Latest / Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women / #15. I Did the Most Restrictive Elimination Diet for 45 Days and My Chronic Illness Got Worse — Listen If Your Protocol Isn't Working

Transcript

#15. I Did the Most Restrictive Elimination Diet for 45 Days and My Chronic Illness Got Worse — Listen If Your Protocol Isn't Working · Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is a driver of chronic illness in women that the entire medical system has missed.
• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: It has nothing to do with your genes, your gut, or your hormones.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it is the reason most women will never fully heal.
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is why you got sick.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Teclody Francesco, certified mind-body practitioner, and certified holistic life coach.
• 0:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast is for women living with chronic illness, autoimmune disease, IBS, chronic fatigue, PCOS, andometriosis, migraines, fibromyalgia, or persistent symptoms that no one can fully explain.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Twice a week we look at how emotion drives chronic illness in women.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: One episode goes deeper into the pattern beneath the symptoms.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: The other gives you a quick way to interrupt the cycle.
• 0:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're done organizing your life around symptoms and flare-ups, this is where that changes.
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast shows mind-body education.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is not medical advice and is designed to complement, not replace your medical care.
• 1:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's begin.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: In this episode, you'll discover why a life that feels miserable, uninspiring and unfulfilling is one of the most powerful drivers of chronic illness your doctor has never tested for.
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: You'll learn how elimination protocols can create the exact internal environment that keeps chronic illness active.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what actually changed in my body when I stopped one of the world's most restrictive diets and why it happened in just three days.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here is something I see constantly in the women I work with.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: On paper, their life looks good.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Really good, actually.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: The career, the relationship, the house, the kids, maybe.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everything they were told to want, ticked off in the right order.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And yet, they are miserable.
• 1:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: They wake up and there's nothing to look forward to.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: They move through their day and nothing genuinely excites them.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: They have built a life that looks like success and feels like going through the motions.
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And because nothing is technically wrong, they don't give themselves permission to say that out loud.
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: They tell themselves they should be grateful.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: They tell themselves, other people have it so much harder so they keep going and say nothing.
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: But underneath that silence, something is pulling you into directions at once.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is the version of this life you are supposed to want, and there is the reality of how it actually feels to live it every day.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: When those two things don't align, when the life looks right but feels wrong, that gap creates a kind of internal panic and emotional turmoil that never fully resolves.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: This pattern shows up in every single woman I work with who has a diagnosed
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: She can't be angry about it because nothing bad has happened.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: She can't grieve it because she hasn't lost anything.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: She can't even name it because from the outside there is nothing to complain about.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it just sits there, unignolaged and unresolved.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the body carries what she won't let herself feel.
• 3:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know what almost every woman I work with tells me in her first session.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: She describes her perfect morning routine.
• 3:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wake up, I do my gratitude journal, I take my supplements, I meditate, I do my gentle movement, I prepare my protocol approved breakfast, she lists it all out and she's clearly proud of it.
• 3:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is disciplined and intentional.
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is everything the wellness world told her healing should look like.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I ask her this one question that quite literally knocks her off her feet.
• 3:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Does any of it actually make you happy?
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is always a pause, and then this shock to look that seems to creep in right after, because the honest answer for all these women is no.
• 3:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't make them happy.
• 3:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: It makes them feel like they're doing the right thing, which is a completely different feeling.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: One feels like relief, the other feels like joy and happiness,
• 4:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: and relief and joy are not the same thing for the body.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: When healing becomes a performance, a checklist to get through before the real day starts, it stops being healing.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It becomes another obligation, another way of managing, another version of the same joyless, exhausting, going through the motion's life that created the conditions for illness in the first place.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: and when healing feels like punishment, that checklist is doing more harm than good.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me give you a very personal example of what this actually looks like.
• 4:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: For those of you who are newer here, after I reversed my two chronic illness diagnoses, I was unknowingly exposed to toxic black mold for three months.
• 4:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: That exposure triggered an entirely new condition called Mossel Activation Syndrome, or MCA's, which I'm actively managing and working toward full remission from.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: As part of that process, I went back to the AIP protocol after a series of more recent flare-ups.
• 5:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: For anyone who doesn't know it, AIP is one of the most restrictive elimination diets that exists, and it did help me rapidly reduce inflammation in the past.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it made sense to go back on it.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I did it perfectly every single day for 45 days, but my eggsma was the worst it has ever been in my life.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I stopped.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not because I found a better option, because I was freaking done.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was miserable.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was short-tempered and rigid.
• 5:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't go out without eating first.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't do the things I wanted to do.
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Every social situation became a logistical nightmare.
• 5:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Every meal was a reminder of what I couldn't have.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was no pleasure, no spontaneity, no joy in any part of my day that involved food, which is a huge part of every single day.
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the most wild part.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Within three days of stopping.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Three days, my skin had almost completely cleared up.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: The wounds closed and the broken skin disappeared.
• 6:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you don't believe this, believe that have the receipts.
• 6:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: They are on my Instagram at manifesting Mindset Co. 45 days of perfect compliance made it worse.
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Three days of relief and freedom and joy cleared it.
• 6:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is not a coincidence.
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is the body responding to how life feels from the inside.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because the protocol itself had become its own source of emotional turmoil.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: The rigidity, the misery, the restriction, the smallness of it.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: That internal state was doing more damage than whenever the diet was designed to fix.
• 6:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I work with women every day who are running some version of that same experiment, but instead of 45 days, it's over years.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: They've been following the protocols perfectly, doing everything right and still flaring.
• 7:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the one thing nobody ever asks them is, do you actually enjoy your life?
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is there anything in your day that genuinely lights you up?
• 7:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because if the answer is no, then no protocol is ever going to heal you.
• 7:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: You cannot lie to your body.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can convince your mind that the machya that tastes like blended grass is worth it.
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can tell yourself the AIP breakfast is so delicious and satisfying.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can perform gratitude every morning and try your hardest to mean it in the moment.
• 7:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: But no matter how hard you try to convince yourself, your body already knows how you actually feel.
• 7:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: It registers the misery underneath that compliance, and it feels the depletion underneath the discipline.
• 7:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: It responds to what is real, not to what you are trying to make yourself believe.
• 7:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And here is where the science gets interesting.
• 8:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Emotion has measurable energy.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not a spiritual concept, it's physics.
• 8:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Different emotional states produce different physiological outputs.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Fear, misery, resentment, and depletion produce a very different internal environment to joy, pleasure, meaning, and connection.
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: A body chronically operating from low energy emotional states, the kind that come from a life that feels hard and boring and unfulfilling, is a body running on empty.
• 8:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: It does not have the energetic resources that healing requires, and no protocol addresses that, because no protocol can generate the energy that genuine joy for filament and happiness producing the body.
• 8:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the why.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is why this matters.
• 8:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Healing does not happen in spite of how your life feels.
• 8:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: It happens in response to it, and that's not something you can just manufacture.
• 8:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you felt called out by the morning checklist, I'm sorry, but that was the point.
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I want you to do when a promise is going to feel very different.
• 9:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Grab a piece of paper and write down every single healing practice, morning ritual, or feel good activity you have ever come across in your life.
• 9:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Meditation, movement, journaling, breath work, walking, cold water plunges, reading, sitting in the sun, watching the sun rise, anything and everything just get it all down.
• 9:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then I want you to stick it somewhere you're going to see first thing in the morning and tomorrow.
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Instead of running your usual checklist, give yourself 30 minutes, time box it, and ask yourself this one question after you wake up.
• 9:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: What on this list actually feels good to me today?
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not what you did yesterday, not what you think you should do.
• 9:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: What genuinely sounds good to you right now on this particular morning.
• 9:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some days it will be a long walk.
• 9:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some days it will be loud music and absolute chaos in the kitchen making something delicious.
• 9:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some days it will be absolutely nothing except sitting with a coffee you actually enjoy drinking.
• 10:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is the practice.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Starting your day from a place of genuine desire rather than obligation.
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: I cannot overstate how differently your body responds to those two things.
• 10:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've said this before and I will say it again.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Joy is not the reward you get when you're finally well enough.
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: It has to be part of what gets you there.
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's wrap up what we chatted about today.
• 10:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: A life that looks successful from the outside and feels empty from the inside is not a minor problem and it is absolutely impacting your health.
• 10:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is one of the most overlooked drivers of chronic illness that medicine never tests for.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your body cannot be fooled by compliance.
• 10:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: It registers the misery underneath those activities and the depletion underneath the discipline, and it responds to what is real.
• 10:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: The shift is not a better protocol or routine or checklists.
• 10:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is starting your day with something that brings you happiness and fulfillment instead, and eventually carrying that through the whole day, every day.
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: The absence and joy and happiness piece is one part of this, but the emotional patterns underneath your specific symptoms go deeper.
• 11:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I developed a free chat GPT prompt in the show notes that connects your physical symptoms to the combination of emotional patterns that may be driving them.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: These are personal to you, and you can find out in under 30 seconds what those are.
• 11:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: The link is in the show notes.
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll see you in the next episode.
• 11:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's Emene.
• 11:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Goodbye for now.