30.

That would be amazing. And we're recording right now. We just went apple picking this weekend because Ginger Golds are picking and you're on the west coast, right?

I'm in Salt Lake City. Yeah, we're not quite there yet.

We're on the east coast and it's apple season and it's just. There's something about picking it off the tree and eating it that is amazing. So I could see shredding an apple up and putting it. So I think I'd love that recipe. You know, it's funny, I. I don't eat gluten and I don't eat dairy and I try not. I don't eat cow's dairy and I try not to eat the replacement gluten products because I just feel like they're. They're not food, they're just fillers. And I've had people say to me, what do you eat if you don't eat that? And I'm like, there's such variety in this world. But as you're talking, I'm thinking, how would you do Whole 30 as a vegan? Can you speak to that for a moment? Because we do have vegans who listen and trying to understand, you know, no legumes, no dairy, no gluten, no nut seeds. Right, so.

So you. We had to change the program to make sure that for vegans they were getting enough protein and it was still providing healthy blood sugar regulation. So on the original Whole 30, we're able to exclude both legumes, including soy and beans and lentils and grains, because you're getting plenty of protein from Animal sources on a vegan program, of course, that is not the case. And nuts and seeds, which are included in both, do not provide enough protein. So we worked with our registered dietitians and determined that legumes, particularly minimally processed forms of soy beans, lentils and peanuts, were the best case protein sources on a 100% plant based program. So on the plant based version of Whole 30, you are eating legumes and soy in those minimally processed forms, but you are still eliminating added sugar, alcohol and all forms of grains and of course all animal products during reintroduction. You're then able to bring those food groups back in, including animal products, if you want to test them to evaluate the perhaps grain based protein sources that work best for you in a plant based context.

What does minimally processed legumes mean?

Yeah, so minimally processed forms of soy would be like your fermented soy. So tofu, tempeh, edamame, it would not include like a soy protein isolate or some of those very heavily processed forms of soy that our registered dietitians feel don't offer the same nutritional benefit and do far more often provide disruption in terms of like digestion and gut health.

What about Trader Joe's canned beans? Are those cool? Not cool? Are those considered?

No, no, no. I would, you know, legumes for the most part are sold in a minimally processed fashion, meaning they are either dried and you rinse and sprout them at home, or they are canned and you just go home and rinse them and cook them thoroughly. So all beans and lentils are part of the program and peanuts are as well because botanically those legume on the whole 30.

Yeah, okay, I have a dumb question. You've mentioned rinsing your beans twice. Why is there some? Is there like what are you washing? Am I washing something off or am I activating them? Like, what am I doing when I rinse them?

Yeah, so when I get a can of black beans or chickpeas, I always rinse them very thoroughly. And what that does is it rinses a bit more of the resistant starch off of the beans, which can make them easier to digest. So that resistant starch that's on the bean can be a good source of prebiotic fiber. But for some, because legumes are already pretty high in fermentable carbohydrate, they can be tough to digest. So sprouting, soaking, rinsing are all good techniques to help make them a bit easier to digest.

Okay, so two things. One, for the listeners, beans are a good source of short chain fatty acids which feed the good bacteria in your gut. So those are good to have. But then, okay. It's funny because I used to always rinse them. That's how I was brought up. You have to rinse your beans. And then I realized that there was this lovely sort of thick paste in the beans that would make this awesome. When I make black bean soup, it's such a nice soup. Like, the soup is already there. I don't have to make the soup. And so now I'm thinking, okay, if I don't have a reaction to it, it seems fine. And if I have a reaction, I should probably rinse it or. I've always been a little intimidated by sprouting my own beans just because I'm not that organized. So I'll decide. Like, I want to make beans tonight and they're not sprouted, you know, they're not ready.

I feel the same way. I think it depends on the context though. If I'm adding beans to a chili, I'm probably going to rinse them because I don't want the extra liquid in a chili. But for a black bean soup, I might not.

Yeah, okay. So I'm not going to hell if I don't rinse my beans. No.

It's highly individual. And if you don't have an issue digesting legumes, you may not want or need to rinse them.

Them.

It's just one of the strategies that we employ because when someone goes plant based for the first time, if they are not used to eating a lot of fermentable carbohydrate, it can be a little tough on the digestion as your body upregulates that enzymatic production. So as strategies to help people kind of ease into a more plant based approach, we offer techniques like rinsing, soding and sprouting. Sprouting, rinsing and soaking, if that helps.

And then. Are you a big proponent of bitters for people who are transitioning into this, if they're transitioning into plant based eating and they have discomfort, do you recommend that they do dandelion greens or arugula or things that can help with digestion?

I love that idea. Yes, we do make those recommendations. There's an Indian spice called hang that can also be really helpful for digestion and adds a really nice flavor and kind of enhances your other spices. So we do have recommendations, actually quite a variety of them in the plant based FAQ section in the book.

Right. And the thing that I want to highlight, because it's exactly how we think too, is the premise that you're standing on is our premise, which is that you are meant to be vital, vibrant, healthy, alive, able and interested in intimacy until at least 100 and every decade is meant to get better than the one before. And you're either on that path or you're not. So if you're not on that path, that's when we recommend that you take a good look at food and consider Whole30 or some other elimination protocol. Because your body's talking to you very loudly. And if you'd only listen to the signs, you would. You would hear it, right?

Very much so. And we've all been sold a bill of goods that as you get older, that's just what happens. Oh, that's just what happens. Oh, you're in your 40s now. It all goes downhill. Oh, you're in your 50s. Like, sorry, your prime is behind you. And oh yeah, all that stuff is probably menopause. There's nothing we can do. And I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And like, that's just not true. It's just not true.

Exactly. So that's why I'm bringing that up, because I, you know, all that stuff you complain about, it's fixable. It's all fixable. So, okay, I love talking to you. I always love when you come on the show. So, okay, tell me. People are going to say, where can I reach her? Where can I find her? Where can people find out more about you?

Yeah. So everything Whole30 related is just whole W H O L e and the number 30. So it's Instagram and Facebook and the website is whole30.com and we're on TikTok and we're on YouTube and Pinterest so you can find us there. And you can connect with me directly on my Instagram channel, which is Elissa U for like urban my last name.

So, okay, you heard it on the Feel Freakin Amazing podcast. Melissa, thank you for being here. We're so excited about your new book and the difference you're making. And really, I would say thank you for the difference that you're making because you've transformed the lives of millions of people.

Oh, thank you so much, Wendy. I always love chatting with you.

Ditto. Nice to have you. So thank you for being here and thanks for listening to another episode of the Feel Freakin Amazing Podcast. Bye, y'. All. Don't go it alone. It's not a social journey until others join. Share this with your friends.