Ep. 161 When Your Body Finally Says Enough with Jen Germain

How do you like all I know about the autoimmune protocol is that it's extremely restrictive, right? So how do you because a lot of us are addicted to sugar, we're addicted to every kind of food there is all this processing stuff.

How do you deal with the mental aspect and not just the physical?

So I think at least for me, I was in quite a bit of a lot of pain.

And so for me, I didn't, the thought of not having sugar, I was like, you know what? I just, I can't have it anymore.

Like I just have to get off of it because if this diet, if this way of eating is going to allow me to not feel this way anymore, and it's actually going to help me get healthy to where I'm at least able to take a shower and not be exhausted afterwards, or be able to get dressed and not feel exhausted afterwards, or having the pain in my gut or run into the bathroom for as many times of the day as I was, then it's worth it to me.

And I think sometimes it's that mindset shift of what is it that is really important to you? Is it the foods that you're eating every day that have like the crunch or they have the chocolate or all of these different components? Or is it the sugar? And honestly, with the sugar, I've never gone back.

Like I'd never I've been off refined sugar for six years and I don't miss it because I know where it led me.

And I think that's one of the biggest keys is I could see what all the habits that I'm growing up and in my adulthood and everything else, where it had led me.

And I knew I had to make that change.

And so it's that mindset shift that is really huge.

And understanding that there are some things when you want to get healthy that you can't bring along for that ride.

As part of that, because like I have two autoimmune diseases that I know of, but in some ways I can correlate it to sugar and diet, of course.

But in other ways, it's kind of detached for me.

So how do you get your clients to realize that diet is a huge part of this?

yeah so for any autoimmune issue or even just chronic illness in general i think the beautiful part about functional medicine is that it takes in the whole person so nutrition is a big big key because nutrition is not just the food that we eat every day or the fuel that we burn it's information for every single cell in your body you have 37 trillion cells inside your body and all of them need different nutrients to turn things on and off or to do different processes and those chemical reactions that we have to create the electrical current energy of the ATP.

And when you think about food in a different capacity and you understand that it's not just to have that growling belly, it's not just to settle that growling belly, it's to ignite the mitochondria inside your cells so that it can create the energy that keeps you alive every single day.

And the one thing I try to tell my clients is to think about food differently.

Don't think about it as just fueling that hunger or providing you with sustenance for the day.

But really, those cells need that information, those nutrients.

And the one thing that we don't always think about are when we have those ultra processed foods, they don't really have a lot of nutrients in them.

So our body and that's one of the problems when when we're eating them is that our body, yes, we're technically eating and filling our belly, but our body is like, I'm not getting my magnesium, I need some vitamin A, I need some more B vitamins in here, I need some manganese, and I'm not getting to eat more.

I need you to eat more food because I don't have these things.

So then that's how we start to overeat on those processed foods.

And if you think about it, when we're eating those foods, we're more malnourished because we're not getting nutrients into the body.

So I really try to stress with my clients that, that to think about food differently, not just from the standpoint of filling your stomach and making sure you're getting enough calories in or anything like that, because it's not just about calories.