00:00
Hey everyone, it's Mikki here. You're listening to Mikkipedia. This week on the podcast, I speak to Erin Power, metabolic health coach, writer, educator, and one of the most refreshingly honest voices in women's health today. Erin has spent more than two decades in the nutrition and fitness world, and her own lived experience of burnout, diet and culture, and metabolic chaos has shaped her philosophy she now brings to the midlife.

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women that she works with. Our conversation goes far and wide. and I are great mates from our business group and we chat about what it really means to heal your relationship with food and metabolism, the mindset shifts women in their 40s and 50s often need to make, and why Erin created her metabolic reboot framework to fill a glaring gap in women's health. We explore how hormonal changes and perimenopause alter both how women feel and function

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and why mainstream diet advice so often misses the mark. We also talk about the very human fears behind behavior change, the ghosting, the hesitation, the stories women tell themselves, and how stress, sleep, perfectionism, and nervous system dysregulation quietly sabotage progress. Erin shares her food philosophy, which is flexible, low-carbish, real-foodish approach, her stance on protein and tracking, and what it means to aim

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not for perfect eating, but peaceful eating. This is a wide ranging, generous conversation about midlife metabolism, self-trust, and the kind of support women actually need during this transition, delivered with Erin's blend of clarity, humour, and hard-won wisdom. So I loved this conversation with Erin and I have put links as to where you can find her in the show notes at www.eatsimple.ca uh

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and also links to her podcast as well where she shares her thoughts on all of these topics and so much more. So Erin Power is a veteran health coach, writer and educator with nearly three decades of experience in the fitness, nutrition and behavior change space. She began her career in the trenches of the fitness industry as a personal trainer and group fitness instructor. And when her own health unraveled in the middle of her career, it forced a reckoning.

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The conventional wisdom she'd been taught and had taught others simply didn't match human physiology. This realization fueled a deep dive into the science of metabolism and appetite regulation. And Erin rebuilt her own health and became fiercely committed to helping others do the same. She's formalized her education with a diploma in holistic nutrition, went on to accumulate advanced coaching certifications, behavior change training, and metabolic health education. Erin became one of the

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earliest senior coaches and the head of coaching at Mark Sisson's Primal Health Coach Institute where she helped shape the curriculum and mentored thousands of students and coaches worldwide. She is known for her trademark blend of metabolic literacy, compassion, and refreshing bluntness. Equal part educator, myth buster, and coach. Erin specializes in helping people unravel long-standing metabolic struggles, particularly those who feel like they've tried everything and it still doesn't work.

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Her coaching approach dulls in appetite, cravings, energy, mood and body composition through strategies that often defy the mainstream advice because these things don't work. And her mission is straightforward and unapologetic to help people build on effortless relationship with food for life and to show them how beautifully the body works when it's finally given the right inputs. And Erin and I discuss her two programs, the Metabolic Reboot, a 21 day program to sort of

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give you a primer into the strategies that she uses and her flagship program is the Metabolic Mentorship and you can find links to both of those programs over on Erin's website. Before we crack on into the interview though, I'd like to remind you that the best way to support this podcast is to hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast listening platform. That increases the visibility of Micopedia and amongst literally thousands of other podcasts out there. So more people get to hear from the experts that I have on the show like Erin Power.

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Alright guys, enjoy this conversation.

04:32
Hey Erin, great to have you on the podcast. Finally, after months of hassling you, you just ghosting me. So nice to see you here. I did, I did. I was going to say we struggled to get our calendars coordinated, but I do think that was more of a me problem than a Mickey problem for sure. Well, I'm pleased that I had the perseverance to just sort of stay at it. So Erin, I love what you do. I love your approach. I love your social media account.

05:02
Hilariously, I think I said this to you as well, but one of my followers and Insta friends, you like, sent me a little message saying, Mickey, I love Erin, but she often talks about yogurt protein bowls as just, you know, like, I don't know, the devil's spawn or something. She's like, how does that make you feel? And it was such a hilarious question to me, because I'm like, I don't really feel anything when I see that, because I just love my.

05:31
Greek protein bowls. So Erin doesn't. you know. I I have, I'm weirdly hostile about them. it's because here's why, here's why. I'll just give it. I know you probably know, but just so I can clear my name, it's not, it's not specifically anything wrong with yogurt or dairy. It's to me, I call it this, this is a demure female eating pattern. talk about this idea and, you, I don't, so there's some very robust yogurt bowls out there, but for me, women eating yogurt, it's like, what are we doing? Like,

05:59
Are we still eating yogurt? Because when my mom used to go on diets, guess what? I would know my mom was on a diet when I was a kid if there was yogurt or cottage cheese in the fridge. Now look at us. Right? And so it's like, you know, meat exists and eggs exist. Yeah. Is it a little bit like hashtag girl dinner? I don't know if you see girl dinner and what I see in girl dinner and hey, I love a salad as you know, I'm sure. And I love a platter, which

06:29
To me, that's sort of pre-dinner, it's not actually dinner, but you just see these little plates of little bits of food and hashtag girl dinner. That's what it is, Exactly. Well, yeah, the Demure Female Eating pattern is more of a... And it's just this concept I dreamed up and I'm kind of going with it, but it's like, have a little yogurt for breakfast, I have my salad with chicken for lunch, four ounces of chicken specifically, and then I'm going to snack and snack and snack all day.

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eat my dinner with the family snack all night. Then I'm going to beat myself up over snacking all day. If I could just stop snacking, I would not be overweight. And to me it's like, well, you didn't eat anything. Your first meal of the day was dinner. You just basically nibbled on these little demure snackies all day long. And I just think it's working for us. And so one of my messages is kind of like, it's time to freaking eat. Like let's have some robust nourishment here. Really just lay it down. So that's my beef with yogurt bowls.

07:24
Yeah. I, of course, I knew what your beef was with yogurt bowls. of course, doesn't stop me eating them, which is fine. But what I find super interesting is that because you and I, both in the nutrition field, we both counsel women on how to eat properly for whatever their goals are. And people generally assume if we have differences of opinions,

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that there must be some sort of like adjibaji or some sort of friction or whatever. But these are just different tools to help different people meet their possibly the same requirements, right? 100%. And so I love having peers like you in the space and a lot of our other business peers also work on women's health and wellness and weight loss and they do it in completely different way. Like one of an example is I really, really am violently opposed to food tracking. Like I just won't do it. Yeah.

08:18
But lots of people do and lots of women have success with it. But for the women who don't have success with it, where do they go? They have to go somewhere where there's no food tracking. So it's like, well, I'm over here. If you like me, if you like my personality, cool. If you don't, well, maybe you'll enjoy Mickey. Maybe you'll enjoy somebody else. And I think about this too as a health coaching educator, because that's one of my side gigs is working at this health coaching school. There's no shortage of ways to help people to their oh

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their own individual expression of health. So as practitioners, we get to do it our way and people vibe with us or not. I feel like there's, feel like I love having peers like you and anybody who has a similar or different opinion than I do. Yeah. And interesting Erin, and I don't know how, like what your training involved actually. I don't think we ever talked about that, but I did like a science degree in nutrition and then went on to do masters and then did research based stuff actually, and then learned.

09:16
A lot of how I coach had nothing to do actually with what I learned at university. But one thing I didn't learn is macro tracking actually. Maybe we talked about it, but there's just been this proliferation of macro coaches. I don't know how this is going to sound, who appear to have done weekend courses or they've done some sort of personal training certificate that has a nutrition module. And suddenly there are all these perimenicals.

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hairy menopause macro coaches out there. And I don't know if they truly understand food and nutrients, but they can tell you about carbs, protein and fat. Oh girl, I'm writing down notes for us to come back to later. yeah. So, so, um, it's interesting because I gather you're right. We haven't really talked about this. I mean, I know that you're, you're Mickey the PhD in nutrition. So it sounds to me like you took, you took this sort of nutritional sciences approach.

10:12
My university education was in dietetics. And actually in the dietetics program, we did talk about macros and that was it. That was it. was kind of like, for weight loss, it's macros and calories. And then we talked about nutrition in other ways. We talked about nutrition and we talked about weight loss and they were completely different modules of the training. And so it's interesting coming from the dietetics background.

10:40
proceed with my dietician credential at all. just didn't, I didn't vibe with the education quite frankly. So then I went to school and got a nutritionist credential, holistic nutrition. But I think this is so interesting. What you just said, which is the focus on macros puts it on these kinds of fuel components of food in a manner of speaking without contemplating the full matrix of nutrition and, relationship with food and how this fits into your family and your lifestyle, your schedule. Like I actually

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the onion goes quite layered for me. And I just think macros, I don't want this to be like us dunking on macros. I don't want it to be that because we aren't, but I just think it misses so many things. I just think it's naive a little bit, I guess. Yeah. No, no, I totally appreciate that. And for what it's worth, probably 90 % of my coaching is not macro focused. Maybe 10 % of it is. What I feel

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a lot of people, um the focus on macros out there on social media, et cetera, then um creates um this mindset for all women that they must track macros and tell me what my macros are, what should I actually do, what should I actually be following? But when you actually start talking to them, that's the last thing that they have the time to do, that they have the energy to do. And they think they want to do it, but when they actually

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find out what it entails. like, oh, no way. Like, there is no way I want to be doing that. I know. feel like it's a bit of a learned helplessness. Somebody just has to give me my numbers so then I can theoretically obey them. Right? I think that's what women think when they go into that type of relationship. And then when they get into it, they realize this is too hard. I don't have the mental bandwidth to be doing all of this. And I think some people do. Some people definitely do. But I would say they're outliers. Most women that I work with are busy.

12:32
Not only are they busy, they're done. They're actually checked out of the idea of being that particular with their food. And that's just the specific clientele that I work with, people who have been through every possible diet known to man. And the idea, the very thought of tracking food is just a non-starter for them. So there's that. And then I also, this is my personal crusade, which is, all that math as well is completely invented.

13:00
It has no bearing on your actual nutrient needs, which are clearly communicated to you by your hunger signal, your appetite signals, which is kind of a foreign concept to people. And I get a lot of pushback actually on that one. Yeah. And what is the pushback? So I get pushback from other nutrition coaches, which is they'll say, no, everybody's appetite signals are completely dysregulated. And we live in an obesogenic food culture where hyper palatable foods

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which is true. And if women were left to just trust their hunger signals, they'd be eating ice cream all day long, which I don't think is true. For me, women have never connected to their hunger signal, so they don't know how to do it. But that ancient wisdom is still in them. And it's just a question of coming back to it and relearning how to trust it. And once you do, and granted, you have to eat like a grown ass adult. can't be like an unsupervised 11 year old at McDonald's, right? I mean, let's be realistic here.

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If you're eating grownup food and really learning how to lean into trusting your hunger signals, I do think the macros, like your body tells you what it needs, not the other way around. Yeah, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. No, I love that. And so before we dive into how actually we get to that point where we feel we can trust our body signals, because you and I might have differing opinions, because I feel the same, but I feel like we can't just immediately be let loose. We sort of have to have some of that structure first, but we'll talk about what that looks like.

14:27
First, Erin, how did you arrive at this more sort of ancestral way of understanding how our bodies respond to food, how we should connect with it and our environment, et cetera? Because obviously, like I know, and the listeners, I don't know if they do know or not, but you work alongside the sort of primal blueprint team, don't you? Or the primal health team with my mate, Mark Sisson, who's not my mate, but he's awesome. He's a good man. He's all right.

14:58
Oh, I'm pleased. I'm pleased that you actually say that because you know him. You know, so anyway, how did you get there? Yeah. So this is kind of the origin story and I'll keep it really brief and unboring, I hope. But essentially, I was, I've been in the fitness industry for 30 years because I came up as an athlete when I was a young woman and in university. And then once athletics kind of dried up, I was looking for that. I was looking for that outlet. This is interesting because

15:28
It's all, I wasn't looking for an athletic outfit. I was looking for a body control outlet because I had a very severely disordered relationship with, was, I had a spiriting disorder and body dysmorphia as a teenager. So you're a teenager, you're an athlete, you know, I had that full female athlete triad going on. didn't honestly, we're getting into the weeds. didn't menstruate for like 20 years. So looking for an outlet after school sports dried up, I got into fitness, into the gym.

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So 18 years old, I've been in the fitness industry for 30 years. I literally do everything right because I'm a disordered woman with an eating disorder. So I was not eating junk food. I was not partying. I was not doing anything. I was a good girl. And it stopped working in the sense that by the time I got into my mid thirties, I was getting very fat. I was getting, I was very tired. I, my brain didn't work and I went to the doctor and it was

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prediabetes, which is interesting. My mom actually died of complications of diabetes. So I have type two diabetes in my family and it was, I'm the lucky one who got the presentation of that gene. And I had just been fighting against it this whole time. So I guess for me it was, wait a second, how does somebody like me become diabetic? I'm exercising all day long. I'm eating stupid bodybuilder diet meals seven times a day. I'm not drinking big gulps and eating Big Macs. I'm not, I'm not.

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So I got really pissed off and I said, and I actually said to myself, wait, how does the human body use fuel? Cause nobody had, I never thought that I just was doing what I was told, know, macros and calories and low fat for a while and then low carb for while. It was like just doing what I was told and it stopped working. So I just, got curious about how the human body uses fuel. And so in going down that path of learning about, you know, ultimately human biochemistry, metabolic biochemistry, I,

17:22
accidentally stumbled across the ancestral health approach because in some ways it really does, it is kind of an interesting little touchstone. How did we use to, how did we, how did the humans, how did ancient humans eat and process nutrients? Why do modern humans have it so screwed up? So I stumbled into the ancestral health model that way. And then I just geeked out on it so hard and became super evangelical about it. Mark Sisson was my ultimate guru. The fact that I now get to work with him is insane, but

17:51
I have softened on my ancestral approach to a certain degree. Like I'm not hardcore paleo girl anymore, but I do believe there's an ancient wisdom locked in our DNA that's running our whole body and we're mismatched with it. That's kind of the origin. Yeah. No, that is great. And isn't it interesting what you say about how you went through dietetics, you did a holistic nutritionist degree as well, qualification as well, but it took your own sort of health.

18:21
ah emergency if you like to actually start thinking about the biochemistry of how we use food. This is stuff we are taught, but for whatever reason, it's almost like the people who taught it to us never connected the dots between what we learned in nutrition versus what we learned in biochemistry because they don't actually align. It wasn't until I sort of went down the rabbit hole with Mark's Daily Apple, Rob Wolf, and all of that information

18:50
May, maybe it was like 12 years ago or so now that I actually thought, yeah, I, I learned it, but I have no knowledge at all about how to apply it. Yes, exactly. Tons of theory and no practical application. And that's what was missing. And that was missing in my education, in my, in my higher education, but also at all the education I was a party to in the fitness industry.

19:18
There was just no, and quite frankly, this is my gripe with stuff like meal plans, calories, macro tracking is it's just too theoretical. And I'm dealing with people who are having, having lived experiences who are trying to make food decisions in the moment for their families in their work day to support their bodies through their activity levels. The theoretical stuff has now, I'm so deaf to it. I really do almost zero in completely on the practical application. I think it's important to also know like, oh

19:47
I love sort of knowing and having understanding of how the human body uses all the various different fuels available to us. And that sort of metabolic flexibility approach that Mark talks about. But I really do zero in more on practical application more than anything. It's interesting because I was on a podcast interview a couple of weeks ago and it was a great chat and the host sent me some feedback afterwards, which I think was great. And by the way, I encourage you to do that as well.

20:17
Here's what I liked, here's what I would have liked to see more of. And this host said, I really liked your approach, uh Erin. I think what you could do better is include more scientific references. And I said, no, I'm not. Because I'm working with women trying to live their lives in their bodies. The last thing they need is more freaking data. And also the data just argues with itself. And that's just confusing them. Do you know what? That's so funny. So one of my very good friends,

20:45
And he's been on my podcast several times. I've been on his podcast. He is the biggest science nerd I've ever met. He has a photogenic memory. And he applies it to his clientele. is amazing. But every time we jump on a podcast, and literally I'm jumping on again with him tomorrow, I always feel like I've got absolute imposter syndrome because he can dredge from the back of his brain studies from like 1983 based on like caloric expenditure, et cetera. And my brain just doesn't work.

21:15
in that manner. And actually, ultimately, to your point, we have these pillars of knowledge as practitioners. We've got that ancestral background of where have we come from, how have we evolved, and how have we evolved to this environment. We've also got the science literature. So in a randomized clinical trial, when we test a mechanism and a theory, what actually happens?

21:40
But then of course we've got our clinical background and we've got working with actual people and how these things apply to that. So to have this sort of dialed in focus on science misses the really important practical application to your point. Yeah, I mean that's the pillars of the evidence-based approach and sometimes it gets muddied where evidence-based means I'm citing research. But there is also the clinical experience and then the lived experience of the, in this case, the client.

22:09
or the subject, shall we say, which gets overlooked. so for better or worse, I tend to skew more toward clinical experience and lived experience. And I kind of turn a blind eye to research at this point. Like I said earlier, it's like, the metaphor, but it's like monkeys flinging poo at each other. Here's a study, here's a study, here's a study. Meanwhile, women are confused about how to eat. And they're going to menopause and they're losing all their lean body mass. They don't know what to do. And all the science bros are flinging poo like monkeys. And it's like, don't worry, ladies.

22:38
I got you. I'm going to teach you how to eat in the context of your life. Yeah. And actually for what it's worth Erin, one, giving you feedback after a conversation just sounds like too much work for me. And two, I literally forget everything I say on a podcast and everything you say as soon as it's done. know. in the moment. You're highly present. Yeah. That must be what it is. I'll just call it that.

23:04
I do find that science and the arguments around the arguments amongst experts super interesting because everyone has a position and they almost present it like the science is settled. This is how it is. And of course, much more recently in our space, it is the argument of fed versus fasted training, uh the timing of nutrients, the type of training we do. And it is presented by both sides at almost like the science is settled.

23:33
science has never settled. Like I find it super interesting. I do too. I that's, you know, that speaks to, think, well, first of all, I love that the science has never settled. And I think that as practitioners, have to, this idea of rolling with the, the, what's presented to us, whether that's science or again, clinical experience, lived experience, um, there's a flexibility that sometimes gets missing. It sometimes is missing. I think when some people are so staunchly, uh, anchoring to their perspectives. And by the way, like,

24:04
I'm probably, guilty of this too. I'm very staunchly, I'm very staunchly in favor of my perspective, obviously. And it's hard for me to have my mind changed. Do know what I mean? Like when some, when a macro coach comes in to beak at me in the comments of one of my Instagram posts to say that macro tracking is the only way I'm not going to change my mind. I just am not. And so I always try to be hyper aware of the fact that

24:30
What I trying to say? I'm trying, I'm always trying to be very aware of my own limitations in my thinking and my approach. And I want to try to be more reminded. It's hard though. I think that generally the whole industry could benefit from a little more open mindedness or something, whatever that, whatever that is. Yeah. I do wonder whether people are pushed into a corner somewhat because in order to stand out in a space like Instagram or Facebook or Tik Tok, or are you on Tik Tok? I'm not.

25:00
No, neither. But where everyone else hangs out, you almost have to put a stake in the ground and then defend it till you die, right? That is how you make a name for yourself out there. And now, the wishy-washy, it depends, probably just doesn't bode well really for fame and popularity. Very true. But it depends is often the only right answer, unfortunately. But you're right.

25:25
And so like, this is probably, I mean, we talk about this kind of stuff all the time, but I'm destined to never go viral on Instagram because I just don't say anything that polarizing. I'm really middle of the road and it's fine. But you know, I think about this, I want to say a couple of years ago, maybe three years ago now, when we, okay, I'm so sorry to bring up this topic because it's so overplayed, but when JLP ones first started coming on the scene and yeah, of course, like,

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people in our world are like, what does this mean for us and our clients? And, know, a lot of weird narrative. I, I was proud of myself because I said to myself, I know nothing about this. So I don't really, I'm not really qualified to have an opinion. Why don't I learn about it first? And so I was pretty, I was pretty open about my learning process because people were DMing me. What do you think about those Zempik? What do think about these drugs? And I'd say, I don't really know anything about them. Like none of us really do. We don't know how it's going to play out. So let's just calm down because I think people were really getting on

26:20
Well, at the start, all I saw in my echo chamber was people opposed violently, big pharma. And I just can't, I just can't with that. I just think I'm such a middle of the road person that it was like, I don't know enough to have an opinion. So I'm going to learn. And at first I was into it. first, my first sort of like exploration, was like, Oh, I actually think these are kind of cool. And then as time has gone on, I've changed my mind a little bit here and there. And I, I think that's one of the first times in my recent memory, I can remember

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doing what we're talking about here, which is trying to roll with the ever-changing landscape. It's good to have these little touchstone moments where you can say, did practice that when that one particular thing showed up in the landscape. Yeah. OK, so actually, you say it's overplayed and over-talked about, but I'm not over-talking about it. So tell me, Erin, because I know that um you trialed it for a bit of a length of time. I think you did a podcast on it as well.

27:15
Are you happy to just share your experience here? Like, because I think there are a lot of people who are really curious about it that don't really know a lot. True, true, true. So I, when I was first learning about them, I thought they sounded like incredible, like, like many people have said, incredible tools for people who are just struggling with the kickoff to, you know, the kickoff, the behavior is necessary. Cause I think weight loss is skill development. I always say that weight loss is just a skill development.

27:45
So it's the skill of learning how to answer hunger and eat meals and what have you, at least in my world it is. When we have dysregulated appetite cues, it's harder. So, okay, do these medications, do they quiet an appetite cues? Yes, they do. They make you less hungry. That's one of the mechanisms of action. So I thought, okay, that's interesting. And I always do think about this from my mom's perspective who couldn't get her health under control, which ultimately was her demise. And she's always somebody who is like an avatar for me.

28:14
OZMPEC had existed when my mom was alive, that might've been a life saving medication for her, quite frankly. So now I'm probably not um the target audience for something like a GLP-1, but I am a perimenopausal woman. And so I went to my functional clinic where I'm going for my menopause therapy and they're kind of a forward thinking clinic out here. And one of my struggles, as I mentioned, is that I skew pre-diabetic and even

28:43
I just kind of always do. My HbA1c is always a little wiggly. It's always a little wiggling up high, no matter what I do. So sure enough, going through the menopause transition, my HbA1c started to climb a little close to pre-diabetic range. And my doctor said, would you be open to trying a micro dose of GLP-1 to see if you can bring your HbA1c down? And I said, hell yeah, let's go. Because I was so curious.

29:10
So this was a couple of years ago and I did go on Ozempic, so semaglutide, which is I think now considered the clunky old technology, right? Now there's better ones. The lowest dose, the starting dose for Ozempic is 0.25 milligrams, but I was doing a third of that, so 0.08 ish. And immediate, immediate,

29:39
jarring loss of appetite, astonishing, specifically loss of protein appetite. So I think this is interesting because I've been working on my own appetite. I've been working on perfecting and answering my appetite for 15 years since I resolved my pre-diabetes. I have a perfect relationship with my appetite. So to have my appetite gone for me, I felt it felt so unusual. I didn't like it. And quite honestly, just a sidebar for a second, this is what I work on with my clients.

30:09
trusting and respecting your own appetite cues. Now my issue now with GLP-1s is it perpetuates this belief that appetite is bad and hunger means you're gonna get fat. Do you know what I mean? And then you probably also know the work of uh Ramanheimer and Simpson, the protein leverage hypothesis, which is our appetite is driven mostly by our amino acid needs. So when you have no appetite, the call for amino acids

30:38
and protein foods is non-existent. The last thing I wanted to eat was eggs. The last thing I wanted to eat was yogurt. I wanted chips and crackers and candy and ice cream. I wanted junk food. That's all I could fathom eating. It was interesting how my appetite changed. And then the other piece I'll just say, and this is, you know, maybe a little off color, but whatever, I might as well just mention it because the other, the other mechanism, one of the other mechanisms of this medication is the delayed gastric emptying.

31:07
So food just sits around in your system longer. And that doesn't feel good. I can't explain it other than, and this is a word I never use, but I felt toxic. I felt like there were toxic, like I just felt gross. You weren't getting rid of what should be getting rid of. Exactly. Exactly. It's sitting in your colon or wherever it's sitting. assume in the colon, I'm thinking like, is stuff getting reabsorbed while it's sitting in there?

31:35
And then like in the bathroom stuff was so unpleasant, honestly. Ultimately for me, it was the appetite thing. I missed my own appetite. That's because I love my appetite. And I know that makes me unusual outliers. This is what I try to cultivate in my clients, but I could see how a woman who thinks her appetite is the problem would say, well, this medication solves the problem. But I think there's a different way of solving the problem of appetite, which is actually learning to coexist with your appetite. If that makes sense. Yeah, totally does.

32:06
whatever it's worth just to close the loop. didn't adjust. It didn't affect my Hb1c in any meaningful way. I think my, came down like 0.1 or something. Um, I didn't lose any weight, but I wasn't trying to. And I quit cold Turkey cause I wanted to eat Thanksgiving dinner. Quite frankly, I was like, Oh no. And I didn't have any rebound appetite effects. I didn't start overeating once I went off the medication. But I think that's again, because I've been practicing appetite for so long. Yeah.

32:35
Okay. Well, that's super interesting Erin, particularly because you've been on what would now what people now call like microdosing, right? And microdosing is being, I guess, promoted as the thing to do is, and it's not about weight loss, per se, but in my book, this is what this is what is said, but I just look at it and go, are you sure? Yeah, I know. That's exactly what I think as well. Like,

33:03
I know. I'm pretty sure that this is all about weight loss actually. I agree. I think that this might be something that our listeners might not agree with our perspective. That's fine. Depending on who's listening, I guess. But it's just a little shady to me. Oh, this microdose of a weight loss medication, it's so your menopause symptoms are better, your inflammation and your joint health and your gut health. So now you're preying on, this goes deep because now you're not preying on, but you're positioning this to perimenopausal women who are Gen X.

33:32
and millennial women who grew up wanting to do anything they could to be skinny. Like we have that psychosocial programming. I think about this all the time. This is where I go deep into the lived experience. The psychosocial programming of the woman who's now in menopause is a Gen X or millennial woman who is programmed into thinness. And you're telling me if I secretly take this weight loss drug for my menopause symptoms, wouldn't it be cool if I just accidentally lost 20 pounds? Like I just think it's shady. To me, it just feels shady.

34:02
I don't trust, like, there was a part of me when I went on Ozempic where I said, wouldn't it be cool if I just got like accidentally shredded? You know, like that's in there. Yeah, yeah, totally. I totally hear you. And, and what I also see amongst people I know, and in fact, to the point where I had to tell, I had to really call them out on it, is that they get hyper.

34:25
Like they just get emotionally hijacked by everyone else doing a DLP one for inflammation. And so I would jump on a call with this person and literally spend 20 minutes of her, like just absolutely. I can't even describe it Erin. It was just this, this real like um panic and anxiety that one, her clients were doing it. And I said, I had to say to her,

34:50
Do you want to do this too? Like she's very thin anyway, but I'm like, is this what this is about? Are you just wishing that you had the means to be able to do this as well? Because why are we having this conversation every single week? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know this, this is like terror. I don't know. I, I do a lot of thinking about the way we think and feel about our bodies and what we think they're supposed to look like.

35:15
and the influence of the beauty industry. Okay, so I think about like the fitness and wellness industry that we're in, right? Well, I think the parent industry of that is the beauty industry. And the beauty industry has been putting rules on us, what we're supposed to look like since we were, well, I don't know. I think I was 11 years old when I started reading fashion magazines or girls magazines. I mean, I'm 11 years old learning how to make my arms thinner so they look cuter in a t-shirt.

35:42
And that's my whole, your whole life, you've been programmed into the beauty industry, changing the shape of your body. So that, that programming runs so incredibly deep. Like when I, when I explained to women to a very high level, the biochemistry of their metabolism, like here's how your body uses fuel, just in case you want to know, here's how we're going to execute that change in your life. And they're like, yep, yep, I'm in, I'm in, I'm in the thing I have to fight against the most is the way they think and feel about the way they look in their current body.

36:13
And the terror and the word terror, they're terrified to be in their current body. I cannot go another minute in this body. What can we do to move this along faster? Now you get something like this, like, well, there's this medication that could help you with your menopause symptoms. And as a side effect, you might lose weight and it's super tempting. And I, I feel it. And I also think Erin is to your point about how long we've been programmed to

36:38
think about our bodies to try and perfect them as something to be, as a problem to be fixed, you know, and this is a solution, is that we're always told that weight loss and being healthy, it's easy. It is easy. It is easy to lose weight and keep it off and be in the shape that you want and fix all of your health problems. And this is something which I really rally against is one, that it is easy, because clearly it's not. But

37:05
that we should want it to be easy. And maybe you and I spoke about this on your podcast, but I really think the effort involved in working on your fitness and nourishing your body is something that should sort of be challenging. You should really, I don't know, feel real sense of achievement because you've done it and then you really grow and transform from that. But actually selling the idea that it is hard, that's a little bit of hard work to be honest, but because we're always told that it's easy.

37:34
It's interesting. We're either told that it's easy or I feel like there's an opposite narrative, which is it also has to be this massive grind, you know, like the David Goggins kind of vibes, but. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that too. We can talk about that. Yeah. think about, so Mark Sisson, his minimum effective dose perspective, which is what's the, what's the smallest amount of effective effort I can put in? Like you have to do something. You have to do something. I just had, I just had a coaching call with some of my clients.

38:04
I was teaching a lesson on, basically I had a grocery shop. I won't bore you with it, but it was like, look, you're gonna have to go to the grocery store, okay? You have to buy food. Then you know what? You're gonna have to cook it. And guess what? Then you're gonna have to wash the dishes. And I know that's a pain in the ass, okay? But you gotta do it, I'm sorry. Just like you have to pay the taxes and get your teeth cleaned at the dentist. You have to buy food and feed yourself, okay? Like that's just adulting 101, okay? Like it's a little tongue in cheek, but it's like, we gotta do it, okay? It's not gonna be that easy.

38:34
Um, but the reason I mentioned Mark's minimum effective dose is because I think that there's, I think for women, the women that I work with, I want to figure out a way for it to feel maybe not easy, but simple. what's the simplest thing we can do? What are the simplest dial movers? So I do start whenever I take on clients into my program, it's like here, I call them the anchor actions. Like here's three things to focus on and they're not that hard. Um, but you do have to do something. And then you made me think of something else that I've been noodling on lately.

39:04
This might be just completely off topic. So hang with me for a second, because I'll try to bring it around too, but dopamine, okay? So dopamine, we always conjure a vision of this like exciting, you know, reward brain chemical, which it is, which it is. It's, you know, it's the molecule of motivation, I guess they say. But I learned in reading some of the...

39:30
main dopamine books that there's two versions of dopamine. There's desire dopamine and control dopamine. Have you heard this? No, tell me. Okay. So desire dopamine is one we all know. It's I want to go get the thing. It's the getting like get, get, get, I got to go get the thing. I got to get the treat. I got to get the spouse. I got to get the sex. I got to get the whatever like the getting, which is a really crucial survival aspect mechanism, shall we say. But there's another, and we know that is exciting. I have clients who tell me

39:56
Oh, I had to eat the whole bin of ice of cake icing, cake frosting, because of dopamine. I'm like, that's a bullshit excuse. I'm sorry. like, me break. But so the other thing is, is that the control dopamine, this is so interesting to me, is actually more crucial for survival and control dopamine is in the keeping. So let's imagine it, desired dopamine is you go and get your spouse, which is crucial for the reproduction of the species, but control dopamine is in the keeping of the spouse, the partnership, the sort of drudgery of it all so that you can.

40:25
retain, you know, remain in the partnership and theoretically, you reproduce, for example. So the control dopamine to me is like, this is in the, in the persistence in the maintenance of your health behaviors. It's not exciting, exciting. It's a different kind of exciting. It's controlled dopamine exciting. Like I did enough today. I checked the boxes on my anchor actions today. The anchor actions could be a step count. It could be, it could be your macro tracking. It could be something else entirely, but

40:55
socializing to clients that the excitement they're looking for is not in the quick wins or the quick results. It's in the boring ass basics that actually get the job done in the long term. That's how I control dopamine P. So that makes sense. It does make sense. And the thing I, the question I have is because we are so geared towards that, um, exciting dopamine and I know exactly what that that's booking the holiday. It's thinking about the glass of wine you're going to have at dinner. You know, it's all of these things. How

41:25
How are we geared towards the control dopamine in the same, like obviously it's different, like it's not, sort of in the background, is it something sort of underlying? My personal perspective, and I'm not a dopamine expert, is that all body chemistry actually does happen in the background. Like when my clients say, oh, I needed the dopamine hit, like you don't notice your dopamine hits, you're just using that as an excuse, okay? Like booking a vacation is very exciting.

41:53
but you're not like, whoa, that dopamine hit felt great. You're just excited to go on the trip. Do know what I mean? So I don't think controlled dopamine is any less noticeable than desired dopamine. It's not. think controlled dopamine has a marketing problem because it's just not exciting. It's just intentionally and inherently not exciting. like, just like, okay, here's a really crazy example or weird example, but like,

42:22
That sense of responsibility you feel when you send off your taxes, even though you hate paying taxes and when she didn't have to, it's like, well, I did it. You know what? I did it. Or, hey, I remained faithful to my spouse for another year. Cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not exciting, but it kind of is. It's a sense of Yeah. Of something. I love that, the sense of pride. Yeah.

42:48
And maybe this is, and that is actually where the transformation happens, right? oh Like if I bring this back to being able to like eat in a way that aligns with your goals and feeling really good about it, like there is a sense of pride, particularly when you're in a modern food environment and maybe surrounded by people who, you know, where it's very difficult to be able to do that, to sort of have this transformation of,

43:17
having this level of control and being able to meet your goals within that, like there is a real sense of pride in that. Yeah. I mean, I can find joy in it, right? When I go out for dinner with my friends, you know, I'm ordering the 10 ounce filet for my entree. And I'm going to be so satisfied that when the dessert menu comes out and like, I'm good. I'm not restricting dessert.

43:44
Whereas my friends might say, I can't wait for that dessert. It's just, get your excitement where you get your excitement. I think we can program ourselves to actually love. so the example I use is one of the principles in my, one of the em interactions in my program is the epic breakfast. And if anybody follows me on Instagram, you know about the epic breakfast. It's just this ridiculous protein dominant, like absolutely satiating satisfying meal eaten at your first hunger of the day. It's breakfast. And I'm at the point now where

44:11
I love my epic breakfast so much that I look forward to it like a kid at Christmas. And if you put a stack of pancakes with syrup in front of me with whipped cream and I don't want it, I don't want it. want steak and shrimp and eggs and I want my epic breakfast. It's like a conditioned response too, right? That sort of Pavlovian, you know what? Every single habit we have is just a behavior that we practiced enough that it became ingrained and you can.

44:39
You can develop habits. You can develop habits that feel amazing, even if they don't seem exciting. Like I'm sure the creme brulee that my friend orders probably seems more exciting to an outsider than my steak. But to me, the steak was the most exciting thing I could have ordered. And so it's just a practice, I think. But I don't know, sometimes we get stuck with like, oh, I'm a sugar addict. I'm a mindless eater. people, women put all these pathologies on themselves and it's like, but you, you're a trainable creature. You're, you're a trainable animal. We can change that.

45:10
Do you, so my theory on that is, it's just a good excuse. Like what you said about the dopamine and the cake frosting. I'm like, you're not, you don't see it as such, but when you tell me that you're stubborn, when you tell me that you have no willpower, when you, you know, when you start putting these, you know, like you had these narratives, I'm like, that's, I don't want to say it's a lazy excuse, but actually you've just never put the work in to see that you can change. And I think,

45:39
There's something quite like it should be, um people should look at that as an opportunity to be able to shift things. Whereas instead people can get quite defensive if you want to mention it. I agree. And I don't know, this is going to sound really un-woke, but

45:57
Like this craving to declare yourself as some really unique snowflake. Oh yeah. You know, no, no, no, no, but I, I need to start my day with a big bolus of carbohydrate. I'm not like other people. I actually do really well with a huge carbohydrate breakfast. And it's like, actually we're 99.8 % genetically identical and that's not the best way for a human.

46:24
to start their day just from a blood sugar perspective. you do what you want, but like you're actually not that unique. We're more alike than we are different. And the reason why I say that's on woke is because, you know, in my holistic nutrition school, I didn't learn this as much in the dietetics program, but the holistic nutrition realm is very much about bio individuality, which is cool, but we're not that bio individual. Our bodies are, we are running human DNA over here. Now the difference is the difference is like in the, in in your lifestyle.

46:54
your schedule, your family, your preferences, your culture, your religion. You know, there's things that are applied to your DNA that can make some implementation harder. But under the hood, we're kind of all the same, actually. Yeah. That is really not that woke, actually, I'm sorry. It's a little bit like saying good or bad food. Like you're not allowed to say good or bad food anymore. know, like God forbid that there's something out there.

47:23
in the grocery store that you could label bad. So Erin, your approach is quite different from many people out there, particularly who I follow, and particularly different. We mentioned fasted versus fed training. You mentioned having breakfast at the first hunger of the day. Whereas other women would have heard the message that if they have to eat within 30 minutes of waking and it's gotta be this type of food here,

47:50
You know, that's what's very protocol driven. And so the questions that I get from a lot of women are, well, you know, at what point after training or before training should I have my 30 grams of protein, et cetera? So can you talk us through your approach to helping people cue back into those hunger and appetite cues? Because that is the important thing, right? It is. I think what underpins it all is that women don't

48:20
trust or believe their bodies when their bodies cue up a signal. oh, this women's health doctor on this podcast said, absolutely under no circumstances should you train fasted. You need to eat this before you go to send a signal to your hypothalamus that you're safe and that cortisol. And so now women are listening, health consumers, women are listening and listening and listening, trying to figure out their bodies and they're getting all this outside influence. There's a ton of inside influence that they're ignoring, but they're getting outside influence. So.

48:47
I'm not here to name names or trash talk anybody. That's not my vibe, but the doctor in question here works with athletes, athletic women, and is an athlete herself, and I'm not an athlete and neither are my clients. So it's like maybe non-athletic women don't have to do that. And if your body needed nutrients, don't you think it would ask for it? Your nutrient needs are tightly regulated by your brain, absolutely tightly regulated by your brain, and then communicated to you through very clear hunger signal, which I want to validate that.

49:16
when you ignore your hunger signal for decades, it's not that clear. So I can help my clients get some clarity back on that. So I don't want to make it sound like it's that simple, but I work on that. Like let's work on picking up what a hunger signal feels like, and then let's answer it to satiety. I call that the handshake of metabolism. Your body simply queued up the hunger signal. Your body said, Hey, I just ran the tabulations. Here's what we need. And that is that's fuel and nutrition. Like I call it nourishment because it's not just fuel. It could be minerals, hydration, fiber, whatever.

49:46
Body said, here's what I need. And if we just say, okay, here you go, body, we go right to satiety, then we did it. But if we say, no, you know what, body, I hear you, but I'm supposed to have this breakfast because according to the meal plan I'm on or according to this doctor I heard on a podcast, we're just overriding the very clear and simple signals from our body. And again, I have to validate that I don't work with athletes. In fact, I'm very clear if you're an athlete, you need to go work with somebody who works with athletes, because I don't.

50:14
I'm working with just normal women who want to eat like normal people and a normal human has normal fuel needs and they're communicated to very normally through normal appetite cues. I'm just gonna keep hitting the word normal because I think it's normal to feel hunger and the answer. In fact, we all did this until diet programming got their hands on us and every other creature on planet earth, your dog, your husband probably to certain extent, except every other creature on planet earth except adult human women.

50:43
Okay, so my only addition to that, and I'd be curious to hear what you think, uh because you did actually mention blood sugar, we don't know how to eat, we can't trust our hunger signals. And I do think actually for someone who is just sort of coming into this, who hasn't really thought about, I don't know, who's always struggled with their weight or whatever, but.

51:13
um Maybe they haven't focused on protein. That's a really good one to sort of go in. They've always been low fat and probably always been low carb-ish until like 3 p.m. and then they're just high carb. um So their hunger is driven a lot by blood sugar. in my experience, and so the way that I approach it is, right, so let's work on you getting in protein early so you can then experience hunger that actually comes from this requirement of

51:42
nourishment rather than being governed by your blood sugar. So are you and I different in that front? And if so, how do we differ? And if not, talk me through what an epic breakfast sort of looks like and with the people that you work with. Yeah, I think, I think we're aligned. the, so when I, the parameters of the epic breakfast are when you feel your first hunger of the day, eat a protein dominant meal all the way to satiety. there's three moving parts. Number one, feeling hunger, feeling hunger.

52:11
That's something I have to work on with my clients. like, I don't know if I was hungry or just thirsty. It was a hungry or just snacky. Was I hungry or just tired? I'm like, you know what? Let's just assume it was hunger. Okay. Let's just, let's just run this experiment. Let's say it's hunger. You felt it now eat to eat a protein dominant meal. the protein piece is crucial at breakfast. I lighten up on protein as the day goes on, which we'll talk about in a second, but protein at breakfast, mainly because we want to send that well, the protein leverage hypothesis. really lean on that.

52:37
We're trying to send the most abundant nutrient signal in the morning because that's when we're most insulin sensitive. And from a circadian rhythm perspective, that's when the body's expecting to take in and use nourishment. and also, from a practical aspect, just get it handled. You know you need to eat more protein, just get it done in the morning, then you're good, right? And then we go all the way to satiety, which again is a moving target.

53:01
when you eat a protein dominant breakfast to satiety, are not hungry for hours later. That's the unspoken piece. You're gonna get this durability of satiety as your body puts all that nourishment to work. So you're not, and because it's a low, it is accidentally a low carbohydrate meal, there's no blood sugar excursion involved, but also there's just, there's no urgent call for nourishment for a while. So for women, what the way this plays out is, I wasn't rifling through my desk drawer at 10 in the morning looking for granola bar. wasn't in the...

53:31
lunch room at the vending machine trying to get a snack. wasn't thinking and thinking and thinking about food and there's just, it's just quiet. You're just, it's a quietness of, of a well nourished appetite. There is a blood sugar aspect to an insulin regulating aspect to it as well. And there's a circadian meal timing piece to this. And this is something that I worked on when I was trying to pull myself out of pre-diabetes. And I learned this through, I can't remember who I learned it from. It might've been Sachin Panda, the well-known circadian researcher, but

54:00
If you think about it from a circadian perspective in the waking part of our sleep wake cycle, that's when we're doing nourishment and the sleeping part of our sleep wake cycles, we're doing repair and restoration, all that kind of stuff. So moving most of your feeding into the early part of the day is more appropriate from a metabolic rhythm perspective. So let's get the breakfast. I call this the funnel big breakfast and the meals kind of taper as the day goes on because your appetite shrinks as the day goes on. So the subsequent meals kind of lighten.

54:28
They become a little bit more carbohydrate oriented, which I think is nice from, uh I think it's nice because there's some research that women do pretty well with afternoon and evening carbs for sleep. But also this is typically when women are having their social meals. They're going out for lunch with friends. They're having the family dinner. I want women to have normal food. want mom to eat the same meal as the rest of the family. I don't want her to skip the carbs at dinnertime. So there's biological implications and practical and socio-cultural and

54:58
everything that comes into play with this eating philosophy of mine. um But ultimately restoring the harmony, okay, goofy word, of the hormone insulin is what we're going for. It's a circadian hormone. The pancreas is a circadian organ. The whole entirety of human biochemistry is attuned to the rising and setting of the sun. So I have a circadian piece to this as well. The breakfast kicks off that circadian meal timing philosophy. Yeah, nice. Yeah.

55:28
I love it, Erin. I imagine that most of your people who you get into your metabolic reboot program and then you go on and coach in your more intensive coaching program, they already know you and know how you operate. So you've sort of got this audience that expects it and is sort of looking forward to the approach that they have with you. Do you have women come in who sort of, I don't know, find you some other way or just like...

55:56
very new to following you and then get this sort of surprise at what you recommend. Yes. More so in the, in the reboot, which is a metabolic reboot, 21 day program. I'm running it right now. And it's interesting because that's the kind of, that's the kind of thing where somebody who just came across you might just roll the dice. It's inexpensive. Like, I'll try this out for 21 days. So sometimes, for example, I do get some, the occasional plant based person in, the reboot and I don't, I don't have a m

56:24
I don't really work well with plant-based people because I am such a staunch advocate for animal protein. So it's not, my program is not going to be that great. I've had, I've had plant-based clients do really well with it, but I don't speak to them. But typically the people who come in that are, um, disoriented by my approach because they haven't been following are this is too much food. How will I lose weight eating so much food at breakfast? And, it's like, but because we're the m

56:51
We get this energy deficit eventually through tapering and eating less as the day goes on by eliminating 200 calories of snacky poos in front of the TV at night. You're going to get your energy deficit, but they just can't believe. But the people who've been following me for some time know I'm going to tell them now this epic breakfast. They just want to know how and why. So I think, I think, and this, I love, I love it when I get somebody into the reboot, for example, who says, whoa, whoa, I'm here for weight loss and you're making me eat this huge breakfast. There's no way this could work. And it's like, why wouldn't it work? I mean,

57:20
It's probably the one thing you haven't tried, right? Whatever you've been doing isn't working because here you are. So are you willing to just give it a try for 21 days? Nothing can go wrong. For me, metabolism is a really responsive but also forgiving body system. And body fat is a slow fuel. You're not going to put on tons of fat in 21 days. You're not going to lose tons of fat in 21 days either. It's a slow fuel, no matter which way it's going.

57:47
So like for 21 days, could you just hang with me and learn something new about your body? Some women just have a lot of discomfort with eating all the way to satiety that feels they feel like they're eating too much, even though the definition of the word satiety is literally enough. So think about that. If I tell a woman, I want you to eat enough and the woman says, well, that's too much. Do you see how that's like a complete mismatch? Since when is enough too much? Enough is enough.

58:14
That's such a good point. Like a lot of people comment on the amount of food that I eat. Granted, a lot of it is vegetables. Like I like to feel satisfied, but equally I run, I actually need the calories and I have an appetite. I've always had an appetite my entire life. your appetite is legendary. I love your appetite. I seriously applaud. It's so good. I love, Mickey's eating again. Yes.

58:41
You know, and to your point, I also spent a considerable few years in disordered eating patterns. And it really wasn't until I discovered, honestly, Mark Sisson, Rob Wolf, and I really started to understand nourishment and actually fueling for the work required and all of that. Because, but I used to overeat when I was younger with like, my dad and I, we would share a 500 gram packet of pasta for a meal.

59:11
with like a baguette that was garlic bread. Yeah, we literally could have half a pack of pasta each and like half a baguette garlic bread. And I somehow managed to fit that into my stomach. So the appetite has always been there, but it's just learning how to eat in a way that can fuel me well and not sort of overdo it. And I feel like um it took me a while. So I was almost the opposite end of the spectrum. It took me a while to figure out

59:40
how to stop when others satisfied and not overeat. I think people can overeat on anything, right? Cause I never really overate on junk food, but I would frequently overeat on healthy type things, which just made me feel uncomfortable, bloated and sort of distrustful actually in my process. And that was, it was a learning curve. Right. And I think where I go with that is one thing that's very, very hard to overeat.

01:00:09
I would almost go so far as to say impossible is protein. It is such a clear, clear leverage point for, for appetite signal, whether it's hunger or satiety, like try to binge on eggs and let me know how that goes. Right. So that's where for a woman who thinks she's got some kind of, I've had women who, who I tell self-identify as having binge eating disorders or again, sugar addiction. And to me it's like, what if, what if you're just hungry? What if we just make you less hungry? Would it be worth a try?

01:00:38
Yeah, I love that. Particularly because in this era of GLP-1s, people are now, everyone's talking about food noise. It's food noise. I've got food noise. So it's almost like this is a diagnostic criteria that then might, you know, um make me a candidate for this medication that will take away that food noise. But to your point, are we all just a bit hungry? Like, have you just not eaten enough at that previous meal? Well, I mean, I don't want to brag.

01:01:07
but I've been solving food noise for 15 years already. so I was solving food noise before it was cool. 3000 women I've worked with that said, wow, food is less noisy for me. My appetite is a whisper, this is a Marxist in quote, a whisper, not a roar. And that's, so I mean, I want to validate that some women have very dysregulated relationships with food. My mom did, my mom had sort of binge eating tendencies, but my mom also was under consuming protein.

01:01:36
Maybe if she'd had enough protein on her plate, her appetite would have been quieter. Like this is the protein leverage. I know I've mentioned it 10 times, but it's so interesting to me. Every single creature on planet earth eats until its amino acid needs are met, including my horses who have to eat 16 hours a day on grass. That's their grazing animals, right? We're a feasting animal. We're more like the lion than the horse. So we feast and then we will say fast, feast and fast. And nobody's feasting enough.

01:02:05
Like I have a lot of clients who come to me from intermittent fasting, which I'm not opposed to. I do some of it myself from time to time, but it's like, okay, what happens when you're not fasting though? Do you know how to eat? Do you know how to feast? Because after you come out of a fast, your body's going to need all of its nutrient needs. And so do you know how to do that? That's a really good point. It's like when you look at the literature on intermittent fasting, I can see very clearly like a diagram that shows like all of the benefits of the fast.

01:02:32
But then also all of the benefits of the recovery, which is food, right? When people forget that point, they're like, well intermittent fast and I'll just eat a little bit when I actually like resume eating for the day, which will almost always do everyone in. It's going to backfire at a hundred percent. Like we are never like, this is my rally cry. We're not out willpowering our biology. You know what I mean? It's not, you, you just aren't your, that hunger is going to come and get you whether you can ignore it for as long as possible.

01:03:02
but it's gonna come and get you and then you're gonna be face first in the, I don't know, extra large pizza. I don't know what it's gonna be, but like, what if we just learn to eat? Like when I say I help women learn to eat, I know that sounds so maybe petulant or something, but women don't know how to eat. They don't know how to nourish themselves. They don't know how to eat when they feel hungry. They don't know what hunger feels like. It's the basics of eating. And it was robbed from them because they did know how to eat when they were kids and their toddlers and kids until the dieting industry, is

01:03:31
grandfathered by the beauty industry. It's the whole thing. I'm sounding conspiratorial, but until these industries got their sort of little tentacles on us, we knew how to eat, but we forgot. So I'm simply returning women to this, again, I call it the ancient wisdom. And what I think is really exciting is I think that maybe, I don't know, I had a conversation with a client today who mercifully, for whatever reason, had her Instagram account shut down two weeks ago. Don't know why. She said, you know, I've been off Instagram. I don't want to get back on it. And she said, suddenly,

01:04:01
I have a different relationship with my body now because I'm not being told what to do. I'm just in my body, living in my body like we used to. Just be in our body, trusting our hunger signals until somebody told us to eat 30 grams of protein at breakfast or make sure you don't go and train at the gym or make sure you eat before you drink your morning coffee. It's too noisy. It's talk about food noise. That's noisy. Yeah. Oh, such a good call, Erin. Well, I need to be mindful of one, your time and two, my flight to Dunedin.

01:04:30
So let me know and let the listeners know how they can work with you. Yeah, I've got two programs currently and I've only had these two programs and it's all I really do. I'm not mixing it up very often. My flagship program is called the Metabolic Mentorship. So you work with me for six months. We get deep into the weeds of your life and I sort of introduce my approach into your world. And we work together in a very close personal working relationship to make sure it works for you. It's a six month mentorship.

01:04:57
It's focused on weight loss, so it is a weight loss program, but it also focuses on your relationship with food and metabolic health and all the stuff we talked about here. And then I have a little quickie called the Metabolic Reboot. I run that three times a year. And you can find all of this stuff on my Instagram page, uh EatSimpleAaron on Instagram. Lovely. That is awesome. Aaron, always great to chat to you. It's sort of like we were just in-person chatting the way we are a few times a year. So we're just happening in a couple of weeks. Really looking forward to it. You too. Nice one. Thanks, Mickey.

01:05:39
Alrighty, hopefully you enjoyed that. I just love it because it's just the type of conversation you listen to is the type of conversation that Erin and I and our other colleagues have almost all of the time on the topic of women's health. And as you can see, we don't always agree. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing either. It's really nice to get different perspectives and then people can take from it what they will. As I said, I've put Erin's details in the show notes.

01:06:08
And next week on the podcast guys, I have my mates Cliff and Daz, they're your mates too now really aren't they, back on to chat about their new book Awesome After 40. Until then though, you can catch me over on Instagram threads and X @mikkiwilliden, Facebook @mikkiwillidenNutrition, or head to my website mikkiwilliden.com, scroll right down to the bottom, pop your name in to jump on my weekly email. All right team, you have the best week. See you later.