Corporate Life, Chronic Stress, and Healing Your Body

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors.

Michelle Leotta

What I love about having these conversations on the podcast. It's at listening to other people's stories helps you see a new piece of yourself. In today's interview Michelle's story. Tracked with mine from being the anxious little kid in elementary school to being the anxious adult working in corporate.
And hearing her story. I saw how much my own life. Was out of alignment. When I first started seeing my own Ms. Symptoms. And I knew it on some level at the time, but stepping back and hearing how somebody else processed their similar circumstances. Really helped put things into perspective. And how I love a different perspective.
This week's guest has a story. I think you're going to relate to just as much as I did. Chronic stress burnout, even having anxiety and sometimes even attacking the cure with the same intensity as the rest of our lives. . We've all been there. And Michelle has a lot to say about how to find chronic stressors in our lives.
And how to get rid of them. From what we're eating, of course, to what's in our environment. To who we're hanging out with. This is a hugely helpful episode. And I had a lot of takeaways for myself that I started to integrate into my own life. Pretty immediately. After doing this episode.
And I know that you're going to have a lot of takeaways from this episode that you can start implementing in your own life as well. So please enjoy this week's episode and visit Andrea Hanson, coaching.com for more.
On Michelle. Leotta. Resources that we talk about in the show. And transcripts from today's episode. Welcome to the live your life, not your diagnosis podcast. I'm Andrea Hanson, author, motivational speaker. And master certified coach. When I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, I was told. I would never reach my goals. But I did. And I'm on a mission to prove that life with a chronic illness can still be expansive and quite remarkable.
Everyone has their own unique path. I'm talking to people, living with a chronic illness that come from different backgrounds, have different points of view and are achieving amazing life goals of all kinds. To you inspire you To achieve what you thought was impossible. These stories are raw. Uncensored and judgment free. Listener discretion is advised
[00:02:29] Andrea: Michelle Leotta has been featured on abc, cbs, npr, and in the movie Lemonade, with her inspiring story of burnout recovery once working nonstop in the fast paced world of big advertising, she was diagnosed with anxiety fainting spells, and IBS. As an integrative and functional health coach since 2009, and host of the She's Got Power podcast, Michelle helps go-getter women reverse symptoms of chronic stress, adrenal fatigue, and autoimmune disease, and she has zero plans to cover up the hard earned silver streaks in her curls.
Michelle, welcome. How are you?
[00:03:08] Michelle: , thanks for having me. It's so nice to be.
[00:03:11] Andrea: I am so excited to talk to you because you talk a lot about chronic stress, which I think is something a lot of us deal with, and it is very much wrapped up in things like anxiety, autoimmune disorders and everything else that I know you're going to, you're going to talk about. So I'm very excited to talk about that.
But first I want to hear a little bit about where you were before you got diagnosed with anxiety and ibs and before you started having these fainting spells.
[00:03:43] Michelle: Before the fainting spells. Well, I'm going to tell you, I was the kind of kid who in like seventh grade would keep a chart of like what outfits I wore every day and which shoes I wore and did I wear the new kids on the block t-shirt or did I wear that, whatever. And , to me that really just points at the type of.
Control freak potentially, , type A person that I was becoming, because even at that young age, I needed to organize, I needed to be on top of my stuff. I don't know why it was so important to me. I think I was afraid that I might wear the same thing too often and the kids would know that we really didn't have that much money.
So this is a coping mechanism in a way. The more I could control things, the safer I felt. And that's just a funny story of like the earliest memory I have of really doing that in a way that seems silly now. , and I didn't have the fainting episodes and the dizzy spells and any of those problems back in seventh grade, but by the time I was 16, they were starting.
[00:04:52] Andrea: That's interesting. I love the picture. Cause I, I love talking about where we were before our diagnosis because a lot of times it gives a little window into who we truly were. And I love that you kept track of when you were the new kids on the block t-shirt, . , but it gives an idea of a lot of us have this baked in, right?
This high achieving or being really hyper focused on something or being very concerned about, , our organization or appearance or a lot of times at school, how well you're doing in school. A lot of times we talk to people who are just those straight A students that are going into college doing you.
Biomedicine and all of this, all of this stuff. And I think it's interesting to talk to people about that because it shows just how common it is and how much we all have in common as far as going into something that's, that is going to maybe go awry and lead to things like painting spells. So you started fainting, that was kind of the first thing that started showing up.
[00:06:03] Michelle: Yes. I mean, in hindsight, I definitely did not recognize it. Nobody recognized it at the time, but I will tell you, , I was moved up a grade when I was in first grade. They popped me up to second grade, and then I finished out the school year with the second graders and went into third grade the following year.
So kind of like skipping a grade. And in those few months I was in the second grade classroom. I have this one memory of it. They were doing, , the time tests, the time multiplication and division tests on the piece of paper. You had to fill out a hundred of them as fast as you could. And I hadn't learned division yet because I hadn't been in their class.
And I, in retrospect, can remember like the numbers sort of floating in front of my eyes and feeling sweaty and the anxiety of, I'm not supposed to be here, they're going to know I'm not actually this smart. They're going to put me back in first grade. I'm going to be a failure. I'm going to let everybody down. Even though the teacher, I, she definitely came over to me and said, don't worry about it.
Just do the best you can. But I was hearing none of that. So , no one, no one saw a problem at all. And I don't think, even when I was 16, the first time I passed out was in church and they had carried me out and it was a whole scene and the ambulance comes and the whole thing. Oh, first of many occasions.
But again, no one really thought it was a health problem that needed to be looked into. I went to the doctor, they all just kind of shrugged and it was, it wasn't happening too frequently at that point. It started to pick up steam in my early twenties.
[00:07:41] Andrea: Yeah. , it's so funny when you're telling that story. I am reminded of when I, we moved around a lot when I was growing up and we moved right before first grade. It was a new class, new school knew everything. And I was so afraid that I was going to get there and everybody was going to know how to read and everybody was going to know how to do all of these things that I wasn't going to know how to do.
And I was already going to be so far behind and, and it's just like you said, my mom was like, Andrea, it's not going to be like that. Don't worry. It's, they're not going to know how to read. That's what you learn in, , starting in first grade. And I was the same way. I heard none of it. I was like, no, no, they're all going to be so far ahead and and, and , it's, it's so interesting how.
We hear none of the, the voices that are trying to calm us or help us, , release a little bit of an, that anxiety. Sometimes when you grab onto it, it's, it's unshakeable,
[00:08:37] Michelle: Yeah, it really is. And the voice from inside is louder than anything that anyone says. I just, it's a bunch of niceties what people say. It's no big deal. Oh, it is a big deal. I'm going to tell you it's a big deal. Cause somehow it is baked into my being that it is a big deal. And I know for me, like the high achieving mentality, well that's how I was getting noticed.
, I had, , my parents had been divorced, we moved a lot. I was new to town. Kind of similar to the story you just shared before starting kindergarten. I felt very unsure of myself, but they noticed that I was academically ahead of everyone. I got a lot of attention around that, even from my.
, family who were kind of wrapped up in all the nonsense that was going on there when I was pulled out of class to be in the talented and gifted program. Oh, like there was that gold star moment. Remember those gold star stickers? I lived for those moments. , it was that attention, it was that, that someone shining their smile at you.
And I think I was missing that otherwise. So I want to achieve that. I want to do the thing. I want to be great cuz apparently this is how I get noticed and that's real deep and that's still there, , to this day. Except now I, now I recognize it and , have done so much work to not let it take over. Cuz it really did start to take me down.
[00:09:59] Andrea: Yeah.
[00:09:59] Michelle: Literally take me down, like pass out on the ground,
[00:10:03] Andrea: Isn't that hilarious how that happens? It's like the figurative turns literal when it's something that we really need to notice. And often, like you said, we kind of don't at those first signs, so you were in high school, you started the, the fainting, but you went into college, you went on into your, your, the beginning of your career in big advertising and the whole time you were, you were having these symptoms of fainting.
[00:10:32] Michelle: Yeah, and a lot of dizzy spells. So for example, I learned about myself around that time period, early twenties, that I couldn't go to the mall because if I went to the mall, I started to feel dizzy and faint. And I'd be in like h and m trying to shop for something to wear out that weekend, and I would have to like sit down on the ground.
And I'm like, what is happening to me? And to be honest, my mother was always the same way. She hated the mall. She always said it was too loud, it was too many lights. I thought she was crazy and suddenly I was experiencing the same thing. So it started to change the way I lived in small ways like that. I didn't really want to go to the mall, , back when we had to go to the mall,
which is funny.
[00:11:14] Andrea: Which is huge. I mean, back in the day, going to the mall was like the thing,
that's what
[00:11:18] Michelle: was the thing, right? So there's a lot of these dizzy spells happening. , may, maybe I fainted, maybe I didn't. There was one time I was at work, we went out to lunch and had, , it's a whole big group of us getting burgers and beers and I didn't feel well. I was starting to feel dizzy.
And then you get very afraid cuz what if I pass out here? How embarrassing. And then it just makes you more freaked out. And I remember I had to lie down on the, the booth where we were seated and. Two of the guys carried me back to the office and found one of the, , one of our bosses had a big office with a couch and they found one of those that was available and me down on the couch.
And I was like, wow, okay. This is really like, not all right, but I had gone to the doctor many times describing this phenomenon and because it wasn't happening right then, they would be like, mm, I don't know what to say. And they would run my blood work and take my blood pressure and whatever. And just say all your numbers are fine.
[00:12:18] Andrea: Mm-hmm. . It's so frustrating when it's the same thing. Like I actually just dropped my car off this morning and a mechanic and it's the same thing. I'm like, look, this is happening. It's not going to happen while you're looking at it, but I can tell you it's happening, I promise. And he was like, okay,
[00:12:32] Michelle: Yeah.
[00:12:33] Andrea: And we get that from our doctors all the time because so many of these things are like come and go kind of symptoms that aren't something that we can recreate on the spot.
All we can do is explain it. And a lot of times it's in this very esoteric way that you can't even see what we're talking about, right? You can't see dizziness, you can't see pain a whole, , sometimes
[00:12:56] Michelle: can't measure that.
[00:12:57] Andrea: can't measure fatigue, right? And, and a lot of times our blood work will be fine and then we're kind of left to try to figure it out.
Or sometimes, , when it's the very beginning, I, it's, it's nice to say, what, it's not all the time. Blood work's fine. Let's just keep doing what we're doing and, and, , figure it out,
[00:13:20] Michelle: Yeah. I mean that's why it takes women eight years to get an autoimmune diagnosis, for example. And that's why so many of my clients come to me with the same story. They said I was fine, but I know I'm not fine. But it's not measurable. It's not something that anyone can figure out. And , it, it's just been left out of how we do medicine, how we do healthcare.
This is not an area that doctors are familiar with. They want to help. They're not bad people. They want to help. They don't have the tools. It was very, very clear in my case. I mean, I eventually went back to the doctor. I think three times in a very short window, maybe a month saying I must have mono, because now I, in addition to the Disney spells and the ongoing fainting episodes, I was so desperately tired.
I mean, I was 21 years old and I couldn't drag myself outta bed. And, , maybe I was out partying the night before. So there was that kind of thing going on. But now I knew it was beyond that. I would go to work and I had to ride up the, , 18th floor in the elevator, and I had to put my head against the wall and try to fall asleep in that time period that it would take me to get to the 18th floor.
And it was just crippling. I said, I know, I, I have to have mono. That's the only explanation. And I, , please test me, test me again. I have to have mono, and, and they, no, you don't have mono. And by the time they told me two, three times, a nurse was like, kind of quietly cleaning up in the room. At the end of the visit, I'm in tears just bawling uncontrollably because once again, I'm being told I'm fine.
I'm not fine. And she's like, she wasn't nice about it either, but it was probably the most important thing anyone said to me. She said, have you talked to a therapist? And I was one part like, screw you. And I was one part. Like, no, I never thought of that and I don't really know what else to do, so maybe I should talk to a therapist.
? So that was sort of like led me down the path of figuring out what the heck was going on.
[00:15:22] Andrea: And so the therapist is what was able to finally diagnose you or tell you what was up.
[00:15:27] Michelle: Well, this is what she said. She's like, and this is maybe the first session, she's like, so have you ever taken any medication for anxiety? And I was, No, why? Why would I do that? , like, I had no concept of what anxiety meant. I would never have identified myself as anxious. I mean, that's hilarious in retrospect of the little girl who was keeping track of what she wore every day in case someone would know that she didn't own that many pairs of shoes.
Right? Like, okay, , I, I could see it in retrospect, but I thought that was just wild. And I was like, what ? Well, alright. And the first thing I thought of was there was a yoga studio that I walked by every day. I, I lived in Boston's back bay and I'd walk up Royalston Street and at the time there was a place called Back Bay Yoga and I thought there were a bunch of weirdos that went in there.
, I wasn't part of that crew. I was very mainstream with my black pants and my high heels going to my corporate job. But I'm like, well, people do yoga for anxiety. I think I've heard that. I'm like, , can I try that? Do I have to take medication? And she wasn't like necessarily pushing medication, but she was like, , okay, , see how it goes, see how it goes, and, and then that just led me down the path.
One step further, started doing yoga and started to figure this thing out that was going on in my body.
[00:16:49] Andrea: Was it at that point that you were saying, okay, I actually, I have anxiety. That's what this is. Are you putting it all together with your fainting spells and your, was your ibs, was your digestion
[00:17:05] Michelle: Well, it's
[00:17:05] Andrea: playing a role as well?
[00:17:07] Michelle: I really never thought too much about the digestive stuff cuz it was so normal for me. I remember my stomach making sounds that I would try to like cough to like hide the fact that my stomach just sounded like a cat and heat and it was very embarrassing. And the bloating and , all of it.
But it was just so normal, right? Cuz it happens for so many years that you don't even think about it. So I wasn't even thinking about it, but I'm going to tell you, when you get into a yoga class, you start thinking about your digestive issues pretty darn quick.
[00:17:39] Andrea: 100%.
[00:17:41] Michelle: So it was the perfect segue to then going, oh gosh, I can't even do this pose.
Oh my God, this is embarrassing. What do I do? , maybe it has something to do with what I'm eating. And of course in yoga, everyone's always talking, all the teachers were always talking about food vegetarianism. My yoga teacher, one of them who I still to this day take classes with, at the time he was on a raw vegan diet and he talked all about that and it was, he was a stick.
And not that I necessarily wanted to also do a raw vegan diet, but it made me go, well what, what am I eating? I mean, I was eating. Like maybe at Lean Cuisine or one of those smart ones, , I'd buy them when they were on sale at the grocery store and bring them to my office and have those for lunch.
, thinking like that was healthy.
[00:18:24] Andrea: mm-hmm.
it sounds healthy.
[00:18:26] Michelle: it does sound healthy. It says it's healthy. They're called like healthy choices or
something.
, that's where I was. And so I think it was an exploration for sure. I, I didn't know. I like the challenge of doing yoga. I had been a dancer. I used to compete. , which by the way, I hear that story all the time for my clients.
I was a competitive swimmer. I was a competitive ice skater. I was a, oh yeah, right? It's that same type of, I gotta do better, I gotta do better.
[00:18:55] Andrea: by the way, I love that you said that you love yoga because it was a challenge. the irony.
[00:19:01] Michelle: the irony, right? Cause I was like, I'm pretty fit. Of course I am because I go to the gym and, , but I couldn't do anything that they were asking me to do. And I'm like, oh. Well, I'm going to come back tomorrow. I'm going to do this. So there was that, that challenge aspect that drew me in. But , between the work I was doing, physically unraveling parts of myself that I had never touched, and this newfound thinking about food, I actually went to the library and I went into the, , the aisle that had all the food books and different diets and things like this.
And I just plucked the book randomly off the shelf about Macrobiotics. It's by Jessica Porter's called The Hip Chicks Guide to Macrobiotics, and I read the whole thing, cover to cover, and she's just delightful. She did, she made it sound fun and interesting and engaging. Usually nutrition books are so boring and I thought, well, let me try this.
It was a little extreme, like, okay, it was a lot extreme. But when I changed what I was eating, it took a very short period of time for me to feel like an entirely different person.
And I was like, whoa. Like in terms of the dizzy spells. And I mean, I, I never experienced it again. Frankly. It never came back.
Once I changed my diet, I took out the sugar, I took out the caffeine. Of course, I also took out the dairy and the this and the that, and everything that the mcob diet required. , but my goodness, what a change. And there was this one day, and I'll never forget, I was standing in my home and the light was shining through the window just so, and I paused and I was like, I feel happy. This, this, like calm, just everything is okay. This sense of wellbeing. That was new and I didn't really remember the last time I felt that way. I'm like, this is remarkable. And that was just the start of what cont, , has been a journey for over a decade now. But, , it didn't take long for things to shift.
[00:21:17] Andrea: So what was the, what was the takeaway there? Was it that you were stressed because you were in this job and you were in this, , you had this lifestyle that you had set up, or was the takeaway at that time, and it might not have been at that time, it might have come later, the stress coming from how you were reacting to it.
Because at some point you left your job and went into the, , the health side of things.
[00:21:48] Michelle: I did, I did. I think what I learned was I can affect the way I feel now. Surely all my problems were not due to eating. right? Having a stressful job, having expectations put on you by your parents, all sorts of things. Just being a woman in society right, is stressful, but wow, such a small, seemingly small thing can make a huge difference.
I'm in control of my destiny. I can still work at this job, but feel like a different person. Wow. ? And now look at me. I have this yoga practice blossoming. , I ended up doing a yoga teacher training, and I think the takeaway was, there's so much I can do. No, I don't have to. I could have taken a pill, I could have taken some type of medication.
I, I just never, I never did. I never had to, , I never ended up trying that route,
[00:22:43] Andrea: Mm-hmm.
[00:22:44] Michelle: and it was just so exciting to see that I wasn't going to have to, I was going to be able to figure this out on my own. So that was definitely the biggest takeaway. Now, of course, once you, you crack that nut, you're like, well, what's the next.
Level, of course, high achiever. How could I do
this better? How could, how could I feel even better? ? And, and really it was, the job was very demanding. Long hours, a male dominated industry that really was hard to be in as a woman, , as in the ceo, no, I'm sorry. The c CEO CO had a stripper pole installed on his desk for the Christmas party.
[00:23:22] Andrea: Fantastic.
[00:23:23] Michelle: That kind of environment, right? Yes. Doing good things for everyone. , and here I am noticing when I eat these types of foods and I cook for myself and I don't eat the process stuff, I feel so much better. I want to evangelize about it, right? I became really annoying if you were my friend. You didn't want to be my friend anymore.
Cause all I wanted to do was tell you about like flax seed and chickpeas, and it was going to get really annoying. But at work I was on accounts like Ocean Spray and McDonald's. And that was very hard to reconcile what I was doing for a living with now these, these values that were emerging for me.
[00:24:05] Andrea: Mm-hmm.
[00:24:06] Michelle: somewhere in that mess, I met someone through the yoga studio who had gone to school at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.
I had been thinking, should I go back to school for a nutrition? What would that entail? But my degree is in art. That was going to be crazy to go back to school, , to become a registered dietician. Even just the cost of it would've been astronomical and, and my eyes were open to this other avenue and I thought, no, that's silly.
That's crazy. That's not a real job. That's not a real thing. Those people are nuts, ? But it kept coming up that synchronicity is the term for it, right? You hear about something and then you start hearing about it again and again. And I kept hearing about this school. So I eventually enrolled and I was halfway through the program.
With the Institute for Integrated Nutrition, and back then there were very few health coaching schools. These days there are a million, but I was halfway through the program. It was 2008, 2009, the economy was tanking. There were layoffs at work, and my boss was like, Hey, I gotta let your name has come up for layoffs.
It can be you, or it can be so and so down the hall. What? Like, what do you want to do?
[00:25:26] Andrea: Well, that's a question. It could be you or somebody else to get laid off. You make the decision.
[00:25:31] Michelle: Right. I mean, we had a friendship. We had a relationship. He was giving it to me straight. And he was like, , people talk, people don't like that you leave at five to get to yoga class. Of course they don't. You're supposed to stay all night long. ?
That's the
culture.
[00:25:48] Andrea: You're supposed to open the vein and
totally give every bit of you. Yeah.
[00:25:54] Michelle: And so I said Take me and raised my hand for the layoff, cuz I knew that would come with, , some type of package, , financially to get through.
And I knew that I was already preparing for a new career. I wasn't quite ready to take the leap, but the step appeared and I put my foot on it, got laid off and called myself a health coach, starting the very next day. It was terrify.
[00:26:23] Andrea: Terrify. Yeah, I understand . I understand leaving. I, , it's funny that a lot of times these big, these big events, , that happen can create some of the best changes in our lives because I got caught up. I was working in finance during that time. There it is. Right? I mean, in finance it was, it was a whole thing.
And, , that's what pushed me into coaching and doing things, for myself. And it's, it is, it's terrifying. And so, it is a time that is ripe with opportunity to push ourselves to fall back into the, you better produce, you better go out, you, this is all on you now. And it's a whole different ballgame.
And sometimes, I know for me it's, you can fall back into those old habits of pushing yourself and not necessarily listening to your body and not necessarily doing everything that is, , good for your health. So how did you do in that, that transition?
[00:27:25] Michelle: Well, you pretty much called it. I mean, I thought these external factors were stressing my body out. I mean, and , they were,
[00:27:35] Andrea: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:36] Michelle: I thought, I leave the stressful job, I do my yoga, I eat the good food, I do a little meditation. , like it's, it's all going to come together. But what I didn't realize was that it was really inside me, this drive, this overdrive.
And really it's a case of, , it's called HPA access this regulation.
[00:28:01] Andrea: wait, say that again.
[00:28:03] Michelle: HPA access. It stands for your hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access. And this is your body's stress response system. So if you think about your immune system that takes care of viruses and bacteria that you encounter, your stress response system takes care of stress that you encounter.
And there's various ways that we do that. So for example, if the tiger is chasing us, pupils are going to dilate so we can see better. Our body's going to dump glucose into the bloodstream so we have fast energy so we can run away, things like that. Now, when that happens, by the way, what gets down regulated in your body or things like digestion, cuz we're not digesting a big meal right now, we gotta run.
So all the energy in the body goes toward that. Things like fertility. You're not making a baby right now, a tiger's chasing you. We're going to down regulate anything that has to do with baby making. And we just want your muscles to work really fast and get you outta here. We're going to make you strong and fast and , able to see.
And over time we don't have tigers. But if the tiger is the job or the way we were brought up, or if the tiger is within us constantly making up a story about why we have to be afraid. We're constantly in a state where our stress response system is turned on and it's not supposed to be on all the time.
It's supposed to be on while we're getting chased by the tiger. Cause it's like an ancient, ancient system. , it worked very well for our prehistoric ancestors. But then either we get eaten and it's over, or the we, we lose the tiger, the tiger's gone and we can relax.
It's supposed to be turned on and turned off.
You're on and then you recuperate. But in our modern world, there's not a whole lot of recuperation time. So that's where I was stuck, , and I was stuck there. Whether I was working in advertising or whether I was working for myself, which turned out to be just another way that I could get stressed, need to strive to do better, never be happy with where I was.
Have fear about finances. Of course, as with any new business, have self doubt. I'm an imposter. I'm new at this. Why would anybody trust me? I'm, I'm a fool. I shouldn't be doing this. And after about a year, I almost quit. I actually had experienced a miscarriage, which I didn't know at the time how common that was.
It was my first pregnancy, fully blamed myself and the amount that I had been working and really just shut things down. I quit everything that I was doing. I canceled clients, I canceled workshops, and just like almost walked away from the whole thing because I had been bringing to it that same overdrive that I had brought to my whole life.
[00:30:54] Andrea: And ironically, when we have something happen and our, our full attention is brought to it, like, okay, something is wrong. We need to rethink things. , we bring that intensity with us. And sometimes even when you're looking at things like we talked about, like with yoga or with resting or with maybe, Back a, a smidge from our businesses or our clients.
It's like we apply the same intensity and all of a sudden it's cancel everything and go crazy with the yoga. And I will do a headstand in three weeks and, and I have to rest . And so it's like we bring this same intensity and a lot of times when it comes to our stress response, it's not like you said, like the tiger is not there.
It's not the actual thing that is stressing us out. It's our response to it. And so sometimes it becomes a really big, , it can feel like a really big call to action to figure out where that stress or where that response is coming from. So we're not attacking rest with the same veracity that we're attacking, creating our business.
[00:32:04] Michelle: Yes. Self care can also be taken to an extreme
1000%. And I would say when people go through this journey, , I've watched so many people on various health journeys, friends, clients, I think everyone takes it to an extreme. In the beginning, it's almost like you have. And that's when you're annoying and you're evangelizing and you're telling everyone they can never eat sugar, et cetera.
Like I brought kale chips to Thanksgiving dinner and , you become that person.
[00:32:36] Andrea: We've all become that person at
[00:32:38] Michelle: yeah, . But luckily over time you can find a middle ground, ? And that's I think really where I thought the healing happened, just in being able to say, I'm not passing out anymore. But even I think today, the healing continues with, can I live in the gray zone?
Can I live in ambiguity? Can I live with, maybe I'm good enough and maybe I'm not, and who cares? And I deserve to rest and have some pleasure in my life. These are new concepts and I'm 43 years old and I'm wrestling with them, , for the first time.
[00:33:12] Andrea: So how did you get there? How did you let yourself get to the point where it's okay to be in that gray zone instead of being all or nothing?
[00:33:21] Michelle: Well, I'm glad it happened the way it did, right? If you never try the things, if you never try the different self care practices, if you never change the way you eat, right, you're never going to figure out how things affect you. It's like a big experiment. And I think that although food is, is not the whole story, I think it's a really important part of the story because what you eat can really muck you up.
Like you can be feeling like very foggy and lethargic. And imagine if you can take away even like 50% of that, , by changing your diet. Now you're thinking more clearly. Now you're able to make different decisions in your life with more clarity. Do I want to be hanging out with these people? Is this serving me?
You start thinking in a different way, so, Anyway, I think I had to go to this extreme, do the experiment on my body and then I'm going to tell you, motherhood hit me like a ton of bricks when I eventually did. I now have two boys. , cuz you cannot be a perfect mother. You can't strive to be the best mother.
There is no such thing, there's no awards and it's very hard to get it right And it softened me. It really softened me. It's been my best teacher.
[00:34:40] Andrea: That's, yeah, that's, that's interesting how sometimes it's things that happen to us. Can really change who we are and how we see the world. And it changes things like our empathy and how we relate to other people.
And in this, in turn, it changes how we relate to ourselves and it creates this whole new level of sometimes calm and, and understanding that I think a lot of times we are so desperately lacking of having that calm and that understanding when it comes to relating with ourselves.
[00:35:13] Michelle: There was a maturity for sure, a maturity that happened through the course of becoming a mom and maybe priority shifting
and also seeing that even if I packed the diaper bag just right and did all the things just right, we could still have a blowout. I couldn't prevent it, et cetera. , so, , definitely a real teaching moment and it becomes harder to be so strict.
With food. So, , a lot of times clients think they have to only eat a certain number of calories and we definitely have to go off gluten and , maybe it should be keto and it should be this other thing. It should be strict, strict, strict. And while I see huge value in addressing the nutrition piece, I also see huge value in doing as little of that as possible.
[00:36:01] Andrea: Oh, that's interesting. I'd say more about that because I think a lot of people go into it thinking that again, they have to attack it, right? They, they've got all of these things, and depending on how many things that you read, you really can find out that everything from gluten to broccoli is terrible for you and you should never eat it, and you can be whittled down to eating next to nothing.
[00:36:23] Michelle: Absolutely. And I think that's another stressor,
particularly for women. We've always, I'm going to just say collectively, we have always been told like, don't eat this, eat that. You gotta be skinny, you gotta do, I remember like the snackwells cookies craze
and the don't eat fat, right? So we all have this like enormous amount of stress about like, what should we eat and is it right and is it wrong?
Oh. And so even though there are therapeutic diets, things that you might do for a short period of time in order to heal your gut, for example, or maybe there's long term changes that do need to be made, like going off gluten and if you have celiac disease, let's not take it overboard. Like with the macrobiotics that I did in the beginning, I didn't know better, so I took it to the nth degree.
, it becomes hard to live. It becomes a stressor in and of itself. And in that way it's counterproductive.
[00:37:19] Andrea: Right. And hard to stick with, right. Counterproductive because it's stressing you out, but also counterproductive because you're not going to be doing it for long. And I think that, , we all have things. We all have foods that don't work with their bodies, I think every single person does. , and I think if you make it so extreme that you can't really even stick with it, and then you don't want to go back and look at your food again because it was such a terrible experience last time, you're missing out on finding like, oh gosh, if I just stop eating onions, there's an amazing difference in my body.
[00:37:54] Michelle: And you are a grown woman, so then you can decide for yourself if you want to eat onions or not. But you have to first see how it goes. How does it make me feel? Now I have the information and then I get to decide, right? And I think that's very empowering place to be. Versus I'm just going to give you a list of foods that are bad and you avoid all of those and it, it never seems to work out in the long run.
[00:38:18] Andrea: Mm, no. Cause a lot of times those things are just not, I mean, these are lifestyle changes and a lot of times what people start with is not, not a lifestyle change. It's a very heavy change in the beginning, and a lot of people don't talk about it the way you talk about it, which I think is great, which is, this can be for a short period of time.
This can be just to figure out some things. This is not necessarily forever and ever. You don't have to be so strict on it because it's important that it, it integrates with your lifestyle and does not create more stress.
[00:38:57] Michelle: You have to want to do it, and you don't want to do it in the beginning. But I'll tell you when you do want to do it, I'll tell you a story about a client of mine I had recently. She came to me primarily dealing with pain, shooting pain up her arms in her hips. It was really keeping her from life, , she couldn't walk her dog, for example, cause her hips would hurt too much if
she did that amount of walking.
, just like basic stuff in life, ? And she had a couple other things going on. They all pointed to autoimmunity, but she did not have a diagnosis of any kind. And I could just see what would happen. It's another eight years from now. Maybe something's going to show up on a test, but I can, , you could already kind of sniff it out based on her various symptoms.
And I said, Hey, you. We can do a diet to see what works for your body. , let's experiment. We have a pretty good idea that this might be an autoimmune issue. And she was, , going to doctors in the meantime, getting a lot of shrugs of the shoulders. , she had another one coming up in a couple of months.
And so I said, she said, I want to start now. I need to start feeling better now. I'm willing to do anything. And so we started with an elimination diet with as few things as possible, and she started to feel better, but not a hundred percent better, but quite a bit better. So she wanted to do more. She wanted to do more cuz she liked how she felt.
And that's the key. So, okay, we took it a step further, , we removed some more things. Follow. Just like you would expect she's feeling better, the pain is going away, , by like dramatic, like 80% reduction in her pain. Okay, what's next? Well then she started to feel pretty darn good, but she had a vacation plan.
They were going to Jamaica, one of these all-inclusive resort things with the kids and her husband. And she said, what do I do? What do I do? , you're not going to be able to follow this diet in Jamaica. Do the best you can. Here I am the second grade teacher saying now to my people, do the best you can.
And of course, while she was there, she was having drinks and sugar and this and that and , she really couldn't control what she was eating too much. And she felt it when she came back. She said, I really feel the difference. She's like, this is a no brainer for me.
I'm going to go back to what I was doing before, cuz I can't live like. And we talked about how, so we built, kind of built towards like what was the appropriate healing diet for her. How to test to know like, all right, , I've been gluten free for X number of weeks or months. Like, is it long enough? How to do a test on yourself so you feel, you feel how it affects you, and you can make a decision from there.
And , with this idea that it doesn't have to be forever, and it can be as strict as you want it to be, but your body's going to tell you, and now you can hear it because you're not stuck in the muck every single day.
[00:41:53] Andrea: Yeah. And I think that's such a, that's such a clear distinction, is when you start to take certain things out of your diet and you find the thing, or one of the things that's really causing things like pain or stiffness or, , fatigue, and you notice that different, you can, you can notice it so much more clearly because it's not covered up by a whole lot of other things.
And so once you notice it so clearly and you can see like, oh, okay, so gluten is what is causing my creaky joints and my stiffness and all that kind of stuff. And when I don't eat it, it's not happening, then it's a whole new world. It's no longer like, but it's a sandwich. Like you don't care that it's a sandwich.
[00:42:35] Michelle: You
never want to eat a sandwich if a sandwich means you're going to feel like that. And I think it's also really helpful to not just be given a list of like bad foods, cuz there is nothing bad I believe about, , food is isn't, it's not a moral question of if it's good or bad. We're not at the confessional in a Catholic church, , , it's not like that.
But if you can understand what gluten does in your body, how it is digested, what can go wrong, why it triggers your symptoms, then you're like, oh, I can make a decision from that place instead of just being told, , don't eat all these foods. So that was very, very powerful for her. She ended up resolving so many of her symptoms that when she went to that next doctor, She was like, yeah, actually I'm feeling pretty good.
[00:43:21] Andrea: I'm all good. Thanks
[00:43:22] Michelle: Yeah. Thanks.
[00:43:23] Andrea: you. I think we're, we're starting to get out of the idea of good food, bad food, but it's still very much there and it's still very much coming from that diet culture that we were, most people were raised on, unless you're, , 12 right now, , like maybe you weren't raised on it.
Hopefully it's coming out of, our thinking with food. But a lot of us grew up with the, like, use the snack wells. I love that you said that, but that's a good snack and what's a bad food? And, and a lot of times it's just that mindset shift away from understanding that food is just food and it's not personal, it's just that different foods react differently for different people.
And it's all about figuring out what's going on. But one thing that I love that you talk about is, Aside from the food, right? When we're looking at, we're looking at chronic stress, we're looking at healing your body from chronic stress and getting out of that cycle of being in stress all the time. It's not only food, it can be other ways.
And so you talk about detoxing and there are environmental things that we need to detox from. When it comes to chronic stress, something's got nothing to do sometimes it has nothing to do with what you're putting into your body, it's what is around you and existing. And you touched on it a little bit before about like who are you hanging out with?
What's going on? But what are some of the ways that we can detox our environment in order to help our chronic stress?
[00:45:00] Michelle: Sure. So that HPA access that I talked about earlier, the stress response system, it gets turned on when your body encounters a stressor. And what's interesting is that it's the same reaction regardless of what the stressor is. So the stressor could be the tiger. The stressor could be your boss or a deadline or your finances.
The stressor could be gluten.
[00:45:25] Andrea: Mm-hmm.
[00:45:25] Michelle: The stressor can be the inflammation. Like that you, you might get the puffiness that you might feel, , when you eat certain foods, that's a stressor. Your body does not like that. Your body's having to deal with something it doesn't like. So food can be a major stressor.
That's why when we fix that, it, it's like you have, I always describe it as a bucket. You can hold just so much stress. You have a stress bucket. Some people stress buckets are bigger or smaller depending on their life experience and their stress set point, I call it. But you have a finite amount that your body can handle before you start having symptoms and disease.
So anyway, what goes in it? Stressors like the tiger stressors, like maybe the food that you're eating. Stressors like loneliness. Same reaction. Same triggered reaction if for someone like think about quarantine when everybody was just desperately
[00:46:16] Andrea: was huge. I mean, so many stories coming out of that as far as how quarantine and the pandemic affected people.
[00:46:23] Michelle: Just, I mean, that's going to trigger your stress response. That's going to, , a lot of. , autoimmune disease is coming out the other side of quarantine, I believe because of the extra, the added stress that we were under. , lack of exercise act actually, when you move your body, I'm not even just talking about exercise, like lifting weights, but any kind of movement is the best way to clear stress from your system, to move through your stress response, to turn it off to say, I'm safe.
When your body moves, it's like the antidote. So if there's a lack of movement in your life, it's the opposite. , that's another stressor on your system. , smoking, right? Obviously a stressor on your system. And then things like. The chemicals in the plastic that's in the lean cuisine that you popped in the microwave and now you're ingesting stressors on your system.
Things that your body does not like. I just think of it that way. Things you, your body doesn't like, your body's like, mm, that's hard to deal with. Any of those things are going to trigger that same HPA access and, , , the people that you're around your marriage, your, , your career. If you're out of alignment, you're doing work that you are diametrically opposed to, like me working on the McDonald's account stressor.
And, , once that stress bucket gets filled up, now that's when we're dealing with, I have the aches, I have the pains, I have the fatigue, I have all these problems my doctor can't diagnose me with. And it's the tipping point, often turning into, , chronic illness autoimmune type.
[00:47:58] Andrea: So how do , how do if what you're dealing with is chronic stress versus it's already tipped into an autoimmune disorder? Cause a lot of times you can have full blown autoimmune disorders and you're still not going to get diagnosed for quite a while because there's still not anything really that doctors can see.
So how do what the difference is?
[00:48:16] Michelle: Yeah, I mean, there is no definitive test, right? If, if there were, it'd be much easier to diagnose these things. And autoimmunity is a spectrum, so you can be experiencing some bits of autoimmune reactivity, but you're not in full blown ms. Right? And I believe that I was in those early stages, and I caught it early enough that I've, it didn't progress, but had the dizzy spells continued and the digestion issues continued and my stress response continued to be stuck on for another 10, 20, 30 years, I think I'd be in a very different place.
So we really look at clusters of symptoms. And, , I have a free quiz on my website that allows you to determine, , is this just kind of normal stress symptoms that everybody has? Or am I in a burnt out state? Am I in a state where I am prone to disease or maybe already there? , and it's just a matter of checking off different symptoms and looking at how they cluster together.
, and your listeners can get that for free. It's that she's got power.com/free.
[00:49:22] Andrea: And that will all be in the show notes, all the links, , and the book that you talked about before on the macrobiotics, all of that
[00:49:29] Michelle: Yes, it's a great book. I still have two copies.
[00:49:32] Andrea: Oh, that's fantastic. It's so great when you have a book, I mean, this is such a, such a side note from an author, right? But it's like when you find a book that just changes your life, it's amazing.
And like, you will forever be talking about that book.
[00:49:46] Michelle: I absolutely have.
[00:49:48] Andrea: Yeah. . Fantastic. So what is, let's start with what you do. What are some of the things that you still do? Cuz I know that you're still dealing with stress, right? We will always have some kind of stress that we deal with. It's not like you can just get rid of stress and it's, and so there's always something.
So what is it that you do? What are your go-to tools, even on a daily basis to help you, , balance out and not, not have those stressors affect you so much?
[00:50:20] Michelle: Sure. , there are a couple non-negotiables in my life and I think for the most part, like I said, I'm pretty negotiable these days. Like I'm going to have a piece of the chocolate cake, , like it there, it's not strict like it once was, but what's really important for me is an hour of exercise in the morning.
It's about the movement. It's also about, this is an hour for me and I've been doing that since my kids were. Maybe not born, but since maybe they started to go to daycare and to school where I would take that first hour that I had and used it just for myself. And then during quarantine, oh my gosh, even more so they learned, don't bother mommy for this one 60 minute period of this very long quarantine.
I'm going to be out there exercising and that's my time. So that's a non-negotiable. Another thing I'm careful with is my sugar and caffeine intake. I stay careful because I will have a cup of coffee, however, if it's too strong, I will regret it later. , or if I drink too much of it or if I have sugar for too many days in a row, I'm going to notice.
So I pay a lot of attention to that and, and that helps me tremendously. And another thing that I hadn't mentioned as a stressor, which is interesting, is a micronutrient deficiency can be a stressor, right? If your body simply does not have what it needs, to keep you healthy. oh, , it's like if you're, whatever, , when any, any machine doesn't have what it needs to work properly, so, Eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables every day is something I strive to do.
In fact, I even do with my kids. A lot of times we'll count up how many different fruits and vegetables did we eat today, and if we can get to eight, we feel awesome. And sometimes, sometimes we get to 10 and then other days it's one. But that's an interesting practice to get into because all the different colors that you're eating signify different micronutrients, and so the wider variety you can get the better, .
So my breakfast today definitely included like kale and mushrooms and cabbage and carrots. That was a fermented carrot thing and an avocado. So that's like five right there.
[00:52:33] Andrea: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. I have spinach for breakfast every single day. Like that's, that's one of my, not, it's like just a huge he thing of spinach, which of course is like a little teaspoon once you
[00:52:44] Michelle: Cook it.
[00:52:45] Andrea: once you break it down a little bit. , I love it though. It reminds me of that advice that we always get, which is eat the rainbow.
[00:52:53] Michelle: Yeah. I mean, it's so cliche, but it's It's true.
It's
[00:52:57] Andrea: are cliche because they're true. Yeah. Things are cliche because they're true for sure. And I think it's important to know, like you said, , it, it's something that I have found, because I'm the same way. I'm still, I'm very, it's not like I'm loosey-goosey, but I'm not super, super strict because that's never going to work with me.
And so I have things that I generally do, but you don't do 'em sometimes, like you said, you're going to have the chocolate cake, sometimes you're going to have the, , whatever the, the big coffee drink. And it was interesting to hear you say it because I find it true for me as well. It's not about whether or not you do it, it's about how often you do it.
So if I do it one day, I need to not do it the next, it, , like one day, one, meal or whatever. It's fine. It doesn't even really affect me too much that I can tell. But if I do it three days in a row, forget about it because it builds up in your system and your body starts to really notice it.
[00:53:54] Michelle: about that cumulative effect. You're so right. Cause people want to know, okay, it's gluten, I can't eat gluten. Gluten is the culprit. But often, I mean, sometimes that, that might be the case, of course, like with celiac disease, but sometimes, , you can, you can have the cake, you can do the thing, you can have the wine, whatever.
But if it's too much of.
[00:54:14] Andrea: Mm-hmm.
[00:54:15] Michelle: In too close of a time period. So like I said, I could have sugar one day, maybe two days, but if I'm five days in and every day I'm having a piece of cake, I'm going to start feeling it. If I'm also very stressed because something's going on with my job or my relationships or something like that, it's going to hit me harder.
So all your different stressors add up in that bucket. And that's why I love that visual because it's no one thing. It's typically not just one thing, but you have to be conscious of like, how many of these different stressors are you encountering at the same time? And at some point you have to go, oh, okay, I need to, I need to reset from this.
Or I really need to step back from all of it and like recuperate, cuz I let it build up too much.
[00:54:58] Andrea: So I know that, I know my listeners are sitting here and thinking, holy cow, this is my life. Like I get it now that it's not just what I'm eating, it's not just what's going on with my job. , it's the idea of how many different stressors in different ways are happening at one time. And so if people are looking at this and thinking, okay, I am probably in chronic stress territory, what is just an easy thing that they can do in their life to start to ease off that?
Acceleration of their stress. It doesn't have to be going into a huge, , they don't have to go into a huge diet. They don't have to dump all their friends. They don't have to do, they don't have to move or quit their job. Like, those are all kind of the big things. But what's something that's easy but can really, that can really help back off that stress a little bit.
[00:55:49] Michelle: All right, I'm going to give you two options cuz I think different personalities go for, , different approaches. And E what I would say is an easy option, and not everybody will agree with this, is stop drinking caffeine. Because caffeine is like, it's like you have a mug full of stress and you're consuming it.
So when you think of it that way, like why, why would you possibly do that? , or at least cut back to one cut before noon. And that's it. Because especially if we're drinking later in the day, it's interrupting our sleep. We didn't even talk about sleep, but that's another non-negotiable of mine getting a full night's sleep every night.
My kids know they better not wake me up early. , so that, that would be like one of my like easy go-to cut it, you're done. It's going to make a big difference. But the other one, , I would say is really important is to start noticing when the voice inside you is saying, no. To something. No, I don't like that.
No, I'm uncomfortable with that. No, I don't want to do that. No, I don't like that. , that person or that thing or that place. And experiment with speaking that no more often than you currently are. Cuz sometimes we don't think we can say no to something. Example, oh, this is a little bit embarrassing.
Maybe I shouldn't even share this, but my stepfather's mom passed away last week and while I've, I've known her my whole life, I haven't seen her in many years at this point. I live close enough that I can go to the wake. It's also just a few days before Thanksgiving, which I'm hosting
[00:57:16] Andrea: Hmm.
[00:57:16] Michelle: and I'm like, I just don't want to, and that sounds so bad.
Oh, like, , like, oh, everyone's going to think I'm the worst person if I don't go right. I mean, there's judgment even within myself, and what if everybody else thinks, but also sometimes you don't need an explanation except, , you can just tell yourself, because I don't like, I don't want to, and I feel, I feel the guilt, but I also feel the freedom in that.
And I want your listeners to try that for themselves, because sometimes it's easier, sometimes you're not talking about like a funeral, , sometimes it's like, I don't want to go to that birthday party. , and if you can practice with those easier nos, it, it just, that's where you tap into like your alignment, doing the things that you actually want to be doing, not overtaxing yourself with commitments, of course.
Stressful. , and, and Wow. Does that make a major difference in how you.
[00:58:12] Andrea: Yeah. And I think it's also practicing, like you said, not it's, it's hard to jump into the, I don't care what people think, but, and of course that is, , that is the extreme of like, , what are people going to think? But I think just testing it out with not feeling like you have to explain yourself and not worrying so much about what someone's going to think when you say no.
Because the more you, the more you practice saying no and realizing that you can move in that space and people actually kind of don't care the more , right? Like people kind of don't, they, they really just don't. And, , but the more you're practicing not having that judgment of yourself, cuz a lot of times a judgment that you think other people are going to have is actually just the judgment that you have in your own, in your own mind.
And so by practicing that saying no. You're, you're just practicing being okay with not worrying about what other people are going to think and not judging yourself so much. So I think that is, yeah, I think that is actually a genius thing to, to start doing is saying, is saying, no,
[00:59:21] Michelle: We don't have to please everyone all the time,
[00:59:23] Andrea: no. Nor can we. It's impossible. It is impossible. Well, Michelle, thank you so much for coming and sharing about your story, sharing about different ways to step away from that chronic stress, which I know is in, in some level in all of our lives. And I think it's been really, really helpful to hear about this.
Again, I'm going to have all of this stuff in the show notes, but real quick, how can people get in touch with you?
[00:59:51] Michelle: So you can find me on Instagram. I'm at, she's Got Power and my website is, she's got power.com.
[00:59:58] Andrea: Fantastic. Thank you so much.
[01:00:00] Michelle: Thank you.
How good was that? Just eat the chocolate cake. Advice to live by, I think for all of us.
I love how Michelle went into the cumulative effect of food and of stress as a whole. In most cases, not all, but most we can eat the cake. We can drink the espresso martini. We can stay out late and we can be okay. It's not the one time that's going to get us. It's if we do it again and again. It's the cumulative effect of eating six meals in a row with bread or sugar or whatever.
And not only just eating the food, but looking at the whole picture of what stressors you have going on. In your whole life. And if maybe there's just too many other stressors happening that one dessert may put you over the edge. So for example, As , I was sick recently. I had a pretty bad cold.
And while my body was stressed with that bad, cold and healing, I made sure that I was really clean. In everything else I did in what I was eating, I made sure I got as much sleep as possible. Because my body was already at it, stress limit and anything extra would have put it over the edge and would have stopped my healing from happening so quickly.
So where you are in that stress bucket, not just with food, but also with your health, your career, your relationships, your ecosystem, right? Like what's just around you. It's really good to take an inventory every once in a while, because the answer to chronic stress isn't always quit the job. Or move to another state.
Sometimes the answer is much simpler than that. And I don't know about you, but if there's a not so intense answer to solving a problem. I am trying that one first. Every single time.
I'm very excited about next week's show. I'm talking with somebody who I met a while ago and have stayed friends with for years. And she's got an amazing story of perseverance resilience, fortitude. And I know what she would say to that. She'd say that she just did what she had to do in order to save her life.
And that she did. I love this woman so much. And I'm really glad that I get to share her and her story with you. So please join me next week for that. And make sure to follow the podcast. So you never miss an episode.
And if there's someone that you want to hear from, or a topic you would like to hear more about, let me know. I love hearing from you. You can always contact me. At Andrea Hanson, coaching.com. That's a N D R E a. H a N S O N C O a C H I N g.com. Until next time. Take care. If you like the show, don't be shy. Please give us a five-star rating and review. Follow us on apple podcast, Amazon music or wherever you're listening right now. To see complete show notes and resources mentioned in this episode
visit AndreaHansonCoaching.com. Thank you for joining me And until next time take care