From Accidental Weight Loss to Intentional Healing

A Journey Through Detox, Deficiencies, and Hormones

Thinking about accidental weight loss (from my previous post about cutting out partially hydrogenated oil from my diet and dropping 30 lbs. without trying) …

I dropped another 15 when I went through my divorce. When my friend Lisa noticed, she said the same thing happened to her. I can still hear her voice in my head saying, “Oh, yeah, you’re on the divorce diet.”

Last November, I was working with two functional physicians on their book (I had never heard of functional medicine before one of my authors referred them to me). They do a monthly challenge, so I took their audio recordings and made sure we incorporated that content into their manuscript.

As they were talking about the root cause of sickness and disease being toxicities and nutrient deficiencies, I got really curious. Could that be true? I decided to work with them.

Our first step was blood work and urinalysis. Then it was time for the detox. I was surprised to discover that I ended up eating more during this phase than I was accustomed to eating. The instructions said to eat a meal within 15 minutes of taking the herbs, so it was always a race for me to figure out what constituted a meal.

Before the detox, I would eat an apple with either cashew butter or pumpkin seed butter as a meal. According to my bloodwork, I was deficient in everything and looked like I was either skipping meals or starving myself.

Truth was, I would often feel terrible after I ate, so I would put off eating as long as possible. And I only had a few things that I knew I could eat and not get bloated or achy or irritable or tired afterward. The blood work showed that I had a lot of allergies. I knew I had a lot of sensitivities, but I didn’t think I was allergic to anything.

They explained that an allergy is simply your body’s inability to break down protein and even bacteria are made up of proteins, but my body was struggling to break things down, which means I was deficient in every nutrient.

My body was starving, even when I ate.

After the 30-day cleanse, I dropped another 15 pounds (without trying—and by eating more). Weird, right? I started supplementing and noticed that the Chinese mineral chi they had me take during the cleanse seemed to help in multiple ways.

My skin looked better, my digestion improved, and I felt an energy boost. I’ve since come to believe that my mineral deficiencies are the culprit when it comes to all the stuff that bugs me about my health, but there’s something even deeper than that.

When I was around 36 years old, I started having symptoms of perimenopause. They worsened right around the time I turned 40, and by 44, my menstrual cycle stopped. Now, at 50, I still sometimes have night sweats, migraine-like headaches (which started at age 41 right around the time of my cycle), ridges in my fingernails, and acne on my chin.

So this week I’ve started hormone replacement therapy (HRT) because I’m learning that estrogen is the master key to all the other systems. There are a few long-form podcast interviews that have opened my eyes to this phenomenon, and they’re all on The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett. I’ll link them here if you want to check them out:

Dr. Mindy Pelz, nutrition and functional medicine expert, and the author of Fast Like a Girl and The Menopause Reset

Dr. Lisa Mosconi, neuroscientist and author of The XX Brain, Brain Food, and The Menopause Brain

Dr. Mary Claire Haver, author of The Galveston Diet and The New Menopause

Dr. Vonda Wright orthopedic sports medicine surgeon and author of Dr. Wright’s Guide to THRIVE, Fitness After 40, and Younger in 8 Weeks.

Jessie Inchauspé, biochemist and author of The Glucose Goddess Method and Glucose Revolution.

Functional medicine looks at all the systems of the body and how they work together like a symphony rather than focusing on one area and treating symptoms. It’s helping me to rebuild from the inside out so I feel better and am healthier at 50 than I was at 25 (that’s the truth).

It’s a wild ride being a woman living in an industrialized nation and trying to do basic things like eat without getting weird symptoms, but here we are. It helps to talk about it. Thanks for reading—and join the conversation!