0:00:00.0 Speaker 1: The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of Mother's Market and Kitchen, Mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition.

0:00:10.7 Kimberly King: Hello, I'm Kimberly King and welcome to the Mother's Market Podcast, a show dedicated to the truth, beauty and goodness of the human condition. On today's episode, the type of foods we eat play a major factor in our health, and it all comes together in our gut. There the food is broken down into nutrients and turned into fuel that we can use as energy throughout the day, learn all about gut health and how you can get your diet dialed in to improve your overall health and happiness. But first up, Melanie Rogers is a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioner, master Pilates trainer, former professional ballet dancer, and Melanie holds a master's degree in traditional Chinese medicine. Melanie helps busy, active women get to the root cause of their hormone and gut issues, developed a personalised holistic plan and takes control of their health, so that we can all feel energetic, slim and symptoms-free at any age. This is why she's my new BFF by the way, utilising a functional health approach that includes ancient wisdom and science-based lab testing, she incorporates customised nutrition-targeted supplementation and needle moving lifestyle hacks to those people who overcome unwanted symptoms to optimise their health. And we welcome Mel to the Mother's Market Podcast. Melanie, how are you?

0:01:29.8 Melanie Rogers: I'm great, thank you so much Kimberly for having me, I'm thrilled to be here.

0:01:34.9 KK: You are a wealth of information and I have come... You come alongside of me in my journey, so I would love for you to just tell us a little bit, the audience, about your mission and your work before we get to today's show topic.

0:01:48.7 MR: Well, basically, my passion is health and all things related to health. I suffered from my own issues growing up, everything from severe acne to digestive issues, to low energy, to thyroid issues, and I, through the work that I have done with healing myself holistically and naturally, and seeing kind of the flip side of some dark side of pharmaceuticals and going to more of a holistic approach, I absolutely love to teach other women and to empower other women to take control of their own health. To take sovereignty of their health choices and to realise that they can feel better, better than they ever thought possible even through many holistic lifestyle, nutrition, supplementation ways, it's really my passion is to share what I've learned and to help other people.

0:02:44.1 KK: I love it, and that's... Obviously, it's working for you, but it's oftentimes your own personal story that brings you to your passion and so you're living that. Today, we're actually talking about gut health, as you mentioned, you had suffered with that when you were younger, what symptoms are related to gut health?

0:03:02.6 MR: Oh gosh, well, so many things are related to the health of our gut, everything from the typical digestive symptoms that we seem to... That run really prevalent here in the United States. Gut issues like gas and bloating, and stomach acid reflux, and constipation and diarrhea, IBS and Crohn's disease and food sensitivity type issues, those are all very obviously gut-related. It actually, the symptomology is localised in your digestion. But what people don't realise is how important our gut health is to so many other functions in the body, like the way our skin is, the health of our skin, the health of our mental health, our emotional health, our energy or metabolic health. Let's talk about headaches and how headaches can be reflective of what's going on in our gut health, our immune system, 80-90% of our main system is housed in our gut, our hormonal health, how bad our periods are, how we're excreting our estrogen ladies has to do with our gut health. So really, even our hair, skin and nails is reflective of our gut health, anything and everything can kind of go back to that baseline, which is why I think one of the most fundamental things to get healthy is how you digest your food and think about it. Every day we have two to six times a day what we put in our mouth, right. It matters and it leads to either optimising our health or disease, so nutrition is a huge factor in how we feel, how we think, and even how emotionally we are.

0:04:55.0 KK: You know, and you really are covering so many bases. Some things that you've mentioned, I wouldn't have even have thought about with gut health, but you mentioned headaches, but really primarily in the world that we're living in right now with COVID, the immunity and our immune systems. And that's so important. What tests do you run to determine gut health? I've been... My disclosure here is that I'm working with you, and I think it's so fascinating that the numbers don't lie, and I wanted you to talk about what test that you put your patients through... Your clients.

0:05:28.5 MR: Absolutely. Okay, absolutely, yeah, you have been working with me and you got the whole shebang and kind of a big chunk of test, and it's really fascinating, there's really no one functional test that can tell absolutely everything. They each have their pros and cons. Some are cutting edge science, some are long standing time tested, of course, blood work is always good as a foundational tool as well. And I'm looking for trends that when we talk about lab testing, we wanna not just look at what is considered within a normal range, but we wanna consider what is actually optimal, so we call those functional ranges, they're often a more narrow bandwidth of acceptability because we're not looking for the general average, we want to find out what really is needed with the numbers that we're looking on in any sort of particular functional test, what really is needed to be functioning optimally. So we're looking at...

0:06:26.2 MR: A variety of different... Let me see how to put this, we're looking at all kinds of different parts of the body [chuckle] for functional lab testing, so I do some stool testing, stool testing can show everything from our gut microbiome, the good bacteria and the numbers that we have, because we can have low numbers of bacteria, we can have too high numbers, we can have not enough variation, we can have not enough variety, 'cause you really want a very varied microbiome, we also are looking for little gut pathogens. Now we can't eradicate all negative gut bacteria parasites, fungus, Candida, they're gonna live symbiotically with us. What we care about is when they're overgrown, when we don't have enough of the good guys and we have too much of the bad guys, right. So we're looking in some of the stool testing at some of those bugs and seeing how much is prevalent and do we have an overgrowth in one particular area. So stool testing can also show us different enzymatic activity, like how is our pancreatic enzymes? How are we digesting our fat? It could show us our secretory IGA, which are immune system in our gut, so we can really see a lot of things through stool testing. Also I do organic acids testing, which is a urine test... So far, these tests I've mentioned, except for maybe blood work, which you'd have to go to a lab or a mobile phlebotomist, most of it, you can do it at home, which is fantastic.

0:07:51.8 MR: Organic acids can also show various metabolic things going on in the body, including bacteria and Candida and things like that, also nutrient levels, and seeing if you're deficient in a certain nutrient, maybe protein or B-12, things like that. And then I do a hair tissue mineral analysis, which also shows your minerals, which are your spark plugs of your body, they're very important and they're reflective of different organ systems. For example, your sodium levels are reflective of your adrenals and things like that. So we're looking at those ratios of minerals and if you are deficient or excess and trying to balance those as well. And typically people feel a lot better when they're minerals, where they're doing a proper mineral nutrient absorption. And then, yeah, traditional blood work is also really good to see trends and see if there's inflammation in the body, and then there's also another urine test that I do, that's hormonal-based which shows your adrenal cortisol levels and your sex hormones.

0:08:49.2 MR: Your estrogen and your testosterone, your progesterone, so a super important test to show your circadian pattern, your circadian rhythm, to see how stressed you are and what your body is doing with that stress, how it's adapting, and then how your hormones are doing and how your estrogen pathways are and are you excreting and those can give us clues directly and indirectly about your gut health, that particular hormone test doesn't directly test the gut, but it will tell us how the gut is functioning because hormones could be... They're simply chemical messengers and they're showing us kind of what the gut is doing, so those are some of the tests that I run.

0:09:30.9 KK: It has been eye-opening and life-changing for me, so as we continue on in the interview a little bit that I can share personally, but I never had had any issues, and then all of a sudden the hormones came through and took over and it was literally out of my control, so you really helped explain to me and how to get back on track, and especially following these tests.

0:09:54.4 MR: You feel better, right? [chuckle]

0:09:56.0 KK: And I feel better, I do. And really, we've been working together since January, February, I guess, about how our bodies change too, and my next question is, what kind of gut issues arise that can be self-healed?

0:10:12.8 MR: That is a great question. So I personally don't diagnose or treat any particular disease, but what we try to do is get the body back to homeostasis by nourishing the body's natural ability to heal itself. So what I do do, stool testing or organic acids testing, and we see some dysbiotic bacteria or fungus, we're working on maybe offering a holistic self-healing protocol to help balance the gut microbiome and allow the good bacteria to do their job, so that they can bring down those pathogenic bacteria numbers, and so that you can feel better and symptom-free, so we can look at things like different types of bacteria, H Pylori, different parasites, fungus, Candida, things like Aspergillus, which is mold. We can look for things with leaky gut, which is intestinal permeability, which means the wall of your intestines has a thin layer of protection, both chemically and physically, and we don't want large particles to get through the intestines into our bloodstream, that's what causes food sensitivities and generalised inflammation anywhere in the body, including headaches and arthritis and skin issues, so that leaky gut or that, I should say that gut, if it is damaged by our diet or by stress or medications or by gut pathogens themselves.

0:11:42.4 MR: We can have all those different symptoms arise that I was speaking about, where you can have headaches and skin issues, so we wanna work on testing for leaky gut and seeing if we need to work on reseeding and healing and sealing the gut so that less things can escape from it that aren't supposed to. SIBO, small intestine and bacterial overgrowth, IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, which is really a collection of different gut issues, symptoms all kind of lumped into one. So those are all things that we can work on improving symptomatically and healing.

0:12:17.7 KK: Perfect, it's so funny because it almost sounds like you're speaking another language, [chuckle] and so it's nice to have you here breakthrough and then let us know the simple... What does that mean? Can we talk about probiotics? And do they work? Do they help?

0:12:32.8 MR: It's a great question. Yes and no, yes. The short answer is yes, probiotics can very much help. But it does matter on where you're getting your probiotics, how much you're taking and what's going on in your personalised gut. So one thing I will say, I am not a fan of refrigerate probiotics as a general rule. If they are so delicate that they need to be refrigerated, they're certainly not gonna survive the fire of your stomach, which is very acidic. So I tend to go for more ones that are stable at room temperature and that have been shown clinically to make it through with your stomach and can actually seed in the intestines, which is where you want your probiotic to work.

0:13:18.5 MR: I tend to like soil and spore-based probiotics, but not even everyone can tolerate those and you wanna start off slow. So yes, it's always good for people to take probiotics, but there's a little more clinical application to customise it, but you could also take probiotic-rich foods. So things like sauerkraut and kimchi, and even kombucha, as long as it doesn't have a whole lot of sugar from the fruit juice in there. Kefir, which is a fermented dairy. Those are all things that you can incorporate that will help bring those good bacteria into your gut. You just wanna make sure they were refrigerated, actually, in this case, because that means they are live. You don't wanna take the pasteurised sauerkraut 'cause it's not gonna have all the live probiotics in it.

0:14:11.8 KK: So you're talking about... Just for clarification, so when you're talking about kimchi or kombucha, that's the life, or the refrigerated part you're talking about, but the probiotics as a supplement that you're looking for the stable room temperature probiotics as a supplement?

0:14:27.6 MR: Yes, if you're gonna take it as a supplement, which is going to be very targeted, then you wanna take one that is non-refrigerated, correct. And then, if you're going to take something like have it be in your food naturally... All ancient cultures have some sort of fermented food tradition, well you just wanna make sure that it's not pasteurised because pasteurisation kills any sort of live bacteria. Pasteurisation is used to make sure it doesn't harbor any bad bacteria that's gonna hurt us, but in turn it also kills off the good bacteria. And so you just wanna get a good sauerkraut and kimchi, you wanna get that refrigerated if you want to eat it for the probiotic benefit.

0:15:13.7 KK: Got it. This is great information, and we need to take a quick break, but more in just a moment. Stay with us, we will be right back with more of Melanie Rogers.

0:15:23.9 S1: Welcome back to the Mother's Market Podcast. And we wanna remind you that if you missed any portion of today's show, you can find us on iTunes by searching Mother's Market, or download the show from our website, www.mothersmarket.com. Click the link for podcast and listen to past shows, plus download our healthy recipes and money savings coupons, all available at www.mothersmarket.com.

0:15:46.1 KK: And now back to our interview with Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioner, Melanie Rogers. And we're talking today about gut health. So Melanie it's so interesting as I was introducing you, we were really kind of talking about your own personal digestion story, and so I wanted to dive into that a little bit with you.

0:16:06.5 MR: Absolutely. Okay, well, I'll start way back when I was a kid and try to summarise quickly, but I always had tummy issues as a kid. Now nothing that I actually went to a doctor and got diagnosed, but I would get tummy aches, or get gas and bloating after I eat birthday cake or pasta. And I just remembered just kind of suffering through it. And then when I hit teenage-hood, I was really plagued with some pretty, at times, extreme acne, so I would say moderate to severe at times, and it really took a toll on my confidence. I was a ballet dancer and I had a lot of confidence from that, but then I was plagued with the skin problem, and so, my mom at the age of 16 sent me to an acupuncturist. She was progressive enough to do so, and I really fell in love with the medicine and give or take kind of a healing journey 'cause I didn't do all the right things. I was a teenager, but it introduced me to the world of holistic healing. And then when I was in my 20s, I went to acupuncture school and Chinese Medicine school, so that was huge, and I got to do a lot of healing through that.

0:17:14.8 MR: I even went on Accutane when I was a teenager, which is a very harsh drug, that I probably still am dealing with some of the consequences of. Anyway, fast forward to getting married and having kids, and then subsequently going through a divorce, I still was plagued with digestive issues on and off. And acne came back after the birth of my second child, when I was... I was like, "No, why?" So I was trying to search again for natural ways, and that's when I found Functional Diagnostic Nutrition, where they taught, or they did lab testing in addition to more ancient traditional healing modalities, which I love. You're combining modern science with ancient traditions, and when I went through the testing I realised and saw my cortisol levels were shot. I was a single mom working a lot and stressed out, I wasn't sleeping well, or not sleeping enough, and I was low on my thyroid, and I had H Pylori and a little parasite, and low digestive enzymes and my immune system was low in my gut. And just all kinds of things. But guess what? It was validation, that no matter how healthy I was eating, I was pretty strict. I went off gluten several years ago, or before, when I did the testing years prior...

0:18:37.1 MR: And no matter how healthy I ate, I still felt I was so sensitive in my gut. And even with my skin. And so seeing it on paper that I had these low-grade dysbiotic bacteria, and my immune system was shot, I had a starting place, I had a road map. And then guided by a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioner, while I was in the school for it myself, and healing all of the things that were bothering me for most of my life, it was even more powerful than just Chinese medicine because I had the lab work behind it and we could retest and see how I improved. Basically, healing's a journey, and I still go through healing modalities myself. When you have sort of a Achilles' heel, a weak spot in your body, it's not like you're forever healing, never have to work on it. There are times I go through another little gut heal protocol, but in general, I am doing so fantastic. I have more energy at 44 than I did at 24. And my skin is clear.

0:19:39.9 KK: Yes! [chuckle] Your skin is beautiful.

0:19:40.9 MR: It's great. So my passion is to help women who have, like myself, who have tried everything, and who either don't love going to their doctor and getting on pharmaceuticals, or who are tired of being on medication, or feel like their doctor's not listening to them, or who wanna do both and get the best of both worlds. And there's all types, and I work with all types, and I honour and respect all types. But I just wanna share my knowledge with other people, other women and men. I've been working with men, as well. I work at a gym and with... We have a lot of athletes. And so I definitely see men, and we all have got issues. It's not just women.

0:20:19.8 KK: You know what? And that's a really good point. And that is true, but you know and... With all ages, you do work in a gym. And so the fact that you're saying that you're working with men, too, maybe we just don't think about men with gut issues, but it kind of leads me to my next question for you, too. Men, women alike, food sensitivities and the differences between that and/or allergies, how... Just hearing your backstory, it's so fascinating. And I'm kind of, you're coming alongside of me now, but how do we know? And is it both for men and women as well?

0:20:55.3 MR: That's a great question. And I didn't speak about food sensitivity testing in the prior question when we talked about testing, and that's a very important test that I offer to clients. I can test foods at the whole food level, and I can test at the peptide level where you're gonna make sure you don't get any false negatives or positives. Food sensitivity testing is different than food allergy testing. Allergy is an IgE antibody type issue where you have a very severe reaction to a food or chemical or bee stings, or things like that, where you could even get like the anaphylactic shock. So what, and it's very immediate. So that reaction is most often immediate. What we're looking for is an antibody reaction from an IgG or an IgA that's becomes it's... Well, we call this sensitivity. And it causes an inflammatory response in the body. And it doesn't necessarily show up immediately after the food. It can show up hours, days, even weeks after. And sometimes, the symptoms can't be necessarily directly associated with that food. So that's where it gets tricky for people. And that's why people feel like they've tried every diet in the world, and they still can't get why they're having issues, right? So I offer...

[chuckle]

0:22:12.6 KK: Yes!

0:22:14.0 MR: You know.

0:22:15.0 KK: I do.

0:22:15.1 MR: So I offer a few different types of food sensitivity testing. And then we wanna be coached. So I'm not just about testing and your protocol. I'm about coaching you through the process. So I never work in just one-off sessions. I work in series of three months or six months of time because, A, it takes that long to heal; B, we may need to tweak protocols and sequence the supplements, and C, I'm here to coach you through the process, the mental blocks, the emotional blocks, the accountability needed to make lifestyle and dietary changes sustainable. So if you're looking at the foods that you're sensitive to, we have to make a priority list, especially if you've got leaky gut and you have a lot of food sensitivities. Now, not all food sensitivities are forever. If you have a leaky gut, and we're working on healing it, the goal is to not have so much reaction to the foods that you're eating. The goal is to eliminate as many food sensitivities as possible. But when we do test and we're doing a protocol, it's good to eliminate those foods so your body can heal. So your immune system gets a break so your inflammation can go down and you can actually feel better. Some things like wheat, which has something called memory B cells. Sometimes, those things are forever. There is a gradient on which you're going to rank different foods, and some foods are just better left alone, and others, we wanna reintroduce. It really depends on the person.

0:23:42.6 KK: And so I think my favourite thing that you said was that it's not forever. I have shared this with you before, but I'm gonna say it again because it was so surprising to me, my food sensitivities, and again, the differences that yes, I'm taking a little break for healing. But oranges and pistachios and avocados, all my favorite, and I think I ate too many of them or something before for them to show up in the red zone for me.

0:24:05.4 MR: That's a really good point. First of all, I like to coach people through the mental aspect of eliminating food because we don't wanna demonise any one food as being bad. Yes, I have things to say about inflammatory effects of gluten and dairy and sugar and things like that. However, we wanna coach you through a healthy mental health around self-love and deciding to eliminate foods, but not to demonise them as bad. And then to strategically reintroduce. Now, one of the key things I wanna tell everyone that even I am guilty of not doing very well, but I try my best, is to rotate your foods. We can get into what I call food ruts where we can eat as healthy as possible, but we're eating chicken breast and broccoli every single day. [chuckle] And believe it or not, you can actually develop some food sensitivities by not having enough variety in your diet. So now, sometimes, when you're on a protocol, you feel very limited 'cause I'm not letting you eat certain foods that show up on your food sensitivity list. But when you're doing a general, "I'm living life and I'm making a nice diet for myself, nutrition for myself", you wanna eat the rainbow, you wanna get a variety of proteins, fat and fiber.

0:25:15.0 MR: PFF, I always say, PFF, protein, fat, and fiber is your BFF. Protein, fat, and fiber, best friend forever. [chuckle] So that's healthy animal protein, that's healthy forms of fat, and non-starchy vegetables as most of your fiber with a little starchy vegetable or starchy carb as a little bit of your carbohydrate, but you wanna really focus on your protein, fat and fiber at every meal. And then save your starchy carb for either post-workout or more in the evening, and that's really gonna help you with your energy levels, your blood glucose levels, which is really important, keeping influence resistance down, having energy to lose weight. That's a really simple rule that I tell everyone: PFF is your BFF.

0:26:01.0 KK: It's your BFF, I love that. We're all gonna use that now. We should turn it into a little song.

0:26:05.8 MR: I have to say I did not coin the term, but I love it, nonetheless. [chuckle]

0:26:10.6 KK: Well, I had never heard it before today, so I think that's awesome. And you talk about energy levels and just sleep is so important, all of that. And that's really to tell you, as I've been telling you, but that's a huge admonition on my part. I've really noticed that difference and so, that's great. Now, I have too much energy and my husband's always like, "Oh, my gosh! Settle down". No I'm just like... [chuckle]

0:26:33.8 MR: I love it! I love it! No, being metabolically healthy means you have energy, means you are sleeping well, means you don't have brain fog, you could think clearly, you're not exhausted in the afternoon. All of that matters, and we coach you through that whole process on how to optimise all those parts of your lifestyle.

0:26:50.5 KK: That's so great. Tell me a little bit about like when you reintroduce with... So for my avocados and my oranges and my pistachios, when is the best time to reintroduce those foods?

0:27:02.6 MR: Well, that's a really good question. Now, if you're listening to this podcast and you're interested in doing your own food elimination diet, you wanna at least do something for 21 days, so maybe try to eliminate gluten and dairy, some of the biggest offenders to inflammation. Not for everybody, but just in general, not working with you, personally, at least 21 days. But when someone works with me, usually, their protocol is about 90 days for us to really do the work with supplementation and diet. And then you reintroduce one food per week at a time so that you can actually see how you react to that food. So if you're doing this on your own, 21 days, you still wanna just reintroduce one of the foods back one week at a time, I would recommend, so that you know what the food's doing to you and you could make notes and have a little food diary and really listen to your body and kinda tap into that intuition and get to know yourself a lot better.

0:28:00.3 KK: I love that, food diary, that's kind of probably my Achilles' heel right now, is just making time to do that. But I noticed that with calorie counting and macros, that they really talk about keeping that diary and keeping check of what you're eating. What do you think about those types of diets or that discipline?

0:28:18.5 MR: It really is personal. In my opinion, if it works for you, great, but you wanna make sure you have a healthy mental attitude around it. I personally don't coach up calorie counting or macros. I do more of a visual plate representation of what percentage kind of, "Okay, you wanna make sure you have at least a palm full or more of protein, over half your plate of vegetables. I want your starch to be quite small". But for some people, getting to know their macros and figuring that out is really helpful and motivating to them. Calorie-counting, I think, is a little double-edged sword and... It really is personal, and I will guide people to apps or programs that would help them do that aspect of it 'cause that's not something I specialise in, but we generally talk about eating slowly, breathing before every meal, stopping before you're overfull. Things that you can just use in everyday life without having to have an app for, I really think are very valuable, and it increases your intuition on how to eat properly for yourself.

0:29:26.8 KK: Well, I think that's so interesting. What about learning... We're talking about, we did talk a little bit about this before, but the hormones and stress and how that affects with weight loss, but gut health really kinda trying to get it all back together. What are your thoughts about that?

0:29:42.8 MR: Oh, well...

0:29:45.0 KK: That's why I called you in the first place, by the way, the happy hormone healer.

0:29:48.4 MR: Happy hormone healer. Yes, I have a program called the Happy Hormone Solution, and I definitely try to tap into the importance of our hormonal health. But really, hormones are simply chemical messengers, and they're basically reflective of what's going on in other parts of our body. And yes, they are reflective of our gut health, as an example. Stress plays a huge factor in absolutely everything. So you can't always choose the stress that finds you, but you can choose how you're going to react. You can choose the type of stress...

0:30:25.0 KK: I like that. I like that.

0:30:26.0 MR: Right? You could choose the type of stress-reduction tools that you implement. One of the simplest ways to de-stress when it comes to gut health is to sit down without distractions when you eat your meals. Put your phone away, put the computer away, turn off the TV. Take deep breaths. Pray, whatever, show gratitude, whatever works for you and your family, and slow down at eating. Because so much of our gut issues can be from rushing while we eat. So we wanna chew our food completely. That actually starts the initiation process of our enzymes. And we want to not take huge bites and chew and swallow and not drink large amounts of water while we eat. Before and after is fine, but you're diluting your digestive enzymes if you're downing a bunch of water while you eat. So things like that are super simple, super free, and they're very profound. And people forget to do it. You can take 30 supplements, but if you are still rushing around, not chewing your food, not paying attention, and not showing gratitude, and slowing down, you're still gonna have gas and bloating. It's just a fact, yeah.

0:31:37.0 KK: That's a... You know what? And I know you do talk about that, too, that you really say, "Slow down and just be really aware of what you're eating and chewing". I think that's great advice. Tell me a little bit, let's talk about intuitive eating. What is that?

0:31:54.0 MR: Well, intuitive eating can really be defined by each individual person and how it relates to them. But what it means to me is that I'm going to gather information and knowledge from either my health practitioners, online, in books, but at the end of the day, I know what's best for my body. However, you can think you know because you've read something, but to actually tune in to your own body's reaction takes a bit of commitment and discipline and time to really, again, slow down and listen to your body's cues and really notice how a food affects you, and not make yourself think it's affecting you because you read that this is bad or you read this is good, but actually feel it in your body. And so it takes time to tap into that intuition. And a food journal can help because you can start to write notes on how you feel with each individual food, but all you're trying to do is actually be more attuned to your body symptoms, and that doesn't come with just how you eat. It's how you're feeling, how you're emotionally handling things, how you're speaking to yourself, your internal dialogue. Even being really honest about the different phases of your cycle and how you're feeling.

0:33:10.4 MR: And being more in-tune is just going to make you more sensitive to understanding what's good for you and what's bad for you. And then you tend to make choices based on self-love, not self-deprecation. And you make food choices and lifestyle choices based on, "I know this is going to make me feel good, and I love feeling good". And then you know yourself well enough that if you don't... If you eat something that doesn't make you feel good, you also don't beat yourself up over it because you know that beating yourself up is energetically going to add stress to your body and make things worse. So it's just being more in-tune, and I think it has a big dose of self-love in there, so it should be intuitive self-love eating, really.

0:33:50.8 KK: Yeah, and I think just mindset is what I'm hearing, and getting your mind right. I know Todd Durkin talked about that all the time, right?

0:33:55.7 MR: Yes, get your mind right!

[chuckle]

0:33:57.9 KK: Exactly!

0:33:58.6 MR: And look, look, it's a journey. It's nothing. I mean, I work on it. We all have the ability to fine-tune our intuition and our health, but it's not gonna be just an upward trajectory. There's gonna be dips, there's gonna be valleys, and we're all human, we all make mistakes. It's a life-long process. It's not really an end destination. But the more sensitive you get and the more healthy you get, the more you want to maintain your health with all of your vigor, with all of your energy because it's so important to you because you fought for it because you worked hard to maintain it, and you know what it takes. And you don't wanna give that up very easily. So it's kinda cool.

0:34:38.0 KK: It is, it's great. And I think, again, having you come alongside with me on this journey is so empowering, but also, I'm learning so much and taking that time to finally say, "Okay, enough. Let's figure out what's going on". So I truly appreciate that. [chuckle]

0:34:51.0 MR: It's been a joy. It's been a joy working with you and to see that... See your wins and how you've been feeling better, and making that dedication and commitment. You know, I don't wanna work with clients who aren't ready. I will tell someone, "If you're not ready, don't work with me. I'm gonna be here. But come to me when you're ready to make a commitment, both financial, but also with your time, with your energy, with making food, with taking supplements. When you're ready to change, nothing's gonna stop you, and then I'm here to facilitate it".

0:35:19.0 KK: That's so great. It's awesome, and I truly appreciate everything. And your words of wisdom today, too, just to peer inside of what it's like to have your knowledge come along with us. So really, some great advice, and we look forward to having you on again. But in the meantime, you can get more information. What is your website, melrogers.com?

0:35:43.0 MR: Yes, my website is melrogers.com, M-E-L-R-O-G-E-R-S.com. And from there, you can book a complementary clarity call with me where we can chat on the phone and see if we're a good fit to work together, and you could ask me questions. I can find out how you're doing and what's going on with your health concerns. And look, at the end of the day, we all have doctors, but doctors aren't trained in nutrition and supplementation and lifestyle hacks that actually help move the needle. So that's what I'm here for. And I would love you guys to book a call and we'll chat and move forward with your health transformation.

0:36:23.5 KK: Perfect, we appreciate it. And yeah, so in the meantime, you know what? We'll get in touch with you again, but check out the website, melrogers.com, and we look forward to having you on again in the future.

0:36:34.8 MR: Thank you so much, Kimberly. It was such a pleasure. It was awesome, and I look forward to doing it again.

0:36:41.0 KK: Yay! Thank you.

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0:36:45.4 S1: If you wanna learn more health information, check out www.mothersmarket.com. Get delicious recipes and health guidelines to keep your body in great shape. Thanks for listening to the Mother's Market Podcast and for shopping at Mother's Market.

0:37:01.0 S1: The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of Mother's Market and Kitchen. Mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition.