Latest / Love Your Gut / Ep. 123: Your GI Issues Are Costing You (And Not In The Way You Think)

Transcript

Ep. 123: Your GI Issues Are Costing You (And Not In The Way You Think) · Love Your Gut

• 0:03
  Dr. Heather Finley: Welcome to the Love Your Gut Podcast.
• 0:05
  Dr. Heather Finley: I'm your host, Dr.
• 0:06
  Dr. Heather Finley: Heather Finley, registered dietitian and gut health specialist.
• 0:10
  Dr. Heather Finley: I understand the frustration of dealing with GI issues because I've been there and I spent over two decades searching for answers for my own gut issues of constipation, bloating, and stomach pain.
• 0:21
  Dr. Heather Finley: I've dedicated my life to understanding and solving my own gut issues.
• 0:25
  Dr. Heather Finley: And now I'm here to guide you.
• 0:28
  Dr. Heather Finley: On this podcast, I'll help you identify the true root causes of your discomfort.
• 0:33
  Dr. Heather Finley: So you can finally ditch your symptoms for good.
• 0:36
  Dr. Heather Finley: My goal is to empower you with the knowledge and tools you need so that you can love your gut and it will love you right back.
• 0:43
  Dr. Heather Finley: So if you're ready to learn a lot, gain a deeper understanding of your gut and find lasting relief.
• 0:48
  Dr. Heather Finley: You are in the right place.
• 0:50
  Dr. Heather Finley: Welcome to the love your gut podcast.
• 0:55
  Your GI issues are costing you, and not in the way that you might think.
• 1:01
  I want you to think about the last time that you picked a restaurant.
• 1:06
  Did you pick it because you actually wanted to eat there, or did you pick it because you knew the menu, you knew what you could safely order, and you knew exactly where the bathroom was?
• 1:16
  If you pictured an actual restaurant, if you knew exactly which table you would ask for, exactly what you would order there because it has never once betrayed you, this episode is for you.
• 1:28
  Because today I wanna talk about the most expensive part of your gut issues.
• 1:33
  It's a cost that has never shown up on a receipt, has never been paid to a practitioner, or even shown up on your credit card statement.
• 1:42
  You have been paying this for years, and I bet you've never once actually added it up.
• 1:48
  So here's the thing, when we talk about the cost of bloating or constipation or unpredictable digestion, we usually count it in really obvious ways.
• 1:59
  You add up the cost of the supplements in your cabinet, the co-pays, the colonoscopies, the elimination diets, how much you spent on this practitioner and that practitioner.
• 2:11
  But there's another cost, and it took me years to realize that it was a bigger one, and that cost is bandwidth.
• 2:21
  Every single day, a piece of your brain is assigned to your stomach.
• 2:25
  It's scanning menus, it's doing the math on whether you can say yes to a dinner on Friday.
• 2:31
  It's planning your morning around whether things are moving.
• 2:36
  It's running the what if I flare at the birthday party s- simulation in the background, or what if I'm bloated for those pictures, or what do I wear, while you're supposed to be listening to your kid tell you about their day, or you're supposed to be connecting with your husband.
• 2:52
  None of this shows up on a lab.
• 2:55
  Nobody bills you for it.
• 2:57
  But it's a tax on your attention, and you pay it every single day, and it compounds.
• 3:05
  I know this because I paid this for 20 years, and what's so wild about this, the most surprising part of my own healing had nothing to do with my actual symptoms.
• 3:16
  It was actually what happened after.
• 3:19
  Because when my gut issues finally resolved, I remember this disorienting feeling of like, wait, I have so much extra brain space.
• 3:31
  I did not know how much mental energy my symptoms were eating until they stopped eating up all my mental capacity and my time.
• 3:41
  I finally had time to think about things that I was excited about.
• 3:44
  I finally could build this business.
• 3:47
  I could finally do things that I actually wanted to do.
• 3:50
  But while I was in it, I couldn't have told you how heavy it was because it didn't feel heavy.
• 3:56
  It just felt like it was a part of my life.
• 3:58
  It felt like it was a part of my personality.
• 4:01
  I'm the one with the sensitive stomach.
• 4:04
  I'm the planner.
• 4:05
  I'm the one who checks the menu.
• 4:07
  I will never forget a time when my friends were going out to dinner for somebody's birthday, and They asked me in advance,"Heather, where can you eat?
• 4:18
  What food can you have?
• 4:19
  We know you have a lot of allergies." Which in reality, I didn't have a lot of allergies, I just had a lot of gut issues, and people always were so concerned about what I could or what I couldn't eat And then once I finally addressed my gut issues, one day I ordered a latte with whole cow's milk.
• 4:40
  I remember the look on one of my friend's faces because she had known me during the worst times of my GI issues, and since she had moved out of town, we, she had come back in town to visit, and we were at a coffee shop, and I ordered, and she said,"Did you just order a latte with cow's milk?" I didn't think twice about it because it had been a while, and I realized, like, that she knew me as the girl who always had the very specific order, was always so cautious around food.
• 5:14
  It was like she was meeting a completely different person.
• 5:18
  That silence that I finally had in my head was actually so loud once I finally stopped thinking about my stomach and food all the time.
• 5:26
  So when I say that your bloating is a bandwidth problem, I'm not just trying to be cute.
• 5:31
  I'm telling you, there is a version of your brain that you have not even met yet.
• 5:37
  What could you actually do if you had the brain space?
• 5:41
  Would that be starting a business?
• 5:44
  Would that be advancing in your career?
• 5:47
  Would that be volunteering?
• 5:49
  Would that be some project that you've always wanted to do?
• 5:53
  The possibilities are endless.
• 5:55
  I, I wanna give you a picture for this because I think that this ties it together.
• 6:00
  You know when your phone battery is draining way faster than it should, and somehow you're, like, in the middle of traffic, and you have Waze pulled up, and you're worried now you're gonna lose your maps, right?
• 6:10
  You go to settings, you find out there's 14 apps, you know, refreshing the background, and you haven't even opened those apps in months.
• 6:19
  That's, like, the story of my life with my phone.
• 6:21
  But those are your symptoms.
• 6:23
  They are the background apps.
• 6:25
  They are constantly running quietly in the background using power you assume that you just don't have.
• 6:33
  Most of my clients come to me saying some version of, like,"I'm just a tired person," or,"I've just always been an, a picky eater, anxious eater," or,"I'm just not a high energy person," or,"I've always needed more sleep," whatever it might be.
• 6:49
  And what I want you to hear is that some of that might genuinely be true, but a lot of this is background apps running.
• 6:56
  You don't need a new battery, you need to close the apps.
• 6:59
  You need to close the noise and the chitter chatter that your GI issues are causing in the background.
• 7:08
  And I wanna tell you what it actually looks like when you get those apps closed because this is really what changes for so many people.
• 7:17
  I have this one client who I am thinking of who finally started dating again.
• 7:23
  She had stopped, not because she wasn't interested in finding someone, but because she felt like she just could not be the best version of herself on dinner dates.
• 7:33
  She's like,"This is a minefield.
• 7:35
  I'm tired of performing.
• 7:37
  I'm trying to pretend like I'm fine." When her bloating resolved, the thing she told me first was about the second date that she went on at an Italian restaurant.
• 7:47
  She ordered pasta.
• 7:49
  She remembers the conversation.
• 7:51
  She was actually able to be fully there and present.
• 7:54
  This is what I'm saying when I say, what would you actually do?
• 7:57
  Maybe you would start dating again.
• 7:59
  Maybe you would start dating your husband again.
• 8:01
  Um, we have worked with clients that haven't eaten out in years, and their husbands are like,"Please, I wanna take you on a date.
• 8:09
  Figure this out." I've had clients tell me that they couldn't be intimate with their husbands because they were bloated.
• 8:16
  They were uncomfortable every night.
• 8:18
  Um, I've had clients plan a road trip, um, an actual, like, multi-day drive, uh, which if you've ever dealt with unpredictable digestion, you know that that's, like, such a big deal to go on a road trip when you have-- when you don't have GI issues anymore.
• 8:33
  So here's what I want you to notice about every one of these stories.
• 8:37
  Nobody said,"My bloating score improved." What came back was actual presence.
• 8:43
  Their brain came back to them.
• 8:45
  They spent it on their actual life.
• 8:48
  They-- That's really what we're doing here.
• 8:51
  The presenting problem is a gut problem, but what you get back is so much more than that.
• 8:57
  Your attention, your evenings, yes to things.
• 9:01
  So the perspective that I want you to leave this episode holding, if you have been telling yourself that symptoms are manageable I believe you.
• 9:12
  You're probably managing them beautifully.
• 9:14
  You are a smart, capable woman, and you have built a whole system around your stomach.
• 9:20
  Imagine what kind of system you could build if you weren't using all of that mental energy on your stomach.
• 9:27
  But managing all that has a cost, and the cost for you is bandwidth, and I want you to start counting it.
• 9:34
  This week, just notice.
• 9:35
  Notice every time your brain checks in with your stomach before it lets you make a decision.
• 9:41
  Notice the menu scanning, the seat picking, the outfit you choose, the, the nos you say, the yeses you say, the, the afternoon bloat, the changing your pants.
• 9:51
  Just notice it.
• 9:52
  We're not judging ourselves for this.
• 9:53
  We're just noticing it because you'll start to see this as an invoice, and then you get to decide whether you wanna keep paying it or not.
• 10:02
  And then just picture this with me for just a second because I can see you there.
• 10:07
  You're at dinner, it's a Friday, and somewhere around the second course, you realize you have not thought about your stomach once.
• 10:16
  You ordered what sounded good, not what felt safe.
• 10:19
  You leaned in.
• 10:20
  You're actually listening to your husband on the other side of the table, and your brain is fully there.
• 10:26
  That is the picture you want, right?
• 10:29
  So here's your next step.
• 10:31
  If you are someone who is bloated no matter what you eat, or you did a protocol that worked for a while, and then everything came back, there is a very good chance we're talking about SIBO, or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.
• 10:45
  And that is exactly what I'm gonna walk you through in my upcoming webinar on August 30th.
• 10:51
  I'm gonna show you why this actually happens, why it is so hard to get it to go away, how to actually make it simple, and then what it looks like when you address this upstream.
• 11:03
  You will leave understanding your body and the exact steps that you need to take to resolve these symptoms for good.
• 11:12
  So right now, if you're listening to this episode the day that it comes out or around that time, the cost of this webinar is$29.
• 11:20
  It will go up to 39 on August 25th.
• 11:24
  So now is the time to grab your spot.
• 11:27
  You will also get my SIBO supplement guide with your registration.
• 11:30
  So come with your questions.
• 11:32
  I always do a live Q&A at the end, where I will stay on and answer as many questions as you have.
• 11:38
  So I cannot wait to see you.
• 11:40
  If this resonated with you and you want something different for your life, and you want to free up your mental space, you need to be there.
• 11:48
  So the link is in the show notes, and I can't wait to see you