When is the best time to enrol into a health program?

It's coming to the end of the year, Thanks Giving, Christmas, New Year celebrations, holiday seasons .... So: when is the best time to start a health program?

In this episode, I share valuable insights on establishing an individualized roadmap for vitality and focusing on personal health. 

I discuss the importance of understanding one's unique biochemistry, debunking the idea of a one-size-fits-all diet. 

Allow me to highlight the significance of nourishing the body with nutrient-dense foods, making peace with what works for each individual.

I also emphasise the role of self-care, balancing blood sugar, and optimizing hormones for long-term health.

The information shared in this podcast does not substitute working with your primary health care provider; it is general in nature and not considered personalised advice.

Visit us online for more information or if you wish to work with Dr Holland.
thehollandclinic.com

For your daily dose of women's health related info and ideas on how to gracefully live through health and wellbeing transitions your body experiences, visit our Instagram
instagram.com/thehollandclinic

Transcript

Dr Kirstey Holland: 0:01

Hello, beautiful. I've been getting lots of, um, questions in my DMs lately about, um, Dr. Holland. Can I possibly bring my health online during the holiday season? You know, can I start to focus on my vitality? Can I start somewhere, you know, or do I really need to wait until January or February once the, you know, debauchery is over, once the gluttony is over? Now, The answer is yes and yes. And absolutely yes, you can. You can always make micro changes to improve and focus on your vitality, right? There is never a good time to do it. There is never a good time to do it. But I'm here to tell you that what I teach is not a diet. So as a recovering food addict or a recovered food addict, I think once a food addict, I think once an addict of any kind, I think we can honestly say. That we know how to self medicate with food, um, or booze, you know, and you know, no judgment, no judgment at all towards myself, towards anyone else, no shame, you know, human beings are just trying to most of the time move away from pain and towards pleasure. And how can you blame somebody for that? Right. So in terms of your vitality and in terms of bringing your vitality online and focusing on your health. You really do need to learn to establish a roadmap that focuses on and supports your individualized biochemistry. So there is no one diet that, no, there's no one size fits all, we know that by now. If anybody is still spruiking that, please. You know, run, don't walk. Um, there's no one size fits all. So you really need to learn, um, to individualize what works for you. You know, for example, some people thrive on chickpeas, whereas chickpeas are not good for me at all. You know, they make me bloat, and they make me tired, and, you know, gluten's not great for me either, and funnily enough, green apples aren't either. And then there's some people that can absolutely handle green apples no problem whatsoever. So, You know, if you're confused about food, if you don't know what to eat, you need to start to learn to establish this beautiful individualized precision medicine roadmap based on your individualized body type, based on your hormonal picture, based on your lifestyle, based on your output, based on what you want from yourself, you know, so if you're an office worker and you're sitting down eight hours a day, your food needs to look very different to somebody who is an elite athlete. Um, or a, you know, uh, Pilates instructor who's, you know, in, in Pilates classes all day long. Um, she needs way more protein muscle synthesis. Well, in actual fact, you could debate that fact too because, you know, if you're an office worker, you really do need to be focusing on your protein muscle synthesis. You know, you need to be building protein. In order to be as vital as you possibly can be. So I'm here to tell you that it takes a while to establish your personalized road map. And there's never a good time to start. There's always going to be, in terms of the fact that, you know, Oh, I've got a wedding coming up, or I've got a birthday coming up, or it's Christmas, or it's Easter. You can absolutely navigate normal life in an 80 20 way. And bring your vitality and your health online. Now that I have established my personalized, individualized roadmap, I'm no longer obese, I no longer am addicted to food like substances, I can absolutely name them out and I can tell you my trouble foods. And I'll get onto trouble foods and trouble places in a moment, as well as trouble people. You know, people that are addicted to food have issues with people, places, and food groups. But I'll get into that in a moment. So, you can absolutely bring it online. So, I'll give you, I'll give you a perfect example. So, inside of my program, I have this incredible power cuppa that I use as a tool. Every single morning I have a coffee, but I would never have a coffee on its own. It doesn't suit my biochemistry. It doesn't suit my cortisol levels. I come from a group of women, and we know how to produce the stress hormone, baby. We absolutely do. The majority of us, and, you know, in my family lineage, Women have been abused and they've been beaten and we come from a traumatic circumstances. So we absolutely know how to produce stress hormone. So first thing in the morning, um, my cortisol awakening response comes up and I really want to support my adrenals and nourish them. So I start my day with a coffee, but it's always got fat and fiber in it. And sometimes it has protein in it too. Now, I know if you've never ever added fat or fiber or protein to your coffee, it may sound completely ridiculous and it may sound like, what? Don't touch my coffee. I don't want my coffee to change. I can tell you that I have researched this so beautifully and so well. I have found incredible fiber and incredible fat and absolutely incredible protein that mixes into my coffee that makes it taste absolutely delicious. Even if you're somebody that wants to give away dairy because it's spiking insulin or causing inflammation in your system, particularly if you're a woman with PCOS or endometriosis, you really should be looking at cutting down your dairy or moving to A2. You can absolutely have a gorgeous, thick, fluffy, creamy coffee without it deleteriously impacting your hormones. So if you start your day with a power cuppa, you are honestly not hungry. You're satiated and the message that you're sending to your brain is that you need to be in a fat burn as opposed to a fat store state. So your body starts to access ketones. Once you are accessing ketones, you are on fire. Your energy levels are incredible. And if you have any additional adiposity to lose or any belly fat that starts to just melt away and disappear from around the middle and the tuck shop arms and the back and the thighs. And then if you have a gorgeous protein rich meal, you know, something like the rainbow eating three cups of green leafy vegetables, one cup of color and two cups of high quality and 200 grams of high quality protein, or. One gram of net protein per kilogram of body weight or ideal body weight, depending on your circumstances and the outcome you're trying to achieve. If you need to go out for a Christmas lunch or Christmas dinner, there's so many tips and tricks that we can put into place to ensure that that one meal or that one cocktail is not going to. Railroad your efforts or the outcomes that you're trying to achieve. It is absolutely possible to have a beautiful, you know, and I don't even like using the word, but just to convey, um, the information, you know, it's absolutely possible to have a beautiful cheat meal and eat according to the power of your plate. Starting every single meal with a beautiful salad, you know, or eating your veggies first. Then eating your gorgeous protein and your fat and having your carbohydrates or your chippies last. So, for example, if you go out and you have a steak, let's say, right? Start with a salad. Then eat the steak and the fat and then have your chips last because what that does is it slows down the absorption of the sugars in your system. It doesn't spike your blood glucose and it doesn't spike your insulin. It doesn't get you into an insulin resistant state, which is a fat store as opposed to a fat burn state. Your diet should not have a special name. You know, you should not have a special fancy name for your diet. I do not teach and do not advocate for any particular diet, right? I use a blend of the best quality research for perimenopausal women. The research is coming in. talking about the Mediterranean and the longevity diets. It has the most powerful research with regards to longevity and perimenopausal hormones. There's no special named diet that you should be, that you should be on. You should be on a beautiful roadmap and you should make peace with the foods that treat you well and support your personal individualized biochemistry. And you should learn how to eat your three meals a day or your two meals a day. But especially over the age of 35, implementing some time restricted eating and some intermittent fasting so that your gastrointestinal tract can heal, seal, and repair itself. If we are eating all the time, we are consistently spiking blood glucose, we are consistently increasing inflammation, and it doesn't do us any good. It doesn't do our brains any good, it doesn't do our bodies any good, it doesn't do our minds any good. Your gastrointestinal tract, your brain, your body. It needs time to repair. It needs a significant amount of time where it is not focused on metabolizing, transforming, and transporting your food. So, firstly, we need to make peace with food. We need to make sure that we have a nutrient dense, rich blood supply so that we are getting in all of the macro and the micro nutrients that we need on an individualized precision basis, right? You need to know which foods nurture and nourish you and make you feel like a million bucks. And then you also need to know the foods that don't necessarily do that. And I like to call them sometimes foods like let's not vilify food. We're so lucky in these first world countries where we have. Ample food. The problem is, is that we're overnourished, really, and often by the wrong things. And essentially to take care of yourself in a beautiful way, you really need to ignore mass marketing, you know, have a, have, have a break, have a KitKat, you know, and if you drink Coca Cola, you're going to be happy and have lots of friends, you know, and lots of, lots of big pharma and lots of big food encourage us to eat food like substances, your body, your biochemistry, your brain and your hormones and your neurotransmitters are not going to come online if you're feeding yourself. Or your children for that matter. Food like substances. If you're eating out of a box or out of a packet, please, I implore you to eat nature's food. If you cannot recognize what the ingredient is, or what it does, or if there's a number involved, please don't eat it. Eat things that you can recognize, because if you can recognize them, you can pronounce them, you know what they are, your biochemistry can too, so if you start your day, you know, with a power cuppa, even if you don't start a power, if you don't start your day with a power cuppa, and you don't use that as your tool, if you start your day with a beautiful amount of protein, fat, and fiber, according to your individualized biochemistry and you follow that process and that program throughout the day, you've made peace with the foods that nourish and nurture your body. You know exactly how to eat exactly when to eat and exactly what to eat to make sure that your energy levels come online so that you're supporting your mitochondria, you're supporting your microbiome and you're supporting your hormones and your health. You do not need. to worry about Christmas. You do not need to worry about Easter. You can absolutely have a treat. You can absolutely have sometimes foods in an 80 20 ratio. As long as 80 percent of the time you're giving your body a break, implementing intermittent fasting and power cuppers over the holiday periods are unbelievably powerful to maintain your weight or still significantly shift that weight if needs be. Without having to restrict. So please, if somebody is trying to put you on a diet... You know, if it's Optifast or Paleo or Keto or, you know, whatever it is, the, the pharmacy lemon diet, this, that, or the other. One of the main reasons for weight loss resistance or the yo yo dieting is because women put themselves through these periods of restriction that they cannot maintain. You aren't, if you are restricting and you are hungry, you're not eating properly. Right? And if you're not nourishing and nurturing your body and your microbiome and your hormones, you're not going to be functioning optimally. And then if your gastrointestinal tract is dysbiotic or it's full of toxins and it needs a bit of a clean out, you've got to start there. So if you want weight loss that is sustainable, And if you are experiencing weight loss resistance, you have to start in the gastrointestinal tract. You need to heal, seal, and repair your gastrointestinal tract. You need to bring your metabolism back online. And then you need to feed your individualized biochemistry body and brain the foods that it needs. Your individualized biochemistry body and brain. Appropriate for your age, appropriate for your activity levels, appropriate for your life and your lifestyle. And you don't have to eat. A diet that is different to, or foods that are different to the foods that your family are eating. I cook according to my individualized food protocol. I have salads on the table every night. I have vegetables on the table every night. I have high quality protein on the table every night. And yes, because I'm a perimenopausal woman, and I do have a, um, an inclination towards thyropause, andropause, insulin resistance, and high blood glucose levels. I do not take in as much processed carbohydrates as I once could, right, because it doesn't support my body. But it doesn't mean I don't put the pasta and the rice on the table for my 17 year old teenage boy who absolutely needs that stuff. You know, gosh, their metabolisms are going a hundred thousand miles a minute. What I would do to have the metabolism of a 17 year old boy, unbelievable. Unbelievable. So it's not like you have to cook some special food or, you know, have a special food protocol that, you know, so you're cooking separate meals for the family. No. And I'm here to tell you that so many of the women in my clinic have actually reported that their kids moods and their skins, particularly the teenagers, My son has unbelievable skin. He has never had an issue with acne. And um, yeah, he gets enough, he gets enough macro micro nutrients. He gets all of these greens, he gets all of these reds, he gets the rainbow and high quality protein as well as the carbohydrates he needs. And I cook and support my body according to my individualized food protocol. And I'm here to tell you that if you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired, exhausted, other, and you're using food as medicine, You really need to stop and pause and nurture yourself. And the question that you need to ask too is What is eating me? If you are using food as medicine, if you are using food to numb, there's an emotion that needs to be addressed. And if you're exhausted, if you're going for the choccy, or if you're going for the fifth cup of coffee that day, and you're absolutely smashed, perhaps it's time to support your microbiome. Perhaps it's time to support your mitochondria. You know, perimenopausal women after the age of 35, We have a significant drop in co-enzyme Q 10 or ubiquinol, which is the gold standard fuel for our mitochondria. No wonder we're exhausted. We've got thyroid pores, we've got an, we've got, uh, adrenal pores, and we're having this incredible transition, right? So it can be an extremely challenging time because it is a time of transition, but it is also a beautiful invitation. It is an invitation to take care of yourself like you never have before. Please establish. Strong personal boundaries and the highest levels of self care that you have ever, ever had. You need to ensure that you are not heading towards insulin resistance, prediabetes type 2, subclinical hypothyroidism, you know, What is it called? Metabolic syndrome or syndrome X, which is where we are stuck in a fat store as opposed to a fat burn state. We have to get out of that state so that we can access our energy from our food and we can fuel our bodies and our brains in order to feel vital, in order to feel cool, calm, collected. Not be snappy, not have aggro, not have rage so that we can nourish our adrenals, nourish our thyroids, nourish our guts, nourish our brains and nourish our bodies. If you need to know how, if you don't know where to start, I'm here to tell you that you absolutely can do it in November, December, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October. It doesn't matter what month you start. It is about. bringing that body literacy online. It's about understanding your body, understanding your individualized needs. It is about understanding how to implement your personalized food protocol so that you can wake up in the morning, jump out of bed. Get to that exercise class at 5 a. m. You know, be at the desk at 8. Smash out the work that, you know, drives you, lights you up, helps you change that world, helps you contribute. You know, when the kids throw things at you, you've got that beautiful adaptogenic capacity. You're able to adapt to stress. You know, when stress comes at you, you've got a high adaptogenic capacity. So, you know, it doesn't derail you or, you know, Set you off course for the entire day. You just adapt to it quickly. You adjust, you make the change that's needed and you get on with it and you are actually comfortable in your own skin and you like your own company and you like yourself and you love and nurture. And like the woman that you see in the mirror, it is absolutely possible, but it is absolutely imperative to take very, very, very good care of yourself. If you're eating food like substances to get through, if you're smashing the chocolate at two or three o'clock in the afternoon, if you're waking between, You know, one and three a. m. You've got a blood sugar issue. We need to balance your blood sugar. We need to keep that stable. Once we've balanced the blood sugar, you have a stability in your mood, in your mind, in your brain. When you're sleeping through the night, you can have the most incredible day. And when you have the most incredible day, you contribute in a way that you're proud of. Right? You don't have to drag yourself around, feeling smashed, not be able to get through the day, feeling overwhelmed. It doesn't need to be that way. Your body is a self healing mechanism, and the beauty about that is it is not broken. As a recovered food addict, I can tell you that I was obese, I had cystic acne, I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, which is an autoimmune condition. I was told that unless I went on the oral contraceptive pill and took extremely dangerous weight load drugs that don't work, by the way, The research has now shown that I had high cholesterol because my thyroid wasn't online. If you have high cholesterol and low ferritin levels, your thyroid is not optimized. If you have high cholesterol and you do not understand why, because you're not eating bad fat, you're not smashing the cheese and your cholesterol is just high, it could potentially be neuroprotective. It could actually be good for you unless your LDL is higher than your HDL. We need to reverse that ratio for you with good fats. You need to be cooking your food in butter or ghee or olive oil or MCT oil to bring your body back online. PUFAs, polyunsaturated fats, are one of the worst toxins that you could put into your body because what happens with bad fats is that they line every single cell in your body. Every single cell in your body has a phospholipid bilayer. It's a fat water layer and it is in charge of the communication, the cellular communication within your body. If they are surrounded by bad fats, you are in trouble and you are inflamed. Inflammation is an absolute killer. If you're puffy, if you're exhausted, if your rings don't fit you anymore, if you have cankles, if your socks leave lines on your legs. If you're bloated, if you have, you know, diarrhea one day and constipation the next, we need to bring your gastrointestinal tract and your microbiome back online so that your kidneys and your detoxification system, your liver, your large intestine and your skin can get rid of all of the endogenous toxins in your body first. So don't forget that your body produces its own amount of toxicity every day. It cleans up your brain, it cleans up every single cell in your body, right? So there's a certain amount of detoxification that happens within your body every single day before you put a toxin in your mouth, right? But remember, if you've got that additional belly fat or that additional adiposity underneath the arm or on the thighs and the back, that could potentially be an estrogen excess picture. Because you're putting toxins in your mouth and your body has to detoxify them first. Now, there is no shame associated with this. I'm just telling you this so that you know how to get rid of it. You need to fix your microbiome first so that your estrobilone, which is this gorgeous special part of your microbiome, can actually detoxify the estrogen out of your body so that you don't have this excess estrogen presentation. And don't forget, like, not only... this is horrible saying, but it actually clinically works. You know, we're fat 40 and frustrated, right? And a lot of that is an estrogen excess presentation because estrogen is also really moody and she's really snappy. And if you can't identify with the adiposity around the middle, if you just have like. You know, it's not even, it's not even kilograms, you know, it's, it's not even quantifiable. You can't sort of say, Oh, I've got like, you know, definitely 10 to 20 kilos to lose. You've just got this additional layer of fluff, right? That you just can't get rid of just this additional kind of padding or sort of fluffy cloud like adiposity on your body. That is an indicator that we really need to bring your microbiome online. Heal, seal and repair your gut, get your estrogen detoxifying appropriately, and get you out of a insulin resistant state, and get you into a fat burn and out of a fat store state. Women, food, and hormones are extremely complicated. So many of the incredible doctors in this space, Dr. Laura Brydon, Dr. Sarah Godfrey, um, you know, Dr. Mark Hyman, um, Professor Geraldine Pryor, Dr. Lisa Mascone, you know, please read all of their books, the Hormone Repair Manual, um, you know. Uh, Dr. Sarah Godfrey has got loads of books out, um, Dr. Laura Bryden's got the hormone repair manual, Dr. Lisa Mascone's got the XX brain or the menopause brain. I've read them all, they're incredible. These women know what they're talking about, they are so well researched. They talk about the fact that we have to bring our hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal axis online. We need to support our thyroid and our gut and our adrenals in perimenopause in order to be able to thrive. Behind the scenes when I'm treating my patients in my clinic, I'm actually preventing Alzheimer's and dementia. I do not want the women in my clinic to have type 3 diabetes. If you have pre diabetes type 2, a high HbA1c, high insulin, You are setting yourself up for type 3 diabetes, which is Alzheimer's and dementia, and this is preventable. If you have high cholesterol and your thyroid is not optimized, if you have thick, sticky red blood cells and lots of inflammation, you are setting yourself up for a cardiovascular event, you're setting yourself up for a stroke, you're setting yourself up for a heart attack. The biggest killer for women over the age of 40 is in fact a cardiovascular disease event or a heart attack. We still think that it's breast cancer, but it isn't. The majority of women actually die of heart disease. We need to make sure that we have a beautiful, beautiful blood supply that is not sticky. We need to make sure that our, we don't have blood platelet aggregation excessively. If you've got clotting in your menstrual blood, this is an indicator that your blood is not as smooth and thin as it needs to be. Olive oil brings your, olive oil is beautiful for blood thinning, so are amigas. These are also incredible for brain health and bone health. We need to prevent cancers. We absolutely can prevent certain oestrogenic type cancers by having a look at how you process your oestrogen. It is absolutely imperative to know all of the above. So please, if you are asking yourself whether you needed to wait until January or February to start bringing