Hypothalamic Amenorrhea Recovery Mindset (Episode 338)

Full Transcript: Episode 338

This is the Fertility Friday Podcast, episode number 338.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Welcome to the Fertility Friday podcast, your source for information about the fertility awareness method and all things fertility. I’m your host, Lisa Hendrickson-Jack. I’m the author of the Fifth Vital Sign and the Fertility Awareness Mastery Charting Journal. I’m a certified fertility awareness educator and holistic reproductive health practitioner with nearly 20 years of experience teaching women to connect to their fifth vital sign through menstrual cycle charting, balancing hormonal health and optimizing the menstrual cycle without hormones. I’m outspoken about hormonal birth control and its impact on fertility and overall health because you have the right to know how your body works and how artificial hormones disrupt that natural process. I host live coaching programs to help you achieve optimal fertility and health because it’s important to have healthy menstrual cycles regardless of whether or not you want to have babies. I’m also a wife and mother of two beautiful boys. I know, I know, I’m a busy girl, but I managed to fit it all in. This podcast is designed to empower you to take full control of your cycles, your fertility, and your overall health. And I’m so excited that you’re here with us today.

I’m excited to share today’s episode with you. Today I’m welcoming back Laura Schoenfeld to the show. Laura was one of my very first guests back in episode number 12. So if you haven’t listened all the way back, or if you’re a newer listener, certainly head back and listen to episode 12 — fertilityfriday.com/12. In that episode we talked about post-birth control syndrome, and to be honest, it’s an episode that I refer to quite a bit when I’m asked questions about birth control and how to minimize some of the challenges of coming off of it. It’s really, still to this day, even though six years later, an excellent, excellent, informative episode. In today’s episode, we’re talking about hypothalamic amenorrhea, HA, and we also get into some of the changes Laura has made to her business recently. Laura is now regularly coaching health professionals, primarily nutrition professionals, and she shares tons of wisdom, lots of great information, and also lots of practical information for how to manage your cycles, particularly if you are having really irregular cycles or you’ve lost your period altogether. As a specialist trained in functional medicine nutrition therapy, she has helped hundreds of women optimize their hormone and gut health while allowing for flexibility in their diet and lifestyle choices. Drawing on her background as a teaching assistant and mentor for the Kresser Institute’s ADAPT Functional Practitioner Training Program, Laura has coached dozens of dietitians and nutritionists on how to grow their businesses for financial success. So let’s jump into today’s conversation with Laura.

So I’m excited to have Laura Schoenfeld back on the show. She was actually one of my very, very first guests, which I remember fondly, back in the day — that was when you were working for Chris Kresser, and I remember you had this really awesome blog on coming off of hormonal birth control, and I still refer people to that podcast pretty regularly, which may surprise you because it was almost six years ago, I think.

Laura Schoenfeld: I was going to say, it’s been a while.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Yeah. But welcome back to the show. And in the intro, what I shared is that you’ve made some significant pivots in your business, which has been really exciting to see. And so you’re doing less client work these days, more business work supporting entrepreneurs — specifically still in the field, though, because I think you focus mostly on nutritionists — but you can maybe share a little bit about what actually brought you into the field initially, into the field of hormone health, and then what helped you to kind of pivot into what you’re doing now.

Laura Schoenfeld: Yeah, well, gosh, that’s like — I’m trying to think, probably a ten-year journey we’re looking at at this point, so I’ll try to condense it down. I would say, I mean, I feel like this is pretty typical for most entrepreneurs, that their area of interest at least somewhat relates to their own experience or their own story. I didn’t really have significant hormone issues growing up in high school and all of that — I had a relatively normal cycle, as far as I remember, honestly, I don’t even think I was paying attention. And as I was getting into college and grad school, and as my stress levels were going up, as I started to engage in some less healthy behaviors like dieting and excessive exercise, and kind of on that constant weight-loss, weight-regain cycle that I think a lot of women in their 20s go through, because they have this idea of what they want to look like and they try to force their body to look like that — and maybe it worked for a couple of months, but then it’s not sustainable, and then you kind of rebound. So I definitely went through all of that, probably — I think I first started dieting in sophomore year of high school, and it was totally random, it was like Slim-Fast at lunch or something like that. It wasn’t something where I was doing anything disordered or anything like that, but as time went on I was just constantly experimenting with different diets. I did low-carb for a while, I did those fiber crackers for a while, which — that was not the healthiest thing — and I think my hormones, for obvious reasons, did not like that, and I started to experience a lot more hormonal issues, a lot more PMS, a lot more cramping, more mood swings, more fatigue. My weight was kind of going up and down within maybe a 20-pound range, so I felt like my body was not in control.

And I’m kind of a little bit of a control freak, I hate to admit it, and so I was always trying to figure out, what’s wrong, how do I fix this, what’s the right diet to follow. I got really invested in the Paleo community for a few years, and that’s how I got connected with Chris Kresser, and that’s how a lot of people started to get to know me, in the 2012 to 2016 kind of range. I feel like I got really dogmatic about what was the right diet to follow and was really, really passionate about it — and again, even though I was being really strict with my diet, I don’t think I was as healthy, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, as I am now. And that’s because I was so laser-focused on perfection, really bordering on the orthorexia spectrum. I never really got any sort of serious health issues from it, but was definitely very black-and-white about food, and anytime I would let myself have something fun, or let myself go at a party or something, I would really just binge, and I would feel sick afterwards. And in my mind, intellectually I understood nutrition — I went to grad school, got my degree in dietetics, got a master’s in public health — so I understood all the stuff from my intellectual perspective, but I think I still had that low self-confidence, body-image kind of issue that was affecting what I thought was right and what I thought I should be doing with my nutrition. And again, it just manifested as a lot of hormone issues, quote-unquote “adrenal fatigue” kind of stuff — I was really into adrenal fatigue for a while as an area of interest from a professional perspective, and it was frustrating because I felt like I should be able to fix it, because I “know better,” quote-unquote. But I think what really shifted the way my body is operating, the way my hormones are operating, the way I feel on a day-to-day basis, was more of the mindset and spiritual side of the equation rather than the food and exercise piece.

So I just got really passionate about helping other women dealing with that kind of perfectionist tendency — the belief that they had to be perfect with their diet, their attraction to restrictive dieting, to fad diets, that kind of thing, to over-exercising. I used to do CrossFit, I used to do boot-camp-style workouts, and when I was in college I was working out like two hours a day, five or six days a week. So I was helping other people get out of what I had been in when I was in my 20s. And then over time I started to realize that it was way bigger than just food and exercise and supplements — I started to get really interested in learning more about mindset, self-image, negative self-talk, problematic beliefs, and a lot of that actually played into my development as an entrepreneur as well. As I continued on that path, I just started getting more and more interested in the way that our mindsets and our thought processes affect the physical reactions we have to the behaviors we’re doing, and even the way our behaviors are driven by our identity, by our beliefs about ourselves, and how that actually manifests in physical challenges or physical health. So it’s been a really interesting journey, and a lot of it has come from my own personal experience growing my own business over the last seven-plus years, and working for Chris Kresser helping him grow his business, and just realizing how interconnected all of this stuff is. I’m a very multi-passionate person, so this year has been an exercise in cutting down and narrowing my focus and really trying to get good at one thing rather than trying to help everybody with every single thing they could possibly be dealing with.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well, thank you for taking us essentially through a good decade of figuring out where you want to be, and it’s so funny when you’re in the interviewer’s chair and someone does take you through that period of time, because this is really this long, kind of windy process of growth and development. And you said a few things that I want to touch on, of course, and I think a big thing is the perfectionist piece, and what I think you highlighted in your own experience and journey is that we’re all kind of looking to get to this place — just kind of go with me for a second — but it’s like this place where we feel happy and content, where we’re healthy, so physically we feel good, emotionally we feel good, spiritually we feel fulfilled, and it’s kind of like this place that I think a lot of us are trying to get to. And certainly I don’t talk about the business side of things on the podcast at all, but when I think about what my role is for the women that I serve, the women that I work with, my clients, the listeners, I really think that I’m helping them on that same path. And so for many women it is through the menstrual cycle that really helps them connect to that better health, that kind of better emotional state, and even the spiritual, because if it’s out of order, then the cycle’s out of order. So I think for a lot of women it’s essentially that same path. So the question out of that that I wanted to ask you — because I’m sure you’ve seen it too — so many women struggle with this idea that everything has to be perfect all the time: the diet has to be perfect, the charting, from my perspective, has to be perfect, the cycle has to be perfect. And even though — for example, the charting method that I teach is very detailed and very specific, and you can go down that road if you want — but I’m kind of holding these two things with each client: yes, it’s helpful to have these details, but we also want to allow for just being a human being and recognizing that there is no perfect. So — still trying to make my way to the question — but the question I wanted to ask out of that was: when it came to the desire for perfection, for everything to be just so, for your body and for your life and for your career — everything to just be perfect — where do you think that comes from?

Laura Schoenfeld: That could be like a whole podcast in and of itself, so I’ll try to keep it short. I feel like for me, where it came from — and I still am not 100% detached from that, I’m still constantly vigilant about not letting myself go down that road again, because even as an entrepreneur it’s easy to have those same behaviors show up in the way you run your business, even if the way you operate with your body is good — but I think for me a lot of that stuff came from the desire to be accepted, the desire to be liked, the desire to be seen as valuable, as worthy — all of those things that were very much external, wanting other people’s recognition, love, that kind of thing. And I can definitely see very clearly when I look back at my own journey — I’m 33 now, so it’s not like I’m looking back on my whole life, but just the last decade or so — so many of my problematic behaviors and negative emotions and tough times in my life became that way because I was so focused on trying to prove myself to others. I was super shy as a kid, I was kind of like a wallflower, I went to prom by myself, I was not super confident when I was growing up, and I always felt like there was something not good enough about me, or some reason why I wasn’t popular or didn’t have a boyfriend — that kind of stuff. And I was always trying to figure out what is it that’s going to make me good enough so that I have friends, so that I have a boyfriend — all of those things.

So it’s been really interesting, and for me the journey is very attached to my becoming a Christian in 2012 — that spiritual journey, for me, seeing myself through God’s eyes and understanding who I am as a created being, as opposed to somebody who’s just trying to be something to everybody else, that was a pretty pivotal moment for me to really start shifting things. But I think a lot of times — and I don’t think I’m the only one who has felt this way — the pursuit of perfection is because we want to be acceptable or approved of by others, or we want to feel valuable to others, because a lot of times, if we didn’t care what other people thought, we wouldn’t do these things. We’re not naturally like, “I need to have the perfect diet for my own happiness” — we think it’s going to get us something external. So a lot of it for me was desiring that external validation, and once I learned to not only self-validate but also to have God’s validation — that really was the pivotal experience for me to start actually changing these behaviors, changing these beliefs, and having something to ground those belief changes in. Because it’s a little hard when you’re just saying, “I’m just going to not care what people think anymore” — it is difficult, we live in a society where there’s a lot of pressure to care what other people think, to be successful, to look successful, to dress in a way that looks like you’re successful, and I think a lot of women fall into it, and it causes them to constantly be looking outside of themselves for what they could actually be getting from within.

Even with the cycle stuff — I track loosely as far as my cycle goes, but for me a lot of it is a lot more intuitive, being able to get in touch with my body. If something’s out of whack, I know very quickly, I don’t need a chart to tell me that something’s a little off, and I can go back to, okay, what are the behaviors that might be causing that — why was my period a week late? Looking back, oh yeah, I was kind of high-stress, I wasn’t sleeping as well, I was drinking more alcohol — that was the last couple of weeks — I’m going to reset a little bit, get back to my normal routine. That actually does work for me, and I’m pretty consistently able to see that reflected in my menstrual cycle. So I usually look at the menstrual cycle more as an indicator of how are things in your life — because if we’re eating well (and when I say eating well I don’t mean eating perfectly, I mean nourishing our bodies appropriately), if we’re getting appropriate amounts of exercise, not too much, not too little, if we’re dealing with our stress, if we’re meeting with our friends (especially female relationships, I think, can play a huge role), if we’re in a relationship with a partner — how’s that relationship, is that a safe, trusting, loving relationship, or is it super stressful with a lot of fighting going on — I think the menstrual cycle is so amazing, and I think it’s really cool that we have that as women, to be able to tell us if something’s off, as opposed to looking at it and trying to say, “I need to do the menstrual cycle perfectly, I need to take the perfect supplements, I need to chart perfectly.” It’s more about zooming out and looking at the full picture and saying, what could be influencing my cycle, and having more of that intuitive ability to check in with yourself, and being honest with yourself about what might be influencing it.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: No, I think it was a perfect answer, because it really alludes to how big of a topic this is — like you said, it could be the topic of a podcast, because the question of where does it come from is a big one, and there are a lot of different directions we could take it. And I think a few interesting thoughts to ponder — not that we’re going to have all the answers to all the problems of the world — but where does it come from? I remember being in my early years of university — they obviously left a mark, let’s just say — I remember learning about things I didn’t know. I remember being 18 or so and learning about airbrushing. This might sound silly to many women listening, but when I was a teenager I used to buy Teen People and read those magazines, and I didn’t know that the models were airbrushed, and I didn’t know that they made the pictures look like they didn’t have pores in their faces, and that they cut off parts of their legs to make their legs look like little batons. I remember being very impressionable, being young, and looking at those magazines and thinking my legs were big — I was a beanpole, I was a beanpole when I was in high school, and I remember feeling that pressure. And I did grow out of it, and I never stopped eating, I was very active, I was always hungry, I always ate all the food, but I was still a beanpole. I’m not saying this to brag, I’m just saying this because this was my experience, but I was still concerned. So my point in sharing this is that I was a skinny little beanpole and I was still concerned, and I wasn’t doing a lot of exercise beyond my sports and ballet, but I would still sometimes sit in front of the TV and do crunches because I wanted my stomach to be really flat.

So fast-forwarding this — because when we’re talking about periods and undereating, obviously we’re hinting at the issues around hypothalamic amenorrhea — there are very certain threads that come through it, and one of those threads is that we move from an intuitive place of taking care of ourselves, thinking about food as nourishment, thinking about our health, understanding that our menstrual cycle is sharing important information — we move from all of that to a place where food becomes part of a goal to achieve a body type, and it’s so disconnected from what’s actually happening in your physical body. So maybe share that struggle — because you had your own experience with a bit of that, but also you’ve worked with a number of women who’ve experienced that, and of course it spills over into other areas when you’re super type-A, which I feel like I can call out because I am too — you want everything to be perfect. It’s so interesting, right, because you end up — no one’s doing it to you, right, no one is preventing you from eating food. There are people in this world who, if their families are struggling financially, it’s no fault of their own that they’re not able to get enough food, but we’re talking about, in a world of plenty, when you’re opting to basically do something that is harmful to yourself — loaded question here, but what have you seen, what is that about?

Laura Schoenfeld: Yeah, and honestly the first thing that comes to mind is identity — that was the word that popped into my mind when you asked that question. I never lost my period, but I was going 40 to 60 days between cycles, so that might as well have been losing my period, right — and I work with a lot of women who have lost their period, or it’s very inconsistent, like six months between cycles, that kind of thing. And I think the biggest challenge — because I run a program called Get Your Period Back, and I think it’s a pretty straightforward program as far as the steps to take, and if people implement it, it’s very successful — the people that tend to struggle the most, in my experience, are the ones that have their identity wrapped up in being “the fit one,” or looking a certain way, or if their clothes start to get a little tight they freak out and go back to their old behaviors. So it’s that identity of your body being, first of all, maybe the most important thing about you, even if you don’t consciously say that — most people don’t consciously say that their body is the most important thing — but I always want to ask, okay, well what are your behaviors reflecting, what does your schedule reflect is most important to you, and if you’re spending all your time at the gym, planning your meals, meal-prepping, reading fitness magazines, scrolling Instagram, looking at fitness accounts — if that’s what your day looks like, then I’m going to say that’s your biggest priority. And I don’t think our body should be our biggest priority. Now, there are seasons for focusing and putting energy and attention towards learning and being educated and making changes, but we’re not talking about a three-to-six-month period of learning how to do things differently — we’re talking about a lifestyle where it’s that obsessive focus around what does my body look like, and what are the behaviors, the habits, I’m doing that are going to control my body. So again, it comes down to, what identity are you latching onto as being the most important definition of who you are, and if that were to be taken from you, what’s the emotional response — because a lot of women, the reason they struggle with recovering from HA is because they don’t want to give up that identity as “the fit one” or “the one with the six-pack,” because a lot of their friends will say things like, “oh, Jenny’s the fit one,” or they’ll go out to eat and their friends will say, “oh, you’re so controlled, you’re so good with your diet, I wish I could be like you” — and that’s powerful, when somebody says, “I wish I could be like you, you’re so good at that” — it’s so easy to take that on and say, “well, that’s who I am, I’m the clean eater, I’m the super-fit one, I’m the exerciser.” And unfortunately, for HA, a lot of those behaviors have to be radically changed — I don’t teach 100% exercise elimination, but there are some major changes that I recommend for exercise for someone with HA, especially if they’re doing five days a week of CrossFit or running marathons, that kind of thing. And making those changes — the behavior change itself is not that hard, because honestly a lot of times it’s just doing less, and doing less is not actually harder — you don’t have to find more time to do less, you don’t have to put more energy into doing less. The hard part is the mindset, and letting yourself make these changes, and letting yourself let go of the identity that you’ve built around those behaviors. So I really think identity is the key to making these changes — if your identity is connected to the diet you follow, if you’re like, “I’m a vegan,” or “I’m paleo,” or “I’m keto,” you’re saying that you are your diet, and that’s your identity. And that’s the issue that I think most people who struggle have a problem overcoming, because eating more, exercising less, doing more restful types of activities, getting more downtime — that’s not actually harder to do than exercising seven days a week or being on a super restrictive diet. So that’s my perspective — I think identity plays a role in all of our choices, our behaviors, and the things we’re experiencing in life, so HA is not special in that regard — it’s definitely related to how we see ourselves and how we’re defining who we are based on the behaviors we’re doing.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Oh, that’s really deep. I know that you do this all the time, so I would imagine it feels similar to when I talk about the menstrual cycle — it just kind of rolls off the tongue and you’re blowing people’s minds, but to you it doesn’t seem like a big deal. But I think that’s huge, and I honestly haven’t really thought about it in that exact way before. When you were talking about those boxes we put ourselves in, and then our friends and family put us in — I think even having a particular type of diet, whether you identify as “I am a Paleo dieter,” “I am a vegetarian,” “I am a pescatarian,” “I am a vegan” — when you identify with those labels — I’ve also had a few interviews with ex-vegans, for example, and that’s a huge thing, because everyone in their circle identifies them as “the vegan,” “the one that doesn’t eat meat.” So it feels like it’s going to be this never-ending, world-shifting event if you go out with your friends and have a piece of chicken — and the irony is that yes, your friends may be like, “oh wow, you’re eating chicken now,” but it’s not going to be like no one is dreaming about you every night and thinking about you 24/7 to the point that it’s going to change their whole world if you eat a piece of chicken. But I could see that feeling like it’s going to be this huge thing if you change the way you’ve been for a while.

Laura Schoenfeld: Yeah, that really struck me, and I will say there is a possibility that relationships will drop off when you make these changes. I’ve definitely seen some angry vegans out there, and I could imagine if you’re a vegan and thinking of not being a vegan anymore, and all of your friends are vegan, and it’s very ethical-veganism, heavy-air-quotes on that, all of a sudden now you’re a “murderer” because you’re eating chicken. So I do think there could be some relationships that drop out if you’re someone who goes every day to CrossFit — I’ve had clients say, “my friends are like, where have you been, why aren’t you coming anymore,” because they’ve dropped down to twice a week. There is some of that pushback, and I don’t want people to have this potentially false expectation that making these changes means nobody cares and nobody’s going to say anything, because it does happen — but sometimes it’s just an initial reaction, out of curiosity, and you can be honest and say, “well, actually I think it wasn’t working super well for my hormones, so I’m dropping back to only two days a week because that seems to be working better for me.” But there are situations where relationships will change, and that’s okay — we don’t want to be in a situation where we’re harming ourselves or forcing ourselves to live in a way that doesn’t work for us anymore just to maintain relationships that probably shouldn’t be there anyway. If a relationship is good for you, changing your diet or exercise routine should not change that relationship — if it does change the relationship, the relationship probably wasn’t a good one to be in anymore. And I can say with 100% confidence that as I have gotten more clear about who I am, what I care about, what my values are, what I put my time and energy into, I have the best relationships I’ve ever had in my life, and there are ones that have dropped out, and that’s okay — it just has to be something where you’re not death-gripping the relationships you have, being so fearful that if you start to be the person you actually think you should be, from a behavior and belief perspective, that you might lose those relationships — it’s actually okay, it’s part of that process of shedding the old identity that wasn’t working for you anymore. I just wanted to make that point, because I don’t think most people care about what you’re eating or your exercise routine, but some do, and sometimes you do have to lose some toxic relationships if they care more about what you’re eating than whether or not you’re taking care of yourself.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well, I really appreciate that perspective as well, because I can think — when I was saying that, that’s what I think, right, at that point in time, because that’s what would make sense to me — but I’m also almost 40, and my friend circle — honestly, it’s what you said — my friend circle, I’ve got good people around me at this point in my life, so I could do what I need to do and no one’s going to say, “I’m not friends with you anymore” because I’m eating chicken. But I don’t want to minimize it, and I’m really glad you made that point, because as soon as you said that I realized that everyone’s in a different situation, everyone is at a different age group, everyone is surrounded by different people, and some people are super intense about their beliefs, and super attached, even more so than you or I, to those identities. And perhaps my lack of perspective here just reflects the fact that I’ve kind of moved through life trying things, kind of trying on this or that, but I have never committed to a diet or to this-or-that. I don’t recommend any diet — air quotes — to any of my clients who are listening. I talk about adding in foods that are helpful for fertility, and I talk about the specific reasons why maybe gearing one way or the next. I had an interesting conversation with a client — if she’s listening she’s going to smile — she had a really positive experience switching to keto for a period of time because she had a particularly intense insulin resistance issue, so for her it was actually really helpful, and she suggested, “maybe you should talk about keto for everyone.” I took it as an opportunity to share that everyone is different, and this is why, when you’re a nutritionist or a naturopath or an MD or anybody in the health field, you have to go to school to learn that everybody is not the same — everybody is not you, and there’s no one-size-fits-all for anybody. But bringing it back to what you mentioned — that’s huge, and that could be a really difficult time, particularly if you’ve really been eating a certain way, moving in a certain way, for a period of time, and really built a lot of friendships around that identity.

So I want to go back to something that you said, because I feel like when you said it there would have been a lot of women thinking, “what do you mean, that happens a lot?” You said something to the effect of your body shouldn’t be the most important thing, and I feel like — if you build your whole identity, your friend circle, around CrossFit, which is one type of exercise in a whole world of things you could be doing, or if you build your friendships and relationships around “I don’t eat meat” or “I only eat meat” — whatever it is — share a little bit more about that, because I think for a lot of women who are listening, who are really focused on their bodies and their menstrual cycles right now, and who are really wanting to figure this out, I totally relate to what you said about seasons of life, but I think there’s probably plenty of women listening who would be thinking, “what do you mean it’s not the most important thing, Laura, what is?”

Laura Schoenfeld: Well, I have a lens — I mentioned before that I’m a Christian, so that’s the lens I’m looking at things through, and everybody’s going to have their own perspective on what’s important — I don’t want to ever say what somebody’s priority should be. I think we all need to be really clear about our own values, about what’s really important to us. For some people that’s family, for some people that’s their career. For me, as far as the way it touches everything I do, it all comes back to my relationship with God and my relationship with the people in my life. So anything I do with nutrition or exercise or sleep or stress — all of that behavior stuff for physical self-care — it’s always stemming from a desire to have clarity of mind, clarity of energy — I want to feel really good in my body so that I can connect with God more easily, and I can connect with others more easily, and I can serve the people I’m working with as best as possible. So that’s been what’s really driving any decisions around my health in the last couple of years — and I’m a little afraid to admit this publicly, but more recently I’ve been thinking, okay, we probably need to start looking at having kids soon, because I am 33, my husband’s 40, so now I’m starting to get curious about what kind of behaviors, from a food and lifestyle and even work-schedule perspective, need to change so that I can start to transition into that preparation.

All of that said, food and exercise — I still care about it, it’s not like I’m saying don’t think about it and eat whatever you want. It’s the same thing as caring about brushing my teeth — I’m not obsessed about my dental health, I’m not every day checking, are my teeth white enough, are they strong enough, do they hurt — I’m not laser-focused, obsessing about my teeth, but I still brush them every day and floss relatively frequently. So the behavior of brushing my teeth is just part of my routine, because I care about my teeth, but I’m not obsessed about my teeth.

Same thing with my body — I care about it, I care about how I feel, I know how it feels is very important to the way I can walk through every single day and show up the way I want to show up, but it’s not the thing I’m focused on. So all of my health behaviors have the purpose of furthering my relationship with God and my relationship with people, so it really does become this thing where you don’t have to be thinking about it all the time. I’ll know if something’s not working — I’ll know if I don’t feel my best, I’ll know if my period’s late, if I’m feeling more tired — I’m not big into weight loss and stuff, but if my clothes start to get kind of tight, I’m like, okay, I’m probably not doing a lot of positive behaviors if I’m starting to see these changes, so I can reassess and say, okay, what have I been doing, what needs to change. Usually it’s just little tweaks here and there — even with quarantine, I’d been drinking a lot more alcohol than I would ever usually drink, just because the first couple of months you’re like, “well, I guess this is life right now, let’s just tolerate it,” and then six months later I’m like, “okay, maybe this isn’t changing anytime soon, I can’t just drink wine every night,” so making those little shifts, just because I know I want to feel my best, and there are certain behaviors, like drinking wine every night, that aren’t really contributing to my overall energy, mental clarity, ability to connect with my clients, my husband, my friends — I just make the little shift. It’s not like I’m white-knuckling, “oh my gosh, I can’t have alcohol right now,” it’s more just, “eh, it’s not really working for me, I’m going to take a break from that for a little bit.”

So I’m saying this because I know this is possible for everybody to get to this place, and part of it is letting go of the level of attention, focus, and obsession around your body, and really zooming out and saying, what actually is valuable to me — what do I want to look at when I’m 90 years old, looking back on my life, what do I want to say, “I’m so glad I put my time and energy into that” — is that your family, your career, your volunteer work, whatever it is — putting your time and energy into that, and then looking at your health and physical behaviors as being, how do I support the things that matter to me by making these choices. That’s how I’ve been looking at it for the last few years, and I find that really helps a lot of women get into that sweet spot of not just ignoring their body and saying it doesn’t matter, but also not, like a lot of women get stuck, especially with HA, where their body is the most important thing, all their free time is spent thinking about it, learning about it, implementing things at the gym, doing meal prep. It doesn’t have to be that way to actually have good results. So again, I know I tend to go all over the place with my answers, but it’s something where, honestly, as an entrepreneur this comes up too — just core values, and knowing why am I doing all of this, and really getting clear about what is the point, and then adjusting the behaviors appropriately to support the point but not to be the point.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Yeah, I like it when you meander, Laura, first of all — but no, I think this is a really helpful and important conversation. For any new listeners who aren’t as familiar with HA, hypothalamic amenorrhea, I’ll certainly make sure to include a lot of links to previous episodes that do a better job of defining and outlining it in a more structured fashion, so it’s easier to follow, but I think this conversation really helps, because it’s exactly that 50,000-foot view, where you’re really zoning in on it. I feel like it’s a really great moment in time — what are you actually doing this for, what is this about — and if you have these really clear goals that you’ve written down, like “I’m going to lose X pounds in X days,” it’s still saying, what is that for, and when you lose that number of pounds and you’re a specific number on a scale, what does that entail. I think you walked a good balance, because it’s not that we don’t care about our bodies or our weight or health, but if you’re obsessed with getting a number on a scale, what is the endgame here — because a number on a scale, if that’s really what it’s down to, I think you deserve a better goal, a bigger goal, a deeper goal. I don’t want to crap on your goals, but at the same time, if your goal is just about a number and you haven’t given thought to the bigger picture, what’s really important to you, what’s close to your heart — because that question of, if the body’s not the most important thing, what is — I mean, for me it’s my family, it’s kind of — when I think about it, it’s my life, so what makes up my life? Well, I need to be able to support myself, and for me it was really important to do something that actually aligns with my values, so that if I am spending time away from my kids — becoming a mother was a very clarifying moment for me, because my time was no longer free or widely available, because now there are literally humans that depend on me for things. It really forced me to clarify, okay, if I’m going to spend my time away from my children, what is it that I’m going to be doing. And when you said, when you look back on your life when you’re 90 years old, what do you want to feel, what would make you feel really pleased and proud of how you spent your time — I think that puts that perspective in line. So I really love that you shared that.

I’m really curious about some of your suggestions, with all of this in mind, for women who are struggling with lost periods or periods that are really sporadic — so just a quick overview, how do you talk about it?

Laura Schoenfeld: When I talk about HA, I share that it’s characterized typically by under-nutrition, over-exercise, and stress — a perfect storm to lose your period. And women are more susceptible to it, of course, if they are type-A, if they have that personality where they want everything to be perfect. But I think it’s more than that, because we are actively targeted from birth with these images through the media, of skinny, tiny, perfect people who are always smiling and always happy and have it all together — and that’s not what a human being is like. The longer you live, the more you realize that isn’t real at all. You think it’s real when you’re young — I did — but as you grow up and live your life, you realize it’s just smoke and mirrors. So, in terms of combining the emotional aspect of it — which is the biggest hurdle — with the basic aspect of what we can do — because it’s not harder to exercise less and eat more.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Yeah, and even just with the influence of the media, especially social media — I’m so glad I didn’t grow up with Instagram and stuff.

Laura Schoenfeld: Even if there’s no airbrushing, and that’s literally what the person looks like, I’ve just gotten to this place where I realize it doesn’t actually even matter — I’m not happier because I look a certain way. It’s funny, the word “vanity” comes to mind — and I’m not saying people are bad people — but vanity, it’s not just about being obsessed with yourself or narcissistic, it’s also defined as “worthless,” like doing something in vain, because it is not valuable. And this comes from scripture, talking about the pursuit of wealth and beauty and all the things we think are going to make us happy — it’s all vanity, it’s all in vain, because even if you get it, it doesn’t mean you’re going to be happy, or feel like you’ve lived the life you want to live. So whenever I see stuff like that — even though I definitely grew up with the magazines, I used to have like five different magazine subscriptions, my mom would get so mad at me because I’d stack up these Self and Women’s Health magazines and she’s like, can you throw these out — I used to look at them thinking, “oh, if only I could look like that, I’d be so much happier, people would like me more, I’d have a boyfriend” — and now when I see it I’m like, who cares, I really do not care. I like to look nice, I like to do my hair, but it really is such worthless stuff to pursue, and again it doesn’t mean I don’t buy clothes or put makeup on, I just realize it doesn’t really mean anything, so to be obsessed or worried about it is so pointless, and I don’t want to spend my life worrying about that kind of thing.

A lot of women that deal with HA are in their 20s and early 30s, and they’re still stuck in wanting to be good enough, wanting to be seen a certain way to other people. It’s either going to take a lot of time to get to the place where Lisa and I are, where we have bigger things to do than worry about what we look like, or I’m hoping this podcast will inspire you to make that journey a little quicker. Basically, understanding that even if you get there, even if you look like the Instagram model or the Sports Illustrated cover, there’s no guarantee that’s going to do anything positive for your life, and in fact it could actually make things worse. But as far as the actual factors that influence a missing or very irregular period — there are so many, when it comes to the actual biochemistry and physiology of it — I break it down into four different main silos of attention in the work I do with my HA clients. I have a protocol called the FOUR-R Protocol: Refeed, Rest, Relax, Repair. Refeed is looking at adequate food intake, adequate micronutrients — vitamins, minerals — all the things that help your body actually function normally, because even if you’re eating enough calories, it doesn’t mean you’re actually nourishing yourself. That’s one of the big issues I see in a lot of the HA world — they’re just talking about “eat more calories, eat 2500, eat 3000,” and that’s good, but if you’re eating a bunch of junk food to get there, you’re not necessarily nourishing your body, and overeating on junk food can also affect ovulation in a negative way — some people stop menstruating because they’re eating too many empty calories. So it’s not all about undereating, it’s eating an appropriate amount of high-quality food, and again, there’s room for enjoyment — you don’t have to eat liver and kale every single meal. But the refeed piece is huge, because most women with HA are either macronutrient- and calorie-deficient — and when I say macronutrient, they could be eating enough calories but maybe doing keto and too low-carb, and it’s not working for them, or maybe they’re too low-fat and can’t produce their hormones — so calorie- and macro-deficient, and/or micronutrient-deficient, which is vitamins and minerals.

The rest is — I tend to look at that partially from the exercise piece, making sure rest is built into a normal workout routine, and really cutting back if you’re overdoing it or not taking rest days — and then there’s also the actual sleep-rest piece, getting enough sleep, taking down-time when you need it, having break days, chill time — that can even be mental rest too, and actually mental rest is kind of more in the relax category. The relax is more about stress management, relaxing expectations, relaxing — not boundaries, but just how intense you are about the behaviors, being more relaxed about your approach to your body, because you can tap into your intuition and start to trust your body to tell you what it needs, but you do have to relax when it comes to the rules you have around food and fitness and your lifestyle.

And then the repair piece — that’s for anyone who doesn’t get their period back from those first three steps, which most people do. The repair piece is really looking at things like hypothyroidism, or insulin resistance, or gut infections — the things that can affect the way your body’s functioning, and a lot of times it comes down to the way your body’s absorbing nutrients, or the inflammation levels in your body — anything creating a lot of inflammation or a digestive issue can also lead to HA outside of those other three things. So those are the four silos I put my recommendations into, and I’ve found that the first three usually tend to be enough for people to get their regular period, and then the fourth one can be necessary for people dealing with a little bit more complicated health issues. So that’s kind of the 101 on amenorrhea, but that’s the protocol I’ve developed for my clients, and it works well when people are able to implement it — and again, a lot of times the implementation is a challenge when your identity is wrapped up in the old behaviors.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Yeah. I feel like HA is a very particular challenge in the sense that it’s not a mystery — there are other types of period issues that are much more challenging to treat and sort out. If someone has a significant gut problem, I’ve had a number of clients who’ve had to go to a number of practitioners because they’ll do a protocol and it’ll help initially and then start getting worse — there are other conditions that are very challenging and can take a long time to treat. HA, in many ways, is very straightforward — if there’s not enough consumption of good, healthy, wholesome calories — it’s not just about calories, but legitimately, if you starve yourself, you will not be healthy — but it represents such a big challenge. And when you were talking about the media and social media, and how you’re thankful you didn’t grow up in this time — I am too, because, to date myself, I didn’t have my first computer until I went to university, I didn’t have my first cell phone until my second year, so I wasn’t constantly attached to all my friends — if I did have mean people in school when I was younger, I left them at school, at the end of the day, and I didn’t continue to get abused throughout the night. And there’s a lot of things I would perceive to be abuse that you don’t necessarily — and it’s so interesting, because I didn’t grow up with it, I recognize that I curate my own content, and my feed is going to look a lot different than Laura’s feed — let’s pick on Instagram or Facebook — because there’s a lot of things I’m just not going to look at, a lot of people I’m just not going to follow. And the other thing is, I sometimes wonder, because there was so much I didn’t know when I was young — if you’re following a bunch of health influencers who are super skinny and perfect-looking all the time, full makeup, eyelashes, the whole thing — first of all, that’s not — no one wakes up like that, that takes time. I feel like I’m going to go into a mini tangent — when I got married I decided to do all the things one time — I got the fake nails, the fake eyelashes, I did all the things — because I was like, let me just try all the things — and the amount of money and effort and time it took for me to do all of that one time, I was amazed, because people do that all the time. When I was growing up, I wore fake eyelashes at Halloween, for fun, legit — and now I see teens wearing full makeup, contour, Kardashian-style, every day. So for anyone who isn’t aware, go to YouTube and look up contouring, watch a few videos, and then go back to your Instagram influencer friend and put this into perspective — nobody looks like that all the time. And the other thing I always bring it back to is the menstrual cycle — when you’re seeing these pictures of skinny, pretty, perfect people, you are not seeing their charts, you don’t know if they’re on the pill, you don’t know if they have a normal menstrual cycle, if they have one at all, if it’s regular, consistent — an Instagram picture doesn’t give you any insight into what’s happening. So the moral of the story is, in this day and age, with all of this information, we have to be careful who we follow, because you only know what they put up on the screen, you don’t know what’s actually going on. And that’s where I have to leave it, because I don’t want to get all preachy, but it’s true — all I can say is, when I was a little girl I didn’t know what I didn’t know, I didn’t know those women have pores, that it was airbrushing, I didn’t know that the models — even the movie stars — aren’t skinny enough, and in movies they’ll give body doubles because the movie stars aren’t even skinny enough. I didn’t know that. And so when you’re looking at Instagram influencers and following all these people trying to get this perfect body, just know that it doesn’t exist — that’s the biggest secret.

Laura Schoenfeld: Yeah, and again, who even cares — right, and maybe I’m just super flippant about it now, but this year has been very interesting for me to learn so much about media and social media, and all the ways we are being manipulated all the time to believe certain things, to want certain things, to spend our money on certain things. You were mentioning all the money and time it took to do your nails and hair and eyelashes, and unfortunately that very disproportionately affects women — men aren’t like, “I need to go get my nails done, get my eyelashes done.” And again, it’s not that we’re saying don’t wear makeup — I have makeup on right now, it took me like five to ten minutes to do — but it’s one of these things where, this year, with the nail salons closing and all that, I was kind of like, do I really need to be doing this, is this a good use of my time, is this actually a good way to spend my money and my time, and if not, then what could I be doing instead with that money and time I would be saving by not being obsessed about whether my eyelashes are long enough or something like that. And I do think this comes with age — you’re also fighting a losing battle when it comes to the way you look, because you could look amazing but you’re still going to look a little worse every month or so, because you’re going to be aging. But I feel like when you actually get a taste of what life is like when you’re focusing on the right things, you get this feeling of, why do I even care about that other stuff — it’s such nonsense, none of that ever gave me any sort of satisfaction — there’s always more to do, your hair is still not nice enough, whatever — and again, it’s that vanity thing, I don’t want to spend my time chasing stuff that either is unattainable, or even if it was attainable, so what, who cares — if I get that, then how is my life going to be better, how am I going to be positively impacted by achieving that outcome.

And I think being an entrepreneur, my time is so valuable that I don’t want to spend time doing these things that have no value — I know what I can do with my time, and it’s not putting fake eyelashes on. If you do fake eyelashes, I’m not judging you, I think they look great — but there’s so much more valuable things, and when you start to see what you’re capable of when you put your attention and energy and focus into the things that really matter, it’s almost like — why would you even want that other stuff? It’s almost like if you make this beautiful, homemade, super-high-quality dessert, and it’s amazing, and then you buy a box of Costco cookies or something, you’re like, “ew, this isn’t even good, why do I even want that.” It’s the same thing with how we spend our time — once you’ve experienced how great life can be when you’re putting your time, energy, and attention into the things that align with your values, then that other stuff is just garbage, you just don’t care about it, it really is meaningless. Doesn’t mean you never do it — I’ll eat a Costco cookie here and there — but I don’t want my life to be surrounded or focused on things that literally mean nothing. And I think the older you get, the more you realize what actually means something to you and what doesn’t. But when we have these kinds of conversations, I’m hoping that even if we’re talking to some younger women, they can have a little bit of a “come to Jesus” moment where they’re like, “oh my gosh, I’ve been spending time on stuff I don’t even care about,” and they can start to take that journey of figuring out what they actually care about and what the point of their day-to-day life is, and what they’re actually doing with their time.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Yeah, I think of it as a journey to finding yourself, in a sense, and that’s why I always take it back to the menstrual cycle — it really brings you back. I played piano growing up, so it’s like a metronome, it kind of brings you into line, whatever you want to say — but when you start to focus on yourself in a different, deeper way, then everything is different. So I think this is a great place to stop, because I feel like we can keep talking about this — I have like a hundred more questions in my head — because this topic is so juicy, with all of it. It really kind of feels like a symbol for the struggles we face in our culture, which is so hyper-focused on looks and the outward presentation — this kind of display, it’s like theater, you put on this persona and live in the world, and the social media aspect amplifies it, because not only do you have your own kind of avatar, but now you have this persona you have to maintain that isn’t real. And I feel like the older generation, who didn’t grow up with it, know it’s not real because we existed without it, and there’s that level of separation — but if you’re young and you always grew up with yourself in this persona, I would imagine it feels really real, and for someone to say it’s not real would be kind of like, “there’s no Santa Claus.”

If we think back even 50 years — don’t tell anybody that — if we think even 50 years ago, us talking to each other on a metal box made out of glass and plastic — and I forget where you’re located —

Laura Schoenfeld: North Carolina.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: — Toronto, so we’re not even in the same country right now — I was going to say, I thought you were in Canada — 50 years ago people would have been like, “that’s not real, you can’t speak” — even 20 years ago.

Laura Schoenfeld: Right, exactly. I mean, even in my own business in the last seven years, so much has changed, things are so different now — this Zoom meeting we’re having right now, kids now think this is normal, like this is school, or whatever’s going on, it’s always been this way — but it definitely was not always this way.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Yeah, and I think it’s nice to have that history — I remember when I didn’t have a smartphone until I was like 25 or something.

Laura Schoenfeld: I didn’t have access to social media on my phone until I think 2010, because that was when I got back from Australia, and I remember everyone had iPhones, and I was like, oh my god, these are amazing, because Australia was super behind on technology, so I had a push-button phone, a little brick, and I was totally happy without having social media on my phone. So I think you and I — your mom, I may be a mom in the future — I think our role — and I know, I don’t want to say “I know,” but I’m pretty confident — part of your role, and the business you’re running, is to be that light for others, to help them live in a way that is more true to themselves, more nourishing to their bodies and their minds and their spirits, and we just have to keep reminding people that that’s not real, that’s not what your life is meant for, there’s more — and I think you and I are both in a place where we can say very confidently, I’ve experienced more, and it’s way better, and I just want to help you walk this way, gently lead you to the light, because I really think it’s just going to keep getting worse, especially with the way technology is moving, and whether or not you have kids, I think it’s our responsibility to help prevent the damage that’s going to cause to the next generation. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I have kids, I might be that mom that everybody hates, where they don’t get their phones until they’re driving or something — but who knows, that’s a long way off — but I just feel like it’s our job to really show what life can be like when you are focused on the right things, and focused on the impact you’re having on the world, or even the people in your small circle — you don’t have to have a podcast, you don’t have to have a platform, to have an impact on the world around you — and I just feel like if we can turn the dial a little bit for people to start looking at that more, I really think it’s going to have a huge ripple effect for generations. That’s one of the reasons I’ve transitioned into business coaching — because I know if I can help other healthcare providers have this influence on their clients, then we can really change the way, especially women, are treating their bodies, are running their lives, are either putting tons of pressure on themselves, or realizing they don’t have to be perfect to be happy. I just get super jazzed up imagining the ripple effect. So it’s so awesome to talk to you, Lisa, I feel like we could talk forever, so I’ll stop.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: All right, well, we didn’t get into too much of the business aspect — so maybe that would be a great place to end. You can share a little bit about the work you’re doing currently, what’s really jazzing you, and how we can get in touch with you, for all the ladies who are listening who want to know more about what you do.

Laura Schoenfeld: Yeah, so right now my main program that I’m running is called the Nutrition Business Accelerator — it’s for anyone who has a business helping people with nutrition, fitness, health, that kind of thing, and wants to be able to do that more effectively and stand out in a crowded market. It’s getting way more popular to be a nutritionist online these days, and there’s a lot of stuff you have to do differently to actually be successful — internet popularity is not the same thing as having a successful, effective business. So the Nutrition Business Accelerator is the main way I do that now, and if people are interested, I don’t know when this will be coming out, so we may or may not have another round enrolling, but I do have a waitlist where you can learn more about the program itself, at laurashoenfeld.com/NBAwaitlist — I’ll share that link with you, Lisa. And then if people just go to laurashoenfeld.com, they should be able to check out some of the business-coaching stuff — it’s different than my health website, which is laurashoenfeldrd.com, where you can learn more about the health and mindset and spirituality content — we put content out on a regular basis, I have a podcast that Lisa’s been on, I have a blog, so there’s lots of really cool health-related stuff on that website, but if you’re interested in the business coaching, that’s at laurashoenfeld.com.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Yeah, I mean, when I think of the future — current craziness notwithstanding, when we’re out of this — whatever happens there — but in general, when I was thinking about the future, a lot really shifted for me when I had children, and the way I felt was like the round peg in the square hole — I felt like, because I had a job, this was something in terms of all the great work I do now that was more of something on the side, that I had never really thought could be a true business and a way for me to contribute to my family financially. But when I had children, all those plans I had of getting a good nine-to-five situation, it just didn’t work for me at the time, with children, because children don’t work on a schedule like that, and everything was very different. So I think a lot of women find themselves wanting to create a really fulfilling career because of the desire to contribute to the world, but also at the same time often really need that flexibility when you’re a mom, when you have kids and you’re trying to do all the things, because you can do a lot of work towards your business, but you can’t always do that in a structured kind of way. So I love that you’re helping business women sort this out, because that’s really what I see for the future — us really wanting that control, that creative control of what we’re doing, as well as that flexibility to fit it in in a way that makes sense for our families.

Laura Schoenfeld: Yeah, definitely — that’s been on my mind a lot this year, as far as, okay, if we are going to have kids, the way I’m running my business right now, I can’t keep doing it that way, I know I will literally crumble if I try to do it the way I was doing it before. So I had to make some tough decisions around getting rid of offers and really honing in on — it’s called an ascension model — one way to serve a client — and it’s made a huge difference, not only in the income I can make, but also the amount of time I need to spend, and the way I can hire people to get help, and all of that. And I think it’s really awesome to imagine all these women having businesses that don’t prevent them from being a fully engaged mother, but also allow them to either contribute to their family’s income or be the primary breadwinner — I’m sure my husband wouldn’t be upset for me to share that I make the most money in our relationship, so if we have kids, I’m not quitting my job, I’m not letting go of that. If I do want to be a mom, I want it to be something where I can be the best mom I can be and the best business owner I can be. And I love helping — I don’t just work with women, but I happen to attract almost all women — because I really love the concept of having all these educated, differently-thinking health experts who are then going out and changing the world, having these kinds of conversations with their clients or other practitioners, and also allowing them to have that financial and time freedom so they can be fully engaged and present in their life with their family while also running a successful business. So I’m excited — I think this year has really opened up a lot of opportunities for people to realize what’s possible, because everyone was forced online — so it’s really cool to think maybe this will be a great opportunity for women to participate equally in the workforce but also be the moms they want to be, and not have to choose between one or the other.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Yeah, and when you said “participate equally,” it made me think of my experience trying to fit into this workforce that was created for and by men, based on their circadian rhythm, and the fact that they don’t necessarily have to leave the workplace and come back when they have children — it’s not — I don’t see the future as women being equal to men, I feel the future is women standing up straight in our cyclical nature, with menstrual cycles, but also cycles of life, where you go through the phase of having children and being in this reproductive phase with littles, and then as they grow older, and all of that. So I’m not trying to be equal to a man in that traditional feminist sense, it’s more like, no, I’m just going to be a woman, and figure out what life is going to look like for me, because I’m not the same as you guys, I’ve got different responsibilities, requirements, and obviously a lot of different challenges with time. Anyways, this is, I guess for all the listeners, probably the first podcast episode ever where we’ve gone into a little bit of the business side, but I know many of you who are listening do have businesses in whatever way, shape, or form, or are mothers or planning to be mothers at some point, and are having these thoughts and thinking about it, so I’m glad we dabbled into it a little bit, and I’m sure your podcast deals with more of this, for a lot more of the business discussions and these really fun, interesting, informative conversations — definitely will link to your podcast — what is it, is it still called the Fed and Fearless podcast?

Laura Schoenfeld: It’s still called that — we’ll see if I change the name in the future. I launched it almost a year ago, it’ll be a year and a month, with the thinking that I was going to be focusing on health stuff, and then this year happened and I really switched over, and now I’m like, do people want to hear about business — so I’ll pepper it in there. I have no idea what’s happening with my blog and my podcast, but I’m still cranking out the content over there, if people want to check it out.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: All right, sounds good, Laura — well, thank you so much for joining us today, this is great.

Laura Schoenfeld: Yeah, thank you for having me, Lisa.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share with a friend — you’ll find the show notes page for today’s episode over at fertilityfriday.com/338.

I hope you enjoyed today’s episode, Laura, as much as I did — I love where we went with this podcast, and what we talked about — it’s such an interesting trend, to see how much things can change in a short period of time. When I first jumped on the scene, learning about fertility awareness and starting to teach women about it, it was nearly 20 years ago, and there was no social media — there was certainly still a lot of media influence, and I certainly remember growing up with magazines and seeing these models, and I didn’t understand airbrushing, and didn’t understand all that kind of stuff, so I remember thinking, “oh man, they just don’t have any pores,” and thinking my skin looked weird because I’m a human and I have pores, and they — I didn’t know they airbrushed their legs and stuff, so you’d see them with these little stick legs, and I was a bean pole growing up, but I would still look down at my womanly legs and think there was something different about me, because I didn’t have these totally stick legs like the women on the magazine covers, and I didn’t know they were, in some cases, fully erasing part of the leg before they put them on the cover. I know that now, and I understand airbrushing and all that kind of stuff, but obviously I didn’t understand that as a young woman. In today’s world, it’s so, so different, with media influences, and I don’t know that everybody realizes that — maybe they do — but I don’t know if really young people, teenagers, realize how much of an influence the people they follow can be. One way I think about that is how different people’s feeds could be — when I was growing up, you didn’t have media tailored to you, you just had the same media everybody else had — whatever was on TV was what was on TV — certainly you could cultivate a different approach, but it wasn’t as customizable. But now, if you look at your social media feeds, one person could be getting one completely different set of information than another, literally just based on the people they follow. So you can think about that from a dietary perspective — if you follow a certain type of diet, and you follow 10 or 20 people who specifically and exclusively talk about that particular type of diet, then you’re getting one very specific set of information, and you’re not getting a different type of information. If you follow a certain type of exercise or fitness strategy, you could be following 10, 20, 30 people who specifically follow that particular exercise strategy, and you’re not following people who aren’t doing that. I just wonder if people realize how specific their experience can be on social media, based on their preferences, and how you can get a very narrow view of something, because you could really be looking at one perspective to the exclusion of all else.

So I just say that because I often think about that as very interesting — particularly if you have challenges with your mindset around eating, but everyone you follow is really, really skinny, super fitness, and kind of promoting a certain way of thinking about things — you may or may not realize how that could be affecting you. So in today’s day and age, sometimes when you’re struggling with certain things, or you’re wanting to make a change, sometimes one of the first things you’ve got to do is either totally ditch the technology altogether — which is less practical — or sometimes one of the first aspects of your strategy is actually to unfollow people, or mute people, or even just get rid of certain people. But sometimes when you’re trying to make a change and do something a little bit differently, it’s important to actually think about who you’re following, and be a little bit selective — and certainly if there are people you follow who make you feel bad about yourself, people who always look perfect, perfect makeup, whatever it is, even just their messaging — it’s okay to unfollow or mute or whatever you need to do, so that you can really cultivate that mindset. Because I’m not sure how aware people are of how tailored their feeds are to them — if you had my feed for a week, you would be seeing a lot of different stuff than if you had someone else’s feed — take 10 different people’s social media feeds, and just based on their own interests and where they’re at in their life, you could have 10 totally different experiences, and I often wonder if people take a moment to reflect on how much that kind of stuff can affect their choices. So anyways, that’s one little part of what we talked about today, but certainly a fascinating aspect of it, and I hope you got as much out of our conversation as I did. I want to thank everybody for tuning in to the show, and of course for supporting Fertility Friday — I see all of you tagging me on social media, sharing episodes with your friends, and I hear so much great feedback — “my doctor referred me to you,” “my healthcare provider referred me to your book,” “my sister told me about your podcast” — and I really, really do appreciate all of you as part of the Fertility Friday community, sharing and shouting from the rooftops about fertility awareness — that’s really how we’re going to raise awareness and change the world, in my opinion. It’s literally just about getting started and doing things — it’s not about waiting for the government or waiting for our education system to think it’s important — it’s just about us, as women, as people who are concerned about the menstrual cycle, and want to gain that power and control over our own bodies, to just keep spreading the word. So thank you so much for being a part of that, and of course, as always, until next time — be well and happy charting.