Lemon Balm Coaching
Welcome to The Lemon Balm Coaching Podcast
Life after 40 isn’t the end of the story—it’s the start of an incredible new chapter. 🌿
Here on The Lemon Balm Coaching Podcast, we’re all about helping women over 40 rediscover joy, purpose, and freedom. Whether you’re navigating empty nest syndrome, feeling stuck in the daily grind, or just wondering what’s next, this is your space to pause, reflect, and grow.
Each week, we’ll dive into inspiring topics, actionable tips, and heartfelt stories that empower you to:
✨ Reignite your passion for life.
✨ Embrace the freedom of this season.
✨ Create a future full of lightness, purpose, and joy.
It’s not about having it all figured out—it’s about taking the next step, one moment at a time. You’ve spent so much of your life giving to others; now it’s your turn to shine.
🎧 Join us every other Wednesday for a new episode, and let’s make this chapter your best one yet.
Your next chapter begins here. 🌟
Lemon Balm Coaching
Your Body's Hidden Messages Are Trying to Tell You Something
Have you ever wondered why traditional approaches to health and weight management so often fail, even when you're doing everything "right"? Stephanie Pasniokas, founder of SJP Health and Wellness, brings her fascinating background in neuroscience to explain what's really happening in your body when stress takes over.
From childhood food insecurity to corporate burnout that left her obese with pre-diabetes and chronic fatigue, Stephanie's personal journey illuminates the profound connection between stress and failing health. Despite her scientific expertise in biochemistry and anatomy, she found herself trapped in the same "eat less, move more" cycle that fails millions of women—until she discovered the missing link.
The revelation? Stress isn't just a feeling—it's a physiological state that transforms our cellular energy factories (mitochondria) from power generators into inflammation producers. Through her compelling framework, Stephanie breaks down six distinct types of stress that contribute to our "allostatic load" and explains how they manifest as everything from digestive issues to mood disturbances to stubborn weight gain.
What makes this conversation truly special is Stephanie's approach to healing. Rather than promoting strict diets or punishing exercise regimens, she champions curiosity and experimentation. Her data-driven methodology helps women discover exactly how their unique bodies respond to foods, activities, and lifestyle choices. The goal isn't perfection—it's personalized knowledge that empowers sustainable change.
For women navigating perimenopause or feeling exhausted despite their best efforts, this episode offers both validation and hope. As Stephanie shares, "I have more energy now at 50 than I did when I was 38," proving that age doesn't have to mean declining vitality. Whether you're struggling with weight, fatigue, or just feeling disconnected from your body's signals, this conversation offers a refreshing scientific perspective on reclaiming your wellbeing—without guilt, restriction, or one-size-fits-all solutions.
Ready to understand what your body's been trying to tell you? Download Stephanie's free sleep guide at
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Music by Adipsia
Hey friends, if you had a chance to listen to the last episode, you got to meet my good friend, stephanie Pasniokas, as she interviewed me. But we're turning the tables today. We're turning them back around, putting me in the host seat and I'm going to be talking with her about all the things that she has coming up and her amazing shift from neuroscience to wellness coach. And she's the founder of SJP Health and Wellness, where metabolism meets mind set, and she helps busy women reclaim energy, stabilize their blood sugar and feel confident in their bodies. Using her signature boss mode framework, she combines brain science, biochemistry and real life tools to make sustainable health feel simple and doable without dieting, without calorie counting and without guilt. Doesn't that sound incredible? Whether you're juggling work, parenting or perimenopause, she teaches you how to tune into your body, trust yourself and take back your wellness. Stephanie's clients walk away feeling clear-headed, energized and empowered to live boss on their terms. Are you ready for this? Let's do it.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Lemon Balm Coaching Podcast, your cozy corner of the world where we'll sip on life's lessons and squeeze the most out of every moment. I'm Melissa, your coach, cheerleader and maybe even a little bit like that mom who always has a warm hug and the best advice waiting for you. If you're a woman over 40, feeling like life's left you a little lost, aimless or downright stuck, you're in the right place. This is where your joy, your freedom and your purpose come back into focus. Together, we'll laugh, learn and rediscover what makes you come alive. Because it's not too late, this is your time, so grab a cup of something warm, settle in and let's start creating the next most beautiful chapter of your life together. Start creating the next most beautiful chapter of your life together.
Speaker 1:Stephanie, thank you so much for joining me on the Lemon Balm Coaching Podcast. We met we actually met in person just a few months ago for the very first time. We had Zoomed before and I knew of you, you knew of me, but when we met at this retreat that we both attended, it was like for me at least, it was like, oh my gosh, I found a long lost sister. It just felt like an immediate connection and what you do and what I do are just, I feel, like a perfect marriage of health and life coaching. So thank you so much for joining me, being willing to come on and share with my listeners joining me, being willing to come on and share with my listeners.
Speaker 2:It is my absolute pleasure, and I have to tell you, I felt like I almost became a fangirl. When we met, I was just like, oh my gosh, I love you and I feel like I've known you forever. And every time we said the next thing it's like oh my gosh, me too. Oh, and have you heard that? Yes, and I mean our favorite books, everything and I thought how are we only just meeting in life now? And it doesn't even feel like it just happened, and so I'm glad that that was the same, because it was quite amazing, and I'm so excited to know that you're in my life period. End of story. You don't get a choice.
Speaker 1:And it's true, though you never know. You meet somebody and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm in love with them. They are the most amazing person ever. Oh, I hope they feel the same about me.
Speaker 2:I know, right, it's so funny, but I am really really happy to be here and you know, I love I, I love the, the science and the health and and all of those sorts of things and and and truly. What you and I do are two sides of the same coin and they're just inextricable. You just can't have one without the other. So I love it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely agree. Now, one of the things that I think is very, very important is the story. So the very first question I love to ask my guests is how in the world did you end up here doing what you're doing in the wellness field?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. Yeah, so I'll try to keep that a little uh, abbreviated, but, um, I think, apropos to the kind of work that you do, I need to go back a little bit before the start and talk a little bit about my childhood, which you know was the best my mom could do at the time. You know, my parents were divorced when I was four. That was a. That's a. That's a tough age for a child who's in the process of bonding to lose any parent. You know it's. It's a tough time.
Speaker 2:So I had a lot of that on my on my heart for a long time. It took a long time for me to understand that that was a. There was a root cause involved in that. I used to have nightmares all the time throughout childhood, all the way up until past puberty, of being abandoned and having my family want to kill me, things like that, like I just all of the people I love turning against me, and I didn't know where that was from for a very long time. But my mom had, you know I'd born in Massachusetts. My mom actually took me away from the rest of the family and me and my brother and sister down to Florida.
Speaker 2:We didn't have a lot of money and I was often hungry. And when I did have an opportunity to eat other people's food or go to a buffet or something like that, I literally I overdid it to the. I mean, I'm surprised my stomach didn't just burst because I didn't know when that kind of food was gonna be available again. And when we did go out to eat, which was occasional, we'd go out to like a pizza place or we'd go to some what I thought were fancy restaurants Now I know they're not terribly fancy, but they were fancy to me and I would have such great anxiety I couldn't even make a choice on the menu because and everybody just said, well here, it is a half an hour for Stephanie to figure out what she wants to eat Because I was afraid I would get the wrong thing and I would never have a chance to have it again to have the right thing. You know what I'm saying. So I just had all this anxiety around it.
Speaker 2:So anyway, fast forward to. I am now an adult and I'm making money and I have the ability to buy my own food. Can you imagine what might've happened? Can you imagine what might've happened when I had a job where I had to travel all the time and I had to eat out on the company dime and I would just order whatever. So but let me tell you a little bit more about that traveling job, because I loved it. I loved the job, I loved what I did, but it was a very high stress job. I had to travel a lot. I was traveling multiple times per month. Anywhere from two day trip to a 14 day trip was my longest.
Speaker 2:I had three small children and my husband was often left home taking care of them. I missed potty training my youngest entirely, and so I was always trying to travel back home to be with them. And it got to the point where I wasn't. I had no time or energy to hang out with my friends. I couldn't even go to church anymore, because the one Sunday a month I could go, it was because I had to be in nursery, because my kids were in nursery and I had no choice but to volunteer. So I stopped going to church because I couldn't even go to the service and I was alone. I was drinking too much wine at the time. That was my de-stressor and my body was literally falling apart.
Speaker 2:So over that seven years, and even before that, because when I had my son, I ate a lot of McDonald's and I gained like 70 pounds with him and people thought I was having three. I had to sell my car. I couldn't get behind the wheel, so I had I I'm not a very tall person as you, as you as you found, I'm only five three and I um, eventually, over the course of of time, ended up at around about 190 pounds. So I was officially obese, um, and I had pre-diabetes. I had high blood pressure, my I had cankles on a permanent basis because I was flying all the time and I did not have a lot of good circulation. I couldn't stand for very long, but our trade shows required me to stand for five days in a row. So I was, you know, my lower back hurt, I was very stressed, I didn't sleep well because I was in hotels a lot. There's just a huge amount of stress. So all of this just meant my body was breaking down, and I know that this is similar to your story in a little bit of a different way, because maybe the root cause of the reason why our bodies were breaking down may be a slightly different. Ultimately, they're breaking down and this is a really important point I want to make, because it's actually, I think, what we're going to be talking a lot about today. It's actually, I think, what we're going to be talking a lot about today. That's all kind of how I ended up sick, but this is the thing.
Speaker 2:My background is in psychobiology, biochemistry, neuroscience, anatomy and physiology, and the seven years I was with that life science job you know, keeping organs alive outside of the body for research and knowing I had to know all of the organ systems. I had to understand how everything worked. I had a lot of scientific knowledge about how the body is supposed to work and I learned a lot about how it was supposed to work. But when it came to my health, that was my career. And then this is my health and, for whatever reason and this kind of all kinds of, happens as we grow up and we sort of just believe a lot of the things that we're being indoctrinated with.
Speaker 2:I thought, well, to lose weight, you eat less and move more, and I didn't know, I didn't really think about the effect that stress was having on my body, the fact that lack of sleep was having on my body. I just knew that. I had a lot of anxiety, and I was freaking tired Right, and I wasn't connecting it to all of the lifestyle factors that were going to it, except that I knew that it was my job, like I knew that it was killing me. I just didn't see a way out and, honestly, the way out took a miracle from God I'm not going to lie about that one, but it so.
Speaker 2:It got to the point, though, when that miracle happened and I switched jobs at a completely different field that I had no business being in but excelled at, just by the grace of God, they had a biggest loser contest and I did everything wrong. I lost the weight, but I did it all wrong. So you know what happens when you do that. When you eat less and more and kill yourself, it all comes back and your body gets stressed and more, and so, fortunately it wasn't at the end, more, but I was right back up at 175, um, over and over and over again, and eventually I said why am I trying to do this the way everybody else says to do it? It's clearly doesn't work.
Speaker 2:If it worked, none of us would have a problem in the world, because we are all doing it and, in fact, studies show that people are exercise, they are moving, they're doing all the things that that people tell them to do. It's just that those things don't actually solve the problem right. They do their short term fixes that create a metabolic adaptation that our body is so brilliant that it says, oh, I don't know that there's going to be consistent energy in the world for me, so I am going to become super efficient and I'm not going to, I'm going to lower the energy availability to this person. There, they can sit on the couch, it's fine, they don't need to move and and I'll, I'll store extra when it happens and I'll make sure I gain weight and I'm. That's, it's, it's energy conservation. Like our body is just like oh, I'm just going to adapt for survival. It doesn't care about a beach body.
Speaker 1:Okay, you covered so much, so so much. There's one thing I just looked up. Okay, I typed it in, googled it just like we do. The weight loss industry right now is worth over $200 billion a year, yes, and they're projecting $896 billion by 2035.
Speaker 2:Yeah, largely due to the drugs.
Speaker 1:Largely due to the drugs, but also because what works for one doesn't necessarily work for the other, and we've been sold this lie that eat less, move more.
Speaker 2:I don't think it really works for anybody long term. Move more. I don't think it really works for anybody long-term. I mean somebody might look thin, that doesn't necessarily mean they're healthy on the inside.
Speaker 1:Yes, All right, so I know somebody.
Speaker 2:I've had clients who ate less and moved more and looked this big and were having so many symptoms of inflammation in their body and pain and hot flashes and everything else because they were dipping into their essential fat stores and their body was absolutely panicking and they looked perfect.
Speaker 1:I know, I know, I know, I know those people as well and they're miserable.
Speaker 2:So I'm not sure. And they are miserable because the brain isn't working well either because of the lack of fat in the body, like there's a lot going on. So much. So I would. I would argue that eat less, move more really just doesn't work for anybody, because weight isn't the real and weight is a symptom that some people get and others don't.
Speaker 1:Right Well, I just wanted to encourage anybody listening, Like if you hear Stephanie's story and you're like, wow, that's kind of similar to mine. I mean I think there are more people who have a story like ours, because the more I'm listening to you, the more I'm like, oh my gosh, this is my sister from a different mister, for real, Like one of the things that I said, and I said this so long ago and it's still in my brain. I will know I've made it in life when I can go to the grocery store without a list and I can just buy whatever I want. So food is a huge, huge thing. It's very, it's so big, it's so big. It's not something we can just gloss over. And the beliefs that we have, the thoughts that we have around food, around eating, around weight, around our looks around all of those things they matter. So, like if you're hearing Stephanie's story, if you've heard my story, like you, you're in the right place. You're in the right place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, and, and I have to say, um, the real straw that broke the camel's back when I decided to, um, when I changed my job, and then I, this biggest looter contest, right, right, when all this was happening. I mean, like I said, there was a whole situation that happened all at the same time. I feel like God, you know, I was like a baby kitten and the mom just picks them up by the scruff of the neck and puts them over there and I feel like that's what happened, and it had to happen, and, and because I I didn't want to be with my husband, I didn't want him to have the light on, I didn't want to see myself. I have hardly any pictures of myself at the time. I was so embarrassed to exist on the planet in my body, as if that meant anything about my self-worth, and it doesn't, and I think that's the big thing. Yes, it matters. I used to think, well, I'm just going to do this for a little while and then I can go back to eating normal. Normal is what got me sick in the first place, so there is no such thing. But what happened in my whole entire journey is that I changed what I wanted in the store. I do buy whatever I want in the store. What I want is different and it's truly what I want.
Speaker 2:So that, all being said, is, I figured out how all this was going to work. I figured out what worked for me. I did it on my own because I'm a researcher, because I'm a scientist. I was able to go back to the papers. I was able to read them. I'm able to read very, very complicated things and understand them, distill them and whatnot. So I was able to do that for me.
Speaker 2:But I was like, how is anybody else going to do this? I had ended up in a startup in this other industry and I was working 80 hours a week. I thought I just really can't do this, and some other changes were happening in the company that I wasn't really thrilled with. You know, I think God allowed the situation to get very uncomfortable because my mom then got diagnosed with cancer. My daughter was having issues. I needed to be there, and my mom then got diagnosed with cancer. My daughter was having issues. I needed to be there and my mom had maybe a year left to live and I needed to. I needed to not be working 80 hours a week.
Speaker 2:I needed to take care of her. I needed to take care of my daughter because I found out she was pregnant. And I said what if I'm starting over what, what? What lights me up? What am I passionate about? What do I care about? And and I have a serious nerdy geeky bone I love the science and, but I also have this drive to help people. I really want to help people and I helped myself in this way and I found I felt this big hole here and I thought is there such thing as like a nutrition coach or a health coach or something like that?
Speaker 2:And I looked it up and lo and behold, it was there in two days before my birthday. I'm sitting down and I ended up going with Precision Nutrition. I'm now a PN2 certified master health coach on my way to national board certification health and wellness coaching. So that's just a process. I'm just still in that process, but I am a master health coach and I that particular program was closing its wait list, like it was. It was closing for enrollment. It's got very tight enrollment periods on my birthday and I thought, all right, a little bit, but everything about it was what I needed. So I'm, I was very thrilled with that and I had said, okay, well, in the next year I'm going to, I'm going to start my business.
Speaker 2:And then I started a waffle and I was going to be like, well, maybe I'll still consult, maybe I'll still do this. You know I was nervous about walking away from our income but, honestly, I'm so passionate about this. I am so blessed to be able to help the women that I help, because, uh, every single one of them ultimately ends up realizing it's not all about weight, that weight is a side effect of a body. Out of I say balance. There is no balance, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a homeostasis.
Speaker 1:There's harmony. It's like a body out of harmony, because all of our systems are meant to function together, and when they're not functioning together, it's disharmony.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's disharmony and there is a balance, there is a homeostasis, but it's in so many ways. Our body has so many checks and balances and so many of us are out of whack. It's like when you you know it's. It's really just a really complicated thing that when you throw a wrench in it, it all goes off. What's the wrench? I'm going to tell you what I believe the wrench is, and I think that there's a lot of research out there that suggests this is the wrench, and I'll get into why you and I'd love for you to challenge it. I'd love for you to say well, what about this? Does that count as that wrench? Does this count as that wrench? And then we'll see. Maybe you'll trip me up. I don't know, this could be fun Stress.
Speaker 1:And stress is a buzzword. Stress is a buzzword.
Speaker 2:We get that. So I'm going to tell you a little bit more about that. Yes, stress isn't just a feeling, it's not just what's going on in your head. It's not just feeling anxious about something. When I'm talking about stress, I am talking about the original definition. Is stress being anything that throws your body out of homeostasis? Okay, and homeostasis is balance Okay, that's just the scientific word for a balance of business.
Speaker 2:In your body there's lots of kinds of stress, and all of the kinds of stress I'm about to mention ultimately will throw off the little, the little canary in the coal mine inside of every single one of our cells. We have thousands and thousands and thousands of them throughout our body. It's called mitochondria. Mitochondria are those little cellular energy engines inside each of our cells that keep us alive and going. That's how I can move. I can move and think and everything because of my mitochondria. Mitochondria have two states cell defense mode under stress, activated by all the kinds of stress that I'm going to be talking about and energy production, and you have a whole bunch of them in your body, and how you feel and how your body you know how dis-eased you are has to do a lot with what proportion of those mitochondria are in one mode or the other. And so I know I'm getting sciencey here, but trust me that, if you just think about the fact that your body has the ability to produce energy or to produce inflammation, when a mitochondria is in a stressed state, in a threatened state, its job is to create additional inflammation in the body, to prepare your body to react to the stressor in the world.
Speaker 2:And I'm going to give you guys a little quiz, because there's a number of different stresses that you can have. It isn't just any one of those that cause the problem. It's when what we call the allostatic stress load, the total amount of stress in your body, exceeds your ability to heal from it, your ability to you know. So your, your, your, your stress exceeds your healing and so now you're no longer in harmony and you experience that in all the ways. Everything that, melissa, that you work on with your clients, you know when, that, when, when they're in those states, that is a high stress state. Okay, so a lot of times these are, you know that could be an existential stress, right? Hopelessness, despair, lack of meaning. You know on that spiritual side or existential side could be an emotional stress from grief, anger, shame, fear, traumas that maybe we don't even remember. A mental stress, right, my job created a huge amount of mental stress, a huge amount of emotional stress, a huge amount of social stress, because social stress is all about your relationships, loneliness, rejection, lack of community. All right, that's a real thing. And let me tell you, when we talk about the psychosocial stress area emotional, existential, the psychosocial stress area emotional, existential, social and mental there are over 70,000 research papers that show how that type of stress creates oxidative stress in our bodies that affects our mitochondria. So this is a real connection.
Speaker 2:This stuff's not just in your head or your heart, it's in your cells. That's one part. Then there's environmental stress pollution cells that's one part. Then there's environmental stress pollution, noise, toxins, violence in your area, an unsafe environment to live in, plastics, microplastics, like anything like that.
Speaker 2:Like environmental stress, there's also physical stress. But physical stress is things like injury. These are obvious Injury, illness, viral or bacterial, parasitic, over training, over exercising, lack of sleep, under nutrition, under eating or eating things that um cause problems in your body. Poor gut health you know a compromised gut from medications. You know a lot of medications or illnesses or other things. There's so many things. Stress compromises your gut. There's lots of things that cause a breakdown in the tight junction in your gut. When that happens, that inflammation goes up in your body. Now you've got systemic inflammation. Now you've got stress. That happens in your cells, right?
Speaker 2:So all of this stress, if you were to say, you know, rate each area of the stress, I'm going to say them again and I want you to write down on a piece of paper from us, on a scale of one to seven, okay, what you feel your level of stress is in each of these areas, seven being high, one being low. And then I'm going to add we're going to add them up at the end and we're going to say, if you're in the green, yellow or red danger zones, okay, on your allostatic stress load. Okay, you ready, all right, we're going to start with an easy one Environmental stress. This is how safe you are. You know, for example, if you live in an inner city, in a very poor area and there's a lot of violence and you don't know if there's going to be a gunshot when you walk out the door and there's noise everywhere and trains and smog and whatever, that's poor environmental stress. If you're in an abusive home, you know, or if you're in a home that is very unclean, right, or have a lot of animals that aren't kept after you know, and not all of these things are in our control and some you know, but that is it. That is where we're looking at. If you feel very safe and your environment is clean and orderly and non-chaotic and you've got a roof over your head and clothes on your back and food in your clean and orderly and non-chaotic, and you've got a roof over your head and clothes on your back and food in your house and you're feeling safe and secure, then you've got low environmental stress. Okay, so that's a scale of one to seven.
Speaker 2:Now let's get into social stress. Are you lonely? Do you feel like there's a lot of rejection from others around you? Do you have a lot of stress in your relationships with people Could be work stress, like work relationships as well with your manager, with other people, coworkers. If you have a lack of community you know you're not involved, you don't see friends, you don't have that kind of social support then you've got a high social stress, which is about you know closer to a seven, right, I was definitely high on the social stress back in the day One is I am completely supported by my community. I'm very involved. Maybe you're involved in a church or a group of people at. You know an assisted living home, or you're living in a dorm. You know an assisted living home or you're you're living in a dorm, but do you have a strong social group and friends and even within your house and closeness with your family? That's then we've got existential stress.
Speaker 2:Okay, so a seven is hopelessness, despair, a lack of meaning. I don't believe there's any purpose in my life. I don't know why I'm on planet earth, I don't care about getting up every day, and sometimes people can feel that this is very similar to depression and in fact, this can be a root of a lot of depressive symptoms. When you don't feel like you have any reason, it's a high level of existential stress. You might not think that that matters, but your body sees that as a threat for what it's worth. You know, on a one very low existential stress, you feel that you have a purpose in this world. You believe that you were created for a reason. You believe that there is something more and bigger than you, that is a rock, that's a foundation that doesn't move, that you can rely on, that you have a meaning, that there's a meaning to your life, and whether or not you believe in God, or if you believe that that meaning is somewhere else, but that it's something that you can hold on to, that doesn't move, and that is a rock.
Speaker 2:Emotional stress, again I said grief, anger, shame, fear, trauma, loss. That grief, that loss, you know. So there's that emotional stress, obviously. One is I don't feel a lot of those, you know, negative feelings. I'm not there most of the time. Seven, I'm there all the time, like I, just every day I'm an emotional stress ball right and again, lots of these things can happen at the same time.
Speaker 2:Then we've got mental stress. So mental stress is interesting. You're like, how's that different from emotional stress? It is because we're talking about things like this freneticness in your mind. You're all over the place, you're very, very busy. You've got decision fatigue. You're like if somebody asks you something at the end of the day and you're like, oh my God, don't ask me another question, I like I don't care. Your battery in your brain is just empty, your information overload, your eyes are glossing over. At the end of the day, you've got perfectionism. Perfectionism is a huge driver of mental stress. In the old fashioned talk of type A personalities, type A personalities tend to toward mental stress. I used to call myself a workaholic perfectionist, people pleaser. There's a lot of mental stress when you're putting that kind of pressure on yourself to to be all the things to everybody in the world, yeah.
Speaker 2:So again, all these are on a scale of one to seven. Physical stress is the last one. Injury, like you've got an injury, or if you especially if it's chronic, you might have an illness. Like you might have scoliosis, you might have a chronic immune issue, you may have you know any, any kind of physical issue or any kind of chronic pain. Poor sleep is part of that. Physical stress. Improper exercise, so overtraining under eating, under nourishing and under fueling your body or inappropriate fueling. So you know, if we don't have enough vitamins and minerals and the most essential nutrients in our body, it's going to be stressed, right, you're putting your body in a state where it has to make decisions on allocation of resources. On a one to seven. Okay. So add them all up, add what you got. If you are 12 or under, then you are in the green zone. Okay, if you are 13 to 28, you're in that yellow zone, caution is warranted and in fact, there's probably some work that you need to do with someone.
Speaker 2:Why am I talking about this stress? Right, I, just I, we let's go back to it. So, all of this stress, if you're in that red zone, if you're, if you're 29 or over, um, now you've got a real you're, you're, I know you're feeling it every day, like I know you're feeling it every day. My heart is going out to you right now because that is the kind of situation that leads syndrome package goes very strongly with a high allostatic stress load and that and I can't diagnose. This is all information. But if you have already been diagnosed and you know you've got fibromyalgia, restless leg, irritable bowel, chronic fatigue syndrome, those are central sensitivity disorders that are highly related to an allostatic stress load that is very high.
Speaker 2:But also cardiometabolic disorders, high blood pressure, um, and uh, you know, insulin resistance, uh, diabetes, uh, type two diabetes, um, heart disease, cop, like the bottom line is where it comes out for you is based on your genetic weak link and you might think, oh, alzheimer's runs in my family or this runs in my family. What runs in your family is these diseases are triggered when there's a high level of inflammation in my family. There's actually quite a small percent where there's a. It's only one or 2% of the population that has something that they can do nothing about. That has no influence of lifestyle. That is a true genetic issue.
Speaker 2:Almost everything else like you might have something like maybe you've got a mother MTHFR mutation and you don't methylate and you're bad with detoxing and this, and that there are things you can do in your lifestyle to actually accommodate for that, simply by supplementing differently. And there's research out there. So there's things you can do almost always, and even I mean I would say there's always something you can do to be the boss of your health and to shore up your foundations so that you have the, that you're maximizing your capability physically under whatever circumstance you are. It doesn't mean that we're going to be the pinnacle of health, but you can do something and and you I believe that everybody can do something to to heal their body to the point where their mitochondria are coming out of cell defense mode and into energy production mode and you get to live your life.
Speaker 1:I think of the energizer bunny right, the, when, the, when the battery dies down and when they put in the new battery. That's what I think of when I hear you talking about the mitochondria. So just picture the. Energizer Bunny dying and then putting in the new battery.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, and that's how I used to explain, I express myself because the way I felt, and I still very much remember, right down into my toes, how I felt back then, and this was over seven years ago now and I want to tell you remember, I told you my little yo-yo story there for a while and I had been struggling with my weight on and off since I was 25. Like it's just been all over the place. But for the last seven years plus, I have been exactly as I am now my ideal weight and and and I do feel like the Energizer Bunny and people are looking at me like I don't know how you get all that done a day. I can keep going, and you know, and it's not like I don't get tired, I just go to bed when I do, but um, but on a cellular level you have more energy than you ever did before Than I ever did, yeah, than I ever did.
Speaker 2:And um, and I'm 50 this year, so, um I, so I have more energy now and I can play with my grandson in a way today that I couldn't play with my kids when they were his age. That's crazy. I feel better in my body now than I did when I was 38. And I get it. People our age are going through menopause, perimenopause and all kinds of weird stuff is happening and it's like I need to take all the medicines or do the things maybe, but I can tell you that the reason all those things are happening is often because estrogen is sort of that protective little nanny that covers over a lot of bad habits that we may have had, that we didn't know we had, because our body needed to be sure that it could take care of children. The nanny's gone and now we're out on our own and all of a sudden we're facing all these consequences of our actions.
Speaker 1:Exactly, but it is not too late, it is, it's never too late. Not too late If you're feeling the tug and you're like I'm tired of living like this, I can't do it anymore.
Speaker 2:And what Stephanie is talking about you're like, oh my gosh, that just makes so much sense. How can they find you? I'm on Facebook. I'm just Stephanie Pazniokas. I am. My Facebook group is be the boss, be well, and I have a gift for you If you're interested. We haven't really talked about it, but one of the biggest problems that I know women our age have, or people in general I honestly everybody I know, has this problem my 17-year-old has this problem.
Speaker 2:Everybody has this problem. Sleep yeah, you know your cortisol has a circadian rhythm. Your cortisol is one of the stress hormones. If your stress is too high, your sleep's going to be impacted. If you don't get enough sleep, it actually causes your stress to be even higher and it's a snowball right. So? But there's a lot of things that we do behaviorally around sleep that are severely impacting the quality and depth of our sleep and our ability to heal and repair.
Speaker 2:And so I've got a list of 20 tips for better sleep that will get you started and that will put you on my email list and you're going to get the whole entire sleep guide after a few emails and I'm very open about what you got even in the first email. So here's the email you're going to get, and then, once a week, I send you a whole bunch of gold. All right, and it's not just here's information. Every single week, you have a little mini action that you can do. That is going that you're going to get to practice all week long if you so choose, and it is going to help you with your overall health.
Speaker 2:That's be the boss giftcom, and I'll put that link into the show notes as well, yeah, yeah, and my Facebook group is be the boss, be well. That link will be in the show notes and you know, know, if you're not sure you want to do something, and and and another thing that I have that I run regularly throughout the year. It's called data-driven eating. If you just want to be open to and curious and know if the food you're eating and if the stress you're having and if the sleep you're getting or not getting is helping you or harming you, we get to look at your glucose levels, because guess what your metabolic health, that's what your mitochondria are. But your mitochondria and your glucose levels and all these other things all affect your metabolism.
Speaker 2:So what we get to look at is hey, is how I'm living helping me or harming my metabolic health? And, of course, is how I'm living helping me or harming my metabolic health? And, of course, glucose levels can tell us a lot, and it's not just the level, it's the pattern. I get to see a lot about what you're doing in your lifestyle that you might be able to, and I'm not going to tell you what to do. I point you in the direction of some experiments. You could say hmm, what if I try this? You've got control data. You're going to do some experiments that you get to eat, because a lot of it's food-based, and you're going to decide what they are. And it's just fun.
Speaker 1:So at the retreat that Stephanie and I met at, someone was there who was doing her data-driven eating program experiment and discover, even just in these short couple of days, that we were together and seeing her excitement over being able to see the immediate result of her experiment was really cool. Now, if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you know I care for my dad. He's a type one diabetic. I'm so totally familiar with the continuous glucose monitoring. But to see someone who's using it to experiment was really cool. Like my dad uses it to survive, but to see someone using it for an experiment to see what foods, what activities, what it does to me like in real time wicked cool. So if you're and and what I love about Stephanie is she is a scientist, it is all about the experiment, it's about the scientific method for her, this whole wellness journey, but it's fun, it is fun.
Speaker 2:Because it's an experiment. It's not like, oh, I failed because I didn't do the thing. It's like I learned something from that. I learned that in this situation, I don't do the thing that I say I'm going to do. How can we change it so that I am more likely to do what I say I'm going to do? It's just, it's fun. I am so sick and tired of the health and, you know, perspective we all have is like oh, my doctor said X, I've got to go try this thing again. I've got to do this horrible exercise that I hate my gosh. How many of us are going to stick with something we hate doing? I'm not one. I'm not Right. So I really do believe this health journey gets to be fun. It gets to be. You know, it's a big learning journey and you're getting to figure out your perfect lifestyle that you were designed to have.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, stephanie, thank you so much for joining me on the show. We could actually just continue talking forever, I'm sure, but again, if you're resonating with everything that Coach Stephanie is saying, I highly recommend you click on the links in the show notes. Get connected with her, become a part of her ecosystem, right, become a part of the people who listen to the things that she has to say, because what she has to say just makes so much sense.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Melissa. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for spending a little time with me today on the Lemon Balm Coaching Podcast. I hope you're walking away with something that sparks joy, hope or a fresh perspective for your journey. If you loved today's episode, let's keep the conversation going. You can find more inspiration, coaching tips and resources over at my website, lemonbalmcoachingcom. Don't forget to follow me on social media for encouragement and updates, and you'll find me on Instagram and Facebook at Lemon Balm Coaching. And hey, if you're looking for a supportive, uplifting community of amazing women just like you, come join us in the Reignite your Flame Facebook group. It's a safe, welcoming space where we share, grow and cheer each other on, and you can find the link on my website or just search for Reignite your Flame on Facebook. Remember, honey, just be yourself. The world needs what only you have to offer. Take care and I'll see you in the next episode.
