Don't Ignore Your Body [Ep. 159]

0:00 This is the Eat Well Think Well Live Well podcast. I'm Lisa Salisbury and this is episode 159. Don't ignore your body. Welcome to eat well. Well, the podcast for busy women who want to lose weight without constantly counting, tracking, or stressing over every bite. I'm Lisa Salsbury, a certified health weight loss and life coach, and most importantly, a recovered chronic dieter here. You'll learn to listen to your body and uncover the reasons you're reaching for food. When you're not truly hungry, freeing you to focus on a healthier, more fulfilling approach to eating. Hi everyone. Welcome to the podcast this week.

0:42 I had something else planned for today. Um, but last night I actually went to sleep thinking about this topic and thinking about possibly just recording something off the cuff for you. Today. So that's what I decided to do. I typically script my podcast pretty closely. Not all the way, but you know, I just wanna make sure that I'm not getting too off track or too wordy and all of that. But I wanted to just kind of tell you guys this story about what's going on with me and not really scripted out ahead of time. So, um, just basically, I'm. This is like a personal episode for me, so I'm just gonna let you know what's going on with, um, some of my personal health and just the title of this podcast.

1:28 This is just a reminder to not ignore your body. And when I was telling my therapist about what was going on, she was like, oh my gosh, like you've been gaslighting yourself about like you have let your. Body, almost like gaslight yourself. So anyway, it's kind of interesting. So, um, about a year ago I had my IUD removed. I had a Mirena IUD, the kind with a small amount of progesterone in it, and I got it into my head that. I wanted to be without any hormones from, uh, you know, birth control. So I, it's been a long time since I've been on the birth control pill. Um, I don't love that method, but I have been on Rena a progesterone only IUD for many years in between pregnancies as well as since my last pregnancy, which my daughter is 17 years old, so it's been in there for a long time, and I just decided like.

2:22 What maybe I just wanna see, and I was pretty deep into perimenopause symptoms and I thought that maybe I would feel better without it. My gynecologist was. Really opposed to this. She was like, you are going to hate it. This will make no difference. And she was absolutely like, this is the wrong decision. So I just wanna make that clear. Like she was absolutely not in favor of this. And I was like, that's fine. If I hate it, I'll put it back in. Like, I'm not that worried about it. Um, this was on the advice of a naturopath that I was working with at the time, who I no longer work with, but she was really adamant that I, that I do this and had been so for about a year. So I finally decided to do it.

3:03 And lo and behold, my gynecologist was a hundred percent correct. I hated it. I hated like how heavy my periods were. They were constant. It was, they were all over the place. It did not help my menstrual migraines in the least. They were pretty much the same. Um, so. Lots. Lots that happened with that period. But one of the weird things that was happening with my heavier periods is that period products were not working for me. So for example, I was trying several different discs and it didn't matter how well I tucked them in. As soon as I stood up, they would pop right out and they worked for a few months, but like the farther.

3:47 Out from getting the IUD out, like the longer I went. So several months, the worse and worse the discs work for me, which was so weird. in addition, like tampons would only get saturated on one side. Which was so weird, like why is it only getting saturated on one side? It would start leaking. I would take it out. It was very uncomfortable because this was dry on like 75% of the, tampon but I just kept thinking it's me, it's me. In addition, I was having pretty constant weight gain and it was specifically in my lower belly. Last winter, I bought all new jeans and I was like, okay, this is fine.

4:27 I've done so much work to accept my body, like all the work that I work with my clients on. I have done all of that work. I have done so much work on loving my body. I was just like, it's fine. I'm just gonna buy new jeans. Something is, is happening, but I'm just, and this is where some of the gaslighting comes in, I just kept convincing myself that I was overeating so. I decided in April to get my IUD put back in. At this point, I had changed insurances, so I had a new gynecologist and she was like, yeah, let's just put it back in. It's, no, it's no big deal. So I had to put back in in April and of this year, and eight weeks later, they pulled me back in for a string check, which I have never had.

5:11 I've never, in all of the IUDs that I have had put in, I've never had a doctor do a string check. So she had me come back in and she's like, we just like to make sure that the IUD is in the correct place by checking the strings. So while there were no strings. So she's like, okay, not a big deal. This happens all the time. We're just gonna send you for an ultrasound because like for some reason your uterus has like sucked up the strings inside. But we wanna just make sure the IUD is in the right place. So she's like, seriously, this happens all the time. Don't even worry about it. Fine. I go, so I am still not worried. I go into the ultrasound and, you know, it's, you should pretty much like turn the ultrasound machine on and see the IUD.

5:58 Like it shouldn't be that complicated. Um. If you are a woman who has had babies and ha, or you know, if you've had any kind of ultrasound on your belly before you know that you have to go in with a full bladder. So I am on the table with a very full bladder and she's like, Ooh, good job. So, yeah, really full. And she pushes around on my belly for 25 minutes and then she's like, okay, I'm gonna have you empty your bladder and then come back in. We're gonna do it vaginally. This ultrasound lasted for an hour. And she just kept saying things like, I'm just trying to take all of the pictures that the radiologist will want. Me still not concerned. Okay. Like what was I thinking?

6:38 That that wouldn't be weird to take a full hour to find an IUD. Clearly the IUD was missing, right? I'm like, okay, something is kind of weird, but I'm still not really that like concerned or thinking anything of it. So a few days later, the nurse practitioner called me and she was like, um, so you've probably read the report. And I was like, Nope. Sure haven't. And she's like, oh, okay, well you have a nine centimeter fibroid in your uterus. And that's why the IUD was pushed out of place. Um, we think we can see it, which is now like really beside the point, like the I Uud is really not. The issue here.

7:19 Now I have a nine centimeter fibroid filling up the uterus and at first I was like, I mean, I'm not good with metric. for those that use centimeters, I, you might know, but if you don't, that's the size of a grapefruit. If you look at reference pictures or reference things online, that's also a nine centimeter or a grapefruit size is also the size of the uterus at a four month pregnancy. But I learned later from my surgical consult that the uterus itself, my uterus is also enlarged around the fibroid. So the uterus is actually like 16 centimeters. So basically I have like, you know, somewhere in the four to five month range pregnancy situation with the uterus size going on.

8:01 So anyway, at that point she was like, okay, yeah, you have this fibroid, so we're gonna send you for a surgical consult. Here's a couple of weird things. Number one months ago, I felt a hard mass on the outside of my body. Like when I was laying down in bed in the morning one a couple of times, I thought, what am I feeling here? Why? Why is there like something hard down low? I mean, you know where your uterus is down low in your belly? And I just kept thinking, I wonder what structure that is that feels so firm. Did I think that maybe something was wrong? I did not. Um, now I know where to feel, and so every morning I like kind of obsessively check on it and, uh, yeah, it's, it's gotten bigger.

8:51 Um, so here's why I am telling you this story. Heavy bleeding can be perimenopause for sure. I had some crime scene periods during the time that I didn't have my IED in. Um, but it can also be fibroids or something else that. I don't even know about 70 to 80% of women by the time they're 50, which I'll be 50 in a few weeks. 70 to 80% of women have fibroids. Um, they're particularly prevalent in African-American women with, according to Google, an estimated 80 to 90% developing fibroids by the age of 50. Not all fibroids require.

9:33 Surgery. So let me make that clear. Don't like panic. Um, lots of fibroids happen that are small, really small little marbles, little peas, and you can have several and have like no symptoms other than sometimes they will cause heavier bleeding. So it's not like all of them do what mine is doing, which is growing with abandoned. So I don't want you to be like scared and think like, oh, you definitely have them. But I also wanna say. What I've really learned is don't ignore things. There really shouldn't be something as firm as a fibroid in your lower belly. Fibroids are essentially hard as rocks.

10:15 They are very, very firm tumors, so that's not normal. I definitely should have, like, that was, that was a red flag. For whatever reason, I ignored it. I also learned to really just not blame myself because of like all of the work I've done on like loving my body and accepting and just constantly telling myself. And, and I don't think this is wrong by the way. I actually love these thoughts like that my body is good and that it's working well and everything is function functioning as it should.

10:55 These are a lot of the thoughts I use like when, when the scale weight goes up and I used to like freak out and panic. A lot of these thoughts bring me peace because I'm like, this is my body working as it should. Of course, it stored some extra water weight. Because I had an extra salty meal yesterday, or of course my body stored some extra water weight. I did a really hard workout and that's normal to have, you know, extra water because of muscle breakdown or extra blood volume because of a hard cardio workout. Like weight fluctuations are so normal and your, it's your body doing exactly what it should, and so. I just kept on with those thoughts, which I don't think are wrong, and I won't stop teaching them to my clients and I won't stop using them.

11:42 But at some point you have to also make sure that you're not ignoring things. I had noticed lower belly weight that. Just wouldn't budge. Clearly, I can't lose the weight of a tumor in a very enlarged uterus. So, you know, I was kept blaming myself. I kept thinking that I was overeating, and that's why I had this belly pain and cramping after meals, but really there just wasn't space. I just felt really discouraged as a weight loss coach to not be able to. Do the things, achieve the things that my clients were succeeding at every day.

12:26 So I was really starting into imposter syndrome in my business. Rather than saying, Hey, maybe this isn't quite normal, you actually do know what to do. You do know what your intake is. You do know that this is an appropriate amount of food to, to take in and that, you know. The amount of dinner that you ate was not enough to cause the amount of discomfort that you're currently having, and I just kept ignoring that. Um, so that, those are some of the things that I have learned. I also realized that, remember how I was saying that period products were like not really working for me.

13:07 I realized that it was because of the pressure and the weight of this heavy mass fibroid was putting downward on the, um, you know, on like the disc so pushing the disc outta place, pushing the, tampon like sideways. So again, this, symptom or cue that something wasn't quite right, I just ignored and thought, oh, it must be user error. I must be doing it wrong. My sergeant also, so I will say that I did go ahead and have a surgical consult in July. And, he told me that these types of tumors, although they are benign, and I don't know if I've said that yet, this is a benign tumor. Um, but it is a very vascular and active tumor, and so it steals a lot of blood.

13:53 And he said, you'll, he's like, you'll probably have a 50% increase in energy. I, I mean that is probably just like a made up statistic, but point being like, I'm also pretty tired a lot of the time and I'm just like, it's okay. People that are almost 50 are tired, like that's normal, but you know, some days are better than others and I still sleep pretty well, so. It didn't really add up. Why am I so tired? In fact, my doctor even, had me tested for anemia because she's like, yeah, that what you're describing isn't quite normal. So all of this is to say that. I just want to encourage you so much to listen to your body in all things.

14:35 I teach you all the time to listen to your body with regards to your hunger and your fullness cues, and to really pay attention to, you know what it's saying in that regard, and that's how we really can lose and maintain weight without having to track and calculate every calorie. But when you're doing that. And you're doing it really well. Like I've been doing this for a long time now. I have been, you know, I have ditched my diet up, um, and I got to the point where. I started to not trust myself even on that because I'm like, why can I not lose this weight? And I started tracking calories again, which was not great for my mental health. Um, I, I gave it up for a reason and,, you know, so I, I was a, I was careful.

15:21 I was, I tried not to get down, you know, that more anxious road that I was on before. But even so that should have also been a red flag because I was eating so little and still continuing to maintain this lower belly weight. So don't ignore your body and all its cues and signs. Like I said, most fibroids will not require surgery even though they are very prevalent because they will be smaller. My fibroid does require surgery because I no longer require a uterus for. Fertility reasons. I'm all done having children. So if you, if you get fibroids when you are a younger woman and you still have a desire for children, you can have what's called a myectomy where they just remove the fibroid and they try to preserve the uterus.

16:09 In my case, because the fibroid is so large, it's also infiltrated into the muscle wall of the uterus, making the uterus itself not healthy anymore. So the whole thing. Needs to go. So I am scheduled for a hysterectomy. Unfortunately, my surgeon is extremely busy, so I still have an eight week wait, which is really frustrating. Um, because as you can tell, there's still quite a few symptoms that I'm dealing with on a daily basis with this. I am looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to, um, that healing process and hopefully getting, you know, on the other side of this. But I just wanted to let you guys know as my listeners what's going on for me.

16:52 And I will probably be taking a little bit of a podcast break. Hopefully I'll get some episodes scheduled ahead of time. But, um, if there's a little break in October, you'll know why. So I want to also remind you that this has all helped me learn even more about perimenopause because I was. Attributing a lot of these symptoms to perimenopause. I did more and more and more research on this. I find that, in fact, my husband was like, I know you're a weight loss coach, but you really light up when you talk about hormone use and perimenopause and menopause. And he's like, that's what you really should be coaching on.

17:34 So anyway, I'm just gonna let you know that if you are in. The throes of that, and you need some help with some of your hormones, what's going on with them? And um, by hormones, I mean like your hormone replacement therapy. Like what kinds of things can you take to help you during this time? Just remember that. Estrogen is basically the only hormone that we lose because of a malfunctioning and non-functioning organ, which is the ovaries. The ovaries produce your estrogen and they stop working during perimenopause and then completely kaput at menopause. Right? And then we don't have a period anymore.

18:14 Um, so the organ stops working, it stops producing estrogen at the level that you are accustomed to as your body and. For some reason we've decided or have vilified replacing this hormone. If your thyroid goes kaput. You think nothing of taking thyroid hormone and for type one diabetics whose pancreas doesn't work, they obviously take the hormone insulin. There's lots of examples of this where hormones or other other things in our body don't work well and we replace them with. Something synthetic. The good news is that the hormones that we use now from regular pharmacies are bioidentical.

18:56 They exactly match what is in your body. It's not like a synthetic horse, urine hormone like they used to use. And so there's really nothing scary about them. I highly recommend the book Estrogen Matters if you wanna learn what estrogen does for you in the body. It's um, it's a little bit technical for sure. It reads a little bit easier than pub me articles and study reports, so they do kind of break it down for you. And so I, I do really enjoy that book. I listen to it and it was very educational. I firmly believe in estrogen. I also love my progesterone pill and that. So estrogen you wanna take topically so it bypasses the liver.

19:37 Any of your transdermal estrogen products are going to bypass the liver, and so you wanna definitely do that. Progesterone is safe to take orally, and that really helps with sleep and calm. So that's a great one. You can titrate up on that If you need more than what you can get from a pharmacy, that's when you might need to get it compounded. But I Highly recommend that you stay away from menopause type clinics that are only offering compounded hormones and charging you an arm and a leg for them. I will tell you that I have just basic. Basic insurance. It's, I mean, it's through a company. It's through my husband's work, so it's, you know, company provided insurance.

20:18 It's not something we purchase on our own, but they cover my hormones a hundred percent, so I just. I just don't feel right about telling someone to go to a menopause clinic that compounds their hormones and claims that they are any better. They're really the same. They're bioidentical, they're very safe to get from your regular pharmacy. And, they've made a huge difference for me in my life. The, so I use an estrogen patch, I use a progesterone pill, and then lastly, I use a. Estrogen tablet vaginally. So that is, just a very, very microdose, it's measured in micrograms actually, and it's, um, for vaginal dryness and, discomfort.

21:06 It also helps with urinary incontinence. It helps with the whole area down there. It's probably my favorite part of my hormone regimen. But. You know, I've been on the patch for a couple of years now, so I don't know what I'd be like without it, so who knows. But, uh, sometimes I forget'cause that's just a twice a week, uh, thing that you do for the vaginal estrogen. And I just know when I forget to use it, I can tell. So anyway, that's just a little piece on hormones because I have done a lot more education on that. For, um, mostly for myself. I do help some clients with that. But if that's something that you are kind of needing or you're just trying to figure out like what is going on with your health, first and foremost, my original degree and certification is in health.

21:55 My degree is in health and human performance, and my first certification is actually as a health coach. So beyond just. Weight loss and emotional eating and helping you figure that out. I'm more than happy to help you figure out some of these other things as well and coach you with the, you know, the questions that you wanna ask your doctor and what you really want to, you know, get tested and those kinds of things. So, um, obviously I will recommend you work with your doctor on all of these medical things, but I would be there to support you if you needed help with any other type of health issues, especially going through perimenopause and menopause, if you are struggling with that, I'm more than happy to chat with you about that.

22:38 So. Be sure to schedule a consult call with me. Those are free, 30 minute free call with me. I do that by phone. You don't even have to, you know, put makeup on and get on Zoom. We just do that by phone for our first meeting. And, um, that's all I have for you today. So I know most of you still are here for weight loss, so be sure to download a couple of my free guides. I have the what to do when you overeat, when you're trying to lose weight. That really is helpful if you find yourself unable to lose weight because you tend to be overeating more times in a week than you're not, uh, check that one out. Also, I have a free Success starter kit for GLP one users. If you are GLP one, curious, or if you are on the medications, be sure to download that free guide as well.

23:23 Remember, what you eat matters, but what you believe about yourself matters more. Thanks for listening and sharing the Eat Well Think Well Live Well podcast.