After creating my list 2 years ago, I am finally getting around to talking about adrenal fatigue and I feel like this has been a much-needed topic we need to discuss. Many of you may hear from doctors that “.. it’s just adrenal fatigue…” and they use the word JUST and you don’t know what the heck it even is! So, I brought Maja Miller on to this week’s Fit Girl Magic podcast to really dive into this topic for us. She is going to help us unpack this adrenal fatigue that we hear so much about!
Maja’s specialty is around adrenal fatigue as well as helping busy women transform their bodies from the inside out! Maja Miller is a metabolic health coach and functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner. A fancy way of saying that she uses clinical labs to analyze blood, urine, stool, hair, etc. to figure out why her clients feel burned out, exhausted and sick. She then uses those results to create tailored, bio-individual protocols to reverse their symptoms. This right here is why we needed to talk to her!
This episode is for you if you feel like you aren’t worthy if you aren’t running around with your hair on fire. Our society is all about no pain no gain, money doesn’t grow on trees if it was easy everyone would be doing it! And it is so darn hard to get out of that mindset. I’m guilty as charged.
These beliefs have been handed down and these beliefs are deeply implanted into our subconscious minds. “At the core of everything I do is a lot of brain science and conscious and subconscious work and 95% of all of your brain activity happens in a section of the brain that is associated with the subconscious mind.” This means if you have a belief that is implanted in the subconscious mind, your subconscious mind goes to the ends of the world to prove those beliefs, this is why we have such a hard time changing our actions. Who you are, impacts what you are able to do and the actions you are able to take!
There is an indirect correlation between autoimmune disease and our belief systems. So, who you are, whether you are being consistent, persistent, loving, kind, or whether you’re being a jerk to myself, or impatient, becomes your identity. Which then becomes the software that makes the hardware work. And who you are, impacts what you’re able to do. Your actions, the things you do in your life, whether you eat healthy food, and get lots of sleep or have off-the-chart stress, that determines what you have and that oftentimes correlates to a healthy body, and healthy relationships, so when you don’t feel good in your own body you are not going to be sailing effectively through life.
The reason why you have an unhealthy body, it’s because of the actions that you’ve taken, the actions that you’ve taken are a result of the programming and the belief systems that you have. “I identify as a healthy person, which means the actions that I’m able to take are that of a healthy person, which means I have a relatively healthy body today, at least compared to where I was 10-15 years ago.”
Adrenal Fatigue – if I am someone who is hearing the term adrenal fatigue, how would they know that they are experiencing it? You don’t need to be a clinician to understand a lot of this, but it is important to understand the history behind it. So, we need to take a step back and have an expanded definition of stress!
Stress is in your autonomic nervous system. Then broken into 2 subsystems, which are the Sympathetic nervous system, and fight or flight. And the Parasympathetic nervous system, rest and digest. We want to be spending the majority of our time resting and digesting. It’s not bad to be in a state of fight or flight, you need some amount of good stress.
In the US, stress is the #6 cause of death. So, it consists of any strain, pressure, tension, and anxiety. It’s an influence that is either internal or external that causes or leads to malfunction. So, the first time you are stressed there may not be a malfunction. But what we don’t understand is that we are under constant stress today and our body doesn’t know the difference between these stressors. When this happens, your immune system becomes suppressed, your digestion is suppressed, and guess what? 70-80% of our immune system is in our gut! Your reproductive system gets suppressed, growth hormone is suppressed, and the tissue repair is suppressed. There is SOO much suppression happening within our bodies just from this constant stress.
3 kinds of stressors.
1. Biochemical stressors – eating inflammatory foods, additives, pesticides, GMOs, alcohol, caffeine, sugar, drugs, poor sleep, lack of exercise, antibiotics, over-the-counter meds, etc.
2. Perceived or emotional stressors – fear, worry, anxiety, excitement, lack of purpose, negative perceptions, stressful day at work, spouse issues, kids having allergies, etc.
3. Physical stressors – athletics, injuries, car accidents, bad posture, repetitive injuries, etc
Now when we take a look at your symptoms; constipation, zero libido, no energy, anxiety, skin issues, hair loss, brain fog, all of these things are happening from these stacks of stress. Are you having a glass of wine every single day, five to seven drinks on the weekends, are you not sleeping, are you not moving your body? Your biography becomes your biology, the things you did in your past, and the actions that you take, are based on your programming. So, the reality is, people have to take responsibility for their own lives!
If you don’t like how much money is in your bank account, if you don’t like the way that your body looks, if you don’t like the relationships that you have, all you need to do is look inside, because your external world is a direct reflection of your internal world. And if you want to change your external world, you have to be the change, you have to start from the inside out. That is why my protocol is called the Inside-Out protocol. We’re transforming our bodies from the inside out.
In this we discuss my 6’s. – These need to be done in this order so that we can see results and we can finally be successful.
1. Strategy. – You need to have someone who understands what is going on in your body. I run clinical labs for all of my clients. We have to connect the dots between what the labs are saying and what your systems are. Then we can put together these tailored protocols – what are the systems?
2. Systems. – What actions do I take to optimize my health without losing my shit. Without losing my sanity. What are the dials we are turning? What are the actions we are taking? If you are doing the right thing in the wrong order you won’t see success.
3. Structure. – Often times people default to just moving your body, yes, it is important but there are so many other things that have to be answered or when we need to do things. This is the order in which we need to do things in working out a certain time of day doing a certain thing, etc.
4) Simplicity. – Have the simplicity you’ve lacked so getting healthy becomes easy. Human beings seek pleasure and avoid pain, so if the things I am asking you to do are very painful and lack zero pleasure, you are not going to be able to do it long term.
5) Support
6) Success pretty quickly.
I like strategy and everyone who’s listening knows I am all about strategy. People want instant gratification, we are used to 30 days for whatever you are looking for, 30 days all my problems will be solved. But if I come to you, you may not know what will happen in 30 days, but you will say you are feeling better in some aspect. “The first 30 days of clients working with me, they are only given 4 things to do over the course of the 4 weeks. I change their breakfast, I change how they move their bodies, I have them do certain amounts of light exposure and we look at their sleep. It doesn’t take a lot of time to do these each week. Little changes to get to where we need to be.”
One thing you can do to develop a healthy routine is to get outside and walk 20-30 minutes every single day within an hour of sunrise. And then within an hour of sunset. I can guarantee you that 99% of your listeners don’t do this one thing. I don’t want to talk to my clients about their other workouts until they can do this one thing! It resets your circadian rhythm. It allows for better sleep at night. It programs your body to know when to stay awake and when you start falling asleep. They call it midnight because it used to be the middle of the night but for most that are not the middle of the night. Most of your detoxification happens at night. Your liver is most active at night. Your brain is resetting as well. And so, if you are not willing to make those changes, I cannot work with you because nothing will matter if you can’t change that thing!
We have laid out a bunch of different paths for people. I am hoping we opened a bunch of loops into people seeing how they are impacting their adrenals and overall health. We’ve given them simple things to try. Everything is an experiment, and what we talked about here is all things that everyone can do, that they can start today. We have to make the decision to change. We have to make the decision to start today!
I was that person who was a big stress ball and went to tons of doctors. I thought I was doing it all right. But I wasn’t. How long have you been living this way? 10, 15, 20 years? Great! So, it will probably take you half the amount of time if you are focused to undo what you just did.
“I’ve been on my wellness journey for 15-20 years now and I am still tweaking. This is a journey that has so many points along the way. This journey is not linear. Sometimes it’s one step forward and 2 steps back. Again, if we take a look at a 12-month chunk of time, if we are stepping forward more than we are stepping back over the course of the 12 months, then that in itself is progress.”
What makes you feel magical?
I am 29 weeks pregnant right now. We are due with our little boy at the end of February and whenever I feel him moving, I feel magical AF! Like Woah!! I am growing a whole human being! I’ve been very attuned to my body during this pregnancy, and it has just felt so magical that I am going through this. This whole process of being pregnant and growing a human has made me feel so magical and the body is so magical itself!!
LINKS
Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/kimbarnesjeffersoncoach
Facebook Group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/fitgirlmagic/
Website:
https://www.kimbarnesjefferson.com/
Podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fit-girl-magic-healthy-living-for-women-over-40/id1476883661
Surely Non-Alcoholic Wines:
https://www.drinksurely.com/?platform=grin&link_id=1038770&token=92sy8rfAhv84FGFe5D9Ui5GVtIk62anS&contact_id=ab3efb78-c462-47b9-8da4-356cbc23a89e&attribution_window=30
Next Level With Maja Miller:
https://iopnextlevel.com/
Maja Miller Wellness:
https://www.majamiller.com/
Maja Miller Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/majajmiller/
Maja Miller Facebook Group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/bemorebizbabes
