From Frustration To Progress: 5 Tips & When To Go Personalized | Ep. 152

I'm Bridget Walton, a Women's Hormone Coach helping ambitious women ages 25-40 naturally restore hormone balance, fix irregular periods, feel confident in their fertility, and resolve gut health issues without restrictive dieting.

If you struggle with missing periods, PCOS symptoms, bloating, or unpredictable cycles, this women's health podcast will teach you how to support your hormones through strategic nutrition and lifestyle changes that actually fit your busy life.

On I'm Hormonal, you'll discover natural solutions for period problems, learn how gut health impacts your hormones, and get practical hormone balance tips from a functional nutrition perspective - no more guessing what your body needs.

This episode walks you through five foundational--and simple--areas to focus on as you move through your hormone balancing journey. If you want to restore regular periods, kick PMS to the curb, or enhance your fertility then you need to start with these five recommendations. For some of you, once you nail the basics then a personalized approach is what your body needs; Bridget walks you through some of the ways that her clients see rapid change with personalized approaches.

👉 Feel like you've tried everything for your hormones? Grab my free guide at imhormonal.com/guide
👉 Have some questions? Not sure if we're a good fit yet? Book a free 15-minute chat at imhormonal.com/start
👉 DM us on Instagram @im_hormonal - we want to hear your biggest takeaway

Chapters

• 0:00 From Frustration To A Plan
• 0:42 Meet The Host And Mission
• 1:31 Why Basics Beat Guesswork
• 2:43 Sleep As A Hormone Lever
• 3:51 Hydration And Cortisol Control
• 4:33 Screen Curfew And Circadian Rhythm
• 6:38 Swap Plastics To Cut Disruptors
• 6:46 Creative Calm And Stress Relief
• 7:50 Vegetables, Fiber, And Regularity
• 9:22 Mindset And Implementation
• 10:42 Case Study: Gut Inflammation And Fertility
• 12:21 Case Study: Ending Constipation Fast
• 13:32 Case Study: Rethinking Workout Timing
• 15:10 Personalization Over One-Size Advice
• 16:19 Final Encouragement And Free Guide

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Sometimes when you're on your hormone journey, it is the worst because you're frustrated. You're like, damn, nothing that I'm doing is working and I don't know why. And that is one of the worst feelings. So that's why in today's episode, what I'm gonna be talking you through are some of the foundations, right? What do you need to start with? And then we'll talk a little bit about what personalized approaches can do for you when you'll know if you're ready for them. So you're gonna have some actionable takeaways to walk away from this episode with, and hopefully a greater sense of what's next for me. What do I need to really move the needle? So, with that, welcome to the I'm Hormonal Podcast. I'm your host, Bridget Walton, a women's hormone coach helping busy, ambitious women just like you through personalized coaching and science-backed solutions. Whether you are working with me one-on-one or you're listening here, my goal is the same, which is to help you stop guessing about your hormone health and start seeing real progress. So let's get into it. Alrighty, well, welcome again. I'm so glad that you joined me. This is episode number 152 of the podcast. We are creeping up on holiday season. I don't know about you, but I'm like, how is it already December? In my mind, it's December, but we've got some days, some work to get through before we are there. What I want to talk about today is something that I hear a lot from my clients when I first meet them, when I'm on discovery calls with you gals, and you are telling me that nothing that you've tried works for you. And believe me, I know how frustrating this can be. I experienced this myself when I was trying to figure out what the F was going on with my gut health, as I was trying to understand how my gut health and my hormone health are related. And maybe you're in the same spot. So what you're gonna get from this episode are some of the basics. It's easy to forget the basics. This is also something that I see with my clients time again. That even myself, you know, yesterday it was probably 2 p.m. And I thought, okay, Bridge, maybe you want to get a glass of water, right? We we just need reminders sometimes. And that's what you're gonna get from this first part of the conversation. Let me run you through these five areas that I want you to focus on because if you haven't refined or you haven't focused on these areas, then you're leaving some progress on the table. This is what will help you out. First of all, focusing on your sleep. It's so basic, but I really want you to focus on getting at least eight hours of sleep. Quality is arguably more important than quantity, but we're starting with quantity for the sake of this one-to-many conversation. A couple of questions for you to think through. Do you need to set some boundaries around your bedtime routine? Do you need to create a bedtime routine? Do you need to or can you adjust the time that you wake up in the morning? It's not rocket science, but when you sit down to make an actual plan for what you're going to change, you're going to be infinitely more likely to accomplish those goals. Tell your partner, tell your kids, tell your whoever, so that you can get to bed on time. Because when you are getting more and better sleep, that is one thing that is going to absolutely benefit every single cell in your body. It's going to support your blood sugar, which supports your hormones, which supports the quality of your period, the regularity of your period, and all of these things. So get some sleep. Similarly, and number two on the list, something that will help every single cell in your body is focusing on hydration. This is easy to forego, but if you don't have, you know, a big water bottle that you can bring with you, if you don't have a regular cadence of getting up to fill up your cup, if you don't have that habit of getting in water every day, you're leaving progress on the table. In short, what happens when you are dehydrated is that your stress hormone cortisol goes up a little bit. And we know that cortisol is not doing any favors for your sex hormones. Your body needs water. Just drink up, drink up. Number three on the list, something that I want you to incorporate and focus on before you approach a personalized approach, would be to stop looking at your screens so close to bedtime. And why is this important? This is important because if you are all up in your screens right until the minute before you go to bed, the blue light from your screens is likely impacting your circadian rhythm, impacting your sleep. We're coming back to old cortisol here again because the blue light that's emitted from our screens, from LED lights, from these bright ass lights that are shining at us when we're driving down the roads these days. These are essentially signaling to your brain, hey girl, it's the middle of the day, because that's when we get the most blue light from the sun, is in the middle of the day. And um, so our brain says, okay, I guess I need to be up. You can build these good habits. You can read. Actually, you know what? One of my friends, and did I mention this last week? Anyway, one of my friends, she was telling me how she has a no scroll box that she made in her house. And I'm like, ooh, that's a good idea. No scroll box, what is that? When you feel like scrolling, you're actually gonna just go on over, wiggle on over to your box that has a coloring book, that has a uh if you crochet or knit, or if you want to play a game of cards with your partner or whatever that looks like for you, easy options that are screen-free that can help you feeling good. You know, this reminds me too, because stress levels are so important for your hormones. I heard about a study recently, it was talking through how doing something creative really helps to reduce the anxiety in your brain. So, like picking something creative, whatever that means to you, that can help support your mental health, which in turn is going to support your hormone health. So moving on from getting sleep, making sure you're hydrating, quitting being addicted to your screens. The fourth thing I want you to start doing is swapping out plastics, especially plastics that are in your kitchen, because those are going to be sources of endocrine disrupting chemicals. They're not doing you any solids, they're not supporting your hormone balance, they're not supporting your, you know, weight loss goals if you have a weight loss goal. It's something that you can do little by little. You don't need to do it all at once. You maybe shouldn't do it all at once. That would be a little bit overwhelming. And you don't have to buy everything new, right? If you just thought, oh gosh, yeah, but that's so expensive. I am a huge goodwill or home goods kind of gal where I'm like, how do they even sell them at this price? If it's been a hot minute since you've made your way to a resale shop or a place like Home Goods, then check it out because they are going to make this swapping of plastics in your kitchen to glass or to stainless steel or whatever that looks like for you. They're gonna make it much simpler and much more attainable. Now, the fifth and final thing that I need you to remember is that vegetables are your friend. The goal that I want you to shoot for is two to three cups of vegetables each day at least. Like that's that's the minimum. Go big, go above and beyond. But if you are trying to understand what's going on with your bloating, if you're trying to figure out why your period is always MIA, why you have a lot of period pain, any other crazy reason your hormones are on the fritz, if you're not incorporating vegetables into your diet, then that is a place that I need you to start. You can make so much change in the way that you feel based on what you're putting into your body. Not only do the nutrients from those plants benefit your body, certainly, but also the fiber from it, that's going to help support your gut microbiome. That's gonna help support your bowel movements. And if you've listened to the podcast before, you know that having regular quality bowel movements is really important for your hormone health too. So hopefully some of those were just reminders and you're saying, yeah, yeah, Bridget, I got it. I already do all those things. If so, this next section is going to be particularly interesting to you. If not, well, this next part will still be interesting, but I need you to focus on incorporating those five things. Like press pause and make a plan to do those things tomorrow. Within the next 24 hours, start implementing them. Because I promise you, those will get you a step up, you know, up to the next ledge, whatever this metaphor is when it comes to your hormone and your gut health journeys. Now, like I mentioned, what I really want to talk about in this second part of the episode is like reassurance for you that you are not crazy. If you've done those five things, if you've got it locked down, nailed down, whatever, and still nothing is changing about your hormones, then I just want you to know that it's it's not you. Health is complex, your hormones are complex. But I want to run you through a couple examples of how my clients who thought the same thing that you might be thinking right now, how we overcame some of those thoughts, because I want you to take inspiration from that as well. Before I get into the examples, I'll just continue to say that you can know all of the tips in the world. I could put out a seven-hour podcast every single day telling you exactly what to do, when to do, how to do it, you know. But if you aren't looking at it through the right frame of mind, if you aren't actually implementing it, if you don't believe that you can change and that you can actually influence your hormone health, your gut health, then you're not gonna see those changes. The way that you think about your health, the way that you talk about your health, the way that you talk about yourself to yourself is really important. You can do this, I promise you. So, with that, I want to give you this first example. I have a client who she has been struggling with fertility. She did her labs with her primary care doctor. Everything came back looking pretty good, save for one marker. So she's like, hey, I know that my cycle is regular, I know that things are in good shape, but nothing is working. I'm not losing weight and I'm not getting pregnant, and I don't know why. So, what we did for her was a stool test uh to take a look at her gut microbiome and see what was going on in there. And what we found was that she had a lot of inflammatory bacteria that were overgrown. And what happens when you have that overgrowth of inflammatory microbes or bacteria in your digestive system is they create this inflammation, this stress that has a follow-on impact on your hormones, of course. So, with that, we did a food sensitivity test too. And this is the thing that I want you to really take away, right? The overall context is important, Delby, you get to know what's going on. But once she started to eliminate the foods that we found she was sensitive to on that MRT food sensitivity test, she noticed within the first six days that uh her body shape was already changing. She noticed that after taking out some of those foods for just six days, she saw a difference and a difference that she hadn't been able to see for months and months. And so that's just this first example of how it's not that you're not doing it right. You just might need, probably need some of this personalized approach so that you can really get clear on what you need bioindividually and not, you know, the advice en masse that's out there. I want to give you a second example of a client, and I've talked about her before too. If you've joined any of the um training, those virtual training workshops I've done, then you've probably heard about her as well. But I have a client who had spent years experiencing constipation. Now, you know that constipation is going to impact your hormone balance, it's going to impact your estrogen levels. But within the first week of working together and actually looking at what was going on in her digestive system, saying, How can we focus on the root cause of what's going on instead of just putting a band-aid on this? Within one week of doing that, she was able to have regular bowel movements for the first time in years. So she really felt like, this is just, I don't know, is this the rest of my life? Is this what I've got ahead of me? Because no doctors, no one on her care team had been able to help her make any progress. But within the first week, she was like, wow, okay, it's not me. And I'll say this to you too, it's not you. You're not doing something wrong. You just might not be a health practitioner and you might not have the context on what your body needs from that holistic perspective to move the needle. One more example for you. Because are you a gal who feels like you need to nap every day and you are tired? You're a sleepy bitch, as one of my friends described herself. Well, another client that I had, she felt like this. She felt like every single day she needed to sleep. And what we did for her, we said, okay, let's think critically about what's going on with your circadian rhythm based on when are you tired? When are you eating? When are you energetic? How much are you sleeping? And counter to what is out there on the social media machine from time to time, we decided that she should try switching her workouts from the evening when she felt like she had more energy to actually getting up early and going in the morning. And that's what made the difference for her. And this is what I'll say to you is that the advice that's out there in the mainstream, you know, one-to-many platform, and even some things that I say here, right? I don't know you or I don't know you yet. So I don't know exactly what's going on with your hormones. And maybe something that works for, for example, a lot of gals with estrogen excess doesn't work for you for some reason that I'm not aware of because I don't know you yet. And so the same thing applies here. When you have that personalized approach that's tailored to you, that can be the tool that you need, the boost that you need to really understand, hey, it's not me. Because one more time and then I'll wrap it up. But you can do it. You have the tools, you have the power. If you have the right mindset, then you can make this change. And that is the one thing that I know for sure because you have the ability to make these adjustments, to bring back a regular cycle, to bring back an easy cycle, to bring back easy regular digestion. But you might just need that next step and one more tool. So that's what I wanted to share with you on this episode today. Quick reminder: everything that I share with you is for educational purposes only, not a replacement for medical advice. But if what I talked about today resonated with you and you feel like you've already tried everything for your hormones, but you're still stuck, I created a free guide that is specifically for you. You can go over to imhormonal.com slash guide to grab it for free. And if you have any questions or requests, find me on Instagram at I'm underscore hormonal. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.