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If You're at a Normal Weight, Do You Really Need to Eat More to Get Your Period Back? · Nourished Fertility

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  Welcome back y'all to the Nourishing Women Podcast, your go-to podcast to
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  get your peer back and get pregnant.
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  I'm your host, Victoria Myers, peer recovery specialist, fertility,
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  dietician, and owner of the virtual coaching practice, nourishing
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  Managed Nutrition, where we work together to restore your fertility.
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  Today we're diving into a question I. All the time.
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  And that is this, if I'm a normal weight, do I really need to eat more
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  and potentially gain weight to get my peered back and restore my fertility?
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  And let me just start by saying like, girl, I get it.
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  If your PI is technically normal, or your body looks healthy on the outside, it
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  can feel totally confusing when someone tells you you still need to eat more.
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  Rest more or pull back from your workouts.
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  Maybe you're thinking, I'm not underweight.
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  How could I possibly be under eating?
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  Or maybe you're thinking like, there's no way this is me.
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  I don't have hypothalamic amenorrhea.
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  I don't have pure loss for my strict diet and exercise routine.
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  Let's clear this up together right now.
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  Just because your weight is in range on the BMI scale doesn't mean
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  your body is getting what it means.
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  In fact, most of the women I work with are not technically underweight.
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  They look healthy.
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  Some even have visible muscle toner, abs.
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  But what we don't see is the internal stress on the body, especially when you've
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  been living in a constant calorie deficit.
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  Or over training that stress to the body, it adds up.
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  And when you're not eating enough, your body isn't going
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  to waste energy on things.
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  It doesn't deem essential, and I'm so sorry to say, but your body doesn't view
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  pregnancy or appeared for that matter as essential to survival the way that you
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  do lu understand why you can be a normal weight and still have ha better to begin.
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  I want you to know that your body needs a certain amount of
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  body fat to produce estrogen.
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  Estrogen is not only made by the follicles in our ovaries into a lesser extent to the
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  adrenal glands, but also by our fat cells.
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  When your body fat percentage drops too low, whether from over training or
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  undereating or being chronically stressed, it sends a message to your brain that's.
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  Is not a safe time to reproduce.
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  This isn't your body failing you, by the way.
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  It's your body protecting you.
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  This could also be you and happening to you right now.
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  If you're technically a normal weight as the focus is of this episode
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  today, yet your body fat percentage is low, especially 13 to 15% or less.
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  Something that you need to know that you may struggle to hear right now is a
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  healthy body fat percentage for optimal hormone production, and fertility is
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  somewhere around 25%, give or take.
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  Obviously, there's people who, because of their genetic predisposition, can.
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  Have optimal hormone production and fertility at less, but
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  also some people who need more than that, and that's okay too.
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  We also know that A BMI of at least 22 is often needed for
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  restored ovulation, especially in cases of hypothalamic amenorrhea.
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  Anything below that may be technically quote unquote healthy.
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  Not necessarily fertile or hormonally supported.
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  I think this is really important right here to address because oftentimes this
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  is where misdiagnosis or not getting a diagnosis at all stems from because you
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  know, your doctor will be like, your BMI is 20, or you know, there's no way
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  that you having period loss from ha.
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  You're nowhere near underweight.
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  You're nowhere near 18.5 or less with your BMI.
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  But this can absolutely still be you.
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  And let's also talk about like, what if you're already there, you're at A BMI of
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  22, or you were never below this, like you were nowhere near those numbers.
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  If in your history, or even recently, you've had a large amount of weight
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  loss in a short period of time,
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  or you're very, very far away from your body's genetic set point, weight
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  range, the weight it can comfortably maintain without excessive dieting
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  and extreme exercise, you can lose your period, even if you're
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  nowhere near considered underweight.
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  And even if you are in a so-called normal weight range
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  or already at these specific ranges of 25% body fat or be my of at
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  least, let's just even say 20.
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  You can still be under fueling, you can still be missing your period.
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  You can lose your period from undereating y'all at any body size.
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  Why is this?
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  Because it's not just about the number on the scale.
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  It's also, it's actually primarily about the inputs your
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  body's getting every single day.
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  The rest, the stress load, the sleep, the nervous system,
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  the food, especially the food.
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  This is why it's such a mistake to say.
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  Okay, I'll just gain five pounds.
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  But what if that's not enough because your habits haven't changed.
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  Focusing on weight gain really isn't even a good idea here because if you're
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  still, you know, focusing on gaining five pounds, but you're skimping fats,
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  you're still facet training, you're still running on caffeine and avoiding
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  carbs, your body's still, even if you gain five pounds, not going to feel safe
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  enough no matter what the skill says.
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  Let's say another hypothetical here, like you've gained weight
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  but your cycle hasn't restored yet.
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  There could be a variety of reasons why that's happening.
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  You've been told you need to gain weight, stop exercising or do IVF
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  to get pregnant with no period.
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  What if I told you that's not actually true?
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  You're tracking your food, working out, trying everything to be healthy,
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  but your period is still missing and now pregnancy, it feels impossible.
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  I know exactly how that feels because I've helped hundreds of women get their
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  peered back and get pregnant naturally.
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  Inside my free training, I'm walking you through the exact five step
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  method that's helped women like Lex.
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  Lauren and Stephanie restored their fertility in 90 days or less.
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  Without extreme weight gain or giving up on movement, you'll learn what's
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  really causing your missing period.
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  Why food freedom is essential for fertility and the customized approach
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  that actually works even if you've tried.
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  Everything.
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  If your dream is to see two pink clients and hold a baby in your arms,
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  this training, it's your first step.
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  Click the link in the show notes to watch the free training.
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  It's time to restore your period, your fertility, and your hope.
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  Now let's get back to today's episode.
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  Maybe for you, you haven't gained enough weight back.
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  Right, like you're still too far away from your body's set point, or where your body
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  has its safety weight, or maybe you've gained weight, but it's muscle, not fat.
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  You could also have gained quickly because your metabolism was so damaged from
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  eating, let's say 1200 calories a day.
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  But even though you're eating more than that now you know you're
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  eating 17, 18, 1900 calories a day.
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  That's still nowhere near enough to get your period back.
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  You could also be eating enough and having gained some weight, but
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  you're still restricting carbs, the number one most important
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  macronutrient to get your period back.
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  And if this is you, when you're still restricting carbs, you're gonna have
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  a hard time getting your period back.
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  All these variety of reasons why this could be occurring is why though
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  it's so important to work with a peer recovery specialist who can
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  quickly identify these gaps in your peer recovery and fertility journey.
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  Actually saying this makes me think of two clients that I really wanna
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  mention in this specific episode.
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  'cause they were both normal weights when they came on to work with me.
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  And I hope this gives you some inspiration.
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  Emma signed up to work with me for one-on-one coaching after months of
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  struggling to get pregnant on her own.
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  She was in a normal BMI range and had already done the period recovery work,
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  gotten her period back, but they were still wildly unpredictable periods.
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  We made targeted shifts in her nutrition and in her workouts and addressing nervous
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  system regulation, supporting her minerals and hormones, and within one month of
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  starting to work together, boom, she was pregnant, yet her doctor told her.
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  That her labs were normal.
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  She was a normal weight.
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  He didn't know why she didn't have a period and that she'd probably just
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  need to go see a fertility specialist.
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  This also makes me think of Morgan.
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  Morgan was also guess what a normal weight when she started working with me.
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  As is true for most of my clients.
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  She worked with her doctor who was so freaked out about her period loss.
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  It's kind of the opposite of what usually happens.
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  Usually they're like, I don't know.
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  It's fine.
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  But this doctor was really concerned and kept sending her on kind of
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  this hamster wheel of being like, oh my gosh, your lining so thin.
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  Oh my gosh, your hormones are so low, and just kept telling her that her best bet.
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  Was IVF, but she knew that her relationship with food
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  and exercise was not normal.
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  She knew that even though she was normal weight, that she was not normal, that
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  there was something going on, and that she deserved the support to not only
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  get her peer back, but to heal her relationship with food and exercise.
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  'cause she believes in her body and that this was possible for her.
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  And through Premier period recovery for fertility, working one-to-one.
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  We got her period back.
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  It took 11 weeks to get her first period back.
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  Obviously got her ovulating through that process and on her second ovulation, so
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  this would've been her second period.
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  She conceived that cycle just like that.
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  And that really is what's possible, specifically in the case of ha.
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  It really, once you get your period back, can be so easy to get pregnant.
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  Once we get your body ovulating and cycling and again, these two clients,
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  even though they were a normal weight.
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  They still had a lot of work to do to get their body feeling safe enough to
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  ovulate, cycle and conceive naturally.
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  And had they just focused on weight gain alone or had they just focused
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  on like, there's no way I even need to change any of my habits.
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  They wouldn't have gotten where they needed to go.
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  They wouldn't have gotten the results that they did so quickly and easily.
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  What I want you to hear loud and clear in this episode two is like.
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  Even if you're like, okay, I'm not normal weight, but maybe I should just gain a
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  little bit of weight to see what happens.
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  Please know that just gaining weight alone isn't going to cut it.
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  That's why inside of our program, we go way deeper than that.
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  We're not just helping you get your peered back.
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  We're helping you optimize your hormones, your metabolism, and
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  fertility from every angle.
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  We're running functional labs like the HTMA or hair tissue mineral analysis.
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  We're assessing mineral status, stress patterns in toxic load.
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  We're reviewing your blood work, not just what's in range, but what's.
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  Optimal for fertility.
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  We're identifying the gaps in your fertility strategy and building a
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  plan that addresses them head on.
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  We focus on the right supplements, the right macronutrient ratios, fertility
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  tracking and nervous system regulation.
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  We support you as a whole person, not just a body that's a normal weight, and
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  we don't know why this is happening.
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  There is a clear answer.
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  You just haven't found it yet.
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  I wanna also say here that in our program we actually don't even
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  focus on weight gain as the data collection point for peer recovery.
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  Instead, we focus on the actions required to get your peer back and trust
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  that the body will do what it needs to in order to become fertile again.
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  If that means weight gain, then so be it.
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  Again, we don't track that.
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  That's not one of the data collection points that we track with our clients, so.
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  If at the end of this episode you are like, this hits home so much, and you're
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  realizing it is time for more support, like a real support so that the fear
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  of your body changing even though it's currently a normal weight, so that
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  that no longer holds you back from your dream of holding a baby in your arms.
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  I want to invite you to work with me and my team.
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  We would love to support you inside a premier peer recovery for fertility.
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  You can learn more and apply with a link in our show notes.
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  Thank you so much for listening to this episode.
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  I hope you got so much out of it.
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  If you know someone who's also struggling with peer loss,
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  please share them this episode.
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  They probably too, just like you are at a normal weight and
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  so confused as to what to do.
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  That's it for this week's episode.
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  I'll be back as always for another episode next week.
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  Until then, Nova a Nourish.
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  Botting is a powerful one.