#422: Dr. Alex Golden (M.D.) and Megan Blacksmith (Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner) talk the “4 bodies,” fundamentals of their Habit Transformation Accelerator, checklist quicksand, pizza, and shared joy.
Come to the 2-day in-person Habit Transformation Accelerator on August 23-24, 2023!
Tap here for info on the Habit Transformation Accelerator
Balanced Bites Podcast #422 with Dr. Alex Golden & Megan Blacksmith
Welcome to the new Balanced Bites Podcast! I’m your host, Liz, a nutritional therapy practitioner and best selling author bringing you candid, up-front, myth-busting and thought-provoking conversations about food, fitness, and life. Remember: The information in this podcast should not be considered personal, individual, or medical advice.
I have spent YEARS researching whether a good multivitamin is truly necessary for overall health. But the truth is, there are a LOT of opinions out there, including from people like me, who love to ask lots of obnoxious, overly detailed questions. But the truth is, if I’m paying attention to how I FEEL, my answer was clear: I will be taking my multivitamin. And it will be from the brand Needed. Needed third-party tests EVERY batch for performance and quality, which is incredibly rare in the supplement industry and also incredibly important to me! To get started with Needed, head to thisisneeded.com. Use code balanced for 20% off your one-time order or your first three months’ subscription. While you’re at it, add Stress Support to your cart. I’m loving that one, too.
Now about today’s episode, Megan and Dr. Alex are the co-founders of zesty ginger. A company founded on the principles of compassionate transformation, where they help women restore optimal health through a combination of functional medicine. Mindset and subconscious reprogramming. So Megan blacksmith as a holistic health coach and a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner, she was also a speaker and a mindset ninja. And Dr. Alex is a university of Chicago trained M D.
Anesthesiologist and interventional pain doctor. So, wow. Right. Zesty Ginger’s framework has gotten such amazing results with clients that they’re now teaching that framework to practitioners and they host in-person practitioner certification trainings, as well as mastermind events for people in the holistic health space, like health coaches, doctors, nutritionists.
Dieticians and natural paths. They also, which we talk about today, have an awesome two day in-person event coming up in August. It’s called the habit transformation accelerator event and it’s on August 23rd and 24th, 2023. And I have heard and seen nothing but amazing things about this event. And we’re going to give away a ticket to our Instagram communities.
As we talk about later in the podcast.
If, what you hear on the podcast from Megan and Alex, isn’t enough for you and you need to learn more about what the habit transformation accelerator is. You can just go to the podcast episode description in your podcast player and tap on the link that I popped in there to learn a little bit more about it.
This is about people with clients, people who identify as thought leaders. If you want to feel more motivated, if you want to become more flexible and less reactive, confident. Make an impact in the world have time freedom, but you’re just not really sure how to do all those things. And I know all of those things sound like different things, but those things all work together to create a person that is more confident, more impactful, and more effective in their life and in the world.
And that’s what we all want. Right. So you can go to the link in the podcast player that I placed in there for you to learn more about the habit transformation accelerator. And also we’re doing a giveaway.
So here’s what you need to do to be entered for a chance to win a ticket to the habit transformation accelerator. As you are listening to this podcast and you can do it right now, screenshot, or do a screen grab of your podcast player and post that screenshot or screen grab to your Instagram stories. Sorry, I don’t do tick-tock. So we got to do Instagram.
And tag, add zesty ginger and add balanced bites podcast. And even while you’re at it, you can tag out real food. Liz, if you like.
And you can post that to your stories or to your Instagram feed. Either one. It doesn’t matter. With a caption about why you listen or why you’re excited about the habit transformation accelerator, and you’ll be entered to win a ticket. This giveaway will close two weeks from this podcast airing. So July 17th, 2023, it will close.
And if you missed it, you can still get 50 bucks off your ticket. By going to the podcast description, tapping on the link to the habit, transformation accelerator, and using code. Liz. Now. Don’t enter this giveaway. Don’t buy your ticket unless you can be. In Dallas on August 23rd and 24th, 2023. This is not an online event. It is an in-person event in August, August 23rd and 24th, 2023.
In Dallas. All right. Let’s get to my interview with Megan and Alex from zesty ginger.
Liz: By the way, have, have we all met in person at
Dr. Alex: some point? Alex, you have, right?
Dr. Alex: Yes. You and I met in Chicago at a Barnes and Noble book signing. Okay. You and Diane came with your book. Is that
Liz: when I was pregnant? Like
Dr. Alex: I was just pregnant? You this, I think this was before you were even pregnant. This was a long time ago. Like, I’m trying to think. I wanna say like eight years ago, nine that I, that’s when I pregnant for the first time.
Dr. Alex: 1111. When, when did eat the Yokes first come out? 2014. Then it was like that year.
Liz: So I was like very newly pregnant and I feel like I told a couple people in because wasn’t Caitlyn, um, wasn’t Caitlyn there promoting um,
Dr. Alex: Mediterranean Paleo? She was, yeah. Yes. Maybe I just missed that part. Maybe you said it and I um,
Liz: oh, I think it was at the very beginning cuz I hadn’t really told anybody then, but then I was like, I probably look extremely bloated and people are gonna [00:01:00] be like, why, why do you have gut issues?
Dr. Alex: And just cause people are just used to Yeah, I know. Exactly. Um, totally.
Megan: What was so cool about this is I was saying to Alex is like, this was, I listened to the podcast like way, way back in the beginning. Mm-hmm. I was still in an engineer, like I hadn’t even switched business. So I’m like, it’s such a cool, like full circle all the way back to I know, right?
Megan: It was the, the only podcast I, I listened every lunch while I walked down to get my lunch and I’d listened, like building the business on the side to becoming a health coach. And so it was just so cool.
Liz: That is so cool. I was talking to, uh, Danielle Hamilton about that too, cuz she used to listen to balanced Bites.
Liz: Mm-hmm. Back in the day and just thinking, Like there this, there’s two sides to it because there’s, in one way I don’t think we really knew what we had. Well, Diane probably knew what we had because she’s a business woman and she’s great with that. But I was, I was just showing up every day for eight year, or not every day, but every week almost for eight years.
Liz: Like, this is fun. Mm-hmm. Having no idea, like how we got in at such a good time and what a loyal mm-hmm. Awesome. Like audience that we had, and then I went away for a while. And so like in some ways it’s like, d why did we let it go? And then in other ways it’s like, well, this was absolutely the most authentic, genuine thing.
Liz: Yeah, we could have been doing it because we would’ve done it even if nobody was listening. So, mm-hmm.
Dr. Alex: Just a good, good memory. We can relate to that too. There’s some things where, you know, when, when done out of like sheer numbers or something like that would look one way and then how life unfolds looks a different way.
Dr. Alex: But it does always seem to connect eventually in the middle. So the that, um, it’s so true and it’s been really fun to see you guys do the other stuff, honestly, like from, from watching out and then seeing the story unfold it like from the other side is really cool in that perspective because it’s like, it’s just a good role modeling.
Dr. Alex: Yes. So I, and
Liz: I think Megan, I think you had a reel on your Instagram at some point in the last couple weeks or months, and it was like, we take breaks. Like taking a break is like an intentional break is not necessarily for a day, maybe for a week, maybe for even longer. I can’t remember exactly what you said, but when I saw that, I was like, I took a break for two years, so I get like extra break points.
Dr. Alex: Really good job. I, I mean, yeah, like when I was going through like the, the main part of my divorce, there was a lot of time away from business, but it was just like, well, shit, my life’s falling apart. You know, like, I don’t know, sometimes life happens and it, it’s not the end of the world either, right. So I, I like that.
Dr. Alex: I love, I love that conversation in general. Cause I think most people are like most scared of it, but here we are and all three of us have done it at one point or another. So, Mean, when
Megan: I met Alex, I was, and we were talking about working together. I was like, I am all in. I said the one, my one goal in life though is to have summers off of my kids.
Megan: And luckily I have just such an amazing business partner and just, we’ve really been on the same page about that, making that kind of thing mm-hmm. A priority. And we’ve, yep.
Dr. Alex: Now it’s a real thing. It’s like a no no questions asked. Um, Megan takes that time. I do the calls during that time, we switch off.
Dr. Alex: It’s totally, you know, it works for us. And, and that’s a lot of what we’re talking about these days. You know, I think most people don’t stick in the business for that long. Um, and so getting that perspective I think is really helpful for, for folks.
Liz: Okay. Well, maybe I should back out and say I hate to make people introduce themselves, but there’s so much here.
Liz: I mean, I’ve listened to you guys on podcasts and I’ve been following you all forever, so I know, but just on the assumption that other people might be plugging into this and hearing from you all, you know, for the first time, probably not everybody probably knows who you’re, but I would like first, what I would like you to do is maybe give me a little bit of a personal introduction for both of you, and then also I’d love to talk about the business, how you all linked up and not just what you’re, I mean, you’re doing D something very different, maybe not very different.
Liz: What you’re doing now is sort of a logical progression for, from health oriented stuff to that broader picture of what actually informs health and what the actual inputs to overall wellbeing are. But you’re also doing business counsel, is it counseling, coaching, what would you call it? Mastermind. Work as well.
Liz: So if you could give me a timeline of that and how you evolved. If only for my own curiosity, because it’s so interesting to me knowing what you all were doing back in the day and what you’re doing now. So maybe start with the personal intros and then let’s move into the, the health mindset and business
Megan: stuff.
Megan: Sure. Okay. I will start. This is Megan. So we got into, separately, we got into health and holistic health and functional medicine on our own, which is why most of us end up here with the health crash, the health, the personal health concern. So I like to say I fell off the. Postpartum hormone cliff after having my first child and was like, what, what is happening to my body?
Megan: Conventional lab work says I’m good to go. I feel horrific. I was having panic anxiety attacks on the floor and just nothing felt good or right, or I just was like, if this is how it is to have a baby, there’s no, there’s no way, because I, I know women out there who have more than one and I would never have another one.
Megan: So that, that started the path to actually find. Holistic health, functional medicine, and then it, it transformed, like you said, Liz, it started with food and then it moved to like, oh, what you put on your skin matters, right? Your skincare matters. And then it’s like, and then that kind of moved into like, oh, actually what we’re thinking matters and what we’re saying to ourselves matters and the energy of the people around us, and then the environment matters.
Megan: So it just kind of kept expanding. And as I was expanding and we were expanding as a business, we were helping women specifically hormone health, brain health, very focused in on that. We started to see really common patterns and we feel like we kind of took the hard path. On all of our own journeys. And so in the process we learned all the things, all the tips and tricks of, oh gosh, I really wish I had had this.
Megan: And it was the patterns. For example, uh, when I was experiencing in our home, we, we bought a home that had mold in it. And I was really trying to recover from the, the mold that was in my body and in our home and working through that. And so there was like this functional medicine approach of like understanding what’s going on in the body and getting it out of the body and getting in my sauna and all the actual physical things.
Megan: And those seemed to take me like 80% of the way there. But on paper they were like all the best things. I was doing all the things and I had access to all the best providers and the functional ones. So, This was a pattern that we were seeing not only in ourselves, but in other people. The people we’d been now working with for 7, 8, 9 years who on paper of just the most clean, amazing diet ever.
Megan: Right. Better than anything I would ever do. And, and just the same problems coming back five years later, seven years later, and we’re like, okay, there’s, there’s something. There’s something to this, and I think naturally, I really, really love digging in with people. Like, I like to go deep really fast and so does Dr.
Megan: Alex is just kind of a, a thing that we do without really having a specific skill around it. And we would get to an understanding of like these common themes where people would be, for example, when I was moving into the home that had the mold and I couldn’t get the mold outta my body, I was really having an existential crisis of, this was the first time my husband and I had actually purchased a home, which was like locking in this relationship even though we were married, but we had been having, I share it really openly on the podcast that, um, That, you know, he was unfaithful for a little while and we had just gone through that the year before.
Megan: So I was panicking internally of like, oh my God is, are we really in a good place? Is this gonna be okay? So the buying a home, it wasn’t really about a physical mold or thing in my body. We actually manifested at a situation where we couldn’t even move in. We couldn’t even move in for six months cause we were all experiencing these symptoms.
Megan: And as crazy and out there as sometimes it would sound that it was lined up, we kept finding that happening with other people, right? They’re like, oh, it was the job that they absolutely hated, that they weren’t letting themselves get out of, or the relationship that they knew wasn’t for them. The stressors, the things that weren’t really just in the physical body, wasn’t really just physical health and.
Megan: Kept coming down to like the belief that they were able to heal, felt like they were worthy of healing. And we were realizing that the common thread and beliefs were in all these people who just couldn’t get better, including ourselves. And that’s what kind of led us down a path of where we are operating now, where we’re really working to add tools, uh, in for practitioners and coaches that they can work with the subconscious mind, they can work with rewiring and rewriting these beliefs so that then the physical body can just do its thing.
[00:10:30] Megan: And that was what ended up happening with my mold journey. I finally discovered that there was actually just a fear around my relationship. There was actually just a fear around moving into that home and what that meant and how that was forever. And, and, and working through that fear and working through the forgiveness, that’s when the mold and the symptoms moved from my body.
Megan: And I didn’t change my supplements, didn’t change my sauna. I didn’t do more harder, which is what we were always told to do, is like, well, if you do this and it works, then you’ll do that harder and it’ll work better. Right? So yeah. It was so freeing though, Liz, right? It was like, oh, there is actually, and now we’re all about transforming faster because we’re like, yes, we love all the physical body things.
Megan: We’re gonna do them forever. We just also want people to have the tools to figure out why they may even be stopping
Liz: themselves. Such a common theme that, mm-hmm. In so many of my podcasts too right now, are integrative practitioners who have realized that the solution is not, do some do X, y, Z harder or do it more, or you’re not doing it right.
Liz: It’s like there’s so, so much more involved and it has taken, I feel like this decade, I’ve been doing this for what, a decade, and I’ve said those things, but I don’t know how much I really believed those things or how much I really, I. Put those that put that knowledge into practice for myself or for other people.
Liz: And it’s just funny. You can know something and you can say it, but that’s an entirely different thing from actually making it a reality in your life.
Dr. Alex: Absolutely. And and we believe that so much that a lot of what we create is frameworks and ways of thinking to help people move themselves from where they are to where they wanna be, as decided by them and as directed by them, based on what feels good.
Dr. Alex: And when you think about overall concepts like this, like holistic, even something like a holistic practitioner, the holistic portion has a part of it where you’re like, In some sense, what does that mean? Right? It’s, it’s not that clear. And that’s where we think the lack of clarity around some of these topics is often the sticking point.
Dr. Alex: Cuz if you don’t know what you’re dealing with, it’s hard to appropriately find resources that match whatever it is that you are needing. And resources are a big deal for us because to us, success is defined by the presence of having the resources to deal with whatever you’re needing to deal with, right?
Dr. Alex: So if you don’t know where to look or how to look or what you’re even looking for, the whole experience gets really dicey really, really fast. So I, I think what you’re saying is really accurate and that’s where frameworks like when we talk about the four bodies, the physical body’s just one of them, but mental, emotional, and energetic or spiritual, Is a framework that can be used to unpack situations when you consider the four different bodies.
Dr. Alex: And the way that you as a unique person, as a unique being is expressing themselves through the four bodies available to you. So all of these things we, we, and obviously we’ll dig into it more as we go along, but it’s so true. It’s until we create a better dialogue, which yay for us, we’re doing that right, right this second until we create a better dialogue and then we create more holistic language around these things, then oftentimes people continue to have a hard time getting what they’re really after.
Dr. Alex: So, So, um, th those kind of things are so true out in the world and we love the trajectory of where things are going and that’s why at this point we feel, we feel that we’re at a big inflection point, and that’s why we’re, we’re going all in, right? That this discussion, people are ready for this discussion and it’s just time to do it.
Dr. Alex: So, very, very fun. It’s a fun time to be, um, in leadership and helping people and making an impact in the world cuz the, the need is great and the opportunity is even greater. So that’s cool. I love it. But in terms of my, my story, uh, to get, if Megan’s postpartum crash was her kind of big inflection point, mine was, um, being told at 27 that I was going into menopause and that I had six months to try to do I v F and then that would be it.
Dr. Alex: Now me, in the meantime, I had, I, I grew up as a relative, relatively normal kid, whatever that means. Um, I don’t know if you’ve met me, you think I was particularly normal, but whatever, um, healthy, normal, fun, whatever. Um, but I did have the tendency to wanna be a good kid. And so from what I know now from the perspective, a lot of what was happening at the time was I was going along, figuring out how to play by the rules of, uh, life.
Dr. Alex: And then I was. Also experiencing some of my own authenticity of, I don’t, I don’t like all of this. This isn’t really who I am or works for me. And it came to a little bit of a head when I got my period. I started having symptoms back then. Uh, but I was told that that’s what it’s like being a woman. And that’s what it’s like having a period and you take your ibuprofen and you get your big old maxi pad and you go on your way.
Dr. Alex: Right. And, and it was confirmed throughout teenagehood and when I see the tampon commercials and there’s like the lady playing tennis and the lady in the suit doing, I’m eating and like, you know, all this stuff and running through the field, so happy. Yes. Yeah. Totally. Totally. And, and I’m like, got it.
Dr. Alex: Okay. The, the message is congruent. Pretend like it’s not happening. And, and so I was denying significant pain in my body. And by the time I was, uh, 18 years old, I started having chronic pelvic pain. And within a short period of time after that, it became chronic, uh, widespread pain all over my body, uh, including it got so bad I couldn’t let clothes touch my skin.
Dr. Alex: It was hard to sit, which is a problem when you’re a piano major in college. And, uh, generally life got really, really rocky. This is where I and did the, um, I will just do everything that’s considered to be a good girl more and harder. So I, we, we call this, um, the checklist quicksand. This is when you create checklist checklists for yourself based off expectations, and then you go through checking them off.
Dr. Alex: So I basically did that and the whole time, um, I had a lot of chronic pain and, and dysfunction and I was seeing a lot of doctors and practitioners and the whole nine yards. And at some point, you know, I saw like 20 or 30 or something and I decided to switch and go to med school instead and become a, a pain doctor myself, which I’ll cut to the chase.
Dr. Alex: There I am. I’m an interventional pain doc and an anesthesiologist by training. Um, and I started that process, um, after I went to college for piano. And uh, so I started on that path and it was in residency that. All of that came to a head and after seeing doctor, after doctor saying, telling her, I’m fine, you’re fine.
Dr. Alex: Your labs are fine. We’re not saying anything. You’re a young woman. Everything’s fine. I go in and the reproductive and acknowledges like, no, shoot. You know, the, you’ve had un undiagnosed endometriosis. You’ve sustained a lot of damage to all of your pelvic organs. Let’s do this whole I V F thing. So obviously that was a huge inflection point.
Dr. Alex: And the checklist quicksand basically crumbled. Like I got stuck on the checkbox. That was get baby. Um, the, the next one after that was like, live happily ever after, right? Like I did. I didn’t have anything after that. So I suppose it’s a good thing I got stuck on that one. Uh, So, uh, I, I did do that. I did, I had multiple, multiple surgeries.
Dr. Alex: I did multiple rounds of I V F, uh, egg retrievals, the whole nine yards. And at that point, because the checklist crumbled, I then began to get more of an invitation from life to live more authentically. And I started seeing how much functional medicine and holistic medicine practices and supplements and herbs were helping, and how there were so many ways of modulating the body, like acupuncture and chiropractic care and sauna, and all the, uh, detox tools and all of those things really were very empowering because I went from asking for help and being like something’s wrong and then being gaslit for it to having options.
Dr. Alex: And that was really, really important. So at that point, Megan and I were, were already working together. And we were, we were applying all of that and things were going well, but I still had chronic pain. So hor hormonally, I got better. But chronic pain still persisted, and that’s the second flection point of once I was able to go from walking around with a brain that was hardwired for chronic pain and sending the signal all the time to then learning about how much the brain can be rewired and remodeled, and the fact that it is so neuroplastic that it is either being changed or being maintained daily.
Dr. Alex: I then realized that I could modulate any experience that I wanted to have. So within a year of us learning and implementing these things, such as subconscious reprogramming, emotional processing, unpacking trauma, addressing beliefs, Looking at habitual emotions, looking at habitual mental gremlins.
Dr. Alex: That’s what we call thoughts that don’t serve you. Don’t get them wet. We have resources. Resources for that. All of these things I realized then set the signal for my brain, whether it was looking at my life as a threat, everything in my life was a threat, including the clothes, touching my skin, to actually saying, what do I want life to look like and who do I wanna be?
Dr. Alex: And walking myself through the transformation of someone completely disempowered and in pain all the time to reclaiming my body, getting to wear anything I wanted, getting sit to sit whenever I wanted, or however I wanted for how long I wanted right to have sex again without pain. These things. Showed me how much power is in greater things than things like supplements, right?
Dr. Alex: Or things like lab testing. And like Megan was saying, we love those things. Those things are very important, but they’re not at all the bigger picture at play here, right? Because as I then reclaimed my own body, I looked around and from the springboard of good health, I looked around and I said, dang, I’ve really been on maintenance mode on me, and I really haven’t been paying much attention to this whole checklist and why I chose it, who I chose it for, how it made me feel, what my soul wanted, like what my heart was asking me for the experiences that I craved.
Dr. Alex: Those things then stood out and it became so obvious that I had do, been doing things that were good for my body, but terrible for. My soul and that I had been in the habit of placing myself in environments as that good girl image that internally gaslit the rest of me. And so then I realized, holy cow.
Dr. Alex: No wonder though, all those doctor visits felt so bad I was doing it to me and being able to rewire that, to reclaim the full experience, to be able to have resources to deal with mental gremlins that we all deal with anyways, then really solidified this transformation. And we realized how fast we could go.
Dr. Alex: I had spent a long time sick, 20 years. And very rapidly. I went from healing, chronic pain, healing the endometriosis, and actually I can eat gluten again even though I have a celiac diagnosis. Have congratulations. Thank you. I also use the subconscious reprogramming tools that we certify people for to turn back on the enzyme.
Dr. Alex: Um, so really amazing stuff and it just got faster and faster and faster. And so together that’s what created, we have our seven steps for transformation. It’s a seven step process that people go through again and again and again when, whenever they’re transforming. What I said about the four bodies is true here too.
Dr. Alex: When you don’t understand what the steps started changing. How to move yourself successfully through the steps. It gets really murky. You know, when you’re down, it starts to feel like all hope is lost. But if you’re like, I’m stuck on step four outta seven, that is a drastically different thought. That has a different feeling in the body.
Dr. Alex: Can I mm-hmm.
Liz: Pop in with a quick question on there when you see Absolutely. When, when you say changing, are you mostly talking about physical or emotional, or all of the
Dr. Alex: above? I would say all of the above. So most people set a goal in one of them, so they wanna heal their body or they wanna speak more kindly to themselves as mental.
Dr. Alex: But the thing is that they all bleed into each other. So you. The awareness starts in one, but you resource all four across the board because all of you then changes in in a the whole way. Right. All of you comes together to become the new identity. If the wholeness isn’t encouraged and supported through the process, people do it for a while and then fall off the bandwagon.
Dr. Alex: I see. Got it. Yeah. But really when we talk about transformation, it can be anything. It can be transformation of how you eat, transformation of some sort of result. I wanna move to the city. I wanna get a new job. I wanna start a coaching business. I wanna get NLP certified. I wanna make my own hypnosis next week.
Dr. Alex: It doesn’t matter if you are doing something new, you become the identity of the person who does it, and that precedes the actions that. Lead to it. And so having an understandable and repeatable framework to do that takes away a lot of the uncertainty, the fear, and the questions that people have along the way.
Dr. Alex: Okay. I have one more question.
Liz: You said you were doing things that were good for your body. Well, I have a lot more questions, but this is my question right now. Ok. You said you were doing things that were good for your body, but terrible for your soul. Mm-hmm. And
Dr. Alex: the, the
Liz: thought that flashed into my mind was the mindset around the same action can determine whether that action is terrible for your soul or good for your soul.
Liz: And I wanted to know if that’s sort of where you were going with that. And maybe I should expand a little bit more. I, I think a lot of folks who are working really diligently on their health, Can either bring a very fearful, terrified, negative mindset to the action of, for example, eating really healthy and enjoying healthy food.
Liz: Or they can come to it with the mindset of, I get to eat these glorious foods. I get to learn how to cook ’em. I’m so excited about this opportunity here. And those things, the, the, those two different ways of looking at the same thing can radically change how that thing folds into your life and what it does to you.
Liz: Is that what you were referring to?
Dr. Alex: That can be one way of it getting expressed. Yes. Because I mean, it can go deep to be honest, even when, as big as the partnership, the marriage that I had. Right. So it can be that too, whether some really amazing, beautiful, wonderful human just not aligned for me, per se.
Dr. Alex: Right. So that level, or like Megan said, the job. So it can be big categories of life like that, that are not aligned for us. Um, because you can have a partner who takes you to your doctor’s appointments and helps you get the supplements and do the things that for your body, but are they aligned for your soul and your life to be in partnership together forever until the day you die?
Dr. Alex: Like that’s a very, very different question. Mm-hmm. That leads to a different answer. But yes, with food, I think that’s one of the best examples cuz there’s so many layers of food. For one, yes, we can do reframes like that of I get to cook this way, I get to eat this food. That part though, we’ll argue, always need to, needs to be tempered with an awareness of the emotional body, because that’s how you can sometimes get, get into a little toxic positivity, right?
Dr. Alex: Where it’s like, well, just think positive. But here’s what happens. You’re in the kitchen being like, I get to cook all this great food. And you went shopping, you got all organic, and you’re scrubbing the potatoes, and then you hear your kids and [00:29:00] your husband playing in the, in the living room, and they’re all laughing and they’re giggling and they’re having a great time without you.
Dr. Alex: Yeah. Right? So it’s like your brain is perceiving all of that and what it, it knows that it is this good food is of value, but what’s the higher value? The connection with the people that you love most on this planet or the food that you have in front of you. Most people will choose the humans. Because they’re more important to them.
Dr. Alex: So it’s like a values statement. And most people do live out their needs and values pretty close. You know, you, you’ll, you’ll meet your needs before the values, but when the choice is there, people will meet their values in the order that they are a priority for them. Mm-hmm. So that’s why you can either force yourself to stand there and feel like you’re missing out on the love that you want or you know, you can just start to modify the experience.
Dr. Alex: But if you don’t ask the question or actually even be authentic and have the courage to be like, I actually hate this and I care enough about my experience in life, that I will not stand here and be miserable. That’s what we’re talking about. Yeah. Because your brain, because it perceives everything. Your greatest desires, the things that you worry about, the things that are obstacles for you, wherever you struggle.
Dr. Alex: It knows all of that. So when it comes to healing, the brain has to accept that your life and your environment and everything about that matches up with healing. And if it’s time to be in fight or flight, cuz you’re chased by the metaphorical bear, it won’t do that. Right? And so we have to ask, yes, I can cook this food and miss out on the love, but then what is the signal that my brain’s getting?
Dr. Alex: Cuz if I’m gonna stew on this and beat myself up and hate the diet and hate the provider that suggested it and loop it over in my head again and again and again over all that, and outcompete the benefits that you can absorb in your food, not least of which is because your brain tells your gut how much, when, and what to absorb.
Dr. Alex: So because you’re, you are interfacing with the system that tells the body what to do. It absolutely matters then how you do it. And it’s a very
Liz: different thing. So the two decisions that were, that were sitting in my mind as you were speaking, were, okay. So what would a person do then if they kind of got what you were saying, but not completely?
Liz: It would be
Dr. Alex: like, oh,
Liz: well, instead of just saying, fuck it, I’m going to the living room and we’re ordering pizza. Yeah. Maybe the detour, that checklist oriented detour would be, okay, well now I, I just need to get my family involved in cooking. Like, we need to all do it together and we need all love, healthy food together.
Dr. Alex: Germinate and grow in multiple other people. Mm-hmm. And that actually ends up like from personal experience making everybody miserable. So it’s like shared misery or like, Pizza and shared joy.
Liz: So I’m like leaning toward the pizza and shared joy right now.
Dr. Alex: It’s so true. Megan and I have an ongoing, uh, saying that we say totally is a joke, but it plays out in reality so much. But it’s basically like, if you would be different, I’d be happier. Right? And, and that’s the attitude that a lot of people, they’re like, well, my partner just doesn’t get stressed enough going to the airport.
Dr. Alex: What if we’re late? He needs to get stressed. And it’s like, well, actually you’re just asking both people to be stressed when maybe the option could be. No one needs to be stressed per se, right? So oftentimes we want our loved ones to come with us and our stuff. And, um, having resources protects the people around.
Dr. Alex: It lets us love on people for who they are and to just experience joy and love with them instead of trying to change them or trying to make them different than the person you love to begin with. So, yeah, really a really good point. And there’s, there’s so much more to it with the pizza too, right? Like, because if the pizza and the giggling and all the snuggling feed your soul, then at that point, It allows you to have a springboard that’s a little more solid for the next choice you make.
[00:33:36] Dr. Alex: So from that place, now what do you do? Most people actually then find it easier to do the things that they think is good for them because it’s like, I am, I did that because I cared about myself. So now I get to go here and say, well, I’m gonna eat to order the salad cuz I care about myself. Oh, then it’s back to pizza cuz I love myself.
Dr. Alex: Right? And so you are then navigating life experiences as they get teed up for you and feeling like you’re resourced to handle them. And that’s what people like, that’s what people call empowerment. It’s not the lack of problems in your life, it’s the ability to deal with what comes up. Mm. Liz, I
Megan: feel like between Alex and I were re renegotiating all the time, right?
Megan: Mm-hmm. So it’s that. The old rules. So we have found that the people who came to us and we were those people, it was like the better they were at following a plan. Like the people who would say, Hey, mm-hmm. Just write. Write anything you want me to eat in any order, and I’ll like stand on my head and while I do it, and then I’ll let lift one weight with the other arm like this.
Megan: They would come and they would be like, I don’t care why, but whatever. You just tell me exactly what to do. Seemed great.
Dr. Alex: As a practitioner, they were lovely. Cause compliance. Yeah, super
Megan: compliant. Like, oh, this will work great. Guess what didn’t work? That didn’t work. It seemed. The pattern, would it be the better that someone was at really following the, the checklist and the plan, the better they were also at completely overriding their own needs, completely overriding their desires, their intuition, and there was no negotiation because they didn’t trust themselves enough.
Megan: Totally. This was me as well. So I’m speaking, I’m here with you if this is you raising your hand. Just didn’t trust myself enough to believe that I could make a decision in any moment. So if I didn’t have this cut and dry, like, well I don’t eat sugar, then I didn’t trust that I could decide on a Tuesday that, yeah, I would.
Megan: And on a Wednesday, no I wouldn’t. And then the rules themselves put, put the little box around me and made me feel safe in a way. Cuz now there’s rules. Every part of me wants to push against the rules, just like the kids, right? There’s a boundary there, like, oh, I wanna push up against that. I wanna, is, you know, feeling a little resistance or feeling like I’ve, um, you know, just feeling that deprivation immediately.
Megan: We, we wanna go for it, right? And all that’s happening in the brain chemistry and the hormones because of that. So that’s perception of, I’m not allowed to just even the words. So we’re, you know, should I eat the pi pizza? I shouldn’t eat the pizza. The words we’re listening to will tell us whether someone’s in that mindset of like, there are rules or around this and someone needs to tell me if it’s right or it’s not right.
Megan: And when we hear the shoulds, coulds have to, can’t, that’s when we know they’ve gotten themselves into the either or, it’s like black or it’s white, right? There’s no room for the, the, and, and they will just continue to find a new box. And continue to find more deprivation. And that was the pattern that we would see above all.
Megan: So it wasn’t really what they were eating. I know lots of people who, someone in my family, my dad, who just doesn’t really care or pay attention to what he eats all that much. And he is so connected to humans and he has such a mission on this earth with what he does. And he just goes for it. And the guy just keeps going and going and going.
Megan: It’s almost,
he,
Dr. Alex: he became like a state congressman, state
Megan: representative in his late thirties. State representative. Yeah. Like doing new things. He was in a play in his late seventies for the first time ever. You know, you just, you, you see this. And if I were to say like. People who pay attention to food are healthy.
Megan: People who don’t, are not, then he would be an outlier. But more and more it’s like the connection to the humans. Other humans, it’s the connection to a, a, a mission in life, or a drive or a purpose, and he has it. So we’re always trying to get people to really look at, cool, make any decision you want, eat the thing, or don’t eat the thing.
Megan: But what’s behind the decision? And like, yeah, knowing they can renegotiate every single meal today, I’m gonna do that tomorrow. I’m not, today I’m gonna just throw the, the dishes down and go play with the kids. And like Alex said, tomorrow I’m, you know, okay, I have my energy, I got that fulfillment. And now I re now the biggest point of connection with them is cooking them to this delicious homemade meal, because that will be my connection with them.
Megan: That will fulfill me. I feel really good
Dr. Alex: about that. People find it really triggering sometimes to hear that cuz people are like, oh, how are you? Health, health? You know, people like an MD who, who are telling people it’s okay to eat pizza. Right? But our point is that whether we say that or not, people are still doing it.
Dr. Alex: Right. There might be some people who are really good at holding out, and Megan’s absolutely right. Those people are amazing at breaking their own heart to appease others. The, and that was me. I, I really relate to that. But basically that’s what eventually the holdout stops and you allow yourself to have what you want, at least to a certain degree, right?
Dr. Alex: And so it’s not that people are not falling as the bandwagon, so not acknowledging that is not helpful to anybody involved at all. What is much better then is to actually acknowledge the choices that you have, put the power back in your hands in order to be able to choose. And from that place, most people actually choose better for themselves.
Dr. Alex: It comes from a more healthy foundational place of self-love and confidence rather than trying to fit into the box and, and all the stuff that we’ve been talking about up, up until here. So it sounds counterintuitive but it’s cool because the benefit is, it works faster cuz you don’t have to fall off the bandwagon and you can sustain it [00:40:00] for as long as you don’t wanna change your mind, which could be forever, right?
Dr. Alex: Which could be
Liz: forever. I love, I, I just wrote as you’re speaking the choice, and then one arrow was anxiety and the other arrow was confidence and ownership. And that’s resonates with me so much and it has worked for me. I don’t know that I probably apply your entire framework, but certainly so many of the things that you’re saying right now are things that I have, I don’t even wanna say implemented, but just authentically lived my life in that way.
Liz: I have not told myself no on almost anything, unless it’s really ridiculous because I’m an adult and I can be like, come on, that’s dumb. Don’t do that. You know, like that’s just part of, you know, self, self-regulating and like Megan, you were saying renegotiating like every moment, renegotiating. And what I love about that is that it acknowledges the gray area, the nuance, the context that we are living in because things change every single day.
Liz: And that’s, and that’s the constant. So if we’re not willing to renegotiate and really be part of that process, then we, we can get so rigid and we can get so anxious. Like I feel that sense of anxiety for people who are like, like in that checklist, quicksand, like you were saying. Yeah. Where it’s just like, it’s all falling apart.
Liz: But maybe the problem isn’t the, the checklist, maybe the problem is the approach.
Dr. Alex: Totally. Yeah. Because one helpful thing for people, uh, as they’re listening, one thing to take note of is that often the wording of your thoughts then dictates the emotional response that follows. Right. I, it’s kind of like the difference between I have to go to the gym and I’m looking forward to going to the gym with Megan.
Dr. Alex: Right. I, I dunno about you guys listening, but when I’m saying that, it feels very different to me. One feels more constricting. I get this tightness in my chest. I don’t like that kind of thing. I used to make myself work out all the time and didn’t care about if I wanted to or not. So yeah, that happens.
Dr. Alex: And then being like, oh, I’m gonna move with Megan. It’s super fun. We do that all the time. We go on walks, go, yeah, go play in the ocean. So that, um, that’s what, that’s a helpful thing to realize because sometimes, like Megan’s saying with the mold, with her mold journey, it was her not changing stuff that actually worked because when she was in her head, like, what if I haven’t found the perfect protocol?
Dr. Alex: What if I need to take this binder instead was sticking with the good plan that she already had. Once she started picking better thoughts, as in the wording, Of the thoughts around it. The way she felt then allowed her to act in the way that stuck with the plan. And the plan was good because there’s a lot of ways to get to good health.
Dr. Alex: There’s 1,000,010 ways to that someone can heal their endometriosis or their [00:43:00] chronic pain or infertility, whatever you got going on. But what’s best for you and the life that you’re living right now is, is the much better question. And that’s what that connection of thoughts and emotions does for us. Creating a better dialogue with your own mental gremlins, identifying them and having resources to deal with them, basically not let them be the leader in your life is, is an important piece of managing the mental body. I
Megan: have an example of that, Liz, just recently that happened.
Megan: So Alex and I had finished, we do seven day certification training, so we just finished seven days straight. They’re long days. We’re standing in front. It’s very emotionally draining. People are having all sorts of things happen and we have to like hold the space and the room for seven days straight. So we’re all, we know that when we leave there, we’re gonna need some rest.
Megan: So I schedule, you know, came home on a week on the Saturday and scheduled to have like four days all the way till Tuesday completely off. And I was like, okay, I’ll need some time to rest. Cool. Took my four days off and then I get to Wednesday and I was, there was no part of my body that wanted to work. I was having, I could tell I was not in a good place.
Megan: I could tell I was ramped up physically, I was ramped up emotionally. I was just still really drained from that experience. And what I was telling myself though is like, well you already took those days off like you rested. So now it’s time. I had put an arbitrary date of like, well Wednesday I’ll be good cuz Wednesday is four days later and that’s how long it takes.
Megan: And so this is the difference between like resting and, and having one belief around resting and then resting, like really resting. So lovely. Luckily I have Alex and we are in a business where we created together and we have said from the beginning, we want this to, we wanna operate this business. That works for us.
Megan: We don’t want to fit ourselves into the way other companies run and the way you should do things. So we are always having these conversations of like, where are you? How are you doing right now? What are you up for actually doing? I know we said we’d do this, but where are you? So I called her and said, Hey, I can tell by the mental gremlins.
Megan: That’s what I’ll know for me when I start to kick up a lot of, I’m gonna say irrational thoughts, like a lot of fears, a lot of worries that aren’t my normal. When those start running, like any email, I’d see any email notification that came in, I’d be like, oh, they hate me. Right? It was like I was jumping to this worst case, everybody wanted a refund, like, you know, so I was watching my brain do this.
Megan: I was like, okay, I know this isn’t a good space. And um, I was actually, when I called her, I was in the target parking lot. My daughter was in there getting some stuff. She loves it. I hate it. And Alex was like, I’m right there with you by the way.
Dr. Alex: Right. Luckily she’s, and I was also in the target parking lot, which is an interesting
Megan: woo in the target park.
Megan: So she said, I want to go
Dr. Alex: in
Megan: there. She said, I want you to go into Target and I want you to get jammies and snacks. Like buy myself night jammies, get snacks, and my assignment for the rest of the week was to take work off. Not just take work off though. She’s like, I want you to take work off like you’re serious about it, right?
Megan: Like you are seriously gonna be snacking and relaxing and chilling and taking a bath and going to get your iv. Because I had been, I’m doing air quotes for the audio listeners. I had been taking the time off. But really what I’d been doing is like any notification that came through, I’d be like, well, let me just clear that out so then I can go rest after.
Megan: Yeah. And I wasn’t actually off, I had beliefs that I really should be working and that I should be better by now. And I didn’t have, I know we had done a training, but my brain said there wasn’t anything specific, like really bad that had happened and I shouldn’t feel this bad for this long. So therefore this was like, not just wasn’t allowed.
Megan: Yeah, I just, there wasn’t a reason, and I’ve noticed that with me and other people, like if there’s a reason something specific happens to your kid or death in the family, we give ourselves that leniency. And when we don’t know why we’re off, we’re like, well, I can’t just, rest goes, what if I, what if I just rested every day?
Megan: Right? We have this fear that then we would allow it forever. Luckily, I keep coming back around and so I just feel like the moral of that story was that when I took the rest of the week off, like in a very serious way, meaning I had permission from myself, I had permission from my business partner, I let other people in the team know like, I’m actually not working.
Megan: I’m in snack mode, jammy mode. Took a picture of my nice new jammy and sent it. It was a totally different experience. It was actually rest and I really didn’t think I would recover and feel excited about work that fast, and like two days later I was like all excited about projects again. I fully went in to the rest mode.
Dr. Alex: Well, it sounds
Liz: like you’ve also created a culture in your work because around people who are like, yes, this is good, you do that. Because I imagine, like, I’m thinking back to when I was in corporate America, people would be like, oh, must be nice. So-and-so’s taking the day off to eat snacks and not work.
Liz: Like, it just doesn’t, it doesn’t make sense. And this is, this is why, this is why it’s a good thing. If something doesn’t make sense to corporate America, then it’s
Dr. Alex: probably actually a good thing. Right. It’s true. I can speak to this though, with the, with being like residency, um, I was at the University of Chicago, so I was like South side Chicago, level one trauma center.
Dr. Alex: Um, as you can imagine, it was, uh, a, a crazy time. And um, they also do a lot of transplant medicine and so as an anesthesiologist that. Those are long, like 28 hour cases, three, you know that you’re there the whole time. Uh, you can be on call for 72 hours at a time. So let, let’s talk about that cuz a lot of people use their circumstances as the reason that they’re like, no, I can’t do that, so I can’t do any of it.
Dr. Alex: But that’s not true. So even within, uh, the framework of working like that, there are still plenty of pockets where you can find and fight for joy and fun and ease in your life. Right? So I would roll in with like, for call. I would have like a whole separate little bag for all my fun drinks that I had. I have like my adrenal cocktail and my like tea eggs and whatever, like things that made me feel good and I’d have my like fuzzy sweater that I wanted to wear when I was in the call room.
Dr. Alex: And I, when I got to. Go to bathroom breaks. I go in the bathroom, I do some breathing exercises or throw in a little audio, and I’d find pockets of time there. I’d be walking down the hall, I’d be doing my parasympathetic exercises, right? Like something on my chest, getting my N vagus nerve to fire and cool off the stress.
Dr. Alex: And so it looks like micro showing up for yourself, but it doesn’t matter because it turns into macro though the identity of someone who chooses to look at corporate America like that. Is the person that frees themselves from needing to be in any environment like that. But it doesn’t happen. It’s not the flip.
Dr. Alex: You don’t leave and then become the person. You become the person, then you leave. Or you become the person who breaks the wheel and builds a new one and shows a new corporate America like you. We don’t have to reject things. Right? It’s the same as when we work with business owners or because we work with business owners.
Dr. Alex: We talk about social media. Yeah, there’s a lot of negative stuff about social media, but if you’re a leader, set the tone. Do you know what I mean? This is not the thing to shy away of. Cuz the more people are like, well, I’m not gonna, if that’s important to you, do it. That’s why we podcast. We’re like, we wanna put new ideas in the world and teach in that way, and that’s what we do.
Dr. Alex: So whether you wanna stay in corporate America and have those things and transform what it looks like or leave, you get to do that. But it starts with thinking of how can I be the identity of the person that fights for a good quality life that actually wants the experience to be good for me? No other reason than I care about me and I want my life to be good.
Dr. Alex: I think you.
Liz: Here’s a distinction. What you did was you brought your lovies to work. I was thinking about little kids, like they’re going for a sleepover at Nana’s house, and they’re a little scared. So they bring their lovies, they bring the things that Exactly bring them comfort and make them feel stronger and more courageous and all of that.
Liz: So you didn’t bring your checklist to work because that, that’s where people are like, okay, well I’ve gotta bring my, um, I have to wear my five finger shoes and I have to bring my adrenal cocktail. Or I’m gonna have a really hard time and I have to do this, or I’m gonna have a really hard time. You brought the things mm-hmm.
Liz: That were nurturing to you in the situation that you were in. Yep. Which were more lovey and less
Dr. Alex: checklist. Right. Totally. It also did mean that it looked different just about every day. For me, that’s important because I know who I am, like I know my personality type and all the different ways, and that’s why we bring in things like human design, masculine, feminine principles, all of those things, and are teaching as well.
Dr. Alex: Because the more you understand yourself in different ways, the, the more you can navigate yourself. And so I thrive off variety like that. So having the same food on call with me, going to the same hospital, parking in the same spot doesn’t feel good. So I got to flow with what I desired and be like, Ooh, this’ll be fun to take.
Dr. Alex: Ooh, this’ll be fun to take. Ooh, this’ll be fine to take. Right? So it’s kind of meeting myself where I’m at. That’s one big, big reason is that we think that a lot of transformation and even health related. Information out there is missing the emotional component. You have to be able to feel your emotional compass and name things appropriately to be like, does this feel good to me or not?
Dr. Alex: Otherwise, you can’t tell, and you do need a checklist. You do need an authority figure to tell you what’s right or what’s good for you or what you should do. Right? It necessitates those things. The way to not need any of that is to access more of who you are, and that does include the emotional body as well.
Dr. Alex: I love that.
Liz: Megan, this might be a question for you, and this is going back to the, um, I don’t know, leaning into the rest and, and identifying those mental emotional aspects of wellbeing. My question is, How do you not get lost in that? It’s something that I’ve seen multiple times, maybe mostly in young people right now, who very strongly identify with these mental emotional diagnoses or mental emotional experiences where it’s, this is my anxiety and it’s dictating what I can and cannot do.
Liz: How do you acknowledge the trauma part, the anxiety part, and all of those mental, emotional parts without getting mired in a diagnosis or a tendency or something that ends up being more limiting?
Megan: That’s a great question and something we focus on heavily, [00:55:00] starting with our language and starting with how we identify around that thing. So we will even go as specific as when someone comes to us when they’re saying, um, I, I’m an anxious person, right? So I am depressed. Anything after I am is an identity.
Megan: So that is very different than saying I am a person who’s experiencing anxious thoughts right now, or I am a person who’s experiencing depressive thoughts right now. Right? So one is like, this is who I am and, and another is this is the current state of where I am and what resources I have in the moment and how I’m doing this is what I’m experiencing.
Megan: So the difference is gonna be whether you have a belief system that you are that thing and you will always be that thing. So I’ll give an example of my little one who is, um, seven years old and she was having a really hard time learning and the school said, Hey, we think something’s going on. Um, maybe dyslexia.
Megan: And I said, okay, let’s dig into this. So I went down the dyslexia rabbit hole of, of learning. And in the process, um, I’m noticing, you know, there’s a lot of things that she does that do fall into this category. And, uh, so we just, I just kind of looked at it step by step. Like, we do have a seven step checklist.
Megan: So I’m like, how are we gonna get her into parasympathetic? Like, how are we gonna look at her brain chemistry? So we weren’t ignoring, I wasn’t ignoring that there was something going on and, but, and I was looking at it just through step-by-step of what, how can we support each area? So the my, she never has, even still has not to this day heard the word dyslexia.
Megan: I am not going to tell her this is a thing that you have. What I have told her is some things around, I say, Hey, your brain is. Works differently than some other people because my biggest fear was that she would decide in school, I am dumb. I don’t learn like other kids. That was my biggest fear. I know plenty of people who have dyslexia, who are super creative and have amazing businesses and have like used this.
Megan: So I, to me this is just one way of being and there’s, this is not an upside or downside. So I just really, really teaching her, um, what the benefits are. And one day I was saying to her, you know, she was struggling to read something and I was like, Hey, it’s okay. Like you, you learn differently. Um, and I said, cuz you know you’re super creative and I was listing some of the things that she is, and she said, yeah, I know mom, and I’m a manifester and I’m a healer.
Megan: I was like, okay, well confidence is not a problem here. Right? She is just taking on the traits, right? She’s learning the traits that she is. So I say the difference is just in all, is in the wording of how it’s been proposed to her. She doesn’t think there’s a problem. She just does know that she needs more time to do certain things and she learns it in a different way though that taking that across the board.
Megan: Yeah, some people do tend to lean way more towards anxious thoughts and so we just feel that that group of people need way more resources to deal with them. So for her, she needed to have the resources to understand how was she trying to read the word? Like was she looking down into like her kinesthetic versus like understanding?
Megan: She can actually look up individual recall and pull the letters out of the air. Were giving her the tools so that she can. Have these tricks around it. And if that’s really how we’re seeing anything that someone comes with mm-hmm. We’re like this is not you. That’s not, that’s just not how we see it. This is just currently the state that you’re in, given the, the, this phase of life you’re in the phase, what your brain chemistry is doing right now, your genetics, how that all plays together and we, our job, what we believe is we wanna see in each person, like there’s this optimal, ideal place for them to be no matter where they are.
Megan: So if, if you had said, when I met Alex and she had celiac disease and I said, well someday you’ll just be able to eat gluten. I would’ve said, you’re absolutely crazy cuz I hang out with her and when she does and we share a bathroom, it’s a problem. Right? Like, this is a real thing. I know what
Dr. Alex: happens.
Dr. Alex: Megan’s seen some stuff.
Megan: So if we were to say, Alex has celiac disease and like Right, that’s a statement, that’s her identity. That will always be how it is. Which is how a lot of different things are. Like I have a D H D, I am dyslexic, I am anxious. Right? We’re just making a statement forever. Then I don’t know if she would’ve taken the time to start to understand that she could actually rewire her brain and now make the enzyme and add our last training or last seven day training.
Megan: She came in with a box of regular old Girl Scout cookies and she ate them in front of the whole training because the belief when someone can see that she has rewired her brain and her body to, and it’s not that she’s gonna go out and eat that all the time and she can, that she can do it. That was so empowering to those group of women.
Megan: We had three other practitioners who were like, right. They were like, I’m gonna eat some gluten too. Right. And it was so cool. So we get to see this is possible. Like somebody else just did it and so now I can too. But if we had been locked into like the, no, no, but I am something else. Right. I have this, it’s just a little bit different flavor.
Megan: And not to say that we don’t all have our own challenges, cuz I think there is, if I just pretended to my little one like, Nope, you learned just like everybody else, like we’re all the same and you’re fine. Like nothing wrong, nothing to see here. That would her, she would be confused. She like, but I don’t learn the same and I can’t read those words.
Megan: They can learn and it is harder for me to cross body tap. Right? So we’re letting her know that it’s different, but it’s not this forever diagnosis.
Dr. Alex: Yeah, it’s a, the, this is where the frameworks also, the more that you understand who you are and have frameworks to think about yourself through like what lens you’re gonna look through.
Dr. Alex: This actually becomes much easier cuz it’s like, if we’re gonna talk about the physical, mental, emotional, and energetic bodies, which one is the dyslexia in so to speak? I’m doing air quotes, right? So the physical apparatus can be wired differently. And then the mental body. But like, do you have dyslexia in your emotions?
Dr. Alex: Right? Or energetically, but, and so these are the or, or even anxiety is who you are as a being. Is it anxiety? And that’s all you are? It becomes a lot easier to look more. We would say authentically and maybe even realistically at yourself, because the more places that you realize that you expand into, you really then find fallacies in assigning to yourself one of those diagnosis as something that can even fit into all four of those categories.
Dr. Alex: I would argue the same thing for, we talk a lot, um, about the concept of parts. Like a part of me wants to connect with this person and a part of me doesn’t feel comfortable with vulnerability, so I push them away. Right? There’s different aspects of who we are. So we have, and I have had depression.
Dr. Alex: There’s, it was a part of me that was depressed, but it was not all of who I am in the entirety of who Alex is. So when we are clear about those things, it protects us from making assumptions that then don’t serve us in our opinion. And it allows people to appreciate who they are more holistically and wholly and that just feels good, right?
Dr. Alex: When we, self-love can be a difficult thing to put into words, but it’s actions like that that really give evidence to, yes, I love myself. Yes, I can really see myself for who I am. And that’s cool man. I just thought of so many
Liz: things, and this is for another episode. I, I mean so many things and I was raised, and I don’t talk about this much, but I was raised in a religion that is very,
Dr. Alex: there’s, I’m just gonna say that for another episode.
Liz: There’s a lot of turn turning away from the, the physical experience, but also, you know, certain things that were sort of negative and sort of denying myself certain aspects of reality, but also it also made my. Brain so much more receptive to the shifts that can happen solely on that mental level and how they can affect the physical and just so many things that you all have said.
Liz: I’ve been like, no, that wasn’t so good. But that totally prepared me for this conversation. And sure, at some point it would be really
Dr. Alex: interesting to go through that.
Megan: We usually end up needing a part
Dr. Alex: two.
Dr. Alex: Okay. Well, I’ll do some
Liz: rapid fire here and we will wrap up with a, like a how to learn more from you all question, because I know people will be craving that.
Liz: All right. Rapid fire question number one. Where did the name Zesty Ginger come from?
Dr. Alex: Oh yeah. We didn’t share our meeting story either. I just realized though not very rapid fire. We, we met on, we internet dating. Just kidding. Instagram. We kept running into each other cuz we were talking about health and then we both emailed each other on the same night.
Dr. Alex: So we have a really cute meeting story. Mm. Um, and then Dusty Ginger came because we accidentally rebranded to Healthy Ginger and then realized that someone already had that name. Oh, and then, and then we actually identified zesty as like the vibe. We were like, oh, zesty is a better fit for us anyways cuz we are kind of zesty.
Dr. Alex: Like, we like to keep it fun and uh, and then currently we are actually in the process of rebranding again and it will just be zesty because zesty, that is who we are. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I love that. Well, period. I did wonder if
Liz: it came from you a little bit Megan, because you do have that fiery hair. So I was wondering if like, you started it and then like Alex came in and you were like,
Megan: well we still like it.
Megan: Yeah, I did. I still as Ginger Nutrition, but with a play on that cuz like ginger root was a big part of my original healing process. Mm-hmm. So Ginger meant so much to me, but
Dr. Alex: yes, the ginger. Yeah, me too. I liked the inflammation, but then she was a redhead and we thought that was funny, but, oh God. Anyway, yeah, it, our name, our name as a good, um, Good story for, for like in business, you, your identity can and often will shift and it’s okay to allow yourself to grow into who you’re becoming.
Dr. Alex: And that can sometimes include hanging your name. That’s cool. That’s totally where I’m at right now. So that’s very Oh, I know, right? It’s very affirmational. Oh, good. I’m good. This is for both
Liz: of you. Quality you appreciate most in each other. You could start with Megan.
Dr. Alex: Oh gosh.
Megan: The compassion that Alex has for me and then for, and the flexibility that comes with that. So there’s like this compassion for me as a human and, and for everybody we work with.
Megan: And then the flexibility of, uh, being able to be really open and vulnerable. With compassion. So it’s like combining all of that into one.
Dr. Alex: Awesome. I, I, um, I actually was gonna say the compassion as well for, for Megan, she can really see things from other people’s perspective. She can completely put down what her viewpoint of the world is and step into their shoes and really access, like, the complexity of what someone can go through.
Dr. Alex: And I’ve learned a ton over the years from watching her do that and her willingness to share the narrative in her head as she does so, because then it really serves me and allows me to be like, huh, I, I am a little bit more of a hothead than, than Megan is. Um, though we’re still way more skewed towards recovering people, losers, but, um, because of that it is really, has served me really well in life and I’ve learned a ton from her.
Liz: I love that. Okay. Well I’m gonna, this is gonna be a very general one, and this is probably not even important, but I wrote it down at the beginning, so I’m gonna ask it anyway. Do either of you have a favorite general easy wellness supplement? Something I saw you in a re with some Organifi the other day, so I just thought, huh?
Liz: I wonder if there’s any kinda like baseline thing that you both really like that is just supportive
Dr. Alex: overall. Uh, Organifi is cool. We really like, um, may, uh, the c e o of the company was on our podcast, so if anyone’s interested, should, we had a really great conversation about this, um, the role of supplements when you’re thinking more comprehensively about yourself.
Dr. Alex: That was cool and we liked Drew can, but, um, The, I would say, I, I actually, would you like to hear my, if I was on a deserted island, what three I’D pack? Is that, that’s a way better way to phrase the question. Ok. Yes. Let, let’s, yeah, let me, I’m locked and loaded for that one. So, um, MIT core, uh, MITRE is one.
Dr. Alex: So mitochondrial support, inflamma complete from innate response. Can’t wait for that to not be on back order anymore. And then triple mag vital nutrients. Nice. Yep. I
Megan: would just be on the island with
Dr. Alex: Alex, like I got the supplements. Grab the snacks. [01:09:00] Yeah, you got the snacks.
Megan: I, I would bring my mud water.
Megan: That’s kind of what I’m obsessed with. Oh
Dr. Alex: yeah.
Liz: Okay. Okay. I like it. All right. Well, we can wrap it up then. How do people learn more from you and find out your offerings and exactly where to find you.
Megan: So you can well, oh yeah, go for it. Go ahead. Okay. You can come on. I mean, we’d love to interact on Instagram, so definitely come on over to at Zesty Ginger on Instagram.
Megan: And really podcasting is where we’re filtering everybody eventually. So, yeah, because podcasting is, it’s our fa favorite platform to really get the message out as you found here. You know, we, we don’t really have short, short bites. Normally tends to be longer conversation when you’re dealing with actual transformation and all the nuances that go into that.
Megan: So, uh, are coming on over to our podcast. You can just search, search Esty, ginger, cuz it is gonna be rebranding very soon to becoming zest. And Liz, we didn’t run this by you before, so if it’s not okay, you could just, but um, we’re gonna be doing a, a live in-person event in August in Dallas, August 23rd, 24th.
Megan: It’s a two day habit event, jam packed with amazing connection community. We’re gonna be rewiring real time learning how to drop old beliefs. We’re gonna be going into the all four bodies in regards to habits. So usually habits. People jump just to the physical and they’re like, well, I’ll hang my dry skin brush in front of the door.
Megan: Cool. We love it and we’re gonna like all the other parts of like how we get to that and how we become the identity of the person who has those habits. So we would love for anyone to join us. We understand that this is a traveling situation. We had people come from all over the US the first time we did this in Virginia Beach in January.
Megan: It was amazing the. Women who showed up and men are welcome to, but the people who showed up were just, they were all in from the beginning. They were sharing vulnerably, people connected. We’ve have people who are made really good friends since then. So we’d love to invite everyone. And if you’re open to it, Liz, we’d love to give away a ticket to one of your listeners.
Dr. Alex: Um, yes. Okay, cool. Always
Megan: open to that. However, however, we’re gonna wanna do that. You can come up with the instructions of tagging a post or something like that. Yeah, that’s
Liz: perfect. I’ll, and I’ll put the details in the introduction when I record it separately so we can iron all of that stuff out.
Dr. Alex: Perfect. Perfect. Yeah. And, um, besides habits, anybody who identifies as being a thought leader, this may be in your family, you’re setting the tone for your children and with your partner. Maybe you are a health coach, maybe you, uh, work in a health office, uh, whatever it is. If you, if your viewpoint of the world is that it’s up to us to impact and help others, and that being a leader is the way that we role model a happy, joyful, successful life, then it’s really for you.
Dr. Alex: So even if you’re not thinking that, you’re stuck with habits, right? The art of thought leadership. Is a skill that can be learned. And when we are passionate about helping the world, it really behooves us to commit to learning how to communicate with others and communicate with ourselves in a way that we see something through to completion.
Dr. Alex: Because we believe that it’s time to really show up for the world. Like we’ve talked a lot for years and years as a collective, that the world needs help. It’s time that enough of us actually put one foot in front of the other and see this thing through so that we do so, right? We’re done talking about it.
Dr. Alex: Time to put it into action, and that’s who we’re hoping to work with. So come on by for the event because if you identify with that, it’s definitely for you.
[01:12:59] Liz: If I don’t care about the
Dr. Alex: world, can I still come? Absolutely. Yes. So we’ll, we’ll try to change your mind. Probably.
Liz: I do care. I do care about the world, I promise.
Dr. Alex: Although, yeah, this, if this is a put your own oxygen mask on first, we are absolutely going to have you do that. Maybe. Maybe it’s more about that when you’re on fire. Yeah, there you go. There you go. Absolutely. Well, it just kinda depends on where you’re at. Some people are struggling and they’re like, gosh, the world’s struggling with me.
Dr. Alex: Sometimes you’re struggling and you’re like, I don’t got bandwidth for this. That part doesn’t matter. It’s the commitment to the outcome. Yeah.
Liz: Beautifully done. I’m so glad that you all could come on. Megan and Alex, you all are awesome and I’m so excited to air this for everybody. Thank you for
Dr. Alex: coming on.
Dr. Alex: Thank you so much for having us. Yeah, thank you, Liz.
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