Biohacks for Fat Loss, High Energy & Optimal Morning Routines with Nate Palmer

10:21AM Feb 17, 2023

Speakers:

Angela Foster

Nate Palmer

Keywords:

day

eating

women

bit

body

feel

energy

track

put

oestrogen

great

sleep

carbs

podcast

workout

melatonin

focus

wake

training

big

A lot of people are going to do for the new years that do like a six week challenge a three week detox. They get through it, they drop some weight and then they gain it right back. Right. So this is kind of my answer to how do we sustain this? Well, it's by looking at energy rather than looking at weight loss.

If you enjoyed this podcast, visit female, bio hacker.com and be part of a special community of women looking to optimise their mind, body and spirit. If you're tired of sifting through countless websites and books to find the answers to your questions about nutrition, fitness, hormones, mindset, spirituality, and biohacking, the search is over. I've done the research for you. And every week we go live with in depth masterclasses q&a calls and monthly challenges to help you transform your life. And when you join the collective you'll have access to a wealth of information, including deep dive master classes and biohacking toolkits on our members favourites, like metabolic flexibility, gut health, stress and resiliency and stepping into your most empowered self. Get Access and be coached by me and my team and level up your health, career and life all for less than $1 a day, go to female bio hacker.com or click the link below to get started. And I'll see you on the inside. Okay, so if you've got through January, and you still have some body composition goals, then listen it because I'm chatting to Nate Palmer, who is the host of the low carb hustle podcast, and he spends his time helping entrepreneurs and busy parents get into the best shape of their lives, using simple training and nutrition frameworks without tracking a single calorie. And we talk about lots of different bio hacks you can use to really boost your metabolism. In this episode. We also chat about how we've both been using CGM, so continuous glucose monitors, and the lumen device which helps measure your respiratory ratio to tell you whether you're burning carbs or fat predominantly or a combination of both. And that can really help you manage your metabolism and really get it into better shape and create what's known as metabolic flexibility, which is really where you want to be where you burn carbs and fats on demand. So we talk about both of those and the insights that we've gathered. And actually some new things that we're going to be tracking in relation to those. If you're interested in getting a CGM or the lumen device, you can find discount codes below this podcast with links to those. This episode is actually part one, because today we're talking all about metabolism and including things like morning routines as well and how to create an efficient morning routine. And then over on Nate's podcast, the low carb hustle will be part two next week, where I'll be sharing my biohack specifically for women and optimising metabolism for women, and also syncing with your hormones using my bio syncing method. So you can check that out over on Nate's podcast, but for today, let's now dive into how you can really create metabolic flexibility. So Nate, it is so great to have you on the show today. I've been really excited about this episode, I think it's perfect for January, we're going to be talking a lot about how to optimise energy. And a side effect of that as you we were chatting offline there is that people actually get body composition results. So it's kind of perfect for this time of year. First of all, a very warm welcome to the show.

Thanks. So glad I'm so glad to be here. This is gonna be such a fun episode.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. So tell me Let's kick off with energy, right? Because I think this is timely. Yes, certainly in the northern hemisphere, you're in North America, I'm in the UK, there's not much late people can feel kind of really energy depleted. And I know that you've done a huge amount of work in relation to how what we eat impacts our energy, and specifically the timing of what we're eating. Can you elaborate a little bit more?

Yeah, well, I mean, I'll tell you a little bit about where kind of where I was coming from, because I'm, I'm big into training, I've always loved that sort of thing. And the reason I got into training in the first place was, I think a lot of us can relate to, like, you know, not really feeling good in our bodies and being a little insecure. I was in high school one time, and some girl told me that that her arms were bigger than mine. And that's when I was like, I have to start training right away because my self esteem is at an all time low. So I started doing all the diets, all the workouts, CrossFit, Orangetheory everything and nothing seemed to really work. I was always kind of skinny fat. And so I like I was obsessed with this so much to this point where I got a job as a personal trainer, and a gym and I was like, I'm gonna figure this out eventually. So I was writing a blog doing all these things working in a gym and a magazine that approached me and was like, Hey, can you write an article for us about how do you eat for all day energy? And I was like, what's interesting because most people want to talk about building muscle or burning fat. So I was like that. Okay, fun. Whatever, man, like we're gonna pay you and explode Sure. And I was like, that sounds great. So I went and did this research about, like blood sugar levels and hormonal adaptations and circadian rhythms and all these things that were kind of outside of my normal sphere of what I was into. And I wrote this article, and it did really well for this for the magazine breaking muscle, and I started eating this way. And I was like, because I wanted energy, right, who doesn't want energy. And the results were super, super surprising to me, because it wasn't just like I was had amazing energy all day. But my body started finally doing what I wanted it to do, it was a lot easier for me to drop fat. I felt like I gained muscle easier. I was sleeping better, like kind of everything just sort of like, fell into line. And then the coolest part was that I stopped really worrying about what I was eating. Because I wasn't necessarily on a diet. I wasn't tracking my macros. I was just using this framework. So basically, what it came down to for me was how do we put in how do we keep ourselves from burning, like getting super low energy, sluggish lethargic during the day? And what it seemed to be for me was what I call the Chipotle burrito syndrome. I don't know if you ever had a Chipotle burrito at lunch. Like it's like a big takeaway takeaway monstrosity, and you eat it. And then you like,

heavy on the carbs and fat. Yeah,

yeah, like, rice beans. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it's like you eat it. And then you're like, Well, I do have a standing desk, so I could lay underneath it and fall asleep. It's an option for me. So like, what it turned out to be was that the more that you're spending time digesting, especially digesting carbs, what you're doing is you're spiking your blood sugar, then you're dropping it. And then so people go through the cycle all day. And I think that the modern fitness industry perpetuates this myth of like, you gotta eat six meals per day, small meals, you got to have chicken and tilapia and broccoli and rice. And that's like, that's, that's eating clean, right. But when reality when you're pulling blood from your brain, from your extremities, into your gut for digestion, you can never be operating at maximum efficiency, you're never going to have all 100% of your cognition. And so what I found with this method is that not only are you getting better energy, but you're also getting better short term to long term memory retention, you get better hand eye coordination, you get better cogs like mental cognition and acuity, you have the ability to be focused longer on that, like the deep work and the tasks that are really important to you. And I know that as a former lawyer, you, you understand, like the benefits of being able to be like head down in your work, and being really focused on that sort of thing. So, yeah, it just like it sort of all came together. Because when we were focusing on how to work with our body instead of against it. All of a sudden, I wasn't white knuckling and having clients like stressing all the time about macros, and tracking and these things that were just kind of a pain for them, and just seemed to work a lot easier.

Yeah, and that's massive what you were saying that I mean, that ability to focus that's really like, for me, I love I mean, anyone that watched my Instagram, they know I love going to the gym, and yes, the body composition results are great. And that feeling of just being really fit. But for me, it is the mental health, the energy, just that morning routine. And it's huge, what you're saying that because I'm always looking at how can I get more productivity during the day. And the other thing I found is, I'm such an early morning person that I don't want to trash like the rest of the day at lunchtime, if you see what I mean, because I've got those peak hours, particularly with kids in school, like three, four, then it kind of is family time, you know, to me, so I didn't want to be like I haven't got time to fall asleep on the sofa too, because there's a really big lunch and lost some energy and I'm the same as you. Keeping it light is great. What we in terms of the carbs, I want to dive into that a little bit more with you because you were talking when we were chatting about this concept of carb backloading Can you explain for listeners how that works?

Yeah, essentially, it's putting all of your carbohydrates at the end of the day. And some people will use Carb BackLoading as like putting all of your your carbs after training and kind of later in the day. But what I find is that all day long, we are burning off what's called glycogen. And so in our muscles, our muscle like a pound of muscle. I don't know a kilo of muscle can hold about doing math here. I don't know how it works. 23 grammes of carbohydrates a pound can hold about 11

We did why we took compounds mostly here as well. Yeah, well, we do both we do both. We kind of like straddle the line with Europe in terms of kilos and pounds but you can talk about

in one stone of muscle. I have no idea actually that's that's that's too fast beyond me. But in a pound of muscle, there's 11 grammes of carbohydrates and our livers can hold about 110 120 grammes of glycogen. Okay, so what's carb breaks with carbs break down into so all during the day, we are moving around we're doing things our brain uses glycogen as well for energy so we burn through it. Then at the end of the day, if you're having a bigger meal, if a client dinner, Thanksgiving, or you just like want to sit down and like break bread and not really stress too much about weighing every little chip or crispy you're you're having dinner. That's like that's the best have to eat. Because what you've done now is by letting your body burn through those during the day, you're now allowing it to replenish those muscle glycogen stores and your liver glycogen stores. Rather than having those already full, and having your body be like, I guess we'll store those on your love handles. So you're optimising for your body's natural storage, and you're using that glycogen for energy rather than for fat stores. So it's by working kind of with your body's natural bio rhythms, which I know is something that you talk about, you can actually get better results. And you also have to like white knuckle and just like, hold on to this, which, you know, like a lot of people are going to do for the new years that do like a six week challenge a three week detox, they get through it, they drop some weight, and then they gain it right back. Right. So this is kind of my answer to how do we sustain this? Well, it's by looking at energy rather than looking at weight loss.

That makes a lot of sense. And I think as well, I think people often they underestimate the impact on thyroid function, right? When they're trying to go solo carb all of the time, and then not cycling in and out of ketosis. They're actually down regulating, as you say, their metabolism, their thyroid function, and it's putting a lot of stress. I guess my question would be, what about when you've done a very glycogen depleting workout? So for example, if you've done a super high intensity workout, would you then recommend that people incorporate because usually that particularly with women, so that we're not kind of increasing cortisol too much? That's when I would say, Come on refuel with protein and carbs post workout?

This is a great question. And so like, to your point, yes, you go to a hit class, a boot camp, something really glycogen depleting, as you probably incorporate some sort of fruit or something that's more of like a natural carbohydrate, that's going to be a good way to make sure that you're not necessarily downgrading your thyroid downregulating, your thyroid function like you, just like you said, however, my preference is that we really, especially women, especially in their 40s, and beyond, and I'm curious what you think about this, we avoid a lot of those high intensity interval style trainings, because to avoid spiking your cortisol to avoid increasing those stress levels, and I think women incorporate like, associate it's workout equals bootcamp, you know, and I think we need to start breaking that stigma. Because I think for a lot of a lot of women, especially as we you know, Enter, Enter menopause and, like getting little bit older, it becomes very important to work on those the weight training workouts for both hormonal function for bone density for like decreasing the risk of osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, and just in general, making sure that you're going into your 40s and beyond with enough muscle, to protect your body and to feel really good. So my preference is always pushing women, especially away from those high intensity interval style workouts, like any more than like, once per week is kind of is too much for me.

Yeah, very similar to you. Yeah. And I think the trap that I usually refer to that I think a lot of women fall into, is not actually creating enough polarity, right. So they're not actually doing really high intensity workouts, what they're doing is a lot of vigorous exercise, which is kind of a little bit in the grey zone, where you're not necessarily getting those adaptations, but you are raising cortical quite significantly. And then when they're not getting results, they're like layering on another one. So now it's like, I'll go and do that class, and then I'll follow it with the class straight afterwards. And it's like, if you were working that hard, you could never sustain that for two hours, like it's just not possible.

And then But then you're spending all this time jumping and doing a lot of pliers, which, which a lot of those boot camps incorporate? Because, like, how do we get? How do we get someone to feel like they got to work out, we get them tired, and we get them sweaty, right, both of which are not necessarily indicators of a great workout, but they make us feel good, or feel like we at least got it in. So you know, pliers are a really easy way to get a group tired. You know, that's why I'll never have a client do a burpee. I hate burpees. I think they're useless exercise done by trainers who look around and go, I guess we'll do a burpees. You know, it doesn't necessarily, it's not something that's going to be effective, long term, it's hard to progress. And most people don't even have the requisite mobility, like get up and down on the ground. So thanks for coming to my TED talk about burpees. But

we'll link to that in the show notes.

Yeah, I mean, I think I think as you say, hip has this place, but not as often as people are saying, I actually personally like to do it in the kind of follicular space for women that are still cycling. So I think it works really well fit in a couple of hit workouts in there to push up or to max a bit. But for the most part, I completely agree. I think weight training is something where women in particular really need to focus on I think a bit of pliers to help with bone density, but not as much as people think even like a 10 minute Finisher is kind of very very effective at Yeah,

love of finisher love like interval finisher, or even like a 25 minute class. I think that's great, but these like like three or 460 minute boot camp classes, I think are doing more harm than good.

Yeah, I agree. I agree with that. So what have you found in terms of then what how would you how would you refuel post strength training in terms of if someone's gone and unsafe? 4550 minutes in the gym, they've been working their muscles have not really done a lot of cardio. How have you found the best way to kind of recover increase recovery and energy?

Well, what I've what I've always thought was that you have like an hour 60 minute window after Are your workouts that if you don't drink a protein shake, all of your gains are going to shrivel up and die. But what I've started, like understand is looking at some of the research, it's basically like, if you have protein in your system, if you've already had a big meal, you had a protein shake, within four hours of that workout, you're not going to need something immediate to replenish that. Because for most of us, like a strength training workout, an effective one, you're getting maybe six or seven top end sets, or you should be and you're not necessarily going to be burnt out or like dead tired, especially you haven't done a lot of cardio or finisher or like a cycling class. So for most people, if you need something having like a protein shake, having some like Greek yoghurt with some berries in it, some like that, that's like that's like that's going to give your body the protein and amino acids that's going to help it is great. But if you've already eaten within like, three or four hours before, and you've had like a high protein meal, or if you're going to be eating like a bigger meal within another two to four hours, I don't think you really need to stress too much about it. If you're finding that you're like your blood sugar's low, and you're like dizzy and stuff like that, I would look first at electrolytes and making sure that your body you're you're well hydrated and you have enough electrolytes. And then if you're still like, ah, that's, that's not working, I don't feel good, I'm lightheaded. Then let's make sure we're adding in some some sort of protein, and then a piece of fruit as well.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. We were talking offline as well. Interestingly, both of us have been making experimenting, and we're big on tracking, we both wear the aura We've played around with lumen. I know like a lot of people listening to the podcast actually use the lumen. And I think people struggle with hitting those ones and twos in terms of fat burning. And I'm curious, I think it'd be great to expand a bit more on what you found because both of us were chatting about the fact that we'd found eating earlier made a huge difference to them morning reading. And then lumen interestingly, actually talk about front loading the carbs in the beginning of the day. But that could be to take account of the fact that people have very distinct eating ties, they don't know how much they're exercising, for example, what have you found from tracking and working with clients in relation to that?

The three biggest factors that I found that like, at least like improve my lumen scores, and I'm still like, a little bit nebulous on like, how, how effective is it to track the carbon dioxide in your breath after you after you, like wake up? Because I don't I don't know if you ever tried the Wim Hof breathing methods. But I feel like after I do a Wim Hof breathing session, I breathe out more carbon dioxide. And so even within like that, you know, 30 minute window, I will see a different result by all my score will drop almost a full notch. After a breathing session for a breath workshop

as in, you'll be burning to Yes, from a three to a two so you'll go more into fat burning. Because you know what's interesting I found with the CGM is that after doing breath work session like that my blood glucose would increase. Interesting. I'm not I'm not an expert lumen to mirror effect, I need to try it more where I've used both. But you would then expect lumen to mirror if you've got good insulin sensitivity that actually that's then being burnt in the cells, right?

That's carbs. Well, we have to we have to go back and test this then we have to go

back and test and then do another episode on all human findings.

So like, but like that's kind of it was like, should I should I be shifting that much but like we used to like to see if the CGM is actually measuring a like a spike in blood sugar then maybe it's picking up the right stuff. So I was I was just curious. I actually I have don't have a CGM, but I use a I'll use a blood sugar just like a little pinprick. So the three things that I've that I've found that have decreased my scores to make me more into the fat burning zone was number one is eating earlier in the night, if I was eating after seven o'clock, especially it was like eight o'clock or nine o'clock and I'm just like, you know, had a bowl of cereal or whatever, I'd always wake up into three or four, which is like for those of you don't know, it's like higher in the carb burning. So at the scales from a one to five, five is all carbs, one is all fats, and then the middle is decreasing. So if I have my if I finished my last meal of the day before seven o'clock, I don't eat after that, I would always wake up another one or two that seemed like it was a like just the biggest indicator. The second thing was dehydration. If I was waking up dehydrated, or if I wasn't getting enough water during the day, I was waking up in a higher number than I thought I should be at based off of how I'd eaten the previous day. Or you know, especially if I was like I didn't eat dessert. I didn't have a really high carb dinner like why am I still a little higher there? Well, it's like I didn't drink enough water that day.

That's interesting. That's when I hadn't observed so much. I had in terms of like waking up morning stress. We could talk about that in a minute but

interesting. Okay. I have not I don't really track my stress and I haven't really put that together so I'd be curious I got a lot more episodes on deck here. I'm really excited. Yeah. And then the last one for me was sleep quality. It's just making sure I was getting enough sleep if I if I was getting like five hours or there abouts. I would always wake up in higher carb or if I was getting seven to eight ish. I would wake up in lowers is the what I saw kind of as the like kind of averages.

Yeah, Sleep Sleep made it sleep makes a big difference. I found that to the hydration stupid Interesting to me with what I found with the kind of stress is obviously you get that morning cortisol awakening response. But if I had a lot of anticipatory stress across the day, then I would get a higher lumen reading. I found this actually with members in my in my membership, the female bio hacker collective. And actually, we were then testing Well, if people are doing a short breathwork session as in gentle breathing, so not something so stimulatory or doing something like a meditation, and then waiting, like 20 minutes to do it, they would actually score more on the fat burnings scale. Interesting. And then I followed that up with lumen, because at first they weren't finding that. And then what they found later, when we went back to it about five or six months later, it was like, actually, yeah, we are now seeing that in the data that when people have interpreted that they've Yeah, that they've done something that's calming and introduces that more parasympathetic state.

So the female bio hacker collective is number one, it's the coolest name I've ever heard. Number two, can you tell me a little bit more about the the parasympathetic breathing exercises that you're doing? Like, what's it doing account? Are you doing like all nasal breathing? How's that work for you?

Yeah, so basically, anything that's really enhancing GABA and engaging that vagus nerve, so rather than doing you know, you know, from your breath work, right, that like Wim Hof style, the more you're focusing on the in breath, and creating kind of more energy around that you're stimulating the nervous system. Whereas when you're focusing on that long exhalation, you're introducing, you're sort of accessing the parasympathetic state that much more, whereas box breathing is kind of keeping you sort of where you are right, almost, and just heightening that focus. Whereas when you start to lengthen the exhale, then you get more GABA. So things like 478, breathing really effectively. But even looking at your sort of resonant frequency, which if people don't know where it is, then just looking at doing kind of an in breadth of four and then alpha six really starts to kind of calm people down, and then they they've seen better reading, so anyone listening to this can can give it a go and give us feedback.

Yeah, so 4787 Being a hold in the middle

seven is the hold in the middle. Now, what I found with the 478 breathing, although there's really good science behind that introducing, you know, enhancing things like GABA is in someone who's highly stressed, they're gonna find that quite difficult to do 478 breathing straight off the bat. And so what I find is doing the 2x breath, where you're kind of just following in for two, alpha two and three, alpha three, and just regulating that breathing first, before you move in. And for some people, they're going to take longer to get that breath hold anyway, so they might hold for a shorter period, but it's the long exhalation and you don't if you're not ready and you haven't prior for you know, you haven't been doing a lot of breath work. And after that eight out breath and

enhancing GABA rise quite stressful. So I always say to people, like build up. We want you calm and relaxed.

I'm trying to get I'm trying to de stress I feel like I'm drowning all the time. So

I feel like you're suffocating me. This is just not working. And now my lumens of five oh my god. Yeah, exactly.

If you're an hour in the morning, like me, but you need some high quality nutrition and protein post workout, maybe I'll grab and go on the school run much like my days. Then here is a little smoothie, you can raise up super quickly. That gives you high quality nutrition, I generally mix a couple of scoops of protein powder with one scoop of creatine for the neurological and muscle boosting benefits. And then I add in tonnes of ice with my ag one and kind of blend and go. Ag one is made with 75 super high quality vitamins, minerals and Whole Foods source ingredients. And so I know that I'm getting the high quality nutrition in alongside the protein in the morning to boost my mood, my immune system and give me sustained energy throughout the day. And if you want to take ownership of your health today is a good time to start because athletic greens is giving away a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you need to do is go to athletic greens.com forward slash Angela Foster. That's athletic greens.com forward slash Angela Foster and check it out

so on your The other thing I wanted to talk to you about is and tells you a framework is your daily investments that you speak off, what are those? What daily investments should we make?

So I like to talk about things like I a lot of my clients own businesses, they're entrepreneurs, you know, have a side hustle at least so I love putting things in terms of financial success, because I think that's where a lot of people's head is that anyways. So when I think about daily investments, I think about what what little things are you putting money in your piggy bank over and over and over again, where you're suddenly going to like crack that bad boy up and be like, Wow, look at like, look at all the work I've put in look what I've done. So that's how I like that's how I like to frame some of these good behaviours or you know what somebody We'll call like habits or disciplines or whatever else. So for me the daily investments are number one is have a great am routine. And I have, I've experiment with a lot of different routines from Hal Elrod savers to Craig Ballantine's perfect day formula. And I found that like for a lot of people who have especially like little kids at home, so like once the kids wake up, you're not doing 60 minutes of journaling, making a like a smoothie with rare ingredients from like the Peruvian Andes. And then like spending 90 minutes in like a red lights on a meditation session session that's just not happening for most of us. So I was like, What can we do to condense this down to the like, the minimum effective dose and the two things for me that I like, that have been great is number 160 seconds of explosive exercise. So jumping jacks, shadowboxing squat jumps, push ups, something like that, where you're just like getting a blood moving right away, first thing in the morning, and then having 32 ounces of water. And, you know, I love include some sort of meditation, some breath work in there. But I also feel like, you know, that's one more level that people can add on if they if they're up for it. But if they're not up for it, then you know, like, don't do just the basics. Have some morning routine, because I think another thing that it's important in the morning, is decreasing decision fatigue, making sure that when you wake up, you know, you go into the shower, you brush your teeth, you drink your water, you do your jumping jacks, that's your morning routine. You don't there's no question, right? I have nine shirts that look exactly like this. Because I don't like to wake up and be like, What should I wear today? It's a black shirt. It's gonna be a black shirt for me. And I don't have to think about it. I like I feel like Steve Jobs. Mark Zuckerberg know, they have plenty of money, but they always wore the same stuff, you know, just to kind of decrease the amount of thought they had to put into those non consequential decisions early in the morning

to minimise the decision fatigue, I just say I'm a little bit jealous, because I think for men, that that one steps a little bit easier. So I tried this. And I was just like, yeah, it's not. So I think for women listening, a capsule wardrobe is definitely the way to go. So you don't need hundreds and hundreds of clothes, which does then introduce decision fatigue. I think if you can find different outfits, and then work together and quite simple, and also to plan it potentially the night before. However, there are days honestly, as a woman, I can tell you, you look in the mirror and you go that just isn't working today. You don't know that until the morning.

I think that like yeah, if you do have if you if you dress nicer than I do, which is you know, hopefully most of us laying out your clothes ahead of time. It's a great way to do that. But and by the way, I bet you get a lot more compliments on your outfits than I do. So

I don't know, I like the black T shirt. I think you'll agree.

But I kind of was I was kind of fishing for compliments. Oh, this whole thing.

So thank my brand new black T shirt. My nice Facebook app.

I just I just like

cafes, but I got really told off once when I was in America, I had a New York Yankees cap on when I was in Los Angeles. And someone tried to pick a fight with me.

I was not prepared for that grocery store.

Interesting. I mean, I feel like if you're not wearing a like the Make America Great Again hat like there's no one's gonna pick a fight with you. But I guess I guess I was wrong. So that's really funny though. So okay, so second daily investment though is breakfast. Pretty easy. They're basically just having a high protein, high fat breakfast, then for lunch.

Kind of give us a go to for protein and fat. Easy One

is just having a protein shake with like two scoops of protein powder and like two tablespoons of peanut butter and almond butter. Super easy. Pretty nutrient dense. I consider protein more like a whole food than a supplement. It's just like a powdered food. But or you can go with like eggs, eggs and sausage, eggs and meat, something like that. And then another one that I've been really enjoying recently is I'll just add MCT oil, medium chain triglycerides and college into my coffee. I'll have two cups like that. And then I won't eat again until like 1130 Then I'll eat again at like 530 And I have great energy all day long. And I'm not stressed about what I'm eating all the time. It's just and then with that protocol, I don't really have like, a tonne of fitness goals that I'm focusing on at the moment. I just love, like biohacking my energy and just see how see how I can make myself feel better and perform better on a daily basis. What I found was that when I was having a coffee, like basically a shake in the middle of the day, and then like a big dinner, I could not keep weight on I kept losing weight. I had to add in dessert in order to like stay to keep my weight. So I had a couple clients tried to and it's been pretty successful if you're

just basically just having coffee with MCT all day. No coffee

with MCT oil and collagen peptides until about 1130 Okay, lunch, lunch was like a protein shake so like a 500 600 Calorie protein shake, and then dinner out I didn't really count calories on it but I would generally do kind of the same thing with the dinner investment which is high carb high protein vegetables for dinner. Okay.

And then the other investments Wow, what kind of carbs which you have at dinner.

I'm a big fan of rice and potatoes though. Is my to go to all the time. Obviously, I eat a tonne of tacos if you follow me on Instagram, but a lot of tacos so tortillas make the rounds. Quinoa occasionally couscous I'll do like a Greek Greek salad or something like that, but I like primarily rice and potatoes are my go twos, okay? Then the other investments are going to be write down your three critical tasks for the day either do that the night before or, or the morning of so that way, you're again, you're decreasing decision fatigue, you know exactly what that like how to score your day, did I accomplish these things? Or did I not? You know, and it's like, some people, it's five things, some people is one thing, but like, if your goal for the new year is to get in the best shape of your life, then hopefully you have the gym or some sort of physical exercise on there. You know, as one of your things. Maybe it's pick your kids up, you know, I've forgotten that once or twice. Not a great day. You know, maybe it's meal prep, whatever that looks like for you. Maybe it's get on the podcast, maybe it's prep thing, maybe it's prepare a like a like an invoice for clients, something like that. Whatever that is for you. That way, you know how to score your day, and you don't have to feel like what am I doing next? What it's like, what's the thing? Because that I think that is a place where we start losing energy? Definitely. So having that like the direction is it just a great way to keep momentum moving forward? Then drink a gallon of water per day. I live in Arizona, so you're talking about it being like, cold and cold and rainy. It's like me, hold on, let

me thank you like earlier as well. I was like, How much is that?

Oh, yeah, it's a quart tapping.

Tapping? Let me see. I don't know. Anyway, carry on.

It's about a litre right. I think.

Yeah, it's just a devata. Lisa, yeah, 986 basically

have having four litres per day. So and then that 32 ounces will count. So try to get three litres in before before like four o'clock. That way, I'm not up all night peeing. And by the way, electrolytes will help with that, too. If you if you feel it's gonna always peeing all day, making sure that you're having like, at least some sodium, magnesium, potassium, when whatever you're eating, I use the element packets for that, like element. Yeah. And then the last one was just trained 20 minutes, 20 minutes minimum per day, whether that's going for a walk, getting on a rower stairclimber hitting your workout, whatever that looks like, we're getting a minimum of 20 minutes of movement every single day, because it's so important. So those are the seven things I like that I would want people to do daily, that I think can result in great success without having to like track every calorie or, like, again, focus on like, really just like I how do I gonna get it done? I'm doing 75 Hard 45 minute workouts twice a day, you know, like, I don't think that's necessary for for progress progression. But I think that like having something where you can check these boxes and be like, I got it. Because now what I do is I have like, I have a score sheet score sheet on this. So Monday through Friday, or Monday through Sunday. Here's my seven things, did I How many did I get on Monday through Sunday. And then one other thing that I like to include is a weekly investment of a 24 hour fast. So this is especially important if like fat loss is the goal. So now you have a score of 50. So every week, how did you do out of 50? And you can really easily tell like, did I get 45? or above? That's an a good job. Am I consistently hitting 22? Well, that's why you're not getting results. Because I think a lot of times people are like, Oh, it's not working, something's not working. And you're like, Well, how are you doing? Like, I don't know, I didn't really do didn't really track and

track it. But none of this actually yeah, and my bias concrete way performance tracker on a spreadsheet. And then you just write in the things you want to track. And across the month, as you tick the boxes, it'll give you your compliance percentage calculated automatically. So you can go back and go, This is how compliant I was this month is super easy. I'm big fan of that. I think it makes a big difference and even consciously tracking it, you are more likely to to engage with us.

Totally. And if it's like, especially if it's like sitting right here for you, you know, so I'll send out a postcard to people, like three or four weeks into the programme and be like, hey, just a reminder, here's what we're looking for. And I guess like the postcard where they can actually check the box, put it up somewhere to they can see it. But like, you know, what gets measured gets managed, you know? So I think that I think it's so wise and I love what you said earlier about that you have a UVA, your podcast is sticky. Your programme is sticky. And I think that having like deliberate performance, like tracker in there is one thing that can really help increase compliance and and long term people sticking around and getting results.

Yeah, I think that's super important. I think as you say, you cannot change what you're not measuring. How do you know you don't know where to start? Right? Whereas if you're measuring it you're like oh, yeah, actually okay. It's even when you do questionnaires right when you ask somebody has you got help? And they go Yeah, it's good. I think it's fine. Okay. How often do you experience floating out in newspapers low energy? How do you Oh shit. Yeah,

that's actually most days. Figure it out. Yeah, actually, maybe it's not so fun as I thought.

Okay, last last question then, before we talk about where people can find you and connect with you and learn more about your work. January sugar detox, I know something you're a fan of what what was your views here on detoxification? Because, obviously there's daily detoxing that we need to know Make sure we're doing adequately and then see, you know, kind of where do you fall within the spectrum of what kind of detoxes people should be doing periodically?

Well, I think it's the more the more expensive, the better. The more hardcore, you know. So if you can do like just a soup detox, or like a yak blood detox, I'm just kidding. No. I did a podcast

listening anyone

gone? I hopefully they're like, wait, what he's just say that they're back. But I did a podcast like, oh, kind of like the new like, the week after Christmas, because that's just a weird time. No one's listening to like to like, they're trying to get there. Okay, but it's all on Celebrity health myths. So like, some people were like, Yeah, we use leeches, you know, and like, oh, yeah, this I thought it was like, You need to put a jade egg in your vagina if you want to have good vaginal health, like, that's okay. All right. So just like, and someone else did a goat's milk detox. And at first I was like, you detox from goat's milk. Good for you. i I'm actually I'm one of those myself. But sure, that's all she ate for eight days was goat's milk. So that's, yeah, that's neither here nor there. So my view on detoxing is that your body's amazing at this, it can do it all on its own. Give yourself some water, give yourself some space youth. So your body can go into a process called a tapa G, which is basically just a fasted state or ketosis. And your body will start pulling out broken down cells, it'll start repairing those sorts of things, especially you've been eating healthy foods, to give yourself the nutrients and minerals that you need. So might the sugar detox that I promote people are always like, 20 What I need to buy, I need to like get a cleanser. And to do these sorts of things. I need a coffee enema like No, good. My, my detox is like this. So in the morning, you wake up, you have some water with some lemon, apple cider vinegar, it's really hardcore. Day two, I do what's called a physical detox. And I make people go for a walk for 10 minutes after each meal. So it's based on the Vedic principles of like, they call it 100 steps, and they, they have a word for it that I can't pronounce. But basically, it helps you with your digestion, it's just going for a little bit of walk after each meal. So help people do that. Obviously, I'm having them get off processed sugars and refined sugars at the same time. Then day three, I have them do what I call my healing salad. This is something my wife and I came up with, while we were travelling in South America, and often would end up with really poor gut health after eating like street meat and just cheap beer for like, nine days in a row. So I don't know how to happen.

Similar thing in Turkey. It's not pretty.

I'll send you the recipe. Thank

you. But it was markets, your salad.

Yeah, so it's like tomatoes, cucumbers, lemon, onion. And something else on there, something else that you're only going to find out not because I forgot, but because it's a secret. And it's in the sugar detox by the sugar detox.com or free sugar detox.com Sorry. And then the fourth day is a fast, it's a 24 hour fast. So the goal is to give your body plenty of nutrients leading up to the 24 hour fast. And then I really find that if you're eliminating processed and refined sugars, and then you take 24 hours off from eating completely, and you're just adding water to your black coffee, your body stops having those cravings, right? Because if you're always feeding yourself sugar, you're always gonna be craving more sugar, because that gut bacteria is gonna send that signal to your brains like, Hey, should we give that doughnut? Like, what's what's up at least half of that doughnut? You know, so. And then day five is basically going back to do day three, having the salad and that sort of thing. And what I find is that it really helps eliminate a lot of those cravings that people have. So it's not necessarily like this complicated process where you have to take $70 worth of rare ingredients. And you know, and only soup, but it's just like, it just makes it easier for people to eliminate some of those cravings, detoxify their body a little bit, gives you a reason to drink a bunch of water.

And how many times a year do you recommend people do it?

I mean, use as needed. It's not like it's not a huge deviation from the norm. So if you did it on a like on a monthly basis, there's nothing that nothing bad is going to happen from that. I really recommend people do a 24 hour fast once a week, especially a fat loss as a goal so you can easily incorporate that. Because really the only other things are water with lemon and apple cider vinegar and then eating more vegetables. So it's it's pretty innocuous. pretty healthy. Yeah. Don't tell anyone though, because I feel like I've been I just build it up and it's like, Oh, it's this really amazing thing. I learned it from a shaman and yeah, you're not going to believe it. So you have to go to get the get the course.

The shaman salad. The shots

actually hit you up for this branding stuff before

I've got to have that now I need to find the secret ingredient. Yeah, it's

really secret. You're gonna you're gonna lose your mind

amazing it's been such fun chatting to you. We're gonna have to do a rerun out we after we track off our live CPMs and

things and see we got a lot of homework after this episode, which I appreciate.

Yeah, we do. We do, which is fun right now. See what I like? I like this.

I love the 30 day challenges so like right like I did a 30 day keto challenge for my podcast and did my bloodwork and stuff like that beforehand I did the 30 days where I did a high dose melatonin worked up to 60 milligrammes of melatonin every single night for 30 days, just track my sleep. deeper sleep, like I was getting two and a half to three hours of deep sleep every single night. I was also nervous about it, because I've heard that like you can, you can get a little physically addicted to it. So I cycled up and I cycled back down. But the cool like the crazy thing was I didn't do it because of the sleep I did it because that there was this couple studies that came out about lab rats getting these higher dose melatonin, like in accordance with their body weight and seeing a decrease in visceral fat. And I did notice, like, I don't have a tonne of visceral fat to study I did like, but I did notice like a 50% reduction in my visceral fat over the course of 30 days, which is, which is about three quarters of a pound. So like, you know, not nothing like it wasn't substantial. But I do think it like it. Brokers further interest.

Interesting because melatonin was linked to sorry to interrupt, there was a link to as well you know, people who suffer with gastric reflux, and that kind of stinks. Muscle opening. Actually melatonin is helpful for keeping that close. So you get less kind of regurgitation less less reflux symptoms. And actually, what you notice is when people have poor night's sleep, they're more likely to get a bit of gastric distress and indigestion. Interesting.

Interesting. Yeah. Okay. That's, I wonder, I wonder which side of that is correlated? Because like, obviously, also what the deeper sleep the more you're sleeping, the better your body's burning fat. So like, is it the melatonin is asleep? I'm not sure. I don't know if I'm smart enough to figure that out. But

I think the melatonin helps with that muscle.

Okay, yeah.

Cool. Yeah. So but I love this like n one experiments. And I love running it for a couple days. And there are 30 days and then, like, given the results on the podcast. So right now I'm doing a mouth taping experiment for 30 days. At night, then my wife takes pictures of me and my husband. Oh, is he? How is it working?

Yes. What was your reason for doing it? Just to see

just to see like, what if my I want to see if my respiratory rate goes down? My what happens with my resting heart rate? What happens with deep sleep and REM sleep. And then just like if I like if I'm waking up more times or less times during the night, so just want to see what impact it has on sleep and some of those variables.

He felt like within a few days, he was like, wow, I just feel I've got so much more energy. Interestingly, because I said to him, I call him a few times a night you'd have a nice evening with your mouth open too much. And but the thing is the thing with the mouth taping as well as I think you really have to focus on it during the day as well and be cognizant of when your mouth breathing so that you can then your subconscious to mirror that. So yeah, I think both work. Well.

That's a good point I've been trying to work out with without keep my mouth open.

Yeah, that's, that's fun. You know, when you do like a zone to run, and you try and just nasally breathe throughout, I have to say that it's like a form of meditation, you just come back, like in the Zen zone. So it's completely different I found to the runway you go out and the endorphins are high, you still get some new boosting effects, but just really, really calm and chilled, which doesn't really happen very much. Always quite high bar. So it's a good thing for me to do.

You got to stay so focused on it. You can't let your attention wander because otherwise you're like, oh, that's me. Yeah, maybe

that's why because of the focus. Yes, I really training that mindfulness muscle. It's very true. Interesting. Yeah. So my husband's also doing the mouth taping. I'm doing a thing this year, where I'm really focused on my biological age and reversing it and also like optimising my body composition, my blood work and everything. So I did a whole thing with with the podcast and I was on Instagram for people to follow what I'm doing.

Are you tracking biological age? So I'm using like an age

Yeah. Which is a test way they look at your glycans and and see what your age is and then help you reverse it. So that's one thing I'm doing also really like focusing just on my blood work as a whole because you know, like we were saying earlier, someone PCOS for me blood sugar management is a little bit harder. I have to work hard on it. I find that annoying, particularly at Christmas, you know, when everyone has the Christmas pudding and I just had to rip joking rip my CGM off and go no, I

don't want to see it.

Not looking. Sorry. are you incorporating the fasting or is that hard to do with PCOS? I don't really have any clients well,

I can Yeah, I am doing fasting but fasting kind of for women of my age when I look at a research actually going too long. Not too often. I think like doing like a 24 hour face fast in the follicular phase is okay. You don't want to be like over stressing the body in the luteal phase. So I tend to optimise fasting around the menstrual cycle. But I think for most women like a daily 12 hour fast works super well. Yeah,

I agree with that. I've I've had a lot Have like female clients, I used to be a big intermittent fasting proponent that female clients were doing it. And then hair loss, insomnia, skipping periods and stuff like that. And so it looks like we're just having that daily, longer fast was really stressful in the body, and female bodies are gonna protect their reproductive mechanisms at all costs, like so, making sure that you're not necessarily putting yourself in an overstressed environment, I found that you can get about four weeks safely with a 16 hour fast, but I really recommend that most women try the 24 rather than for 24. Like prolonged fast, infrequently, rather than doing like a intermittent daily.

I would agree with that. And actually, when I was doing the 16 hour fast daily, much as I loved it, and I was like felt really Lee, I didn't notice I didn't notice much difference in my menstrual cycle. But I did notice things like hair, right, who needs to prioritise hair when there's not enough availability? So I did notice.

I feel like what I've talked about earlier with that the coffee the piece like the MCT oil and the collagen, it's a small enough dose of nutrients that you're not necessarily in a fasted state anymore, but it also mimics a lot of the like, the things that you like and enjoy about it and written fast where you have energy you're eating really liked, so I would try that out. See what see what you think. 30 days, maybe I

can try MCT I just I don't know what it is. I can't get on with it. I just really don't like it. Yeah, I just don't. I've tried it. I can do the collagen and the coffee for sure. I like to struggle. Coconut oil. should do. I don't like the Oh, yes. And my coffee and heavy cream and black heavy creams. Okay, yeah, I could do that. I've done that.

I had a friend who was like, oh, yeah, MCT oil. You got to do more of it, though. You got to have like four or six tablespoons. And I was like, Okay, it's awesome. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I was like, I will see you guys in four hours.

No, I was at a gym training. And when my clients like you got to do this. So I did. And I was like, you're training now? I'll be gone.

Oh my god.

Yeah, you don't need to make that mistake. Other ones.

Anyone listening right now you do not need more than one tablespoon of MCT oil. Thank me later. Yes, you will find my loss is your game.

Amazing. Do you have any last tips that you would like to share? Nate, anything you want to leave listeners with? And also where can they find?

No, no more tips, some all added tips. I will say this though, like I know it's January. And I know that a lot of people are starting or restarting a fitness journey. And I think a lot of times, we have this idea of like, oh, I screwed up, I failed. I gotta get back to it. I was eating, I was eating clean. Now I was eating dirty, then I'm eating clean again. And I want to just kind of dispel that idea for a second and just give you the like the encouragement that in your fitness in your life and your nutrition. It's not so much about the it's about like the being 100% All and it's about being 75 or it's about being keto it's about not quitting, it's about being consistent. taking one step forward, don't you have those two steps back, just take one more step forward. Because in this game, you cannot lose if you don't quit. You can't lose if you don't quit. So trying to make sure that like as you go through this, that you're not putting yourself in your as perfection as the only attainable goal, or losing 20 kilos is like the only win you're gonna get look for those little wins along the way. Look for those times you ate three healthy meals in a row. Look for those times you got seven days of eating really nutritious food in a row, you nailed your workouts all week long, did a great job tracking, all those little wins are going to add up and if you do not quit and you do not keep or you do not stop putting one foot in front of the other, you are going to be successful. Whether that takes three months, six months, two years or six years.

I love that. Amen to that. That's such a great point to finish on and always be in the game right? Never be in the gap. Yeah, Dr. Benjamin Hardy I love that book gap in the game so powerful. Yeah, and stay on track because that whole screw I blew it mentality. Yeah, it's it's dangerous. And I certainly want to either. Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't say if you keep mostly 80 90% of the time, if you're getting back on track, you're gonna you're gonna get those results.

What's like the plus the screwed I blew it mentality is couldn't be objectively false, or at least objectively not as true as something else where you're saying, Hey, I learned something that didn't work for me. That's equally true as Screw it. I blew it at one of those serves. And one of those does not serve you very much that mental watch that mental talk. Right?

Yeah. Yeah, it all comes from that. Amazing. Well, where can people find they can get your book? The million the million dollar body method? It's available online, please link where can they find this where

they can get that on Amazon? The audible version just went up to if so if you want to hear my friend Jason sir Cohn sweet, sultry voice talking you through it great. Otherwise, if you want to just grab an ebook or a PDF, I will send that to you. You just got to go to get Nate's book.com I'll drop it into your inbox right away. So you can get the Kindle version and get the ebook, or we got a hardcopy or an audible version. That's all on Amazon. On.

Amazing, we will link to all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on the show and being so generous with everything today. And yeah, Happy New Year,

as well. This was a tonne of fun. Thank you so much.

My pleasure. It's been great, thank you. And you record as well. And then if your spouse, I've got it.

Angela, I'm so excited, you're here, this is gonna be a tonne of fun. So for those people who have not heard of you before, can you just talk me through a little bit of like who you are, why you're in the like the space that you're in right now. What made you create the female bio hacker collective? And I know that's like nine questions on a reel. But just I'm just so excited to hear your story.

Yeah, sure. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you so much, Nate. I think we'll have some fun today. So as you know, you were talking offline. I was previously working as a corporate lawyer for many years. And that was very long as you can imagine, when these huge law firms in London, very similar to the American firms, they kind of almost sort of owned you. I was working, you know, all nighters, weekends, everything for many years. And then when I have my children, that's when things kind of it made me refocus my house. So I had a little bit of an introduction to health in my late 20s When I was diagnosed with PCOS and insulin resistance, and endometriosis. And that was kind of taking its toll because it was impacting potentially my fertility. So I started to look at the low carb and tried to modify my nutrition to take account of the PCOS. But then, when I was very fortunate, I felt very fortunate to have my three beautiful children within four and a half years. Anyone listening who thinks I'm crazy, I probably am. But it was, it was pretty quick. And that was really after being encouraged by the medical profession because I'd had some surgery before and they were like, have your children close together because the endometriosis the sexual regrow. So I did all of that. But then I developed what started out as postpartum depression and got successively worse with each child and was then diagnosed with major depressive disorder. And that was when I was on some pretty hefty medication. And ultimately, I was just thinking about suicide, most of the time, I got myself into such a hole by the time my youngest was about two years old. And they were sort of changing over medications and things. And then we got this kind of cough in the house kind of a flu, I developed it, and then it just got worse and worse. And I think my mental health was now affecting my physical health. And then one day, you know, I got sent for a scan, they saw some things on the X ray, they said to me, we know you've got pneumonia, but you know, we think you might have something else called bulky X to says, but the consultant was saying to me, you know, your lymph glands, you shouldn't just kept talking about my lymph. And I was like, hang on a minute, you keep talking about my lymph glands? Like, you're kind of starting to freak me out a little bit. Do you think I might have something like lung cancer? And he was like, Well, yeah, we can't tell if you don't without a CT scan. So I was then promptly sent off for a CT scan. And he was like, Don't worry, you're not gonna have to wait for the results. I can read them. And then as I walked back into the doctor's office, he's like, it's worse than I thought. And I just, everything just falls away, right? I'm like, Oh, my God, I know, I've gotten pneumonia, really struggling. And then, and it's weird, right? Because you hear you attract what you think about there I was in this impossible situation. That's how it felt because I had effectively created a prison. In my own mind. I didn't want at that point, I just had these thoughts in my head that I wanted to shut off. And the only way I knew to do that I was having so much therapy, so much medication, nothing seemed to be working. And I was just thinking about suicide. But I didn't want to leave my husband as being, you know, the widow whose wife took her life, I didn't want to leave my children whose mother took her own life. And so I was just in this prison in my mind. And then I was just so sick, they immediately admitted me into hospital. You know, my blood count showed I was neutropenic, I was hooked up to oxygen, double pneumonia in both lungs, both viral and bacterial. And when they gave me the news, I was neutropenic. You know, I knew at that point, antibiotics, were going to help with the bacterial infection, the viral infection, I was going to have to try and my immune system was going to have to kick in. And the strange thing was that at that moment, I had tried so hard to run away from myself. But when you're in hospital, you can't be anywhere else where you are with yourself. And I felt I don't know if it was the high fevers but this profound sense of peace and connection, and it was almost like a wake up call, but calm and thinking, you know, what am I doing that my kids need a mum, they need their mommy to see them grow up, I need to be there for them. And I felt the shift. And the moment that I felt that shift. within 48 hours, my blood work changed. They thought they were going to have to intubate me, suddenly my white blood cell counts coming back. It was nothing short of extraordinary. And when I left hospital, I decided I'm going to have to get myself really, really healthy. And that's when I started looking into alternative things like meditation, looking deeper into nutrition, retraining, kind of looking into the spiritual side much more. And that was where it all began. And since then, you know I've gone on to completely change my profession. It's not about me, it's a much bigger mission now, really to empower women to live their best lives and help them face the challenges and become their best selves, essentially, so that they can really enjoy life to the fullest.

Wow, that's a powerful story. I can't even fathom, like that mindset shift. And that profound piece you experienced, like that actually creating and allowing your body to build new defence mechanisms and white blood cells. Oh, what what is, by the way, neutropenic, I don't know that word is when your

blood cell count is so low. So you often see it in chemotherapy, so in cancer patients, and that's when they can get you know, an infection that's very dangerous, and it will hospitalised them. So what's a sore throat for someone else who you know, will be pretty major in there. And so it was

I had no immune system, essentially. Yeah,

yeah. And I was just that low. And I feel like almost the universe was answering, right. I was saying, just find me a way out. And here was a way out being given and there was a choice, almost, that's what it feels like. And I'm profoundly grateful for it, because it brought everything into focus, like laser focus, you know, I was like, What am I doing? I have a two year old, a four year old and a five year olds, they need their mom. And so it became much more about them than it was about me, and they inspire me every day. That's why I do do because it's really for them. But at first when I came out, I mean, I'm not saying it wasn't without its challenges, you know, immediately like they were going to do a repeat CT scan to look at the lung damage within six weeks. And for another chest infection. It's like, you know, when you try to get back up, you fall down again. Right? And you have to keep getting back up. But and it took a long time. It wasn't that was back in 2014. I don't think I was I remember being off all medication by October 2019. So it was a journey. It was a it was a long road. But bit by bit. I built myself back my body and spirit.

And when did you leave your corporate job?

So I took a break after the kids, which initially was going to be just a career break. And I was thinking about becoming a judge. And then I decided I wasn't going to go back because I wasn't going to see my kids. And this was the thing because I was so this is what I never understood was why was I somebody and I still don't fully know that missing piece. Why did I struggle with depression, I seemed like the most unlikely candidate for it. I completely connected with my children, I adore them adored. My husband wasn't postnatally you know, I had any trouble with that. I just couldn't be with myself. And I do think there's a hormonal component. I think there's a big depletion component. Yeah, when you have a child, they deplete you of things, you know, vital nutrients like Omega three, and I think three pregnancies in four and a half years, three C sections because I tried to have my first one, naturally we run into trouble, I have pelvic disproportion, you know, I think it took its toll on my body. And I think it I think also as well, looking back, you know, when I was practising as a lawyer, the signs of adrenal dysfunction were there. So I think I've been pushing the envelope. You know, there were times I was dizzy, low blood pressure spots in front of the eyes, things like this. So I think I probably didn't go into pregnancy in as good a health as I could.

Gotcha. And I think this is a good warning lesson for all the moms out there because when you're pregnant, that the foetus the baby is going to get its nutrients, period, whether it has to take them from what you're eating, or you're consuming or from your skin, hair, bones and nails, right? Your body will will feed the foetus at your detriment, if you are not nutrient nurturing yourself. I think that like, there is probably some sort of analogous, like, idea that going into motherhood to where you'll sacrifice so much for those kids. You know, I see this with my wife all the time, like, the kids get theirs, the kids are well taken care of. Even if that means that she's staying up later, she's not eating quite as well. She's not getting enough sleep, all those sorts of things. So, like, how can how can women? How can moms take care of themselves without letting go of what's really, really important to them, which is caring for their family? caring for their children?

is a great question. And I think it's a really difficult balance. Because I think as a mother, you're so attached to the to your children, right? You grew them, okay, they're a part of you. And I think you're so invested in them. But I think that it's about understanding it's not sustainable, if you're not taking care of yourself, and ultimately, you know, you're not infallible things can go wrong. And I think that taking care of you just even if it's prioritising small amounts of time, is is really, really important. And if you can like enlisting the help of your partner as much as possible, but prioritising your sleep, and I think that was something I really neglected. You know, we can talk in a minute about this shift protocol I've developed because sleep is the foundation of it because as a corporate lawyer, we completely disregarded sleep right? It was just worked through carry on You know, it didn't seem to matter. And I think when I had my children, I was like, Well, I don't need to map, you know, if they've kept me up all night, it's okay, I'll be okay. I'm used to this. I've done it before, and pushing that too hard. And I think that if you don't, the warning signs are there along the way. And if you ignore them like I did, that's when you can end up in a bad situation.

Gotcha. So you had just been pushing the envelope in your corporate job, where you're like, little, little low blood pressure, a little bit of spots in front of your eyes, you should be fine for another eight hours. And you just took that mindset into your into, like having a family, you're like, I don't need to sleep, sleeping for the week. So but obviously, that's a not the case and be something that you learned the hard way. So I want to talk a bit about that shift protocol. And because I know it's based off of your own experience, and what ended up being the right thing for you, but not just for you. But for your family. I know, we've all heard the expression, you can't pour from an empty cup. So can you talk us through your shift protocol, what that looks like and how that is enabling women to fill their cups to be able to, you know, have it for their partner, their family?

Yeah, for sure. So I wanted something that was replicable, right, I wanted to put that methodology, everything that I done, because it was it was so extensive. And and just to track back a bit, what happened was, when I came out of hospital, I was in a fortunate position where financially I didn't need to work. So I could really, really focus on my health. And I know that's not true for everyone. So when I did that I got really healthy, but then I looked at it, and I was kind of like, well, this is fine, I can be really, really successful. As a corporate lawyer, I made partnerships when I was eight months pregnant, this is all great, but then I really burnt myself out. But then I can get really, really healthy. But I'm not working at the moment. So how do I combine the two. And when I dived really deeply into it, what I realised was actually health is the foundation myself greatest asset, and we so often neglect it. And yet, it is the one thing that is the foundation of high performance. And if you apply, you can get high performance or performance results, and not necessarily enhance for longevity. But if you flip it the other way, and you think well, actually, how can I optimise for longevity a little bit when we were chatting earlier on my show we were talking about if you optimise the energy, the body composition results come as a side effect. If you really optimise and think I'm gonna get in the best physical, mental spiritual health of my life and optimise for longevity, you will get those performance benefits. So I realised that actually it works super well. So then it was about creating something that people could take. So it was like, Well, how can they make, and that's where shift came from. And, and I was playing around with the words and the things that I wanted people to focus on. And shift essentially sounds for sleep, which is the foundation. Because a it's so important, we can't overstate it. It's a huge performance hack. It's hugely important for longevity. But also it makes everything else you're going to do easier. If you're well slept, as you know, everything's easier. And then the age is about hormones. So is about opting Yes, around the female physiology, because I work a lot with women. But also optimising your stress hormones, looking at your HRV you know, cortisol, adrenaline, all play a part in this. So there's the hormonal component. And then in the centre point, is the insights like you and I were talking around how you can't change what you don't measure. So it's like, what are the insights I need to track to wearables at home? Even for someone who maybe doesn't have the budget? Using your journal? Right? What are what are you what can you see? What can you gather about yourself? And to an extent, if you can, you have the investment things like lab data, and then the F is is how do you feel your body and I break that down into flow. So it's food like oxygen and water. So you know, life is a huge component in terms of our health. And then the last one is the T which is training both your mind and your body. So it's not just about physical training for the body, because that was a piece that I'd really neglected. And you know, when I was recovering, like Joe Dispenza, as work Dr. Joe Dispenza, in terms of breaking the habit of being yourself and retraining my subconscious mind was huge in terms of my own recovery, so that that T is about training body and mind and really connecting with you and what you want and in your life and in the world. Powerful.

So you described your programme as basically a mix between biohacking and mindset work. Can you talk a bit about the mindset piece because I think that a lot of women are that this might be just my perception, but a lot of women will see biohacking and be like, that might not that's not for me, like the supplements and that's not for the for me, but I think everyone can get on board that mindset work is incredibly important because of it your point where you said earlier like if you you if you have your physical and your mental health dialled in, it seems to be the cornerstone of the law as all these other pieces to work appropriately. So how do we how do we as busy people as parents, dial in that mindset work? What are some of the strategies that you use?

Yeah, so with biohacking, you're right. I think it has a very male dominated perception and I think probably with good reason and so does a lot of the science behind it right? When we look at things like fasting really like you and I were talking About a lot of those protocols are based on overweight sedentary men. And they don't take account of a woman's physiology and her hormones. And so I developed BIOS thinking which uses the shift protocol at its core in terms of how do you put that in place. But bio thinking really is about syncing with your bio rhythms, syncing up my physiology, and also with your goals and dreams and universal rules. And that mindset piece, one of the most important points is to create your future self all of the time. Because whether you are intentionally doing it or not, you are creating your future self and manifesting that all of the time. And every action you take your future self is either going to thank you, or be a little bit less grateful for right in terms of what you're doing. And so it's about that identity. So it's B do have, and people think, you know, when I have this, I'm going to feel so much better. And then I'm going to do these things, and I'll be that person, it doesn't work that way, as well. So with it, you know, and so as above, so below, and I think that's the critical piece.

That's so interesting. And I love that because I mean, even in the million dollar body course, we have a whole section on cast a vote for the person here because it because I do believe that especially in the morning, it's important to make a make a deliberate effort to move towards who you are, or who you would like to be. And I think that what you're talking about there in terms of like being, like, focusing on like, the physical side of things around the menstrual cycle around the bile rhythms, that sort of thing is important, but also moving in a specific direction. And you know, I know we talked in a previous like an on your show about my seven daily investments, and one of them being the three critical tasks. And the reason that I like that is that it forces us in a direction that like always pushes us towards checking those boxes, achieving those goals and making sure that we are moving forward in a positive direction that we've intentionally said. The other thing that you mentioned that I wanted to hear a bit more about was the universal laws. You said all these things work together with universal laws. Can you describe what those are and how that works with within the shift protocol?

Yeah, so a lot of people have heard of the law of attraction, for example, many people have watched the movie The Secret. And

you probably be attracted to like having like a Ferrari and it doesn't seem so foreign.

And put you somewhere, you're resisting it, maybe you just got to open the gateway. For so. But the law of attraction, you know, is secondary, really to the law of vibration. And that is where what you focus on are your energy. This is what you're how you're feeling what you're putting out. And I think really developing that inner sense of connection. And again, I don't want people to get hung up on it and think, Oh, my God, I'm not in a good vibe, this is not good. Now, I'm not going to be attracting bad things. Because that again, doesn't that doesn't give you the control that you're looking for. It's about we were talking together earlier about on my show, you know about getting things right most of the time, and when you go off getting back on track. And it's similar to that, right. So being grateful for everything that you have in your life and grateful for what you're creating, you can't attract more if you're not already grateful for what you have. So I think that focusing on things that help really align your energy with your values and your goals and your dreams and what you want to put out into the world. And what you want to achieve is absolutely critical. I think when we're out of alignment, we create friction. You know, and so we have, you know, there's various laws that are there. They're universal laws, the law of cause and effect, you know, the law of polarity, the law of rhythm, this is a big one, right? Everything has cycles. And so it's about understanding, you're not going to be perfect, like, let's get go of perfect every day. There are cycles in life. And there are seasons. And so, you know, at the moment, for example, I have three children that are, you know, kind of adolescents and teenagers, I'm focusing on them, I may not be able to focus as hard on other areas of my life as when they've left home. But I want to be fully present to this experience. I want to help and be with them and enjoy them while they're here. And so maybe I'm not going to go at the same time as running my business on my podcast, go and do some extreme court, you know, sports and run marathons and or do ultra marathons or triathlons that take me away from the kids embracing that and understanding there's a seasonality. And I think when you start to sync with those, you just get so much more into flow. And you understand you get really, really clear on what you want to achieve. And then who is the identity of that person that achieves those goals so that you can really step into him or her and when you step into that person, that's when as we say to be do have you can happen.

That's powerful. I love that you keep bringing it back to your podcast. So you know if you guys haven't checked out that yet, go check out Angela's podcast where can they find that

it's high performance health you can find it on any platform on every platform cool.

So check out high performance health we we did what interviews before that we can call it what you call it part one. So because I feel like a lot of what we're talking about now is related like is like very, very interconnected. I think we have like oddly similar philosophies. i But I love that yours is very specific to one And, and we're talking about the law, the law of rhythm. And the way that life has cycles, right, in the same way that we were dealing with the seasons, sometimes more like, you know, like, I'll tell clients, you know, during the holidays and stuff, consider sleeping little bit more, don't worry about waking up so early, you know, like using this time as, as more of like a downtime or relaxation that we can shift up as the as the weather changes. Now, women have a really powerful rhythm within themselves, like the menstrual cycle. Can you talk a bit about how women can use the like that rhythm and that that cycle and plan their training, their nutrition, they're just like, like emotions are how do we use that to our advantage rather than being victimised by that or being reactive?

Oh, sure. I would love to talk about that. So I think it's something really powerful that more and more women are embracing, I think, you know, we were conditioned, particularly when I was a teenager, like, got a survey, you know, your period shows up. And it's actually your like, fifth vital sign. It's really, really important. And it shows you it's a mirror of your health at the time. And I think that understanding that then looking at that whatever your cycle length is, often in textbook, it's not many women have the textbook cycle, but it makes it easy to talk about in terms of that 28 days, is understanding what's happening across the month. So at the beginning of that unfreedom rhythms and freedoms, something that goes longer than 24 hours, you know, we have ministration. And during menstruation, a lot of women find this surprising at first, but you are most like a man. And the reason for that is because your hormones have dropped so oestrogen and progesterone and now at their lowest. And at this point, you've actually very resilient to stress. Now in the first few days for some women, particularly if you haven't been optimising around it at first, it can feel like oh my god, that just is so far from how I feel. You know, I have really bad menstrual cramps, I've had PMS and bloated I've got real energy and want to get out of bed. As you start to optimise around the menstrual cycle, those symptoms will improve, generally speaking, unless there's something more going on. But also even if you feel like that on like the first one to three days, if you do some exercise, it really helps alleviate things like pain, it doesn't have to be super intense. In fact, some of the evidence shows a hit workout helps to relieve pain. But if you can do something small, and then after you get past kind of day three, and you're going through this is when you already are resilient to strain. So this is a fantastic time for doing resistance training. I know you're a big fan of particularly weight training for women, this is a great time to get those reps and to really lift heavy because as you come out of maturation, and each trip begins to rise, oestrogen works a little bit like testosterone and women and it helps you stimulate muscle protein synthesis. So it's a great time to be doing your strength training, any kind of high intensity workouts that you want to do, whether that's hit or set training. This is the time to be really optimising for that. And then oestrogen visors. And then as we get to the middle of the month, this is the like big event, right ovulation. This is the point at which conception can happen. At that point, we see a surge in luteinizing hormone and a big surge in oestrogen just before, you're super primed for strain there. But as you tip over the other side, this is where you start to need to moderate your training a little bit. And it will enhance your results. Because when you move into the second half of the cycle cycle, so that first phase is the follicular phase, then we move into the luteal phase, you are less resilient. And actually if you're tracking you know, you and I both were on aura ring, what women will notice is their resting heart rate is a little bit higher and HRV can be a bit lower, their recovery is not the same. And so at this point, you want to kind of taper off a little bit, but not I'm not saying you've got to take a two week rest by any means. And you know, I rely on pretty much daily exercise for my mental health. But what I will do, and what the science shows is you adapt that training. So you might be doing a little bit more endurance focus work a little bit more up tempo, aerobic work, maybe you're doing slightly like higher reps in terms of your training, before you then move into that last week of the month where you can work on kind of skill development if you have a specific sport or functional training, mobility work or work, all these kinds of things. You know, in the in that sort of third week of the month, you can do a bit of plyo but you're not doing the really intense super, you know, sprint interval training or the very, very heavy lifting. And if you go through and you optimise in that way, when you come back to the next month, you'll be ready to like really hit it hard. The other thing that happens when we're optimising for progesterone in that second phase is we can be a little bit more catabolic. So it's important to refuel, particularly to increase protein at that point to refuel the carbohydrates post training so women returned to baseline much quicker than men. And so actually to moderate that cortisol response, it is important for women to refuel post training.

catabolic in this case has meaning like Britt muscle breakdown, so making sure you're getting enough calories. Anabolic being the opposite which is growth or building exact Hate, that is so helpful. And that's honestly, this is a complete education for me. I've never, I never I've never understood this, like the depth of the what you just described. And basically how females can use this as a as a strength almost of understanding their cycle and understanding what how to structure their training around it to get the best results possible and to almost gonna be like having like a positive snowball effect going into, like the future.

Yeah, very much so. And the lifecycle of the egg is about 100 days, right. So if you begin making some of these changes, today, over the next two to three months, you're gonna see some results coming through. And a lot of women, I mean I've ever been when we look at the the nutrition aspect, for example, there isn't really strong science behind what I'm about to share. But the results are formidable in terms of what women always pretty much always express, even things like C to cycling, which is kind of like your grandmother's thing, where you basically have two types of seeds in your smoothie. So you focus on flax seeds and pumpkin seeds in the first two weeks of the cycle. And then you swap it out to sesame seeds and sunflower seeds in the second half. So you're just putting these, for example in your morning smoothie, can have a profound effect on the way women feel and things like PCOS. So really kind of optimising for nutrition as well.

I'm curious why. What's the difference in those two seeds? Is it in Omega three to omega six ratio or?

Certainly I think that flaxseed, for example, works very well in terms of helping with oestrogen but also moderating the effects if you're a bit oestrogen dominant, dominant, so it has kind of estrogenic and anti estrogenic effects. So it can be really helpful. It's a bit like, for example, in the first half of the month, if you're feeling that you have symptoms of oestrogen dominance, maybe you're not clearing and detoxifying that oestrogen effectively, that can be one reason. So introducing plenty of cruciferous vegetables, and sulphur containing foods. So like leeks and garlic and onions, that can actually help you to detoxify excess oestrogen, because there's sort of three main pathways that your oestrogen can go down. And there's a test known as the Dutch test where you can look at these. And we want to make sure that most of it is going down a two Oh H route, because you're detoxifying it effectively.

Birth control plan to all of this.

Birth control is a little bit different. So birth control, actually, the results for women tend to be better when they're not on birth control, and they are optimising around the menstrual cycle, because with birth control what you're doing, as you're literally like flattening all the hormones, that's effectively what you're doing the natural hormones by taking exogenous hormones. But birth control has its place. You know, it's I think it's a tricky one. It's one that I took for many years. And I think, you know, many women do rely on it as a form of contraception. The difficulty is what we do see is often like cortisol can be a bit higher with birth control. inflammation can be a bit higher, it can affect gut microbiome. I did an amazing podcast with Dr. Sarah E. Hill, who wrote the book your brain on birth control, I recommend people listen to that if they're interested in finding out because I think everyone should be informed because birth control is too often prescribed, not as birth control. And it definitely was in me know, before I found out I had PCOS, for about 10 years, then medical professionals named Don't worry, we'll look at that when you when you want to optimise for fertility, you're not having a menstrual cycle. And I didn't have it for a year at a time. So they were like we just put you on birth control. And I think it's often used in that way. So just becoming aware of it as

well. Or even like, you know, in in teenage girls using it for like acne, things like that

as well. Yes, yeah. Yeah, very much so. But then with acne, unfortunately, what you often see is a rebound effect afterwards. And so when you come off it, you get a rebound

of acne, which is like an extra dump of oestrogen and progesterone.

And it's and it's hard to control then at that point, I'm

gonna say this, I'm just gonna go on record and say, I'm a big fan of male birth control. I got a vasectomy. vasectomy is reversible. I think more guys should do that. I think that like, you know, rather than rather than asking females to keep putting exogenous hormones in their body, and, you know, causing some, like some long term effects with that, I think that, you know, a vasectomy is just so easy. It was it was it was an annoying two weeks. I'll say that. But then now it's done, you know, move on with our lives. So

yeah, I think a lot of men are reluctant to do it. Yeah,

well, I get that a lot of men are also pansies will say, I'm gonna say I'm just gonna say it. I put the cell box down. Yeah. And I'm not gonna pretend like I didn't cry a little bit, and I almost pass out. I'm not I'm not gonna say that because it's that did happen. But I think that I think that that's like, one thing that we can do especially step up for for the ladies in our lives. Men calling you out right now. You Angela. Well, I don't know. I just feel like I just feel like I needed to say it. Like, I don't think that it gets talked about often enough. All of like the book talks about

Yeah, I think it's a shame. I think it's often you know, on the woman basically to exactly solve for that. Yeah. I think at the end of the day as you say, you're in a relationship together. And it's and it's both of you if you'd if you don't want to have any more kids, for example, or you don't want to have children at that time, it's both your responsibility.

Well, I was kind of always on Train No kids anyways, I was like, I'm pretty selfish. I don't really know. Like, I'd rather just travel around and do whatever. So we compromised. We had two kids. So that's,

that's the compromise was. Was your wife going to have to? Yeah. Okay. That's a good compromise. Sounds about how it works in my house.

Yeah, so she, what mama gets on my mother wants so. So this is, this is gotta get back on track.

I mean, I'm just gonna say, this just is how it is, you know, I'm not gonna pretend I'm not lying to anybody out here. So tell me a little bit like I know, we talked about this. Bringing it back, talking about biohack. Right? You said this is like this is a male dominated thing. When I think about biohackers I think about like a 22 year old with a gold chain. And like red light, like blue light blocking glasses sitting on his couch telling me to like, you know, eat like, Colombian bee honey in order to optimise testosterone. What does biohacking mean to you? And what kind of bio hacks do you find are critically important to the women you work with?

So I think bio hacking and this is why I kind of I feel like we need to be thinking more, right. That's why I talk about BIOS thinking, but specifically does incorporate bio hacks. I think with bio hacking, what we're trying to do is return to ancestral living as much as we can by using science. And I think that that is super helpful. So for example, one thing that I found is using red light therapy. So infrared, and red light therapy is super useful in terms of optimising for mitochondrial health, a detoxification for cardiovascular health. I think things like that are really, really helpful. So I think but I, the reason I developed the shift protocol really is you want to get all of those basics in place. And then when you've done that, you can biohack on top, it's the opposite. Like we were talking about how much people love supplements. Everybody wants to do the exciting biohackers first, but it isn't going to make a marked difference to you if you're using red light therapy, but you're staying up watching Netflix with no blue light blocking lens where it's all 1am. Right and then not sleeping properly. I think that's the day

upon that caught out to us. That's who said that again. It's like I want to hammer that one home. I'm not sure what I blacked out for a second. You said it doesn't matter if you use red light therapy, just staying up to 1am watching Netflix. Yeah, yeah. I love that. Because like everyone wants the sexy. What supplement you got for me? How can I you know, how can I do a cold plunge? You're like, you haven't slept above six hours and two years. You drink soda still? Like, take a second? Take a breath?

Exactly. Let's get the free stuff done correctly first, right? It's super important.

And I've talked about as like the acid sleep like let's get sleep dialled in first, what are you what are the protocols or or the ideas that you have around sleep that you're like, Alright, here's what we need to do to make sure that your sleep hygiene is really good. You're getting enough restful sleep, how are you tracking that? And what are you what are you recommending to your your clients? Yeah, and

there's some bio hacks, right that you can use there to enhance it. I think you were talking about melatonin, for example, with sleep. What I would say is the way you sleep tonight, depends on what you did this morning. So the way you sleep tonight really depends on what you were doing this morning. So the sooner you get access to early morning light, that is going to reset your circadian clock ready so that you are optimising for melatonin and cortisol. So cortisol we need in the morning, right? Cortisol is not bad. It's just bad. If we have too much of it at the wrong times. Cortisol gets us up and going. That's why we have this cortisol awakening response. It gives us energy in the morning. And it's really important in terms of that. And so we will understand

that people think that cortisol is the stress hormone of the belly fat hormone. Exactly why you brought that up.

It is if you are having too much cortisol, and particularly at the wrong times. But if you're having a really robust cortisol awakening response, and you feel really super energised, but I think people need to understand that cortisol and melatonin have an inverse relationship, they cannot be higher at the same time. So if cortisol is high, melatonin is low. So in the evening, what we see and I see in some people, when I'm looking at their labs is that actually they get this uptick in cortisol at night. Now that could be because they've got a food intolerance. It could be that they're exposing themselves to too much artificial light could be the watching 20 You know, exciting or kind of horror, horror style movies and things, right, but this is the wrong time to be stimulating, because we want to optimise for melatonin. And light exposure is critical to this process, because we are super light sensitive in the evening, but not that light sensitive in the morning and Andrew Huberman talks about this a lot, because in the morning, you actually need to expose yourself to fight bright light to really optimise from a circadian rhythm point of view. Whereas in the evening, it doesn't take much light to disrupt that and melatonin production. So I think that making sure they're getting early exposure to light that you are eating your last meal. And we talked about that earlier around, you know, not having a meal too late, and that transitioning into fat burning. You don't want to be digesting food when you're trying to get into deep sleep. Putting your phone away, like having a bedtime alarm and putting the phone away and not Mindlessly scrolling is a biggie because I think so many people procrastinate sleep, it's so easy to procrastinate sleep. I think we probably procrastinate sleep as a as a population more than we procrastinate things like work. It's just it's kind of endemic in society at the moment.

Well, there's a million things that are like that, you know, you could be looking at you could check Instagram, have you seen your email recently, like we could watch one more episode of The Office, even though we've watched the whole season like 50 times already. So I think I think one of my big hacks if you if you want to go there is go to sleep at the same time, have good sleep hygiene, where you go to sleep at the same time, and you wake up at roughly the same time. I think that is one of the key things that people miss is that they'll go to sleep at 10:10pm, Monday through Friday. And then Saturday, Sunday, they stay up until you know one or 2am and it kind of throws off their whole week. So I think that social jetlag. Yeah, social jetlag. I love that. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's really a system. And it takes you till about Thursday, if you do it till about Thursday to catch up, because you've pushed yourself so far out of alignment.

I find that even with drinking, I had, like I had for drinks on New Year's and I'm probably be good tomorrow. I'd get on Wednesday.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, it makes it alcohol actually, last year, as a bit of an experiment. Well, it was interesting, because I was tracking my HRV. And I was playing a lot with like the brain TAP device, in terms of meditation and stuff. And I wanted to track these properly. And I found that alcohol actually really smashes HRV. So initially, I was like, I'm just going to do it for 90 days. And then I'm going to see and I wanted to do some kind of work around habit formation. So it was a bit of a self experiment around, you know, my husband and I are big fans of wine, we invest in wine, we lay down, things like that, you know, it's lovely on a Saturday night. So how long would it take for my brain to stop reminding me that alcohol was something we did a glass of wine together that we really enjoyed? And they say don't do the research, I think, is it Oxford, did some research that it takes around 66 days, and I would say that I stopped getting reminders, probably 50 or so days in. And then after that, it just became super easy. It was like I'm not drinking, so we got to 90 days. And then we did it together. My husband came on board. I just randomly said to him one day check this. It was on the 25th of June, I think because we were going to a ball my daughter's school ball. I

was like, I'm gonna give up alcohol for 90 days. And he was like, what, like today, we're going out tonight. And I was like, Yeah, I

figured it's as good a time as any, right? If I can do it at a school kind of all, then I could do it any day. So I gave up, he waited a couple of days, we opened a bottle of red wine on a Friday that he loved. And he didn't want that to go to waste. And then he joined me. And when we got to 90 days it was then like, you know, maybe you should go to 100 Why break it and 90 is 10 days, and then got 200. And then the funny thing is, it was unintentional that way because we got a winning streak that I didn't want to break. And then we got to my birthday, we took the kids to Disney, and I was like we're busy. It's not really the time to have alcohol. So we went past that. And at Christmas, funnily enough, Christmas Day would have been six months. And so we decided, actually, you know what, let's do it for a year. I think I heard Richard Branson talking about his son Sam giving up alcohol for a year. And he was like everybody should do it once a year. So I decided out of pregnancy. So obviously each time then I have not drank that we would do it for a year. So we're kind of partway through that halfway through, I should say just over that journey.

Wow. That's very cool. And it's cool to hear like the like, the about the 35 days or the 60 days that you said, or you stopped getting those reminders. And that's an interesting way of thinking about it. So Okay, before we sign off, though, do you have your you have your HRV and your heart rate available to look at right now. Available to

look at right now?

Yeah. Do you have your Do you have your flight your phone to check your app? No. Oh, I was gonna say we have a contest right now. A contest? Of course, I wanted to contest that question. I want to win it every single

check competitive.

No. Just just a little bit more competitive than you been? Alright. Well, I guess the final question will have to be instead of instead of a heart rate variability, mentoring. I guess the final question is if the female biohackers collective had a theme song, what would it be? I gave her zero time to prepare for this question.

You gave me zero time. Yeah. Because I can't think of a song right now. But it would be I know what the strapline would be the you can do this. That's the First thing that comes to mind is a really supportive community of women who all like champion each other on like, I love what we've created there. And people just celebrate each other's wins. So 100% be about that. But if you can think of a song that goes with it, I love that we should choose a song for sure. Maybe I'll put that in the group.

It's it's Kelly Clarkson champion, then.

Oh, there we go. It's Kelly Clarkson champion.

That's how I'm so glad we had this discussion. Because I think that was a very, that's the key takeaway that I'm taking with this and walking away today. The Angela, this has been so fun. Thank you so much. If you guys haven't checked out the part one on the High Performance health podcast, go check that out right away. But Angela, where else can people find you? And how can they get involved? If they if they're like, yes, female by hackers collective Kelly Clarkson champion, featuring ludicrous by the way, how do they get involved?

Lots of different ways to connect with me. I'm pretty active on Instagram as over Angela s. Foster, the female bio hacker collective. If you want to find out more about that, you just go to Angela foster.me forward slash SBC. If you want to get a free health check, you can get a personalised report from us over at your total health check.com. The podcast, as you said is high performance health. We are taking part of our premium this year for extra access and kind of if you want to get a bit more science me and you're really into the biohacking or by syncing I've been talking about. So yeah, you can find more about that on the podcast as well. So yeah, and send me a DM I do personally reply to everyone. It might take me a while I always get back. So yeah, I love connecting with people. So thank you. Thanks for having me on the show.

Amazing. I will put all that stuff in the show notes too. So if you're not connected, Angela, that should be below right now. Angela, you're incredible. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to chat with us. I know it's like 9pm in the UK or like 10 or whatever I math is hard. But I just really appreciate the time you spent with us today.

My pleasure has been an absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. I'm

super looking forward to parts three and four. Yeah,

let's do it. Thank you for listening to today's show and for your interest in health optimization for high performance. If you're new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that you can get a free health score and report complete with personalised recommendations on how to optimise your sleep, nutrition fitness and resilience in the top link in the show notes below. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Links to everything we talked about are also in the show notes and if you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe for more