Why You Still Feel Exhausted (Even When You’re Doing Everything Right) |Jessica Van Antoine | Becoming Series

Burnout doesn’t happen all at once.
It builds quietly… until your body forces you to listen.

In this episode of the Delay the Binge Podcast Becoming Series, Pam Dwyer sits down with functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner Jessica Van Antoine to explore the moment everything changed, when pushing through stopped working, and listening became the only way forward.

This conversation goes beyond mindset.

It’s about the body.
The signals.
And the moment you realize something deeper needs your attention.

You’ll learn:

• The early burnout signals most women ignore
 • Why your body is like a “bank account” (and what happens when it’s depleted)
 • How high-performing women unknowingly push themselves into imbalance
 • Why habits like sugar, caffeine, or overworking are signals—not failures
 • The connection between gut health, hormones, and emotional patterns
 • How to pause long enough to understand what your body is asking for

This is a Becoming conversation.

The moment where awareness replaces force…and you begin to shift from pushing through → to supporting yourself differently.

Because the goal isn’t to do more.
 It’s to become someone who listens sooner.

🔗 Connect with Jessica Van Antoine

If this conversation resonated, you can learn more about Jessica’s work here:

🌐 Website: https://phoenixfunctionalhealth.com/

🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-van-antoine-fdnp/

🎙️ Stay Connected with Pam

✨ Podcast + resources: https://DelayTheBingePodcast.com

 📩 Join the newsletter: https://newsletter.delaythebinge.com/ 

This is Delay the Binge™

Delay the Binge™ explores burnout, emotional patterns, Quiet Depletion, and the pause between impulse and action where real behavior change begins.

Through emotionally honest conversations and practical insight from experts in neuroscience, psychology, resilience, wellness, and human behavior, you’ll learn how to recognize patterns, reconnect with yourself, and build momentum one intentional choice at a time.

Because it’s not about willpower…it’s about what you do in the moment the urge hits.

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© Pam Dwyer. All rights reserved.

Transcript

When Doing Everything Still Fails

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What if you're doing everything right, taking care of yourself, showing up, pushing through, and you still feel exhausted, foggy, or just off? What if the problem isn't your efforts, but something deeper your body is trying to tell you? This is the Delay the Binge podcast, where we learn how to pause in the moments that matter most, so you can choose differently, build momentum, and finish stronger. I'm your host, Pam Dwyer, and today I'm joined by Jessica Van Antoine. Jessica is a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner and the founder of Phoenix Functional Health, where she works with high-performing women, especially entrepreneurs, who are doing everything they're supposed to be doing. But they still feel exhausted, overwhelmed, or mentally foggy underneath it all. Her work focuses on helping them restore real energy, mental clarity, and resilience so they can actually perform at the level they're capable of without sacrificing their health in the process. Jessica, I'm so glad you're here. Welcome, welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Thank you so much, Pam. I'm so glad to be here.

Meet Jessica And Her Approach

SPEAKER_00 1:28

So I work one-on-one primarily with female founders and entrepreneurs to really optimize the one system that affects all the other systems in their business, which is their body. And we don't often think about the human body as a system. And, you know, these female entrepreneurs, they use data with every other part of their business. They optimize every other part of their business, operations and hiring and marketing and sales. But the one, again, this one system that's touching everything else and that's determining the efficacy of everything else is their own capacity. So as you mentioned in that intro, these women are very high achieving. They have been used to pushing through their entire lives. And that strategy served them well for a long period of time. And I include myself in this group of women as well. High school, college, 20s, early 30s, maybe, um, just pushing through. And as we get older, as uh, you know, in our latter 30s, early 40s, we start to notice like, wow, I'm just not recovering as quickly as I used to. Or I'm just, you know, one cup of coffee just isn't doing it anymore. And then two becomes the norm, and then maybe three, and um, and that affects how you sleep. And so you're not sleeping well because you're drinking more caffeine, and then you wake up tired before your day has even begun. And all the stress of all of the pressure of being in business for yourself and and growing a company is taking its toll on you.

The Body As A Bank Account

SPEAKER_00 3:04

So I like to use the analogy of the body as a bank account, because everyone has a bank account. Everyone can kind of understand that there's a finite amount of money in that bank account, right? And every day there are little withdrawals coming out of that bank account. And in terms of the body, it's uh it's the things that we choose to put into our bodies, the things that we do with our bodies, the things that we don't do with our bodies. Um, they're either making small deposits or making small withdrawals. And so how that is balancing out over time, that's why we tend to see these kinds of um, I don't want to say symptoms necessarily, but these kinds of experiences, right, not crop up until kind of latter 30s, early 40s, where, you know, we start our lives as children with this like really robust bank account balance, so to speak. And so the the things that we used to be able to get away with, um, now that our our body's account balance has been slowly dip depleted over time. And so the things that we used to be able to get away with kind of take a larger toll as we get older because it's it represents a larger percentage of the remaining balance. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Oh my gosh, I relate to it so much. And I'm sure a lot of women I would think all women can relate to it because we're just so busy checking off all the boxes, right? And I know personally I'm the last person on the list. Like I'm not gonna look at myself until everything else is done. Right. And so I can relate to that, yes. Um I saw your we talked about this a little bit before we started recording, but I saw your recent post about the moment you were literally under your desk. And and what stood out to me wasn't just the burnout, it was that shift made, you know, from thinking it was a mindset issue to realizing it was something happening physically in your body. Can can you take me back to that moment so that we can give everyone some background on that?

The Breakdown That Changed Everything

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Sure, yeah. Um, so I was the director of business development for a wellness center. And this was in my latter 20s, and I had lots to prove, right? And so I was working about 90 hours a week trying to um open a new location and really uh, you know, help this business scale. And it just was unsustainable. I had lost track of all of my wellness habits. Um, so I was relying on coffee to make it through the day and then beer to unwind at night and a part of my story that I don't like to share, but but uh people appreciate the vulnerability um is that I had started smoking cigarettes just as an excuse to get away from the computer for five minutes and go outside and disconnect. And um, even though I was inhaling toxic air, um, I'm very fortunate insofar as I don't have an addictive relationship to nicotine. So it wasn't a huge deal for me to quit that. Um, but you know, in the absence of the wellness habits and then in the presence of these habits that were making withdrawals from my body's bank account, the beer, the nicotine, the, you know, too much caffeine, um, my body had become really depleted. And I reached such a state of fragility and overwhelm. Um, I didn't recognize myself. And I was like snapping at people on my team and I got called out on it, actually, by one woman in particular. Um, and it just kind of made me step back and be like, wow, who have I become? Because I'm not, I don't recognize this version of myself. I was so spread thin that um, so overwhelmed that I felt like if someone so much has said my name, it felt like glass was cracking inside my body. And then came this day, I was in a meeting and my boss said something and like the whole it just the glass shattered that day. I just couldn't hold it together anymore. And that's when I excused myself from the meeting to go into my office and curl up in a ball on the floor underneath my desk and just sob. And of course, you know, being in the health and wellness industry for almost two, almost two decades now, but at that point, um, I just thought I needed to meditate more, take a yoga class, get a massage. And um, as the universe would have it, and you know, the universe works in mysterious ways, but that day a gentleman walked into the studio to talk to someone about teaching classes there. I was the person he needed to speak to. And this was after I sort of collected myself and, you know, had my breakdown. And it turns out he was a functional medicine practitioner. And in I was already, you know, really into natural health and wellness and heal, you know, using the power of the mind and the body and taking care of myself to heal. Um, but in learning about this functional health approach, I immediately signed on. And what that entails is running labs so that you actually get a picture of what's happening internally and being able to connect the dots essentially between everything that you're experiencing in your life and some physiological function in your body. So I came to realize I signed on immediately and then came to understand that this sense of fragility, this sense of overwhelm, uh were direct results of physical imbalances in my body. And so once we had the data, then the solution became easy. It was like, oh, rebalance these minerals, oh, support cortisol, oh, rebalance hormones. And then all of my experience totally shifted. My responsibilities say stayed relatively the same. I cut back to about 70 hours a week instead of 90, but that's still a lot. Uh but my ability to meet those responsibilities and obligations just shifted because my body was resourced. And so I all of a sudden felt bigger than the stressors in my life rather than feeling sort of crushed and weighed down by all of the responsibilities of my life. And so that's when it really motivated me to approach health from a different way, not from a reactive standpoint, not waiting until that point, right? Um, so this is, you know, my passion behind the work that I do, particularly with female founders and entrepreneurs, because there's so many burnout coaches out there, but I don't want people to reach the place of burnout. I'm trying to help people avoid that altogether. Not only, yeah. So um, not only by incorporating their health as a business strategy to the benefit of both the individual and the business, right? Um so that, yeah, so so that they never have to reach that place in in the in the first place.

Pause Before The Habit Takes Over

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Powerful stuff. And it's it it it runs so close to what we're researching and trying to learn here on delay the binge. It's all about the pause, right? Before you act on the urge or the unhealthy behavior or habit. Because if you just take a moment and then that is where you and I are similar in our thoughts, because that's when you can think about what's really going on. What's really happening? Why am I smoking these cigarettes? Why am I, you know, drinking all this wine at when I get home at night? What's because we're intelligent women. We know we've done all the research. We know that it's not serving us, but we still do it.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

It's true, it's true. And I I really appreciate you saying that in particular. And this is, I'm gonna share with you a part of my story that I don't think I've shared publicly. No. But I um in my 20s, I had a really bad addiction to cannabis. And um, and I came to find out through the process of like when I turned 30, I was like, I don't wanna be this person anymore. I don't want to have this behavior anymore. I mean, it was bad. It was like, it was the first thing I did when I woke up. It was the last thing that I did before I went to sleep, and I was high all day long. And when I wanted to change that behavior, that's when I realized that I couldn't. And um, and then I went through this process, this, you know, process of like, well, why can't I change the behavior? Oh, well, the behavior is compensating for something. The behavior is serving a purpose. Okay, so what is that purpose? I had to go through, you know, it self-inquiry, what purpose is it serving? For me, it was protection. It was a protective mechanism. It was about getting my social needs met, but not being fully emotionally present. So having this sort of like haze in between, like a literal, you know, smoke screen in between me and the people that I was um around because of childhood wounds and betrayal and you know, not wanting to be vulnerable essentially because I felt like that I was gonna end up hurt, right? That was that was the the programming, my subconscious programming from my childhood. And so it was in this process of self-inquiry. Okay, so what purpose is it serving? Is this purpose necessary anymore? How else can I get that need met, essentially? How else, you know, and so for example, I've worked with clients on sugar and their sugar addiction. And I'm like, oh, well, I just want to give myself a treat. Okay, well, let's let's talk about that for a minute because this treat is actually doing damage to your body. And this, I'm thinking of this one particular person who was pre-diabetic, and she knew she wasn't, she did not want to become a full-fledged diabetic. She knew that sugar was bad for her, but she still had this um relationship with sugar that it was a treat. And I was like, okay, well, how about we reframe sugar from being a treat to really understanding what it's doing physiologically to your body? And how else, what other behavior could you substitute that would actually be beneficial to your body? What are you trying to accomplish on the other side of this treat, right? Is it a dopamine hit? Okay, how else can we get that dopamine hit in a healthier way? Go get a foot massage or have a smoothie that, you know, has some fiber in it and isn't straight sugar, how, you know. Um, so so yeah, really looking at the habit, the purpose that it's serving, and then trying to, and so that's where it ties into what you're doing in terms of taking that moment before engaging in a behavior and um and really utilizing that to, okay, what's the end goal here? And how else could I accomplish that goal in a way that actually serves me?

SPEAKER_01 13:52

I just love it. I love all that you're saying because it just gives validation to what we've been trying to, you know, work on as a as a as my audience and I are just trying to figure it all out because a lot of people, Jessica, are talking about this.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

Right?

SPEAKER_01 14:08

But and and sometimes it's a little difficult for people just to grasp, okay, you're saying that I need to pause. Well, pff, what's that gonna do? The cake is still there, or the sugar or whatever it is they're doing is still in front of me.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

Well, it's like the whole thing in AA, right? Like awareness is the first step. Yes. And so even if even if you go ahead and eat the cake, even if you go ahead and eat the sugar or whatever, again, that behavior may be for you, at least you have that moment of awareness. And next time you'll opt not to have the cake. Maybe maybe it'll be the fifth time or whatever, but um developing that awareness is certainly the first step.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

I find the stall tactic works for me. It it doesn't work for everyone, but like if I'm going to eat the cake, I know it doesn't serve me, but I don't care at the moment. Right. Right. I'm just gonna eat it. But then if I tell myself like I'm a child, if I I pause for a moment and I say, I'm you cannot have this right now, but if you still want it, you can eat it tomorrow. That's what I tell myself. This it works for me and and other people have said it works for them too, because when tomorrow comes, you don't really want it anymore. You're not in that emotional state that you're like wanting to feed your frenzy.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

But a lot of people don't realize that if they continue in this pattern, this unhealthy pattern, they're just gonna go numb inside. They're not gonna feel anything, they're not gonna feel joy or sadness. They just are like robots going through the motions because it has to be done. We don't feel anything. We're numb.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Yeah, you're eating away the whatever it is that you might be feeling, right? It just becomes your your go-to. Um, and so you you end up feeling the physicality of what you put into your body rather than the emotionality of what you're trying to avoid.

Emotions As Data From The Body

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Um, which I really appreciate appreciate. I have a almost two-decade background in the in health and wellness. And um primary my my my introduction into this world or my first career path in the in in this industry was massage therapy, and and that sort of opened the door to all sorts of other healing arts, um, cranial sacral meditation, qigong, which is like tai chi, uh, and and really getting in touch with the emotions. But one of the things that I've learned is that you know, the the emotions won't go away unless you feel them, unless you allow space to actually feel them. And as difficult as it may be, I think that, you know, so often in our modern society we have this um aversion to things that are perceived to be negative, quote unquote. And I put these emotions or I put, you know, negative in air quotes, because emotions aren't either positive or negative. They they do have the quality of like, you know, feeling good or not feeling good, but emotions are the intelligence of your body speaking to you. And so if we can remove the judgment of the emotion from being either positive or negative and really step into a place of awareness, right? Even with the emotions, of like an inquiry. What is this emotion trying to communicate to me? Have my boundaries been crossed? Am I upset about something? What is it that needs to change here in order for this emotion to shift? And that moving through it is how you actually get to the other side of it. But if you avoid it, it's just going to be stuffed down into your body. And um, and there there's a book called The Body Keeps the Score. And um write that down. Yeah, it's an excellent book, um, but it's all about how emotions are held in different places in the body. And um again, if you if you don't process them, if you don't move through them, then they'll show up again later. And you might also be find yourself in circumstances that seem to be like, oh, this was just like that time back then, and oh, this was just like that, and this the cycle keeps happening in your life. And I think it's from an existential perspective because you haven't actually learned the lesson that you were supposed to learn. And so it keeps getting presented to you, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:26

Have you until you learn it, you know? Until you learn it, yeah. It it does. And I'm a big advocate for journaling. And a lot of women just roll their eyes because they think, I have I don't have time to go to the bathroom, bam. How am I gonna have time to journal? And I'm like, well, if you don't make time, you're sometimes you don't realize you have patterns. And the only way because I don't remember what I felt two weeks ago. Right, right, exactly. You can reference it and then figure, oh, there's a pattern here. No. And so I I love journaling and I love meditation. I do both of those every single day.

SPEAKER_00 19:03

Yeah, beautiful. And it takes a while to develop those habits. It's just like building any muscle. You're not just gonna jump into journaling and all of a sudden be a journaler, you know, daily. But if you can, like you said, I appreciate that you said make the time, but not have time, right? Because if you just wait until you have time, that's never gonna come. You have to prioritize these things that are ultimately going to serve you and and really be the curator of your own life, you know?

SPEAKER_01 19:33

Exactly.

Motivation Comes After Action

SPEAKER_01 19:34

And I always challenge people to, you know, if they wait for motivation, right, to move their bodies or to do something different to to that, you know, to something that does serve them, you can't wait for the motivation. You have to act first. Then the motivation happens. A lot of people don't realize motivation comes after the action. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Well, and I really appreciate um I think it's who's the guy that wrote atomic habits? James Clear, I think. Yes, yes, yes. Who yeah. So, so you know, if if, for example, if exercising or moving your body is a challenge for you, then start by start by just putting on your workout clothes. You don't even have to exercise, just put on the clothes. Chances are you'll do something, right? And so then once you get into the habit of putting on the clothes, then start with one minute. Well, I'm just gonna do some squats for one minute. Chances are you'll do more than one minute, and then it just starts to build that muscle memory and that habit. And then you start to experience the benefits of moving your body, and and then you start to crave those benefits. So you know that exercising isn't necessarily a comfortable process. Like your muscles are gonna burn, you're gonna breathe hard, you're gonna sweat, but that temporary pain, so to speak, is worth the long-term gain that you're seeing in the way that your body is changing and the way that you feel because all those endorphins are being released from moving your body and you're getting your blood pumping and getting your breath rate up a little bit. Um, so so you start to prioritize the long-term gains over that short-term discomfort.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Right. And I I am one of those I hate exercise, but I I still walk my I'm I walk three miles in the morning. But if I don't walk before, say, a podcast uh interview, my brain is not as sharp. I'm I'm foggy like you were talking about. But if I walk before, oh my gosh, you know, I'm very very clear headed.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Exactly. It makes a difference for me. I think it's also a matter of like finding where it fits in your schedule. So for me, if I don't exercise first thing in the morning, it doesn't happen. I just get into the I just get into the flow of my day and I prioritize everything else. So I know that I have to exercise. Exercise um pretty you know before I have breakfast. Not like not like get out of bed and start exercising. I prefer a slow, a slow ramp up, but but I know that it has to go in the in the morning for me. Otherwise, at the end of the day, I'm too tired. I don't want to do that.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

Right. We're gonna psych ourselves out of it. Yeah. Convince ourselves that we don't, we're too tired. That's the lower brain talking to us. That's right. Exactly.

Early Warning Signs People Miss

SPEAKER_01 22:21

So if there are maybe we can help our our listeners understand what maybe the signs of your body are before like what happened to you, going under the table and just having a breakdown. Are there any signs they can can try to take note of?

SPEAKER_00 22:38

Oh, absolutely. Um, so many so many signs. They're different for every person. Um, for me, it was that sense of fragility, it was that um that irritability and snapping at people that when this uh person on my team kind of called me out on it, I would it kind of shook me and I was like, oh, this is not me. So anything, any sort of behaviors that make you have that sort of realization, like this isn't like me, or this is that's certainly a sign. Um physically, the signs are so many and so varied, headaches, uh, you know, over reliance on caffeine to get going in the day, um afternoon crashes, any sort of cognitive decline, so brain fog or just feeling like you can't focus, um skin issues, eczema. I have some clients that have like stress-induced eczema, um, anemia, really any physical symptom that you would go to the doctor and they might say, um, oh, we're just gonna give you this, you know, medication or this cream or whatever. Um, but really all of these little things are signs from your body that some system is not functioning at 100%. We have sort of normalized them, right? Like, oh, headaches are common. People get headaches all the time. But common and normal are two different things. Okay, so just because it happens to a lot of people, that's the definition of common, doesn't mean that it's normal. When your body is functioning at 100%, you don't get headaches. You have all the energy that you need to make it through the day. You sleep well, you wake up refreshed. So if you find if you're finding that um, you know, you're you're waking up and you're already tired or you're not sleeping well, your sleep is interrupted, or you have incredibly painful periods, or for people who are, you know, going through perimenopause, menopause, like in you know, super intense hot flashes, or um, weight that just won't go away, or really anything, all of these little little things that we might complain about or just put up with, or equate to this is just part of getting older, or it's just part of the job, right? Um, those are all the signs that there might be some physical imbalance going on in your body. Now,

Functional Labs Versus Normal Ranges

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Western medicine would, they would traditionally tell you, like, oh, headaches happen all the time, just you know, take this migraine medicine or whatever. But that's not actually getting at the root of the issue. Why are these headaches happening? Why are the migraines coming? Why are these hot flashes so intense? When you run functional lab testing, then you get that to kind of like look underneath the hood of your body and understand oh, I'm estrogen dominant. And so if we rebalance, you know, progesterone and estrogen, the hot flashes will subside. Um, oh, I'm low on testosterone. Maybe that's why my motivation on a daily basis is so tanked. Let's support your testosterone levels. Uh, let's regulate your blood sugar so you're not on this energy roller coaster all day with like super high highs and really low crashes. Let's get everything functioning more smoothly. Um, let's get you sleeping better. You know, there's mineral imbalances play a role in the your adrenal function, your thyroid function, um, your just your energy throughout the day. I mean, there's so much to be learned by do running some functional lab tests where Western medicine might brush you off and just say, oh, your labs look normal. Um because, and here, here's the the the nuance, right? Like Western medicine is looking at their range of normal is an average of everyone that's taken that test over time, like in the history of the test. And so you get that normal kind of bell curve, right? But you only get flagged as abnormal if you're a really far outlier in one direction or the other. And if you think about the average American, anyway, not very healthy, sadly. Um, so that that range and what is normal includes all the people who aren't very healthy. Whereas functional health takes a much narrower subset of what we're what we consider to be normal. We're look at um actual healthy people and how those, whatever test it may be, whatever marker we're looking at, it's well, how does this show up in a in a healthy person? And so we're also not looking for disease, right? We're not looking to diagnose someone by checking certain boxes. All that we are doing is looking for a deviation from optimal. And so it's so much easier to see uh when you have a target like that, a narrower target, if you're slightly off in one direction or the other, it gives us the data to connect everything that you're experiencing with something that's going on in your body. And when you have that data, then the solution becomes clear. So just like uh my addiction story that I shared with you, the addiction wasn't the problem. It was the symptom of the problem of deeper needs that weren't being met, right? And so it's the same thing with this the quote unquote symptoms or the experiences that we're having on a daily basis of low energy, brain fog, fatigue, headaches, whatever it may be, those aren't the problem. Those are the symptom of the problem. And these functional lab tests give us the data to actually tell us where the problem is, whether it's coming from mineral deficiencies or hormonal imbalances or a pathogen in your gut or something that you're eating that's not agreeing with your body. Um, and and then once you know where it's coming from, where you know what that imbalance is, then it's super easy to fix the imbalance. And then the symptom goes away on its own. So you don't have to battle for years and years and introduce this wellness hack and that wellness hack and this other thing that's like barely keeping Humpty Dumpty together, you know?

SPEAKER_01 28:48

But it's not tools that that we rely on instead of addressing the foundation of the problem. That's right. Yeah. I mean, I've I had bariatric surgery because what you're describing is powerful because it's you're describing my whole journey with my health. I mean, I was over 300 pounds, but the doctors were telling me your labs are perfect. We don't know what's wrong with you.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

And I thought, what? Well then why is this happening? You know, there were all kinds of things going on, but it's just that they didn't take the time to to to do what you're saying, which is okay, sh she's in the the correct zone on these labs, but she's really close to this over here. Let's look at that. Right. But that I went to so many different doctors just find trying to find one that could help me understand. But even with the bariatric surgery, that's the foundation of delay the binge is because they teach you about nutrition before you have it. And they teach you about a lot of things, you know, mindset, you know, preparing for the new emotional transition of the lifestyle and all of that, making sure that you will still be healthy and you can do it mentally as well as physically. But they never once taught me about maintenance, how important it is that you learn how to maintain whatever weight you're at. Exactly. And then you can tweak from there.

SPEAKER_00 30:18

Mm-hmm. And that's the that's where like the lifestyle stuff comes in, right? So the the taking walks, for example, first thing in the morning, or having protein within the first hour of waking, or just eating healthy, moving your body, those are the foundations that help you maintain, but they're not actually going to correct the imbalances that are happening internally. Um, and I wanted to touch on what you mentioned about you went to so many doctors trying to understand and trying to get uh a picture of what was really going on. And that's such a common experience, right? Um but one of the issues with Western medicine, from my perspective, is that they look at things in silos. So you get sent to the kidney doctor, you get sent to the heart doctor, you get sent to the pulmonologist, and it's it doesn't take into consideration that this system of your body works in harmony. All of these systems work together to maintain whatever homeostasis that you're at, whether it's an unhealthy homeostasis or a healthy homeostasis. Um and so what we find in functional medicine is that the the problem can can crop up in, say, the renal system in your kidneys. Um, but it's not necessarily being caused by a malfunction in the kidneys. It can be being caused by something going on in the gut or a mineral deficiency, as I've mentioned, or you know, something going on uh with your hormones. So, so just kind of isolating one system and looking for, so the problem is there and you're looking for the or the symptom is there and you're looking for the root cause there, that's not necessarily where you're gonna find it because all of these systems interact with one another to create the beautiful symphony that is you. And so that's why, you know, in in my practice anyway, and not all functional health practitioners work this way. Some of them do kind of work in the same way that Western medicine does in terms of, oh, well, here's your symptom. Like, let's test that system. I work from a perspective of we're gonna test all the systems. We're gonna run a comprehensive suite of labs such that we get insight into your hormone balance, your immune system, your digestion, your detoxification function, your uh energy production, your nervous system, and oxidative stress. And so that we're not playing whack-a-mole, kind of chasing around symptoms. You know what I mean? So we address everything at once and that rising, so again, not from a place of you know diagnosing or uh, but but simply from a place of noticing where things aren't functioning at 100%. And as we address everything all at once, that rising tide lifts all boats, right? So everything starts to clear up and we don't again have to go, you know, like chasing, well, this intervention didn't work, and so we're gonna try this intervention, or now I'm gonna send you to this specialist or that specialist. It's like that's not it's not it's not working, you know. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 33:17

Where were you when I was in my twenties? I'm sure I I would not have done a lot like like I do um wish that I had not done that surgery because you know, I I wish I would have met someone like you that would have treated my body as a whole, as a machine, you know, that kind of like a car, right? Just because you're low on oil, well, why are you low on oil? What's happening? What's causing that? Right. You know, exactly. But I digress, but I love I love how you said um, it was pretty powerful to me, that it's not always a mindset problem. It's physical. And that's a very different conversation than what most people are hearing right now.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

Mm-hmm. So even yeah, I'd like to um connect that back to to kind of the the binge and delay the binge and and your audience in particular, and and like and this client that I was talking about with the sugar addiction, right?

Gut Microbiome And Sugar Cravings

SPEAKER_00 34:17

Sugar addiction isn't necessarily yours. And what I mean by that is we have co-evolved with bacteria in our bodies over millennia. So, and we all know about the gut microbiome that's being increasingly talked about um in just common culture, which is a really good thing. Um, and so we're paying more attention to our gut microbiome and taking probiotics and eating, you know, yogurt and fermented foods that have good bacteria in them. Um, and these bacteria serve purposes in our bodies. We sort of outsourced some of the functions of our bodies to these bacteria. They help us digest our food, they help us uh with immune function, they help um keep kind of the bad guys out of our guts. But if that microbiome gets unbalanced, then other guys start to come in, the guys, the bad guys that we don't want to be there. And um, some of these bad guys actually feed on sugar. So um in this co-evolution of our bodies, so I sort of got ahead of myself a little bit. In this coevolution of the bacteria with our bodies, our brain has learned to listen to the bacteria in our gut. And so now you're hearing people talk about that gut-brain axis, that line of communication between your gut and your brain, and how that is regulating kind of all the other systems in your body, right? The endocrine system, the pituitary, and the hypothalamus, and you know, the the fight or flight mode and and even sugar cravings. So when the bacteria in your gut are sending a message to the brain, the brain listens because again, the good bacteria have they they've served these good purposes. But when that bacteria gets out of balance and these bad guys come in and they feed on sugar, then they tell your brain, we want more sugar. And so your brain tells, like gives you the craving or the signal, I need sugar. And so then you go indulge and you know, you fulfill that craving. And um, I've had to educate my husband about this. When we got together, he's like, Well, my body just wants sugar, so I'm just gonna give it what it wants. And I'm like, No. Like, I mean, yes, your brain is telling you that you want sugar, but and and to a certain extent, there's, you know, yes, your your brain feeds on sugar, your brain runs on sugar, and um you do need some sugars, but not in the concentrations and the quantities and the amounts that we have available to us in our modern society. So um, this is all to say essentially that it's not, it's not necessarily a mindset issue. Fighting sugar cravings isn't necessarily a matter of having more discipline. If you you can get a test to measure your gut microbiome and see the balance of bacteria there, and then you can know that um, oh, I need more of the good guys, less of the bad guys, or oh, I have an overgrowth of this, overgrowth of this yeast, or oh, you know, um, there's some other causative factor that is making the sugar cravings so intense. And once you address that gut balance, then ostensibly um combined with a little bit of discipline, then uh those sugar cravings will lessen or go away altogether.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

Yes. I this I'm so I love this conversation so much. I think I think the listeners are gonna just have to go back and listen to it over and over. There's so much to unpack here. You know, I want to slow down too for a second, because I think a lot of people are hearing conversations like this, even about the microbiome and um all those things, gut health, but they don't know what to actually do. If someone's listening and they're thinking, wow, that could be me, something feels off like that, like they're describing, what are one or two things they can start paying attention to today, and then maybe an a uh something they can do about it?

Simple Steps To Start Today

SPEAKER_00 38:04

Yeah, um, so uh just some lifestyle stuff to help kind of quell the sugar cravings. Um, the first thing is that the the flavor of sour sort of takes up the same receptor sites in the brain as sugar. So if you uh get something sour and eat that instead, lemon, you know, lime, citrus, um, that can oftentimes kind of quell that sugar craving. Um, also not letting your blood sugar get too low. So don't let yourself get really starving. Um and front load your day with protein and fat. So blood sugar and cortisol, the stress hormone, sort of have an inverse relationship. When um when your blood sugar gets too low, then it triggers your brain to produce cortisol because cortisol raises your blood sugar. I sort of digress. Um I'm trying to tie, I'm trying, yeah, it is a lot. So I'm trying to tie in the the front load your day with um with protein and uh and so a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 39:13

Well, can I make a point there? Because women and and you can validate this, but I read somewhere that men and women are completely different in this world. They they are. You know, women need protein like the first 30 minutes you're awake.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

That helps bring down those those uh the cortisol. So eating helps lower cortisol levels, which sets you up for more steady energy throughout the day, which also kind of helps regulate blood sugar throughout the day. So then so that was uh yeah, kind of where I lost myself a moment ago. Um so rather than being on that blood sugar roller coaster, because you know, I know intermittent fasting is really popular right now. Uh, but the latest research, so there's a woman named Stacy Sims who has specifically been researching women, right? Because a lot of the nutrition advice we've been getting over decades and decades is all from studies that are done on men. Um, but so Stacy Sims likes to say women are not small men. Like we function physiologically completely differently. And so we need a different approach to managing our weight and our hormones and our you know exercise and stress levels. So um, so she's a big proponent for that protein within the first 30 minutes to one hour of waking to help bring the cortisol down, which takes you out of the fasting window, right? But that's okay because ultimately what she's found in her research is that intermittent fasting actually has obesogenic effects, meaning it causes the uh the body to retain weight. Um, even though you think you're doing a good thing by quote unquote starving your body, like I'm eating fewer calories, right? Um, but but then meanwhile, your cortisol's over all over the place, your blood sugar's all over the place, and it's it's wreaking havoc on the internal systems of your body. Um, so there's another woman, I forget her name, uh, but she specifically, she has a book called Fast Like a Girl. And so she has done research on intermittent fasting specifically with relation to women. And so if that's something that works for you or, you know, anyone who's listening, um, not saying don't do it, but I'm just saying consider uh and and experiment. I mean, you are what works for everyone else isn't gonna work for you. And so here's one, you know, one really educated woman, a professional in her field who's saying intermittent fasting isn't for women. And then here's another woman, an expert, uh well educated in her field, who's saying, intermittent fast, but do it in this way. And she takes menstrual cycles into consideration and hormonal fluctuations. And so, um, so you know, ultimately you are you are an experiment of one and you have to find what works for you. Um, and I think so. We were kind of talking about if someone is listening and resonating with what they're saying, with what we're saying, and and are kind of curious about next steps, and just to kind of summarize protein within the first hour of waking, 20 to 30 grams. It doesn't have to be food if you're not hungry. I particularly make myself a protein shake because I'm not hungry first in the morning, first thing in the morning. And I'm also attempting to sort of circumvent the sugar cravings by having going for something sour first. And then if it's still coming up as an issue, go get a it's called a GI map. Go get a gut test to really figure out the balance of um of bacteria in your gut. It's this is one of the tests that I run in my practice as a functional health practitioner that is covered by insurance. So you can go to your doctor because it's also used by doctors to diagnose, um, whereas most of the tests that the functional health practitioners we don't diagnose. Um but the GI map is one thing where it is also a diagnostic tool. So go to your doctor and request a test and you can get it paid for by insurance, and then you can really have an understanding of if there is something, an imbalance in your gut microbiome that might be driving these sugar cravings.

SPEAKER_01 43:12

Oh my gosh, these are so amazing. And I didn't know that about the sour. Yeah, isn't that interesting? Yes, I'm so gonna try it because I love sugar and it takes everything in me to not eat it because it so doesn't serve me. I feel horrible for days if I eat it. So but the microbiome, the gut, the gut check, that's huge because a lot of people think that it it's not covered by insurance and that it's and it's very expensive. But man, that would take all the guesswork out of everything. Exactly. Exactly. We like to say test, but don't guess. Yes. Yeah. Sometimes they're in denial, I think. And I have done this, and you don't want to look at it. It's almost like I don't want to go get that gut test because I don't want to see what it's gonna tell me because I don't want to have Do what I need to do in order to fix it. They're in denial. Or, I mean, so what are some early signals that people ignore the most, but are very critical? I mean, people don't realize it's like with women with heart attacks, right? They always women brush it off because they think it's something else. It's in reality, it's a heart attack coming up.

SPEAKER_00 44:23

Yeah.

Tools, Supplements, And Maintenance

SPEAKER_00 44:24

Uh bloating after meals is a good one, uh, that there might be something out of balance with your gut, uh, any sort of digestive issues, whether you know, constipation or diarrhea, alternating constipation or diarrhea, um, those are signs that something is out of balance in your gut. Uh eczema can be, skin issues can certainly be uh an indicator, as well as just those intense sugar cravings that we're talking about. So again, and signs show up differently for everyone. So just any little thing that you think, oh, well, that seems weird, or that's new, or you know, that didn't used to be there. Um, they're like to use to go back to the car analogy that you mentioned earlier, those are like little warning lights on the dashboard of your the vehicle that is your body. And if you don't pay attention to them, that car, your car, your body is gonna break down at some point. So pay attention while, you know, while they're just kind of blinking at you before they start, like before alarm bells start going off and they sort of take you out. I mean, we all know people who, like you said, with women in heart attacks who have ignored the warning signs that their body is trying to give them until they can no longer ignore because they have been completely laid flat and they have to take time off work and they have to, you know, and then they incur giant medical bills for time spent in the hospital or, you know, whatever it may be. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as they say. So, you know, be proactive. Take your health, you know, we all know that the healthcare system in this country is broken. They have no interest in actually improving our health outcomes or uh, you know, the care that we get, even that's covered by insurance, is just it'll get you back to your baseline, but it won't improve your health. That's up to us. And so I really like to encourage people to be proactive because it'll save you thousands and thousands of dollars down the line, hundreds of thousands, if not, you know, people go bankrupt from medical bills that all could have been avoided if we were just a little more proactive in our own health and well-being.

SPEAKER_01 46:34

Exactly. And that's what I meant earlier about tools. I love tools. Whatever tool I can use that's going to aid me and assist me in learning what ultimately what I need to do to stay healthy. But a lot of times people rely on the tool completely, like I don't know, GLP1s or whatever it is, but those help people, but it's not I don't think that it should be forever. I think that it should just be utilized so that you can figure out what's really going on. Right.

SPEAKER_00 47:02

Right.

SPEAKER_01 47:02

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 47:03

Yeah. I appreciate you saying that too, because that's that's where like um the labs give us information where we can target our supplementation to support that system in the body to return it to 100% function, but they're never meant to be for the rest of your life in the same way that like pharmaceuticals are, right? Um, so so the the supplements that we use as a result of the data, A, we know that your body actually needs them. It's not guesswork. B, they're temporary until your body regains the capacity to maintain that uh 100% function on its own. And C, it's it's healing that system of the body. It's actually improving your health versus the Western approach of just kind of, you know, being a crutch for a while. So uh, and then the lifestyle stuff is what helps you maintain, like we talked about. It's what helps you maintain the benefits uh that you get from doing the labs and and returning your body to a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01 48:03

Right, because that's the trick, right? I don't know if you know statistics with bariatrics, I know them by heart, but a big percentage of them regain all their weight. Yeah. You know, they chopped up their insides, you know, in an effort to be healthier, but then you know, the surgeon, I the surgeon literally said to me, Pam, you have one year to get the bulk of the weight off, and then the body figures it out. And then regain can become an issue.

unknown 48:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:29

But that's I wasn't told how to do that.

unknown 48:32

Right.

SPEAKER_00 48:33

What are you talking about? Tell me. Yes, exactly. And the stomach is stretchy, right? So like you can you can cut half of it out and uh and just have a smaller stomach and eat less. But if you keep overeating, then it's just gonna expand and it's gonna expand. And that's where the that's where that weight gain comes back.

SPEAKER_01 48:50

Exactly. And so I'm curious about this, all this from a momentum standpoint, because once someone is in that pattern of pushing through anyway, even though they see the signs, it it just keeps going. So what do you see happen over time when someone keeps overriding those signals versus when they start catching in earlier, like being reactive, proactive?

SPEAKER_00 49:17

Yeah, I mean, they're certainly headed towards something more serious, right? Yeah. Like that car is gonna break down if you ignore those warning lines. Um, but I like to use the analogy, I love that you said momentum, because I like I have another analogy of a freight

Changing Momentum Before You Crash

SPEAKER_00 49:31

train. And so you have this freight train that's like heading in a certain direction, either um towards health or towards dis-ease, toward, you know, or disease, as we say. And and it has a certain momentum. And it takes a while for you can't just like stop it overnight and send it back in the other direction, right? It takes a while with concentrated effort to A, get the train to slow down, much less come to a stop, much less start going in another direction. So I work with people for a period of six months during which we achieve a lot of that, right? We slow that freight train down from going further towards disease. We and we get it going back towards a state of health. And because we change the momentum and the uh of the body, then my clients continue to see improvements well after we finish working together. Six months, a year later, they're still noticing like it sticks. Oh, this thing isn't happening anymore. Um, my mom was my first client when I started doing this work. She's my biggest fan. Oh, besides my husband. But she she was my first client and she was having a conversation. She's in her 70s. She was having a conversation with a friend last week, and they were um, as you know, as an older generation, kind of comparing their well, I this aching pain and that thing and this thing that's going on. And and my mom was like, Well, I used to have this, but I don't have it anymore. And I used to have this, but that went away. And I used to have, you know, pain in my feet and my hips, and now that's gone. And and this lady was like, Well, what do you mean gone? How how did you do that? Like, um, and it's just through this kind of work, right? Getting the data, repairing the body, and making the fundamental lifestyle changes that will maintain that progress.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

Well, and you know, motivation or inspiration, let's say, because we discussed motivation coming after the action. So to be inspired to do these things that we must do in order to make a difference, you know. I've I have, I think I read it in one of your posts where you said the the body is the system running everything in your business. For me as an entrepreneur, that matters.

SPEAKER_02 51:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 51:46

You know, because I want my business to be successful. Exactly. And if my body is the system that's running everything in it, you know, I'm gonna pay a little more attention. That's right. So so what actually changes when when someone is physically supported versus when they're running on caffeine, willpower, and pushing through?

SPEAKER_00 52:07

Everything becomes easier.

unknown 52:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:09

You don't it doesn't feel like you're pushing through. You actually you wake up with that motivation and excitement to jump into your work for the day because ostensibly you started your business because you're passionate about what it is that you're doing, right? But sometimes that passion gets clouded by a sense of malaise in the body. So when you handle that, you deal with that, then all of a sudden that passion and excitement returns and you're excited to take on your days instead of feeling like you're dragging through your day and like, oh, I have a million things to do. It's like here are all these things that I get to do to have this impact on the world that I really dream about and help try to create the world that I want to create. Protect that dream, you know? Yeah. And so stay sharp. That's right. So everything gets easier, your mood lifts, your your business grows faster, decisions are made faster, you don't lose as much time to brain fog and just trying to think about what you want to say. Um your business, yeah, the imp and the impact that you want to make on the world is larger because your business is growing, your bottom line is growing, you know.

SPEAKER_01 53:13

Well, and I mean, it does seem like everything seems twice as difficult as it really is as it is. It's not really it's just if your brain's not on on top of things, it's gonna make make everything seem really, really bad. And can deal those things are gonna happen in business, but we can deal with it much better if we're strong and healthy. This this is part of our becoming series, and I always come back to this question because it's it's not about becoming someone different, it's about becoming back to yourself, who you really are.

Becoming Back To Your Worth

SPEAKER_01 53:50

So when you look at that version of you, let's say uh under the desk, pushing through, who were you then and who have you become because of that moment?

SPEAKER_00 54:03

Wow, that's a good question. Um at that point, I like I said, I definitely had something to prove. And I thought that working harder and longer was going to get me a feeling of worth, a feeling of self-worth, like I, you know, deserved, I had succeeded and I deserved it. And this all kind of ties into my addiction to cannabis and what I was avoiding was uh and and the the childhood wounds were all about you know betrayal and not being worthy of love. And so I thought I had to earn love and earn success rather than just being worthy just by virtue of being alive. Right. So that's where I am now is like I am successful. The number on the piece of paper at the you know, the on my balance sheet for my business has nothing to do with success. And I am worthy of love regardless of whether I'm successful or you know what I've achieved or accomplished in this world or you know, external recognition.

SPEAKER_01 55:10

So absolutely I love that. Um so it's almost like the you version now, you know, if you could if you could talk to that person before, you would say you are loved just the way you are.

SPEAKER_00 55:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:26

You're we're literally using all these things we've learned as fuel. Um you know, the pain can be turned into purpose. That's right. Because I know my intent is just to help anyone that's willing to listen avoid my mistakes and how to maintain it, sustain things.

SPEAKER_00 55:45

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 55:46

Thank you for that. That's beautiful. So before we wrap up, where can people connect with you and learn more about your wonderful work?

Where To Connect And Final Pause

SPEAKER_00 55:55

Yeah, thank you. Um, LinkedIn is my primary platform where I spend most of my time. So Jessica Van Antoine and my business name is Phoenix Functional Health. Um, of course, we have a website if you want to check that out. It's just phoenixfunctionalhealth.com. Um, and I'm was on Instagram, uh, but not so much there anymore. So whatever you find over there will be uh a bit older. I can't do all the platforms. That's all I would do.

SPEAKER_01 56:20

I can't do it. Jessica, this was such a powerful conversation. I mean, by far the closest thing I can send anyone to help them understand more about delay the binge. What stands out most is that it's not that the people aren't trying hard enough, right? Don't beat yourself up. Yeah. It's that they're missing the signal. And the moment where something feels off in that moment, that's where everything can start to change.

SPEAKER_02 56:55

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 56:55

So thank you for sharing this so uh openly today. My pleasure. If this conversation resonated with you, pay attention to your next moment, not the big change, just the next one. Pause, choose, build momentum, and finish stronger. One moment at a time. I'll see you in the next episode.