Lifestyle

Are you there hormones? It’s me Grit.

February 16, 2019 by Margaret Phillips

Hormones, man. *Shudder*

Does anyone have balanced hormones in this day and age? It seems like every Instagram influencer, every food blogger, and every fitness phenomenon has come forward professing their struggles with balancing hormone levels. And I mean, IT’S ABOUT TIME.

As a woman, our hormones are designed to save us. From life or death situations. Like surviving a famine. Or running from a lion. Things that we were subject to literally thousands of years ago.

Um hello hormones, excuse me, but we haven’t been chased by a lion for a few days now (about 730,000 days but really, who’s counting). Can you PLEASE work with us here and adapt a bit?

Our lives have changed greatly since the days of hunters and gatherers, but unfortunately, our hormonal responses to stressors have not. What does this mean for women in today’s world? Picture an angry cat sitting in front of a glass of water. The world is the cat. Our hormones are the water glass. I think you know where this is going.

High stress levels have been linked to several hormonal disorders, such as Graves disease, diabetes, and hypothyroidism. It’s even been shown that when kids are exposed to excessive stress, they experience stunted physical development due to low levels of growth hormone, even when receiving adequate calories and nutrition.

Unfortunately, the things that are so highly celebrated in today’s society–busy schedules, trendy diets, insane careers, thin figures, extreme sports–are the very things that are feeding the angry cat. And let me tell ya, my pissed off cat is #PHAT.

I really wreaked havoc on my hormones through years and years of disordered eating. Then I fixed my eating but continued to abuse my hormones with excessive exercise. Then I fixed that and decided to work myself to death. And when your body feels like it’s starving or under attack, it starts to adjust by shifting hormonal production and shutting down nonessential functions. My period was one of the first things to go.

I finally pulled myself out of the binge, restrict, and over exercise cycle that was controlling my life and started to get regular periods with the help of naturopath. The naturopath cost me one very, very pretty penny, but it was worth it to feel good without medication and to restore my body’s ability to menstruate. I felt so proud the first time I achieved a 4-ish week cycle. High-five, uterus.

Then something terrible happened. I went through a three-month-ish period at work that was incredibly stressful. Because I’m in the construction industry, deadlines are VERY real. I’ll spare you the details, but to summarize, I was working 7 days a week for at least 10 hours a day. At first my cycle slowed by about two weeks. Then I lost it completely. I was devastated.

So many things are wrong with this. How is it fair that men can work all hours of the day and be FINE, and yet when we try to push our limits, we lose the key bodily function that scientifically defines us as female? *sigh* The workplace needs to adjust for the (much needed) influx of women but until that happens, we need to be prepared for when we go into a hormonal crisis. Because all that money and time that I invested into getting my period back was ruined by the very thing that funded that healing journey. We can’t win, people. We just can’t win.

So lets talk strategy. When I go into hormonal crisis mode, I give myself a week-long bear hug that I like to call Grit’s Great Hormonal Retreat. This is a 7-10 day restorative “retreat”. In my apartment. Where I still go to work. (Hey we can’t all afford to go to the Malibu Healing Center ammirite??) By following the simple steps below, you can consciously lower stress levels by giving yourself some extra care and grace.

Swap out your strenuous workouts

Its going to be key to cut stress out of your schedule as much as possible, and one form of stress is physical stress from exercise. If you’re like me and you truly love your workouts, you don’t need to cut them out entirely. Maybe swap out your jog for a walk or your kickboxing class for some restorative yoga. Drop your weights, take off your Fitbit, and exhale.

Prioritize sleep

If your hormones are out of balance, then your body needs to heal. If your body needs to heal, then you need to sleep. It’s that simple. If you’re not sleeping, you’re not healing. Maybe talk to your boss about coming in later for a week in the morning so you can wake up naturally. Or take melatonin early in the evening so you can get to sleep earlier. I can’t stress enough that during this week, you need to make sleep your number 1 priority.

Eat more food

In order to heal, your body also need some extra high-grade fuel. During this week really focus on filling your body up with some extra foods that make it smile. Avoid processed foods and sugars. I like to keep it simple during this week by making things like fatty smoothies or whole grain pasta and veggies [click through my recipes for some more meal ideas!]. By filling your body during this time, you’re giving it the chance to catch up to its optimally performing state.

Add adaptogens into your routine

Adaptogens are like magical plants that help your body cope with stress. They’re all a little bit different so depending on what your situation is, you may want to switch up which adaptogen you are taking (Mind Body Green has a great article on adaptogens here.) My personal favorite is ashwagandha and I take it for both work stress and thyroid issues. When I am really undergoing a stressful time at work, I’ll add CBD oil into my routine too.

Treat yo’self

No sugar coating here… when your hormones are out of whack, you feel like shit. You’re depressed, anxious, lethargic, and simple things like brushing your teeth sound like a lot of work. Plan a treat or two to bring some joy into your life. Meet your gal pals at your favorite restaurant, buy yourself a new pair of shoes, go see a funny movie, get a fancy facemask and a bottle of wine, or spend an afternoon baking. The options are endless. Just pick something that brings you joy and schedule in some time for it.

If you can afford it, go to a naturopath. If you can’t, do a biometric screening.

I would recommend anyone having hormones issues go see a natural path because I had really bad luck with traditional western medicine. They can really help you identify what’s causing the hormonal balance and provide you with appropriate tools to fix it. Of course, I know that’s a luxury and not everyone can afford/has access to naturopathic doctors, so as an alternative, you can go to your primary care doctor and ask for a biometric screening. They are typically considered preventative care and covered by insurance. You’ll get a series of indicators of health that can help you pin point what’s going on with your hormones. Your doctor will be able to help you decipher a lot of what’s going on, but make sure you do your own research too. I found out that my liver was really suffering, and I was able to target that with supplements and diet changes. It made a big difference and it cost me zero money. Did I have to do some of the leg work myself? Yes, I did. But it was worth it.

A hormonal retreat isn’t going to heal all your hormonal issues, but it will give your body the chance to reverse some of the damage done to the body by life’s day to day stressors. As a woman in the workplace, the cards are stacked against us. The least we can do is give ourselves a little bit of a break and some extra lovin’ so we can get right back to being the badass business powerhouses that we know we can be 😊

How I leveraged my sweet tooth to get a six-pack

February 12, 2019 by Margaret Phillips

Alright TBH it’s more of a 4.5 pack but that title is sexy click bait, ammirite??

Okay now that’s I’ve gotten that off my chest, let’s talk sweet tooth.

I have a sweet tooth. Actually, I think most of my teeth are of the sweet variety. I’ve fought it and I’ve fed it. I’ve faked it and I’ve forced it. I’ve denied it and lost a ton of weight. I’ve denied it and blown up like a balloon. I’ve indulged it and crashed into a deep dark energy-less despair. I’ve simply “gone with it” and watched my health deteriorate. I’ve cut it off completely and lost my period.

FINALLY, I looked that evil sugar in the eye, and I said to it, “Sugar, there’s only room for one of us in this town.” We both drew our guns and took three steps back…

I kid I kid I kid. That didn’t happen. (I had you going though, didn’t I?) I didn’t do that. I finally gave into my body. I embraced that inflammatory, addictive and publicly shamed ingredient that my body asked for so often. And I didn’t die. I didn’t get diabetes. Actually, my blood sugar levels stabilized. My cycle became more regular. And I shit you not, my body went from kinda-fit to #strong.

So below is the story of how I went from using and abusing sugar to embracing that sweet tooth to feed my muscles, my hormones, and my brain.

Sugar and I have had a turbulent relationship to say the least. It is the Liam to my Miley. The Rachel to my Ross.

I’m a child of the 90s. Growing up, I idolized Britney Spears, I wept over the death of my Tamagotchi, and I way overconsumed sugary beverages and foods. It didn’t outwardly impact my health, plus it was how everyone else was eating. But of course, I was developing an addiction.

Fast forward to the 2000’s. Britney Spears no longer has hair on her head and instead of shaking Tamagotchi pets, we’re chatting up cute boys on AIM. The thin ideal during this time was REAL, as was low-fat “diet” foods, artificial sweeteners, and “slimming” supplements. Desperately trying to look like Nicole Richie, I dug into these diet foods with reckless abandonment. Instead of eating a tablespoon of real sugar, I ate endless amounts of sugar shaped plastic (aka Splenda). There were maybe a few vegetables mixed in there, but it was mostly plastic.

It was in college when I really began to use and abuse sugar. Enter vodka. Everyone knows that alcohol breaks down into sugar, right? And what did I mix with that sugar? More sugar. And what did I eat in the morning to deal with the hangover? Sugar. And then in the afternoon when my blood sugar was crashing into a deep dark despair? Yep, more sugar. Some other carbs too. Sugar transportation carbs.

After a few weeks of feeling terrible, I’d give it up and eat nothing but carrots and protein shakes. But sugar was my lover, and you know what happens when you spend time away from your lover… I’d fall right back into the arms of my boo, with even more vigor and passion than before.

Needless to say, this left me feeling like crap. My weight fluctuated +/-30lbs at a time, which is a lot when you’re 5’ 4”. When I entered the workforce, I was swinging from one diet to the next, feeling bloated, lethargic, and terrible about myself.

When C and I started eating healthier after his hospital scare with Crohn’s (see that story here) we decided to attempt to give up sugar for good. We bought a sugar-detox program and I followed that thing to a T. It promised me that at the end of the 8-week program, I would be free of all my sugar cravings. For 8-weeks I ate ZERO sugar (with the exception of a select varieties of berries). I ate a lot of fat and a lot of protein. I lost a lot of weight. At first, I felt ill. Ill as in the flu, not the #hahstag. Then I felt great. Like a rockstar. Tons of energy, sleeping great. I felt supercharged.

But that’s where things really took a turn for the worse. After the first few weeks, my period screeched to a halt. My moods were up and down. My acne was out of control. And worst of all, after the 8-weeks ended, I still craved sugar! But now I had associated serious feelings of guilt with it and tied moral value to its consumption. I had 100% transferred my obsessive control over by body size to obsessive control over my sugar consumption. Still disordered eating. Just a different form of disordered eating.

Look, it’s not cute, but you get the point. By body was STRESSED, inside and out.

This time around, it didn’t take me 10 years to acknowledge my problem. With the help of some reflection and some thoughtful discussions with C, I decided to introduce sugar back into my diet.

I shut out all voices that were trying to convince me of the evils of sugar and tuned into my body instead. Rather than fighting my sweet tooth with all my might and then binging on an entire package of Oreos, I made my own sweets where I could control the amount and the type of sugar used. I got creative with some of my favorite recipes, adding fats and reducing carbs to create treats that weren’t harmful to my energy levels but fulfilled my sweet cravings.

Basically, I just ate a like sane normal person who ate the things they wanted to eat (what a revolutionary concept, right?!)

And then slowly my body changed. I noticed I had way more motivation to get to the gym. And at the gym, I had way more energy. My muscles grew in a way that they’ve never grown before (I’m not sure if it was from the added carbs or the increased energy). For the first time in my entire life, I started to see definition in my abs and in my thighs. Amazingly, my period came back and for the first time EVER it became somewhat regular. My acne faded (though let’s be real, it still has a mind of its own) and I began sleeping better.

All because I started listening to my body instead of listening to the internet.

Friends, if you get one takeaway from this blog, let it be this: You need to listen to your body. It is not trying to fool you. But I see why we don’t trust our bodies because almost everything else is! Sneaky marketing, hidden salts and sugars, empty promises, mindless influencers… you gotta protect yourself from the from the junk.

But your body? It knows what it needs and what makes it perform it’s best. It’s pretty simple man, if you want to feel the best you’ve ever felt, follow these diet rules:

Think about what you want
Make it for yourself
Eat it.
Smile n feel satisfied 😊

And if you have any questions beyond that, feel free to shoot me a message or comment below!

Grit: A brief history

January 24, 2019 by Margaret Phillips

I really didn’t want to write this blog post.

And then once I wrote it, I really didn’t want to post it.

But I think it’s important to know where people come from and understand their journey. So below is a brief history of how I hit my rock bottom and what led me from my rock bottom to this blogiverse home that I reside in today.

Fitting in is not and never has been my forte. I was (and… hopefully still am…) a smart kid, so most of my classes were separate from my friends and classmates. I left high school early and started my college career as a 16-year-old living at home with her parents (sounds #COOL amirite?), graduated college early and started a graduate program for engineering.

Though I loved my program, I had a really hard time connecting with other engineers. I felt I was either downplaying my personality to get along with my classmates and labmates, or embodying it to an extreme as sort of a rebellion against the stigma projected upon me by others.

In the labs, I claimed to look down on the things that I loved to get along with judgemental people that I didn’t like. And outside of school, I felt dread and guilt whenever someone asked “and what do you do?”. The response is always the same– “oh wow… a woman in your field… that’s great… good for you.” My day job really puts a wall up between myself and other females. There is no way around it. In the labs, I felt like an imposter engineer. Outside of the labs, I felt like an imposter female–sensing guilt for spending money on something as “pointless and purposeless” as Pradas and then feeling like a fraud wearing them to construction sites and technical conferences.

Here’s lil Grit at a national technical conference standing with lab mates and some prominent committee members… not uncomfortable at all right?!

I felt uncomfortable with my existence in both worlds, which I think is what caused me to be uncomfortable with my existence in my physical body. I’m really not sure why. My mom never made any remarks about the way that I looked or the way she looked. And I can’t remember a single female role model discussing diet or weight loss. I had no trigger. I just wanted to fit in. I wanted to be cool. I wanted other girls to want to be like me. And the further and further I progressed into my adulthood, the further and further away that goal felt. As I let go of my hopes of fitting in with females, I grasped tighter and tighter to the ability to change my body and to make it smaller.

Things were at their worst during my first year of grad school. I really struggled through my last year of undergrad; I was bullied by one of my… louder (I selected this word VERY carefully)… roommates which impacted me more than I would like to admit. I also graduated a year early, so I didn’t get to celebrate with my friends, leaving the experience feeling regretful and lonely. Then starting graduate school was a culture shock. People naively said things like “you’re so lucky to be a woman” regarding my program acceptance and research funding. No, I wasn’t lucky. I worked hard and I was smart, just like everyone else there. But instead of telling them this, I would mindlessly mumble my agreements, subconsciously solidifying my impostor syndrome.

I became addicted to working out and I managed my calories on an obsessive level. I binged and I restricted. Instead of hearing the concern in the voices of friends of family, I heard compliments. I constantly compared myself to everyone else and watching the number on the scale go down brought me peace in my uncomfortable world.

a classic “I’m hiding my thighs” look.
leaving one of many doctor visits disappointed and lost on my low blood pressure, blood sugar, and thyroid levels.
this was at about the worst point… I was on a family vacation and tried to only wear sweatpants and jackets to avoid comments from my family about my weight.

I developed terrible acne on my face and body. Somewhere along the way, I lost my period and was diagnosed with PCOS. I struggled with keeping my blood pressure up and managing my blood sugar levels. But shockingly, the doctors told me I was doing great. That it was great that I wasn’t overweight with PCOS and that I was managing it with exercise and diet. That my abnormally low blood pressure was helping my heart and my brain. That my BMI was healthy. That my acne was from school induced stress. But I felt physically terrible and mentally I was emptier than my stomach.

During my second year of grad school, just before my thesis defense, my healthy-as-a-horse boyfriend (now husband, C) got very, very sick and was hospitalized. He had an out of control fever, was bleeding internally, and couldn’t keep anything in his stomach. I spent the entire first night at the hospital with him just watching his chest move up and down, making sure he was still breathing, wishing I could take his pain away. He was diagnosed with a severe Crohn’s flare up and after a week in the ER, he was stable enough to go home.

The only kind of fishing they’ll let a heavily medicated man do.

This experience shook me. I was prepared to do anything it took to prevent C from landing back in the hospital and began my education in nutrition and gut health. It was through this avenue that I came across the online world of health and wellness. One thing about me is that I don’t do anything halfheartedly. I didn’t read an article here and there, I consumed EVERYTHING-insert cookie monster gif here. Slowly, in my dedication to help heal C of his Crohn’s disease, I began to heal myself of years and years of disordered eating, self-attacking, and addiction to exercise. Life has a funny way of handing you a beautiful gift in the midst of it’s most frightening chapters, doesn’t it?

Of course, the change didn’t happen overnight. I learned how to cook healthy meals for myself and C. I gave up cutting calories and instead focused on food quality. I incorporated wellness techniques in our daily routine. I learned about lifting weights and starting following people on Instagram who promoted strong, healthy bodies. I gained weight back at a very slow rate, one that allowed me to embrace it with strength and positivity. Most importantly, I admitted to myself and to a select group of people close to me that this was something I was struggling with. Something I would probably always struggle with. Slowly I learned how to give myself grace.

The road to recovery isn’t linear and I am still trying to learn to embrace wellness, healthy eating, and health at every size into my daily mantras. And to this day, I still feel like when I say “engineer” out loud, I am hardcore humble bragging myself right out the door of waxing salons, nail studios, bar classes, you name it. But I no longer take those feelings of social anxiety and stress out on my own body. I am working with functional medicine doctors on regaining hormonal and gut health and instead of minimizing calories, I maximize nutrition, and *gasp* happiness (s/o 2u Eating Evolved cocobutter cups).

It’s been four years now since C had his Crohn’s flare and in that time, I have tripled my TSH number (thyroid measurement) without any medication or extreme diet changes. C has been managing his Crohn’s beautifully and despite the fact that he drinks designer (craft?) beer like a horse drinks water (okay maybe a wee bit dramatic) he hasn’t had a single flare up since his hospital visit in 2015.

So no, I really didn’t want to write this blog post. I am not proud of obsessing over my body. But guess what? I did. And it’s okay. Being a woman is hard. Living in today’s society is hard. But luckily we live in a time where we can connect a beautiful wellness community thriving on this world-wide web that makes things a little bit easier. This is a community that I leaned on heavily through my journey and hope to give back to through this blog. Whatever journey brought you to my page, I truly believe that together, we’ve got the grit to get through it.