MODULE 4

A MIND BODY APPROACH TO ENERGY & FATIGUE

Section 2

Learn a powerful new approach to working with low energy. Using principles from Dynamic Eating Psychology and Mind Body Nutrition, we can understand and treat fatigue with a new set of skills that addresses nutritional status and our personal journey.

DOWNLOADS

All Section 2 audios

All Section 2 slides

PART 1

Autoscroll:

Greetings once again, my friends, this is Mark David, founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. Let's have some great conversations about energy and fatigue. What a great challenge to work with. What a fascinating challenge to work with. So we are, we're gonna really dive into this topic and see as always, if we can approach this from a fresh perspective, let's get some new insights, let's understand this topic in a different way. So from that understanding, we could actually be of service to people. We can actually help those who are challenged around their energy. And perhaps we can especially help those who have been challenged around energy and haven't been able to get where they want to go via whatever traditional and alternative means they have been using. So working with low energy, you know, it, it's fatigue is, is very intimate. When I'm talking to a person who's low energy, who's fatigued, that's an intimate conversation. When I'm feeling low energy, when I'm feeling fatigued and I'm talking about it, I, I don't even wanna admit it. I wanna feel like I have all the energy all the time that I need. There's actually a lot of people go into a little bit of guilt, uh, if they're low energy for any reason. So this is an intimate challenge to work with. It is a powerful challenge to work with because quite frankly, whatever this actual thing called energy is, we know we need it. You know, you need it to get through your day, you know, you need it to get through your life. You know, when it runs out for good, then that's it. So there's a part of us somewhere in the back of our mind, understands that we're running on energy and it seems like life is finite. At some point, we're not going to be running on any energy. So if you look around, I think you might notice that we live in a time where so many people are wanting more energy. It's a very common desire. Sure it is. Yep. There's a lot of people who are fine, they're doing great, they're a bundle of fire and they don't need your help here. At the same time, there are a lot of humans who are dealing with this challenge and there are a lot of people who will be dealing with this challenge at some point. And you know, not only are so many people dealing with the challenge of low energy, but I believe it's time we face the fact that there are indeed so many factors that can influence our sense of low energy, influence, our sense of fatigue. Those factors could be metabolic, they could be lifestyle, they could be very personal, emotional, all mind based factors. It could be a swirl of all of these. So as always, we're going to be taking a holistic perspective when it comes to energy and fatigue. As you know, lack of energy impacts us in a very poignant way. And because there can be so many causative and or contributing factors to low energy, I'm telling you, a lot of professionals, a lot of practitioners can easily miss important information really through no fault of their own. And that's why I am saying this is the reason why working with low energy is a pretty fascinating explana exploration and journey. Um, when I say that there can be so many causative and contributing factors, you know, if you are trained to, in a very traditional way, you're going to do a blood test and you're gonna look at nutritional factors, you might look at hormonal factors, you might look at some other factors. And if a blood test comes up negative and everything looks good, then that particular expert is going to say, there's nothing wrong with you.
And indeed, there might be nothing wrong in that realm that we can find. But when people say they have low energy, they're generally not lying. They're generally being real, they're being honest, and that is their experience. So we, you and I as practitioners need to learn how to be good sleuths, good detectives, and understand that we're gonna cover some turf in exploring the different possibilities. Now, part of the challenge of working with low energy, oddly enough, is how we view energy, how we define it, and what we think it actually is. So each of us, you and I, each of us likely has some very interesting beliefs about this thing we call energy. And we each have some assumptions about energy that may or may not be helpful. So depending on the type of practitioner someone is, once again, that's how we will generally look to diagnose and treat low energy. In this training, we are looking to take the widest and the most general approach to the topic of energy. Why? Because unless you're a specialist, I'm going to assume that this is a generalist training and the more general the approach, the wider the number of people you and I can capture and be of most help to. It's as simple as that.
So, you know, one of the common complaints, one of the very common complaints that a general practitioner will hear, a medical doctor that a health coach will hear is, I don't have enough energy. That's probably one of the top five. So if that's a most general complaint, many people experience it. Let's take a wide approach. Let's be good generalists here.
And as always, when I am beginning a new topic with you, I start wide. I start big, I start big picture. So when we could at least agree on a framework, or at least you understand the framework that I'm coming from, you can best understand the material and best see how you are going to use it and how you are going to work with it.
So in this series of conversations, we will specifically look at energy and fatigue from a mind-body nutrition standpoint. What do I mean by that? When I say we're gonna be looking at energy and fatigue from a mind-body nutrition standpoint, what I mean is we're gonna look at the impact of meal timing and macronutrient, balance and stress, state eating and eating speed and awareness and pleasure and food quality and food allergies and general metabolic factors. Maybe a few more. We're also going to look at energy and fatigue from a more dynamic eating psychology standpoint. Little different meaning our toxic nutritional beliefs lifestyle, huh? How might my relationships be impacting my level of energy? Family work, meaning purpose, spirituality, sexuality, all the life domains.
You're gonna see some fascinating connections between energy level and a person's life.
And we're gonna notice that oftentimes our energy is impacted by a combination of any or all, or some of these factors that I've just mentioned.
Usually my friends. Usually it's not just one thing,
yeah, sometimes it might be one big thing and other contributing factors. But oftentimes it's a complex
of different energies, different factors in different aspects of life. And that's what we're gonna be learning about. How to sniff that out.
So low energy and language, allow me to state the obvious. Here's what you're gonna hear people say. Now, just understand you might have clients come to you and their primary complaint is around energy. Great. So now you know their primary complaint. That's why they're coming to see you. I want more energy. Uh, you will have clients who, that's not their primary complaint. Their primary complaint might be over reading or binge eating or emotional eating or weight. Low energy might be a secondary complaint. The good news is you help one, you help the other. So languaging that our clients will use, I want more energy. I don't have enough energy. I'm exhausted. I'm tired all the time. You know, I used to be able to do this, this, this, and this and this. And I can't do it anymore. I don't have the energy I used to. Or people say, you know, something is off around my energy or you know, I get tired when, or someone will say, I'm just wanting to get my energy back.
So many of us hit a point where we realize, wait a second, this isn't what it used to be. Something's going on here. Some of the core questions about energy, I just wanna lay those out and we're gonna, we're gonna answer these questions to the best of our ability. What exactly is energy anyway? We're using the term. What is it? How do we really define it? Do we all mean the same thing? When we talk about low energy, are we actually saying the same thing? Is low energy something we help address by taking something that gives us energy? Oh, you have low energy. Here's a food, here's a pill, here's a substance that will give you more energy.
Is low energy something we help address by removing things that drain our energy, which could be those exact same thing, food or pills or other substances. Oftentimes prescription drugs, oftentimes over the counter medications. Uh, and what are the best ways, if there are any best ways to truly have more energy? So those are, those are some of the guiding questions here. So my friends, let's just take a few minutes and look at a big picture view of this word called energy in terms of how we traditionally use it. And then we'll slowly start to narrow down and hone in on what we're gonna do about this.
You know, the concept of energy is widespread in all sciences. We talk about chemical energy. You can talk about mechanical energy, you can talk about all kinds of electromagnetic energy. We can talk about ther thermal energies. We can talk about gravitational energy. We can look at the body, we can look at biology, and we can talk about energy at the biological level, at the cellular level. So energy really goes across every scientific discipline you can imagine. You know, the conversation around energy is often limited by science itself. How science defines it. It's limited by our imagination. And the imagination is what invents science. The conversation around energy is often limited by just our programming, our conditioning, what we've been led tova about energy. In other words, I'm trying to say we're gonna be thinking a little bit more out of the box. That's my intention. Why? Because when we step out of the box, things tend to get a lot more interesting. Now, a simple definition of energy in the most general sense of the word that can cover just about any discipline, it's the concrete, it's the real, but it's also this subjective, meaning we can't always define it. The concrete and subjective motive, force and stuff of the universe that can leapfrog from one form to another.
Again, definition of energy. It's the concrete, okay? We could define it, but sometimes it's subjective. I want more energy. Well, what exactly is that? So we can measure certain kinds of energies very concretely. And there's other kinds of energies. How do you measure your own energy? It's very subjective. So it's these various kinds of energies. It's the stuff of the universe. And it can go from one form to another. You've probably learned somewhere in junior high school or high school or college, that matter in energy or interchangeable. They often are, you burn a fuel, you take matter, you burn it, you release energy. Energy changes, forms. This will be good to remember when we start looking at the energy that you and I are concerned about here, which is the human energy that my client experiences. Because energy in different aspects of life can leapfrog. It can change from one form to another. Okay, well let's lay it out. Energy is a purely symbolic term, really even to a physicist. What I mean by that is no one has actually ever seen pure energy. There's no such thing as pure energy. Nobody's even seen an electron. Okay? We can see its effects, you can see its traces. But pure energy, whatever energy is pure energy can't be bottled, it can't be contained. And according to science, you can create it out of nothingness, nor can you destroy it. It's always changing forms. So the concept of energy, really, there's a level where it mystifies medical science because it defies the rules by which science plays by. And it's simply difficult to nail down where our human energy actually comes from. If we had this nailed down, nobody would be complaining of chronic fatigue. Nobody would be complaining, I'm low energy. We would've figured it out.
So let's just be humble. Let's just understand and admit that we, the collective, we, the scientific, we we're still in kindergarten when it comes to truly understanding energy. And that's okay. That's a good thing. We're learning. We're understanding that when it comes to human energy, the energy that you wake up in the morning. And if I'm standing right there and I say, Hey, how's your energy? And if I ask you two hours later, how's your energy? That's a very subjective conversation.
We can't truly measure it, but we can experience it. So I just wanna point down an interesting feature about humans before we dive into our personal energy. We seem to have this global challenge around energy. You know, oil, electricity, coal, nuclear energy, what a disaster. Energy disasters. Oh my god, energy's too expensive. Oh my god, there's people without basic energy, electricity. This is true. You go to underdeveloped areas around the planet and you visit people who don't have electricity. One of the greatest ways to help those humans step into the present day and join the rest of humanity is to give them electricity changes, everything. So in general, we want more energy collectively. God, is it electricity? Is it oil? Is it nuclear? But we have all these energy disasters. We want cheaper energy. We want better energy sources for all our human needs. Makes perfect sense. So all I'm pointing out, which is the obvious, but I'm just reminding us because things are interconnected, we're grappling with the collective waste of energy. You know this, I don't have to tell you, we the collective, we, we waste energy.
You often hear talk of free energy. We want free energy want. We want renewable energy resources. So we're not burning down our planet. We want energy that can renew itself, that's not gonna destroy nature and destroy our world and pollute our world.
It's also interesting to note, in case you haven't noted it for a while, that our primary energy sources, oil, coal, nuclear power, electricity, are owned by a very tiny percentage of humans. They are controlled by corporations, but in turn, those are owned by shareholders who are the wealthiest humans in the world. Interesting to note. So really as I am saying this, I'm thinking to myself, you know what we face individually in relationship to energy, you know, hey, me, you know, I want some more energy. Wow, my energy's running out. Wow. What we're facing individually when it comes to energy is often what we're facing collectively with energy. Me and you, you're alive. Your energy's running out. It's only gonna last so long. You know, oftentimes we can't afford energy. It's expensive. Oftentimes you can't afford to do the things that would give you more energy. We can't agree on the best source of energy, literally on a global scale. We are duking it out. Some people want solar power. A lot of people want solar power. Well, a lot of people want renewable sources of energy, but we're still using oil, et cetera. We really can't collectively agree on the best source, nor can we agree on the best source on a biological, biochemical, nutritional level. Everybody has their beliefs and opinions. And globally we're locked into old habits of how we produce energy. The way we produce energy globally ain't working anymore.
And I think the same holds true for so many individuals, particularly your clients who come to see you. Chances are if they're low energy, they're doing something, they're locked into old habits that aren't working for them when it comes to having the energy that they want.
So the individual often is reflected in the collective and vice versa. Just interesting to note
and speaking about collectively, I don't know if you've noticed this, but collectively, I think for the most part, people are fatigued. People are often drained. We don't have enough time. We're often in fear for our safety and security. We're often in fear of not having enough financial security, enough social security, enough emotional security. As humans, we worry about the future. We're worried some of us, about the future of the planet, the future of the environment, the future that we're leaving for our children. If you're not worried about that, chances are you are and or you're worried about your own future. Is it gonna work out? Am I gonna be okay? Am I gonna find love? Am I gonna be happy and healthy? Am I gonna have the body I want? Am I gonna have the energy I want? Whatever it is, we worry about the future.
So in any given week, approximately 50% of people polled will tell you, yeah, I was fatigued at various points. That's interesting. The reason why I am pointing out that we are collectively fatigued, often drained, don't have enough time and fear for our safety, security, financial security, we worry about the future.
Is that your client who comes in with low energy, they're not unique in terms of their challenge? Yes. Are they an absolutely unbelievably, beautifully unique human being? You bet. I treat every human being as unique as having a completely different psychology. And I often notice that many of us humans are dealing with the exact same challenge. My low energy, my overeating, my binge eating, my weight, my body image.
It's helpful to understand your client, but it's also helpful to always see that we are a product of the collective. So if you look at so many cultures around the globe, we're moving too fast. Every culture, no, a lot of cultures, yes, chances are your client who's coming to see you for low energy. They are living in a culture that moves too fast. We suffer, I believe collectively, we the collective we, our speed is going too fast. There's a lot of empty life pursuit, meaning we're chasing after things that don't actually give us what we want. We're taught to chase after certain goals around weight, where certain, we're taught to chase certain goals around career, around finance. We're taught to chase certain goals around the things, the material, things we get in life. And yeah, that's good. That can be great. And oftentimes it could be very empty.
I believe if you look around, you will notice there's an absence of the sacred, of the spiritual, of the religious, of a deeper sense of wow. Life is more than just what I can see before me.
We're a product of an environment that, as far as I can tell, since I've been around, tends to get a little more toxic. There are certain things we clean up and there are certain ways that we make things more toxic. We live in a world where there's a lot of stress. I don't have to tell you about that. We live in a world where if there's a lot of stress, if we're moving too fast, if there's a lot of empty life pursuit, then there's gonna be an absence of good old fashioned rest. Really it's as simple as that. And we are often asked, we're often asked to disconnect from the body. We're often asked to sacrifice our body in the service of work, in the service of being parents, in the service, of a job, in service, of a career,
in service, of just getting from point A to point B in life. There's a lot to do. A lot of us are real busy, and I don't say busy is good,
but one of the results of moving too fast and not having enough time and having to worry about survival money, the people we're responsible for, the things we're responsible for is it's easy to disconnect from body wisdom, which then means it's easy to make choices that unbeknownst to us drain our energy. What I'm trying to point out by saying all this is that all you need to be, all you need to do is just be born
and you're gonna have an energy challenge. Chances are, because chances are the culture that you are swimming in
is not necessarily conducive to you having optimal energy. We're products of our world, we are products of our environment. So I hope as you're hearing this, you are understanding that for many clients there's a brilliant reason why they're low energy. There's a brilliant reason. Based somewhere in biology, in psychology, in culture, in the world, in life,
people often go to, it's my fault. People often go into shame and we fail to just notice, wow, you don't have it easy. Chances are your client who's low energy. I bet if we listen to most stories, you're gonna hear somebody who didn't quite have it easy, or their body had an insult, a toxic insult, poor diet,
high speed work, high speed living disembodiment because of busyness, because of the need to make money,
always trying to help our client place themselves in the world so they can begin to see some of the brilliant reasons for their challenge.
So fatigue is truly a disease of our times, my friends, because for many people we're afraid to slow down, understandably. So what happens if you slow down, you're gonna relax. And if you relax, you're gonna see things different. If you relax, you might not be able to get as much accomplished. A lot of people are afraid to be tired.
I've just noticed this.
I wonder if you've noticed that certain people are afraid to be tired. We can, many of us be driven. Our soul's compass is often distorted in word chasing after the wrong things.
I've seen people who are chasing after lifelong perfection when it comes to body and weight. That can be an energy drainer my friends.
So all I'm trying to say is it's no accident that so many people are so tired.
So my friends, when you and I are treating fatigue issues in our clients, we're looking to work on both the personal level with the human being sitting right in front of you. And at the same time, we in the back of our mind are understanding that there is a collective level at work. So what I'm saying is, can you see your client in the context of the culture?
I need you to be able to do that because then you're not looking at your client like this poor, broken human being. Oh, you have low energy. Wow, let me dive into your chemistry, let me dive into your diet. Let me see what your issue is. So yeah, of course we're gonna dive into chemistry and we're gonna dive into diet. But we first have to understand where we are in the universe.
And where we are in the universe is that the setup already exists for us to have low energy. So it's important just to see your client in the context of the world they live in, the culture that they live in, the city that they live in.
Can you see your client in the context of their job?
You can take a very reasonably healthy human being. You put them in the right circumstance in terms of a job, and you're gonna have a low energy human, a fatigued human. Can you see your client in the context of their family? Some people have exhaustion from how they need to serve their family or how they're going about serving their family. Can you see your client in the context, yes, of their personal world, their relationships, what they go through, their emotionality, their spirituality, their sexuality. All of that can impact our energy. I want you to see your client who's low energy. As somebody who's trying to find energy in a world that's often a bit toxic, that's often a bit unbalanced, that's often a bit uncertain. It's an uncertain world and that's often a bit unsupportive.
I want you to be able to understand your client.
It's not just you helping somebody be a better person, even though you are, you are helping somebody to the best of your ability exist in a world that's often unsupportive when it comes to health and energy. That's not an easy job. But with that reframe, we're being honest. This is the world we live in. And I, and, and this isn't blaming the world, this is just calling it like it is. It's being honest, it's being clear.
It's helping us see that yes, you and I, each one of us needs to take responsibility for how we manage our energy in this world. But at the same time, let's look around and say, Hey, not an easy task.
The cards, the deck is stacked against you. Chances are,
so for you and I as the practitioner, our task is the exploration. Exploration. We're gonna explore and hopefully discover what supports the experience of energy in our clients. What detracts from the experience of energy in our clients, how do we tap into our clients unique sources of energy? Each client, you know, something, they have some resource that may be unique to them that gives them energy. You'll see we're gonna get to that. We're gonna explore and hopefully discover how to educate our client around the subtleties of energy. Ah, my friends, it is often the subtleties, it's often the little things that we do that when you add 'em up, end up to some energy drain. So we're gonna be looking at that. Okay, let's just make sure we're on the same page. I'm calling lack of energy fatigue. That's just my simple definition. I don't think there's any argument there. Lack of energy equals fatigue. Um, fatigue. What is fatigue? Really, it's the experience. You know, a client comes in as you know, I'm fatigued. Really, I think what we're saying when we're saying I'm fatigued, there's an experience of lack of life force. It's the experience of having insufficient energy to express some of our simplest desires in the world.
When I'm fatigued, I'm experiencing a lack of life force. I am experiencing having insufficient energy, motive, power to express, to do some of the simplest things I wanna do in this world.
I want you to notice the term experience, because as you will see if you do this work long enough, is that a person whose low energy can have many, many thousands of dollars worth of medical tests for their fatigue and be told that nothing is wrong. I, i if, if I have 50 bucks for every time I've seen that I could take a five year vacation.
People get the most amazing test and they're told, Hey, nothing's wrong with you. But meanwhile, that person walks out and goes, I'm fatigued. I don't have energy. I'm low energy. I got a problem here. I'm trying to solve this.
So there's a level where we are dealing with this thing called experience. And I am very happy to trust any human being despite whatever clean bill of health they get from the world of traditional medicine. And I'm not knocking traditional medicine. Traditional medicine has its limits and it has its superpowers. Oftentimes when it comes to this particular realm, when it comes to working with energy and fatigue. Medical science has very specific tools, very specific measurement tools. That's what it knows, that's what it does. You and I are here to augment that in many ways. We are here to be educators. If you're a coach, we are here to be better practitioners. If you are some other kind of health practitioner when it comes to working with energy so that we can respect the experience of our client and begin to see, okay, if you've gotten a clean bill of health here, here, here, and here, let's start exploring other places now to help you solve your challenge. That's what this is about.
So I don't want you to be alarmed by a client who's come into you with this story because it's a common story.
Now, you will also oftentimes hear terms like chronic fatigue. Chronic fatigue is a catchall,
we can call it a medical term because it's being more and more adopted in medicine and it's kind of a catchall term. Chronic fatigue is not one clearly identifiable disease, nor does it have a one clearly identifiable cause.
So when you hear somebody has been diagnosed with chronic fatigue, really what that is, is they've been having fatigue for a long, long, long time and nothing's helped. So, yep, the vacation didn't help, the rest didn't help, this didn't help. That didn't help. You have chronic fatigue, you have longstanding fatigue. So it's just a catch alter.
And it reminds us that treating fatigue can be fantastically elusive. It can be difficult, it can be time consuming, it can be costly, it can be frustrating. Speak to a person who has chronic fatigue. They will tell you that many people who have chronic fatigue, they have been searching for a long time, they might have spent a lot of money. Chances are they're very frustrated people with chronic fatigue, oftentimes I have noticed they're working hard and they're working hard without a lot of energy to get where they wanna go.
So I'm just telling you this, so you can start to understand the internal world of some of your clients. And you can understand how the world of traditional, even natural medicine when it comes to this thing called chronic fatigue, where we, the collective we we're exploring, we're trying to figure it out. We're learning on the the job. That's okay. I'm interested in anything that works. I don't care what works. You know, as long as it ultimately has a benefit and is not just short term and then yields, uh, long term problems. But I'm always looking for what works. It doesn't matter what works. If it works, it works. So the challenge is that collectively we tend to miss the target when treating fatigue because far too many practitioners are searching for the one metabolic cause. Oh, you have fatigue. It is gotta be one thing. It's gotta be one virus, one bacteria. It's gotta be one kind of deficiency. Maybe there's a few vitamin or mineral deficiencies. So we're searching for the one metabolic cause and we're often searching for the one metabolic cure. What's the pill I take? What's the drug I take?
We tend to ignore soul, heart, psyche, and all the collective factors. We tend to ignore the whole mind body dimension.
It's not as, on the one hand, it's not as sexy
on the other hand, it takes more work.
And many of the helping professions, many people in the medical professions, their life and their practice is not set up. That culture is not set up for a lot of long term detective work, sleuthing work with a client. And for many people it can get very, very, very costly.
So there's an assumption I'm operating on here, and that is by supporting our client's deepest emotional and soul needs, we can help liberate a powerful source of energy. I say that again. When you and I are supporting our client's deepest, emotional, personal, and soul needs,
we can very well help them liberate a powerful source of energy.
Might that be the answer to their challenge and problem? Absolutely. Might it be a big piece of the puzzle? Absolutely. A medium piece of the puzzle. Absolutely.
Either way, it can't hurt, it absolutely can hurt. And my friends, many, many, many times, I'm just saying this from experience, many times, that's where the action is.
Many times when it comes to helping somebody with their low energy and their fatigue, the answer is found in the emotional, personal soul realm. Plain and simple.
And once again, energy and fatigue levels in our clients can be a swirl of nutritional and biological factors along with the emotional and soul factors. And what I wanna say is, neither trumps the other. I'm not, I'm not standing for either one and saying, this one's more important, less important, each are and can be profoundly important. So that's why we're being generalists here. Yes, of course, I'm gonna look at all the nutritional factors, the traditional nutritional factors, the, the, the mind body, nutritional factors, some of the uh, metabolic, biological factors that can impact a person's energy. And yes, what's the emotional soul factors?
And a lot of times you work in both those realms, the nutritional biologic realm and the emotional personal soul realm.
The work synergizes, it becomes that much more powerful because we're multidimensional creatures.
Again, we don't always go there because we wanna work in one place because experts tend to have one expertise. And the reality is, a lot of people who are steeped in the world of nutrition, biology, medicine, biomedicine, they think very nutritionally and they think very biomedically. And that's a certain way of thinking because that's how they're trained to think. That's how they're taught to think. Hallelujah. That's a good thing. But they are not generally not taught to think emotionally, personally, soul factors.
And consequently we might completely miss that. And that might be where the action is.
And vice versa. There's a lot of people who are taught to work in the personal and emotional realm and they don't quite have the nutritional factors now.
So the emotional soul factors along with the mind body nutrition factors are often profoundly unnoticed and an undiagnosed source of potential energy enhancers or detractors.
So all I'm saying is let's work in these realms because this gives us the greatest chance to help our client have a powerful breakthrough. So I want you to consider the act of helping your client find more energy as a treasure hunt.
Remember, you ain't fixing your client, it's not your job. Oh, you're broken, broken energy machine. Machine doesn't have enough energy. Let me fix the broken machine. No, you're going on a treasure hunt along with your client who comes in and says, I'm fatigued, I have low energy help on a treasure hunt. What do we do? It's exciting, it's interesting. We might find some treasure. So we're gonna look for clues. We're gonna dig here, we're gonna dig there. Treasure hunt. You know, I'm sorry, it takes a little time. If a treasure hunt just happened in 30 seconds, ah, life wouldn't be that interesting. So if you're on a treasure hunt, it takes a little patience.
As always, we need to respect the journey. And what I wanna say, especially when it comes to energy, is the journey itself. To find more energy oftentimes is the cure.
Does that make sense when I say that? The journey itself often is the cure. Meaning for many people who have low energy, just the fact that they have to slow down, look in the mirror and go, huh, I need to look at my actions. I need to understand what's impacting me. I might need to look at diet, I might need to look at lifestyle. I might need to look at my inner world, at my job, at my relationships. That's a journey that's asking a person to step into consciousness. That's asking a person to step into awareness. That by itself is a cure.
Oftentimes where low energy, because we're not conscious of our world, we're not aware of our world, we're not embodied in ourselves, we can't see the places where we're draining energy. We can't see the places where we are harming ourselves.
So I really, really, really want you to consider the journey of finding more energy, the remedy in itself. As soon as my client walks into my office, I want you to help me get more energy. I'm thinking, great, we're off to the races here.
The healing has actually begun. That's how confident I'm now contrary to popular belief, the pot of gold here is not at the end of the journey. Okay? So, okay, Mr. And Mr. Glenn, we're gonna, we're gonna eventually find this pot of gold and, and the pot of gold is just all this energy. And then you're gonna eat the gold and have more energy. Uh, I don't think so. I haven't seen it doesn't happen on occasion, sure.
But generally there are pieces of gold found all along the way and they accumulate with time and with awareness and with discovery,
once again, yeah, there's always the isolated case. You're going to hear of the person who said, and I took this supplement, I did this diet, I did. Um, and my energy came back. Okay, I believe it. I've met people like that oftentimes, by the way, they've done a thousand other things before that or a hundred or maybe 20. But that's not the first thing they necessarily tried to do.
And if it was great, good for them. That was a quickie.
And in general, there's a journey. And in general, you are the guide in that journey. You set the tone for that journey. Now my friends, I want to introduce a concept that I've been saying in different words, but I wanna say it very directly. And it is absolutely 100% crucial
to understanding how to work with energy. I'm gonna call this a postulation, I'm gonna call this an assumption. Most, um, underlining the word. Most humans already have all the energy that they need. Not all. Most humans already have all the energy that they need. The secret is to manage that energy better
and to notice how we drain it.
Looking for more energy is often, often, often a recipe for failure. Think of it in terms of money. My friends, I give you a million bucks and you go, oh my goodness, thank you Mark, I have a million dollars. I am wealthy, I am happy, I'm energized. This feels really, really good. I've just given you a million dollars. What a nice guy. Now you get so excited that you drink some wine that evening and you go, you know, I wanna have even more millions than this. I'm gonna just go to Las Vegas and gamble. So you hire a private plane, you go to Las Vegas, you gamble it and you lose it all. You didn't manage that money very well, did you? Now you can come back to me and say, mark, I don't have enough money. I need money. And I go, I just gave you a million dollars. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I need more. I need more. I'm low in money. Okay? Hmm. I wouldn't be very smart if I gave you another million dollars because you're gonna waste it again. You didn't manage, let's call money, energy. You didn't manage that energy very well, did you? You know plenty of people, chances are who don't manage their money very well.
The secret, by the way, to wealth is to understand how to manage it.
The secret to money is understanding how to best manage it. How do I shave and then how do I spend and what do I spend on? And if I invest, what would be the wisest investment? The biggest bang for the buck. Okay, I might take some risky investments, but I don't wanna risk everything on a risky investment because risky investments are gonna leave me with no money. IE no energy.
So if you lost that million dollars that I gave you, and if I really wanted to do you a favor, I'd give you 50 bucks. And then we would sit down and have a conversation about how to manage that energy, how to manage that money. Okay, whatcha gonna do with this 50 bucks. How about if we put 35 in the bank? How about if you take the other 15? What do you really need to spend it on? What do you need to spend it on that's gonna actually give you more momentum that might be investing in you? Oh, you want a nice cup of coffee so you can get a lot of work done that day? Hmm, that makes sense.
A lot of people have all the energy that they need. My friends, they don't realize how they're squandering it.
If a human does not know how to manage the human energy, the biological energy, the energy in my system that I already have,
and they end up being fatigued, giving them more energy doesn't do anything. You're gonna just make the same mistakes over and over again.
Okay? Think of if you've been around some young people, if you've been around young kids, if you've been around young kids, what you notice is some young kids have a ton of energy. Many young kids have a ton of energy and you know something you ever notice. Sometimes kids have so much energy that they could run around like crazy and you can see it coming. You know that in another two, three minutes there's gonna be an accident because they have so much energy they can't imagine, they can't contain it. They have so much biological energy, they're just running around there, horsing around there, playing around, and somebody's gonna bang their head on a wall, somebody's gonna fall down, somebody's gonna hurt somebody else. Not because they're mean. They literally don't know how to manage their energy. They're learning. We have set at various times in this training that so much of what we're doing is we're learning how to regulate our discomfort.
Humans, when it comes to food and body are learning how to regulate discomfort. We are learning how to regulate our emotions. We are learning how to regulate our thoughts. Another word for regulate is manage. We're learning. Learning how to manage our emotions, learning how to manage our discomfort. Learning how to manage the thoughts in our mind because when we're not managing those, they could easily overpower us.
So like those little children, sometimes we have so much energy, we don't even realize it, we don't realize how we're spending it. We don't realize that we're, that we've been banging our head against the wall.
I see this time and time again with my low energy clients,
yeah, they're feeling low energy. They got there because they didn't know how to properly manage their energy. And understandably so, because they weren't taught and they live in a world where the cards are stacked against them because the world is asking us to expand more energy. Come on, you could do it. Keep going. Drink more caffeine, drink, take more sugar, come on, work harder. Stay over time. Do do do, do stuff. The more you do stuff, the more you seem to be rewarded or the more you hope to be rewarded or the less rewarded you are and the more stuff you do desperately hoping you get rewarded at some point. All I'm trying to say is the setup often has us training our energy.
So before I'm truly helping a lot of clients have more energy, get more energy, they need to learn how to manage whatever energy is coming through their system. Whatever money is coming through the system, if you don't know how to manage it, you're not trustworthy with more money, nobody gonna give it to you. Why should they? Life often doesn't give us more energy.
Have you noticed there's times in life where you have to learn how to work smarter, not harder.
It's kind of what we're talking about.
So when I say most humans already have enough energy, they already have the energy they need. It's not true for everyone.
But it's useful for more people than we might realize. And quite frankly, I can say to you, even with my chronically fatigued clients, even with my clients who have suffered an environmental insult, meaning we could trace their chronic fatigue to something that happened to them, an environmental exposure. Some people are extremely sensitive to certain kinds of air pollution. Some people are extremely sensitive to foreign travel and they will catch an exotic bug that depletes their energy for months or years to come. Even for those kind of clients who, yeah, they weren't squandering their energy still oftentimes the road to recovery is learning how to manage the little energy that they have
because it's like a bank account. As you build it up slowly, you gain more power.
So again, I wanna say this is a largely unexamined, unpracticed, unpopular and unsexy approach to having more energy. It would be much more sexy for me to say, Hey, I got this really great herbal supplement supplement, has got a proprietary formula, it's got all these great herbs in it. It's gonna give you more energy that, that, that is typically more sexy than you have to learn how to manage the energy you already have. Jesus, I'd rather drink something, get it over with, don't make me work. Yep, there's work again. And working in this way can yield some very, very, very powerful benefits.
So at the very least what I'm saying is we must learn to effectively and wisely regulate the energy we already have, no matter what the cause of your low energy is. Because from there, when you know how to regulate your money wisely,
it is now possible for more money to come into your system and be sustainable.
When you learn to manage your biological energy, your life force, your vitality more wisely, having more energy becomes possible. Personal power equals metabolic power. Personal power. As I learn how to be a smarter, better, wiser human being, as I learn how to manage my energy, guess what? That can very well impact my metabolic power.
Power. Nowhere is that formula more true than when it comes to actual energy.
And by the way, you're gonna see, we're gonna go into case studies where we really break this down. And you'll see this in action. So remember, we're starting wide here. Now there are many organic causes of fatigue that are very well documented, and some of them are elusive. So we know that there are many people who are suffering from fatigue and the cause is often viral. It's bacterial or it's parasitic, or it's yeast infection, or it's a combination of organisms. By the way, a lot of times or sometimes those are easy to find. And a lot of times they're very difficult, especially for farm travel. People who, who, who travel to another country and they come back and they're fatigued and they have health issues and it's invariably some type of organism. Uh, but it's, it's, it's hard to track in the body. Um, you know, we know science knows that a poor diet can lead to fatigue, nutritional deficiencies can lead to fatigue. Specific nutritional deficiencies can lead to fatigue symptoms commonly. You will hear that around iron. You will hear that around B12. You will hear that around protein. You will hear that around essential fats.
You will hear that actually around vitamin D. That deficiencies in those can lead to low energy. You can also hear that around magnesium as well.
People who have heart, liver, lung or brain diseases of various kinds. And there's a lot of those that can often be reflected or reflect itself in low energy. Show me a person with heart disease. Show me a person with lung disease, brain disease, liver disease. Chances are you're gonna see a person who might be experiencing low energy. Low thyroid is often ex uh, it's concomitant with low energy, various autoimmune conditions. Chances are if a person has an autoimmune condition, they're experiencing low energy. Exposure to mold is a new one that we're becoming aware of. Um, internal bleeding. A lot of people, there's a subset of humans who they have internal bleeding, especially somewhere in the gut. Um, and that's what's causing their low energy. For some people, it literally is poor sleep. So these are all kind of the more traditional well-documented factors that you will learn from biomedicine. Poor sleep, food allergies can be a direct cause of low energy. By the way, let, let, let's make sure we underline that. Poor sleep one there. We'll return to that at some point. Heavy metal and other environmental toxicities. Heavy metal exposure is very important in this day and age because we now have, oh goodness, probably about a good hundred plus years of potential heavy metal exposure coming through water, coming through environment, coming through various different industries, um, coming through household products, coming through vaccinations, coming through mercury based dental fillings.
For many people, they have difficulty clearing heavy metals from their system. One of the symptoms of heavy metal toxicity can be fatigue. Certain kinds of hormonal imbalances, fatigue, use of alcohol, certain kinds of recreational drugs. Prescription drugs can lead to fatigue. Stress can often energize us. Stress can often fatigue us. A lack of sunlight because of fatigue. Depression is often associated with fatigue. Anxiety, closely related to stress can often result in fatigue. Of course, there's genetic factors. Of course there is aging of course there's more. These are some of the main ones just to lay it out there so we know what they are.
But once again, fatigue is often multifactorial. So we might be able to identify certain metabolic causes. You might get a blood test and we could identify a metabolic cause. Yet this approach is not always sufficient because there could be other things at play.
We may be able to identify certain metabolic markers,
yet the emotional soul factors might actually be the key. Now what do I mean by that?
All too often what happens is science has labeled these metabolic causes of fatigue that are really effects of fatigue. They're actually secondary conditions to a deeper cause. What do I mean by that? You might get a blood test, you might be very low in vitamin D and a smart practitioner would go, huh, this could definitely be a big contributing or causative factor to your fatigue. You need more vitamin D, you have a lack of vitamin D. Okay, that's true on a certain level. But really if you look deeply, if you go more deeply, what would cause a lack of vitamin D? What would cause a lack of vitamin D is a person who's not in the sun. What would cause a person to not be in the sun is maybe they're overworked, maybe they're not taking care of themselves. Maybe they have so disembodied that they're just living in service to everyone else and everything else. And there's no self-care involved perhaps because there's so much necessary responsibility and they're eating junk food, which may deplete a person's vitamin D. So yeah, they're low in vitamin D, but that person might be following an overall pattern of disembodiment and not taking care of self and not even knowing that that's an option to take care of self.
Somebody might get a blood test and turns out, wow, you're low in certain B vitamins, you're especially low in B12, but you're also low in other B vitamins. And we go, okay, so there's the issue B vitamin deficiency. Well, okay, got it. But you know what can also cause B vitamin deficiency? It could be a poor quality diet. And that poor quality diet can be a function of me just running around me being unconscious. Me thinking I could eat whatever I want to eat and do whatever I want to do and not taking responsibility for my health and my diet. That low B vitamin state can also be related to stress because stress will burn through the B vitamin family very quickly. Those stressors might be actual real life stressors that we can't do anything about. Those stressors could be self-chosen stressors. We could be stressing ourself out about losing five pounds or losing 25 pounds, or not having the perfect weight shape, body life. This, that, the other thing, you see where I'm going with that? So yeah, the person's low in B vitamins, but that's not a cause that's often in effect.
Somebody could be low thyroid, they might be low thyroid because they worked so, so, so hard and they were so, so, so stressed out that at some point
it impacted that specific gland that often happens for people. So the list goes on, you know, somebo, we, we can say, okay, yeah, your heart disease, it is definitely a factor in your low energy. Sure. And where to from came the heart disease.
Was that diet related? Was that lack of self-care? Was that stress? Was that a closed heart, a closed mind, and a closed life?
So we're looking to to gaze a little deeper when we can.
So here's another important assumption when it comes to energy and fatigue. Fatigue. Or for those who have chronic fatigue, especially, I'm going to consider a necessary symptom.
If you or your client has fatigue, good news, it's a divine message. It's a whispering from your angel. It's information from body wisdom, however you wanna language it, whatever the languaging works for you. But it's a beautiful necessary symptom. It's a divine message. It's a whispering from your guardian angel. It's body wisdom speaking. It's the wisdom of life speaking.
It's there for a reason. So our job as counselors, as coaches, as practitioners, believe it or not, is to give fatigue a big hug
when it shows up in our practice. Welcome it. Welcome your client's fatigue. They want to get rid of it. You want to welcome it. They want to get rid of it. Totally understandable. I'm all for them getting rid of it. The way I help them get rid of it is I welcome it. The way I help them get rid of it is I listen to it, I linger with it, I hang with it, I spend time with it. I honor it. I give it lots of space. Give it lots of room to breathe, lots of room to talk.
By welcoming fatigue, I will help as best I can my client to stop fighting it or resisting it or trying to override it. Guess what that does?
Fighting fatigue. Resisting fatigue, trying to override fatigue, I promise you causes more fatigue.
It's kind of silly.
Fighting fatigue is counterproductive.
Resisting fatigue is fatiguing. Trying to override your fatigue with stimulation of all different kinds, whatever that is. Chemical stimulation, food stimulation, supplement stimulation, electronic st. Whatever we do to stimulate ourselves when we're fatigued, will only lead to more fatigue.
So what I'm asking you to do, my friends, is don't try to fix this. Ain't nothing broken.
We have to help our clients hear the message. Sometimes the messages are very simple, very clear. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes the message is you gotta eat better. Sometimes the message is you gotta sleep better. Sometimes the message is you gotta eat and sleep better. Sometimes the message is you gotta look where you're draining your energy in this place, this place and that place. Sometimes the message is you need to go back to your doctor and get a blood test. Sometimes the message is, okay, we need to take some time and really explore this from different angles and stop trying to override it.
So this is a beautiful challenge. Now, of course, that's not what your client is sitting there thinking. That's not their job. That's your job. It's your job to hold that space because when you hold that space, you are serving your client. You are putting yourself in the best possible position to actually understand the thing that you're trying to help move along.
If you wanna help fatigue move along from your client's life, listen to it, honor it, give it lots of room. Make sure that you do your best to work with your client and align with your client to see what is this here for? What is this trying to teach us? Specifically you, Mr. And Mrs. Klein, what's this trying to teach you? What does this have to say?
And that's what we're gonna be listening for. That's what we're gonna be looking for.
And that's interesting. That's exciting. It's a whole different way to work with this, you know, and when it comes to time and fatigue, I, I wish this wasn't true, I really do. But what I've noticed, especially I've, I've worked with a lot of chronic fatigue clients over the years. You know, the soul doesn't care about time. Soul doesn't care about our need to hurry things up. Life doesn't care about our timing. Have you noticed that if life was going on my timing, I would have everything I want exactly when I wanted it. And I don't, I don't know that that's ever happened. And when it does, it's, it's, it's a surprise. Uh, for sure. So what I'm trying to say is we, our client, we, the collective, we, any one of us may need to live with fatigue for months or for some people years before we have integrated its teachings.
So I am with any fatigue client. I know I want to help the person as soon as possible. I don't wanna be fatigued for more than a few hours, let alone days, weeks, months, or years. So this is a serious business, but at the same time, we have to be patient.
And patience is really about awareness and consciousness. And all I'm saying is I'm pointing out to you that fatigue for some people can have a long life cycle. And when that is the case, this strategy called managing the energy we already have right now becomes of primary importance. Because when you are chronically long-term fatigue, client begins to learn to manage the energy they already have right now. That's actually when life starts to get better. It's a slow build. It will create more happiness. It will create more effectiveness. It will create more energy. It might not give the person the true amount of energy they want, but some, sometimes, sometimes with energy, it's baby steps, my friends. So the gift of fatigue, it's asking us to listen. It can change our life direction and focus. I don't know if you know anybody who's ever experienced long-term tiredness, lack of energy fatigue. Oftentimes you gotta, you gotta really look at life and look at your life and look in the mirror. And a lot of people end up changing how they, how they do life, or specific parts of it. Fatigue can often wake us up. You know, a lot of people are on an automatic pilot and they're just, they're just, they're just going and doing whatever they do, however they do it, not really noticing their impact on themselves, their body, the world, others, and you get fatigued and it wakes you up. Fatigue is often asking us to do a life review. This is key, my friends, I have clearly seen that if I have a fatigue client, I gotta look at everything for them. I gotta look at all parts of their life, personal diet, lifestyle, relationships, all of it. And that's a good thing. We have to discover the places where a person can manage their energy better. So the gift of fatigue, it's asking us to explore new things. It's asking us to experiment. So you gotta do new stuff, you have to try things and some things are gonna work and some things won't. So fatigue, I've often noticed, noticed one of the gifts in it is it humbles us. It really does reminds us that we are finite creatures here, that life is short and we won't always have the amount of energy that we have that makes us feel good.
Fatigue can also make us wiser if we learn from it, if we listen to it, if we follow its instructions.
So my friends, I hope this opening to the conversation of fatigue has been helpful for you. We have lots more to come on this topic. We're gonna be going into a lot of details. The psychology,
The science. We're gonna be doing a bunch of case studies slash case stories. We're gonna really see some interesting ways to work with fatigue and our fatigue clients. So this is the end of energy and fatigue. Part one, part two is right around the corner. I look forward to seeing you on the other side. Thanks.

PART 2

Autoscroll:

Screenings. Once again, my friends, Mark David here, founder of the institute, let us continue our conversation about energy and fatigue, and we will indeed continue laying a foundation of key understandings, core concepts before we dive into the very specifics and the case stories of exactly how to proceed. So let's talk about some assumptions and a lot of people have about energy. And as I'm reading these assumptions to you know that I'm questioning them. Here's some common assumptions. The more energy I have, the better. That's what a lot of people believe. The more energy I have, the better. And honestly, it makes sense. The more energy I have, I like myself more. I like life more. And what I wanna say is oftentimes more energy keeps us doing things and can keep us distracted. So I'm not saying having more energy is bad. I'm not saying having more energy is good. I'm saying having more energy. And the more energy I have, the better. I'm saying yes, but no, that's true when it's true and it's not true when it's not true. So your client is coming in, assuming oftentimes your energy challenge client is coming in, assuming that the more energy I have, the better. And remember that low energy and fatigue is often here to teach us. It's often here to course correct us. So for that person, that might not be true because if they continue to have all the energy they want, they're gonna continue down what was likely a self-destructive road to begin with, or an unconscious road to begin with. Similar to that, if I don't have enough energy, I just need more similar, but different. If I don't have enough energy, I just need more.
Remember how we've already talked about that? Part of what low energy is teaching us is to manage the energy we already have right now. So if I don't have enough energy, it's not that I just need more, it might be for some people, but it might not. If I don't have enough energy, it just might mean that I need to learn how to manage what I have right now more effectively, because that's what life is doing. A lot of people are walking around with this next assumption, which is I should have more energy and it should look exactly like this.
I met a lot of, lot of people who are convinced of what their energy level is supposed to look like. Why? Either because they had a certain energy level in the past or because they know certain people that they want to emulate who have a certain kind of energy level and their energy level looks a certain way.
And who knows, once again, I should have more energy, especially when we're comparing ourselves to the past. Guess what? Life changes, the body changes, health changes, the world changes. So I don't truly know that a person should have more energy when my client comes in to see me and they are, hmm, gripped with the assumption that I should have more energy and it should look exactly like this. I will challenge that. And you'll see we're gonna have a case story where I do that because oftentimes we put our humble demands on the universe and the universe does not comply. And the reason why it's not complying is because it doesn't have to and it doesn't want to. And there's a different program, there's a different workshop, there's a different wisdom that is going on. So if you think your client thinks this is the amount of energy I should have, this is what it should look like, and this is a should, I should have more.
When I see that I, my yellow caution light comes on because I see a human being trying to twist the arm of life. And life always wins on that one.
Another one that another assumption people have about energy, and this is most of our fatigue clients will come in and essentially what they're believing is that this fatigue is in my way.
I got all these things to do. I have life to accomplish people to see, places to go work to make happen. And fatigue is in my way. It's in the way of my goals, it's in the way of the things I have to do, I need to do. I want to do, I must do.
Now, this is a tricky linguistic one because of course I want people to have all the energy that they need. Of course, I don't want people walking around being fatigued, but my first move with my fatigue client is to welcome it when a person is showing up with fatigue is in my way, this is in my way. Get it outta my way. So we have to get it outta the way, and then we will adopt strategies that oftentimes don't work because the strategy is based on a philosophy that isn't in alignment with what's actually going on, on for us. Once again, fatigue is often a teacher. Fatigue is often an alert mechanism of whispering from the universe, from your guardian angel. It's a divine messenger. It's talking, it is not in the way. Yeah, it, it kind of is in your way. It's in the way of us oftentimes going down a road. That's not the right road for us, but we don't know that.
So before you can get something out of the way, you gotta notice it, look at it, study it, understand it as the beginning of moving it.
Similar to that is my fatigue is something I need to simply get rid of. How do I do this? Oftentimes people have an urgency around their fatigue. They want to get rid of it and they will do anything. And oftentimes we try to do anything. I understand we're gonna do all kinds of energy, drinks, supplements, caffeines, whatever it takes, because we need to get rid of it, like it's a thing to be removed.
And once again, when we're trying to get rid of it, we will generally adopt strategies that aren't a good match. Here's another one. If I don't have enough energy, then something is wrong with my body, huh? Love that one. If I don't have enough energy, then something is wrong with my body.
Honestly, that might be true, and it absolutely might be false.
If you don't have enough energy, maybe you need rest. If you don't have enough energy, maybe you're expending too much. If you don't have enough energy, maybe your body is trying to tell you something. So it's not that anything's wrong with the body, it's that everything is actually right with the body. The body's talking, the body's letting you know, Hey, here's a discomfort, it's called fatigue.
That doesn't mean something's wrong with my body. It might very well mean that my body has a wisdom that is speaking up and I've gotta listen. So that's why our first move is always to listen. We wanna hear, okay, what, what can be going on here?
So I don't always agree with my client that something's wrong with their body if they don't have enough energy. In fact, my first move is to believe, okay, your body's talking to you. I wonder what it's saying.
Last assumption I wanna cover for now is that more energy is something that I get from outside me.
And you know something that's a fascinating one because oftentimes it does seem like energy comes from outside me. You know something, if I'm low energy and it's because I haven't eaten and I eat food, I get more energy. So that energy came from outside me. You know something, if I'm low energy and I have a cup of coffee and I drink it, there's a darn good chance I'm gonna have more energy. That's pretty clear. That energy just came from outside me.
So yeah, okay, I'm buying that. But more energy is something that I get from outside me. Sometimes other times more energy is something I get from inside of me.
A power plant does not have energy in it. It generates energy. Sometimes we need to generate energy within us, and that energy might need to be inspiration. Sometimes generating energy within means self-exploration. Sometimes generating energy within means accessing my creativity. Sometimes generating energy from within means tapping into love, tapping into intimacy, into passion, into connection. Sometimes generating energy from inside means simply thinking better thoughts and letting go of the thoughts that are draining my energy for goodness sake. So yeah, sometimes energy is something you get from outside you, but uh, when we're really fatigued and we're battling fatigue and dealing with ongoing fatigue, chances are not always, but chances are, is not about getting energy from outside me. More what do I eat? What do I take? What pill, what supplement, what magic, substance, what thing? 'cause inside me feels a lack. It looks like all the energy's out there. Mm, not really. So what we're saying is fatigue is body wisdom, plain and simple. And it is asking us again to listen more carefully. It's a brilliant guiding mechanism of the body. So as you know, my friends, the more you and I surrender to body wisdom and what it's asking of us, the more we can heal and grow and evolve and nourish.
Fatigue is such a great teacher. It really is. It's a brilliant teacher. And if you wanna graduate from fatigue, you gotta listen to great teacher and hear the lessons that it's teaching us. And oftentimes, fatigue is teaching us to listen and listening can lead us in all different directions. Listening might lead us to, I'm listening to the fatigue and it's pointing me in the direction of, oh, it's a food allergy. Oh, it's not eating enough food. Oh, it's a lack of essential fats. It's a lack of protein, it's a lack of iron, it's a lack of vitamin D. It might lead me to see, oh, it's a sleep issue. Oh, it's a mold issue. Oh, it's the fact that I live with a constant barrage of negative self-talk about my body. So fatigue. As I listen, I begin to hear it and I hear the, the room in my head where it's coming from. Fatigue often is teaching us to rest or perhaps to do a life review.
Just look at everything, look at the whole map of a day of what I do.
Fatigue is often teaching us to go on a journey of discovery
because life speaks through us. Life speaks to us through symptom, through unwanted symptoms, unwanted behaviors, because that's oftentimes how life gets our attention.
You can be running around and have all the energy in the world and making a mess of things and making a mess of other people and wreaking havoc.
And ah, you know, fatigue can slow that down.
And fatigue is now a great teacher.
Fatigue is sending us on a journey of discovery. It's often asking us to find deeper purpose and meaning. For a lot of people, fatigue catalyzes
a deeper search, where previously there wasn't any.
And sometimes we don't need to do a deeper search. That's the reality of things. Sometimes you just need to go about your business fine. And other times life is talking to us in a different way.
So yes, if somebody has fatigue or chronic fatigue, that's that's a little bit of a yellow alert, the alarm should be going off.
Sometimes it just asks us to look at what am I doing? How am I expending my energy? How am I regulating my energy? What would be a better use of my energy?
How did I get here in the first place?
So I would love to say that it's time collectively, I think in the big picture, to slow down, down to reevaluate, to breathe, to recalibrate, to set a new course. And fatigue so often makes this so is forcing us to stop. When you get forced to stop, it's time to listen. When you and I get forced to stop, sometimes there's a message in that forced vacation.
We have to listen. You have to introduce that kind of understanding, that kind of listening to your client on behalf of a greater wisdom and on behalf of you helping your client in their highest goal, which is to be their greatest most self-expressed person in this world possible.
And to understand that life will give us exactly what we need. Sometimes fatigue asks us, demands us to slow down and to look at our course and see where we're going.
Now here's something interesting, and I've said this a few different times, but I really want to hit this home.
It's how many times have I seen this, that so many times with clients, they're simply tired and they need to rest. I, I I'm, this isn't brilliant. It's so obvious. And I am stunned how many people, smart people, uh, powerful people, successful people, wealthy people, and not so successful, smart. So many people miss this.
We think it's our divine right to have all this amazing energy. And you know, people go on their energy kind of extravaganzas. There are times in life when you and I and others just, we've got a lot of energy. There are times in life when you might have been indestructible in terms of your energy. There's times in life when your client is, is fatigue is not a concern. There's a full tank of gas all the time. And, and, and your client's getting great gas mileage with their energy and life is good.
And you know something that doesn't last forever. You know something, there's a lot of people, they have enough of a constitution, they have enough of a biological foundation. They have enough of a strong Physiology that they can, they can do some hard work. They could burn the cannel at both ends. They can get by without a lot of sleep. They could absorb a lot of stress, and at some point it hits us. And then at some point we become tired and we can't believe it. Oh my God, this is, this is so unusual. And yeah, okay, it might be for you, but do you think it's unusual in this world that eventually we tire?
So I'm saying this because I don't want you to miss this because sometimes it's so bizarrely obvious.
And if we miss it, your client can end up wasting a lot of time looking for answers, looking for love, looking for energy in all the wrong places.
So yeah, you and I might hit times when the body changes, metabolism changes. We have a, a transformational shift. And okay, we're not functioning with the same level of energy we used to. We need more rest now.
So once again, fatigue is just letting us know you need more downtime. Plain and simple. You have to learn how to sniff that out with your clients. Oftentimes, my friends, it's the high achievers who find themselves in this position or, and or it's the people who, because of life necessity, they just go and go and go and go and go through no fault of their own. They got a full plate, full life kids job, this, that, whatever it is. And they just go and go and go. And they can go and go and go. And at some point they can go
and there's actually nothing to fix. There is just a readjustment. And the readjustment is okay, now you can't work 60 hours a week, you have to work 40. Or now you can't get by on six hours of sleep anymore. You need eight. Or now you have to take a rest in the middle of the day. Or now you can't take on other people's responsibilities so much and you can't do this extra piece of work, whatever it is.
So I implore you to please with your clients, I want you to notice the obvious when it's there. Which means you're gonna really have to hear your client's story. You're gonna have to hear their journey. You're gonna have to listen to how they spend their energy, how they spend their time. You're gonna have to listen into their archetype and their relationship with energy. And are they just living life on the assumption that they just should, should have more and more and more energy and that they are beyond this thing called I need more rest now.
Now here's something else. And this is very simple science. And you don't hear this a lot. And I don't know why fatigue is often what the nervous system funnels us into after a prolonged alarm response, which means stress response fatigue is often what the nervous system naturally funnels us into after a prolonged alarm response. In other words, stress physiology is powerful. It's intense. Your system is pumped. You are a lean, mean fighting machine in a stress response. You can kill, you can run, you can jump. You are designed
to be at your physiologic and metabolic best. When it comes to strength, power, quick thinking, quick reaction.
And because it's designed for short-term activation, what happens is a lot of us are in a prolonged long-term stress response. For all the reasons that you know, a human being would legitimately be living in that physiologic state. Oftentimes by itself, body goes, damn, we've been in stress a long time. You know something, it is starting to tax this physiology. It's starting to tax this body. We have to create the resolution phase of the alarm response here. We have to create the rest phase. And what happens is the body gets funneled into a natural fatigue or a recovery state. So it'll complete the stress response. Or if the stress response is actually naturally over, I don't know, you had some work project, you had some task, something, something in life and, and now that chapter is closed and all of a sudden you go, ah, and you're completely fatigued.
That fatigue is natural is when I'm trying to say. And for many people that will feel unnatural because they've been in a prolonged alarm response and in a prolonged stress response, alarm response, you and I can get a lot of things done. We could work hard, we don't always need a lot of sleep. We can make things happen. We can be very, very, very efficient.
And then the wisdom of the body takes over. And that fatigue is actually what we need for the body to recalibrate and reorganize because that's what happens to any animal in nature.
And I've seen it, I've seen it. When an animal is running for its life and it gets away and oftentimes it collapses, it's gotta lay down. It's gotta be fatigued. And in that fatigue state, in that rest state, the body's recalibrating, plain and simple. The stress response is unwinding itself. In order to do that, an organism, a creature, a human needs to rest.
So there's nothing wrong there. It is the simple physiology of the body. And we think we have a problem. 'cause we've been so stressed out, living a stressed out life, pushing ourselves really hard, and then all of a sudden the party is over in terms of us being able to push hard. Because once again, your brain takes over and says, okay, this prolonged stress response is too prolonged time to unwind it. Fatigue is the great unwinding.
So another way of saying that really is that because we override body wisdom oftentimes and create low level sustained day in, day out, stress activation, eventual fatigue or crash is metabolically predictable. You show me a person who's burning themselves out hard, who's who's, who's pushing hard, pushing hard, pushing hard.
A crash or a fatigue is generally predictable. Sometimes it takes people years, decades, even. Now, as you remember, low level stress can mean any kind of self-chosen anxiety. It can mean all the thoughts that we think, the toxic nutritional beliefs. It can mean the kind of feelings and beliefs around body image. I'm no good, I'm not enough, I'm not lovable. It could mean the impossible messages we tell ourselves about food. Food is the enemy. Appetite is my enemy. I shouldn't be eating this. It could be our worries around money, around relationship, around sexuality, love, intimacy, whatever's going on in the workplace, my relationship with a higher power, with spirituality, whatever, whatever is a place that is creating stress, anxiety, fear, upset, disconnection will contribute to low level stress and can result eventually in this thing called fatigue. When that low level stress activation eventually feels like too much for the body.
So consider the possibility that fatigue is all about us humans evolving from a survival based living and thinking, you know, a lot of us are taught to be in survival based living and thinking, we just gotta get through this. We just have to survive. So fatigue reminds us oftentimes to consider a heart-centered way of living, a trust-based way of living, a more interconnected way of living because you know something, anything else is sometimes exhausting.
When I can't trust in life, when I can't relax into my life, I'm gonna eventually get tired. So we're often fatigued because we desperately need to alert us to evolve.
Now here's another one, back to
nervous system physiology, brain chemistry. How we are genetically programmed when it comes to survival.
Remember we talked about the fight or flight or freeze response. Those are the three main defensive responses that creatures do in nature. Fight makes sense. You fight the thing that wants to eat, you
flee, makes sense. You run the heck away from the thing that wants to eat. You freeze also makes sense. You faint in the presence of the thing that wants to eat you. Why? Because sometimes in nature, that's the best chance for a creature to survive. It's kind of like playing dead. And indeed, there are animals in nature which will seemingly make a kill and they won't eat whatever they just caught right away. They'll save it for later. They'll drag it under a tree somewhere, they'll hide it in a bush.
So if an animal faints lion thinks it's made a kill, pull it somewhere, hide it. You can wake up 20 minutes later and stroll away. That's the idea. Now, many of us, when we're in fight or flight, we get very defensive. That's a good thing. Many of us wanna run. That's a good thing. Many of us wanna lash back, okay? That's all a good thing. And many of us, the way we are more wired to deal with stress and anxiety is that we freeze a little bit or a lot. So once again, believe it or not, this is a very common way that's hard to notice that humans Deal with stress. They go into freeze response. What does that look like?
So, like I said, it's more common than we realized. And the prolonged, prolonged physiologic freeze response in humans can look like the following depression.
The freeze response can actually look like depression. The freeze response can have us in the emotional state called apathy. Uh, I just don't care. The freeze response can shift us. Yeah, not depression, but maybe halfway there, a third the way there, a 10th away there. Low mood, slow mood, not enough to stop us. Like deep depression. Can any variation of tiredness, low energy can be a freeze response. Also, there are some people who will very much claim, like, I'm, I'm just absolutely stuck. I'm immobilized in my life. I just, I just feel immobilized. I can't move forward. I, I just, I can't move. That's a freeze response. Oftentimes.
Can you see how
these primitive, genetically designed, intelligently designed features of the human nervous system, of the human body that are designed to help us survive
the stress response fight or flight or freeze. Can you see how when it comes to humans, because we are not mere animals, we have kind of more going on, it can show up as depression, apathy, low mood, tiredness, low energy, and just this, this, this sense that I'm immobilized.
So what I'm saying is a lot of people who are diagnosed as being depressed, they were actually in a prolonged stress response. And that depression is the body saying, okay, freeze response. Just trying to freeze up because this other strategy's not working.
So you can switch from one strategy to another. An animal that goes into a freeze response might have tried to escape first. It might have tried to attack first. Uh, yeah. And then it goes into a freeze response. So oftentimes the freeze response is where we go when the other strategies don't work. And we don't even know that we went there. All we know is here. I I am and I'm apathetic. I'm, I'm in low mood.
And please, please note that when most people feel apathy or depression or low mood, that we tend to say, oh, you had a brain chemistry issue. So what do you do with brain chemistry issues? You address them with chemistry. So then we treat our depressed person or our low mood person with antidepressants or mood elevating drugs makes sense. But we're actually solving the problem from the wrong place, which doesn't truly solve the problem.
So, by the way, I hope you're noticing, and we're gonna talk about this when we get into our conversations on mood, the same challenge. Depression, for example, can have vastly different causes or contributing factors. Somebody can be depressed for just classic reasons of why a human might be depressed. My loved one died, for example. I lost my all important, amazing job, for example. That's a good reason to get depressed.
But some people are depressed because previous to that, they were in extreme anxiety and stress. And the depression is their freeze response.
We arrived at that from a very different place. So to unwind, that takes a very different strategy. So a lot of people who are in a freeze response simply need to consciously, consciously thaw out. I'm, I'm just gonna mention that briefly for now. And you'll see we're gonna do a case story of someone who was in a freeze response. Consciously thawing out means it takes a little time. And we have to be alert to understand that we got to this place of frozenness because there was an anxiety previous. And oftentimes there's a precipitating anxiety. There's a very specific anxiety, fear, stress, or event that is just wanting us to notice it, look at it, listen to it more closely.
So by the way, my friends, this whole concept of a brain chemistry issue, any, any mood you're in, any feeling you have has a brain chemistry behind it. When you're feeling love, you are in the brain chemistry of love. So love has a biochemical equivalent in the body. And it's, and and it's, and and it's all complex. You know, there's, there's no such thing. Even though science often, you know, gets off on saying, oh, this is the love chemical. You know, pheno, ethyl and mean. Used to be that There's a lot of chemistry going on in the body. The whole point is if you're feeling irritable, there's a brain chemistry behind that. If you're feeling elated, there's a brain chemistry behind that. If you're grieving, every emotional state has a corresponding chemistry to it. Why? Because we're beings of, of chemistry, you're in a body.
But that doesn't mean that the chemistry is the issue. So the chemistry has to exist. So in order to be depressed, you have a depression chemistry in order to be apathetic, there's a chemistry going on. But that doesn't mean, oh yeah, hey, you got no problem. It's, it's just chemistry thing. You're fine. It's your chemicals. Oh, that drives me nuts. Yes, for some people you come in with that approach and you can help them. But I think it's a small percentage of people, especially when we don't hit the issue at the cause of it.
Why are we low mood? Why are we depressed? For most people, the brain chemistry issue doesn't come first. It is a result of life. Okay? So ultimately, as you know, we need to face our quote unquote stressors, which really means our fears, our anxiety, our life challenges, our disappointments, our hurts, our past.
Because you know, sometimes they seem so overwhelming that we just want to just wanna back down from them. We just want to freeze like a deer in headlights. Oh my God, I dunno how to deal with this. Lemme just freeze.
So another way of saying that is we need to learn how to stay awake and breathe and be with ourselves while we're in our various versions of hell.
Because oftentimes staying awake in our fatigue is the way we can best address it. Now, I just wanna mention this. I am not going to go into this. If you want to study this more, research it, please do. So. You will oftentimes hear the term adrenal fatigue. I just wanna presence this term and mention it. I think it is a useful term. It has become natural medicines, more mechanistic term.
It's biomedical term for too much stress, too much anxiety, too much suffering, which finally becomes too much of a physiologic burden because adrenal glands are a, these small bundles of tissue, these tiny little organs that they work hard, particularly when we're under stress. So they are in part helping us pump out many of our stress chemicals. And when those little tiny glands are overworking, you know, at some point they just go on strike. They just fold their arms and go, forget it. I'm shutting down IE freeze response.
So many people who are legitimately experiencing chronic fatigue are oftentimes diagnosed by a naturally oriented doctor, physician, chiropractor, naturopath, et cetera. They're diagnosed as having adrenal fatigue. Uh, and you treat adrenal fatigue. There's all kinds of ways that practitioners treat adrenal fatigue. There's oftentimes a lot of natural medicines, herbs over the counter substances that are very interesting. What I wanna say though is I have been around a lot of people who are and have been treated for adrenal fatigue from a natural medicine perspective across the board. I find that it's never enough treating this thing that is called adrenal burnout or adrenal fatigue with natural medicines alone, never quite truly does it. I'm just raising my hand and saying that I've noticed that. So you might have a client coming into you who's been diagnosed with adrenal fatigue and chances are they've had it for a while. Now, what I also wanna say to you is, um, a lot of people are diagnosed as having adrenal fatigue and they don't actually have adrenal fatigue. Are they fatigued? Yes. Are they tied in low energy? Yes. But is it truly related to adrenal gland shutdown? No. So my client has received that diagnosis. I wanna know, can you tell me more about that? Who diagnosed you and did they do any direct medical testing, blood testing that directly gave them the information that they needed to conclude that this is very specific adrenal fatigue. Because I've seen people getting treated to heal their adrenal glands and their adrenal glands are fine.
The issue is elsewhere, not in those tiny glands. So can somebody get adrenal fatigue? Yes. Can somebody be fatigued without their Adrenals being fatigued? Yes.
So once again, burnout, fatigue, tiredness. The remedy is oftentimes simple. My friends, deep rest going within being quiet, forced consciousness. The universe is taking people to the mat. It's taking them down. It is, it is not like you gain 10 pounds. You can gain 10 pounds and still keep moving. It might be irritating as hell. You might hate that 10 pounds, but most people can still keep going and going with that extra 10 pounds. When we get hit with burnout, fatigue, tiredness, it's forced vacation. It is forced slowing down. It is reflection time, it's meditation time, it's soul time. It is quiet time. It's learning how to nourish yourself. Time. It's going on a journey time. It's reevaluation time. It's a spiritual quest time. It's a health quest time. Sometimes that's just the time it is. Sometimes it is time. Toof work hard and use all that energy and be the energizer bunny. And you keep on going and going and going. And other times it's not that.
And our clients, I'm gonna be real with you, they oftentimes, they don't wanna hear that what I just told you, they don't want to hear.
And that's why they're burned out fatigued and tired. 'cause they didn't want to hear that body was likely giving them little signals and then not so little signals, and then medium sized signals, and then maybe slightly larger sized signals. And finally, the body just does its best move. You are fatigued, you are tired and you're going down.
But the body kind of loves us. You know, really does. It's given us an opportunity. It it is, it is overriding the part of our brain, the part of us that can just get lost in so much nonsense and so much, um, self-harm that we're not even realizing it. So my friends, I really want you to remember very clearly in the back of your mind that when you are dealing with an energy challenged client,
as you are gathering their story, as you're getting to know them, I really want You to consider this possibility that your burned, fatigued, tired client simply needs rest. And your job as a coach, counselor, practitioner, healer, whatever it is you do, your job is to raise your hand and alert them to this. In no uncertain terms. Mr. And Mrs. Client, you've just shared with me this intense style of living and working that you've been doing. I'm, I'm blown away. What you've described is in many ways, you have had the lifestyle and the schedule and the work output and the parental output of five people. So congratulations. You've, you've been a, a fountain of energy in the past. And you know what happens sometimes, I know this is gonna come as a shock to you, Mr. And Mr. Client, but sometimes the body gets tired. Sometimes the body is so fatigued. Sometimes our physiology is so depleted that the body no longer lets us override its tiredness because you and I, we have times in life where we can override our fatigue. We can override our tiredness and override our burnout. There's all different ways to do that. And you know something, I don't think you can keep up this work schedule more, you know something? I don't think you can keep this amount of stress and responsibility on your plate anymore. There's some things that you're gonna need to figure out. How do we get this off your plate? How do we get you a little bit more help in your day with the kids? How do we get you more help when it comes to what you need to do at work? How can you take more downtime for yourself?
Because right now your body is screaming for rest. And correct me if I'm wrong, in a perfect world, wouldn't you want more downtime right now just to nourish yourself? And just to rejuvenate a little bit.
So I'm gonna speak as directly and clearly to my client with the best intellectual intervention that I can because some people literally, and, and I've had hundreds of clients like this because a significant part of my professional life in terms of my professional practice has been with people who are of a higher economic standing. And oftentimes people who are very motivated in the world and successful in the world and, uh, putting in a lot of work and oftentimes exhausting themselves. And it was a revelation for so, so, so many people to be faced with the potential understanding that they need to slow down and rest because it causes us to, um, look at who we are. It causes us to let go of our persona, our mask.
I'm this eternal live forever can't be stopped. Work machine accomplishment. Machine doing machine. Don't need to stop machine.
Supermom, super Dad, whoever you are, whatever you've been doing, people just need to be told they need to hear a voice of wisdom from the outside. It's honestly, my friends is as simple as that.
Now here's the thing. A lot of people, a lot of clients are so in fear about their fatigue.
They're in fear of their fatigue, which makes sense. I don't like getting fatigued. I get afraid when I get fatigued. But here's the thing, you know what fear does? Fear can energize us big time. I get energized by fear. You get energized by fear. Fear can also paralyze us sometimes. So for a lot of people, what happens is the fear of fatigue can actually lock fatigue in because you're creating a stress on top of a stress.
The fear can lock in fatigue. The fear of fatigue can create its own additional physiologic stress response. It can create a sense of, oh my God, I gotta do something. Which will then drive us towards quick fix strategies and the quick fix strategies. When it comes to fatigue, the majority of times are a resounding ineffective. It's ineffective.
Ah, when was it? There was a product that came out many years ago. I I'm gonna, it was a four hour energy bottle or the six hour energy bottle, whatever it is, you know, and then all, all kind of knock off products from that. But I remember when it first hit the market and it was all of a sudden you see it in every gas station in at the front counter of every deli in every store I went to in the United States. It was stunning to me. And I remember thinking, this makes perfect sense. You look at the bottle and it's telling you four hour energy. And like I said, it could be six hours. I don't know. And, and I always used to laugh at that. I like, whatcha talking about? What, how do you know they was gonna give somebody four hours of energy? How do you know they was gonna give somebody any energy for goodness sakes. But man, that's such a great little marketing ploy. It's such a great little quick fix strategy. We love that. People love us so much that it, it's, it's, gosh, it made hundreds of millions of dollars and it probably still does
and it hasn't solved the lack of energy problem. And that's the thing. That's the thing. That's the thing. What do we do? What do we do when we're low energy and we wanna push through it When we're low energy and we wanna push through it, we will push through the natural need, the natural need to rest the natural need to rejuvenate. The most common things we use are caffeine in all of its forms. Wherever you can get it. So we use caffeine. I eat coffee, we use sugar for a lot of people. Excess carbs can be very stimulating, believe it or not, for a lot of people. Excess meat can be stimulating. But more powerful than that. Uh, the energy drink market is, is just extravagantly huge. So we go for the various forms of energy drinks. How else do you push through the need to rest and rejuvenate? You push through with willpower. I I just push you push through it with ego. I can do this. We often push through it with less sleep.
Believe it or not. Less sleep is its own weird altered state that we use. A lot of us can use electronic stimulation to keep ourselves going. We'll use music. We will use the images that we're watching, what we're doing in front of the computer, the way we stimulate ourselves on different websites. You can, gosh, you can just read the news and you will stimulate yourself. You'll stress yourself. And not in a good way. And believe it or not, that's just, it's, it is for a lot of people, the electronic stimulation of that which agitates you or um, causes you to react like the news, like listening to the politician that you hate, whatever it is. Um, it gives us a little boost, but ouch. Who wants that? So that's what we do. And it completely makes sense. And you'll see when I have a client who I clearly see is complaining of fatigue and they are clearly trying to medicate with, with caffeine and sugar and energy drinks and less sleep, you know, I'm going to correct that. 'cause ultimately it's about rediscovering our natural metabolism. Our natural metabolism. I have no problem with caffeine, no problem with sugar, excess carbs, excess meat, energy, drinks, willpower, ego, less sleep or electronic stimulation. I do all of those at some point in life. So I'm not saying those are bad. I'm saying is how do we use it? When do we use it? And when the body is clearly needing rest and rejuvenation, you know, push it.
Many people are learning a very simple, simple, simple soul lesson of not pushing the body.
Now here's the thing. One of the reasons, see if you can follow me here, that we're gonna fear not having energy, which makes sense.
Some of the reasons we're gonna fear not having enough energy is because that might end up meaning I'm gonna lack money. That's very possible. I can't work, I can't make money.
So oftentimes the two are feeding each other. Fear of lack of money.
If I'm fatigued, I'm often fearing lack of money. And when I fear the lack of money, I get more fatigued and it becomes a little circular. Closely related to that. Money for a lot of people represents security. So when I am fatigued, I am less secure because I can't make enough money and I don't have the wherewithal necessarily to do all the things I know to take care of myself, to take care of others and to secure a good future.
And what I wanna say is, gosh, what if a person starts out just has basic fears around money, independent of just anything fears around money, fears around security, those fears by themselves can eventually be fatiguing.
So it gets circular. You know, lack of self-worth
a lot of us, our self-worth is tied into how much energy we have. So when we get low energy, we start to lose our self-worth. That's not a good thing because then as I lose my self-worth, honestly, I've got even less energy. So it makes perfect sense. I'll speak for myself. When I'm lower in energy, I can get less done. And I'm the kind of person, I tend to value my self worth by how much I do.
So low energy means lower self-worth. And then when I'm in low self-worth, my energy gets lower. So that doesn't work. These are loops that we need to interfere with. The lack of that should say true purpose,
the lack of true purpose. If we don't have a true purpose in life,
that can be very tiring.
Lack of love, lack of trust.
Those can be very fatiguing and by themselves. If I lack love, that can feel fatiguing. If I lack trust, that can feel fatiguing.
But also, if I'm fearing my fatigue, it takes me out of trust. If I'm fearing my fatigue, it takes me out of love.
So my friends, please remember,
fatigue is a collective challenge. Meaning a lot of people are experiencing it. It's not just you. It's not just your client. It is a collective challenge. Many humans across the globe are experiencing fatigue. So it's a collective challenge that happens to personalize. It finds a home in specific individuals. It makes perfect sense that we would fear low energy because our survival is based upon having enough energy. It's true. And, and, and, and the world is often demanding that we work harder and harder and harder. So a lot of times we have to look in the mirror and really measure and weigh what the world is asking of us, what life is asking of us.
And indeed, are there places where we have the power to draw the line? And you'll see when we get to our case stories, examples of that.
Because for so many people, our task is to reclaim our life.
A lot of humans feel as if my life is not mine.
Yes, we do have responsibilities to other people. We do have responsibilities at work, at job, in our profession to our who, whoever are the people in life that we have responsibilities towards. And, and, and. And we have to learn how to regulate our energy. So that whole process works for many people. They have to understand better that our time, yes, it's a commodity, but it's a very valuable one. Your time is everything you have. It's the most valuable thing you have. Is your time really? 'cause your time is running out. What do your friends want from you? Your time? What do your loved ones want from you? Your time? What is the the business you work in want from you wants your time. You know, what does your pet want from you? Wants your time.
Our time is so valuable
if we're spending it in things that fatigue us, that don't need to be fatiguing us. Or at least to that degree. Hmm, we gotta listen up.
Another way of saying our time is a commodity, is that our energy is a commodity.
So in a way, yeah, that's what the workplace wants. That wants your energy. That's what the people around you who care about you and wanna be around you want, they want your energy. Let's go do this. Let's go do that. Let's hang out, let's talk. That's your energy. You're expending your energy during that time you are with them.
We oftentimes need to learn how to value our own energy more.
'cause sometimes we expend our energy, we spend our energy on nonsense. That doesn't give us a return. In fact, we spend our energy on things that drain even more of our energy.
You don't wanna buy something that's broken and constantly have to fix it. You don't wanna buy a card that's in good shape. You don't wanna buy a car for, I don't know, $20,000 and you have to keep on putting $5,000 into it every five months. Mm-hmm, your energy, money's energy is valuable.
So we don't wanna put our energy into things that are then going to require even more and more and more to the point where it drain us. And it doesn't make any sense.
So a lot of our clients when it comes to energy and fatigue are here to learn how to value their time and energy more. Can you see that? They have to value it here. They're wishing they had more. Did you squander it?
Why should the universe give you more energy if you're squandering it on nonsense?
If you're eating a godawful diet that doesn't serve your physiology
and you're going to drink energy drinks to compensate for that, you're actually really not valuing your body. You're truly not valuing your energy. You just got a leak. You got all kinds of leaks in your, and you're sticking your fingers in the leaks, trying to plug up the leaks. Okay, I'll eat poor quality food, but then I'll be low energy, but then I'll use more energy. Drinks. No value. Your energy, your energy's valuable. How do you nurture it? How do you stoke the flames of your energy? How do you rest so you can rejuvenate and have more energy? How do you treat yourself? How do you feed yourself? How do you conduct yourself so you have the energy you need and your energy renews itself.
So we are here, your client, your fatigue challenge client. I don't care who or what is the cause of their low energy and fatigue. At the very least, they need to learn how to spend their energy better regulate and manage the energy that they have right now as best as they can.
When your client starts to do that, they lay a powerful foundation to have more energy. They create a container, a vessel, their body, their life becomes a container and a vessel for more energy. But you gotta plug up the leaks before you fill the vessel up with more energy. Otherwise it just looks silly. You're pouring in more energy, but it's leaking out. Why? Because my client might be doing nonsense. They might be hanging around the wrong people, living in the wrong place, eating the wrong foods. Whatever it is, whatever it is that you discover with your client, we have to tighten our game first.
You wanna have a lot of money. Learn how to manage a little money first. It's that simple.
Ah, personal power equals metabolic power. Who would've thunk for many people and many clients working on our inner world, our relationship with our energy, how we spend our life force, what we think and believe in, how we conduct ourselves working on that can yield a very powerful and surprising result when it comes to our actual perceived lived energy level.
I've seen this happen so many times. You remember the example. Energy level can change in a moment. You can be low energy and depressed and lying on your couch feeling miserable and the phone rings and it's a love interest. It's somebody with great news that you haven't heard from in a long time and your energy completely picks up. That is how quickly you can phone in a prescription to your inner pharmacy and create a whole different brain chemistry just by hearing a voice on the other end of the phone, for goodness sakes.
So oftentimes, oftentimes, oftentimes, this is where most of the action is. Oftentimes for people when it comes to healing their low energy
is literally working on their inner world. How they're spending their life force, what they're thinking and believing. If you're beating yourself up, every time you look in the mirror to you think that's gonna give you energy,
I promise you, you beat someone up enough, they're gonna feel very tired.
It's debilitating. Beating yourself up is debilitating. People don't, people, people don't notice that.
So all, so like I said, oftentimes it's where most of the action is. And oftentimes it's where at least some of the action is. Okay, some of the action you show me a person, anybody, I don't even care if they don't have a single complaint. And I'll show you a person who can manage their energy better. We can all manage our energy better. I can manage it better. You can manage it better. There's always better when it comes to this realm. There's always ways to work smarter in this realm. And you know, many of us know that when you hit a certain age, you have to spend your energy more wisely. You know, when you're in your teens or your twenties, you are immortal. You're gonna live forever. Chances are you have a foun of energy.
And then you start to notice maybe in your thirties or your forties or your fifties that, oh wow, the game is changing.
And if we're smart, we get smarter. Huh? Let me really see what foods work for me. Let me really see what kind of movement and exercise works for me. Let me really see what kind of lighting, what kind of people, what rejuvenates me. So the inner work, the inner work that we do around energy and fatigue can powerfully compliment and infuse and add an extra big spark to whatever metabolic, nutritional supplemental strategies we're doing. And the inner work may even be the key catalyst.
Personal power equals metabolic power. When you work on one end of the equation, you naturally support the other. So when I'm working on my personal power, who I am as a person, what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, how I'm regulating myself, how I'm conducting myself, where am I in my life? Where am I in my purpose? Where am I with a love? Where am I with all the important things that a human being feels important. When I'm working on that, I give my body the best chance to step into. Its metabolic, its biochemical potential and vice versa. When I'm treating my body with the right foods, with the right substances, with the right supplements, with the right kind of movement, you know, it makes it easier for me to step into my potential. 'cause I'm feeling good, I'm feeling healthier.
It works okay, you know, let's play with this equation just a little personal power equals metabolic power. Here's what I wanna say. The more conscious we become, the more, the more conscious we become, the more energy we often have.
Consciousness means. The more we have an ability to see our world as it is, the more we have the ability to witness our world from a higher place, from a higher perspective, that tends to give us more energy. It doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna have more energy to run around like a maniac, but it gives us a different kind of energy. The more awareness we have. What's awareness? Just aware of your world, aware of your body, aware of what's going on around you, aware of the feelings of the people that are sitting right in front of you.
The more energy that gives us
try it, the more we develop in character.
Meaning the more you grow as a person, the more you step into the finer and finer aspects of your age appropriate archetype. More energy you have
character means the more you're following your moral code, your inner ethical code, we're all born with it. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. The more you step into your higher character, the more energy you have.
Have you ever noticed people who looks like they have a strong religious or spiritual connection and they just got a lot of energy? It works. Even if you're not interested in their religion. You'll notice a lot of people who are very devoted to their religion, they have more energy,
they're getting something from their belief system, they're getting something from their connection to a higher power that for them is actually very tangible in terms of their energy level.
The more we tap into our purpose why I'm here, whatcha you supposed to be doing?
And for a lot of people, for most people, it it, it doesn't mean some extravagant thing. You're purpose might be yes, for now you're a parent and this is the work that you do and these are the people that you're here to love. That's your purpose. The more we embrace what our purpose is, the more energy we have.
Haven't you noticed that? Haven't you noticed that when you step into your purpose more or when you start to touch upon something that feels, oh wow, this is, this is something that I wanna do, or this is something that that really inspires me, gives you more energy.
You ever notice that the more intimacy you have with your loved one, with the person you're dating, with the person you're married to, with the person you're living with,
with your kids, with your animals, the more energy we have.
And you know that the more love you got in your life, the more energy it gives you. You know that. And here we are, you know, we get a low energy. And what do you think? Oh my god, I need an energy drink. Maybe. Maybe you need an energy drink. But I know this, an energy drink ain't a substitute for love. It's not a substitute for intimacy or purpose or connection to a higher power or character growth or more awareness or more consciousness. Ain't gonna get that in a drink. And if you can let me know, I want some.
That's why we have to listen to fatigue. That's why we have to listen to low energy.
I'm not here to help my client get more caffeine in their system so they can go out and run around like a maniac and continue to do the same thing that collapse their energy in the first place that actually isn't working for them or the people around them.
So my goal with an energy challenge client is not to give them more energy to help them get more energy.
My goal is to help them step into the highest version of themselves. It might mean they need to be fatigued for a little while. Of course, I want the person to recover their energy, for goodness sakes. Of course I do. And of course I understand that sometimes we need to go down. Sometimes we need to learn the lessons that fatigue and low energy are teaching us.
Therefore, I'm not going to caffeinate my client. I'm going to listen
because I'm not here to quick fix my client.
We are doing the slow fix. We're doing the slow growth.
Do I want that to happen as quickly as possible? Sure. But I also know that every client is on their workshop that is driven by life with a capital L that's driven by the wisdom of the universe with a capital W that's driven by a higher power with a capital H
or driven by a higher code if you're an atheist. Yeah, we'll give that a capital H too. So I think you get what I'm saying. So my friends, some of the keys for working with fatigue, listen for the message. We're going to invite our client into slowing down. They're doing it anyway. You're being forced to slow down anyway. Let's actually slow down. Like actually. And sometimes your client needs to slow down their mind because the mind is agitated when we're low energy because we're trying to fix it, trying to fix the low energy. I understand slowing down the mind really means relaxing the mind. It really means parasympathetic nervous system dominance because the mind thinks it's trapped. The mind thinks it's under a threat. The mind thinks it's survival is threatened and it's running around inside of itself. Keys for working with fatigue is we have to feel, our clients need to feel what they're feeling.
Oftentimes, our client needs to embrace simplicity and humility. Okay. We need to start to simplify because you just don't have the energy to do this, that, and the other thing. So we might have to let go of this and that and some of the other thing.
You'll see that one of the keys for working with fatigue is attention to nourishment. But in the little, little details, my friends, the little things are the big things. They really are. A lot of people rediscover their energy when they learn how to be more masterful with the little details. Because when we're pushing through life and we're going at high speed, we don't notice the little things. We miss the little things. Oftentimes we don't do the little things and that adds up.
We must let go of the fix. You must and your client must let go of fixing their low energy. Yeah. You're here to see me so I can help you. I am helping you and the first way I help you is to let go of trying to fix this as if it's an emergency and we need to relax and listen. So we're gonna let go of having more energy. For now, I'm gonna work on managing the energy you have right now as a way to slowly rebuild and we're going to embrace this special challenge called fatigue instead of fighting it. Because what do, what happens when you fight something? You get tired. Do you really think fighting fatigue, has any human in the history of humankind ever won that battle? I don't think so. I fought, I was so fatigued and I just fought and fought and hit myself harder and harder and pushed myself harder and harder, and eventually I wasn't fatigued. Hmm. Yeah. That can work in a, in a, in a moment. That could work. In an instance, that could work in a short window of time. Can that work long term? I don't think so.
So the first move is to embrace things. Yeah. There's always time to rise up from our fatigue for sure, but that's not our initial move with a client.
Okay. My friends, there is so much more to come with this conversation around energy and fatigue. That was part two. Part three is right around the corner. I appreciate your time and your energy, pun intended, and your attention, and I look forward to more.

PART 3

Autoscroll:

Greetings once again, my friends. This is Mark David, founder of the Institute. Here we are continuing our conversation about energy and fatigue, and in this particular conversation we're gonna dive into some of the key dietary factors and some of the key psychological factors when it comes to energy. So as a way to jump in, as a way to warm up, let's look at a couple of reminders. Big reminder number one, my friends, is that the number one key for a majority of people to having more energy is to learn to manage and regulate the energy you already have right now. What a great concept. I hope that's really landed for you, and I hope you can see really how rich that approach is, because it's a game changer. Because really what it asks us to do is to play a long game. Playing a long game means you're looking at the big picture. You have a whole life ahead of you, your client as a whole life ahead of her, him, and what a great thing to learn how to manage our energy better and better and better. Because as you do that better and better, you spend it better. You get more mileage from the energy that you already have right now, you get smarter and you get less fatigued. Next important reminder, you know this, we're welcoming fatigue as a great teacher.
And when you welcome a symptom, a challenge as a great teacher, what happens is automatically we step into a completely different realm. We empower ourselves. We're living in alignment with life because truth be told, we're here to learn and grow. You've seen that, you've noticed that you've figured that out by now. Sometimes we forget. And indeed, when we're looking at fatigue as a great teacher, what happens is it becomes clearer and clearer that as we learn the lessons that fatigue is here to teach us, that gives us the best opportunity to graduate. So we're here to listen to those messages. So before you get rid of it, we're giving it a big hug. Now, oftentimes, here's another reminder. Fatigue is letting us know that we simply need to rest and rejuvenate plain and simple. In this way, fatigue is, it's like a forced vacation. It's forced downtime, it's forced. Meditation. Life is just grabbing us and saying, sorry, you can't run around anymore like you've been doing. Something different is happening. And another reminder is that many of us, many of our clients need to learn to better, really value their energy, to respect it, to nurture it, to learn how to not drain it. There's something about valuing our energy, which is valuing you your time, your life force. When we value it, we cultivate it much better. We nurture it better,
and when we value it, we don't squander it.
Okay, my friends, let's, let's dive in. These are the dietary factors we're gonna take a look at as it relates to energy and fatigue. We're gonna talk about dietary factors and energy and fatigue when it comes to fast eating, stress state, eating poor, eating rhythm, macronutrient balance, excess caffeine, excess sugar, poor quality, carbohydrates, poor quality food, low pleasure diet, food allergies. All of these that I just mentioned have the great potential to fatigue us, to rob us of energy. Any of these things you see on the list can be easily dealt with, addressed, experimented with, played with.
You gotta look at this sometimes as play. Um, I personally enjoy the kinds of clients who enjoy trying different things.
And it's not in the service of something's wrong with me, let me fix this. And even if it is the willingness, the enthusiasm, the inspiration to try new things, makes the journey to find more energy that much more juicy, that much more interesting, that much more fun, because otherwise we're just moping around with not enough energy. So we're gonna look at each one of these factors, break them down a little bit and highlight some of the key points.
Let's start with eating speed and energy. Now, fast eating by itself can lead to overeating. Why? Because we're not paying attention. Why? Because that's our habit. Why does fast eating lead to overeating? Because it takes the body time to break. To discern a meal, it takes head brainin and gut brain time, approximately 15 minutes to notice, okay, here's the nutrient profile of this meal. Here's what I got, here's what I need. Is this a good starting, stopping place? Okay, I'm full. I got what I want. When we eat fast, head, brain, and gut, brain do not have time to make that assessment. And oftentimes what happens and what results is that the brain simply says, okay, I don't remember eating. I don't remember getting what I want. Uh, hungry.
Also, when we eat fast, we don't register. Taste, pleasure, aroma satisfaction in the visuals of a meal, which will lead us hungering for more. So overeating means too much food in the body,
which also means at some point we will need a compensatory relaxation response. Why? Because that's geared to help us digest. Body realizes, wow, you ate a little too much. We need to, we, we, we need to create a relaxation response. That's the point at which you likely become a couch potato, which means low energy.
Isn't that interesting? Just, and, and by the way, you could be fast eating your entire life and overeating a little bit your entire life and never experience noticeable low energy, and then all of a sudden, one day boom, it hits you. So I just wanna alert us to the fact that just because a bad habit works for a particular person for x number of years, doesn't mean it's gonna work for them forever. So a lot of people are often surprised, but I've been doing that for, okay, I got it. And eventually that, that habit you've been doing forever has now caught up with you. Okay? You gotta get outta jail free card for a long time. Time is up. So understand that digestion requires energy. Just digestion of food by itself requires energy. Digestion of too much food requires even more energy,
and that energy's going to go to digestion. And hence, you will have an experience of low energy or fatigue. Fast eating also means partially chewed food. Is that a challenge? Yeah, it is. Because preferably what the stomach would like is wel chewed food. Why? Because in your stomach it's, it's, it's sort of, you know, first phase or next phase after mouth of digestion. So chemical and mechanical digestive power happens in the stomach. So the stomach is a muscular churning organ. It will take undigested, un chewed pieces of food, and it will literally, mechanically break it down just by churning, but it'll also chemically break it down as well. The less chewed your food is, the more work digestion has to do, in this case, the stomach, which often can yield a sense of discomfort, queasiness. And that by itself adds to our sense of fatigue. Uh, when we have pain or discomfort in any part of the body, it it, it actually has a secondary effect of tiring us. It fatigues us fast. Eating for so many people can lead to poor food choices. As you know, poor food choices can adversely impact energy. Fast food. Notice how fast food, the, the concept of fast food, um, and fast eating kind of go hand in hand. So those of us that are constantly eating on the run, and the way we're trained in so many different cultures across the globe is that you squeeze eating in, you do the fast food, you do the fast eating, which often leads to poor food choices. Fast eating is often accompanied by other stressors, my friends, which can impact energy. Like what? Like being in a rush to get somewhere. I'm gonna eat fast. If I'm in a rush, I'm going to eat fast. Oftentimes if I'm multitasking, I'm eating and I'm working, I'm eating and I'm talking on the phone, whatever. It's also fast eating might be accompanied by hidden toxic nutritional beliefs such as food is the enemy. So here I am, I'm eating, but I'm eating the enemy and I'm not fully aware of that because that toxic nutritional belief is running me from the background and that my friends is a stressor and that my friends is doubly debilitating. So ultimately, the simple act of eating too fast. So just the act of eating too fast, you could be the most relaxed for person in the world and you start eating fast, your body registers that as a stressor.
Eventually stressors, many of them lead to fatigue by now. I hope you're starting to see that, that our, our, our alphabet, our core strategies that we use impact so many of the common eating and health challenges that people face.
In other words, what you are learning can do a tremendous amount of good for a large amount of clients in a number of different places. So not only will eating slow, train the body to have more energy, eating slow, as you know, will naturally regulate our appetite. You don't have to work hard on your overeating and your willpower. You know that eating speed is gonna help you make better choices. You know that eating speed when you do it slow is gonna put you in the optimum state of digestion and assimilation and calorie burning, which is parasympathetic nervous system dominance, which is the relaxation response.
So we're simply doing what's right and just, and in alignment with the nature of who we truly are. It's really that simple sometimes. Okay, let's talk about it. General stress, state eating and energy. So, you know, eating speed certainly creates stress. State eating, but stress state eating, eating under stress, eating while in stress eating, while stressing ourselves out can also mean I'm worrying about food, I'm worrying about weight, I'm worrying about how much I'm eating, or I should eat or I shouldn't eat, or I did eat or I didn't eat. I'm worrying about the fat and food. I'm worrying about the fat on my body. I'm worrying about my appetite. When is this gonna be over? When is this gonna end? I'm so hungry, I can't believe it. I'm worried about not eating perfectly. I really shouldn't eat this dessert, but I want dessert, but I shouldn't eat sugar, but I should.
Sometimes it's the simple conundrums that we create in our mind that are creating stress. We don't always see it, we don't always notice it because our stress state eating in terms of all the food, worry, the weight worry, the body worry, the appetite worry, the fat worry, the worry about eating the healthy foods, those are creating a biochemical milieu that, that, that creates kind of an emotional blueprint
that has us not functioning optimally
and we think we can get away with it, but the body listens, the body's gone along for the ride the whole time. It knows it's registering our self-chosen stressors. And it's translating that into our physiology
sometimes in a subtle way, sometimes in a not so subtle way. Stress state eating can also mean I'm simply not paying attention to the food. I'm multitasking while I'm eating. Again, I'm being in a rush to get even eating over with. I might be in stressful company hanging out with stressful people. I might be eating in an environment that's not so conducive to a nice relaxed meal. A lot of people are eating in environments that Don't support nourishment. And again, that becomes normal. And oftentimes that's work related or it's lifestyle related. It's not as if we are trying to do that. And here we are as coaches and practitioners here to help our client here, to educate them here, to raise our hand and say, okay, here's where I see you creating a relationship with food that's not truly nourishing you. In fact, you're creating a stress state when you eat.
Now again, those with toxic nutritional beliefs such as food is the enemy, will invariably be in some degree of stress response when eating.
And the more we have anxious nonsense moving through our minds, the more we are contending with the little stressors in our environment, especially around eating, it kind of gets additive for a lot of us, and it can deplete energy.
We don't even know it, we don't even realize it.
Let's talk about meal timing, bio circadian, nutrition and energy. So guess what, you skip meals. Why would you skip a meal? You skip meals because you're busy. You skip meals because you got a crazy schedule. You skip meals because you gotta do this at nine o'clock and this at 12 o'clock and this at two o'clock. And whoops, look, I didn't have enough time that day. So sometimes skipping meals is related to our lifestyle. So you have to sniff that out with your client. Sometimes skipping meals is simply because your client isn't committed to eating meals. And the reason why they're not committed to eating meals is because they're afraid to gain weight or they're trying to lose weight.
And then what happens Makes sense. Eat less food, have less weight, or certainly won't gain weight. So for a lot of people, meal skipping is secretly a virtue to them. They're following their religion very religiously. IE their religion of low calorie. The lower the calories I eat, the better off I'm going to be. The more lovable I'll be, the better chance I'll have of having love in this world because it's gonna make everything perfect.
And you know what happens if you skip meals? Sometimes you get fatigued. I can't tell you how many times over the years I have had clients who so fall into this category and much of the time, Most of those clients are coming to see me for some version of either weight loss or overeating or binge eating. They're not coming to see me for energy issues and all of a sudden we take care of their meal skipping and their first thing they report is, I got more energy. Of course, you have more energy you're eating.
If you don't eat enough, eventually you will tire.
You know, some people are more resilient than others. They have a more resilient metabolism, they have more wherewithal to indeed not eat and indeed skip meals here and there. And it's not gonna really show up on their radar because their body adjusts somehow. And for many meal skippers, meal skipping might've worked for them. And at some point it stops working. The body wants what it wants, when it wants it, when it comes to maintaining its energy level. So I am a believer in the three meal per day general approach to food. So, and it's why much of the planet does that
or a good chunk anyway. Um, I'm also a believer in whatever works for you. So I'm not attached to the three meal a day model. If you wanna do six small meals a day, and some people do nine small meals a day, some people do the three meals and the two snack, whatever it is. But it's staying true to what the body's calling for. It's listening to body wisdom. So what I wanna suggest to you is, especially, especially especially for your weight loss clients, and you've seen this, you've seen this in some of the case stories that we've gone through. A weight loss client, one of the first things they notice after the first session, if I correct their meal timing is they say, I've got more energy. Great, of course you have more energy. So meal skipping generally is gonna affect energy when it's skipping meals in the first part of the day, meaning breakfast and or lunch, dinner. Not an issue for people overall, in terms of what I've noticed and what I've seen, dinner has a different quality. A lot of people overeat dinner or they eat too much at dinner, and then they're going to deal with the consequence of being tired of being fatigued. And for many people that's fine because they want to be tired in the evening. So that has a sensibility to it. But again, if we're skipping meals during the day, then we have a problem. So eating an over overly large meal for the body, um, this happens again, I wanna say at dinner for most people. Um, or it can happen on vacation for other meals. You know, usually for, for people in a work a day, I generally don't hear, wow, did I overeat lunch in a big way? Did I overeat breakfast in a big way? I do hear it for sure. Um, but let's just lay it on the table. Anytime we eat an overly large meal for the body, we're asking a lot of the body, that's fine. Eat a large meal, go for it. I'm not even saying that's bad for you, I'm just saying here's the repercussions. You eat a large meal, you need to address that large meal. Your body needs to address it. Your metabolic power needs to address it. Your digestive system needs to address it and you're gonna need more energy. The less food you're digesting, the less energy your digestive system is going to take. The more energy that you need to digest a meal, chances are the less energy you are going to subjectively feel that you have.
It's as simple as that. Okay? Eating too little during the day. So this is, you know, closely related to meal timing. It's meal amount, yeah, somebody's meal timing might be great. Um, but they're eating tiny amounts of food. And why your tiny amount of food, people invariably are trying to lose weight or they're trying to not gain weight, they're in fear of fat. The body ultimately regulates itself in our truest state. Appetite is naturally regulated. Body weight is naturally regulated. You will reach your natural weight. You don't have to do all kinds of juggling and gesticulations and forcing and willpower and subjecting yourself to eating too little food in order to get some result. But we're human, we diet and or we stealth fully diet. So we eat too little and we think we're good girls and good boys. And what's happening is if you simply do not have enough nutrition in the system, if you don't have enough bulk of food to calorie burn on the basic level of body needs calories to burn for, for energy, you're gonna suffer and you're gonna be tired. And what happens is that becomes normal for people and it becomes normal for people because it is far more important for them to be eating too little so they can lose weight or not gain weight. That's far more important to them than sitting around wishing they had more energy. So if their energy is dipping, they might notice that or not, but it's not gonna be that big of an issue because the number one issue for them is around body weight. Once again, I've had so many clients who, once I see that, once I notice that if it's a weight loss client, a binge eating client, an overeating client, and we correct caloric amount during the day,
not only do people end up having more energy, 19 times out of out of 21, they're always gonna say, am my appetite increase? And remember, whenever a person's appetite increases like that, kiss the ground, praise the Lord. That means you're alive, means you're not dead. It means your metabolism, your calorie burning metabolism is picking up. It's the fire in your belly. The fire in your body is heating up because sometimes if you feed that little campfire a tiny amount of wood, it ain't gonna burn very, very, very well. You give that campfire enough wood and you got a nice fire, you give that campfire a ton of wood and just pour on the wood and you'll smother the fire. So too much, too much food. Smothers literally dampens metabolism, dampens our digestive fire. So it takes longer to break down that meal.
So here's an interesting one. A lot of people struggle in the morning with energy because, or in part because they ate a heck of a lot at night, more than their body needed at night. I am not saying bad to eat at night, okay? I'm truly not saying bad to eat at night. There are some people eating sometime in the evening before bed. A small snack is actually very helpful for them. So, and there's some people who religiously don't eat much after, I don't know, seven or seven or eight o'clock, and they swear by that. So it all works. It's all good, it's all possible. It can all work and it works for different people at different times. Here's the challenge. Some people, because of their lifestyle, because of their habit, because of just what they do, because of their social circle, because of their work cycle, all eat a lot at night.
And consequently, when you're eating a lot at night, too much for the body, let's call it too much for the body. How do you know what too much is? Um, how do you know what too much is? You experiment, you play around, you notice, here's how you know what too much is. I'll give you an example via the example we're talking about. When you're eating too much food at night, oftentimes what happens is we will wake up in the morning extra tired, extra foggy with extra maybe congestion or extra mucus, or We feel stuffy.
And that's often related to what and how much we ate at night.
Normally when the body goes to sleep at night, it wants to do something very important, which is healing, maintenance and repair of body tissue. That's one of the great things that happens during sleep. Sleep is rest time for sure, but sleep is also literally your body rejuvenating and repairing itself because you're in a deep relaxation response. And that's where rejuvenation, healing, repair and maintenance of body tissue is designed to happen in a big way. Now, when you have a big amount of food in your belly, guess where your metabolic energy is going to? It's gonna go to digest that food. You have to deal with the meal in your gut before you start going into maintenance and repair a body tissue. You gotta handle the immediate,
we end up not being hungry in the morning and we end up oftentimes not being able to wake up with the natural amount of energy that we normally might have in the morning. So you experiment, experiment for yourself, experiment with your client. Find out how much they eat at night. Are they hungry in the morning? How do they feel when they wake up in the morning? Can you make a potential connection between how much and what they ate at night and how they feel the next morning? Hey, what happens Mr. And Ms. Client when you are, are there times when you don't eat at night? Oh yeah, there are. Well, great, how do you usually feel the next morning? Oh, much better. A lot of people even know, but they don't know until you ask them. Okay? Um, dieting consciousness. A lot of people are skipping meals because of dieting consciousness and they're low energy simply because of dieting consciousness. So the reason why I'm mentioning this is you just might have clients because I've had these, um, who come in to see me specifically for fatigue.
And unless I caught it, and it, and it took me a little while in my professional practice to start to realize this, okay, well you have low energy, so of course we're gonna follow somebody's self-diagnosis, low energy. And of course when you're starting out, you think, oh, client has low energy. I need to help them have more energy. So then you're trying to help the president have more energy. And meanwhile they have low energy because they're in dieting consciousness and because they're in dieting consciousness, they are skipping meals, they're eating too little food during the day, you follow me? And that's what's causing their low energy. And they got macronutrient. I balance, chances are, so that's what's causing their low energy. They don't have something organically wrong with them. But if you're a beginning practitioner, you're running around trying to help somebody find more energy. No, you're being a sleuth, you are listening, you're understanding that everything's connected. So we're just ruling that out. We're looking to rule it out, you know, is my client living in dieting consciousness? And you're gonna pick that up based on the questions you ask them about their diet. What are you eating when you do the dietary intake? You know, some people just have a very erratic eating pattern because of work and life schedule. It's just the way it is because of their schedule. They're not doing anything wrong. This is, this is how life presents itself to your client. They have an erratic timing to life. There's a lot of different travel. There's things are different. Things are happening on different days, and consequently, they can't have a normal eating rhythm that can be tiring. A rhythm rhythm by itself is healing. My friends rhythm by itself is healing.
When you have a rhythm, animals love to have a rhythm. When I say rhythm, they like predictability. They like to know, Hey, we're going for a walk, now it's, it's six o'clock. They know kids like to have a rhythm. Here's what we do when we wake up. Here's what we do when we go to bed. So for my clients who have erratic eating patterns, I'm interested in their energy level and I'm always gonna look to do my best to help my client correct that. So I'm just saying heads up for that. You could always make small adjustments with people regardless of what they say their limitations are. Okay? Oftentimes we don't synergize the need for brain power with how much we eat. I'm gonna say that again and then I'll explain what I mean. Oftentimes we don't really synergize my need for brain power and how much I'm eating. Meaning you're gonna be taking a test, meaning you're gonna be going for an important job interview, meaning you are going to be in a meeting at work and you are on because you're making a presentation. You need brain power. There are certain times, let's, let's, let's face it, let's be honest, certain times you and I need a lot more brain power than others taking a test, something going on at work. Something important where you gotta show up and you're on and you're giving a presentation, you're giving a lecture, you're, you're front and center. Okay? Now, if you said to me, mark, I want to have the worst possible experience and the lowest possible energy when I, I deliver my talk, what should I eat beforehand? And I'll just say, eat a lot, eat a lot, and you're gonna be a couch potato. So what often happens is people just, they don't realize it. They don't realize that they might get nervous and they eat a lot and all of a sudden they come into an activity and event where they want brain power.
But there was no forethought or there was no understanding. And and here's really the trek is if you wanna have more brain power under eat the meal before the time slot that you want to have brain power, I've just seen it happen, undereat, whatever, under, just don't eat as much as you normally do. Be just a little hungry when you finish. Be even medium hungry. Not painful hunger, but better. To go into a situation where you need your brain power, you gotta take a test. Better to come in a little hungry than twofold. Twofold equals metabolic power, extra metabolic power going to your gut, which is gonna leave a lot less for the head brainin.
So the good news here, when it comes to meal timing, you can easily experiment with somebody's meal timing. It's an experiment. Let's change this and see what happens. Once again, this is always why no matter what your client sees you for, you wanna make sure you understand all their secondary complaints. Because even though your client might be coming to see you for weight or overeating or binge eating, and you make a correction in their meal timing, in their eating rhythm, and they have more energy, then woo, you gotta jump all over that and go, wow, congratulations. We have a success. We're on the right track. We're on the right road because we must celebrate the small successes. And your client needs to learn how to navigate their own body for goodness sake. And the body doesn't always give you the exact thing you want in the moment, but the body will give you feedback. So if you make a tweak for someone and the body gives them any kind of positive feedback, you and your client have to take that as good. We are on the right track.
I don't care if it's a weight loss client. And in two weeks of you making changes, they have more energy and they have more brain power and they're more alert and they clearly see that. But I didn't lose any weight. I always wanna spank a client when they say that. Quite honestly. Um, yeah, you didn't lose any weight. That's correct. But what you are doing is you're course correcting your body. What you are doing is you're elevating your metabolism. What you are doing is you are creating a healthier you. What you are doing is you're moving into a more, more natural expression of your biology. So you've been eating with an erratic meal timing pattern. You've been, you've had an eating rhythm for years that hasn't worked for you. Now you're changing that. And that erratic eating rhythm, that eating rhythm that doesn't work for you, hasn't worked for your weight. So the body has its own timing and the body slowly changes. And you, Mr. Mr. Alein have to learn how to celebrate the successes. And you have to understand that weight loss comes when it comes. And right now you have more energy, means you have more metabolic power, you are doing something right. So you need to take a deep breath and you need to relax and you need to let the body do what it does on its own terms and its own timing. 'cause that's what it's gonna do anyway. And really, you gotta grow up. We, you and me, we have to be big boys and big girls. You're not gonna always get everything you want when you want it.
That, by the way, was a little intellectual intervention for the person that says, yeah, I have more energy, but I didn't lose weight. I hear that so many times. Okay, let's talk about macronutrient, balance and energy. My friends, you know this one, so I'm just gonna breeze through this. This is such, such, such a very common and often unnoticed cause of fatigue or significant contributing factor. Let's state it in a different way. Experimenting with macronutrient. Balance is a beautiful strategy
when it comes to helping a client have more energy. It's either gonna work or it won't. And man, does it work a lot, especially when you can see that your client is low in essential fatty acids. Or you can see that your client is low in protein, or you can see that it looks like they might be low in EFA and protein, or I suspect they might be a little low for them.
So you play with it, you experiment. You let them know we're gonna do an experiment.
And you notice how it impacts their energy. This is a, this is probably for low energy clients who haven't played in this realm and haven't experimented, and they're indeed a little bit too high in carbs, too low in EFAs and or protein. Works like a charm. It really does. And remember, we're always talking about healthy versions of fat containing foods, healthiest versions of protein containing foods because we like food quality because that's important. Quality of life is important.
You know, so many people, people, my friends, we've talked about this, have body image driven low fat or low calorie dieting that can lead to fatigue, uhoh fat and food equals fat on my body. I better not eat that fat. I better not eat that fatty food. I better get skinless chicken. I better get oil-less oil and fat, less fat and fake fat and not eat any fat and whatever. So we avoid fat and we avoid a macronutrient who, which is the building blocks of many of the hormones and chemicals of energy in the body. Fat yields our most sustained caloric energy release.
We should have a different, it. It's, it's such, it's such a, it's such a challenge that fat on the body and fat and food is the same word. Fat because, and, and fat. You're fat. It's the same word that just as these such different meanings. But for the person who is fat phobic, which is far too many people, um, and if you're not fat phobic, chances are you judge fat in food or fat on people. And it's, it not only is it a linguistic nightmare, it's a psychological nightmare for people. And it ends up being a metabolic nightmare because it draws us to a scientific conclusion that is woefully inaccurate. Just is. So the macronutrient balance is yet another causative or contributing factor to fatigue that you can easily experiment with. My friends. It, it's, it's really, it's such a pleasure to do this because you can get a fast result. Oh, it's so good to get a fast result. And I mean, your client notices something after a week or two because once again, then you have gotten off to a great start. Your first handshake with a client is a darn good one.
Okay? That's, uh, this, this one is just so important. It's such a great place to play, my friends. Let's keep going. Let's talk about caffeine and energy.
Caffeine, what a fascinating chemical. Just remember, I'm not saying caffeine is bad for many people, A consistent caffeine use can simply be fine and there's no issue. And they're doing great and their body just handles and metabolizes caffeine very, very well. I believe I've told you this before, that different humans metabolize caffeine differently. Significant amount of the metabolization of caffeine in the human body happens in the liver. So different people clear caffeine from the system very quick. Some people, you could drink a cup of coffee and you could trace the caffeine in the body. Days later, they clear caffeine very slowly. So the bottom line is Viva la de France, we're all different. Um, because there's a group of people who intense caffeine use, I eat too much caffeine for them can initially yield a benefit. I got more energy. Why do I have more energy? Because I'm drinking caffeine. Caffeine is a, it's an interesting kind of energy anyway. The intense use of caffeine can initially yield a benefit. However, there's a subset of people who that benefit is followed by a deeper fatigue and they don't realize it. I just wanna, while we're on the subject of caffeine, you know, I wanna say I did not have a cup of coffee until I was 35 years old. So I'd never had more than a sip of coffee. Uh, and the reason being was I just remember I had a sip of coffee when I was young and I thought, this is the most disgusting stuff I've ever tasted. So, but I never drank coffee again and coffee. I just didn't need it. And at age 35, I had a child. And for the first year, I don't recall sleeping. And I was complaining one day to a friend of mine and the friend looked at me and said, why don't you just drink more coffee? And I said, I don't drink any coffee. And she laughed at me. I'm like, what's that? What's so funny? I I I've never really had coffee in my life other than a few sips here and there. And she said, just try it. Well anyway, I had my first cup of coffee, um, and it was a revelation changed my life. So coffee can yield an effect, a positive effect. Eventually what happened was as I drank more coffee, my body started coming down the other side of the mountain and it would get fatigued. So one can overuse caffeine. If somebody is tired, they don't have a caffeine deficiency
and somebody's tired, great reach for caffeine. But when we do it consistently and it doesn't truly work for the body, what's gonna happen is not only could you feel lower energy for some people, some of the other, other, other other, uh, uh, let's say symptoms of over caffeination equals moodiness, irritability. For some people it can, it can catalyze the emotion of anger. So moodiness, irritability, anger, um, a sense of feeling wired but tired, wired but tired or tired, but wired, whichever sounds better to say, um, which is an odd state to be in because the body is physically tired, but the mind is racing. Caffeine over caffeinating can do that. So when I say caffeine gives us a false metabolism, so, so that is not a scientific term, uh, that is a term that I am inventing right now. Maybe somebody else uses it good for them. Um, the way I'm using it here, and I say it's not a scientific term, it's not a traditional scientific term. However, I think it's a extremely useful term, uh, that I would love science to adopt, which is a true metabolism, is when it comes to energy, eat food, digest it, pulverize it, assimilate it, suck the nutrition out of it, suck the energy out of it. So you are using that food to create energy, and then you burn that energy. And then at some point you eat more food and you begin that cycle again, digest it, pulverize it, assimilate it, suck the nutrition out of it, suck the energy out of it, burn that energy, use that energy, get a little tired, and then, okay, here we go again. That's a true metabolism. You have been doing this since the day you've been born, actually since before the day you were born. Um, however, with caffeine, it gives us energy, but it is not a true calorie burning energy. It's not a take a substance, break it down, utilize that substance as fuel to give your energy. Caffeine is essentially figuring out in the body how to signal certain kinds of nutrient release, how to signal certain kind of hormone release. Caffeine is actually slightly mimicking a stress response. It will increase cortisol a little bit, increase adrenaline a little bit, and it will give us energy. But there's a cost because we are literally burning through nutrition, we are literally burning through a lot of micronutrition vitamins and minerals. And that can eventually have an effect on people in a negative way. And it'll affect your weakest link if you're over caffeinating.
So let me jump to the end of this list for a second. How do you know if somebody's over caffeinating? Ugh, hard to know. But here's what I wanna say. If a client is doing four uses or more of some type of caffeine per day, that gets my attention, I just start to wonder, uh, okay, a cup of coffee in the morning, cup of coffee in the mid morning, cup of coffee at lunch, cup of coffee in the late afternoon. I'm wondering, are you over caffeinating? Any of those could be energy drinks, any of those could be some type of caffeine, literal caffeine supplement. So when I'm saying caffeine, I am, coffee is number one on the list. Coffee's number one on the list. Um, the caffeine in black tea. Oftentimes when they measure the amount of caffeine in black tea, they do not take into account that there are various chemicals that we can call caffeine cousins. They actually are not the exact same molecule as caffeine, but they're damn close. And tea has a lot of those, oftentimes so does coffee itself, but coffee is the most caffeinated beverage. Um, and it will have the strongest caffeine hit as compared for any kind of a tea. So when I'm thinking caffeine, I'm largely thinking of coffee. I'm thinking of an energy drink of any kind or an energy pill of any kind or an energy substance of any kind that has caffeine in it. Secondarily, I will say black tea. Am I worried about yorba mate? Something like that? Quite honestly, no. Um, because there are more caffeine cousins in a yorba mate in terms of the effect on the body than the literal actual caffeine molecule. Um, that being said, I'm just taking notice. I'm just wondering, I'm just looking for the signs. I might say, wow, you know, you're drinking four cups of coffee a day. How long you been doing that? That's a lot. If I drank four cups of coffee a day, I think after a week, I, I would be wired and tired. Like, oh yeah, I've been drinking a lot of coffee lately because no, no, no, no, no. So you just wanna gather information. So we said excess caffeine can mimic the stress response. That's part of what gives us the juice and the goodies. But it can burn through micronutrition, it can stress the adrenal glands and the kidneys and other organs, and it can literally lead to a deeper fatigue than we might have started with.
So all you gotta do is go on an experiment with people at some point. I especially like to do this for people who are willing and people who have the intellectual and emotional, uh, wherewithal to want to explore. Um, I'll say to a client, have, when was the last time you experienced a life without caffeine? And they'll often give you a weird look and they can't remember, and then they'll go back to a heck of a long time ago. So what's happening is there's a lot of people who are accustomed to a certain amount of caffeine and they don't know what it's like to not have that amount of caffeine. That's fine. You are using caffeine so you could have more energy so you can do all the things that you do. Good for you. Congratulations. And there's a place where we have a natural metabolism. And I love for people to experience that because it's hard to believe, and I really mean this because I've gone through times where I would get addicted to coffee and I think, oh my goodness, I can't give this up. It's giving me energy. And you give it up. And for some people, it depends on the person. Usually within no more than a week or so a person really changes. Um, they start to have a natural energy. They're not as wired and they're a little surprised. They're, there's, they have a noticeable shift noticeable to them because caffeine is a powerful substance. I love powerful substances. We respect power. So you respect it sometimes by just letting it go. You learn about yourself. What are we going to learn? Let's see, let's do the experiment because you just might get back your natural metabolism and you're going to see, you're actually gonna feel better.
So I want you to notice the people who are over caffeinating, see if you can sniff them out. See if you can put them on an experiment of either decreasing their amount of caffeine or even slowly decreasing it to the point where they let it go. Just as an experiment is not forever. Mr. And Mrs. Client.
And for a lot of people with low energy, you do caffeine here and there and it's helpful.
It's okay. You learn how to regulate your metabolism in a way that works for you. So it works for you truly. Okay, sugar and energy. Ooh, la la What an interesting one. Um, as you know, well, let me just say this. Lemme just say this straight up for children, pre puberty, puberty and under, no, no, no, let's say pre puberty and under. So I wanna say children like, ugh, elevenish and under sugar is a powerful drug. It has a different chemistry in the human body as compared to the body of an adult. Now, I found research on this goodness, like at least 30 years ago. Um, talk about unpopular research that gets buried. You're not gonna see this. Um, and I wish I could dig up the study. I don't have it. Uh, and the study was that they measured, oh gosh, they measured, um, cortisol levels and they measured adrenaline levels in people who consume sugar. And they did it across age groups. And they were stunned to find that pound for pound kids, children, eight years old, seven years old and under had a very strong reaction to sugar more so than an adult in terms of the amount of adrenaline and cortisol released.
Don't wait for a scientific study to prove that my friends watch a child when they eat a bunch of sugar. Watch the child presu and watch the child post sugar, post sugar. They're often running around like crazy. Is it every kid? No. Is it a lot of kids? Yes. This is why children love sugar. It is their first drug. And I, I'm being very honest when I say that, is literally being a drug for their body. So it is reacting differently in their body than it is your body because they have a more, they have a highly sensitive body.
Now, I haven't seen the same information for teens and sugar, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. But I will say what I've noticed, observationally, I believe that for majority of teenagers, they will also metabolize sugar differently than an adult in their late twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties. And, and it makes sense. That might not be biologically true, but if you think about it, it makes sense. When you're a teenager, your body is going through an amazing growth surge. You are reacting to nutrition in a very powerful way. Watch teens and sugar. Watch how much they hunger for it and go for it. Watch the intensity of their relationship with it. You'll understand what I'm saying. Watch how young children cry for sugar. They might as well be crying for drugs. So once again, I'm not saying sugar's bad. I'm not saying sugar's bad. The dose makes the poison my friends, it's all about the dose. I'm not saying don't eat sugar, sugar that works for you. Eat it. Find out what amount works for you, play with it, experiment with it. Sugar will give you a quick caloric burn. It'll give you a fast energy release in the body. And that's an often very welcomed and it's very readily available. You just open up your cabinet, you could walk down the block, you can get sugar, you could consume the sugar, and you could have more energy.
I will say that a consistent use of sugar for energy, once again, can give us a false metabolism.
It will eventually yield blood sugar dysregulation for most people. IE it'll put you on the continuum for pre-diabetes. Diabetes, excess sugar will lead to all kinds of micronutrition deficiencies, vitamin and mineral deficiencies. It can lead to inflammation throughout the body. It can lead to a long list of symptoms that we might normally not connect to. Overuse of sugar, headaches, brain fog, mood moodiness, and of course fatigue. For many people, sugar works and then it stops working. Yeah, sugar used to gimme energy and now I take sugar and it gives me a little energy and then I get tired. Yeah, body changes. Your body's talking to you, your body's letting you know good for your body. So a sugar detox is most always an educational and informative strategy for your client, you know, and, and you always work with what your client is willing and able to do. I don't get a**l about that. I don't get intense about it. Um, a lot of your clients are afraid that you're gonna be the food police. They're afraid you're gonna be a**l and intense and make sure that you don't need a single speck of sugar. I'm not that guy. Um, but at the same time, yeah, I think going on a sugar detox and eating a really clean diet for a while is a great strategy for me personally. Just so you know, me, my my, my approach is I wanna, I wanna always eat the healthiest food possible for sure. I wanna eat the highest quality food possible. I want to eat the best food for my body. And at the same time, I wanna be able to be in the world. I want to be able to travel, I want to be able to be in certain situations and go with the nutritional and food flow a little more. So on the one hand, I don't mind being the guy at the party who doesn't eat any of the junk food. And on the other hand, sometimes I'll be at the guy at the party and I'll eat a little bit of the junk food just because it's happening. It's the moment. Um, I'll especially, uh, go outside my norm normal dietary guidelines. If I'm in a social situation where I feel, um, my host might be, might feel disrespected if I don't eat some of the food or taste some of the food.
And at the same time, for some people, that strategy doesn't work. Some people need to be very strict about what they eat because otherwise their body's not gonna feel good and good for them to know that. So all I'm saying is similar to caffeine, sugar for many people works for a certain time in their life to give energy. But in the long run, if it's a big part of the diet and my client is complaining of low energy and they're doing a lot of sugar, you bet I'm going to experiment with a little bit of a sugar detox. Um, and I'm really talking about the poor quality sugars. I, you know, if a person wants a little bit of honey in their tea or something like that, if they wanna put a little bit of maple syrup on something, you know, go for it. Um, I'm a believer in the natural sugars for sure,
and you do it on a person to person basis. Okay, let's talk about food quality and energy. Here's what I wanna say about this. For most clients, the longer you work with a client, the more the responsibility is on us to help them move into a relationship with higher quality food. Some of your clients are great eaters. Some of your clients might be eating more high quality food than you do. They might have it nailed down better than you do. Great. Some clients, it's, it's, it's just not where they live. It's not part of their understanding and it's not how they're raised. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with such people. Um, a lot of times we're here to educate, you know, for a lot of people simply being alive and eating the kind of diet that the world typically exposes us to is fatiguing
food quality is not an always obvious place that we look to work for a solution to fatigue. You give me a person who has long-term fatigue and if they have a long-term poor quality diet. You know what my strategy is? We wanna slowly change your diet to high quality food. You gotta play a long game.
What goes into your body is going to talk to your body, feed your body poor quality substance. That's the kind of body that will be built from it. The body can't help itself. It's gonna do as best it can. I mean, I think if right now I adopted the diet, the kinds of foods that I was eating when I was like nine years old, I would die in two weeks. But the body's pretty resilient, especially when we're young.
So what I wanna say is, food quality is more of a longer term game with your client. I don't hit clients hard with this. I look to slowly change food quality for the people who need it. It's slow. I don't hammer them over the head. I introduce it very gently, very sweetly.
A long-term, poor quality diet will eventually take its toll on metabolism. I, I mean, uh, truly my friends, that is such basic nutritional wisdom. But we have to remind each other of that. We have to remind our clients of that who don't know that. So your job is to educate your client about the great experiment of gradually increasing food quality. Um, you know, again, I said the longer you work with a client, you know what the more of a connection you have, the more of a relationship you have. I've had clients who at some point, you know, they come in five, six months later and I'm like, okay, it's time to work on your food quality no more. We have to really up your game here. You know, I'm getting attached to you as my client. I want you to be healthy. I care. You just need to do better. You just need to shop better. You just, you just need to shop different. We might need to get you shopping in a different place. We might need to really go down the list and look at all the foods that you're purchasing and say, Hey, what are the really higher quality alternatives? It's time. If it's somebody with kids, I always pull the, do you wanna be alive for your kids card? If it's a grandparent, that's even a great card to pull for grandparents who are eating junk food, I meet them all the time. I say, Hey, wanna be alive for your grandkids? Take better care of yourself. You don't wanna be alive. Eat whatever the heck you want. I will literally, my friends, I'm not kidding you, I will talk to a client like that. They hear it and they get it. It's a straight shot to the truth. And I'm not saying it like a jerk, I'm saying it because I care and maybe because I'm from New York and Brooklyn and I can be more confronted in that way. Okay? I think you understand where I'm going with this one. Yeah, I really wanna say that A lot of people, they eat their their their junk food diet for a long time. And when you're young, you naturally got energy. And all of a sudden I've seen young people in their, in their early twenties actually, and all of a sudden it starts to catch up to them. And it's hard for them to hear that. You gotta completely change your diet.
I'll say it's straight up to them and say, you gotta start playing a longer game because previously you've been immortal and it's nutrition counts. I'm not being the food police here. I'm just telling you straight up, you wanna buy a poor quality car that's gonna give you poor quality gas mileage. Fine. You know, that's one way to spend your money. That's okay. Just know that you're doing that. If you put the worst gasoline, the worst fuel in your car, it ain't gonna work. Same with the body. Okay, let's talk about pleasure and energy. This one's a little more subtle, but I mention it and I bring it up because my friends, I have had so many client experiences over the years where my client has had, had such a deep fear of pleasure, particularly pleasure from food,
that it causes so many toxic thoughts and so many behaviors and so many choices that end up draining us. So here's the assumption. I'm gonna make an assumption. Pleasure generates energy.
Remember we said power plant doesn't have energy. It generates energy. Okay, A human generates energy.
Yeah. You know, you don't have a lot of energy at night. You don't have energy. You wake up in the morning, all of a sudden you're generating energy. You eat breakfast, you get some fuel in the system, you're generating energy. Maybe you go do a little walk or a little workout, you generate energy. There's all kinds of ways that we generate energy. Pleasure. I am postulating. I'm saying, I'm asserting, actually, I'm asserting that it's an assertion. I'm like, here's what I believe. Pleasure generates energy. Disprove it or prove it to yourself from your own experience. Think of times when you were getting a lot of pleasure. I don't care from what it was just a lot of pleasure in life. It could have been from a partner, could have been from a place you were living. It could have been from family. It could have been from a pet. I don't care what it was. But the pleasure quotient was jacked up in your life, makes you feel good, gives you more energy on top of that, because pleasure catalyzes a relaxation response. Pleasure can heal us on many levels.
Just because you're in a relaxation response doesn't mean you are lying on the couch. There's different levels of relaxation response. You could be relaxed and have energy. You know, think of times when your mind is relaxed, your inner being is relaxed, but you're, you've got energy. You might not be running around like a maniac, but you have energy.
A lot of times we think of energy as like I'm wired. Like, no, you don't have to be wired to have the experience of energy. You can just have a nice, slow, steady energy. So I'm saying pleasure relaxes us in a very unique way in a healthy dose of relaxation response is necessary to rejuvenate us, and it contributes to our energy because it's the kind of relaxation that smooths your feathers. It's the kind of relaxation that allows us to take a deep breath. It's the kind of relaxation that gives us a rejuvenation, which gives us energy. Again, it's not gonna be the same energy necessarily from three cups of coffee that you drink, but it's energy nonetheless. Now. So if everything I just said is true, which I believe it is, then the absence of pleasure puts us at a disadvantage when it comes to energy level.
And the extreme absence of pleasure really puts us at a disadvantage. And the resistance of pleasure, just resistance alone drains energy. I don't care what you're ing. Whenever we're in resistance, we're working hard. God, I don't wanna be in this meeting. God, I don't wanna be at work today. God, I don't wanna be talking to this person. God, I don't wanna be sitting in my computer doing this, that the other thing. You're in resistance eventually that's gonna tire you out because it takes energy to resist.
What I wanna say to you is that observationally, people who resist pleasure with food, pleasure with the body, pleasure with life, they, they're often going to occur as very conflicted. They're not fully in their personal power at all, because you're afraid of your own biology. You can't be empowered if you're afraid of your own biology. If you're afraid of your appetite, you cannot be empowered to the fullest degree that you can be if you are afraid of pleasure and your body is designed for it in many different ways. Um, if you're afraid of that, you can't fully step into your power, personal power and metabolic power. So we've talked about pleasure before. I'm noticing my client's relationship with pleasure. Um, noticing how much pleasure they are receiving in life. I'm noticing if they resisted particularly around food, and it's a place that I might work with a client, it's not usually a first place that I'm gonna work. This is, this is down the line. I hope that was helpful. Let's talk about food allergies and energy.
So this is a very important nutritional concern of our times. Food allergies, you know, something, a poor quality diet along with lowered human immunity that so many people are suffering along with environmental factors such as toxins and strains and stressors and pollutions. Plus whatever genetic influences we face can lead to food allergies and food allergies will invariably fatigue us. So the bottom line is, if you have a food allergy at some point, it is fatiguing you. Fatigue is arguably, arguably one of the more common symptoms overall of a food allergy. Now, there's certain food allergy that's just going to give you a rash. There's certain food allergies that are just gonna c close up your throat. It's not what I'm talking about. I'm saying overall, on average, one of the most common symptoms of a food allergy, low energy, many foods. Here's the thing, many foods that we're allergic to will actually initially give us kind of a rush example. Komo morphines and glute morphines. So komo morphines is the protein is a, is a, hmm. It's a protein-like hormone morphine-like chemical, um, found in cheese, found in dairy products, glute morphines. It is a protein ish
compound similar to a morphine. It gives you, gives you a little bit of a drug hit. That's why a lot of young kids, you see, they're hooked on. Like certain kids, they just eat pizza. They just only want to eat pizza, literally to them. They're, they're doing caseomorphins and glute morphines. They're doing drugs. So they're gonna, and, and those will give you an energy rush. Often, often, not always for some people, followed by an energy dip. But then we get hooked. 'cause you want the rush. Of course, you don't want the dip. Oh God, I'm dipping some point. You get the rush again, and then you dip, and then you get the rush again, and then you dip.
So oddly enough, we initially get energy from our stress response to an allergic food. And allergic reaction is a form of stress response. Your body's mobilizing and like, oh my goodness, I'm being attacked by this food. So in that mobilization process, you, you can often feel a little bit of a rush from a food you're allergic to. So we oftentimes will reach for a food. We are really drawn to it. We're really wanting it, craving it, because it's gonna give you that initial rush, but then it's gonna give you a drop. So we're actually getting hooked on that food that can happen for people. And it happens often. It's not a big deal. You can play with that. You can experiment with an elimination diet of some type. And oftentimes that an elimination diet is really, it's a must try nutritional strategy for those people who have hard to solve fatigue. So if your client has done a lot for themselves with their fatigue, if you've done a lot with them and you have not tried an elimination diet with them, IE you haven't looked to the level of food allergies, that's a place I will at some point go with a client. Uh, because oftentimes that's where you hit gold. Oftentimes for people, it can be the gluten, it can be the dairy, it can be the soy, it can be the corn, it could be eggs. Those are the big ones. So it's a great place to play and experiment. Okay, my friends. Now let's talk about some of the psychological factors as it relates to energy and fatigue. We're gonna talk about anxiety, stress, and fear in general. We're gonna focus on self-chosen stress. We're gonna talk about emotional metabolism. Talk a little bit about toxic nutritional beliefs. We're gonna talk about unforgiveness. We're gonna talk about lack of trust or faith or connection to a higher power. We're gonna talk, talk a little bit about undigested life experience, and we're going to talk about unspoken communication. Ah, because when it comes to energy, oftentimes it's all about what's going on in the mind. So when it comes to fear, anxiety, stress, and energy, remember the four questions, my friends, what's stressing my client? What's their biggest fear or stress? You know this, you've heard me say this, our stressors will impact our metabolism. Stress will impact your food choices. You're not a smart when you're under stress in terms of wise, you're a smart survival creature. You are not a smart, long-term thriving creature. At some point, excess stress drains energy, and all organisms must have a recovery period from stress activation. And such a recovery period means the relaxation response. So, so I'm, I'm just listening. What's stressing my client? Um, the four questions. What's, what's the, what's stressing them? What's their biggest stress? And with all clients, at some point, I'm working with life unfolding each week, Hey, how did your week go? What was happening? What went on? I'm listening to where the challenges were. I'm listening for where the stressors were. And I'm gonna look to see how I can help my client better regulate the stress that they have at work, the anxiety they're experiencing at home, the fears that they're having around money. I'm gonna just look for ways that I can help them relax more into their challenge or stress a little bit less into it as a way to better navigate their life.
And they're little things, little things, but oftentimes when it comes to a person getting back their energy, it's the little things because the little things are additive and all of a sudden you have a little bit less anxiety here and a little bit less fear there. It starts to add up in a good way.
Add in more fears, anxieties, and stressors to the system. You will eventually feel the fatigue. Remove some of those or massage some of those. We release energy. It, it's really that simple. So this is how we're working with clients in general. I really want you to learn and experiment and practice working with clients and life unfolding. So yes, you're working with them with their weight, you're working with them with their ovarian, their binge eating, their digest. They're this, they're that. But you're also working with them with a life unfolding at the same time, because that's gonna give you all the information you need. How was your last week? Oh gosh. You got into an argument with your partner. Like, wow, what was that about? What happened? How did you deal with that? And you're listening to see where you can offer a way for your client to step into greater awareness, step into greater consciousness, step into greater empowerment, which will eventually lead to more energy.
Okay? Self-chosen stressors and energy. This is a big one. I'm always, always, always about skewering the self-chosen stressors. That means our toxic beliefs. We've talked about this self-chosen stressors means how we resist life. Okay? If you got your job and you're resisting it every day in a big way, then you got work to do. Your client has work to do. If they have two kids and they're resisting being a parent every day, they got work to do because this is life. So you either accept what you have or you somehow change your life.
But sometimes you can't change your life. You can change the fact you have kids. And sometimes this is the job you have right now. And sometimes these are the parents I have, and these are the relatives that I have, and these are my circumstances, and this is what it is.
So a self-chosen stressor means I wake up every day and I resist what is takes energy.
Self-chosen stressor means the amount of judgment and self attack that we do, particularly the inner self-talk, judging, self attacking, self harming self with our thoughts and our words. That is debilitating and it's fatiguing. And prove it to yourself by stopping that conversation in your head for a few weeks. And notice what happens to your energy. Or at least having that conversation. Cut it in half, cut it by 50%, watch yourself have more energy.
So when I'm working with a client, I know that when I help them with their self chosen stressors, when I help them still stop, or when I help them start to limit the negative self-talk, because they're now practicing catching it and noticing it and switching it around. People feel much better. They feel better about life. They feel better about themselves. Good things happen. They have more energy, more vitality.
Self-chosen stressors oftentimes means how you see the world. Does the world suck? It's how you see the world is in a nasty place. Okay? If the world sucks and it's a nasty place, that's a stressor, and you're gonna get fatigued. If you see the world as a jungle and you see people as mean and untrustworthy, yep, you're gonna get fatigued by that. Chances are self-chosen stressors means our perfectionism. Perfectionism at some point is a choice.
At some point, you can choose to graduate from perfectionism to slowly let the air out of the perfectionism bubble. Self-chosen stressors can mean how we stay in unconsciousness and forget to find the high road. We just stay in the same silly arguments. We stay in the same gripes, and you just don't take the high road.
You know the places oftentimes where you're not taking the high road, where you can take the low road enough and it's gonna tire you out. So working with self-chosen stressors, by the way, my friends, is a lifetime practice, and it is often the key to healing our fatigue. Oftentimes, the key, at the very least, it's a great contributing factor to healing our fatigue,
emotional metabolism and energy. Okay? So this is a big one, and this is, honestly, it's a general one and it's saying what I've said, but in different terms. So what I wanna say is unprocessed or unexpressed or unregulated emotions can often lead us into an experience of fatigue.
Meaning having all these thoughts and all these feelings going, all these feelings going on, and they're inside me and I'm just blabbering them out, and I'm not really being with myself. If we don't know how to be with ourselves, we often end up letting our emotions get the best of us. We can let our emotions take us over. Yes, emotions are emotions. I want you to feel them, but I don't want them to take you over. So unregulated emotions often make us feel crazy,
and they eventually drain our energy. So I'm noticing where my client
loses themselves, where they disembody and step outside themselves and let any emotion run them.
Some people just become emotionally constipated and stuck, meaning they just keep their emotions in. They're holding it in, they're holding it in, they're holding it in that, that, that's just very tiring. They're holding in their anger, they're holding in their love. So it's all about energy management. And for so many humans, better regulating our emotions, once again, might be the key when it comes to managing our energy and fatigue.
So really that's what we're learning in this training. So much of the training is about when, when I talk about working with your client in a life unfolding, okay, what happened this week? What went down? What were the ups and downs? Oh, you got upset. Oh, you got angry. Oh, you got depressed. Oh, you got sad. Oh, you sort of crashed. Oh, you took three steps back. How we manage that, how we handle that, how we speak to ourselves. Yeah, I got really angry, and then I got so angry at myself for getting angry. Okay, now you know how to work with your client. They got angry for being angry. They got depressed because they were depressed. Well, that's kicking yourself when you're down, okay? It's the little ways that we help our clients step into their power.
In this case, here's my emotion. How do I express this in a way that works for me? That's the name of the game.
Um, let's talk a little bit more about this. Some of the emotions that can drain our energy, judgment, unforgiveness, disappointment, anger, resentment, fear, anxiety, confusion, low self-worth, self-hatred, and more. So those can literally drain energy.
Don't hang there too long past the point where you need to hang. You know you're gonna get angry. Got it? But if I live there and pitch my tent there, it's gonna eventually drain me. Yeah, we get confused, we get anxious. But if you live there, that will drain your energy in the positive. Positive emotions when we don't express them, can drain energy.
If you're holding in all this love, if you're holding in all this happiness, if you've got to contain your enthusiasm, that's hard. That's tiring. There are some people, some of your clients, uh, are very reactive.
Some people are very reactive, and they have a quick emotional trigger.
Oftentimes those people end up at some point dealing with fatigue, because to constantly be in overreaction is tiring.
So for many of your clients, just the fact that they can talk to you about their life and what happened this past week, you don't have to be a brilliant expert here. You're just being a sounding board. You're just being a witness. So if you're sitting here worrying about what do I do if my client is, what do I do with my client that, you know, sometimes you just have to listen to your friend and really be warm and very be, just be open, be warm, be present, be there.
Sometimes just witnessing is enough. Gosh, that's really hard for you. I totally get it. So for a lot of people, a place to share their emotional world is oftentimes very, very, very healing.
And I'll say, if your client is ever drawn to different types of emotional release work, emotional release tends to liberate energy. I don't know, get in the car and drive and scream. If you got a lot of anger for me, a lot of times I got a lot of pent up frustration and just energy and nervous energy. I'll take a cold shower or I'll jump in a cold river and I'll scream a couple of times. And that for me is my emotional release. Hey, Mr. And Mrs. Client, how do you kind of release emotions? Like what works for you? That's what I would ask.
Toxic nutritional beliefs can be primary energy drainers. I'm not gonna linger here too long, but I wanna say this again because this is so freaking important. Until we cover, we as practitioners, until we cover the key toxic nutritional beliefs for our energy challenge client, until you are able to do a clear intellectual intervention for every important toxic, nutritional belief that your client has, then we haven't yet done all the work that we can do with them.
What I wanna say is simply put the beliefs that we have. Our core beliefs will either give us energy or they'll drain our energy.
If your core belief is, I'm unlovable. If I'm fat, and you happen to weigh an amount that you or others are considering fat, then you have a core belief that is draining your energy. If my client has the core belief that when I am the toxic belief that when I lose X amount of weight, then I'll, then I'm gonna find love.
Man, that sets us on a program that trains our energy. You've gotta see this.
We can compet the best diet in the universe, and you could have the optimum lifestyle. But if our inner world is driven by toxic beliefs, then we'll never reach our full potential when it comes to energy and vitality. Yep. There's certain people are doing everything right, but what's driving them is fear. What's driving them is, I don't want to be fat. I don't want to be unhealthy. I don't wanna die. I don't want to get sick. I want to be loved. And this is exactly what I have to eat and look like and control my appetite in order to be loved and be healthy and be perfect and live forever. Whatever it is, I,
unforgiveness and energy, I'm just circling back, I'm reminding us about this. We've talked about it holding self or others as unforgiven requires a goodly amount of energy. We don't always realize how much energy it takes, quite frankly. So there is a real, and you know this, think of, think of all of a sudden somebody does you wrong and you're so angry and, and you are right, you're right. And they're wrong. Like, you know you're right. You know they're wrong. You know they're evil. You know they did something bad and maybe you can't even do anything about it. Done is done. And you're just, you're just holding a grudge and it's just, it just trains energy. You know, in a weird way, it gives us energy at first 'cause we're angry and we're in a stress response. You want to do the the fight part of the fight or flight,
and eventually we gotta let them go because then if we don't, their offense to us continues on and on and on and on and on. Let somebody insult you once, but don't carry around that insult for the rest of your life. You, you're better than that. We are worth more than that person's insult. So there's a real energetic cost for holding someone as responsible for our plight, our condition, our life. There's a big energetic cost for that. It's huge. Many people falsely believe that we're gonna somehow lose or come up short if we forgive. No, you always gain, if you forgive, stated in the positive, forgiveness can release a tremendous amount of energy. And my friends, if this doesn't work for you, if this concept around forgiveness doesn't work for you around other people, then just focus on yourself. Because oftentimes that's the number one dude you need to forgive is you. And chances are you might have done something you wish you didn't do, or you might not have done anything. Meaning forgive yourself for this is how you look, even though there's no crime in that.
Forgive yourself for how much you ate or didn't eat or think you should have eaten. Forgive yourself for anything.
Yeah, if we've truly harmed someone, of course, make amends. Do what you need to do to make things right in the world. But I'm especially, especially, especially talking about the places where you haven't committed a crime, but you're holding yourself in judgment anyway. And that's usually around looks and weight and shape and appetite and food.
And if you truly harm someone, or if you truly did bad and did wrong, then forgiving self is all about somehow making amends in the world so you can feel worthy of forgiveness
and making amends is a tremendous energy release.
Okay, a few more my friends. Let's talk about trust, faith, higher power and energy. So a lot of people who simply have little trust or faith in life itself and in their own life and in a deeper meaning to life and in any real and honest meaning to their existence, a lot of people are laying around going, what's the point? What's the point? What's the point? Ah, you're born, you die. There's all this nonsense in the middle.
And what I want to say is that religion is an energy drain. It is exhausting. Prove me wrong. It is exhausting to live in a random loveless, chaotic, meaningless universe just is. Notice the people who don't live in a loveless, chaotic, meaningless universe, they're a lot happier.
A lack of connection to a spiritual source or a higher power, or a religion or a spiritual path can be, can be deeply depleting for atheist. I've noticed a lot of atheist people have a very clear moral code that they live by and that empowers them. Good for them. I'm calling that their connection. I'm calling that their kind of religion, really, they're following a code. They're following something higher than them.
A life where we have no moral or ethical or religious or spiritual. Compass invariably results in a lack of consciousness and awareness. It results in us often taking the low road once again in our relationships with ourself, with anything in life that is a profound energy drainer. We receive energy from the very source where all energy comes from that which invented and created us. So what I wanna say is that many people are fatigued because they feel a deep spiritual aloneness and stated in the positive. The remedy for that is embarking on our spiritual journey. You know, there's been times when I've said to a client, you just need to go on your spiritual journey. You need to start inquiring of the universe. You need to start seeing where you fit in. You need to start seeing what you believe. You need to start to consider that there's something bigger than you. That there's a higher power here. I get that you got burned by your religion. I get that you don't like to use the word God or Jesus or whatever it is that you don't like, but don't throw out the baby with the bath water here. Oftentimes I will ask my client to do the journaling exercise of writing down their 10 commandments. Remember, it doesn't have to be 10, it could be five, it could be 55. It don't have to be commandments. It's just what are your actual spiritual guidelines and beliefs? What are your beliefs about how life works? How the universe works? Just write it down. Let's see what it looks like.
You know, it's hard just to take a person who hasn't been on a spiritual journey and say, oh, here's what you need to do. It's not always as simple as that, but at least to be in the conversation, to urge your client in that direction, to alert them that there is such a direction to get them thinking about it and to get them grappling with this. 'cause part of the spiritual journey for many people is they have to grapple with the sense that they don't know what they believe in and they don't know what to trust, and they don't have faith in something bigger and that isn't given to us. You have to seek it out. You gotta find it. You have to effort. So that's why there's no, oh, just read this book. It doesn't work like that. Oh, just read a book. No, it's often a journey, but it's a choice. We have to make that choice to explore.
This is a hidden one. This is a big one. Again, I want you to say, I wanna say to you, notice the people that you're around, friends, family, loved ones, just people in your environment who have a religion, who love their religion, who love their connection to whatever their spirituality is. They have a different kind of energy. They have a day, they, they're getting fed by someplace. That is what I'm talking about.
Undigested life, experience and energy. So similar to unprocessed and unregulated emotions. Undigested life experience can drain our personal and metabolic energy. So what does that mean? Undigested life experience. It could mean any event that has left us in some way hurt, damaged in trauma, abandoned, confused, stunned, hopeless, bitter, self attacking in judgment, in blame, in self-imposed isolation and or just with this sense of, damn, ugh, that hurt. I can't believe it. I'm not gonna talk to people anymore. I hate men. I hate women. I hate this. I hate that. This sense of incompleteness, oftentimes an undigested life experience is a person's biggest life stressor.
So we're just listening for these. We're just listening and we're creating conversation. We're creating space. You're creating curiosity. And from what you learn, you are looking to invent suggestions or homework assignments or journaling that just creates conversation around a person's undigested experience.
Next, my friends unspoken communication and energy. So if there's a truth that you wanna speak and you're not speaking it, it takes energy to not speak. That truth takes energy to hold it back. IE, you're using your energy for something that, huh? Why spend it on that? It takes energy to hold back. Words that wanna be spoken, authentic words that truly want to come out of us. It takes energy to pretend, no, I got nothing to say. You got a lot to say. Sometimes it takes energy to eat our words. What an interesting metaphor. Eating our words. People do that all the time. Not a lot of calories in there. But man does it mess with our metabolism.
Holding back the power of our throat chakra will eventually de eventually deplete us.
The throat chakra chakra is the the throat. The throat chakra, the throat energy center. That's powerful. It's our voice. It's who you are in this world. It's how you communicate. It's how you declare yourself to this world. It's how you make the world know this is who I am. When we're short cutting that, when we're not letting that energy move, we don't rejuvenate. When you express your power, that power regenerates itself. When we don't express our power, that power starts to eat away at our innards. Stated in the positive. When we speak the truth, when we be honest, when we speak authentically, here's me. And when we take risks with our words in a conscious, loving way, that can generate a tremendous amount of energy. My friends. So I'm always listening for where my client holds back.
I'm always noticing the client who, oh no, no, I'm just being nice and nice isn't getting them anywhere.
Sometimes we have to step into the game of life and stepping into the game of life means we have to communicate means we have to use our words, means we have to be more confident in our words, means we have to be more confident in the truth. And the words that want want to come out of us,
you oftentimes don't even need to figure out what to say. Oftentimes we simply need to get our fear and anxiety of what we're going to say out of the way.
And then what wants to come out comes out. So I'm noticing my client and their relationship to, is there unspoken communication?
Sometimes having the right conversation with your partner, with your parents, with someone that you had a falling out with. Someone where there's a grudge. Someone where there's just this unspoken stuff, it's all under the table. You know what I'm talking about? And you finally come out, oh, that feels so much better. I'm so glad we talked about that. Right?
Yeah. You are glad that you talked about that. 'cause you were holding all this energy and then it was eating at you, and now you've liberated that energy and you have energy. Now you actually have more energy by releasing that energy.
What a good thing. Okay, my friends, let's finish up. I just wanna mention some other factors that can impact energy in the psychological realm. Um, a lot of times we have soul lessons that are just waiting to be learned. It is waiting. They're waiting for us to learn them, claiming our power, claiming our sexuality, agreeing to be here, expressing our creativity,
uh, being in our masculine, being in our feminine, whatever polarity we're hungry for.
When we're learning our soul lessons, we are generating energy. When we are resisting our soul lessons, we are resisting life at a very deep level. And resistance eventually leads to fatigue.
Grieving my friends, grieving is a natural part of life. Grieving is healthy. Someone dies, something dies. A part of our life is over. A great part of our life is ending. Whatever it is we grieve. Grieving is good.
Oftentimes, when we don't grieve, when we skip the grief process, when we skip the mourning process, we drain our energy because we actually never gave our emotional metabolism a chance to do its rightful thing. So I'm not saying grieving is bad, I'm saying grieving is good. And when we fail to grieve a loved one, a part of our life that we need to say goodbye to,
when we fail to do that fail, it often eats away at us. Disappointment. We get disappointed in things. Disappointment is a natural human emotion, and it starts to become toxic and draining and debilitating when we let disappointment rule our inner world. So at some point, if that emotion doesn't leave, we have to help send it on its way.
So disappointment that lingers too long,
we often have to have a conversation with our client. If you notice that, if you notice, huh, there might be a disappointment here, that it's time to start shifting. Oftentimes it's around an old relationship.
We can't get something new in the closet until we get rid of all the old stuff in the closet. We talked about grudges before. Holding grudges will drain energy. You know, a lot of times we work hard and we need to work hard, and we did work hard and we do work hard. And f sometimes you work hard and you just have the natural need for rest. And if we don't rest after true hard work, then how can we regenerate energy? I mean, it's obvious, but we don't always notice it. For many people, if they let their sexuality go unexplored
in a way where they feel disappointed in a way where they feel shut down in a way where they feel remorse or regret, then that can drain energy or unexplored. Sexuality can simply mean you are in a relationship and there's a place where sexuality needs, needs some energy. It needs some insight, it needs some ideas. It needs, it needs to be uplifted, it needs to be played with, experimented with, explored. More
stated in the positive. When we are expressing our sexuality in a healthy way, that can be extremely energy producing unclaimed archetype for a lot of people. Yeah, you're you. And there's also other parts of you that you might be wanting to express.
I don't know, maybe you're in this training and you're here to express the part of you that's a practitioner, that's a coach that helps people. Great. You're claiming that. You're claiming that archetype. Some of us need to step into the archetype of being a parent. IE You have kids, you could step into the archetype of a parent and not even have kids, but start parenting certain people in your life. Some of us are ready to step into being a mentor. Some of us are ready to step into being a teacher. Some of us are ready to step into the more scientific part of our brain. Some of us are ready to step into the more nature boy, nature girl part of our brain. So unclaimed archetype. What, what, what is it in you that's wanting to express? What is it in my client that's wanting to express unclaimed power? Very similar. You know, a lot of us have powers and we just don't acknowledge it. We don't understand all the time. We don't give ourselves credit for what our genius is. Um, I've seen people who, you know, spend their life gardening and and farming and they don't realize that that's a power to be able to work with plants and work with nature in that way. Some people just don't give themselves credit for, they don't, they're not claiming the power that they have with, you know, I don't know, with children, with parenting, with how they deal with men, with how they deal with women with, with what they know and do when it comes to music or art. It's just being able to wrap ourselves around, oh, these are my powers, these are my superpowers. It's not coming from an ego place, it's coming from just a practical place. Because when you claim your power, then you can relax into it and you can deliver it in a good way. And it gives you energy.
My friends, sometimes having more energy means we just gotta grow up. It's just time to grow up. Stop being little kids. Sometimes having more energy means letting go of self-attack, self-hate, self-criticism about the body, letting go of perfectionism. God, those things are so draining. Yeah, very, very, very draining. Sometimes having more energy, you know, it, it comes to us to a great degree when we're living in alignment more with our inner code, our soul's code. When we're following a deeper kind of guidance, it really does. Sometimes that's just what we need and it's not more mitochondrial health and it's not more caffeine and it's not more exercise. Sometimes it is those other things. For many people it is just we need more love in our life. And it might mean love coming in from the outside and it might mean love coming from us to the outside. So for most people, for many people, once love gets circulated, more love coming from me. Coming to me clearly means more energy. I think you know that, but we tend to overlook it. So I'm listening into my client's life. Where, where can we let the love flow more? Where does the love want to flow more?
It's an obvious place to look that we might never think. So my friends, that was a meaty, juicy conversation, I think, and I hope that was helpful for you. So that was the energy and fatigue part three, part four is next. Thanks. That was a long conversation. I appreciate you hanging in there. I'm excited about this topic. We have. Ooh, lots more to come here and we're gonna be getting into case stories soon. Thanks my friends and I will see you on the other side.

PART 4

Autoscroll:

Greeting once again, my friends, Mark David here, founder of the Institute. We are continuing our conversation about the wonderful topic of energy and fatigue. So as always, let's spend a few minutes just getting warmed up, review a few concepts, and then I want to jump into a few case stories that will begin to illustrate putting the distinctions we've been learning about energy and fatigue to good use, and to see how we might be working with clients in an interesting and unique way. So the practical work of elevating energy, let's remind each other that low energy issues, fatigue issues, can be some of the most challenging health issue for the best of clinicians and the best of practitioners. So we need to understand that this is not necessarily easy work to help somebody get exactly what they want to get now because it could be pretty challenging work. It's therefore pretty useful for you and I to be able to think outside the box and to look for remedies that we don't usually pay attention to. And in this training, in this body of work, those remedies often exist in the realm of emotions and beliefs and spirituality and purpose and stress regulation. And of course, in the various realms of nutrition, mind, body, nutrition, food, diet, and a combination of any of these.
So as you know, we're not looking to fix fatigue. We're looking, we're looking to help our clients liberate more energy and to stop draining the energy they already have. And I'm assuming that that makes sense to you by now.
There's a great line that I learned from the practice of yoga many, many moons ago, and it is where attention goes, energy flows. I love that. It's got a nice ring to it where attention goes, energy flows. What that's saying is wherever you put your attention, that's where your life force ends up going to. That's what you start to spend your vitality on. That's what you start to spend your life energy on.
So if we're putting our attention to nonsense, then nonsense gets our energy. It's if we're putting our attention to uplifting ourselves, inspiring ourselves, having a better life, growing learning, that's where the energy is gonna move. So I'm always asking in the back of my mind when I'm with a client, is my client's attention going to places that naturally drain their energy? Is it going to places that naturally uplift energy?
Because if I see attention, a lot of attention going into the energy drainers as opposed to the energy gainers, then I know I've got a good place to work.
You know, another way of saying where attention goes, energy flows is that we as humans are surprisingly powerful creatures. When we focus on something, when we beam our attention on something,
there's, there's a result that starts to happen. Our being moves in that direction. So the good news is that we have power. The other side of that good news is we have to see are we using it for our benefit or not. Now, you know, our life flow, our life energy has a flow, and that flow is largely beyond air control. Just as the oceans have a flow, the tide comes in, the tide goes out, it has its own rhythm. The ocean has a rhythm. Sometimes it's nice and flat and glassy and beautiful, and sometimes it's incredibly stormy and dangerous for a human to be out there. Your energy, as you know, has a flow.
Part of our job as human beings on planet earth who are living in a body, is that we need to learn. You and I and our clients need to learn about our natural energy flow. So we have to observe, we all need to be good observers, good scientists, good students of our own energy.
And if we're not paying attention to what gives us energy, what drains us, drains our energy. If we're not paying attention to the flow of our energy, and, and you know, a lot of people do to the degree that they do, they know when they get tired. They know when they're going to have their, you know, burst of juice during the day oftentimes.
But a lot of people are on automatic pilot when it comes to their natural energy and aren't quite paying attention. So again, that's what we're helping our clients do, learning to watch their natural energy flow, learning to study it like an interested, curious scientist. So you're gonna be alert for where your clients might be draining energy. We're gonna sniff out the places where clients can liberate more energy.
Remember we talked about some of the places where we might not be liberating energy because we're not speaking the truth. We're not being our authentic self. We're keeping our natural flow of energy in. We're not letting our, perhaps emotional metabolism. Um, being its natural state. We might have a lot of love and a lot of excitement and a lot of passion that we're pushing down.
And when we allow that to come out, we are liberated in terms of more energy.
So you're always remembering you can't necessarily help anyone get more energy in a, any kind of sustainable way until they learn how to truly manage that energy once they actually have it.
So when it comes to your fatigue client having more energy, oftentimes, oftentimes it's the various little tweaks that add up to make a big difference.
Now, I wanna emphasize that because it sounds maybe nice to you or it sounds interesting, or maybe that sounds like a throwaway line. I don't know how that sounds to you. And what I'm saying is I've worked with many, many energy challenged clients over the years who've had a lot of medical intervention without much success at all, because the kinds of interventions they were getting natural and traditional, were sort of looking for the one cause,
the one metabolic cause, the one dietary cause the one what's going on inside your body. Cause the bacteria, the parasite, the nutrient deficiency, the biochemical pathway error or deficiency. So we look for that. We, the collective scientific we, and that's a fine strategy, and that's one strategy. Many people, it's the additive practices that they do in life day in, day out, that when you sum total them, they drain energy.
But when you look at any of those one little behaviors,
yeah, I'm just not gonna say what I really feel right now. And that's a habit, that's a consistent habit. If you look at any of those one little behaviors, eh, it's not a big deal. But when you SumTotal them all up together, we can end up with a fatigue person. And sometimes that's where the action is, and we often miss it because looking at all the little things isn't necessarily so sexy. Okay, let's jump into a case story.
And this is a memorable one for me. I love clients that push me to my professional edge and allow me to learn new things about being a practitioner. So this is a case study about Meadow. When I saw her, she was, uh, 60 years old female. She is working for a big corporation. And within that big corporation, she is a corporate trainer. So she goes around to all kinds of different departments and works mostly with the mid to higher level executives, just doing all kinds of training for them for small groups. She's a very driven person. She's single. She has an extremely high workload. She has an extremely high stress job, um, very accomplished person, uh, quite brilliant. She is at the same company for 25 years. That's pretty impressive. And in that time, she worked her way up to a high corporate position. So she feels a lot of pride and a big sense of accomplishment. Meadow is coming to see me a very specifically for fatigue. And that fatigue is a very deep fatigue. Secondarily, she says, I am 35 pounds overweight. So she would love to lose that weight. However, she's here to see me for fatigue. She wants her energy back. I i, if she had a choice, she'd have her energy back first. Uh, like if she had to choose between weight loss and energy, there ain't no doubt about that. Um, she doesn't exercise. She doesn't like to exercise, never has. She is, um, we'll see in a moment. High sugar and high caffeine, skips a bunch of meals. She wants more energy quite desperately. And her basic belief, she's kind of telling me as I'm interviewing her, you know, I need more supplements. I need some kind of cleansing program. So she has it in her mind that there's gonna be some nutritional
technique, some bunch of supplements that's gonna just make it all right. So she admits that she's terrible at dieting, has no interest in any kind of movement, she says in her own way, without saying, I hate my body. She essentially hates her body. Um, her body gets in her way. Uh, she doesn't like it. She's not happy with it. She doesn't really care to take care of it. And she almost resents that she has to take care of it. And at this point, she is very mad that her body is slowing her down. This is a fascinating person because what I'm learning about her in our initial conversation is that this is a lady who's had a lot of energy for a long time and has used that energy to catapult herself to a place in her professional life where she really wants to be. And she's been a workhorse, and that's not happening for her anymore. And her reaction is, she's indignant, she's angry, she can't believe this is happening. She's got more important things to do in her mind than deal with this body that's not listening to her. So kind of on her high horse about that, uh, very fascinating to me how she was speaking about her body. Like, it's this car you gotta fix. And she's annoyed at the car. Okay, a little bit more about Meadow. I mentioned she's single, she's never been married, never really come close to being married. I I poked around a lot about that. It just hasn't, doesn't seem to have been a big focus for her. Uh, she acknowledges that even though she's been at this company for 25 years, even though this, she occupies a, a, you know, a substantive position at this company, she's afraid to lose her job. Why is she afraid to lose her job? Because of her age? And because the company is doing a lot of downsizing, and when they downsize, they tend to keep the younger people who are making less money. She is also embarrassed. This is fascinating. She's not embarrassed about her weight. She's embarrassed at how tired she looks. Uh, she has like deep dark black circles under her eyes. She looks like a tired person. You know, if I showed you a room full of a hundred people, just pick a hundred people random and put her in that room. And, and I said to you, who looks really tired in here? You'd probably pick her out. Uh, it, it's shocking. You almost don't have to diagnose her. Um, and she's convinced that there's some kind of quick fix for her, and she's just gotta find the right smart person who knows the right smart quick fix. And then she's off to the races. She did mention to me, you know, I, I asked her about her family history, et cetera. Uh, her mom died young and she acknowledged that, that there's a part of her that's afraid to die young like her mom. So her mom died in her late fifties. And she also shared with me that she is not finished yet when it comes to Climbing the corporate ladder. Uh, fascinating to see a 60-year-old woman who's, you know, occupying a great job and she wants to be known in the corporate world even more. Um, so she wants to do work even outside of her company at some point. Um, she's not quite ready to do that yet, but she's got big plans for herself career-wise.
Okay, here's Meadow's Diet at 6:30 AM in the morning. She has a quote unquote mug of coffee with sugar. That mug of coffee is approximately two and a half cups of coffee. It's a big mug. Um, this might very well be the client who helped me understand the concept of a mug of coffee. Um, meaning a lot of people say, oh yeah, mug of coffee. What does a mug mean? You know, you could have a huge mug, you could have a small mug. You gotta ask the size. When I started breaking down the size with her, I was shocked, um, because of my assumption. And so she's drinking two and a half cups of coffee in the morning with sugar. She puts a lot of sugar in there. Uh, at 10:00 AM she has a muffin at work and another mug of coffee with sugar. Uh, okay, so at 2:30 PM she has another mug of coffee. So now we're up to two and a half cups in each mug. Times three, that's seven and a half, seven and a half cups of coffee by 2:30 PM And at that 2:30 PM lunch, she has half a sandwich, half of a sandwich. She says she's not hungry. So I just want you to notice that from the time she eats breakfast, so she's up at 5:30 AM she's eating breakfast. So from 5:30 AM up until seven o'clock when she has dinner, okay? So 5, 5 30 in the morning up until 7:00 PM So there's a good 14 hours or so. All she has in her system is seven and a half cups of coffee with sugar, a muffin and a half a sandwich. Oof, I'd be dead. Okay? Dinner time, that's where she eats. And she eats out about five times a week. It's a large meal. It's always centered around work and work and work and work. So she says it's a large meal, she's hungry, she helps herself to bread and butter. She'll usually have a pasta dish. She'll usually have chicken. She'll always have some kind of dessert, and she'll always have a glass or two of wine in the late evening at home before bed, she'll have some ice cream and or cookies. Not a lot, but just enough to make her feel good and fun and go to bed. So I just wanna let you know, I'm looking at this diet, thinking to myself, wow, five 30 in the morning until 7:00 PM in the evening, seven and a half cups of coffee with a bunch of sugar,
half a sandwich and a muffin.
So you already know her. I wanna work with this lady. And she's supremely fatigued, and she looks fatigued, and she has dark circles under her eyes. And she's been following a diet like this for many, many years. She doesn't even know how long. She said she's been gradually drinking a little more coffee over time. She couldn't quite really place when the coffee started increasing. And to her mind, she's not drinking a lot of coffee. It just doesn't occur that way. So I actually pointed out to her what I said to you. So from five 30 in the morning till 7:00 PM here's what's in your body. I thought I was saying something. Oh, so dramatic. And she's looking at me as if she's saying, sure, yeah. So what? So there's a woman who I'm realizing that despite how brilliant she is in her corporate career, she's not really tuned into her body and doesn't really, never really stopped to consider or learn about nutrition. Hasn't been an issue for her. And she's one of those people that probably has had a strong metabolism and just a lot of natural energy for most of her life. And here it is, and it's catching up to her. That's how I look at this person. It's catching up to you. Now. Okay, so here's what's going on for me in session one, it's clear that meadow needs some dietary changes. So here I am, I'm dealing with a corporate trainer. I'm dealing with a successful woman. I'm dealing with a no-nonsense lady who is just wanting me to fix her. So with this kind of client, I'm not gonna beat around the bush. I am going to take the liberty to be very direct because she understands that language, and I know she will appreciate it. So in that first session, I discussed concepts of food quality. I discussed concepts of macronutrient balance. I talked about eating rhythm, I talked about caffeine use. I basically broke down her diet for her. I said, listen, if we're gonna work together, here's what it's gonna look like. I can really help you. I can really help you help yourself. I can really help make a difference for you. That's how confident I am. Here's what we're gonna be, be looking at. We're gonna have to examine your caffeine use, because right now you're using caffeine to give yourself a false metabolism. Meaning caffeine doesn't give you actual true metabolic energy, true metabolic energy. A true metabolism, remember, is eat food, digest it, pulverize it, assimilate all the nutrients, take the caloric value from that food, burn it as energy, use that energy, eventually get a little low energy, eat more food again, and continue that process. Caffeine is just milking the system and creating temporary chemical energy. It will create micronutrition imbalance. It will influence our weakest organs. This lady's drinking a lot of caffeine. So I said, we're gonna have to gradually cut down on your caffeine. We're gonna have to work on your eating rhythm from the time you get up in the morning up until seven o'clock at night, you have no food in your system,
and you're just pumping yourself with caffeine and sugar and carbohydrates in a muffin.
And maybe you're getting a little chicken or tuna in your sandwich. So you have to eat an actual breakfast, you're gonna have to eat an actual lunch, and you're gonna have to eat that lunch earlier. Um, because you're moving past your metabolic hour, your peak metabolism, your peak calorie burning hours, which is approximately 12 ish to one 30 ish.
So I said, that's gonna help you with your weight, that's gonna help you with your energy. And we're gonna have to look at food quality. You're gonna really have to up your game. You know, you're all about quality. You're all about people doing their job in a quality way. You dress in a quality way. All your equipment is high quality, your pen is very expensive, your watch is very expensive. Um, treat food the same way. That's what's giving you your fuel. So as I'm talking about all this, I'm watching my, my client in a sense of dismay. So she's extremely resistant. She basically told me, I don't wanna do all this work. She said, I just want you to give me something. I just want you to tell me what to take. And I, I'm explaining to her, there's no magic pill. And she argues with me. I don't know where it was coming from. And, and, and I don't even know that her argument had any sensibility to it whatsoever, but she was, uh, she was annoyed with me that I'm gonna make her do work. She kind of started bullying me a little bit. You know, when I say bullying me, um, I mean, she's trying to tell me how to do my job, job. So because she's doing that, it's my job now to get bigger than her. Why not from an ego standpoint, I don't care. To me, she looks silly. I don't feel, I I don't take it personally. I don't feel like, oh my God, you're bullying me, you bully. No, it looks silly to me. Like, don't tell me how to do my job. You're, you're the person who's in trouble here, like a lot of trouble. And you're telling me how to fix. You're telling me how I should fix you. Well, you should just fix you then. So it's our obligation to get bigger than our client so we can help move them beyond their resistance and their roadblocks. Because resistance, when our clients are resisting, the surface changes. Hey, let's change the diet. Let's change this caffeine, let's change your eating rhythm. When they're resisting those, oftentimes simply what that means, my friends, is it's pointing to deeper change that's wanting to be recognized and deeper change that needs to be made. So my clients arguing nonsense points with me. But when I translate that into my wisdom mind, I understand, okay, there's something else happening here. You're afraid of something. You are trying to bully me here. I get it. I have to get bigger than you, meaning just not let you bully me and look at it as silly, which I am, and help set her straight.
So I essentially told her, listen, if you want me to help you, you have to let me help you. You can't tell me how to do it. I said, I understand you're a powerful lady and you're used to telling everybody what to do. That's kind of your job at your company. You're a consultant within your own company. You're a trainer within your own company, and every day you tell people what to do. So I get it, but now you're coming to see me to help you. So I'm going to take on your role and tell you what to do. And I'm not gonna tell you to do things just because I wanna make you miserable. I wanna help you get where you wanna go. So I laid it on the line and she said, okay, because she can't argue with me. But it was sort of a resistant, okay? Okay, so here's your homework. I want you to become a slow eater. She's a fast eater. I want you to become a slow eater. I want you to relax. I want you to take more time with meals. I want you to eat a lunch between 12 and 1:00 PM So I want you to eat an earlier lunch. I just need to shift her macro. She needs food in her system. I'd like for you to cut your coffee intake just by half. You're drinking seven and a half cups. Just cut it in half. And she's like, oh my God, I don't know if I can do that. I said, okay. Well, she said, can I have decaf for that other half that I'm cutting out? I said, sure. By the way, decaf has a little bit of caffeine, but in this case, I don't mind. I told her I wanted her to have a healthy late afternoon snack that is protein and fat based. We talked about having a yogurt at work, having some cottage cheese at work, having some trail mix. Why? Because I want to help her decrease the amount of her evening meal. You know, I wanna also a little bit work on weight loss at the same time. And, uh, because she's, she's ravenous at dinner time. So she acknowledges that when it comes to dinner, she wants to eat. Um, she says she has a huge appetite. So I'm explaining to her, have a nice, big late afternoon snack, will likely decrease your dinner time appetite. So let's just see how that works. I also told her, you know, whenever I get a client that's trying to bully me, um, and especially in this age group, I said, listen, I'm gonna be very honest with you. You are, you are really pulling your chemistry in the wrong direction. And you've been doing that for a long time with how you eat and how you nourish yourself. And if you keep on this track, you know this, you're fatigued. You know this, you look in the mirror, you don't like how you look, you look tired. It is because your body is in suffering. And I said, the good news is, you're still a healthy lady and you have time to turn your metabolism around. Said you still have time, but now is the time to take some action. So I'm trying to inspire her. Okay, here comes session two, and I'm really looking forward to this session because I, I wanna be successful. I wanna show this lady, I know what I'm doing, and she's all smart and makes all this money and is all powerful in her company. And, you know, at that time, it was pretty important for me to quote unquote, impress important people. Well, she comes into session two and says to me, I couldn't do any of it. And she said it almost in an arrogant way, said, I need an easier solution. I can't do this. She said, I cannot possibly eat slower. These, these are all quotes. She said, there's no way I could give up coffee and all this she agreed to try to do. And I, I couldn't do any of it. It was the first thing she said to me. Um, so she didn't do anything, literally did nothing, uh, not even close. So I'm like, okay, I did my best to let her know, you know, this is your resistance coming up. Here's how I see it. It's just your resistance. I get it. If I was you, I wouldn't wanna make these changes. You have your patterns. You have your flow. You have your way of doing things. You have your style of living and your style of working and your low energy, and you've gained weight and you don't like how you look. And you want a quick fix. I don't blame you, but you know, you're a professional lady. How many times are you working in some aspect of your company where there's no quick fix to a problem? Oftentimes it's a slow fix. So you are asking me to create a quick fix where none exists.
Once again, I said to her, the proof is in the pudding. I referenced her, I, I, I really to her vanity, I said, listen, I would love to see these dark circles under your eyes gone. I said, but those dark circles are not gonna go away. They're gonna, they're gonna hang out there and remind you that you need to nourish yourself in a whole different way. That's what they're, that's what they're saying. They're saying, this person needs to nourish herself in a whole different way. They're not, those dark circles are not there to torture you. You're, you're already doing that job. You're torturing yourself with a very un nourishing way of being in your body. So I really want you to turn this around. Interestingly enough, this was the first time I felt that she softened, um, because I actually just focused on the dark circles under her eyes. Um, whereas previously, you know, I just kind of, it's, it's, why would I focus on that, you know, other than to notice it. Um, so I'm, I'm trying to pull out all my little tricks at this point. So I said to her, okay, here's the homework. We're gonna just try again. We are gonna try again. And this time I just want you to cut down on any amount of coffee that you can cut down by one cup.
See if you can do that. I want you to just do your best to slow down while eating. And then this time, let's do one thing different. I want you to change your breakfast. And really what I'm saying is, I want you to eat a breakfast. So we went through a list of all the possible things she could eat. She doesn't wanna cook for herself, she doesn't wanna make anything. I'm like, great. Have a yogurt, have some cottage cheese and fruit. She's willing to do that. She's really keeps asking me for supplements. So, okay. Can't hurt to give her a vitamin C supplement. It can't hurt to give her a vitamin B supplement. A person who's under that much stress and drinking that much caffeine. Um, she's, it, it's, it's, it's a pretty high probability bet that she is low in B vitamins, low in vitamin CIE, the water soluble vitamins that she's p*****g away and burning up by having to metabolize so much caffeine. I also suggested just a few herbal tinctures to Chinese medicine to help her replenish her body. And I, I didn't, I didn't even wanna give her supplements, but this appeased the part of her brain that wanted this stuff. And it can't hurt. It can't hurt. I just didn't want to go there because I didn't want that to be the focus of the work. 'cause the focus of the work clearly needs to be in other places. She said to me in this session that she needed me to force her. She literally, I need you to force me to be accountable.
I love that term. Force her to be accountable. So we agreed that she would leave me a voice message every evening, telling me how she did that day with her assignments. So that was the best I could come up with that I was willing to do. How do you force someone to be accountable? Okay, leave me, leave me a voice message on my telephone and tell me how you did that day.
Okay, my friends, here comes session three. So what happened? She bought all the supplements, but only took them a few times. She couldn't let go of any coffee. She didn't like eating a heavier breakfast. She called it heavier as opposed to just, you know, coffee and sugar. Uh, she really didn't like taking any kind of liquid herb, even though she said it was fine. Um, and I'm just looking at this person thinking, I'm, I'm dealing with a per, like a petrol and child that's wanting energy now. Um, I was actually surprised at her inability to implement any of my strategies. Um, again, this is a woman who's fantastically accomplished and motivated in her work life. And in essence, I am, I'm dealing with somebody who has been disembodied for a long time and has figured out a way to make it work pretty much up until the last few years.
So I like a good challenge. This is me. So, you know, part of me going over a case study like this is the truth is, you know, so many times when you're listening to case studies, it's always these great case studies that everybody lives happily ever after, and they get what they wanna get. And the reality is, you know, people, people are people. And there's oftentimes so many bumps and roadblocks, speed bumps, so many things happen that are not in a straight line when we're dealing with a client. Um, they don't show up for sessions. They stop the work, they start the work again, they're resistant. They don't do anything that we say, but they still wanna see us. And, but they want us to do it the way they, it's just all this stuff comes up. So I am sharing with you a particularly difficult client, but I'm also sharing with you how I approach it. So I'm approaching this as a challenge.
How do I, how do I help this person? Because life, the wisdom of the universe, God, a higher power, the hidden architecture of all there is sent me this person. I wanna do a good job. That's my shtick, that's my thing. I wanna do the best job that I can, and I also want to better myself. If that means, okay, here's a difficult client. What do I need to learn to do better here? So in this session, number three, okay, let's dive a little deeper. Here is what I think to myself. I said, listen, I get meadow that you're all about your work life and you're all about your career. And I'm pretty blown away at what you do and have a ton of respect for you. What do you want most in life? Like, really, what do you want most in life other than work? So I'm doing my best to have a deeper conversation with her. So I ask her what you want most in life other than work? So of course, she starts talking about work. She wants job security the most. She wants to know that she's at this job as long as she needs to be in this job, even though at some point she wants to leave the job, she wants to make millions of dollars as a consultant, not within her company, because that's, that's not possible. Um, but there are corporate consultants out there who make a lot of money. She wants to be one of them, and she wants to be recognized for her unique work that she does. And she does some unique work.
So, okay, so everything you want is work related. Understood. Um, my best response to her, I said, look, I, I, I get it. That's, that's a wonderful goal. And it looks like what you want is killing you, or at least the way you're going about it.
And she didn't like that. Meadow doesn't wanna hear about anything that takes her away from her career goal. She's, she's like a dog with a bone. She's not letting go. Um, so
I questioned the relationship. I said, listen, I, I don't, I don't know if this is a good match. And she said, you know, I've really been drawn to working with you. Um, and, and you know, she's an intuitive person and she still thinks she should be working with me, but she doesn't like the work that I do, and she can't comply with any of it. So I said, Hey, let's just, let's just, let's just bar as friends here. Like, I get it. You know, sometimes we're just not a match. And so in that session, we decided to end our work together. And I truly at that point in the conversation, because she was, she just wouldn't play with me. Hey Meadow, what else do you want in your life other than work? And she couldn't go there. So I have nowhere else to work with her. She can't, she can't do any of my suggestions. She doesn't want to, she wants something else. I gave her something. I was, I gave her supplements. She couldn't even take those. So part of me was feeling a little bit frustrated, but also part of me wanted to take the high road. And I don't wanna waste her time and money, nor I don't wanna waste my time. So there's the end, but it's not the end.
Here's the parting words I shared with her. I said, listen, here's what I wanna say to you. 'cause this is our last session. And quite honestly, and I pulled this, I said, if this was my last session in life on planet Earth, and I said, I think you know me by now, what you wanna, I are a little bit similar. I'm very competitive. And by competitive means I wanna do a great job. I wanna be the best that I can be at what I do. So if I wanna be the best at what I do, and I want to go out in my last session in life with a bang and have the best session, here's what I would tell you. Here are my parting words for you. Uh, I think you need to do a serious life review. I think you need to do a serious life review and really look at career and money and work style. But you have to measure that against your health. You have to measure that against do, don't you have any deeper goals? Don't you want love in your life? Don't you want intimacy? Don't you have other life goals that are not just about work and money and recognition? I said, you really, really, really need to have a have a talk with yourself. I also said to her, and I think you need to slow down. Uh, you've been going high speed for a long time and it's not working for you. That's honestly my assessment of you as a human being. Your pace doesn't work. There's something, there's someplace I feel you need to let go. And part of that is you're trying very hard to be somebody. And I get it. You have goals, but it feels like your ego's driving you so hard that you don't really get how much you are harming yourself. So instead of fighting your fatigue, you have to embrace it. You have to listen to your body wisdom and start to follow it for goodness sake, instead of resisting it. That's what I would say to you.
So that was a very liberating conversation for me, even though it wasn't so much a conversation as me just talking to her and her listening. And oddly, this was the first time I felt she really dropped in with me. And I was actually surprised at how much it seemed. It seemed to me that my words were landing for her. All of a sudden, I started wishing she had been more receptive at the beginning. And at the same time, I still felt really good that I'm giving her my best heartfelt wisdom and assessment and advice that I can offer, even though she's no longer gonna be my client. Um, I don't care. I'm, I'm, I'm not gonna pull back at the last minute. I'm gonna still offer.
And I'm saying to you, I think that's a good approach to always think of over-delivering in that way. Just, just the more you give, the more you get really. I think it's, it's important to always give our best no matter, even though I'm letting go of this client, and even though I'm letting go of a nice income source, and it was a great reminder for me, indeed for us, consider treating every session with a client as if it were the last session you're gonna ever give in your life.
'cause if it was, and you really took that on, you might be very liberated and empowered around how you speak.
We get through to people when we're coming from a deeper place, a more heartfelt place, a more soulful place. Okay, so here's what happens.
It's an interesting turn of events. Five months later, meadow ends up in the emergency room. Turns out she thought she was having a heart attack. Turns out she was having a panic attack. And by the way, I've since learned that probably the number one reason why people show up in emergency rooms is they think they're having a heart attack. And much of the time they're having a panic attack. So she literally had a panic attack. Um, one month after that, she was diagnosed by her internist with low thyroid, and she had a 15 pound weight gain on top of that 35 pounds that she had already wanted to lose.
Let's keep going here. During this time, she lost her job. So they downsized and they let her go. So basically she was retired. You know, the good news is she got a little bit of a, a, you know, what they say in the corporate world, sometimes a golden parachute. So she got a little payout. Um, but that was not her wish. You know, her wish was not to lose her job at all. Um, so she reached out to me and wanted to resume our work and acknowledged that she was very depressed. Uh, I could hear how vulnerable she was. I could hear how open she was, and I was just, I I, my heart melted. I was just very touched that she reached out. It sounded like a different person over the phone. Um, you know, our flow, again, our flow with clients often takes some interesting starts and stops and twists and turns. And, you know, in a lot of ways, I feel that that last session was almost like our first session. You know, she didn't forget that. And it turns out, you know, what I had shared with her was true. And it's not because I'm some genius, it's just because it's obvious. And I'm stating the obvious to her. I had stated the obvious to her with a lot of love, but a lot of clarity. And without holding back, I, so now she's ready to do the work because life has humbled her, really. And she needs help. So I'm going to, for the most part,
fast track this a little bit
in the next five months. So from the time she called me in the next five months, we did a lot of good work. Uh, meadow was moving through all kinds of waves of emotion. Uh, I, I went from being with a person who was very left brain corporate lady, and all of a sudden she has dropped into her feminine. And in any given session that I see her, she's crying, she's depressed, she's apathetic, she's confused. She doesn't know what she wants. She's remorseful. She's regretful. She's in a dark night of the soul. Dark night of the soul is a term that's often used to describe periods that we go through in life that it ain't fun. We're going down, we're getting in the elevator. And no matter which floor you wanna ascend to, the elevator goes down into the darkest parts of the basement.
And we oftentimes have to face a lot of our nightmares, face a lot of our fears. Uh, life ain't fun. And we have to even choose if we wanna be here and be alive. So she's in a dark night of the soul. When somebody's in a dark night of the soul, you need to move through that night. You need to endure it. You need to get support in it. You need to create the conditions as best you can in your life. So you can be with yourself, contact yourself, nourish yourself. Uh, have people who can hear you speak to you, maybe mentor, guide or coach you, uh, be by your side. Um, be a good friend, um, and move through the challenges. So in that five months, we slowly changed her diet. I got that. I had to move real slow with her in that time. She let go of all caffeine, let go of all alcohol, did a lot of soul searching In that time, she also got clear that she had been deeply wanting a relationship. She just didn't wanna admit that or say that. What was really fascinating to me, um, I was so happy when she said that because she was just owning something that she was hiding. Um, you know, I just casually said, well, any possibilities, knowing that the answer's gonna be no. And sure enough, the answer is yes. She said, there's a man that she'd been working very closely with at her company, still there. He had previously asked her out many times, and she refused each time, even though she said to me, she secretly, she didn't say she secretly likes him. She says, I really care for him.
I don't understand people sometimes. Really. She didn't even say I like him. She said, you know, you know, I really care for this guy, but I I don't wanna say that. Well, well good for you. Good. And I encouraged her to get honest with him. Um, she was really afraid. She was really, really afraid. Um, and I keep seeing, and, and I keep having to learn with myself, that whenever I look at Meadow, I'm looking at this amazingly powerful, successful woman. But she's an amazingly powerful, successful woman in, in a certain domain of her life when it comes to food and body. She's childlike. Um, uh, teenage like when it comes to relationships, she's like 13 or 14 or 15. So I have to understand that she's in a different archetype when we're talking about relationship because she wants a relationship. And here's a man who she cares for. 'cause she's been working side by side with him, but she doesn't want him to know. Okay? So I encourage her to get honest with him, and she agrees, okay? In the next three months, we focused quite a bit on her connecting with this man, and they quickly became pretty close. They started dating. Um, and she said to me, yeah, we just started dating really quick, even though I'm jobless and depressed. And it was a very sweet learning for her. Um, because in her mind, she thought she had to be this all powerful corporate millionaire consultant to be worthy of having a relationship. So she doesn't have a job and she's depressed, and she's now in her mind, 50 pounds overweight. She's chronically fatigued, and this man's nuts about her. Um, during this time, I'm just noticing how unbelievably open Meadow is, is like a different person. It really is a different person. You know, she got scared for her life. You go to the emergency room and think that you're dying, you know, thank goodness she learns. It's only a panic attack. But then after that, remember one month later,
she's diagnosed with low thyroid.
Oftentimes what happens is people reach a point, the body is stressed, it's stressed, it's stressed, it's stressed, and all of a sudden she's probably in a freeze response body, just can't handle that stress anymore. And it's shifting to a freeze response. She's frozen.
She needs time to thaw a little bit. So she's a very open person. We're working on all kinds of simple strategies around self nourishment and self care. Um, we really talked a bunch about her letting go of her career for a while while she heals. And the good news is because she got a payout to get laid off, essentially, so she could easily afford to take a couple years off easily. Um, it's, it's how wonderful I, I mean, look at how life is conspiring to help her, to help her take advantage of her fatigue. This is a person who now has forced vacation, forced downtime. Life was demanding of meadow, that she slowed down. It forced her to twist her arm. It brought her down to the mat. It's forcing her to slow down to self-reflect, to take rest, to go within and grow as a person. For goodness sakes, her fatigue had gotten worse and worse and worse until it finally overpowered her resistance.
The stress that she was under finally got to her weakest link and her body said, okay, we're crashing. We gotta stop this nonsense. I mean, really, friends, it's as simple as that in my mind. So let's start to close out Meadow, some thoughts. So her fatigue was a divine messenger. She needed a mandatory vacation. Fatigue makes it so she needed a dark night of the soul. This is why my friends, you're not here to, you weren't put on earth to take people out of their pain and suffering. Yeah, sometimes people are in pain and suffering, and it just so happens they need to come out of it. It's time, time to be out of this pain and suffering. You are creating optional pain and suffering. Our toxic nutritional beliefs do that. Certain beliefs we have about life, about the world, about ourselves, do that. I'm no good. I'm not enough as I am. I'm too this. I'm too that. Nobody's gonna love me. So yeah, that creates suffering. That's unnecessary. But sometimes we need a dark night of the soul. So our job is not to take that away from a person. Our job is to accompany them on that journey and to be there by their side as they're going through the challenges that they go through. That's what you would do with your loved ones. That's what we sometimes are called to do with our clients. I think she really needed to find her heart in a lot of ways.
She just needed to be in more contact with her heart, you know, and, and sometimes we need to just go down. You know, we need to go down in the elevator, we need to go down in our health. We need to go down and observe. You know, she, she went down, she fell and life caught her. And life was taking good care of her. So she was getting good support.
So for me, I was really glad that I had truly never given up on her. Um, yes, I had ended the relationship, but even in the end, I wasn't giving up on her. I was saying, Hey, human to human, here's what I think you need in this relationship. I learned, really learned to always give my client my best, even when we are departing. So in that eight month period when Meadow returned to me, she lost about 25 pounds. Um, was it the total of 50 that she wanted to lose? No. But hey, that's what her body wanted to do. And she hung out there. So that was a very lovely piece of work that truly for her wasn't a focus. Um, and she was obviously very pleased with that. You know, this was a client who taught me a lot. Her journey was a clear example to me of how the wisdom of the universe works in its own way and in its own time. We've gotta trust. I am always, always, always, always trusting that life sends me a client for a reason. And we don't know our impact on another human. This is so important. We don't know our impact on another human. I've had people who have said things to me years ago when I was very young, and at the time it didn't mean anything, but I kind of remembered what they said. And then 20 years later, oh, now I know what she meant. I get it now. So sometimes wisdom is time released in us. That's why I'm always saying that, yes, it's important to speak the truth to people. It's important to speak the truth to your clients, but speak the truth with love and consciousness. Because when you speak the truth with love and consciousness, on some level, it is registered and heard, it's noted, it's bookmarked, and you don't know how. The things you say to a client, they're seeds sometime. And those seeds might not sprout for months or years or even decades. I kid you not so
meadow didn't need more energy.
Do you get that? My friends Meadow didn't need more energy. Clearly she needed to learn how to manage the energy that life was giving her. And she was squandering it. She was p*****g it away. She was polluting it. She had been disembodied and pushing her body in a relentless and unconscious way. Let's just call it like it is. People do that. People can get away with it until they can't. Meadow had exhausted herself, energy exhausted herself in service to a goal that was not in alignment with her soul's purpose and with the wisdom of life. How do we know that? Because life showed her otherwise. Because life will, the wisdom of life will speak to us through symptoms will speak to us through dis-Ease will speak to us through the challenges of the body, will speak to us through our unwanted eating behaviors will speak to us perhaps through true excess weight.
Her goals were not in alignment with her, her true soul's compass.
So interestingly enough, by the time our work was finished, um, she did not have more energy to push herself back into her career. However, her energy was far softer. Now it was quieter, it was more refined. She was more dignified. She, even though she always carries herself like a queen, when metal walks into a room, you go, there's the queen. I, i just a very, very, uh, I forgot to say this is a very regal, regal woman. Uh, just, just carries herself so well. Um, for someone who's disembodied, just, just has a presence. Um, but now she felt like a real queen and she was no longer when we finished our work, she wasn't in exhaustion. She was learning from scratch how to manage her energy. She was being wise with her energy. Indeed, she was learning to find her natural energy, her natural flow, and to listen to her body and to respect her body more on its own terms. So when I finished working with her, she was just having a great relationship with this particular man who was crazy about her. Um, and
life stepped up for her.
Life will often step up for us. It will step up for our clients, um, when we are willing to do the work. And sometimes when we're not willing to do the work, life will grab us and put us in the sandbox called work.
So meadow had to wisen up quickly. And the wisdom of life helped her do that. The wisdom of the body helped her do that. So her fatigue was an unbelievably wonderful gift because it created a soul course correction, it created a life course correction.
So I didn't help this client have more energy, take more caffeine, here's a better energy drink. No. And I'm dealing with a completely different human being now. I was, I was very proud of her. I'm very, very proud of our work together.
Okay, I hope that story was useful for you. Let's tell another one.
This is a story about Anne. You know, I use the word case story or story. It's a case study that's traditionally how it ought to be languaged in the medical community, in the therapeutic psychological community. Um, it's stories, my friends we're story. You and I and everybody we're just one big juicy, wonderful, amazing, incredible epic unique story. And when I say story, I mean that in the most positive sense. Okay, let's talk about the story of Anne. When I saw Anne, she was 31 years old. Anne is a graphic designer, very soft spoken, slender. She was recently married. Um, she wants to have kids in a couple years or so. She, um, moved from the east coast to northern California and is in love with her lifestyle. Um, because she does graphic design. She works mostly from home. She has a garden. She loves gardening, she has a lot of friends. She is just a happy person. And she says it, uh, and she's not kidding. And again, she's, she's like gentle, soft-spoken person. So Anna is seeing me because she's been fatigued for approximately five years. Interesting. But it's been really worse in the last four months. So she's noticed it for five years now, but in the last four months, ouch. Um, she has medical insurance. She has gone to various doctors. Nothing's wrong.
Her secondary symptoms include moodiness in the afternoon, she notices she's being forgetful. Her memory's not as good. She has difficulty falling asleep. She doesn't have a sex drive, she doesn't like the medical profession. Um, but her parents keep insisting that she follow the traditional medical route. But because her doctors found no place to work, her parents are now helping her out financially to try anything alternative medicine wise, because they're good parents and they wanna help their daughter. So good for them. So that's sort of the context of why she's seen me. Um, she's now branching out because she's more the alternative kind of gal.
So, and her insurance doesn't pay for alternative practitioners. So that's why she's seen me. Her parents are footing the bill. More information about Anne. She has tried other natural medicine strategies. She's gone to a naturopath. She sees a chiropractor, she's seen, you know, some other type of health practitioner. Nothing has worked. Uh, she's starting to worry a little bit because she knows she wants to be a mom. And she is all about being a healthy mother. She wants, she wants, she's, she's about health and she wants to be a healthy mom. She wants to have a healthy pregnancy. She wants to have a healthy baby, and she's not healthy. So she's, she's putting one-on-one together. Um, she is definitely concerned that fatigue is affecting her sex life. In particular. Her husband is very unhappy about this. Um, uh, previously when they were dating, uh, and engaged, this was not so much an issue. So all of a sudden her sex life is gone. She literally has no interest. It's, she's not holding back. She just, it ain't there. Um, she's also noticing in the last handful of months that the fatigue is starting to affect her work. So that's not good. So what's even more challenging for her is she can't compute at all because in her mind, her life is good, her diet is good, and she's all about health. And she takes care of herself and she lives in a healthy environment and she makes a lot of choices based on health and lifestyle. Okay, so this is a concerned person. I get it. Let's dive in and figure out where we can work. Let's talk about food for a minute, Ann. Okay. First thing, you eat breakfast. 7:45 AM in the morning. She has a fresh, organic fruit salad. Great. Next, she has a snack at 10:00 AM she has some kind of fruit. Great. 1:00 PM is lunch. She has a nice salad. Inside that salad will be sprouted beans or hummus. She'll put some olive oil and she has one slice of grain bread.
I dunno when people say that. One slice of grain bread. Interesting term. Okay. At 4:00 PM she has a snack. It's some kind of small healthy pastry, you know, some like health food store pastry sort of thing that's small and organic ingredients. Or she does a piece of dark chocolate and she, and she has some coffee and girl eats everything organic. Um, dinnertime. She has a salad, a nice salad. She uses the term nice salad, I'm remembering, as opposed to, I don't know, mean salad. Uh, she has fish once per week. When she doesn't have fish with the salad, she'll have a piece of toast with nut butter and she'll have some kind of cooked veggies at dinner. She drinks lots of water throughout the day. She doesn't eat dessert in the evening.
Okay, interesting. So as I'm looking at this diet, I am noticing that, hmm, this might be a human who is a little bit low in protein and fat. It might be, this might be a human who might even be a little low in food, um, period in terms of food amount.
I'm just interested in this diet. It feels minimal to me. Healthy. She is very proud of what she eats, by the way.
So as I'm putting this together, I'm thinking to myself, you know, I think your diet is definitely causing you fatigue.
I'm thinking we got a place to work here. Because the more I think about it, the more I say to myself, she's low protein and she's low fat and she's low calorie. She might even have an excess in natural sugar. IE fruit. Why do I say that? Hey, people can eat fruit and they're fine. And other people actually don't do well with fruit. You can't just make a blanket statement and say, fruits and veggies are great for everyone. Well, there are some people, it's not always so great for, I don't know, but I know between the time she wakes up in the morning at seven o'clock-ish to one o'clock, so that's what, six hours, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 1. So for the first six hours of her waking day, all she has is fruit. Now, if that works, I'm sure there's some people who could do that. I'm sure there's many people could do that. I'm sure there's people gotta go through the first six hours of their day and eat nothing. I don't care. I don't care what a person's eating. I care what their complaint is. And once you tell me your complaint, and once you're paying me to help you, then I'm gonna look at your diet and start to say maybe. So I hope you can hear this, my friends. I'm not saying you shouldn't eat fresh fruit at breakfast and as a mid-morning snack, there are people who do that and their life is great. Hallelujah. I want them to continue that until the day they die, if that's working for them. But if you are paying me and you have a complaint, then I'm gonna measure your complaint against your diet. So as I'm looking at her diet, I'm thinking, huh, if I was eating fruit in the morning, yeah, I might be a little brain foggy and forgetfulness and if I had a salad that had no protein and just a little bit of olive oil and a piece of grain bread, I'd be hungry, I'd be spacey. And then as a snack, she basically has pastry or chocolate cheese. She's getting a little bit of a sugar hit natural sugar, I get it.
So I'm now thinking, ah, this is kind of an easy client because there's clear dietary places to work. So this is what's going on in my mind. Easy client, clear dietary places to work. Let's go. So here's Anne's homework. I want you to change your breakfast. Anne, this is an experiment. Why are we experimenting? Because you're coming to see me because you have low energy. So I want you to have a more robust breakfast. Let's talk. What do you like to eat for breakfast? If everything had the same amount of calories and everything had was low calorie, tell me all the foods you like to eat for breakfast. So from that list, I learned she likes yogurt. She likes eggs and she, she won't, she enjoys making a smoothie. Great. So I wanted you to have either a full fat yogurt or have a couple of eggs or make a smoothie that has some, any kind of healthy protein powder and any kind of nut butter that you wanna put in it.
I told her I would like her mid-morning snack to not just be pure fruit, said You want to eat fruit fine. Have a little nut butter. She's into nut butter. She's into almond butter, sunflower butter. Sometimes she'll have peanut butter, cashew butter. She likes all the nut butter. So like, great, have some kind of nut butter, a spoonful, a table spoonful something. Want to get a little more fat and protein just to ease her in there. I also told her I want your salad at lunch to be a little bit more robust. So what kind of proteins do you like? So we talk, she likes fish, she likes eggs. Can you have fish and eggs or eggs every day with a salad? No. Okay, so we negotiate. What could you do? So we negotiate down to four times per week. I also asked her to change her mid-afternoon snack. Why? Because her mid-afternoon snack is basically pure carbohydrate for the most part. And I would love for her to do a full fat yogurt or some nuts and seeds along with fruit or all of those, I don't care. Mix and match. I'm thinking to myself, I want her to see a result quickly. So that's why I am loading her up on dietary changes. And she's all about diet. Um, and I'm clearly, I'm, I'm clearly believing as I'm watching her and how do I say this? As I'm reading her body, I'm just feeling she's a bit malnourished.
I'm feeling the diet that she has been following. It's healthy to her. I get it. I know why she thinks her diet is healthy, because everything in it, if you take it in isolated pieces is healthy. But when you put it all together, I don't think it's working for her. So I'm really confident. I'm feeling pretty good about myself.
So session two comes around, Hey Ann, how did it go? Gimme the report. And she was very sweet and she acknowledged that she was able to comply with, with all my changes about half the time. She said that when she did follow my suggestions, she felt much better for the first time in years. That's her words, felt much better for the first time in years. Not the first time in days, months, or weeks, but years.
And she said, I'm thinking, so why didn't you follow my recommendations most of the time as opposed to less than half the time? It was making you feel great. Like, that doesn't make sense. I'm not, I don't say that. I'm thinking that.
Um, then finally at some point I mention it and why wouldn't you eat all these other foods? And she explains to me that, well, I I really want to eat a mostly raw diet. So this is interesting. It's new information for me. Now, how did I miss that?
I'm wondering to myself, why would not she have told me that? I'm wondering to myself. She never mentioned raw when we talked about her diet, when, you know, when she's, she's into health, but now I'm learning that she wants to eat mostly raw. Okay, I didn't see that coming and it just, something about it was a little bit of a surprise for me. Um, so what's happening is she's feeling guilty as she's eating the foods that I'm recommending, because it's not all raw. Eggs are not raw. The yogurt isn't raw. The protein shake isn't raw, you know, the fish or exit lunch, it's not raw. The yogurt or the nuts and the well nuts and seasoned fruits, okay? That can be raw. But once again, the yogurt at mid, uh, mid-afternoon, it's not. So she wants to eat raw. So she's feeling guilty because it's against her dietary goals and beliefs. And she said, you know, I wanna do the right thing here. And it was very difficult for me. So clearly I'm, I'm watching her and she's really conflicted. So all of a sudden my client looks completely different to me because she knows I don't, this is a girl who's in touch with her body. 'cause she's all about health and she's all about, you know, working in her garden outside moving to northern California from a city. So she's, she's embodied in many ways. Um, so she knows that the dietary changes she made made her feel better for the first time in years. But she still wants to eat the way she's eating because it's more raw. But that way of eating doesn't make her feel good at all. So there's her conflict. She's trying to follow a religion, I mean a diet that doesn't work for her. So she's being religious about her diet, religious in a way that, that religion is not working.
So I did an intellectual intervention with her around in general our beliefs about any kind of diet and the kind of wisdom and the feedback that the body actually gives us about how we eat. You know, I did my best to let her know that her dietary experiment with raw foods was great, but that her fatigue was telling her something interesting that she needed to listen to.
So my intellectual intervention will sound something like this. Hey Ann, listen, I really respect how much you are on it about your diet and about health and about taking care of yourself. And I know you're gonna be a great mom someday. You know, you're gonna have two really, really lucky kids. Um, 'cause you understand the body, you understand health, you understand nature. I'm really happy for you and I also admire that you are experimenting with eating a raw diet. You know, I, I've done the same in my past. I was actually on a raw food diet for two years at one point when I was much younger. Personally, it was great until it wasn't for me. And this is what often happens. I said to her, we can get really religious about our beliefs about diet because it sounds good. We want to believe something. This is the best diet for me. This is the best diet for people. But your body's telling you something different and you know you have to listen to the body. So she's listening to my, to me speak to her. I'm giving her an intellectual intervention. I am telling her like it is. I am stepping into being a mentor, a guide, a good parent, and I'm laying it on the line. And then all of a sudden, duh, it hit me. I asked her, I said, you know, is your way of eating? Does it have anything to do with you in terms of your weight?
And I didn't need an answer from her. I watched my question, hit home.
I'm good enough to read people that I could see. Bingo. Boy did I hit the target. Um, so she let me know. She did the best to let me know that she had the weight she wanted. She's very happy with her body. Um, but I'm thinking to myself, yes, and I'm believing that her goal is to be as thin as possible possible for her. She wants to be thin and I'm starting to believe that she's using this diet to maintain her thinness. I am now believing intuiting, this is my strong hunch that I am willing to bet money on that her raw food diet is sort of a great cover for I wanna be thin. Now, does she believe in a raw food diet? Sure, but she wouldn't believe in it if it wasn't about thin 'cause. The reality is you can have a subset of people and you put them on a raw food diet and they can lose a bucket load of weight.
And what I wanna say to you all is there is a subset of people, particularly a subset of women that I've noticed, are there men in this group? Yes. Are there a majority of women? I will say yes. There are a subset of people who will often follow what on paper looks like a very healthy diet and it is healthy, it's organic this and organic that. And it's raw this and it's raw that, and oftentimes people are using that as a cover for, I just wanna be thin. Yes, I know again, this is a healthy diet in the ways that it's a healthy diet. And I know she cares about health, but she's being driven by wanting to be thin.
So I mentioned this to her in a gentle way.
I said to her, to me, you are trying to balance out this diet that can be wonderfully healthy, a raw food diet. And you are also balancing that out with wanting to have a certain body type. And I think the part of you that wants to have a certain body type is creating a diet that is making you fatigued. That's what I think might be happening for you. Because in order to create a certain body type, sometimes we have to eat less food or we choose to eat less fat or less protein or just a smaller amount of food or the kinds of foods that we think won't be fattening. If that's the case for you, and I'm wondering if it is, then you are
contributing to your fatigue by wanting to have a certain body. So I just said that in a very gentle way and I just wanted that to land for her. And I wanted to see where it landed. And she was quiet and she took it in. She didn't give me a, oh yeah, you're right. But she didn't give me a no, no, no, no, you're wrong. She didn't resist. Um, she basically just listened. But in my mind, I got a diagnosis for those of you who are empowered to diagnose others and has body image driven, dietary induced metabolic fatigue,
body image driven, dietary induced metabolic fatigue, her body image. She wants to be really thin. What does she do? She adopts a diet that she thinks will help her be really thin and as a bonus help her be really healthy as well. That's kind of smart. I admire that. So be her, her body image concerns are driving her to eat in a certain way. And the way she eats is creating a certain kind of metabolism. And that metabolism is a fatigued, tired metabolism. So is the issue the food she eats? Yeah, but not really. The issue is what she's believing about her body and what it has to look like and what it has to be. And because that belief is very limited and it's driven by insecurity, it is driving her to adopt behaviors, specifically eating behaviors that actually don't serve her, that actually are harming her.
So, and I got some homework for you. I want you to continue with the original recommendations that I gave you as best you can. So let's just continue. You did it less than half the time. See if you can get to over half the time. I really think we need to get a little more fat in your system. And, um, seeing that that might be a little challenge for you. Would you be willing to take an essential fatty acid supplement? It's a, a really good quality supplement. Absolutely. She is great. I asked her to do a journaling exercise. I said, would you do a journaling exercise? And it's all about making a complete list of what helps ground you in life. What, what helps you feel here? What helps you feel rooted?
'cause I was realizing as I was looking at her, she felt very ungrounded to me. She felt very airy. It felt like she was floating like a foot or two off the ground.
I also asked her to have an honest talk with her husband.
I asked her to have an honest talk with her husband about her diet and her weight, and to ask him about his thoughts and his opinion more specifically, I wanted her to talk to him about how she feels about her own body. We just have an honest conversation based on everything you and I have talking about. I want you to see what's the most honest conversation you could have with your husband about what we've been covering and some of the, some of the insights or potential insights that are coming up here around your diet in relation to your weight, in relation to what you think you should look like in relation to your fatigue. Just open up the conversation for him. So she was willing to do all of that. Here comes session three. Anne has been mostly compliant. She tells me her energy is vastly improved. How much? At least 50%. Wow. Anything else? Ann, how you doing? Talk to me. Like what are you noticing? She feels way more alert. That's her word. She feels way more motivated. That's her word. She never complained of lack of motivation, by the way. Um, but when you're fatigued, you're less motivated. So all of a sudden she's more alert, she's more motivated. She also shared with me, I always miss this one, she also shared with me that she's not as hungry. Um, I didn't even know that her thing to ask her what her ongoing hunger level was. Um, but the reality is Anne had been denying her natural need for food and she was constantly thinking about all the food she wanted to eat, but couldn't. So I learned that in session three, that Anne is walking around hungry quite a bit. Um, many people will do this. Many people who are underfeeding because they're trying to lose weight or maintain a very thin weight. There are many humans who are walking around and you won't know it until you know how to spot it. They're literally hungry. They're just walking around like hungry animals.
They're just hungry. That's why they're so irritable. That's why they're so mean. That's why they're so b****y. That's why they're so nasty. That's why they're, they have such a quick trigger.
So we spent most of session three also, by the way, talking about her relationship and the insights that emerged when she was sharing honestly, with her husband. And now the work gets really juicy because Anne realized this is what she said after talking to her husband about the work we were doing. And I had no idea what she would say or what would come out of it. But notice, even notice the assignment for a second. Notice the assignment. I'd asked her to share honestly with her husband about our work and some of the insights that have been happening. So I'm asking her to do work. I'm asking her to go home and do work after our session. Talk to your husband. That's your primary person in your life. Everything is connected to everything which is, is connected to everything in our life. So chances are her relationship with food and body is connected to other important domains in her life. One of the most important domains in her life is her relationship. So she realizes, she realizes she'd been subtly pulling away in her relationship. She realize that her body image issues were getting in the way of intimacy.
Turns out her husband had zero idea of what was going on in her inner world. He had no idea. He had no idea that my lovely wife actually doesn't really feel confident and good about her own body. And she's struggling to be thin. He was extremely happy to understand her better because he had been taking her physical emotional distance very personally. So she was pulling away from him. Why? Not because she doesn't like him, but because her primary relationship is with her
disordered relationship with food and body. Essentially. That's her pri that was becoming her primary relationship. Let me eat in a certain way. Oh yeah, let me go raw. Oh, that'll help me be even thinner now that'll help me really maintain myself and be healthy.
And she's constantly hungry and she's constantly dealing with her hunger. Hunger. And if you say to me, mark, I wanna, here's a woman client who has a nice healthy sex drive. Figure out a way from a dietary perspective to take it away. Take away this person's sex drive. I would go, great, this is easy. I put that person on a very low fat diet. I would put them on a low protein diet and I would put them on a low calorie diet and then I'd have them exercising their brains out. So she was doing three of those low calorie, low fat and somewhat low protein. But again, he had been taking everything very personally and hadn't been saying this to her. But he was very frustrated, um, that she kind of knew he was frustrated sexually, but he's taking it personally. So as a result of the conversation, they feel so much closer. They have a sense of renewal in the relationship now that there was more honesty and communication. So wow, this was a breakthrough for both of them. I mean, forget about Anne and her fatigue for a moment. Uh, good news is happening here. Really, this is what's important.
So here's your homework, Anne. I want you to continue with all the dietary recommendations. I want you to think about. We talked about this adding in some quality meat or chicken at dinner. I felt that she needed a little animal food in her body just because oftentimes that will stimulate sex drive for people who have been low in animal protein. And it is important both to her and her husband that they're connecting in that way and that she is not asexual. I asked her to begin to honestly, honestly witness your thoughts around weight and body image as they arrive on a day-to-day and a moment to moment basis, you need to start to watch yourself.
You need to catch yourself.
You need to notice that you're in a constant conversation that doesn't get you anywhere.
And I also asked her to think about this question. What would my life be like? And how would I spend my energy if I was just in love with the body that I have right now? And I wasn't trying to make it any different. What would my life be like? And how would I spend my energy?
So my friends, three weeks later was when I saw her, her fatigue was about 80% gone. Her words back to my old self. Her sex drive is coming back for the first time in several years. Um, she was far, far, far more willing to see how her body image was driving her life. She was really starting to get it. Um, she was loving her newfound kind of breakthrough with her husband. The relationship was stronger than ever. Coincidentally, I love this. She brought this up. She said, you're not gonna believe this, but you know, since these last few sessions together, my husband has more energy.
Isn't that fascinating? My friends, remember we talked about how our symptoms, our diseases, our challenges are often shared. So I didn't even, I mean, I never asked her any questions about our husband's energy. Um, I wasn't focused on her husband, quite honestly, other than when I gave her that homework assignment. But all this time, he's, his energy is dipping. Why? Because is he feels his wife pulling away from him emotionally and physically. He's taking it personally, understandably so. And that fatigues him because he is getting a little depressed. He's feeling bad. He's feeling bad about his life. He's feeling bad for himself. And you know this, when your energy picks up the person you're closest with, it's easy for their energy to pick up. So all of a sudden, it's not that she has more energy, the whole system has more energy because more energy is circulating. Because when a relationship is working on some level, it generates its own energy. A lot of times relationships are draining our energy. Well, when a relationship has some health to it, it actually generates energy. So all of a sudden their relationship is generating energy. She has more energy, he has more energy. I love it. Some final thoughts about Anne, once again, my friends, you could see her fatigue was a divine messenger. It was asking her to look at her relationship with food and body.
It was calling her into a right relationship with her marriage.
You know, marriage is serious. You can't just get married and then, I don't know, not do anything and not do any work. There was a place in the relationship where both partners were just in darkness. They didn't know what was happening. Each just realized, okay, there's no physical intimacy happening. The husband realizes, wow. And it feels like she's pulling away emotionally. And she was, but she wasn't getting it. 'cause she's just focused on being hungry. She's focused on food and body and has no idea that he's in that level of suffering. So the marriage needed to have better communication. Her fatigue was asking her to be more authentic and real. Her fatigue was asking her to step out of her young princess stage. This is a young woman who is how old again, you know, she's in her early thirties. She's 31. Uh, so she is ready to start stepping into her mature princess. And in a mature princess stage, yeah, you're, you're on the road to womanhood. You're learning to take responsibility. You are learning to understand that it's not all about your body, your body, your body and perfection, perfection, perfection. So she's being called into the more royal and mature part of her archetype.
Interesting that Ann reached for the kind of diet that helped generate the kinds of symptoms that matched really where her consciousness was at.
Does that make sense? I'll say that again. Anne was reaching for the kinds of foods that generated the kinds of symptoms that matched where her consciousness was at. So where her consciousness was at was my body, my body, my body being skinny, skinny, skinny, being healthy, healthy, healthy.
But without really examining where her motivation was coming from. Her motivation wasn't coming from true health and true embodiment. Her motivation was coming from what the world has indoctrinated into her mind as a certain body type that she has to have, which in her mind was very slender.
So she was reaching for the kind of diet that, yeah, it helped create that, but it gave her all the symptoms that go along with an unconscious approach to food and body and life. So this is a client who she worked on the level of diet. Notice how we, we, we have to work on diet. She had to work on her diet. If we didn't work on diet, ain't nothing gonna change for her. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. I hope that's abundantly clear to you. The dietary changes that we made were crucial, necessary for her transformation.
But we also worked in her personal emotional, psychological realm. And she was able to do work on self, really looking at herself and taking some challenging feedback of, hey, you're using your diet as a bad religion.
And the homework assignment that I gave to her, you know, that was an invented homework assignment. I want you to get that. I don't say to every client and go home and share with your partner, this, that, the other thing. But based on our work together, based on this is a young couple based on, just based on everything, based on the fact that she had told me that her sex drive was low.
So I'm not dumb. I'm thinking in the back of my mind, he can't be happy. And once her and I had a powerful conversation, I'm thinking, hey, you know, be a good idea for for her to share this with her significant other. Because when you have significant things happen in your life, share it with somebody significant to you.
Especially when we're seeing clients and we want to help them access their resource. So anyway, what I'm saying to you is that homework assignment was a game changer. Was I thinking it was going to be a game changer? No. I was just thinking, I think this could be a good idea. But it turns out that, that, that, that was just the gift in all of this.
So by using fatigue as a great teacher, by using fatigue as a doorway, we walk through that doorway and lo and behold, good things happen. Mm-Hmm. So you see how when we're following the guidelines of this work, you're not always gonna know what's around the corner. You don't have to. That's the beauty of the work. It's surprising, it's interesting. It's uncertain. Just like life. You don't know what's gonna happen every day. If you did, you would be bored outta your noodle. I know as practitioners, sure we'd love to be certain, I wanna know that if I tell her this, tell him that, do this, do that. It's gonna work and my client's gonna love me and all that sort of stuff.
And that's not how life works and what it generally does. So two client success stories, two very different clients. Um, two very different reasons. Really why each person was experiencing low energy and two very different sets of strategies in terms of what needed to be done to help my clients get where they needed to go. So was I focused on their small goal? Sure. Their small goal. That's the doorway, that's the entry point. Do I want both my clients to have more energy? Of course I do. But what I really want is for them to step into their personal power. I want them to step into the greatest possible version of who they are meant to be in this lifetime. And by doing that, everything else starts to fall into place. Yes, I'm working on diet at the same time, but I am aware that diet would not have been enough
because if she didn't get, if Anne didn't get that, her approach to food, body and diet, her toxic approach to food, body, and diet. If I'm thin, then I'll be happy, then everything will be wonderful, then I'll be the real me, then life will be perfect. Well, she's thin and she's fatigued and her marriage was actually suffering and neither of them were able to bring that to the table. Even though they love and care about each other, they just didn't have that level of maturity yet.
So by helping her become a more mature partner in relationship, we actually got down to what's truly important. And she's able to see, oh, the way I think about food and the way I think about my body and the behaviors that I then choose to do around what I eat, not only is impacting my health in an adverse way, it's impacting my relationship in an adverse way. And now that I'm making these changes, life is better, my energy is better, my relationship is better. So she's, she's learning it. She's getting it. That's the beauty that can happen when we synergize the personal emotional realm with the nutritional metabolic round.
I hope these stories were helpful for you, my friends. The good news is story time is not over. There is more to come. This is the end of energy and fatigue. Part four, part five is around the corner. And I do look forward to seeing you on the other side. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

PART 5

Autoscroll:

Greetings once again, friends. Mark David here, founder of the institute. Let's continue diving into energy and fatigue
and to get us warmed up. A couple of musings on energy and fatigue. You know, when it comes to functional nutrition, functional medicine, in a deeper biological understanding of fatigue, advanced nutrition often focuses on, often focuses on mitochondrial health, cellular health, and some very specific biochemical tests and markers. And what I wanna say to you is, this is great. I love it. It's wonderful, and it's a beautiful way to look at the body. And yet it often has us completely miss the big picture where the action truly might be. In other words, cellular changes can happen, not just because they're cellular changes and the cell decides to change, but cellular changes can happen because of who we are, because of what we're thinking, what we're feeling, what we're believing, which in turn will drive our food choices and our behaviors, which in turn will affect our biochemistry. Can you see the circularity there? So the challenge is we often go to the complex to initially solve problems that might be rooted in the simple. So indeed, before we go to the fantastically complex biochemical levels to solve fatigue, it's often best. It's often wise, it's often prudent to start with basic and foundational life domains where we're impacting energy on a daily level, on an on a moment to moment basis. Doesn't that make sense? I had a great conversation not too long ago with a doctor friend of mine who's a pediatrician, who was saying just this, he was just irate because so many of his patients, so many of the families that he works with, you know, the kids have had very complex allergy testing and they're allergic to 50 different foods and the parents are trying to limit 50 different foods. And really what's happening is, yeah, a test can show certain results, but we don't truly know what's driving those results. And when you work on the overall health of a person, when you work on the bigger factors, simple dietary changes, uh, simple changes in, you know, some of the stressors that are impacting us, all of a sudden health changes, immunity changes, the body changes, it responds. So let's dive into a couple of case stories anyway, to see if we could illustrate these points.
We're gonna talk about a couple of men. This first one is Keith. Keith, when I first saw him, was 41 years old. Real estate sales. He had just finished breaking up from a nine year long, very, um, uh, close, deep, intense relationship. Uh, they had a business together, so they're selling the business that they had together. And it was a very sad but necessary end to the partnership. So they sold the business and he took the decent amount of money that he made from the business, and he invested it in a new business and he lost it all. So he lost all his money, essentially, and his nine year relationship. So the result was that he became very depressed and he moved in with his parents. And shortly after he comes down with chronic fatigue. So now Keith is having great difficulty working and he's pretty much a self-motivated worker. He's been working for himself largely, uh, in real estate sales. So Keith has a challenge. He attributes his depression to his fatigue, and he believes his fatigue has some unknown organic cause in his body, in his chemistry, in his brain, in his cells. I don't know. He doesn't know. And it has yet to be determined and discovered. So with that thinking in mind, Keith is a client who has come to me and he has had extensive medical testing, which has ruled out Epstein Barr, Lyme's disease, all kinds of nutritional deficiencies, been tested for thyroid and autoimmune disease. So he's really covered a lot of turf. And Keith is very determined to try all the alternative approaches possible to heal himself. So I'm dealing with an extremely motivated client, uh, who is leaving no stone unturned from a medical perspective,
some more information. I am now seeing Keith when he comes to me, approximately one year into his, what's been diagnosed as chronic fatigue. So he's seeing me and he's already had chronic fatigue for a year. He's told me he's borrowed over $50,000 for his various healing strategies and clinics that he's gone to. Uh, significant amount of alternative approaches to health and medicine, uh, are not covered by traditional insurance. So as soon as we unfortunately step out of the paradigm of what the insurance companies want us to do when it comes to health, because they love us so much, I'm being sarcastic, uh, they don't pay for it. So the good news is he's able to borrow money. And, but so far things have been unsuccessful. Keith really takes a very thorough and intellectual approach to his health, which I respect in general. He's got a very healthy diet. Um, I'm not gonna go into his diet with you, but truly no place to work. Uh, Keith is taking all kinds of supplements, all kinds of homeopathic remedies. And at this time that I'm seeing him, he has a relatively new girlfriend, uh, who is actually helping support him financially. Um, he mentioned to me, 'cause I just found that very fascinating, uh, that he, he thinks she hasn't said anything, but he thinks she's starting to feel resentful that he's not earning money. Um, he also mentioned to me at some point that he's feeling angry at his mom and his girlfriend who's helping support him. Both of them are helping support him, uh, because they just don't get it. And he's the one who has an unknown illness.
So I'm just kind of bookmarking that and noticing that there's that tension. Who knows? We'll see where that goes.
So as I'm listening to Keith and as I'm listening to a person who has chronic fatigue and who hi, who is energy challenged, you know, some of the thoughts going through my mind are, Hey, maybe the guy needs to be tired. The thought going through my mind is, I wonder what the divine message is in here. The cosmic message. What is the gift in his fatigue? What does this man need to feel, if anything, what does he need to integrate in his life? If anything? Another way to ask all this is why is the wisdom of life slowing him down? Because, you know, I'm dealing with a person who has taken some very extraordinary means and is very committed to healing himself and getting his energy back. So because I'm dealing with a client who already has a lot of medical intervention, who is following a very clean diet, no allergic foods, he's dairy-free, he's gluten-free, he's eating enough fat, he's eating organic. He's one of those guys. So what I wanna say is we spent the entire first session really talking story and getting the details. Keith likes to talk. Um, I mentioned to him that given his great diet and his very thorough approach in terms of supplements and homeopathics and energy remedies, that, you know, the work I would do with him, which is really where my skillset lies. Um, in terms of what he hasn't done, which will perhaps be exploring more of the life realm, the emotional realm, the spiritual realms, and see if we can connect any dots. I'm thinking to myself in many ways, this is a great client because indeed, great client, because he is already tried so much in the traditional and alternative medical realms that we could rule out a lot. And, you know, key to seeing me because he had heard about me and was very interested in working together and was really curious where the work would go. So I gave him a very simple homework assignment and I asked him to journal about his chronic fatigue, uh, and how it might be a message from the intelligence of the universe and try to tune into what the intelligent message from the universe might be. Like, what is chronic fatigue here for? If it was a whispering from your guardian angel, what's it teaching you? What is, what are you here to learn from it? Much to my surprise, this was the first moment I noticed him tighten up in the session. Right at the end, he became very resistant and he actually needed me to explain this assignment several times. He was looking at me like I was talking a foreign language, um, which I must admit surprised me because I thought I explained it very well, and I thought it was very simple and straightforward and clear cut. So I'm also taking note of that. And he seemed to understand what I was saying by the time we finished. And by the time I finished explaining it for about the third time, so here comes session two, and Keith couldn't come up with anything zero around the deeper message in his fatigue. He looked at me like, nah, nothing. There again, I'm surprised given his willingness in wanting to work with me. He was really in the dark here and needed some help. And it was then I started thinking to myself that Keith really seems committed to finding a metabolic cause for his fatigue. I just very committed. Like this is where it is interesting. Like that could make sense to me. Perhaps that's his paradigm. That's his belief system. Plenty of people have that belief system that if something's wrong with me, something's wrong with my energy, then it has to be something in my biochemistry. Okay, now, in this session, I was just asking Keith more about his relationship with his girlfriend. I was asking him more about his relationship with his mom because I remembered from the first session that there was a little bit of action there. He happened to share with me that both his girlfriend and his mom, our actual therapists, they're psychotherapists. And it just really fascinated me, like, really, what are the odds that your mom is a psychotherapist and your new girlfriend's a psychotherapist? I thought that was, that was pretty interesting to me. Um, but what I was really getting when he is talking about them, he, he's just in a very intense relationship with both of them. I could feel his, his his, his sort of gravity come out when he speaks about either one of them. He just gets just more, uh, he, he gets more embodied in a way. Um, and he, he started coming out with little complaints and he let me know that he's mad at both of them. So I gave him this next homework assignment after the session. So it was more story, talking a lot about his mom, a lot about his girlfriend. And here's the homework assignment I gave him. So I'm making this up on the spot. Why? Because that's how we work. We go with life unfolding. You're tuning into your client. Every human is different. If you want to make every human the same and give every human the same diet and the same strategy, go for it and tell me how that works. It's not gonna work. Please don't waste your time. Um, so I invent the homework assignment. Hey, I want you to ask your mom, and I want you to ask your girlfriend what they think the cosmic lesson in your fatigue is. So you can tell them that your nutrition guy, your eating psychology guy, said that theoretically there could be a divine message, a deeper teaching, a soul lesson, a whispering from your guardian angel from the wisdom of the universe in all of our symptoms and diseases. So what do they think your cosmic lesson or lessons might be in terms of what fatigue is trying to tell you? So he was fair game. I think he was a little resistant, but he gave me the thumbs up. So I have a client here. Now again, I want you to notice how I am doing my best to be inventive with homework. I'm following my intuition, but I'm also following my logic. I'm noticing where the energy is, where there's energy in his relationship with his girlfriend and his mom. How do I know that? Because I told you, when everybody talks about them, like the, everything changes, the lighting changes the weather outside, just you could feel it. There's a palpable shift. So there's energy there, and when there's energy, we follow that. So sometimes you're gonna have to stalk your clients a bit. And when I say stalk, I'm saying that in the energetic sense, the shamanic sense, the subtle sense. You're, you're, you're just looking, you're looking for the clues. You're looking for where the energy was. Um, I'm also starting to feel that Keith is a little bit slippery.
I'm just noticing that he, he, he just blames his mom and girlfriend for little things. Um, and ah, I'm just noticing that the fact that he couldn't come up with anything, what's a deeper lesson? Hmm. I didn't like it. So quite frankly, I'm wanting him to work harder.
I get it. You've been going to all these practitioners and you sit down and they take some blood and then you come back with a test result, and then you take some supplements, you take some herbs, you take some remedies, and essentially everything he's doing, as much as he's working hard and spending hard, he's actually doing strategies that are passive. And again, I'm gonna say there's nothing wrong with that.
And there's another kind of work to be done here. So I felt he wasn't showing up in a big way at all when it came to just more self-reflection and openness. Keith sorta had an idea of how this all had to look and how it had to unfold. And he is very committed to it. Okay, session number three, Keith comes back and he is looking like he got beat up. Um, and he unhappily reports to me that the two women in his life, when he asked them this question was the cosmic message, independently, privately. He asked each one of them, they both gave him the same answer around his assignment. Check it out. Each one of them said some version of, you need to stop feeling sorry for yourself. You need to sort of be a man. You still haven't let go of your ex. Remember, a nine year relationship, your energy crash after your business investments failed, you just have to pick yourself up and move on. It's all emotional. So that, that, that's the basic, that was the basics of what, uh, the sum total of what each of them pretty much said. So he's even more angry. He's visibly angry. He's kind of red as he's explaining it to me that each one of them, how could they have the same answer? Um, and he's also annoyed that they made it about him. He is really clear. They're making it about me. I have a disease, there's something wrong with me that's interesting. And he believes that. And let's be reasonable. He might be right. Maybe he does have some unknown disease. Um, but I don't think so. You know, you gotta bet, you gotta wager. You gotta follow your intuition. This is a place that has remained unexplored in his healing journey. So we want to be good explorers, we want to be good detectives. We want to be good sleuths. We want to be good practitioners. We want to help our clients. So how do you do that? You start with the best places to work that you can possibly work, and then you look for evidence and you look for results, and you see what each of those places yields. So he's done a tremendous amount of traditional and untraditional biochemical biomedical methods to heal himself and nothing's working so great. Let's try something else.
And he's resistance. So personally, I'm actually thrilled for him that he came back with this because it was kind of what I was sensing anyway. And even though he is, he's angry, I'm actually feeling very hopeful because I am choosing as the practitioner. I'm not buying into his resistance. I'm not letting his resistance cause me to be resistant to the input of his mom, his girlfriend. I'm not letting his belief system drive the relationship he's paying me to help him. I'm going to do the best I can, even if it annoys him or irritates him, for sure. We don't want to annoy and irritate clients in a way that alienates them. But you and I can do things that annoy and irritate people in a way that actually kind of surrounds them and embraces them. When you do it from a place of love, when you do it with a smile on your face, and when you are clear that you are in alignment with helping your client reach their highest goal in life, which is to help them be the best possible version of the human that they're meant to be. Because when you do that, you're just in integrity with the universe. You cannot go wrong. You might not make every single right guess or right decision, but that's what life is. Not every decision is right, not every guess is right, but you're coming from the right place.
So what was interesting was Keith was fully expecting me to side with him in his belief that the women in his, his life were being typical therapists and blaming everything on him. So that was his thing. They're therapists and that's what they do. And now he's looking at me like, I'm that guy as well. So he really thought I would be his buddy. And, and, and he probably had good reason to think that because we definitely had a kinship. I just really wanted to help him. And I just really had a natural regard for him that I know he felt. So, once again, I was pretty surprised at the shock on his face when I told him that, you know, in my opinion, in my professional opinion, the women in your life, I think they might have hit the target there, Keith. And I said to him, notice the technique. I was your best friend. Okay? So now I'm creating a listening. If I'm your best friend, if I was your best friend, I would tell you the same thing pretty much that they told you.
I'm thinking, I said, listen, dude, you broke up from a nine year intense relationship that was the most significant relationship of your life. There's nothing small about that. You guys had a business together, you sold the business. It's like selling your baby. And then you took the money and you invested it and you lost it all. And shortly after that, you know, you got sick.
So I think there was a trauma to your system that you never really quite fully understood. You never quite got on a conscious level.
And I said to him, I think the fatigue is giving you an opportunity to do some work on yourself. And I said, you know, you're angry at the women in your life, but take a look here, buddy. They're supporting you. You're living in your parents' house. Your girlfriend is helping financially support you. You're in good shape here. Why would you be b******g about these women?
And as I'm saying this to him, as I'm saying all this to him, and, and I'm thinking as I'm talking, I'm right. That's what I'm thinking. Uh, I'm confident I could see his energy collapsing. Isn't that interesting? I I could just re I i energetically his posture, his facial expression, just, just the color on his face, I could just feel his energy collapsing. And I mentioned that to him and he acknowledged that. He said, yeah, I'm like, really tired all of a sudden. And I said to him, all we're doing is talking. I just want you to take note of that. All we're doing is talking. We're talking about something that quite frankly, you don't like. And as we're talking about something you don't, don't like, your energy is collapsing. Huh, interesting to note. There's no biochemical event that's happened unless there's some biochemical event happened in your body that just happens to be a pure coincidence that it happened in a moment that we're talking about something very uncomfortable for you. But I don't think that's the case.
So I have Keith's attention now. I'm essentially being a big brother to him. When I'm talking to Keith, I'm truly being a big brother. I, I really feel like I'm looking at little brother. So silently, secretly, energetically, I'm coming from that archetype.
Big brother doesn't mess around. Okay, session number three. Here's the homework I gave him. Hey, Keith, you know, give some thought. What's your true work in life? What are you here to do in this world?
I also want you to journal about what feels incomplete about your past relationship. Just some journaling. Make a bullet point list. Write as much as you can.
I'm also gonna give you an assignment to consider. I just want you to consider this because I'm telling him this at the end of the session. I didn't wanna talk about it too much, I just wanted to introduce it. The, the assignment is this. Consider taking one month, four weeks to stop trying to fix your fatigue. So for one month, I want you to actually just stop doing anything. I want you to be tired. I want you to be low energy. I want you to let go. I want you to stay in bed. If you need to stay in bed. I want you to do your best to fully actually go into your fatigue and just drop into it as if, I don't know, you're walking in the rain and you're not resisting the rain. And if you're walking in the rain and you're not resisting the rain, you're gonna start to relax and you're gonna notice you're getting wet. And see if you could be with that. So I want you to make fatigue your guru. Just let it teach you. And during this time, I want you to stop taking every single supplement.
So I'm not saying you have to do this, but I'm saying I really, really, really want you to consider this because I have a feeling it just might be very, very helpful for you. And I'm gonna tell you again as I'm saying this, he is looking at me like I'm an alien from another planet speaking some strange language, and which sometimes is a good sign. Okay, couple weeks later, session number four, here comes Keith. Turns out he was a great sport. He was extremely resistant to all my assignments, yet he actually did his absolute best. Um, so when that happens, I made sure to acknowledge his efforts and his courage. We, I celebrated his small success. Um, this was the first session I also noticed, um, that Keith actually looked tired.
And I took this as a good sign. And what I'm saying is, in the first three sessions we had together, if I had, if this was just, if I had just met him on the street, I would've had no idea that he was experiencing chronic fatigue. It just didn't have the occurrence of a person who looks like he has chronic fatigue for whatever reason. Um, in this session, he was really looking tired. Um, and I mentioned that to him, said, you really look truly like you have fatigue. And Keith admitted that he's been feeling more depressed lately. Um, that made me very happy. I commended him for his honesty. Why? Because that's what's happening. That's what life is doing.
A rookie practitioner will go, oh my God, you're feeling more depressed lately? Oh my, I suck as a coach. I suck as a healer. I suck as a practitioner because you're supposed to just feel great and better. And by the time we finish our work together, you're gonna just be the healthiest person and you're gonna live happily ever after. Please don't do that. Um, I'm happy he's feeling more depressed. I'm not really happy that he's depressed, but I'm happy that he's being with his life in an honest way. Because the reality is, my friends, you're not here to fix someone. You're not here to make them not depressed. Not this, not that, because guess what, the healthiest, happiest, best humans who were ever invented by the world go through their stuff in the course of a lifetime. They have their ups, they have their downs, they have their health, they have their unhealth. So you have to understand that you're riding a wave with your client. You're on a journey with them. And whenever their journey takes a twist and turn, instead of you making it about you, or you think of yourself, oh my God, I gotta take away his depression. What did I do wrong? What? No, this is a good sign. Because now he's actually feeling a little more, quite honestly, Keith to me, lives in his head. So the fact that he's feeling anything is a good sign for the first time. He, Keith, wondered out loud if his depression was real
rather than some type of exotic disease or nutrition deficiency. So he's been thinking, I've got some disease or some brain chemistry issue.
Well, what if you're just actually freaking depressed? And you know, something wouldn't be a great leap of intelligence, faith, or consciousness to conclude that you're probably depressed? Because everything that's happened in your life in the last couple of years has been kind of depressing. So it makes sense that you would be depressed. So to immediately think that your depression is a biochemical issue, purely. Now, in order to be depressed, you must have a different brain chemistry. You must have a different biochemistry in order to be asleep. You need a different biochemistry in order to be awake. You need a different biochemistry. In order to digest a meal, you need a different biochemistry. If you, in order to be happy, you need a certain biochemistry, okay, no big deal, great. We can find changes. Oh my God, you have all these biochemical markers for depression. Of course you do because you're depressed. And yes, there might be certain people that have a chemical issue. We're gonna get to that in another conversation, another section of this training. But for now, Keith is starting to come to grips with the obvious fact that you're depressed because you're depressed, and oftentimes you're depressed, you're low energy. The two pretty much go hand in hand on a hunch, because I'm looking at this guy and understanding, getting, seeing that he just lives in his head. I just asked him if he cried at any time during the breakup.
And without hesitating, he, he flatly said no.
He didn't say, no, God, no Uhuh, no, I don't think so. He said, no. And I, I just looked at him and I didn't say anything. And we actually shared, at least what I thought was a pretty profound moment of silence, because that deserved a moment of silence. You need to reflect on that.
So I gave him another homework assignment. I said, talk to your mom and your girlfriend. Why do I have him talking to his mom and his girlfriends, my friends? Uh, because that's his resources, that's his relationships. Those are his key relationships. We are using our clients' own resources to help us and help them do the work
you are conducting an experience with your client. So yeah, his mom and his girlfriend are right in there with him. Great. Let's involve them. Talk to your mom, talk to your girlfriend about your relationship with this thing called crying and how you haven't cried. It turns out he hasn't cried in years. Um, so I just want you to talk to your mom and your girlfriend about this. Say that you and I talked about it. Just be totally honest. You and I talked about it. I asked if you'd cried at any time during or after your breakup. You said, no, I thought that was pretty interesting. And I asked you as a homework assignment to talk to your mom and your girlfriend. Just share those details, um, and ask, ask them simply to listen to you. So their job is to listen and to give you kind and loving feedback kind and loving words.
So notice how I said, notice how I set up the assignment this time. I didn't want him to get any kind of input from mom and girlfriend at this point that would smack him around. So the last homework assignment I had given him with mom and girlfriend notice it was a challenging one because they're gonna give him insights that he doesn't want to hear. This time. I'm asking him to be more vulnerable. And we're asking them as a setup to simply listen to what he's sharing and give kind and loving feedback. So that's the setup. So he's now safe to share about this as opposed to, oh my God, I'm gonna share about this and they're gonna, you know, tell me I'm, I don't know, there's something wrong with me. I'm emotionally shut down or whatever.
So next session is actually in three weeks.
Hey, how's it going, Keith? It's been a long time. What's happened since I last saw you? And he launched right in, he said, when he started talking about his homework assignment about crying to his mom, he cried with his mom. And he told me that this was really huge for him. He hadn't realized, um, how his sadness was just held back. He had no idea. Truly, uh, truly had no idea. You know, sometimes people, people know they're holding back. He had no idea he was holding back. And in his world, and we spoke about this, he believed that he should be efficient and move on from things and not be emotional. And he just wanted to put one foot in front of the other and just do the next thing, which makes sense to the logical masculine mind on one level. But it doesn't always play out that way. It turns out he was sharing that his girlfriend and his mom were tremendously supportive, um, and instrumental in helping him just come out more and give him the ability to feel comfortable crying and making him feel safe. So all of a sudden he's not complaining about his mom and his girlfriend, and he's really getting it. He's really letting in the love. He also had a realization that he shared with me. He said that he'd been so angry at the two women in his life, uh, mom and girlfriend. And he realized that behind that anger was simply a lot of sadness and loss, which is so classic. My friends, oftentimes, oftentimes on the flip side of anger, as you go through the anger and pass the anger to what's deeper is there's a sadness.
He was all of a sudden feeling a lot of guilt about being a financial burden. I think there was a part of him that was just so on automatic pilot that he was, I don't know if he was expecting that to happen, but he just wasn't getting it. He was so caught up in his own universe. Um, I actually thought he, it was good for him to feel a little guilt around that, um, because that guilt was now motivating him. And he said to me that all of a sudden he wants to make money. Um, and Keith explained to me that he hasn't had trouble making money in the past. When he sets his mind to it, he could make money. He's very confident in that realm. Um, coincidentally or not during this time, he actually had a big improvement in his energy level. Hmm, isn't that interesting? Cries a little bit. Has honest conversation with mom and girlfriend. Starts to feel more loved, starts to feel more self insight. Starts to find inspiration, motivation, energy for making money, which is really for just taking care of himself, taking responsibility. Very interesting coincidence, huh? You know, I'm being a little sarcastic. I don't think it's a coincidence at all. So, session six through nine. Let me fast track these a little bit. Um, Keith was extremely appreciative and thankful for our work together. This, you know, has, has really been, for me a satisfying relationship. Um, he told me flat out he was really enjoying having a man in his life that he could rely on. Um, that happens, you know, some time with our clients. You might be a woman and have a woman client, and you might be the one woman that they can have an honest conversation with. Whatever the configuration is. You might be the one woman in the life of your male client who he feels comfortable with. You as a woman, you might be the one man. It's, it's on and on and on. So, by the way, um, I forgot to mention he was, when I initially told him I wanted him off his supplements, that was very hard for him. It's extremely hard for him. And I had told him, I said, listen, you're taking a lot of supplements. I just want to tell you from a straight up digestive, nutritional, metabolic standpoint, I don't believe your body can handle all these supplements. It's too much. It is literally too much for your system. Uh, all these supplements that you're taking, they're very intensive packages of energy and information. I love supplements. I take lots of them. I've taken tons of them over the years. I guarantee you more than you have. I've spent more money on supplements than most people I know. So that gives me the right to critique them. And because I'm not antis supplements, but I'm happy to raise my hand when I don't think supplements are useful. Like your, your metabolism has slowed down. You are being depressed, you are fatigued, your body hasn't responded to any of this. It could actually be putting more pressure on you. So I want you to let them go. Really? Why I want him to let his supplements go is that's a part of the reason for sure. It's a part of the reason because I've seen people taking a ton of supplements and it ends up doing more harm than good. It's just too much. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing, uh, oftentimes. So I also wanted him to get out of these little tiny things are gonna fix me. I am broken. I am looking for a biochemical fix. So isn't it fascinating that while he's off his supplements, his energy has increased based on the work we've been doing together without any supplements. So he has taken note of that and it kind of blew him away. So by the end of our work session nine, his energy improved by he said at least 50%. And this was huge because previously the energy, his energy level had him not being able to work, uh, had him really down, um, and had him just tired and moping around all day. So Keith was now hunting for a moneymaking opportunity. This is a man who has a very entrepreneurial spirit. So we actually kept in touch over the next year and a half. Turns out he made a bunch of money on a real estate consulting project. He's now outta debt. He's paid back his mom, he's paid back his girlfriend. He's paid back some other money that he owed. Very happy about that. And he has money in the bank to boot. Um, and he had told me that during that time, his energy, his fatigue would vary anywhere from 50% gone to a hundred percent gone.
Ain't that interesting? That's called a success. My friends. Let me share with you some final thoughts about Keith.
To me, his fatigue slowed him down so he could do his personal growth. I mean, let's look back on it now. Slowed him down so he can face the music, slow him down so he can integrate all of his supplements. And all of his energy remedies were like a placebo that kept reaffirming that he was ill.
Now, might he have some biochemical imbalance? Sure, but sometimes you don't correct a biochemical imbalance with biochemistry. Sometimes you correct a biochemical imbalance by having an insight, by having a breakthrough, by having an opening, by changing the way you see things, by being more vulnerable, by being more truthful, by being more real, by releasing a long held emotion, sadness, by really checking in with your emotional metabolism and seeing what would be healthiest for it for him. At one point that was crying, you release a withheld emotion that takes a lot of stressor, and all of a sudden it takes a lot of stress to hold back, and all of a sudden you have more energy. But every time he was taking his little supplements and his little energy remedies, it's all it's saying is, you are sick, you have a biochemical problem, and you need to keep taking these. And then your biochemical problem will be over.
Now for some people, that actually works for him. For him, it was not a good placebo.
Turns out his fatigue was gone in less than two years later. It had its own timing and its own wisdom.
So it didn't just go away on my watch with him, but our work catalyzed a whole different part of his journey. And now he was on a good path. He was on a conscious path. He was on a path to healing that actually was taking him where he wanted to go. You know, looking back on it, for me, one of the best things I did, and I didn't know this at the time, was inspire him to enroll the people closest to him to give him the feedback that he truly needed.
Is that always the case with a client? No, with him that happened to hit such a target, it hit the bullseye, which often happens with our clients. You get a hunch, you get an intuition, you do it, and it turns out to be huge. But it's different for different clients. For some clients, it's, it's the, it's the way you change their macronutrient balance, and that's what's gonna do it for them. And for Keith, it was having a conversation with his mom and girlfriend where they both ended up separately, privately giving him the same feedback that he couldn't possibly avoid. And then when he went to meet a complaint about it, I said, I agree with the ladies.
And somehow that was enough proof in his world to finally get him to relax a little bit into a different possibility, to humble himself, to be more open.
Keith was doing work on himself. He needed to get poked and prodded. But I want you to notice that I poked and prodded him, not in a bad way. I have no problem making him feel uncomfortable. If it's in service to him reaching his highest goal, which is his highest potential as a human being, which then gives his metabolism its best chance to reach its highest potential.
Few more thoughts. A lot of, to me, to my mind, a lot of his fatigue was unexpressed grief, sadness, and just letting go.
And my friends, this is not unusual. This is not an enactment against anyone. This happens to humans. We have difficult life events happen. He had a breakup and a massive loss of all his assets, you know, move in with his parents and his new girlfriend supporting him. So he, he hit the bottom of the ladder
and a lot of his fatigue was simply there was grief and sadness, and he just didn't know how to express it.
And it might be as simple as that for him, quite honestly. We could easily stop there and say, yeah, that was it. Because he did nothing else metabolically other than let go of his supplements. And his supplements wasn't, weren't causing his fatigue. They were simply not helping him. They were keeping his fatigue locked in, in part because to me, I have no proof of this. But his body couldn't really grasp them, absorb them because it wasn't the medicine that he truly needed. We essentially worked on his emotional metabolism. We essentially worked on his false belief, his toxic belief that biochemical means alone will heal me.
Now, for some people, biochemical means alone might heal me, might be true for them, but it wasn't true for him. To me, his depression around his breakup and his business loss was coming out as anger a lot of times. And again, often beneath our anger is sadness waiting to be expressed. You know, it's easy for us humans to say something is chemical rather than personal, because then I don't have to deal with it. Just gimme a chemical to fix my chemical. That's how we're taught. I'm not being anti-science, I am being pro-science here, because things are often biochemical and they're often not. So we have to be open to all possibilities. So here I'm just emphasizing the part that normally doesn't get emphasized, because if you miss that, you can end up wasting a lot of time, energy, money, and life force in many years looking for answers in all the wrong places. I also wanna say that to my mind in our work together, and, and we talked about this somewhat, um, Keith really expanded his definition of the masculine. I don't think he understood how he was showing up for the women in his life. And there was a place where he needed to be more directive with himself, with his emotional world. And his mom and his girlfriend needed him to be more directive, meaning take the reins and be more emotionally responsible. Yes, you are being responsible in terms of your medical strategies, but that's not enough.
So I hope you're getting my friends from so many of the case stories that we've talked about so far that a lot of times we're, we're kind of grappling with our clients, our cl we're, we're, we're, we're grappling with life. Um, meaning your work as a professional. It's not gonna be, oh, just take this, do that. Then your client comes back and says, oh, how nice. I did what you say, and now I feel better. This is so wonderful. Yeah, that'll happen every once in a while with clients. But you are dealing with a human. And humans have blind spots. Humans have resistance. Humans have emotions. Humans get angry. Humans we're imperfect. So oftentimes you have to poke around with your client. Oftentimes you have to push 'em a little bit. You have to go to the edge with them. You have to be willing to have them feel uncomfortable. You might have to be a little bit uncomfortable stepping into an edge that you kind of have a hunch we need to explore here. But, oh, this is gonna make my client feel uncomfortable. If I tell him I agree with his mother and his girlfriend about what they said, I, I don't care if he feels uncomfortable. I care that he is making steps towards his largest goal in life. And because I care about that far more than I care about anything else for him,
it doesn't stop me. His resistance doesn't stop me. His emotionality doesn't stop me. I'm not afraid to lose him as a client. I'm staying in my power with my clients. I'm staying in my confidence with my clients. And it's not because I've got a big ego, even though that helps to have a big, healthy ego, sometimes
I'm able to do that because of my commitment to their highest goal, plain and simple.
Let's tell another story. And here's another male,
his name, we're gonna call him Jesse. When I saw Jesse, he was 36 years old. Jesse does carpentry work. He's been married three years, no kids, but three horses. Um, he built his own home. Jesse has a good social circle. His wife works as an office manager in a business somewhere. Uh, Jesse's a very health conscious guy. He hikes. This is another client to, I am actually not going to go into diet, um, simply because I'm gonna tell you, his diet was fine. I didn't have a place to work. His marriage, he acknowledges is bumpy, quote unquote. Um, right now they're both questioning if they're really right for each other. Um, Jesse has seen me before. Fatigue. He's been very deeply fatigued, deeply tired. Jesse has done a lot of, um, strategies. He's tried acupuncture. He's tried herbs. This is all from professionals. He's done the supplement route. He's been on a healthy diet. Nothing helps him. He's also depressed. Uh, he has taken antidepressants. They don't work very much. So Jesse has also had all the traditional medical intervention that his health insurance can cover and everything keeps coming back. Nothing's wrong. Uh, right now, Jesse is running outta savings. He's feeling financially burdened because of his fatigue, because he can't work much. And he's a carpenter. Uh, and he, he does, he does physical work, so he needs energy. And Jesse is coming to see me for a different viewpoint, pretty much so he's heard about me, he knows I work differently, and he's actually eager to see me because he's at the end of his rope.
A little bit more information about Jesse. Prior to his depression, Jesse was having a lot of anxiety around his failing marriage. He used the term tremendous anxiety, makes perfect sense to me. Uh, he was explaining to me because I was asking him, so, so talk to me. What, what, what was happening before your energy crashed? What was going on in your life? So he was extremely anxious. He told me he was really wired and he couldn't stop his anxiety. And he said in one day he crashed just one day. It was random. He just crashed. He was wired and anxious. And then all of a sudden, the next day he's depressed and he's tired.
Isn't that interesting
to my mind, I'm gonna tell you right now. Jesse's stress response kind of segued into sort of a fight or flight response into a freeze response. His system froze by the way. I, you know, asked him more about the antidepressants, and he said they tend to, you know, make him flat. He says, I'm very not present when I was taking antidepressants. But he did say he had less emotional pain. Um, he kept telling me in different ways that he really needs to get back to work. So he's really experiencing financial stress on top of the fact that the guy's fatigued.
So Jesse's really open and willing to hear any of my opinions about his fatigue. He's especially interested in any supplement or amino acid strategies or herb strategies. Um, you know, he, he did see one practitioner who worked a lot with amino acids. There was a little temporary blip on the screen where he felt better, but then all of a sudden everything went back to the same. So part of him is a little hopeful that maybe that's still a possibility. Do I know anything about that? He's been doing reading on that. Um, uh, just, I, I will say a few things about his diet. He's eliminated all sugar, all caffeine, all wheat products. All junk food. Uh, he's juicing. He's doing organic food. So he's, he's taking care of himself. Diet wise, Jesse's sleeping about 12 hours a day. He usually has about one hour each day of what he says energy. And it's at 4:00 PM So from four to five, that's the time that he's able to make phone calls, get on his computer, and just like do things. Um, so the first session, 90 minutes was just a lot of listening and talking story. And I wanna share with you what I told him at the end of the first session. I'm gonna explain to you what I basically explained to him, which I said, Jesse, here's how I'm seeing it. You likely have stress-induced freeze response leading to depression and fatigue. I said, this is a natural and it's a wise body-based response to prolonged fight or flight activation. I told him, here's and, and so I gave him the intellectual scientific mind cookies. I said, your marriage was failing. You were in some very difficult conversations with your wife. It was causing you a lot of stress and a lot of anxiety. How do I know that? You told me stress and anxiety means a physiologic stress response. You were wired, you couldn't turn that stress response off. What happens for many people is at some point the stress response is so intense for the system, the system cannot maintain it. And what it does is it shifts into the freeze response in nature. And Jesse's a nature boy. So he really heard this. I said, in nature, here's what happens. A lot of animals, there's no way that they can escape, which is flight. Well, there's no way they can fight their predator because they're just never beat them. So fight or flight is not gonna work. So our nervous system, the primitive brain wisely, will send us into a freeze response and a freeze response. An animal faints, it gives that animal a slight chance of survival. If the predator decides not to eat that animal in the moment and weight, in which case, usually what happens is the animal thaws out at some point, wakes up. And if there's no predator around, runs away.
So I said, that's probably what you're experience, you're experiencing a freeze response that technically looks and feels like depression and fatigue. And it is for all purposes, depression and fatigue. But it was driven by an anxiety and a stress that you could not manage.
So I told him, you need to slowly thaw out from your freeze and slowly return in a strange way to your fear.
But this time in a way where you can manage that fear and be with that fear, instead of that fear freaking you out on some level, I'm guessing the fear, the anxiety around your marriage was freaking you out. It's not a bad thing that happens to people. In other words, my friend, you gotta breathe into your life changes. You gotta be with yourself, and you have to face what's really going on in your life. That's going to be the ultimate remedy for all of this.
So as I'm saying this, he said to me that it turns out his energy crashed that one day that it crashed, it came within one day of a very intense talk that he had with his wife about divorce. It was, it was the most intense talk where they really started going over the details about divorce. So I'm gonna ask you, do you think this is really a coincidence?
I said the same thing to Jesse. Do you think that's really a coincidence?
So Jesse was very intrigued by my thoughts and good news. He's curious and curiouser to work with me even more, which is a great thing. Uh, you know, I told him, Hey, we're gonna be doing a lot of talkie talkie in our work because that seems to be where the action is. Um, he really wanted time to think about the connection between his fatigue and his previous intense anxiety. He wasn't, he wasn't by he, he wasn't sold. He was, I intrigued. Uh, so he, he was still keeping this possibility at arm's length, but grappling with it nonetheless. Um, he said he was also wanting some support around navigating his relationship challenges, which I said, you know, I'm happy to do my best with you. And what's interesting, similar to our last case story, his wife at that time had been wanting him to make more money and be more proactive around getting consistent work. Jesse was a freelance, uh, doing freelance carpentry, and the work was not always consistent for him. So that was part of her complaint in the relationship. And here he was. Now he's just in the opposite state of being able to be proactive and go out and be energetic and make more money. He's literally, uh, kind of bedridden most of the day, or couch ridden. Okay? I'm not saying this is for everyone, but oftentimes an illness keeps us a little safe. Oftentimes illness allows us to maintain the status quo and put challenging life issues on pause that allows us to focus on, you know, my pain, my fatigue, and we're not really focusing on where the action truly is. And it might be that we're simply not ready to face our discomfort or our destiny. That happens a lot of times. You know, we need to get loosened up a bit. And fatigue, I like to say is a great equalizer because it's always asking us to self-reflect and fatigue more so than a lot of illnesses, um, or challenges. Helps us eliminate so many distractions. And it drops us into mandatory meditation. Jesse's in better on the couch most of the day, except for one hour when he has energy. So what are you doing? You're reading, you're watching tv and you're just in your head thinking. So at some point you have a good chance of thinking, some thoughts that matter and make a difference. You have to do some self-reflection somewhere in there. You know, in a lot of ways fatigue can be like a, uh, like a mini dying experience. You're losing your energy for goodness sakes. Um, and by confronting such a mini dying experience, by confronting a mini death, it often asks us to consider paradoxically how we're living life. If we wanna live life and to start figuring out a better way. Low energy can do that. Fatigue can do that.
It shows us that energy is valuable. Our life force is valuable and we're not gonna have it forever.
So here's my strategy with Jesse. We're gonna have once per month sessions. That's all he could afford. And he was on medication. He, he was on, um, still on antidepressant and still on an anti very strong anti-anxiety medication. I told him I really wanted him to explore with his psychiatrist going off his medication. Why? Because it hasn't been helping. So talk to your psychiatrist. Have an honest conversation. You have to make a choice of what you wanna do, and then you have to enroll your practitioner, your psychiatrist in helping you get there. I said part of it is you have to commit to feeling again. Uh, you know, I, I could see talking to Jesse, it's, he, he's monotone. His facial expression doesn't change. And it's all about the anti-anxiety and the antidepressant medications that he's on. He doesn't really feel, I said, you have to commit to feeling again, otherwise you're not gonna feel, so he, he didn't have a lot of affect. How is he going to get back into the challenge in his life that he needs to address, which is his relationship? So I told him, this is all about reclaiming your body, reclaiming your brain chemistry, reclaiming your naturalness.
He admitted that he's a different person on this medication.
I said, you're going to learn to focus on working with your anxiety. You're gonna learn to focus on your relationship challenges in a way that doesn't cause you to collapse. And learn to focus on honest conversations with your partner where you're able to stay present with yourself. I said that's, that to me is the work here. So this is my strategy.
So in essence, we're working on managing the energy Jesse already has. So what I did was I asked him to relax into his fatigue and stop fighting it. And the moment I said that to him, he looked at me, I could see he got it right away. It just like the lights came on. It was truly a revelation for him. You know, I was very clear. I said, the more you can work consciously with the small amount of energy you have, the more you're gonna be able to deal with more energy once it begins to emerge. Um, we actually focused a lot on him, you know, using that one hour, that, that one hour that he had during the day. How do we maximize that hour? How do we capitalize on that hour? How do we plan for that hour? So when that hour comes, you're doing what you need to do, whatever that is in life. Um, you know what, what, what I'm learning about Jesse is he is very easily thrown off his horse. Um, he was more sensitive than I realize. And then I think most people in his life realize, um, and we talked about this and it turns out he had a lot of shame about being so sensitive. Um, and he was also having a lot of fear about coming off his medications and feeling. And to me, Jesse's soul lesson is agreeing to be here and, and, and more specifically agreeing to be here on life's terms.
You know, you could agree to be here, but dream to be here means, you know, you agree to be, uh, in a world where the sun goes up and the sun goes down. You know, that's life's terms. You can't change that agreeing to be here on life's terms, which means, you know, sometimes difficult things arise and they're so overwhelming and overpowering. And we need to learn how to stay present with them and to not get so anxious where we get to the point that we lose our sense of self, we lose our grounding, we lose our embodiment, we lose our dignity, and we step outside of our own body and we freeze
So he has to learn to stay awake in the world, really, as opposed to take a supplement as opposed to follow a different diet, as opposed to make sure you take your medication.
So to me, we have found the road for him to get better. That's what I'm thinking. Might I be wrong? Sure. But I don't think so. You have to learn how to value your own opinion, your own experience, your own intuition,
your own guidance. That's important. So
Jesse was off his medications. It took about a year. Um,
this was a client that, um, you know, I've, I've probably been with, I don't know, several dozen clients over the years who were getting off intense psychiatric medications under the care of their physicians. I don't do that. You don't do that unless you're a physician. Um, but I really watched his journey and I saw how hard it was. It was a grueling process emotionally and physically. Um, it was very grueling. It was fascinating. Um, and, and it's not like that for everyone. It was less the antidepressant for him and more the anti-anxiety medication that was, um, just extremely hard for him. Um, but the truth is he really wanted to get his life back. He understood that he was not advancing and he was not a moving forward. So I really watched his courage show up. I watched his bravery show up, and he really wanted his life back.
So, you know, this is not necessarily a popular position. This is not politically and medical politically correct for a health coach to tell their client, you should speak to your psychiatrist and tell the psychiatrist to help you get off your medications. But you know something, I think it's a damn important conversation to have with people. Um, because we overmedicate the world overmedicates with its prescription medications. I don't approve, use them when they work, don't use them when they don't work. Plain and simple. That's it. So Jesse really had to fight to get back to an unmedicated state. He had to reclaim his life. He had to choose life. So, you know, I didn't really get this until afterwards, but that process of going off the medication, oddly enough was like a year long exercise. Weightlifting, you know, physical training, but it was really mental, emotional, spiritual, physical training because he had to work hard to do that. And it's interesting because in that hard work, he began to get his energy back. Um, fascinating too that during this time, you know, him and his wife would go in and out. And there were times when she was very close to leaving him. Um, and I, I just watched that the more close she was to leaving him, the more motivated he became. I'm just noticing that, um, he made the promise to himself. He made the promise to his wife that he just wanted to become, Just to make more of himself, step more into his potential as a man, as a person in the world earning money. You know, and this is another client who we kept in touch. It took him about two years after we first met two for him to get the majority of his energy back. So we worked together about a year and a half. But he had already been, um, you know, it was, it was three years total for him to get his energy back, really once it had collapsed. So it was a journey. That's a journey.
But is that a journey about, oh, I lost my energy and it's taking me all these years to get my energy back. That's like saying, I, I don't know. I lost my, I lost my favorite teddy bear and it took me two, three years to find it. No, it's not like saying that because he didn't so much lose his energy
and get depressed and need to get his energy back and need to get not depressed. Those are symptoms. So of course you want your energy back. Of course, you don't want to be depressed. If I had low energy and depression, I wanna get back my energy and I wanna get back my good mood. But really, those were the symptoms. And the work was Jesse claiming his life. The work was Jesse being able to be present to conflict in his life. The conflict in his marriage was actually too much for him. And he would disembody and go into a freeze response.
So he had to face his life. This process of fatigue and depression. Again, I wanna say it, it, it's, for him, it was kind of like weightlifting. This is, it strengthened him because he had to deal with it. It actually strengthened his resolve. It strengthened his, um, it strengthened his, his emotional fiber. His character fiber,
you know, low mood and low energy tend to track one another. And many clients, not all many fatigue clients are simply living in the aftermath of stress overload. And life often doesn't let us simply recover so we can get back to a style of living that doesn't work for us in the first place. You know, imagine if his energy had crashed and he got depressed, and then four days later he got better again. He, he, he would be back to being the same person. So our dis diseases, our symptoms are doing something for us. They're delivering something for us. They are divine in this way. And self-examination and deep soul searching was, was exactly what Jesse needed. And exactly what so many people need who are dealing with fatigue.
Because it might be helpful to reclaim our energy. And it often is, and sometimes it's crucial to reclaiming energy. Sometimes that is actually where the work is, gotta look in the mirror and embrace her life.
And I also wanna say that oftentimes when somebody who's been chronically fatigued, when they, when we recover our energy, finally it's not quite the same
because a lot of people, their energy is very, it's, they don't realize how much of their energy is being driven by stress, anxiety, fear. I've gotta be somebody, they're not being driven necessarily from the most healthy place. 'cause you could easily motive, motivate yourself and energize yourself from an unhealthy place.
So once Jesse got his energy back, he, he was more sensitive in a different kind of way. He was more sensitive to his energy. He didn't just have lots of excess energy to blow off and waste so many people. When they finally reclaimed their energy after fatigue, they're more aware of the body. We're more aware of how we're impacting the body. We're more wise, we're using our energy more wisely.
So my friends, let's finish up by saying this similar to weight loss. We don't know when someone should get their energy back into what degree we don't know. Sure, I want my client to get all their energy back, but I don't know that that's what life has in store for them. Nor do I know when do I want it to happen? As soon as possible for them, absolutely. But am I willing for it to take as long as life wants it to take? Absolutely. I have no choice. I could be unwilling, but that doesn't do anything. So as a practitioner, I am looking to be open. I'm looking to be humble. I am looking to listen to my client's fatigue. I am looking to listen to the wisdom of the universe on behalf of my client to see how is that fatigue talking to them.
You know, the journey to finding our energy is, is really, it can be so fascinating. Um, it it, it's personal. It's emotional. It's metabolic. It's a spiritual quest. It's all of these, it can be very humbling line,
relaxing into the journey to reclaim our energy is key. Stressing into it will only deplete our energy more. So the key is patience. And oftentimes patience is one of the medicines. All those supplements that Keith was taking, he, he wanted his energy back yesterday. And every time he took a supplement, I'm not saying this is about supplements in general or supplement takers in general, but when he took them, it was from a place of let's get this over with already.
And really, patience truly is a virtue and virtues are healing.
When you learn a virtue, you step more into your personal power. And when you step more into your personal power, you have more of an opportunity to step into your metabolic power. So experimentation, exploration and a willingness to leave no stone unturned is key. When we are working with our clients to help them solve their energy and fatigue challenges, to me, I'll, I'll try anything. I want my client to try anything that makes sense. That seems right. So my friends, I hope this conversation was helpful for you. We got more to come. That's the good news. This was energy and fatigue. Part five, part six is coming up next. I look forward. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. I look forward to seeing you on the other side.

PART 6

Autoscroll:

Greetings once again, my friends. This is Mark David, founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. Here we are continuing our conversation about energy and fatigue, and let's talk about a few more case stories along with perhaps some new information along with starting out just getting warmed up. And hopefully, as you know, as we get warmed up and build the energy, we're actually not totally focused on helping people have more energy. We're focused on helping them manage what they have. We right now, energy wise, as a way to teach people how to regulate it. So as more is ready to come based on all the other great strategies that we do with them, then they will indeed start to learn how not to squander that energy, you know? And we're focused on identifying and letting go of that which drains our client's energy. Really, from there, energy can find its rightful place for so, so many people, you know, even for people who are chronically fatigued and who can't find a solution, and let's say theoretically they'll never find a solution that things we're learning here are really applicable, quite frankly, to any human being. Whether they have a lifelong chronic fatigue, or whether you're just somebody alive in the world and wanting to have a better experience. We have to learn how to manage and regulate our energy. It's really that simple. So we always have to understand that our energy doesn't simply come somewhere from out there, obviously. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Our energy is impacted by our environment, for sure. It's impacted by the foods we eat. It's impacted by everything that we're exposed to outside of us, positively and negatively. And at the same time, so much of it is ultimately generated from within. And we're going to remember to keep our eyes on that and focus on that. Let's jump into a story, a case study.
I'm gonna call this woman Jolene, when I saw her, she's 34 years old. She has two young children, age four and five. Jolene is a lab technician. She has what she describes as just a very solid marriage. Jolene is a regular exerciser. She likes to read in her spare time. Uh, she loves music. Her parents live nearby and they help out with the kids, and that's a huge thing for her. Uh, and at the same time, her parents are very frustrating to her. She has been dealing with fatigue now for three years. Her doctors can find nothing wrong. She's very concerned. On top of that, she has mood swings. She's irritable between three and 5:00 PM in the afternoon. And this is a person who wants her energy back. I don't blame her, um, husband. He either works long hours or he travels a lot for work. And that's, by the way, one of the key reasons she needs the parents around Fatigue has cut her exercise sessions short, and this disturbs her because exercise has always been a good friend for her. She loves it. Uh, it's just a big release for her. She's gained about five pounds, wants to lose it. She's also a very dedicated mother, really cares a lot about her kids, and cares about her role as a mother. Takes it very seriously. And even wondered to me out loud, you know, if she's gonna be this tired for the rest of her life, I guess three years of being tired and fatigued and not having your usual energy, um, yeah, that can bring up those fears and that happens for us. Other secondary complaints, dry skin, constipation, cravings for sweetss and cravings for fried foods and fatty foods.
This already, like so many of our clients, is shaping up to be an interesting one. Let's go right to Jolene's diet.
She gets up early, she's up at 6:00 AM at six 30. She has a non-fat yogurt. She has some coffee with sweet and low at 9:30 AM She's got another non-fat yogurt or a few pieces of non-fat cheese. She has some more coffee and she has some sweet and low. So, by the way, this is her telling me coffee plus sweet and low. I didn't even have to ask her if she uses a sweetener. She was very clear to let me know. It's a non-fat yogurt and non-fat cheese. So already you're getting the picture at 1:00 PM is lunch. It's either a chicken or Turkey sandwich. She has bag of chips, corn chips, potato chips, another cup of coffee with some sweet and low 4:00 PM She has a snack. It's either a piece of fruit or it's either a few cookies, once again, coffee and sweet and low. So it's four cups of coffee a day. Um, you know, which she needs to do right now, according to her. And it's, she's probably right at 6:00 PM It's a traditional dinner for everyone. Some type of protein, usually a chicken or a meat that the kids can eat, which is usually hot dogs, hamburgers, vegetables, and some kind of starch. Usually pasta, sometimes rice.
So my friends, hopefully you are starting to see a pattern here. So this is a person who is likely
relying on coffee to fuel her because she's really tired. Kind of makes sense. Um, she needs coffee to get through her day. Um, so doesn't have a problem sleeping at night. But at 4:00 PM she's still drinking a cup of coffee because she needs to keep going relative to the kids. The fact that she's non-fat yogurt at her breakfast or, or non-fat yogurt and cheese at breakfast and snack, and is clearly telling me she's a sweet and low girl. I hear dieter, I hear I'm very concerned about my weight, and I hear somebody who's very diligent about that.
So just by hearing this diet, I already have a lot. Now, you know, I, I was learning that things were actually more complicated then she was letting on in terms of what and how she ate, meaning this, I was just under the impression that she was trying to please me by telling me what she ate. Uh, she was a little proud of what she was eating, but she kept looking at me for my approval or disapproval, is what it felt like. My sense was that she believed that the diet she was following really made her a good girl. You know, as much as I'm talking to a 34-year-old who's the mother of two children, uh, as soon as we started talking about her diet, I might as well have been talking to a 17-year-old. Her mannerisms completely changed. Her affect completely changed. She went from being mom when we talked a lot about her kids, her parents, the whole flow of the day relative to being a mom. She was talking as if she's an on it, mature. I'm doing what I need to do, mom, talk about diet. I watch her transform before my eyes, subtle but noticeable for me. She did say, you know, upon further questioning that as many as three or four days per week, she would just grab anything for lunch or snacks.
Why did she tell me that? Because I asked her, is this how you eat every day? Well, pretty much, okay, what pretty much doesn't mean yes to me. Um, is it different on the weekends? Is it, what, what, tell me, is this what you do every day? Well, you know, sometimes it's not that clear cut. So anyway, three or four days per week where she just quotes, unquote grabs anything for lunch or snack, that's, that's very different than what she had shared with me. Uh, so she's having a hard time actually telling me what she's actually eating. She also told me that several times during the week, she'd eat very little for dinner and then have a late evening snack of cereal or cookies, bowl of cereal with some milk or cookies.
So why would you eat very little for dinner? Because you're trying to eat very little for dinner. Chances are that's all about weight or dieting or trying to lose weight or trying to maintain weight. But then she's having cereal or cookies later on because she's hungry. So to me, her diet definitely said, I'm concerned about my weight, but this is really all I know how to do to manage it. She's truly using her best insights. Okay, let's just put sweet and low in the coffee. Let's just eat non-fat foods. So she's doing what she knows what to do, what she's been taught by the world, low fat, low calorie self-denial and worry a lot. So I'm already saying to myself that in order for me to help this client, I really need her to be an adult with me. Because it's our job to call our clients into consciousness. I'm not going to let my client exist very long in our relationship or in our session not being clear and honest and upfront, and being able to step up and answer my questions in an honest way. Now, she's not a liar. She is just in fear around food and diet. So I completely understand where she's coming from and when she eats the way she eats, when she worries, the way she worries, a part of her is going into her 15, 16, 17-year-old girl. She, she's becoming a youngster. So I am simply aware that I need to call her into adulthood, more into consciousness, more into awareness, more into maturity more. Because as I do that, she will get more accustomed to doing that in the conversation around food and diet, such that hopefully when she's alone, she begins to see that this is the persona within her, her mature adult, that she needs to be relating to food and body from. I hope that makes sense. 'cause remember, we're not just one person, my friends, we're a crowd. There's different people living upstairs. When Jolene is doing her mom thing, she's a mom. She's in her mid thirties and she's a very mature princess mother, very mature, concerned, um,
but around food and body, she's that young princess who is not so confident about herself, who's feeling insecure, who wants approval. She wants approval from me, and she probably wants approval from the world that you look, okay, I get it. I understand. We have to understand where our clients are coming from and still love them.
So my thoughts are pretty clear, pretty quick. This is a person based on the diet that she is most likely deficient in essential fats. Her diet is, is an essential fatty acid deficient creating diet. In other words, her diet is, the diet is one diet I would give somebody if I wanted to create an EFA deficiency, if we were doing a weird science experiment. Here's what you should eat.
Uh, I hope you're remembering my friends. Some of her secondary complaints. Dry skin, that's a sign of EFA deficiency. Constipation. That's a sign of EFA deficiency cravings for sweets. Many people, they will crave the opposite of what they need. Um, but she's likely craving for sweet because she's low in fat and she's craving for sweet because she's low and sweet. Why? Because she's doing sweet and low. An artificial sweetener does not satisfy your desire for sweet, it doesn't work. Um, she's also craving fried or fatty foods. That's also a very clear symptom of essential fatty acid deficiency fatigue. Uh, what she's seeing me for is a sign of EFA deficiency and weight gain or inability to lose it is the same. Okay, so,
so I'm thinking EFA deficiency. I'm also thinking in the back of my mind, you know, there are some people who will react to artificial sweeteners, different kinds of artificial sweeteners. Might she be one of those people? Absolutely. I recommend artificial sweeteners for no one, not a single human. I'm not talking about stevia. If you wanna do stevia, fine, it's a natural plant. I prefer you go for the more natural versions of Stevia. Um, 'cause a lot of the products that they're making are mixed with all kinds of nonsense these days. But regardless of that, artificial sweeteners don't do anybody any good, except for the people who make them and sell them. I am sorry to say that. They don't help you lose weight. They don't decrease your sweet cravings. And they're generally neurotoxic and cytotoxic. Avoid them as you can. Have your clients avoid them. Um, you know, every once in a while we have to spank certain food ingredients really hard because it's just not necessary.
Okay? Overall, she has a pretty poor quality diet, is how I see it. So even though she thinks she's eating healthy, it's actually poor quality. I am looking at her and her size. You know, she's about visually I would say she's about 130, a one 30 ish pounds maybe, maybe 125. Um, there's a lot of caffeine for that small of a body, quite frankly. Uh, so I'm thinking she's doing an excess of caffeine relative to her fatigue. Might she have potential adrenal fatigue? Sure. Does she have a skewed eating rhythm? Huh? You know, here's the thing.
She is, hmm.
Her challenge is her biggest meal is coming in the evening. And when she skips her big meal in the evening or eats very little, she ends up eating a bunch of, what was it, the cookies or the cereals afterwards. She's more skewed really in macronutrients than anything else. But right now, I am interested in getting her to eat more substantially in the first, you know, third of her day,
I should mention, she considers herself a very fast eater when I started just talking about where she shops, that sort of thing. I'm starting to believe that she's a bit more nutritionally unsophisticated. It's, it's just, you know, she's a smart girl, but nutrition is not her forte. I am also learning as I'm speaking to her, as much as she's a concerned mom and she's on it about being a mom, my overall feeling is I'm talking to a person who's overwhelmed with motherhood. I don't know if you've ever met someone like this or been someone like this. Uh, you've never been a mother before. You have a child or two, and you, you don't know what to do because you've never been a mother before. But you wanna be the best mother possible. And consequently, you go into a lot of anxiety about what do I have to do about this? What do I have to do about that? There's a lot of worry. Um, some mothers to be don't come into it with that kind of worry. I've noticed some do. So she's, she just feels overwhelmed with the whole experience because her entire life has changed. Um, I was asking her, you know, when, when she started talking about Occasion, like a number of days a week, she won't eat much dinner and then she'll do cookies or cereal afterwards. I asked her, you know, well, how much cereal, how much cookies? And do you do one or the other? Or bo Well, she said, well, you know, it's really hard to say.
And I asked again. And she said, well, really, it's different on different evenings. I, I, I won't even know what to answer you. So when I hear that, I hear that she doesn't want to tell me. And I start to guess that she's bingeing binge eating in the evening time and doesn't want to tell me. And in this moment, because it's a first session and she's very nervous, uh, I'm not gonna push her. I have a, since you're binge eating there, little lady, no, I'm not gonna go there. Uh, I don't need to. She's not feeling comfortable telling me. I've kind of given her the opportunity. I didn't mention the word binge or binge eating, but I know if she's gonna stay with me, we'll eventually cycle back to that. So I'm bookmarking that in my head. So these are the things that we have to notice about our clients. Just because you ask a client a question doesn't mean they're answering it honestly. Just because they don't answer it honestly doesn't mean they're dishonest. It just means they're afraid. It just means they have a little anxiety, or they have some fear, or they have some shame, or they have some embarrassment about what they're doing. And why should she tell me that I'm this strange guy that she's paying money to, to help her have more energy? Why should she tell me she's binge eating?
So again, I, I really notice the part of her that wants to be a good girl and wants to be a good client, and please me. Um, because she's very apologetic when she, she's constantly apologizing when she can answer a question really clearly. Um, she just wants to do it right. She's one of those people, which I respect a lot. So, here's the big picture strategy for Jolene. This is not what I've told her to do in the first session, but this is the big picture strategy that I'm thinking. I wanna get her on an EFA supplement plus I want to get her on more fat in her diet, meaning I'm gonna switch her to a full fat organic yogurt in the morning. We went through various, what do you like for breakfast? What do you like for lunch? That sort of thing. She also likes eggs. So I want her to have, you know, some kind of protein at each meal. And she has to have a protein at dinner. Um, so if she doesn't do organic yogurt in the morning, full fat yogurt, do, do hard, boil free range eggs. That's what she likes to eat. Um, and I want her to put olive oil on her vegetables, on her pasta, her rice at dinner, at least two tablespoons. I want her to completely get off artificial sweeteners. I would like her to add a small salad to her lunch, a small, fresh salad. And I would like her to buy higher quality meats and cold cuts for her lunch sandwiches and for the dinner meals that she cooks. So let's see if we can get some free rangey, organicy meats and cold cuts. I would also wanna see her gradually cut down to two cups of coffee per day.
I don't want her skipping dinner. I don't want her skipping lunch. She's occasionally skipping lunch. So no skipping meals. Can't do that. Of course, I want her to slow down with her meal. She's a very fast eater. She, she's kind of the person that sometimes she, she's a little bit of a fast talker and sometimes she talks so fast that that, that she literally gets ahead of herself. Um, so I think she's naturally, or she's been trained to be very wired. Um, but the overall strategy is to create more relaxed and slow meals, which are not gonna be easy for her, because oftentimes the meals, particularly dinner are with kids. Breakfast is with the kids lunch, usually not.
I'm also wanting her in the big picture to get truthful with me about what she's eating, to start being honest, which means taking responsibility for her relationship with food. Really, that's what it is. It's just her stepping up into her adulthood with food. I'm also wanting her to get a little more help with her food shopping, which might mean me coaching her on what to buy, but I want her to, she does have an option to shop at a big supermarket that has a, you know, a nice organic section and to start switching slowly to more organic foods, more fresh, more real.
And I also want to invite her to use this same approach with her children.
I mentioned that last in part because it's the little cherry on top here, in part because if I ask the four questions of the universe on behalf of my client, what's most important to this client in my mind is motherhood and her kids. I really get that from her. And great motherhood and kids are very important to you. So, hey, learn how to feed your kids healthier while you're learning how to feed you healthier. Because guess what, this is a package deal. So if I can get her a little more focused on, Hey, you know what, you're also seeing me for the benefit of your children. 'cause this is gonna put them on a far healthier path,
that's gonna motivate her a little more on behalf of her own self, if that makes sense.
Now, there's some more big picture strategies that I know I'm gonna work on with her. And I'm, I'm really putting it together. I'm literally putting this together in my mind towards the end of the first session because it's, it's a bit obvious to me.
I wanna start to see and explore where she's draining her energy.
I want her to feel more nourished with food. I want her to evolve as a mother. I'm noticing she's so anxious about motherhood, that what comes through is anxiousness about motherhood. I think there's a part of her that, because she's very, um, she's very achievement oriented. She's very goal oriented, which is great. But a part of her, I think, wants to be a supermom,
sort of what I'm getting from her. And I think she's put herself a little too much aside.
I could be wrong here, but you know, when I'm, when I started talking to her about downtime, relaxation, time, she doesn't have any. And given her parents and the fact that they're retired and they love taking care of the kids, and the kids love their grandparents, I am imagining she could work in an hour here and there to get a little bit more time for herself. Um, this is a person who, to me, you know, similar to evolving as a mother and stopped trying to be a supermom, there's a place where I don't think she's relaxed into life.
You know, she's had kids now for four or five years, and I still think she's fighting the changes. She still hasn't sunk into it. Um, she's, whatever's going on with her and her parents. I, I think her parents irritate her. Um, and at the same time, she loves them. That really comes through at the same time. They're unbelievably helpful and they're irritating. They have habits that she doesn't like. They say things she doesn't like. None of it's awful. None of it's terrible. I I couldn't get anything from her that they're doing really bad. Um, and I don't think she was lying. I think there's just a place where she's around them too much. Um, but it's a big help. So part of what I'm thinking is like, how can you make peace with your parents? Meaning they're in your life, they're being oh, so helpful. How can you stop resisting them so much and appreciating more what they do for you? I get that they irritate you, but then you're in constant irritation and you're not gonna change them from what it sounds like. You have to change you. So this is what I'm thinking to myself.
So again, I want to tell you
on paper, Jolene, as a client, her life was kind of exhausting. Juggling work, juggling two kids, juggling, wanting to be a good mom, juggling, wanting to get some exercise in there, and all the details of life. And she's fatigued. So yeah, she's exhausted. It's a fatiguing life, but she has to learn how to manage her life better. She's gotta learn how to manage the details better. Um, she argues it seems over silly things with her parents. You know, when I was really trying to drill down every example she gave me about why her parents irritate her. They were, they were just like little things. So this is a person who has to choose her battles more, manage the energy you have. Why fight a battle that doesn't need to be fought in that you can't win anyway.
It's also time for her to listen to her body Wisdom, meaning her fatigue is telling her something. She's desperate to get rid of it. I understand. And there's a place where we have to listen to it. And there's a place where she needs to make the decision to choose the life that she has right now.
So, you know,
this is a client, I'm not gonna go through like for second session, second, third, fourth, because I wanted to just give you an example of just a more multifactorial client and how I look at the big picture. And many clients who face fatigue issues are indeed multifactorial. So, in other words, Jolene needed to work on her diet big time. She needed to work on macronutrient balance. She needed to work on eating speech. She needed to work on food quality. She needed to work a little bit on meal timing and not skipping meals.
She also needed to work on her relationships, particularly with her parents. She needs to address her lifestyle a little bit, which is closely related to her parents. She, she, she has to accept her lifestyle and look to make the tiny tweaks that can make a difference. She also needs to work on life unfolding. You know, my, my senses, she didn't say this, um, but she, she said this in her own way. You know, motherhood is very challenging for her because she's not in charge of her own schedule. It's not her life anymore, in a way, in fact, she might have even made that comment, it's not my life anymore. And when she said it, there was a little bit of a complaint in there. And here's the weird thing. Now, of course, it's your life. And I also know what she's saying when she says, it's not my life anymore. Because your life changes when you have a, a family. So it isn't just your life anymore. You are responsible. So yeah, they're gonna be a heck of a lot of times where the little people come first.
So that's embracing life and, okay, here's your new life. Now let's just relax into it. It's gonna look like this for a hell of a long time.
So I think her fatigue was asking her, so what's the divine message in her fatigue? I think it's asking her to look deeper. I think it's asking her to get smarter about her life, to get current with her, new life, to get into right relationship with her parents. And to me, that's mostly inner work, really, right? Relationship with her parents means, Hey, these are your parents. These are the kids' grandparents. These are the people in your life. They are of massive help to you. Start loving it. Otherwise, you're gonna be resisting it every day and arguing about silly nonsense.
Now, if she would've gone to a typical practitioner, which she did, they're gonna tell her, you know, upon whatever testing was done and nothing's wrong, or she ended up going to a dietician, you know, most good dieticians would catch, they're a little low in fat.
But depending on the dietician, I don't know what they would do. So all I'm saying is even a great nutritionist, a great dietician working in the realm of nutrition and diet alone is not gonna do it for this girl. Is it gonna help her? You bet. It really will. If I could only help her with diet, I, I could help her a good 40, 50%, halfway. The other half is her life and how she's seeing the world. So what I'm saying to you is, when we are committed to exploring fatigue from various perspectives, remember we said this, we give our clients the best chance to succeed, my friends.
Now, I want to tell you, Jolene had shared with me in the first session that, oh, she asked me how long the work was gonna take between us, which is always an interesting question. I don't know. It is really what I wanna say. Um, and
she mentioned to me that, you know, she could only see me for some, some, she didn't give a number, some limited number of sessions, basically referring to the fact of cost. She needed to be cost conscious. So right then and there, I made a decision and I thought to myself,
I can probably help her easily in three to four months. I can probably help her see some results. She's on a limited budget. This is not the kind of person in my guesstimation that's gonna be a deep diving, long-term client who then wants to meet a coach about this, that, and the other thing.
So I guesstimated, I said to her, listen, I think you and I can meet for about five sessions over three or four months. And in those five sessions, I'm gonna lay the foundation for you. And we're gonna do work along the way. And I'm not gonna make this hard for you. I'm not gonna ask you to do impossible things, and I don't want you to do anything you don't wanna do.
Notice this conversation that I'm having with her, I don't want you to do anything that you don't wanna do. So whatever you do, you're doing it because you've agreed to do it and it's doable for you. So I'm not gonna give you anything impossible to follow, and I'm gonna lay it all out. So even after we finish our work, you are going to know all the pieces that I think are important for your energy puzzle.
So she liked that, and I kind of intuited, you know, I just had a good feeling about that because I wanna follow her, her over time. But the changes I'm gonna give her, you know, I could see her once every two weeks, once every three weeks. Um, even more, you know, once a month, once a month is a long time. The first month, I'm gonna probably wanna see her twice. Twice, just for momentum's sake, just so there's not too much length of time in the first, you know, couple of sessions. Okay? So what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna just fast track this and tell you, we indeed had five sessions over four months. By the time we finished working, Jolene's energy improved by about in her guesstimation 75%. Her secondary symptoms were basically doing great. Her skin was far healthier, like far, far healthier. She really had more of a glow to her. Constipation is completely gone, completely. Uh, isn't that nice? Um, she said she's in a better mood. She says she has a happier outlook. That's because you now have likely a better hormonal picture, better chemicals of energy. Why? Because you have some of the building blocks, important building blocks of hormones and chemicals of energy, which is essential fats in your diet. And you're eating and you're not hungry, and you're not limiting yourself, and you're getting more pleasure. So better mood, happier outlook. It turns out in the course of our work, she did own that. She was binge eating at night. Um, and it was pretty much, you know, every night. So that did come out. And honestly, her binge eating was very much, yes, it was a stress release for sure, but it also had everything to do with diet, and it had everything to do with low fat. And her binge eating was now down to once or twice per week. And in her words, it's under control. Previously she was out of control. She hadn't wanted to tell me she was out of control. I perfectly understood. Um, this information, by the way, came out in our second session. Um, actually, once I started realizing that we're only together five sessions, I decided, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put my foot on the gas a little more here, um, and move things forward. Um, so she was actually a very good sport about that. And I wanna tell you, the way I visited that with her was, it was probably midway through the second session I said, and, and it was, you know, I was waiting for the right moment. I was, I was waiting for a moment when it felt like her and I had dropped in a little bit more. She was trusting me more. You know, after our first session, I had initially, um, just asked her to focus on slow eating. I asked her to focus on macronutrient balance and better quality food. Um, so when she came back into the second session, she was feeling damn good. Uh, it was, it was pretty. I, I, I had a client then, meaning she's gonna stay with me because she just got a darn good result. So, because I'm now more confident and she's now more comfortable, and she knows she's gonna be with me, she knows I know what I'm doing. Uh, I said to her, you know, Hey, Jolene, there, there, there's something I wanted to check in with you about. You know, I've been doing this work a little bit and I really love it. And you know, I know there's a lot of challenging places people can get to around food. And I don't know, you know, when we talked about what was going on in the evening sometimes where, you know, you might not eat dinner or just have a little bit of dinner and then have some cereal or cookies, it felt like you got a little bit uncomfortable talking with me about that. And I, I just wanted to circle back to that and just see, was I wrong about that? That's when it came out. So we actually had a very sweet conversation about it, and I didn't really go into anything personal or emotional around it, you know, I said to her, that's by the time we finish working, I have a very good feeling, um, that this is not gonna be so big a challenge for you anymore because it's largely I said dietary related, which honestly, for her, I believe is true largely probably about 65, 70% dietary related. The other 30% is the fact that she's just, she's just a little stress cookie, you know? Um, because she's a young woman with two kids and two annoying parents and a husband who travels a lot, and there's, there's just a lot on her plate. Um, Jolene is enjoying her new diet. Um, she's not gaining any weight, by the way, um, which was a big thing for her. She didn't lose any weight in our work together. But honestly, I, I don't even know that she had weight to lose. I, I, I really mean that. She said she had gained five pounds. Is that possible? Sure. You know, but she's, she's a small human. Um, so whatever the five pounds were, we didn't focus on it. I didn't focus on it. Um, I didn't have time to focus on that. There. Actually, it was more important for me to focus on helping her with her energy than helping her focus on the toxic nutritional belief. I need to lose five pounds. So, ah, also her cravings for fat completely 100% gone. She still has occasional sweet cravings, but they're occasional. I love this one. I love this, love this, love this what she said to me by the end of our work, she said, food tastes better. I can't tell you how happy that makes me. It's so silly. Um, but what that means is her physiology has changed, her brain has changed, her taste buds have changed, her body wisdom has changed, her awareness has changed because of the work we've been doing together. And the great advice in education and suggestions that I've been giving her, her body essentially said, thank you. And her body got smarter previously. She is assaulting. And I mean that assaulting her taste buds with poor quality food and specifically artificial sweeteners, will over time dampen your taste buds. Is that a scientific fact? Um, not according to mainstream science. Uh, is that a fact that I've observed in many, many, many humans? You bet. I would argue that to the death, and I know I'm right on that one. Um, anytime you're eating a strange, bizarre human-made molecule that's toxic to the body that we know is toxic to the body, science will tell you that artificial sweeteners can be cytotoxic and neurotoxic. That's science. Okay? But the way the world works, that doesn't matter because it's industry as well. So anyway, food is tasting better for her. Um, she's getting along way better with her parents. So we worked on that actually in every session. Um, I just focused her on, listen, you have to raise yourself into motherhood and adulthood, and you have to stop looking at your parents like they're annoying. Mommy and daddy. Like, you literally have to reframe how you see your parents. They are no longer mommy and daddy. They are grandpa and grandma, and they are here to help you with their kids. If they weren't here, your life would be so miserable, wouldn't it? And she smiles, of course. So I'm basically calling her into adulthood. And every session of our four remaining sessions, I check in with her, how you're doing with your parents. And the practice is learning to be thankful for them and for what they do, and to not sweat the small things. And I'll also tell you, by the end of our work together, four months just looking at her, she, she's more settled. She's less fidgety, she's more present, she's more aware. If she was previously moving at about 70 miles an hour, she's now, she's now doing the speed limit. Honestly, she's now doing 55, is what it felt like.
So my friends, you know, collectively, it's, it's, it's time to get over a hour addiction to more, you know, we always want more. I want more stuff. I want more things. I want more money. I want more fun. I want more happiness. I want more, more, more, more. And we want more energy.
And we don't always appreciate what we have. Really. It's as simple as that. And there's this thing about wanting more. I think wanting more can come from a healthy place for sure, but oftentimes not always. Oftentimes wanting more instantly creates the state of not having enough. You see the little twist there. So I can want more. And if I'm also living in some satisfaction of what I have right now, then that wanting more is not draining me. But if what's living inside me is I want more, I want more, I want more, then what's also living inside me is I don't have enough. I don't have enough. I don't have enough. So constantly, we're always living in a place of lack. And that's what happens with a lot of people around energy. They're living in lack. And it makes perfect sense. Why? Because I did have more energy and now I have less. So I'm not knocking that it makes sense. But when we clamor for more,
the more we do that from a place of fear, anxiety, demand, and not really listening to the divine symptom, the more we're gonna live in, in poverty consciousness. I don't have enough. I don't have enough, I don't have enough. As opposed to, okay, how do I manage this energy? How do I spend it wisely? See that little twist?
So, you know, my client needed to become a more effective, more aware, and more mature human. That's what energy is teaching us. It's teaching us to work smarter and not harder. And I think we're all learning to some degree the things in life that can drain our energy and the things in life that give us energy. She was draining energy. Jolene was draining energy on just a relationship with her parents that was so silly from her end. I don't need to know what the parents specifically are doing. I don't need them to grow up. They're who they are. They're grandparents. They're old. Let them have their life. Let them have their habits. Just let 'em be who they are. If they were these awful people, sure, but they're not. They're just irritating to her. And when you let go of those irritations, guess what? Oh, life is a little better. You have more energy. You know much to some people's dismay. Our energy can be very sensitive and easily depleted if we don't continuously get smarter as you get older. As our clients get older, we need to be smarter with our energy because you will get more sensitive. Meaning you will be more and more responsive to that in your environment. That does not work. This used to work. I used to be able to do this. Great. I agree. You used to be able be able to do this, and now you can't. So we gotta grow. So I'm always focusing on baby steps, baby steps, baby steps with my low energy client.
Let's get into another case story. Let's talk about Deidra.
Okay. When I first saw Deidre, she was 34 years old, real estate agent, uh, living in Los Angeles. Very busy human, very motivated. Uh, she's been more and more successful in her business. She works very long hours. Um, Deidre presents as extremely polished. Uh, she's, she's attractive, she's very formal in her presentation, in her energy. Um, she's a regular exerciser. She's very health conscious. She describes herself. She's one of those, she's a slow eater. Um, five foot seven and weighs 121 pounds. Uh, Deidre wants to be wealthy. Um, you know, we, we talked a lot about work. She's on it. She's on it. Uh, she's in a two year relationship. She's not exactly sure where it's going. Uh, she's very close with her family. Uh, Deidre has very strong religious values. She is suffering from fatigue. So that's why she's coming to see me. She's coming to see me for fatigue. Uh, she's increasingly drinking more coffee. She's up to four cups per day. She has trouble sleeping at night. She's seeing a very skilled chiropractor naturopath. Uh, but no results so far. She's been also tested for a variety of things. Thyroid issues, Epstein-Barr, all tests negative. Uh, Deidre is understandably concerned because no matter what kind of intervention she tries, supplements diet, nothing is helping. Like nothing is moving the needle for her, literally nothing. So here's an interesting client.
Let's look at the diet breakfast for Deidre 7:00 AM She has Kashi cereal with fresh fruit, some flax seeds and soy milk. Uh, 10:00 AM she has a snack. She'll have two cups of coffee. Um, 1:00 PM she'll have a hummus sandwich with some, just a bunch of fresh veggies. And she'll have another cup of coffee at 3:30 PM She'll do some crackers with low fat cheese, and she'll have another cup of coffee at 8:00 PM She'll have a pasta dinner, usually with vegetables or pasta with shrimp on occasion for dinner, she'll have a fruit sorbet for dessert, she'll have a fruit sorbet, or she'll have a non-fat frozen yogurt.
Now, what I wanna tell you here as well
is that I am wondering about her diet as she's sharing about it with me, in part because I'm looking at her, I am noticing that she occurs as very slender to me. So I'm interested in food amount, and I had to push a little, just a little bit. I had to ask a few more questions than normal, you know, what do you have for breakfast? Oh, I have Kashi cereal with fresh fruit, flax and soy milk. Now, I usually don't say how much cereal, but you know, I, I thought I'd ask. She said, well, we'll have a bowl of cereal. I'm like, what kind of bowl? Like, like, show me, show me. What's a bowl to you? I got some big bowls in my house, you know, do like, show me with your hands. And she showed me a very small bowl with her fingers. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Um, it turns out when she has her dinner with pasta and veggies or pasta with shrimp, like how much pasta? Oh, it's, you know, a small plate show me. And she showed me. And once again, it didn't look like a lot.
So, um, I'm, I'm putting that into, um, putting that into my internal computer program. But here's really what I wanna say to you.
The more I'm looking at her, the more I'm talking to her, the more I'm seeing that she looks and presents to me as too thin. You're too thin. What right? Do I have to say that I got no right? Um, but what has earned me the, um, how can I say, earn me the stripes to say that is because this is what I do for a living for so many years. Um, I'm not just working with people's food and diet. I'm working with their bodies. And because I have spent a lot of time actually working with bodies from an exercise standpoint, et cetera, uh, if you're in the biz, you're in the business, you start to get a sense of when somebody is carrying too much weight for them or not carrying enough weight for them. You know, there are some people who are naturally slender and wiry and that's it. There are some people that are naturally gonna be bigger and fater and that's it. They're fine. And they don't actually present as too big or too fat.
So I think she's too thin, and I always trust my perceptions around that. Uh, she has a masculine feel to her, meaning, you know, despite her, despite the fact that she's very feminine in her dress and she's very petite, um, she's a very logical linear nuts and bolts. Like, get down a business here. Um, you know, I mentioned you should very put together in terms of fashion and makeup, like really. Um, but at the same time, I also noticed she has dark circles under her eyes, which you've hear, heard me say. I think when we, um, did a case story on meadow, which is often a sign of toxicity or adrenal fatigue or kidney issues, or not enough sleep, which she does have trouble sleeping. So, you know, everybody knows this dark circles under the eyes doesn't mean life is good. It means something's up. So it's kind of making sense to me to focus first and foremost on diet as my client is, um, a very determined person. And I'm assuming she's a little more logical and linear because that's how she presents. So I'm assuming this is where she's gonna feel most comfortable. So I want her to add in protein at breakfast. And we had to negotiate that she was willing to only add some vegan protein powder to her cereal. That was an interesting one. Um, I had tried to negotiate other animal and fish protein at breakfast or nut butter. She wouldn't have any of it. So I'm like, like, what else can I do? I said, well, it was a smoothie. I don't really like smoothies, huh uh, you know, smoothie with some protein powder. And then she said, well, I could put protein powder in my cereal. Okay, actually people do that. So she was willing to do a vegan protein powder. Great, okay. That's a negotiation. She didn't do what I wanted her to do, did not do what I wanted her to do. Um, and I want you to notice also, you know, I try to sneak this one in here. I said to her, I wanted her to have more protein at breakfast. And then I suggested like, you know, nut butter on a piece of fruit, or I suggested, you know, fish, some kind of breakfast fish, and both of which have fat on them, particularly the nut butter. Um, I try to sneak it in because I think she needs more fat, and I'm not sure she's going to do fat. By the way, her hummus is a non-fat hummus. Forgot to write that down. Um, so, so that didn't work. I asked her to diversify her lunch to get more protein and fat. She didn't like this at all. Why am I asking that? Why are we talking about that? I said to her, you are coming to see me for fatigue. You are tired. You have the diet of a person who is likely low in protein and low in essential fatty acids. I didn't, I I'm not gonna use the word fat with her, um, initially, because that's a scary word. So that is actually a good point that I haven't brought up before, which is when you're discussing with a client of getting more fat in their diet, and if they are clearly somebody who is fat phobic or you suspect they're a little bit fat phobic, then don't use the word fat. Use the word I, we need to get more essential fatty acids into your diet. You're saying fat. They kind of hear that. They might ask what that is, and you might have to say it's healthy dietary fat.
But when you say essential fatty acids, it's, it doesn't sound as bad as fat. The f word, the evil word. Okay? So she agreed to do a salad a couple times a week. She could have bread with it for some reason. She wanted bread, a piece of bread. Um, she agreed to add some avocado to the salad along with hummus. Uh, I try to negotiate olive oil. You know, I started at three tablespoons. She agreed to one. So I am now aware that my client is very focused on her weight, on her low fat lifestyle, on being thin. And she feels very immovable right now to me in this realm. Well, pretty much immovable. Uh, she's a tough negotiator, meaning I'm taking what I can get with her any little change. But honestly, I, I'm feeling like it's not enough, but I decide I'm gonna work with her and go with where she is at. You gotta do that. You can't force your clients to do something they don't wanna do. And I'm happy that she negotiated with me. I like a client who negotiates because that means they win. Always let my, uh, the client always wins. 'cause they agree I can do this. I can't do that. It just means there's a far better chance that they will comply when they negotiate with me.
So I'm gonna work with her where she's at, and I'm going to take advantage of any openings that I can find. Okay? So I want her to take a couple of weeks until we meet the next session because I need time for things to kind of work themselves out based on the strategies I've asked. Okay? After two weeks, Deidrich comes in and says, I don't think I noticed any difference. Ouch, that hurt. Um, so that was a hard one for me because on the one hand I was hopeful, and on the other hand, I was kind of a little disappointed after the first session that she negotiated hard and wasn't doing enough of what I wanted her to do, but I was still hopeful. So I decide I'm gonna lay it on the line because there's nothing else I can do if that's, if that's your negotiation with me and you won, and we don't see a result, in order for me to help you, you need to follow my lead a little bit more. So essentially, I very gently and sweetly and lovingly and firmly did an intellectual intervention around what I considered to be her body image driven, limited diet deri. Here's what I see happening. I see you, and I've told you this, but I really wanna put this in perspective. I see you being very low in protein and fat, and I see you needing to eat more. I see that what's going on for you with your low energy, um,
is that you're being impacted because you have a, a clear nutritional deficiency. Essential fats are the building blocks of hormones and chemicals of energy in your body. You're deficient in those. It will eventually affect you more and more and more. It could affect your skin health, it can affect your hair and nails. It can affect your childbearing ability. Um, I also said that one of the symptoms of low fat for too many years is eventually people actually begin to gain weight. Why? Because many people go into what's called a so I'm scaring her right now. Many people go into a survival response. IE the survival response is when your body thinks it's on a desert island, when your body thinks it's on a desert island and looks around and goes, oh my God, I'm on a desert island. I better slow down calorie burning capacity. I better store fat vigorously and not build muscle. Building muscle takes a lot of energy. Storing fat vigorously is a good idea. If there's not enough food, so your body thinks it's not enough food, eventually that can catch up with you. And I said, you're gonna likely experience, and, and I meant this, this is, this is true. I would say this to anyone. Um, I said, if you keep down this road and keep following this diet, your symptoms can get worse. And really what's most important for me to say to you is, you know, you're following this diet because it helps you maintain a certain look and a certain weight and a certain shape. That's what I said to her. And I said, quite honestly, I think you are too low in body fat and I think you need to put on a little weight.
So, uh, suffice it to say giving a person that kind of feedback. She was absolutely mortified that I said that. I might as well have said, you have to sacrifice your firstborn and, and, and, you know, jump off a cliff. And it's, it's, it was awful in terms of the look on her face. She was, it's the last thing she thought I would ever say, and it's the last thing she wants to hear.
And I followed that up with, listen, I'm telling you this because I care. There's no woman on the planet that I've ever met, quite frankly, who wants to gain weight. Actually, I have met a few, um, because they're extremely slender and they're really trying to gain weight. And no matter what they do, they can't. But essentially, it's fair to say no, most women don't wanna gain weight. So I understand, but the reason why I am saying that is I am extremely worried for your health. I'm extremely worried for your health into the future. And I said to her, because I, based on the look on her face and based on what I was imagining, um, I don't expect her to come back again for another session. So I was very willing to lose this client. Why? Because me losing a client is nothing. You losing a client is nothing compared to
not for me not raising my hand. When I see a person who is harming themselves with their diet in service to a perfectionist body image that is a toxic nutritional belief that she has caught as a virus from the world that's not even hers, that I know will affect her worse and worse, it'll affect her mind, it'll affect her body, it'll affect her health. And she's going down a bad road. So, I'm sorry, my, my job is to raise my hand and say something in the best possible way that I think she will be able to hear me. I want my client to hear me. You follow what I'm saying? Um, so I told her and I laid it on the line and I said, you know, it's, it's, I know that's not what you want to hear, and I'm interested to see, you know, what you have to say about that. So, you know, I had brought up the thing about it's gonna affect her childbearing. Guess what? The first thing she said to me, she spun. She, she, she, she hadn't put it together because I had said, you know, it's gonna affect your childbearing, meaning you're not gonna be able to bear children. So she said, she spontaneously just shared she hasn't had her period in four months. I said, do you want children in the future? And she absolutely, yes. So I explained very clearly, you're proving my point with your experience. Um, healthy mother means the best chance to have a healthy baby. And you're not healthy right now. I'm just telling you, you are not healthy. You know, you're not healthy. You look in the mirror, you can see in your face that you are not healthy. By the way, that's a little bit of a low blow, but it's not. I'm appealing to her vanity and what she knows anyway. We've already, she's already referenced the dark circles around her eyes. I'm not the first person to bring it up in this relationship. Um, you know, also discuss the effects of fat deficiency and protein deficiency on a developing fetus. I said, if this was the diet you were eating, if you had a baby in your body, you would be harming their growth. So I pulled out the fear card, but quite frankly, my friends, it's the Fear Card in a very honest way. You know, I'm just telling it like it is. Well, as far as I'm concerned, I've got a client now and she has agreed to try more protein and fat. So, and this was rocking her world. This whole conversation truly was rocking her world. It just, it, it's, her face was red, you could practically see her head exploding. Um, why? Because right now to what's the most important thing to my client? Well, you know, of the four questions, the question, what's most important to my client? Well, what's most important to her? Yeah. She wants to be rich and she wants to be successful. But really in the future, um, having a family is most important to her.
Having a family and raising them in a good way is most important to her. So I'm, I kind of appealed to that. That's why we asked that question. And I'm sensing that because she's, she's a, she's a religious woman. She is. You can just tell she's the, she, she's just a good human. Um, so she agreed to try more protein and fat, um, nut butter, at least two tablespoons of nut butter with toasted breakfast, a full tuna salad or chicken salad sandwich at lunch. You have to put olive oil in there. Um, with the chicken salad or the tuna salad, she needed to do this two straight weeks. You can't just try it once. You need to do it two straight weeks to see results. Um, so now her fear is a healthy motivator. Now, after two weeks, she comes back. She has 50% more energy. She feels more upbeat. She's more sharp. And guess what? She has about a three pound weight gain, and she's horrified. Um,
honestly, she looked better. It looks a lot better. She, she, she looked like, um, okay, okay, we pulled you out of the desert and we gave you a meal. You're looking good. Um, how she can be horrified of that, you know, I get it. I understand it. But visually, visually, she looks so much better, so much healthier, so much brighter, so much more glow. She was starving for essential fats.
So basically, my client is now in her nightmare. She's had weight gain. Uh, truth be told, I actually wanted to give her more fat and more protein. Uh, but she's still in a lot of cognitive dissonance because the weight gain, she's feeling better. When I was three pounds less, I didn't feel good. I'm three pounds more now. I'm doing what this evil nutrition guy said, and I'm feeling so much better, and she looks better. So I said, listen, you know, you've got a choice. And I, I'm not gonna take anything personally, which I won't. Um, I told her, you know, we could stop our work if you don't feel like you wanna move forward with my suggestions. You know, I would totally understand. Um, and I also said, listen, you need to get your cycle back.
You don't have your cycle because your body thinks it's on a desert island and your body's smart, and it's not gonna give birth on a desert island. It's not that dumb. So the only way you're gonna get your cycle back is through better nutrition. I pulled out the term better nutrition, um, and I was very clear with her. I was very matter of fact. But I, and I'm honestly concerned for her at the same time, I really am, because I'm in a fascinating position. I'm in a very good position where I can really serve this person, because what I am talking to is her toxic belief.
She's buried somewhere inside herself. I'm talking to the toxic belief that's running her life.
At the same time, I know I can't fight her around her perfectionism because she's really steeped in it. And this is my doorway to help her around her perfectionism,
because she was smart enough to tell me that she doesn't have her cycle. And I'm smart enough to understand, Hey, here's why. It's pretty simple. I've seen this 150 times. You go low fat or no fat, and you're a girl, you bet, say goodbye to your period at some point, add in overstress, definitely say goodbye to your period. So she had all the perfect conditions to say goodbye to childbearing.
You know, in a lot of ways, I think Deidre was very connected to her feminine, disconnected from her feminine power. Uh, her, she was masculine in her work masculine and hi in, in her persona. Um, you know, when I look at her from the back, she looks like a teenage boy. Like her body looks like a teenage boy's body. Um, not menstruating, my friends. That's a separation from the feminine, driven by a distorted body image, which then leads to food behaviors that support that separation from the feminine and that distorted body image. So what the female body does during its reproductive years is it has the ability to, to reproduce. So on so many levels, her body is having its feminine archetype and its feminine energy, and its feminine metabolism sucked out of it. So her deeper choice, actually, should she make it, is really about embracing the feminine. Like, Hey, you're a woman and you, you're going to fill out, you're not gonna be skin and bones and muscle. So in her mind, she's either confronted with staying very thin or choosing to have a menstrual cycle, being a mature woman and gaining some weight.
And towards the end of the session, I let her know that.
So I'm, this is, this client is being hit very hard in her mind, this is hard work for her because I'm talking about essentially her disordered relationship with food and body in a way where she can't avoid anything that I'm saying. I'm saying, okay, so some further issues are now coming up, um, which is really great because now she's actually feeling a personal connection with me and we're able to talk. And as we're talking about childbearing, and I'm really harping on that, you know, what came up was she's not sure where the relationship is going. Um, you know, I asked her, what do you want? Um, and it turns out she has a timeline, and that's great as she should. And she eventually wants a family. She's now 34, and she's thinking, you know, within a couple of years to start having children. And she was hoping to make a lot of money first and then have kids. That's the piece about revisiting her timeline. So she's not where she wants to be financially. She literally wants to be wealthy. I don't even know what wealthy means for her, but she's not there yet. Um, so she feels like when she has kids and she's wealthy, then she's, she could devote all her time and energy to kids. She has the money that she need, all that sort of thing. That's a great plan. Um,
so in other words, you know, she really, she's really not bought into reclaiming her feminine, at least not yet, because okay, I still need to get my money first, then I can have children. Really, what I wanna say about that is oftentimes unexamined specificity can be an impediment to the not yet mature princess mind. I'm gonna say that again, that's a doozy. Unexamined specificity is often a roadblock, an impediment to the not yet mature princess mind. In other words, for the young immature princess,
it's easy to be specific. So specific, the feminine can, by nature, by its by its archetype. The feminine is actually very specific in what makes it feel good, what doesn't make it feel good. You know, watch a lot of women in relationship with food. They know exactly what kind of texture they want. They know what kind of taste they want. They know what kind of exactly when something hits their palette, exactly what kind of salad dressing they want. Women can be very specific. The feminine can be very specific in us. That's great, wonderful. Love it. When we don't examine our specificity, oftentimes it rules us. I want this very specifically, has to be that some women and some feminine oriented males can be so caught up in their specificity, has to be just like this has to be just like that has to be, this has to happen. And then that has to happen. And that has, I'm sorry, but no, that's immature princess mind at work. So that's what I felt I was looking at. For a woman who is 34, who should be in her mature princess space right now, she's, she's ready to start stepping into mature princess.
So she's not sure what she wants to do. I don't blame her. We agreed to let things marinate for a month or two and then reconnect and see if she wants to continue working together. I asked her to fill her boyfriend in on all the details of our work together if she chooses. Um, and to consider, just open up a real dialogue about your future and what you want and when you want kids, and your timeline, his timeline, and just, just stop floating. Um, you know, and let's connect. Call me in a month or two, doesn't matter to me when you're ready, and we'll check in and see where we want to go. So sure enough, two months later, she reaches out and love it. Honest woman. She told me that, you know, a few weeks after seeing me, she, you know, after our last session, she was continuing what we were doing together, her dietary changes, but then she quickly reverted back to her old way of eating, and she was feeling awful. She then went back to the diet that I'd given her, and she felt better during this time. Sure enough, she had, um, some good conversations with her boyfriend, and she said he woke up and all of a sudden they are very diligent about planning their future together. Um, right now she's feeling stuck and confused, and I told her, Hey, I think we got more work to do together. It's time for you to see me again. And she agreed. So she comes in this time, she is far more open, and I, I, I just feel I've got a, I I'm talking to a different person. It feels like she's a little more serious. Um, I think life has gotten more serious for her in a good way. She's now planning with her boyfriend about the future. So anyway, um, four grams of an EFA supplement, three times per day. So with each meal, you're taking 4,000 milligram capsules of an essential fat. By the way, you've heard me say fat and capsules for many people is way more doable for many women, especially than fat and food. Um, I asked her to stick to her new meal plan and to actually email me when her period returns. So the new meal plan is really the old meal plan, but with the added, uh, EFA supplement. So basically she came back to see me and I said, okay, you know, we're upping the ante here. Um, I really, you know, taking a supplement also in this case very specifically. So it's basically food in a pill. It's food in a pill. Not every pill you buy in a hell food store is food in a pill. An EFA supplement is food in a pill. So every time you take that pill, taking pills is a little bit more medical. Taking pills is a little bit more, this is about my health and my metabolism. It's a little more, uh, um, it's, it's got a little more science in it. It's, it's it'ss more serious.
So I want her to be in that frame of mind. That's, that's another reason why I want her taking a supplement. It's reminding her three times a day, you gotta be on this. Okay? Sure enough, three months later, her period returned. Love it. Um, she's preen gaged to her boyfriend. She told me very reluctantly, you know, as much as she wanted it to go somewhere, uh, once it happened, she got a good laugh out of that. She was saying, you know, all of a sudden he was all gung ho. Uh, and she started pulling back a little bit, but they're preg engaged. Whatever preen engaged means to silly to me. But, um, I guess it means something. I guess it does mean something. Okay. Um, but her period returned. What a beautiful thing.
Let me share some final thoughts about this client. Once again, my friends, I want you to see how I was committed to this client's largest goal. Not her smallest ones. Almost lost her as a client. Technically, I should have lost her as a client because she gained weight. And this is a person who had zero interest in gaining weight. She was committed to being borderline anorexic. So her low energy on one level was the absence of the feminine. If you look at it from an archetypal diagnostic standpoint, absence of the feminine in her life, in her affect, in her work, in how she relates to her body, in how she relates with food, in how she relates with her own inner world. Her low energy was made possible metabolically by a diet, low in fat, low in protein, low in calories, and too high in caffeine. She was very deeply attached to being skinny. So much so that she became disembodied. She, she literally, like when, when I first met her, it, it, it just felt like, where are you? As much as she was present and clear and can talk very, uh, intelligently when it came to her body, um, it, it just felt like she wasn't in it. Um, you know, many women especially become so determined around achieving and maintaining a very specific weight or figure that they fall into suffering and distortion and symptom, and they don't even get the connection because they're so committed to skinny. Um, the key to success here was baby steps and was being clear, was not forcing my client. I didn't go toe to toe with her. I followed my intuition. I let her make her choices. I was not trying to fix her. I was being super real and super honest. I was being willing to lose a client. And, and I did good work in the world. I feel great about myself after seeing her. So much so that I feel good about this client, that I've included her as a case study in this training. Um, because it, it was a, it was a, for me personally, it was a beautiful affirmation of my willingness to lose a client in service to that person's highest call.
Um, I'm not gonna hide when I see what you are doing. I'm not going to be silent if I see you harming yourself. I might wait for the right time to say something, which I did.
But I'm gonna do my job now. You know, this, this leads me to think about one of the core teachings of fatigue. I believe for modern times in these days. One of the core teachings that fatigue, or one of the teachings fatigue has for us is that it addresses a particular issue that many people in the world seem to be gripped with these days more and more, which is being somebody.
I just notice people wanna be somebody. And when I say be somebody, I am saying that in a negative sense. Of course, I wanna be somebody in this world. Um, but I'm, I'm, I'm putting quotation marks around somebody, being somebody. 'cause we have a certain notion of what somebody is that isn't really in alignment with who we are and is more in alignment with a toxic meme, a toxic virus that floats around the world, that the media presents to us every day in every way being somebody. What I'm saying, being somebody means in the negative here, is that I'm not enough as I am right now. I should be ashamed of where I am right now because I haven't hit the big time. I need to be someone else or somewhere else to have more value as a human being. Somebody means I'm comparing myself to some arbitrary standard of success and fame. I must be important. Here's the thing. Somebody for a lot of people means I have to be important. I have to stand out, I have to be different. I have to be financially successful. I have to be noticed for a lot of people. They just need to go big and be recognized. So I was dealing with a client who really wanted to quote unquote go big. Um, she was doing well for herself for sure, but she clearly wanted to go big. I have no fine, have your goals, absolutely go for it. And at the same time, be willing to examine them and see where you're coming from. Because oftentimes when we're not clear about where we're coming from with our goals, it's actually harder to achieve that goal because the motivating forces and the driving forces were actually not in alignment with our true self. So, you know, the psychology of fame or being somebody, I think it's important to, to spend a moment here. So let me just lay it on the line. Let me, let me just give you my very strong opinion here. My strong opinion is that culture teaches us that fame is the ultimate destination. It doesn't tell you that straight up in words, but it tells you that in every show that you watch, where you're being discovered for being a singer or discovered for having this special talent and a judges fawn all over you, and you're gonna be famous and you're gonna go big, and our freaking kids are watching this nonsense. Yeah, I've watched these shows and I enjoyed them, but at the same time, they're programming us in a real bad way, in my opinion, because it's teaching us that fame is the big time. It's the ultimate destination, and it has the ultimate value. Yep. The people that get that, they're the most valuable because why? Because look at all the attention and the money and then, and the goodies they're getting. Even if we don't want fame, it's still held up by the world as the gold standard is constantly being thrown in your face and, and, and, and, and being wealthy is constantly being thrown in your face. Many of our behaviors, silently and unknowingly are pushing us towards being somebody, towards making it big. I I notice this about Deidre, and we're often trying to achieve in a way that is simply a bit unnatural, sometimes impossible, oftentimes ineffective, and we end up feeling a sense of failure.
So, you know, a little bit more, I wanna break this down a little bit more. Being somebody as often closely associated with winning the lottery, I made it and just one try. Ta-da or finding the one answer or the one strategy, or the one system for ultimate success.
You know, being somebody often comes with the turf of false promises because any false promise that out there that promises you, you're gonna be somebody if you do this course, take this program, eat this food, put on this makeup, I don't know, whatever. There's so many false promises out there that are luring people in with the promise that you're gonna be somebody here. So we end up placing style over substance. We end up putting money over morals. We create all this weird, unnecessary competition with each other. And the bottom line is, it's being somebody who's very stressful. Somebody in, in, in this, in this terminology. And stressful means create stress, physiology, and all of its repercussions. You know what those are. So the fact that we think we need to be somebody, again, I'm saying it's a literal toxic belief,
but the thing is, it's a very socially acceptable one. You go, oh wow, you're going for the big time. Good for you. Good luck. I hope you make it. It's highly seductive. Go ahead, pursue your dreams. Oh yeah, of course, pursue your dreams. But we don't always examine where it's coming from. And a lot of times when you see pursue your dreams in the movies, it's to become the one famous person. Because you're famous, because you're singing or dancing or acting, and there's not a lot of famous singers and dancers and actors, my friends, you can, you can count 'em on a handful of hands. There's not a lot. And everybody's clamoring for that. And it distracts us from the core wound of, I'm not enough, I'm unlovable as I am. That's really what's going on. So it, it, it, it kind of feeds into that wound, feeds into that wound, but at the same time doesn't let us see what the wound is. So there's a lot of people who end up in a professional black hole because they're trying to achieve something that they've set the bar so impossibly high. I'm not saying don't set a high bar for yourself or for anyone, but we have to see, am I being driven by an unconscious need to be somebody? Because if so, ah, there's gonna be some challenges along the way and you might not exactly get where you wanna go.
So oftentimes, not always our low energy and fatigue is asking us to confront the nature of our ambition. What's driving you to reexamine our goals using a strong spiritual compass? You, you gotta refer to something greater, a higher code. If you're an atheist, God, if you believe in God, higher power, you name it, put your name on it, whatever works for you. But I'm gonna use my language right now. Examine our goals using a strong spiritual compass. Notice your ego is this coming from a healthy ego place, and it's certainly for yourself. Help and help your clients see through the cultural illusion of high speed, high achievement, high visibility, high attention, because oftentimes that's driving us to be just stress monkeys. And no matter what good food you eat, it's not gonna help if we're driving ourselves into the ground by a toxic belief that doesn't serve us.
So my friends, let's finish up with this. Our task as practitioners is do your job. Just do your job and do it well.
So this is now, I'm appealing to you as a professional and you, in terms of the bar you're setting for yourself.
If you want to be good at what you do, then do your job and do it well as best you can, and learn how to do your job and learn how to do it well. If you truly wanted to go big and be famous, then do your job and do it well. At the very least, even if you never get big and famous, at least you know how to do a, a job really well. And people notice that. Focus on your craft. Focus on being good at what you do, deliver value.
If you're focusing on being big before you're focusing on doing your job well and focusing your craft and delivering value, then you got it backwards. Please don't waste your time or energy. I really mean this for you as a professional. This is me talking to you. If you're seeing clients are going to be seeing clients, do not waste your time and energy comparing yourself to other people, to other professionals thinking, look what he has, look what she has. Um, because you don't really know what they have. And there's a lot of smoke and mirrors going on out there in terms of people and how they present themselves to the world on social media, on their websites professionally. I don't care. Do your job and do it well. And remember that being a practitioner and being well known are not a package deal. I say that because in especially in the coaching universe and more and more in the practitioner universe, it's, it's becoming a, a field of celebrity. Meaning we're focused on the celebrities. Um, and it's, it's, it's not what it's made out to be. You know, I have a certain amount of celebrity in the nutrition or health field, or personal growth field, and it's, it's, it's good. When is good and it's not good when is not good. Um, but for me, my focus has always been on doing what I do well and learning and being the best practitioner that I can be and being the kind of person that approaches the body with the spirit of a true explorer, the spirit of a true scientist. I always put my craft first, um, first and foremost. And really, I think the less ego we have as practitioners, the better it is for us, the better it is for everyone. So I'm just saying, relax into your journey. You know, to be big and famous, you just have to do your job and do it well and touch the lives of the people that you work with and build on that success and build on that satisfaction and learn as you go along and learn from the places where you didn't exactly have the kind of success with a client that you wanted. Um, don't go into this field to be loved and adored. Um, nah, it's, that's, it's not the right field to be loved and adored. Um, and that tends to be an illusion. Anyway. Do it because you're drawn to do it. Do it because you're inspired to do it. Do it because it fascinates you. Do it because this work or other kinds of work have helped you advance yourself and become a better person. And now you wanna share what you've learned or what you're passionate about with others, that's a good thing. Then you are in good stead with the universe. Okay, my friends, I'll stop pontificating and get off my soapbox for now. But I'm just trying to tell you, relax and do your job. And that in and of itself is, um, a beautiful reward.
And we still got a bunch more to go when it comes to energy and fatigue. So we have to save our energy for energy and fatigue 'cause there's more coming down the pike. And I appreciate you as always, and I'll see you on the other side.

PART 7

Autoscroll:

Greetings. Once again, friends, Mark David here, founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. We are continuing our conversation about energy and fatigue, and let's spend a little bit of time talking about, oh, a rough cookie cutter approach to working with fatigue or low energy. So we'll see what that might mean. We'll also look at some of the specifics in terms of what you want to be listening for and asking your clients some of the key questions to focus on when you are speaking with your low energy client. So as always, just to warm us up, a couple of reminders. We're here to be great detectives. Not a great fixer, but a great detective. You know, we're asking our clients to be willing and inspired scientists of their own body. That's, that's part of your job, is to empower your client in relationship to their own body. And this is not just with energy and fatigue, this is in anything that you're working with your client. Uh, we want them to have the spirit of an explorer and you're gonna communicate that to them by you being an inspired scientist and you having the spirit of an explorer and you being upbeat about their journey and their process, despite the fact that it's hard for them. 'cause they're the one with the low energy. You are here to help them find the gold and to help them look for clues. So we're not looking to give energy drinks and supplements or substances that will give people more energy. Again, I want to remind you, I seldom see that work. Um, uh, definitely not as a long-term sustainable strategy. And that's what most people naturally fall into because it seems to be the easiest approach. It seems to make sense on one level, it does make sense to the logical mind. And there's your client who keeps on increasing their caffeine intake. I need more energy, which will in turn eventually lead to more fatigue. So we're looking to help our client effectively and exquisitely manage the energy they all already have right now as the key crucial number one can't miss starting place. And of course, we're looking to help our client let go of the practices that are draining their energy. And from this place you and I have as practitioners, we have the greatest chance of success when it comes to the most general population of fatigue clients. That's what we're going for here. We are not ultra specialists. We're generalists looking to be able to address the largest number of people who might possibly come our way. The most common complaints that you'll see
now for the practitioner, some of your energy challenge clients will already come in with a diagnosis of chronic fatigue or perhaps fibromyalgia for such clients. Unless you are a specialty practitioner already,
your job is to fill in all the blanks where their clinician, their primary support person, simply doesn't or didn't work as an educator coach. So you have a whole set of tools, which I'm gonna remind you of in this part of the conversation. You have a whole set of tools to help people.
Now, if you think your job is to fix someone, then you will be nervous, you will be freaked, and you will go, oh my God, I don't know what to do. This is too complex. And yes, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue might be too complex for you. Once again, if your client, hopefully they are under the care already of a practitioner because they've gotten this diagnosis and maybe they've gotten this diagnosis and they've worked with practitioners and nothing has helped. So you are stepping in to fill in the blanks that their previous specialist hasn't done.
Now, what I want to assure you and remind you here is that you and I, based on what we know and what we're learning, can be of great help to such clients once again, especially when you get, you're not here to fix it.
I say that a lot, don't I? It's so important because you're gonna forget so many times, um, for the chronically fatigued client who has gone through a lot of intervention, your approach is best when it's a patient one. Your approach is best. When you are relaxed, you are playing a long game and you start to move through the strategies and the specifics that you've learned to help people. So with that said, please encourage any client who is not under the care of a truly skilled physician to make sure they've had some basic blood work for nutritional and hormonal status.
Make sure to find out what care they are indeed under, if any, and what, if any diagnosis they have been given.
You'll also be listening for what kind of strategies they have already tried. You're listening for what's been successful and what hasn't. And once again, you listen for all that and you simply focus on working in the areas you are best at.
At the end of the day, think about your own self. You're not dependent on one person, one practitioner since you've been born, to fix all your ailments and to fix all your problems and to heal the broken bones and do the surgery and fill in the cavities and help you with the coughs and the coals and the flus and the pneumonias and whatever. You've probably been under the care of a lot of different people at a lot of different times. It's how it works. You are that practitioner for your client. You are one of perhaps many people that they've been seen. Now, you know, perhaps in the old days, back in the 1920s, thirties, forties and fifties, it was a little bit different. You might have stayed with one general practitioner for a long period of time. These days I don't see that so much or as much. So you're simply focusing on working in the areas you are best at. As soon as your temperature starts to get really high and you go into freak out about how you're going to help your client who hasn't been helped by anyone else,
then you might as well say to yourself, there's no way I can be effective with this person.
Your job is to relax into the journey, not stress into it. Your client's already feeling stress. You're not here to add to that. That's not what your client is paying you for. So your job is to learn how to relax into someone's challenge.
It's okay. It's not yours at the moment, and you are not here to make it all better. You are here to be someone on their journey who is hey, here to add more pieces to the puzzle, more insights. Perhaps the work you do with them will be exactly what they need. Perhaps it will be some of what they need, most of what they need. You don't know, nobody knows.
By the way, this is the same situation or challenge, challenge that any doctor would be dealing with. Should they have a client, a patient coming in to see them for chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia. It, it it can be years and years and years and tons of money and intervention and nothing works.
So that's the realm that we're in. And we just simply need to learn how to trust and relax into the journey of life. That's the space you are holding for your client.
So let's look at how to work with fatigued clients with a more standardized approach.
So the following of what I'm gonna dive into is a more cookie cutter approach. It's a good roadmap. And in our cookie cutter approaches, we always start with the easiest ways to work that can potentially yield the biggest chance for a quick miniature success, which works sometimes and doesn't work. Other times. If that doesn't work, that doesn't mean you've done something wrong. This is just the tricks of the trade, what we try to do, because if your client is expecting to see a result after the first session, now that they've had low energy for fill in the blank months or years, uh, that's a big expectation. And if they're gonna leave you after one session and never come back because whatever you suggested didn't yield a result, then that's not a good client for you. That's not a patient client, that's not a mature client.
They might not have liked you, it might not have been a good match. That's something different.
But if people have that expectation that you're gonna work magic, then that's not a good expectation and they're gonna have to have something to learn. So of course you remember that in this body of work, everybody is unique and forgetting about this body of work. Everybody's unique anyway.
And even though you can take 50 people and each of those 50 people are experiencing fatigue, each one of them will have a different way that they need to be worked with. There will be a different doorway to walk through. They could have very different etiologies, they can have very, just why they're low energy is everybody. Um, so many different factors for each person.
And at the same time, if you are not super comfortable or confident, then a way to be more confident is to say, okay, here's a basic roadmap that I'm gonna follow this basic roadmap that's not gonna hurt. And chances are, we'll help, it's gonna help you understand some good places to start and it'll slowly help you build success with your client.
So at some point, I want you to ask your energy or fatigue challenge clients to get the following checked out if they haven't already. Can't hurt. Just raising my hand hand here and saying, here's commonly,
commonly what is easy to spot for the average medical practitioner once a person is tested when it comes to low energy thyroid health. So you want to get your client to have their thyroid hormones checked, um, metabolic syndrome, the diabetes continuum. They need to be tested for low iron,
a basic blood hormone paddle, including testosterone for men that could lead to low energy. Um, Lyme's disease also, these days we're seeing more and more and more and more that many people who are experiencing fatigue are low in vitamin D. So these days, at some point, I'm interested in my client getting tested for vitamin D and you need to find out is your client on any prescription medications? And if so, do those medications have as a side effect low energy or impaired sleep? You would be shocked how often people go on a prescription medication and they have no idea of what the side effects are. Why? Because to determine those from what's on the label or what's online, oftentimes you gotta do a lot of reading and a lot of digging. And oftentimes the medical practitioner who's given that prescription, um, might not even know some of the key side effects or they haven't mentioned to their patient the key side effects. So oftentimes this is where you can be very helpful because I've seen this happen. So, so, so, so many times people started prescription medication and we prescribe, when I say we, I mean the collective. We, we prescribe powerful substances, prescription medications, millions and millions of times every day, a clo across the globe. And these are powerful substances and they have a long list of potential side effects. And if a client doesn't know what they are and one of those side effects is impaired sleep or low energy, and here's your client fighting their impaired sleep or low energy, then you have an understanding and you have a place to look at with them. And sometimes they just might have to endure that if that's a prescription med that they have to be on. And sometimes they might need to go back to their general practitioner or their doctor or whoever prescribed that medication for them and look at alternatives.
So here what I'm saying is you are being, you're being a health advocate, you are helping a person be a good consumer of health care.
That's a great thing that we can do in the coaching universe because the professional universe doesn't always fill in the blanks for patients and clients and they miss a lot. And I'm not making a judgment out of that. I'm just stating it as a fact. So it's good for you to understand what the medical profession misses. Oftentimes because it's busy, it's stressed, it's got a lot to do, um, doctors are often bombarded with a lot of nonsense and they're gonna miss certain details because they're focused on others. So if you can help catch some of those details on behalf of your client, then that's a great thing.
Okay, here comes my fatigued low energy client. That's what they're coming to see me for. And I'm thinking, okay, what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? Here it is, here's six places to start.
I'm calling these level one strategies. They're mind body nutrition distinctions. I want you to first look at macronutrient balance. Next I want you to look at eating rhythm. Next I want you to look at stressed slash relaxed eating. Next, I want you to pay attention to use of caffeine and sugar. Next, I want you to pay attention to food quality. And next I want you to have a heads up and consider that your client's low energy might be related to food allergies.
So essentially on this list, I picked what I think is a rough order of where to start. First, based on what I've noticed with fatigue people based on what I noticed, gives the biggest bang for the buck based on what I notice gives the biggest probability that you might be able to help someone short term with their fatigue. If one of these are off macronutrient, balance, eating rhythms, stress or relaxed eating, use of caffeine and sugar, food quality, food allergies. So right here, if you only focused on these alone, you can be of help to your client. You might be of tremendous help to your client. You might be of some help to your client. You might help your client less with their energy, but you might help them solve other challenges that they have.
We're always looking to redefine success. Success doesn't mean I absolutely hit the bullseye when it comes to my low energy and fatigue and, and, and, and you know, I walk away from this coach, this practitioner, and I have all the energy in the world and I'm back to being a, a youthful, immortal creature forevermore
know my friend success looks however success looks. So you have to notice the success. Success, yes, might be the big lottery win. Success might be yes, your client gets back the lion's portion of their energy based on the work you did with them. Success might mean you help them. It turns out you made dietary changes with them. You discovered food allergies and they might have had chronic joint pain. They might have had brain fog. You've helped with that. They don't necessarily have a ton more energy, but they're feeling better.
You might not help them with their energy, but some of your strategies might help them lose weight. And that wasn't even a primary reason. They came to see you, but they wouldn't have mind losing some weight. I've had that happen, uh, with energy and fatigue clients. They're always shocked. Um, so you and I don't know, that's why I am reminding you, you have to be locked and loaded. You have to be poised. You have to be a hawk about noticing with your vision. Oh, I just had a small suc. We just had a small success with this person. Might not have been around energy, might have been around energy maybe after the first two weeks. These changes that I gave my client around macronutrient balance and eating rhythm. My client doesn't have more energy, but he, she comes back in and reports to me. Yeah, you know, I'm still feeling the same. But you know something, the weirdest thing. Um, I notice I'm not binge eating at night. And you didn't even know they weren't binge eating at night 'cause they didn't tell you.
So when that happens, that's a mini success. Great, we're on the right track. What we're doing is helping you on some level and sometimes healing people, helping people heal from a specific condition is not a straight shot. Sometimes other things have to go down first plain and simple.
Okay, how should we proceed with these? You know what these are, you know how to work with these. I'm not gonna break these down. Um, you know how to work with macronutrient balance. You know how to work with eating rhythm. You know how to work with stress and relaxed eating. Now, am I gonna do all of these six things in the first session? Absolutely not. I might do two of these in the first session. I might work on macronutrient balance and eating rhythm in the first session and send my client home with that homework based on whatever they're presenting. Now, I'm not saying you do this with everyone because their might, their macronutrient balance might be fine. Their eating rhythm might be fine. They have irregular meals. They're not skipping meals. They're eating at good times during the day. They're not going long periods of time ending up being ravenous because if they're skipping meals, of course they're gonna be low energy. If their macronutrient balance is off and they're low in fat and or low in protein, of course they're gonna be low energy. If a person is constantly eating in a stressed state and they're eating fast, eating fast eating in a stress state, they might simply be impacting their digestion. They might be going into some degree of digestive shutdown. So after they eat, even if it's a small meal, they feel tired. Why? Because they're eating under stress and they're not in the optimal state of digestion and assimilation, which is the relaxation response, parasympathetic nervous system dominance.
So really what needs to be improved with that person is their digestion needs to be stronger. But they don't need to be taking digestive enzymes. What they need to do is put themselves in the optimal state of digestion and assimilation and calorie burden, because meanwhile, they're not in that state. So you might notice, oh wow, okay, my client's macronutrient balance and eating rhythm are actually fine. Let me now go to stress or relaxed eating. So stress or relaxed eating here means eating speed. Eating speed. And it could mean the state I'm in when I eat.
Am I eating in a stressed environment? Am I eating with stressful people? Am I eating in the two minutes that I have standing up, running around that stress state eating? Or that also points to, by the way, quite frankly, toxic nutritional beliefs. Because you might have a client who is a chronic dieter and they're freaked out about food and every time they're eating, they're in a stress response because food is the enemy because fat and food is the enemy because appetite is the enemy that can tire out a human being constantly fighting the natural urge to eat.
See where I'm, see where I'm going my friend. So you're gonna look to see from this list, okay, what, what is relevant to this client?
Your client might have perfect macronutrient, balance, eating rhythm. They eat in a relaxed steak, they don't do any caffeine and sugar. Their food quality's fine. Okay? Then I'd look at food allergies and I would first focus on gluten, dairy, soy, gluten being the big one, dairy being far behind, but next up in line, make sense?
So you are learning to,
Even in this cookie cutter approach, you are going to have to pay attention. You're gonna have to listen to your client. You're going to have to assess from their dietary intake and from all the questions you ask them. And I'm gonna get into some interesting questions here soon. You're going to assess, okay, which from this list of six things, macronutrient, balance, eating rhythm, stress, relaxed eating, use of caffeine, sugar, food quality, food allergies, which are relevant for or potentially relevant for my client, where do I start first?
So once again, these can give the quickest bang for the buck for a majority of clients. They're easier and more obvious places to work. Again, for many clients, your success can come exclusively from these six things. From the MINDBODY nutrition realm, you determine where to start. You are going with the easiest place that can potentially show a quick benefit. If it doesn't, that's fine. That's just our nice little hope.
So you're always remembering to collect your clients secondary complaints.
Anything else, Mr or miss, a client that you notice around your health or your eating that you know in a perfect world you would love to see better?
Like, how's your digestion? Um, are you happy with the health of your hair and skin? How's your mood? What else might be going on for you?
How's your sleep? So you are listening for other complaints. If they don't know what you mean, you mention some things.
So once again, you can literally move through this list in order in terms of what's relevant for your client. I'm not saying use this for every client. You only use those pieces on the list if they're relevant. So if you see that your client's macronutrient balance could use a little tweaking, great. Start there. See what happens.
Hmm. Okay, let's talk about next level strategies. You've worked through those mind-body nutrition distinctions. You've seen what you can see. Maybe you've helped your client, maybe you've helped him with some secondary complaints, your client is still with you. Let's go. What else have you looked at their sleep? Have you looked at, is this person getting daytime rest? That's a big one for some people. Is this person getting nourishment time? Is this person doing the kinds of movement or exercise that's more restorative?
Is this person functioning in a home or work environment that is toxic or healthy? Might there be something in their home or work environment that's impacting them?
Okay, so these are next level distinctions that I'm going to be listening for after, after I do this list. The mind-body nutrition distinctions.
Let's actually break these down.
Let's talk about sleek tips for a minute.
A lot of people, this is where the rubber meets the road, believe it or not. Um, sleep is becoming a bigger topic in the health universe. And I think that's a wonderful thing. Uh, it's fantastically important. It is eminently unsexy. Hey, let's talk about sleep. Um, it's just, for some reason it hasn't been as popular as it should be. So if your client for whatever reason, lets you know that sleep is an issue for them, here are some places that you might be able to work with them as a basic coach and as a basic educator.
Now, I wanna tell you these places, uh, I'm saying they're basic, but basic means foundational and fundamental.
A person is not going to go to a physician and necessarily hear this information because that's not how a physician is generally trained, and it's not their job for the most part, unless this is their specific specialty. So when it comes to sleep, you can be a great sleep educator. So if your person, your client has a hard time falling asleep, you can work on focusing on a relaxing evening ritual. A lot of people don't have an evening ritual. They don't have a transition time. Sleep oftentimes needs a ritual. Ritual is a repetitive act that we constantly do that gives power.
It's a repeated act that gives us some kind of power. So an evening ritual could mean I lie in bed, I turn on beautiful music, I turn down the lights, I
put, I don't know, what are those little room darkening masks over my face and relax and listen to music. An evening ritual could mean my client jumps in the bathtub with essential oils and lights a candle and plays music. The evening ritual might be whatever you ask your client, what would be a relaxing evening ritual for you? What would help you slowly transition into sleepy universe?
You know, the key pieces I know are some kind of bath, some kind of shower use of candles, use of oils, use of music.
Those are some of the keys on top of that. Related to that is to focus on letting go of evening rituals that don't give power. Um, meaning evening stimulation and stress. If you are going to bed, talking to people that stress you out, um, ah, that's gonna impact your sleep. If you are going to bed right after you finish stressful work, then ah, we still need a transition time. If you are going to bed after you've watched the news, which is depressing you about the state of the world and the insanity of our leaders who supposed to know what they're doing, um, yeah, that'll cause you some stress when you go to sleep and that will keep you up. Stress is designed to keep us alert and awake and protecting ourselves so that which stresses us out before bed naturally will keep us up because we're trying to protect ourselves. Makes sense? So we're going to do our best to help our clients eliminate the kinds of stresses and stimulation. By the way, a lot of people don't realize, I wanna get back a moment to, um, use of caffeine and sugar. There's a subset of people who are very caffeine sensitive and it takes their body a long time to clear caffeine. So if my client is doing a later hit of caffeine four, five o'clock or beyond, I'm gonna ask them to let that go as an experiment. Let's let this go for two weeks. That late, that latest cup of coffee or energy drink that has caffeine in it, or tea that has caffeine in it just to see, just as an experiment, because many people, uh, I've experimented with, with people who have poor sleep. And for some people, you, you let go of all their caffeine and their sleep gets better and their energy gets better because they're so caffeine sensitive that a little bit of caffeine in the system that they had honestly at lunchtime is enough to impact them. I know that's not what you want to hear, but I will do anything that I think is legitimate to help my client. So another sleep tip is to focus on lighting. Lighting is a big one. If there is light on, it will be more difficult to fall asleep. That has much to do with brain, brain chemistry, melatonin production. The more light that is on, the more you will be alert, the more difficulty you will have getting to sleep. So oftentimes people in their rooms, they have all these little gizmos and computers, and I don't know if you notice sometimes, you know, if I stay in a hotel and, and I'm going to sleep at night and I turn off all the lights and the room is bright because the little internet box has this bright light and the tv, uh, these little g has bright lights and they're just all these little, little lights on different things.
So light pollution can affect many people. So one of the solutions to this again, is to cover up any lights that are in the room, like the small lights that light up the room. Another piece is if there's light coming in from the windows from the outside, is to get room darkening curtains or shades, which make a difference for a lot of people. Another piece of the puzzle is to just wear one of those, um, room darkening, uh, you know, masks that block the light from your eyes. That might be an easy solution. Um, focusing on music, focusing on sound. If there's a lot of sound around you, use earplugs. Also, I'll focus with my client on, as best I would put it, bedroom health feng shui of the bedroom. Uh, is your bedroom a mesh? Is it a peaceful environment? Is there stuff all over the floor? Um, are there a lot of electronics right near the bed? Because if there are for some people they don't notice and never will that they're sensitive to electromagnetic frequencies, especially when it comes to sleep. So the less computers you have by your head, the less gizmos machines, whatever they are by your head, the better. Um, by the way, a really, really, really great sleep expert to follow is Dr. Michael Bruce. Um, for, uh, uh, Michael Bru. B-R-E-U-S is the last name. Uh, he has some great books, great articles, uh, great website. And this is both for the practitioner and the client, you know. So if my client is wanting to work on their sleep, I will refer them to his work and his books because they're very easy to read. Um, and at this time I consider him by far and away the foremost sleep expert. So, um, that would be my go-to expert in this realm. He's always up on the latest. Okay, that's the sleep piece. Uh, by the way, I hope you're getting, when I'm focusing on sleep here, that you don't get sleep, you don't get rejuvenated, you, you wake up, you're low energy.
So that's an important piece of the puzzle to start to play with. You know, I I'm gonna say one more thing. A lot of people, sometimes they need to, sometimes your clients, you really need to ask them what would truly help you fall asleep. Um, I've had clients who say to me, you know, I really do better when I sleep alone and they're in a partnership. They're married. I'll ask them to experiment. You know, tell them you're a nutrition guy. Tell them your health coach said, Hey, take five days. Sleep in a room by yourself. If you can sleep in a living room, sleep in a just another room in the house just to notice what happens. Um, you know, actually for a lot of couples that can be very healthy, actually spending time where they're not sleeping together and then you choose to sleep together when you sleep together. I've actually worked that way with some couples, uh, when it came to sleep. And it actually has benefits for many people in terms of the relationship itself. Because when you sleep with somebody all the time, all the time, all the time, it can not will, but it can sort of depolarize people, um, and takes away some of the charge, takes away some of the electricity, takes away some of the magnetism. You know, absence makes the heart grow fonder a little bit. You know what I'm saying? Okay, so next on this, this list is daytime rest. What does that mean? Um, and, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna put daytime rest and nourishment time. I'm gonna load those two up together here. So all kinds of research, one to two periods during the day of 15 to 20 minutes of relaxed downtime is a very simple and powerful strategy for rejuvenation.
This research has been around
at least for 40 years.
This concept has been around possibly many, many hundreds of years. Um, you know, passed down, especially from the Ayurvedic tradition, the yoga tradition
of rest and downtime during the day of, of yoga nidra during the day where you are lying down, you're not going to sleep. It's not, it's not a 15 or 20 minute sleep time. In fact, you stay awake, but you just go into deep quiet. You try to let go of thoughts. You focus on long, slow, deep breathing. You cut off all sound, you shut off the cell phone. You know that in that 15 or 20 minutes and you can set a little alarm. You're not going to get up for anything. And you're going to just focus on consciously putting your body into relaxation response and letting go.
Try that once or twice during the day. See what it does for your energy. Many people need to find downtime during the day when your client can do this. That's a great strategy when possible. Um, oftentimes times with energy challenged clients, we just need to begin to rearrange some of the furniture. You need to just do change just for the sake of a little change just to see what's gonna happen. Now, you might've noticed this, sometimes you just change the furniture in your house and just, hey, this is cool. This is fun. Gives you more energy.
Oftentimes when we switch things up just to change, you drive to work down a different road. It's interesting, it's novel. Novelty is stimulating for the mind in a good way. So many people need downtime during the day. How can they get that? And I, and when I say downtime, meaning time for a cup of tea, time for a break where you can chitchat, call a friend, sit down, sit outside, sunbathe for 30 minutes, listen to music. Do something that's just nourishing. So what helps your client pause during the day and smell the roses. Even if they say, I don't have time. I don't have time. Everybody has two minutes. Anyone, I don't care where they're working. Can take two minutes. You can take two minutes and and, and get on your, your, your phone, get on your computer and play some music that uplifts you and inspires you and rejuvenates you and makes you a little bit happier to be alive.
So I'm gonna ask my client, what are the little things that you could possibly do during the day that, that, that take a minute, that take five minutes, that take 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, see how much time your client can have.
You are trying to help your client get more conscious here around self-care.
What helps my client feel happy about self-care During the day? A lot of our energy and fatigue challenge clients a lot, not all a lot have arrived where they are because they just blast through their day. They don't self nourish, they don't attend to themselves. They are work machines. They're workhorses, whether they're work machines at literal work work or at home or both.
So sometimes what you're doing is you are helping your client drop out of a constant low level stress response that they don't even know that they're in. So I want you to learn to collect an inventory just in conversation with your client, all the little things that work for them. And then you point them in that direction. Okay, what are all the little things Mr. And Mrs. Client you could do that would help you stop and smell the roses during the day? Something that could be from a minute to 30 minutes. Let's just list all those things in your perfect world. And then once you have that list, do it with your client or send them home as a homework assignment. Then you go through that list and see what they can start doing now
and you hold them accountable. Holding them accountable means you check in next session after you give that assignment, after they agreed, yes, I'm going to stop three times during the day and play some two of my favorite songs that always give me more energy. Great. Did you do that this last week, Mr. And Mrs. Client? You did? How was that for you? Oh, it was so good. Oh, it didn't make a difference. Okay, let's try something else from the list.
Restorative exercise.
So I'm always listening. Is my client over exercise? Are they still pushing too hard? If you have a fatigue client, I have had clients who have fatigue and they're still doing the kind of exercise that doesn't serve their fatigue.
Now some people aren't even able to exercise or move, so you need to discover that. So if a client has difficulty for whatever reason, because of their fatigue, let's say because of their fatigue exercise or moving, then I want you to think in terms of what is doable. What's more restorative? Restorative means actually this can rejuvenate me. It might take a little effort, might take a little effort, but once I do, it gives me energy. So here's what I have found for my fatigue clients that can yield a big bang for the buck, believe it or not, for a lot of people, you just gotta inspire them to, to walk, especially if they can do so in nature. You can get your client to walk in nature. I don't care how much time, if it's on, if they can only do 10 minutes, that 10 minutes is infinitely more than no minutes and can make a difference because you're changing that, you're helping that person change their mindset. You are helping them get embodied. You are helping them lift themselves up and putting themselves in a situation that can be restorative. I don't mean power walking, it can be the most slow pleasure walking. It doesn't matter how little energy your client has,
we're teaching them how to manage the energy that they do have. So if you have some energy to walk, then I'm gonna inspire my client to do that. I, I've had some great success really, because a lot of times people get their low energy, they're fatigued, and then of course they end up not feeling good about themselves. They end up up, they end up depressed or very low mood. And they're thinking exercise means, you know, jogging and biking and, and, uh, jumping off whatever. No, it means moving in whatever way you could move that feels good. Most people can walk breathing exercises. Just sit in a chair, sit upright in a chair. If you don't know breathing exercises, learn some breathing exercises. Get online. Take a course, learn a handful of breathing exercises. There are energizing breathing exercises. There's the lion's breath, there's alternate nostril breathing. You can do some interesting breathing exercises with your client that are very simple to do that bring more oxygen to the system and more oxygen equals more metabolism. It's just how it works. More oxygen will help you wake up your mind. It will help you literally wake up. Your brain breathing exercises will literally send more oxygen, not only into your body, but into your brain, which can create more alertness. So for my client who says they can't really move, they can't really do much exercise, they can sit up in a chair and do some breathing exercises, get on YouTube, watch, learn, and practice them yourself, and then go for it with your client. Um, is your client willing and able to do a restorative or, and or therapeutic yoga class? Many, many, many towns, cities around the globe have yoga and many yoga studios will offer a restorative yoga class or a therapeutic yoga class. Have your client call up even if there's only one yoga studio local to them, call up. What kind of class do you have for me? I'm a little fatigued. I don't have a lot of energy. I need something more therapeutic. Sometimes you'll hear the term yin YIN yoga, which is very restorative and therapeutic. So have your client call around and find out. Um, it's a great way because sometimes some people just just need to be guided. They need to be led. So here's a class where you're not gonna be jumping up and down and doing aerobics and, and, and doing back flips. No, you are going at the pace that you can go and the class itself is geared towards restoration. Um, sunbathing. It's not an exercise. However, uh, I want to put it in there because it's an activity. And even though you're lying down or sitting down, the kind of sunbathing I'm talking about is getting your client to expose as much of their naked skin as possible to the sun on as many parts of their body as they can. This is an overwhelming favorite of mine for people who are low energy, because oftentimes low energy equals low vitamin D and for many people low vitamin D means low sun, okay? Probably for most people, low vitamin D means low sun. Once you get out in the sun and you're producing more vitamin D in your system, you are doing yourself a huge metabolic favor. In fact, it's, i I I would actually suggest you get online and Google and do some self-learning around vitamin D and everything that it's, um, being used to treat and all the conditions that can be caused or contributed to by the lack of vitamin D, which quite frankly is just about anything you can imagine it seems these days. So, but I'm emphasizing vitamin D here more because it's, to me, whenever I say vitamin D, I smile, uh, inside. In fact, I smirk a little bit because I think it's funny because I don't hear vitamin D when I say vitamin D. I hear sign, we have strangely reduced the sun to a supplement. You're low in vitamin D, here's a vitamin D supplement. Now, I'm not against vitamin D supplementation because for many people that will help kickstart their vitamin D deficiency. But what I want to tell you is the number one remedy for vitamin D deficiency is getting out and sunbathing in the sun. 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes. Really even if it's 10 minutes, that's something as much skin. Even if you could only do your face, that is a thousand times better than nothing. Plus you will actually take a lot of sunlight through the eyes as well, which will have a very stimulating and healing and energizing effect on the brain. That's a whole other interesting topic. So big believer in vitamin D, but really big believer in the sun. Uh, next, believe it or Not, there's a subset of clients. If I am dealing with a person who has been chronically fatigued and you know, done everything, um, I always look to put them male or female on some lightweight lifting. If they can't go to a gym, I'll ask them to buy some dumbbells for the house and just do some lightweight lifting. Uh, if they don't know how to do it, get online if they can afford it. Just have a personal trainer come to the house one time and give them a routine. That's very simple. Lightweight lifting for chronically fatigued clients, you do that three or four times a week, even once a day, 15 minutes, 10 minutes can actually make a difference. Asking your muscles to work stimulating a little bit of muscle growth, uh, can actually yield a very noticeable benefit for many people, especially if they don't do any kind of resistance training. If they don't do any kind of exercise or movement that is asking their muscles to grow a little bit, the tiniest amount of muscle growth will often yield a noticeable benefit.
So this is just another, I'm gonna just call it a little secret weapon, um, that I've used. And it sounds like a throwaway line. Oh, sunbathing. Oh, light weightlifting. Oh, restorative yoga or, oh, walking in nature. Oh, that sounds nice. Well, no, for a person who's fatigued, every little tweak that helps is big. You need to understand that if you haven't dealt with fatigue and if you don't understand it from a more personal embodied standpoint, because this has not been an issue for you, you have to understand that when it comes to your fatigue clients, the little things are the big things. Any, any 10% increase in energy is noticeable and big and a success home environment. Uh, have they checked for mold? This is a challenging one because there, there's some people who are sensitive to mold from the place that they know they're reacting to something in their environment. There's a lot of people who are sensitive to mold and they have no idea that they're being sensitive to mold. So if the house is old, if you live in a mold prone area,
if the house is kind of musty and dusty and smells a little moldy. So checking for mold can be a big one because many people it's about the mold and especially for your clients who have a chronic form of fatigue that nothing has helped and they've been through the gamut. Um, mold is a big one for many people. So I'm just raising my hand. You don't have to be an expert on mold, but if you help your client discover by them getting a test or getting an expert to come into the house and help them test for that, and they discover that they have mold, um, yeah, I'd wanna do something about that. And then from there, you need to find a practitioner for them in their area who can help them, who specializes in working with mold. So you have to be a sleuth, you have to be a detective. You're here to be an advocate for your client. So these are things I can't tell you. Oh, here's all the mold practitioners. No, it's, how do I know this? I literally just bumped into an old friend who told me, you know, she's had chronic fatigue for a year, uh, and it turns out it's mold exposure in the home. And she was telling me she found a great local doctor who works with mold. And then later that evening, I bump into yet another friend who tells me that his wife, it turns out, has had mold exposure and they're not sure what to do or how to treat her. So great. Now I have a recommendation. Um, but all I'm saying is you have to do the work. You have to do the legwork and find these things out. You learn as you go along. Um, how's the air circulation and how's the air quality in someone's home? That's important. A lot of people are living in an environment where they don't cleanse the air in their home, meaning they don't open windows. Some people just get into that habit when you don't have fresh air coming in and out of the house. Yep, you can have toxic buildup in the air, you can have a lot of particulate matter in the air and you will have a lower oxygen content in the air. Yeah, it's fascinating. By the way, lower oxygen content is gonna mean you're gonna have a harder time with energy and metabolism for most people.
You want to ask your client, you wanna find out what kind of house cleaning and household products they're using in general. Some people are very sensitive to the typical chemistry that is behind our household products. And I'm talking about cleaning products for the floor, for the bathrooms, for the sinks. I'm talking about the cleaning products for our clothes. I'm talking about some of these air fresheners that people use in their house or in their cars and, and they're completely toxic chemicals. Um, those little things that people ha hang in Their cars, they're toxic. I don't get it. Um, so oftentimes, you know, if my client is willing, I will ask them to switch to all natural organic as possible. Household cleaning products, close cleaning products, air freshening products, everything that they use in the home. Uh, and then you have to look at the use of toxic body care products. A lot of clients, once again, they are sensitive to the human made chemicals, of which there are thousands, which previously did not exist in nature and have been invented since the 19 hundreds. And some people, their system just can't handle it, or they reach a point where they get toxic overload. So all I wanna say is whatever you put on your body will eventually find its way in the body. You know, that put something on your skin, what happens to it? The skin absorbs it, it goes into the body. So this may sound odd, but if you cannot eat it, don't put it on your skin.
If you can't eat it, don't put it on your skin. There's a lot of perfume products that people use that are, that are just synthetic chemistry, um, which many people are extremely sensitive to. Many people are sensitive to artificial fragrances and don't even know it. Many people are using these, these pesticides that you put on your body to repel bugs. Um, don't do that better to get the bug bites or better to simply not be around the bugs or better to find another solution like citronella candles or wearing a long sleeve shirt. Then put a substance on your body that is neurotoxic to insects and will be toxic to your system. Uh, I am woo, a big non-believer in, uh, spray on insecticides. Most, um, sunblock products are also toxic. Um, oftentimes the sun blocking agents are as toxic as what we're trying to prevent the sun from doing. To us, people have this massive fear of the sun. It's, it's bizarre. Um, there are natural sun care products that use mineral pigments as the sun blocking agent. That's the direction you wanna go in. Um, so yeah, for my long-term, chronic fatigue clients especially, I'm gonna look at household cleaning products and body care products, anything that goes on the body. We talked about location of electronics, especially where you sleep. We mentioned noise level in the home. Um, feng shui in general, a lot of times people really need to consider the level of mess. You know, I'm really thinking in, in terms of neatness and mess. I'm thinking in terms of how much in your home is dead weight. How much in your are like, are you a pack rat? Is my client a pack rat? Are they just collect tons of newspapers and magazines that are sitting around and off gassing unnatural substances? Um, so there's the chemical aspect of just a lot of junk around the house, but there's also the energetic aspect, which I strongly believe impacts people. So when we do a good cleaning out, when you get rid of anything that you truly don't need, if you haven't used it in five years, chances are you don't need it. Uh, when we clean up, oftentimes we get an energy boost, quite frankly. Okay, now here's third level strategies. So you've worked with these mind-body nutrition distinctions, and you've worked with these lifestyle distinctions. Now we're gonna look at some of the psychological distinctions. And you know what, this is life stress. Where is it? What's stressing my client? What's their biggest stress in life? Remember the four questions might be work, it might be relationship, might be parenting, money, sexuality, disappointments, any of those. All of those we're gonna slowly look to see how we can help our client better regulate the natural stresses in life. Better deal with those. And of course, we want to look at the self-chosen stressors for sure.
You know, we have to listen for our client's life unfolding. Are they in a life transition right now? Oftentimes people are in a life transition and they lose energy. They're, they're under a lot of tension. It might even be a great life transition moving from one place to another, and they're fatigued. They might be coming out of a long-term relationship. And it is oftentimes not unusual for people to become fatigued. Sometimes we just go into recovery at such times it just happens.
So I'm just noticing where my client is in their life.
Are they in a life transition of some sort? And simply, you know, some people just have a hard time managing their inner world and have a hard time managing their life as it unfolds. And sometimes having a coach, a mentor, a guide, a best friend there by their side is very helpful. You're a sounding board. You're not a fixer. You're a best friend who's getting paid to be a best friend. Can you? Can you see that distinction? You're not here to fix someone. So person might have had a traumatic or stressful life event. Sometimes traumatic or stressful life events can precipitate fatigue.
And, and as a next level strategy for your clients, you're gonna be listening for the deeper message in fatigue. What is it? What is the true deeper message that fatigue is teaching my client, which is usually some kind of course correction. They have to do life differently. They have to be in life differently. They might have to see the world differently. They might have to change their thinking around work, around relationship. They might have to stop trying so hard in certain places to be somebody. They might be putting a lot of energy into fruitless activities that don't get them anywhere. A work project, a relationship, a friendship, a goal, something they're chasing after. It might be how they live in their body and the fact that they don't pay attention to their body and they don't really care for their body. And the message in fatigue might be, okay, time to slow down, reevaluate, and start taking care.
The deeper message might be it's time to choose to be here.
The deeper message might be it's time to reclaim one sexuality. It's time to explore one's spirituality, one's religious life on a deeper level. You have to listen to the universe on behalf of your client. You have to listen to a higher power, a higher code, a higher guidance on behalf of your client. You can have this conversation with them, you can give this to them as a homework assignment.
Let's break these down a little bit. Life stress and fatigue. Okay? Remember back to the four questions. What is stressing my client and what is their biggest fear or stress? You know, this, how we manage that, which is stressful, difficult, hard to process anxiety producing and challenging to us. Tells us a lot about how we manage our energy bank account.
If you're sweating the small stuff, you're wasting your energy bank account. I mean, really, if you're spend, if my client is spending time on nonsense and dealing with the same people who are creating nonsense in their lives or the same situations that they have a choice To get out of, we have to explore that with our client. How are they managing their world? Where are they draining energy? So as a coach, you can do so many great tweaks here and help your clients see the places where they might be draining more energy than they realize. We're gonna have a whole separate conversation where we really focus on energy drain and energy gain.
Life unfolding. Life unfolding and fatigue. Life unfolding means, hey, each day I wake up, my life is unfolding. It is continuing, it is, it is. Moving forward, the journey goes on.
I'm gonna make a statement to you. I've said this before, I wanna remind you of this with all clients. All clients. The work of a true coach in the coaching model is to work with life unfolding, to be with your client in whatever is coming up for them on their journey. So that's probably the most broad-based, classic definition of a life coach. And what I am saying to you in this training is, yeah, you're being trained to work as you know, as a coach when it comes to a person's eating psychology when it comes to their mind, body nutrition, when it comes to their relationship with food and body.
But really, you are being a life coach. And when I say the life coach, maybe my definition is a little bit different. It's capital L, capital I, capital F, capital E, willing to go in all aspects of life, willing to look at relationships, willing to look at food and nutrition, willing to look at inner beliefs and thoughts and toxic beliefs. Willing to look at spirituality, willing to look at money, career, purpose work, sexuality, children, anything.
So it's just like having a best friend that you check in with all the time. Hey, how's it going? What happened? Oh, this happened. Oh wow, that sucks. What'd you do? I don't know. I don't know what to do. Hey, I've got some ideas. Let's talk about it. Your job is to listen to how people handle their life, their affairs, their emotions, their thoughts, their relationships, and whatever has come up for them since you last saw them that has their attention and their energy.
Remember, we're looking for where the energy is.
Soon as I see that, oh wow, there's some energy for my client around their relationship. There's some energy for my client with his boss. Okay? So we're gonna, we're gonna linger there. We're gonna hang there a little bit. We're gonna discuss, and I'm gonna notice how they handle that. And I'm gonna see if I can help them
take a higher road, play a higher game, manage that experience more effectively so that they're draining less energy and maybe even finding some self-empowerment,
traumatic life events and fatigue. For the purposes of this training, I mention trauma. I raise my hand about it. This is not a trauma training that is a whole separate creature. So I'm not asking you to work with trauma. I'm asking you to be aware of its existence and to know that it is a factor for many human beings. So a traumatic life event is an experience that remains undigested and unprocessed in our body. And being, it's an experience that by definition is very difficult for mind and heart to handle. So because we can't handle it, because we can't digest and assimilate it and excrete it because we can't process it, it ends up living in our system and it will live in our system oftentimes as symptom digestive, symptom fatigue, weight, physical pain moodiness brain fog as some examples. It could be any symptom.
Traumatic life events that have been unprocessed and undigested. Can undigested, can live in our system as unwanted behaviors. I'm binge eating, I'm overeating, I'm gambling, I'm promiscuous. I'm making poor decisions that I can't stop myself.
And oftentimes we're being driven by a trauma that just has us in a low level or not so low level stress activation that has become normal for us. So trauma lives in us as a stress response that is never resolved.
That I would say is the classic physiologic definition of a trauma, a stress response that lives in us that's never resolved. And the result of such trauma, again, invariably, is some form of unwanted symptom and be behavior. Long-term fatigue is one of them. Now, if you're not trained to work in this realm, you can still be of significant help to your client. How? Because you might help them identify the fact, um, that this may be part of their journey because you've noticed it. You're gathering details, you're gathering story, you're creating conversation. You're listening to them, and you're at least making the connection more conscious between your client's fatigue and their past history of a difficult life event. Because you might determine, Hey, when did your chronic fatigue Start? When did your fatigue start? And it turns out it was from when their business partner stole all the money ran away and the business collapsed. Yep, that's a traumatic event that precipitated it. That might be the first time your client truly made that connection.
They might need to talk more story about it. You can just simply be here to talk more story. I'd love to learn more about that. What happened for you? How did you deal with that? How did you manage that? How do you feel about that person? How do you and your life, Mr. And Mrs. Client, how do you, how do you resolve things like that? So you're just creating conversation. And if you think that, wow, this, this might be important, and or if your client thinks it might be important, then you research a good trauma therapist, a trauma specialist in their area, and you refer them out, or you suggest that they try that and see what happens. It's an experiment.
And that might be, if you have such a client, your opportunity to start learning more about trauma.
Peter Levine has some excellent books in this realm. So this might be something that you get inspired around, and you might even want to get further training and learn about EMDR and learn about some of the therapeutic strategies or not.
So you can't be an expert in anything, in everything. Um, but you can certainly be alert to these pieces because you are being a coach and you're being an educator, and you're being a best friend, and you are helping you client learn how to be a general manager of their experience and their body in part by you stepping into that role and saying, Hey, hmm, this trauma might be a piece here. So it's not your job to fix it. It's your job to be alert to it, to notice it, to make the connection, to create conversation, and then to see where that conversation goes. And yeah, at some point you're going to have to, uh, determine guess into it. Is this something that I think my client needs to pursue further? And if so, with who?
Listening for the deeper message in fatigue. You know, there's almost always something to benefit from. When we look for the deeper message, it can't hurt.
Even if a person, their fatigue is caused by mold, A lot of times there's a deeper message in there as well. Yeah, okay. Get rid of the mold and the body's gonna get better. But, but what did you learn in that experience? Because people will tell you after the fact, they've learned a lot. So oftentimes identifying the deeper meaning, the soul lesson or the life lesson and fatigue, is exactly what we need to help ourselves move forward. It's where the action truly is. It's where you put the key in and turn it, and the door opens.
So you're always asking the question of the universe on behalf of your client,
what's the message here in their fatigue? And feel free to ask your client what they think the deeper wisdom in, in their challenge might be. Put them to work. See what they come up with. Get them in the sandbox. Get them to play in this realm. Get them to learn how to think big. You know, sometimes the deeper message is that we just have to keep moving forward despite the fact that we have no energy. Sometimes the deeper message is to slowly and steadily persist in our journey. We're literally learning how to persist.
Okay, my friends, here are some key questions for your fatigue clients. I want you to ask these during your intake session. As always, when you're asking questions, you are being a detective. You are being willing to not know 'cause you don't, and to discover. So remember helping a client find their energy, recapture their energy is a treasure hunt.
So, Mr. And Mrs. Client, how long have you felt low energy? Oh, I don't know. Well, it's roughly how long has it been? Days, weeks, months, years. Just, just gimme your best sense. Exactly when did it start? Do you know what the year was? Do you know even what the month of the year was?
See if you can get an answer from your client. Sometimes clients will tell you, sometimes you just have to have to be patient with them because they really have to go back because they're not paying attention to these things. So this is a very important piece of information, as I've already told you, Hey, where were you living at that point? Is it the same place you're living now? Was it a different place? What were you doing then in your life? What was going on at that time when your low energy started? Was there anything different? Anything unusual happening at that time? Oh, no, not really. You sure? Any, any particular challenging events or experiencing, uh, experiences? Like, like anything that you could think of that was different, different.
Now, I just wanna say, I wanna remind you the, this question, these series of questions is key for many clients because it helps us see if there was a precipitating event in your client's life that led to their fatigue. So you wanna be a bulldog. I don't care if your client says there was nothing unusual going on, nothing different going on in my life at that time. If that's the answer to their question, I want you to immediately assume that that's the wrong answer. Now, it might be the right answer. It, they, they might be a hundred percent correct. There was nothing different. But I want you to assume it's the wrong answer. Why? Because I'm gonna say, hmm. There's a good number of clients who you have to poke and prod. You've got to poke and prod because they don't get it. They don't remember, they don't think that way. They don't make the connections. They're being honest with you and you're gonna miss it. So anything unusual, anything different? Did anything in your life change? Ask them, did your diet change?
What? So, so let me give you some examples. Did your diet change? Um, did your, did your work change? Were you working somewhere different? Was there a relationship change at that time?
Did you move from one workspace to another? So it could be around work, it could be around relationship, it could be around diet.
Did you get sick with anything else at that time? Were you hospitalized at that time? No. Mm-Hmm. Um, had you done any foreign travel right around that time or just before? Oh yeah. I was in India for a month. Forgot that. Okay, so a lot of my clients, that's it, it's foreign in travel and they catch something, which by the way, is very hard to deal with and very hard to treat, but at least you've made a strong connection. Okay? Um, so even ask about travel, you're going to ask about dietary changes, work changes, hospitalizations, medications, relationship changes,
financial changes, anything different, anything difficult,
anything travel.
So once again, this is a place where you may find that there's a powerful connection or not. Here's another really important question. Hey, Mr. Mr. Klein, is your low energy worse at different times of the day or different times of the week?
Like, like when, when is it at its worst? What do you notice? You know, I'm not really sure. Well, think about it. Think about it. When, when is it really bad? When did you notice? Oh, man, is it different times? Might it have anything to do with a different environment that you're in, a different place that you're in during the week?
You're just listening for information.
You might find that it's location related. You might find it's related to a certain day of the week. You might find it's related to a certain time of the day. That might be useful if their energy is extremely low at 3, 4, 5 o'clock, and you happen to notice when you do a dietary intake that they skip a lot of meals and they're eating low fat and they're eating a lot of diet foods. Yeah, you might have something there. So when's your energy at its worst during the day, during the week, during the month might be when they're with certain people. You'd be surprised at the information that you gather from these kinds of questions and some of the connections that you might make. Here's another very important question that goes along with this question is, are there any times when your energy feels really good? Like during the day, during the week, or even over the years? Are there times when the fatigues like, like it just goes away?
This is a very intriguing question. I find that a majority, and I mean a majority of fatigue clients, even chronic fatigue, clients will have moments when they will describe, yes, my energy feels really good when, and it might be very seldom, but there's specific things that they might do when their energy feels better, traveling to a certain place, being with a certain person.
That's, that's some of the ones that I've noticed. Um, but it is just that are popping into my mind right now. But once again, you don't take no as an answer. No, not really. Well, well, like, think about it. There must be sometimes when you go, wow, that feels a lot better. Might have been when you traveled, when you were around certain people. Maybe when you were eating at certain kinds of restaurants, somebody else was cooking for you. Like what? Think about it. See if you come up with anything and, and I'm, I'm looking to get an answer in that moment. I'm always assuming, I know this sounds weird, I'm always assuming when I ask these, these questions that we've been asking, you know, was there anything different that was happening in your life when the fatigue started? No. I'm always assuming their answer's wrong. And I keep pressing and pressing and pressing even until the point where my client is getting a little irritated. And if I see them getting irritated, because I'm asking, are you sure? Did your diet change? Did you do any foreign travel? Did your work change? Did your living situation change? You know, I'm, I'm asking these questions, Mr. And Mrs. Client, because sometimes, you know, there's so much going on in our life and there are certain things that we don't even notice that we don't even make the connection. So I'm just, I'm just trying to help you jog your memory here because this might be useful when I ask my client, is your low energy, where's the different times of the day or the week or the month? And they say, no, I'm gonna assume their answers wrong. And again, I'm gonna start giving them examples. Um, have you noticed anything that in general helps you feel better, that you do? What helps you feel better? Anything. I don't care what it is. Persons, places, thoughts, things, beliefs, foods, supplements. What makes you feel better? See if you can get a list from your client. What else? What else? Oh, when you're hanging around your friend, so and so, yeah, great. What else? Oh, when you eat really clean and raw, great, what else? So you're just listening. You're collecting information. You always wanna ask about foreign travel. So let me just handle this one really quick. Uh, there are certain places that certain people go where they will be exposed to certain organisms that their immune system is not accustomed to. And, you know, read the history books where you're constantly hearing and the Europeans came to this island and half the population died. Uh, because we bring our dis diseases to populations that are isolated and have a very specific immunity built up to their environment, not to a completely different environment and a completely different species of humans, essentially. Um, so any foreign travel in your life, and if you notice there's a correlation between the onset of their fatigue and their foreign travel, then you know that there's a good chance that your client has come down with some kind of organism or parasite. And if they even want to consider addressing that, then they need to go to a specialist for that. Quite frankly, it's not something you're gonna work with. Um, yeah, it takes a real specialist and even specialists have a very difficult time there, quite frankly. Um, Mr. Mr. Klein, any medications, vaccinations, hospitalizations, or surgeries during the time or just before when the fatigue started?
This is an important question because you can go into a hospital for a minor procedure and catch something. You could have a surgery and you don't think your surgery is connected to the onset of your fatigue. You could get a new prescription, you can get vaccinated and not make the connection that the vaccination you received. And then the onset of your fatigue are connected.
Once again, you are gathering information. This might be information that their doctor, their general practitioner, their internist there, whoever did not gather.
Once you have that information, if you are not qualified to work in this realm, depending on your training and what kind of practitioner you are, then I'm always going to look to help my client find a good naturally holistically oriented or functional medicine doctor in their area who has a little more experience in this realm. Did your diet change beco before you came down with fatigue? So this is an area, my friends, where you can use your smarts and I really want you to use your smarts here. Did your diet change at any point before you came down with fatigue? Why is that important? Because that happens a lot. People go on strange diets, people go on interesting diets. People go on sometimes some very limiting diets that can cause their system to crash if that person is already weak. So we're just looking and listening for dietary changes. Did they get into raw foods? Did they get into being a vegan? Did they get into being a vegetarian? Did they get into eating a lot of meat? Um, did they previously eat healthy and then they just started eating a lot of junk again?
Did they go on an extreme weight loss diet? So you're just listening. You wanna find out, especially from their dietary intake, you wanna put extra attention on how much caffeine they're consuming. Uh, so even after you do a dietary intake, you know, are there, are there any other times during the day where you're, where you're consuming, like any kind of caffeine, whether it's in coffee or tea or sodas or energy drinks? So you wanna make sure to double check on that. Why? Because your client might forget number one. Number two is they might not necessarily wanna say it because they might be embarrassed about how much they did or how much they're doing. So you just wanna get a sense. You just wanna know and you wanna know because at some point you want to help your client get down to the minimal amount of caffeine that they can do. 'cause with my clients who are extremely fatigued, who are relying on caffeine, I am not going to take away all their caffeine. But I do want to oftentimes bring it down to something that I consider more manageable for them, which is ideally no more than three consumptions of a coffee or an energy drink every day. No more than that as best I can.
Hey, Mr. And Mrs. Klein, any other physical symptoms or health complaints? Anything you could think of? No, not really. How's your digestion? Oh yeah, that gets real sluggish. How's your elimination mood stuff? How's your health in terms of your immunity, colds, headaches, skin health, hair, health, sleep? So joint pain.
Make sure to collect their physical symptoms because when you make dietary changes or tweaks and you see your client has a success, you're gonna celebrate it.
So remember we talked about at the beginning of this conversation some of the metabolic things that you wanna make sure your client has had checked up with their physician, thyroid
metabolic syndrome, the whole blood sugar insulin continuum. Uh, are you under a physician's care and have you received a diagnosis? So that's important. You want to get a sense of, is my client with a doctor right now? Are they under care right now? If they are under care with somebody who's working on their fatigue, you want to be an adjunct to whatever their primary person is doing. You don't wanna do things that are counter to what their primary physician or healer is doing. Um, here's something I wanna mention. Um, mercury feelings in your mouth. When were those put in? So this is one of the often Unherald Unherald did undisclosed unnoticed places where many people will experience a host of symptoms and dis diseases in including fatigue, um, heavy metal exposure, exposure to mercury. Now Mercury traditionally is coming in through fillings, but these days it's also coming in from other places. It can come in still from vaccinations. It can come in from the environment, it can come in from the air, it can come in through seafood. And again, certain people will clear toxic metals from their system rather readily. They, it's, it's a literally a genetic superpower, um, that, that toxic metals come into their system. Mercury, aluminum, and the body literally goes no way, baby. Uh, and they're excreted out.
Some people will take those toxic metals and they are not good excers, but they will store it and your body will try to store it in places where it will do the least amount of damage. Unfortunately, one of the symptoms of heavy metal toxicity is, um, is fatigue. There are many people who have been diagnosed as chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia who are heavy metal toxic. So this is something I'll bring up with my client. If they tell me they're working with a naturally oriented doctor, I will say, have you been tested for heavy metals? Well, no. Well, great, you know, something, if my client can afford it, and if they have the inspiration and the wherewithal, I wanna be able to check that one off the list. Because if they're heavy metal toxic, then you bet does a heavy metal build up in their system? Um, you bet. I want them to address that. That's what I would do for my family. That's what I would do for my loved ones and my best friends and myself. Um, so I think that's very important. Okay, let's leave that at that fast eater, moderate eater, slow eater. You know, sounds simple, but if a person's a fast eater, they're not gonna be digesting well. And oftentimes it is poor digestion that is the cause or a major contributing factor to our fatigue.
Digestion simply needs a little time to do its job. It needs the right state to do its job, which is relaxation response, parasympathetic nervous system dominance. That's why you're asking that question. And if they say they're a fast eater, you know what your job is. Okay. Um, do you have any food sensitivities or allergies that you know of? 'cause they might have been tested before or they're aware of this or they've gone on elimination diet? No, I don't know. Um, you know, something I, I wonder though. I think I might be, might be sensitive to dairy. I think I might be allergic to this. I think so. You're just listening for what your client knows. You're learning about their relationship with their body as they're answering a question like this.
Some clients are very educated about what they're sensitive and allergic to. So you just learn something about your client, you know, okay, they're on this one. Um, if they say, you know, none that I'm aware of, I have no idea, what are you even talking about? Then I'm gonna bookmark that. Hmm. This might be a place we return to at some point. So remember, you're getting a description of their home environment. Um, hey, Mr. Mrs. Client, I give, gimme a sense of where you live, a house, an apartment. Like, describe it to me. How would you describe your living environment to keep it clean? Do you get air circulation in there? Is it noisy? Is it more in the road? Is it in the country? Just like, gimme a picture, see what your client does.
Did you ever notice? Does your house have a lot of mold? Does it have a lot of dust? Uh, do you have animals in your home? How's the air circulation? You know, how's the air quality around your home? Um, are you in a more industrial area? Like, what's that about?
By the way, I mentioned animals. Here's one I've probably had. Gosh, I could, I could think of four or five clients over the years. This is why, you know, you learn these things as you go along. Um, I had a client once who was just, all of a sudden he's experiencing fatigue. Boom, it comes outta nowhere. Um, along with the fatigue, he would get mild headaches along with the mild headaches and the fatigue. He started getting very minor skin rashes. And man, I looked at everything with this guy. I looked at everything. Um, he was under some very intensive, um, natural medicine care and was on, was given a, a bunch of supplements for his immune system. Uh, had some blood tests, you know, he was a little low in certain B vitamins, so, so anyway, he'd been taken for, you know, good part of eight, nine months. A lot of supplements. He said some great medical testing and everything he's done. Nothing helps. So, okay. Well, anything, what was going on in your life when the fatigue started? Nothing is different. Literally nothing is different. Now, I'm gonna say sometimes I'm gonna go back a little bit before, so this is a little more advanced, but I'm gonna tell you how, how my brain works here. Um, okay, so nothing different. When your fatigue came down, how about, you know, three or four or five months before your fatigue was there, was there anything dramatically different? Not really, no. Um huh How about even a little bit before that, any major changes? Well, you know, other than moving in with my wife and her cat, no. And as soon as I heard that, I thought, huh, I'm allergic to cats, I've said, and then I started realizing, oh goodness, mild headache, mild skin rash. Do you have any problems with like sinus congestion? Yeah, a little bit. Is that usual? No, it's, it's part of this whole fatigue thing. Long story short, okay, when do you feel best? Whenever they travel. Whenever they travel, boom, it's gone. Hmm. So I'm starting to put one on one and one on one together. And I'm now suspecting that he's sensitive and he's and or allergic to the cat.
And sure enough that's, uh, you know, him and his woman started talking about that and they were looking at each other going, oh my goodness. Um, and it turns out he was, he was very, very, very sensitive to the animal. And how did he discover that? Because it became so obvious. As soon as I pointed it out, he would notice that, you know, a lot of times his symptoms would get worse right after he was handling the cat and playing with the cat, and sleeping with the cat. Um, they had eventually part ways with the kitty. Um, so, but all I'm saying is that's where you can be a great sleuth. Okay? You wanna get a description of the person's work environment. Tell me where you work, what kind of environment is it? What do you do for a living? Get a sense of their office, get a sense of their factory, get a sense of their work environment. Like how would you describe your work environment? Do you like it? Is it clean? Is it healthy? How's the air quality? Is there dusty? Are there animals? There? Is it, is are, are you exposed to toxins that you're aware of?
Again, I'm gonna tell you, I had a client, um, who taught me a lot deeply chronic, fatigued, um, very profound medical intervention. Um, this young man was being flown all around the country to experts. His parents were sparing no expense. Um, and guy could find absolutely zero relief. And when he came to see me, I was asking about his work environment. I was asking about the onset of his chronic fatigue. And the chronic fatigue happened. Um, he, he came down with it less than a year after he started working in a print shop.
In a print shop where he was exposed to a fantastic amount of inks and toxic inks, which in many ways also means heavy metal toxicity. Um, and he was still working at this print shop. And sure enough, you know, when are you, when do you feel best on the weekends? When he is not at work? When else do you feel best? When he is traveling, when he is not at work?
And when does he feel best? The longer he's away from work and he loves his work. He, he absolutely loves his work. And I said to him, listen, just from everything you're telling me, I think your work is killing you. I think whatever toxic, toxic exposure you have, there's people who can deal with it and there's people who can't. I don't think your body can deal with it. It was a workplace exposure that did not work for him. Okay, you're gonna ask about family relationships, sex life, work life, money, career goals, religion, spirituality. Just wanna get a sense of your client
when it comes to the stressor, sores and life unfolding. And of course you want to ask about sleep. You wanna go into sleep quality. How is your sleep? Do you have trouble falling asleep? Do you have trouble staying asleep? Do you wake up in the middle of the night? How many hours do you sleep? What would you say is the quality of your sleep? Do you take any sleeping aids? Some people have no idea that their fatigue is being caused by their sleeping pill.
A lot of the prescription sleeping pills and a lot of the over counter sleeping pills, they make you extra fatigue the next day. You sleep really well, but you can be fatigued and foggy the next day. And people don't make that connection.
So my friends, you're always asking, where is my client training or leaking their energy? Remember? That's what gives my client energy or enhances it. And how can I help my client manage the energy that they already have right now?
You know, in Chinese medicine it said that we come into this world with a certain allotment of energy from birth. You come in with a package, you come in with an energy bank account. So it's good to spend that energy wisely. It's good to think in terms of a long game. How do you spend your energy? Is this the way you wanna spend your energy? What are you wasting it on? Where do you wanna put it?
How are you p*****g it away?
At the same time that we have this birth allotment of energy, we're constantly impacting our day-to-day energy in little and sometimes not so little ways by what we do, what we think, what we feel, what we believe, what we eat, what all the little things that we do during our day. So managing our energy is about awareness. It's about consciousness, it's about waking up, it's about being educated. It's about getting embodied, listening to your body, listening to body feedback. It's about experience. Literally collating one's own experience. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Now that we're talking about this, Mr. Coach, Mrs. Coach, you're right. I'm noticing that when I eat like this or when I hang out with this person, or when I'm not at work on the weekends, that's when I have the most energy. So your client is learning. And it doesn't mean they have to give up their job and never work again, but you're making connections and you're seeing where there's places to work. So managing our energy is all about maturing. It's about wisdom, it's about experimentation, it's about practice. It's not about fixing your broken client. It's nothing broken. We're learning how to live. Yes. Do certain people need extra intervention? Sure. But again, it's not broken. It's just here's what's needed for many people. The more we agree to be here, more we agree to be here, the more energy we have or the more energy we can have. Yeah. If I'm resisting the very nature of my life, that's exhausting, resisting one's own existence, that could be exhausting. Accepting one's existence, being willing to be in one's existence as it is right now in this body, in this life, in these crazy circumstances with these interesting people around us, with this nutty job I have, with these challenges I have.
Granted, it's not always easy for people. It's not always easy for us to be alive in this world and to walk down the road and be on our journey.
And when we can begin to move in that journey with more grace, with more humility, with more acceptance, with more gratitude, I'm alive. I'm here. I have an opportunity. And as bad as things might be over here and here and here, they're pretty good over here and here. Gratitude. It's a good energizer.
And we have just completed part seven of energy and fatigue. Part eight and nine are coming up. We got more to go and some great distinctions coming up. I'm actually excited for us, my friends. Thank you as always for your time and your attention and your energy. And I'll see you on the other side.

PART 8

Autoscroll:

Readings. Once again, my friends, Mark David here, founder of the institute, let us continue our conversation about energy and fatigue. And we are going to focus on the concept of energy gain, energy drain. And we're gonna take that concept and we're going to look at how we can use it as a great tool and a great technique and a great learning experience to ongoingly play with and practice with your energy challenge client. So energy gain, energy drain. This is probably one of the simplest and yet most profound distinctions you can use to help you help your client when it comes to their fatigue challenges. It's a classic coaching tool. And because it's so simple, it's very often overlooked. Now, with this strategy alone, in my experience, we can do some great work with just about any energy challenge client. And it's all about learning to manage, regulate, and wisely spend the energy we already have. So we're gonna really break this down. Now, here's a reminder. Most clients who are low energy will not necessarily benefit from more energy, of course, because it's easy to go up to, for us to go back into old habits, old ways of eating, old ways of working and stressing out and wasting energy in ways that we're not even aware of. We don't notice, we just do it. A lot of people just leaking a lot of energy. So the lesson in low energy and fatigue is very often the need to get back to the basics of learning. How can I, as a human being alive on earth, regulate my energy in a way that actually truly works for me? So there's an assumption here, and the assumption here is that many people need to learn and practice embodiment in this way. Embodiment here, this aspect of embodiment. Embodiment means being wise enough, smart enough, sharp enough, alert enough, interested enough to see what is giving us the energy to do our life and what is draining our life force and working against us. You can actually take any human being that you know and just divide their life into this category that which gives them energy and that which drains their energy. Yeah, there's probably things that are neutral in there somewhere,
but our life consists of that, which is giving us more juice and that which is taking it away. So it's our job to help our clients get more conscious about that because then they can begin to increase their energy bank account, and that's when a person truly begins to transform their low energy and their fatigue for many low energy clients. So here's a great homework assignment to give to your clients to get the conversation going and to find some good juicy places to work. So what I want you to do is ask your client to make two lists. Okay, Mr. And Mrs. Klein, we're gonna make two lists. On the first list, there's a homework assignment. On the first list I want you to write down everything, everything, everything, everything that gives you energy. Now, when I say everything, I mean persons, places, things, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, foods, supplements, substances, any kind of experience, anything in the human realm. Anything in life. So first list everything that gives you energy. On the second list, I want you to do the exact same thing for everything that drains your energy. And again, it could be people, it could be places, it could be specific things like, I love my rock collection. I look at my rocks, it gives me energy, thoughts, God, whenever I look in the mirror and say, oh, you suck, you're terrible. You're no good. Yeah, that, that, that doesn't gimme energy. It drains my energy. Certain feelings give us energy, drain our energy. Certain beliefs, certain foods, certain supplements that I notice. Wow, I take this, it gives me energy. Wow, I eat this. It drains my energy experiences. Oh, every time I go here, every time I do this, every time I listen to this kind of music, whatever it is, anything you could think of, please ask your client to be very complete and exhaustive with this list. This list can include big things. What's a big thing? You know what gives me energy? Oh, whenever I go to a wedding, okay, well that's, you know, maybe once a year at the most, okay, is okay, I'm gonna call that a big thing. Oh, you know what else gives me energy? Um, okay, lighting a candle at night before I go to bed. Yeah, it's a little thing. So I want your client to write down everything, the little things, the medium things, the big things, doesn't matter, include them all. In fact, it does matter. I want everything on that list possible. Okay? So this is how you are setting your client up for this assignment. Then when your client comes back to you the next week, I want you to use their inventory to work from, to take practical steps. So the first thing, and have your client bring in a copy or have them email it to you, I want you to first ask your client before you dive into anything else, ask your client, Hey, Mr. And Mrs. Client, what did you notice about this exercise? Did you have any particular insights? Did you have any particular aha moments? Were there any connections that you kind of made as you were writing this list? Was there any new understandings that came out of this?
The reason why you're doing that is because what I have found over the years doing this exercise is that the simple act of doing this exercise is very transformational for most people because insights already start to emerge as your client is inventorying their experience of that which gives them energy and that which drains their energy. They're gonna notice certain patterns, they're gonna notice things that they hadn't really thought of before. So we want them to get to share their insights and their aha moments first, because quite honestly, that's what matters most. When your client comes up with something on their own, that's what's most important. That's what they're gonna act on, that's what they're gonna be inspired about and that's what's worth talking about.
Make sense? So you wanna first hear from your client and, and spend time on that. If they have some good aha moments, be curious, create conversation around it. And from there, once that part of the conversation has happened, then begin to look at that list. And I'm gonna say that, oh, okay, Mr. And Mr. Client, I'm looking at this list and I wanna know what things from this list you can really begin to incorporate in your daily life in terms of the energy gain list.
And I want us to also take a look at what we can start to remove or limit or cut down on in terms of the things on your energy drain list.
So there's certain things that give your client energy, let's say going on vacation, okay? They can't do that every day. So I want you to first spot the things on the list that are daily doable or every other day doable or once a a week doable. So look at that list. What is easy for your client? And you literally discuss the list together. Okay, Mr. And Mr Client, do me a favor. Here's a pen. Circle everything on this list. That is, you can potentially on the energy gain list, circle everything on this list that you can do perhaps once a day. Circle everything on this list that you can do, you know, once or twice a week.
Circle things on the list that are more, you know, yearly.
And then you're gonna start to look at what can we incorporate from the energy gain list on a regular basis. And ask your client what really jumps out for you? What are you attracted to on this list? Now there might be things on that energy gain list that they could do every day, but right now they just do once a day.
There might be things on that list that they're really drawn to. They forgot that that's such a good thing for them, or they realize they need to be reminded. So from that energy gain list, I want you to come up with a new list that your client can start with. Here's the practices that I'm going to daily that give me energy. Here are the practices that I'm gonna do once a week or a few times a week, or three times a week, whatever it is that give me energy.
Here's some of the things that are more big picture a few times a year, but I wanna make sure I calendar those in that give me energy.
And this is always a negotiation. You wanna find what's most inspiring for your client, what's most doable. Now when it comes to the energy drain list, same thing. You wanna look at what's on that list that your client is doing every day that drains their energy, what's on the list that they do once or twice or three times a week that drain their energy?
And start to notice, okay, Mr and Mrs. Client, what on this list can we begin to limit or let go of in a real practical way that's doable for you? Now there's gonna be certain things on the energy drain list. Your client might say, going to work every day drains my energy. Okay, sure. But we're not gonna, we can't just cross work off the list and not go. So on the energy drain list, you have to pick out the practical things
that are impacting your client, that are doable for them to let go of.
And there you have a great place to work. And then the next time they come in, you check in with them. How did that work? Were you able to practice the energy gainers on your list? Were you able to let go of some of the energy drainers, tell me what happened, how did it work out for you? Gimme some story, gimme some insights here. And then you have a conversation and you'll be very surprised. You know, clients really enjoy this exercise because it's a very cool inventory. And people's favorite topic is themselves. And this is the kind of exercise where they're looking at all the things that make 'em feel good pretty much, and the things that don't make 'em feel good pretty much. And we're creating as best we can, an exhaustive list, and your client gets to see it on paper or on the computer and it makes it very real. So I have found this to be an extremely useful tool. So here's some tips. Um,
we mentioned looking at all the energy gainers and seeing, labeling them as what you could do daily, several times a week, once per month, et cetera. Um, important for them to look at the energy gaining practices that they can do every day, meaning easier to do. And you have to notice what your client seems more excited about on the energy gain list. That's the direction you wanna urge them in. So you're gonna be looking at them, listening for them, watching their body language, their intonation, watching how their face lights up when you cover certain things on the energy gain list. So you're gonna pick up all the subtle cues that you pick up
more tips, work with your client, explore and negotiate all the entries on their energy gain list to see how often they can practice these. What can they incorporate right now between now and the next time you see them? And again, you always start with the things that are most doable for your client that they're most inspired about, that gives them the best possible chance to have a success because it's easy to practice. So that's essentially their work, that's their homework. And from here you will be their accountability coach and you're gonna check in with them in the next session. You're gonna schmooze, you're gonna talk story, you're gonna ask them what worked, what didn't, challenges, successes, and you have a client and you have a great conversation to be in. Again, same thing for the energy drainers. Notice the items on your client's list that might be easier to let go of. First. Notice the energy drainers on their list that might yield a really nice benefit, meaning a noticeable success. If they let go of this real soon, you must please consider starting with what seems easiest for your client. There are certain things, even though they might be draining your client's energy, they're gonna be a little bit harder to let go. So you wanna try to make the exercise a little more fun. You wanna make it more inviting. You wanna do this in a way that's interesting, that builds momentum where your client can smile, where you guys can get a good laugh. So this is not serious,
even though for a fatigue client, not having enough energy is serious business.
But when I say it's not serious, what I'm saying is the more fun you make it, the more inspired you are. The more laughs you have around this, the better. And you'll see what I mean as you start to do this with clients. Now, there's a couple of distinctions that I would love for you to look out. For many times the very things that give us energy can be the very things that drain our energy if we do them too much too often or we don't set a clear and intelligent limit for ourselves.
So I just wanna say that again. Many times the very things that give us energy, yeah, this, this helps me have energy. Those very things can be the same things that drain our energy if we do it too much or too often, or don't set a clear limit. Now, this is often a very sweet revelation for people.
So
example, okay, certain foods give you energy. When I eat sushi I get energy. But you know something, if I overeat sushi, my energy is drained. Yeah, eating my favorite foods gives me energy. Eating too much of my favorite foods drains my energy. Isn't that interesting? Let's see. Having certain relatives over my house for two days for a visit gives me energy. Those same people, once we hit day three and four, they start to drain my energy. You will often notice that there are certain people that you can hang out with and really have a good time for X amount of time. And if you hang out with them too long, it starts to be an energy drainer. Even though given the first amount of time, it's an energy gainer.
You know, for some people they're on vacation and it's great, but a lot of people hit a wall on a vacation is like, there's only so much hanging out at the beach or laying down that a lot of people can do. And all of a sudden they start to get antsy. They want to get back to work. So yeah, the very thing that's relaxing us can actually drain our energy because there's a natural part of us that's ready to shift and get back to work.
For many people, a certain amount of exercise gives us energy. If you over exercise, you can be drained for the next couple of days. You could be in pain for the next few days.
Hey, play your favorite song gives you energy. Sometimes in the morning I'll play my favorite song three or four times. It really gives me energy. If I play that song 10 times, it starts to drain my energy. If you played your favorite song a hundred times in a row, it won't be your favorite song anymore. Too much. See where I'm going Now for many people, here's another distinction that which gives them energy are often things that have a relaxing quality. Not always, but I wanna point out that this thing called relaxation in a weird way, gives us energy. So I'm pointing this out because oftentimes we can get stuck in the belief that that which gives us energy has to feel like a cup of coffee and has to feel really stimulating.
You might get energy from something that we rejuvenates you.
So in a weird way, you know, one could say, you know, some people a little nap during the day gives them energy or a little rest period during the day, gives them energy or meditating gives them energy in the moment it looks like they're relaxing, the net result is a rejuvenation. So I just don't want you to miss that distinction and think that an energy gainer has to be something that makes me move really fast. It makes me talk really fast and makes me wanna stay up really late. No, it doesn't have to be that. It means more. Yes, it could be more motive energy to do things and pick things up and move things and talk about things and stay up later. Sure, it could be that, but it can also be more of a sense of vitality. It could be more of a sense of health and more of a sense of God, I feel good. Wow, it feels much better to be me right now.
So again, I wanna say many clients really enjoy diving into the specificity of this inventory, and this is a very good thing. So what I'm saying is I invite you to be willing to hang out here and really linger with your client in this way.
Let's go through some energy drainers of note. I wanna point these out to you just so you can see some of my thoughts around this that I want to make sure you catch. Because a lot of times you might know your client a little bit because you've spent time together. And when they write their energy drain list, and we're gonna, by the way, we're gonna spend more time on the energy drainers, um, because I find that that's the place where a lot of people just miss things. They, they don't quite get what's draining their energy. Um, so I'm going through this list. So you might be able to pick up on things that your client didn't quite put in. And as well as a heads up for you as the practitioner, these are places for you to notice in general with your clients in general with your clients. These can be places of extreme or moderate energy drain. And some of these energy drainers that we're gonna, that we're looking at here are indeed, um, sometimes where the real action is your client might be involved in what I'm gonna just say fruitless pursuit. They keep going after something. It could be a person, it could be somebody they wanna date, somebody they wanna be in relationship with. They keep going after a certain goal. Um, they keep going after a certain work goal or a certain career goal. Um, they keep going after, um, wanting somebody to change in a relationship and it's just a fruitless pursuit.
I want you to notice the places in your client's life where they keep going after the same thing and it doesn't get anywhere. Kind of like losing five pounds right from this very specific part of my body over here, and they've been trying to do that for 5, 10, 15 years. I'm calling that fruitless pursuit.
So perfectionism is fruitless pursuit.
Wanting to be famous can be a fruitless pursuit.
Negative self-talk. You know that that's an energy drainer. I just wanna make sure when your client writes their inventory that they catch this one, you need to catch this one for them because negative self-talk might be up there as one of the biggest self-chosen energy drainers, that we have a significant say in that a human can possibly think of. All grudges. All grudges. It takes energy to maintain a grudge. It takes energy to make space inside of our brain where the grudge can live and the grudge can be revisited and the grudge can, you know, get a little air and get a little food. Take it out, take out the grudge every once in a while, walk it, exercise it. Um, but that takes energy and the grudge never gives us energy at some point. A grudge gives you energy, it gives, makes you stressed out, might make us a little bit angry, give us energy, might make us a little bit righteous. We might even be right,
but eventually grudges, our energy drains taking on too much. Please catch this for your clients. You will have some clients who are high achievers, high achiever by this doesn't necessarily mean a career achiever. There are some people I've seen, uh, people, particularly women who are stay at home moms and they're some of the highest achievers that I know. They're trying to be super mom, they're trying to be super exerciser, they're trying to be super healthy person, they're trying to be super social. They're also super wonderful with their volunteer work and they're exhausted. They take on too much.
There are people who are taking on too much at work and they have the option to not take on so much at work. There are people who oftentimes take on too much of someone else's emotions. They take on too much of someone else's personal load.
And it's an energy drainer. Indeed, my client might have a load to bear and they're not sharing that load when they can. I guess that's related to taking on too much. But the flip side of that is we're not sharing the load because oftentimes we have responsibilities, and I've seen this a lot, particularly with couples where one person is just taking on a lot more. It can happen, uh, and the person who's taking on a lot more can easily get resentful. And the person who is not taking on enough of the load oftentimes is oblivious and is not gonna raise their hand because it's not something they have their eye on. So it's up to us. It's up to your client if they're not sharing the load to be alerted to that, especially when they're carrying a load that's related to a relationship that's related to parenting, that's related to a family matter that's related to something at work where an individual and, and a lot of our clients have the martyr archetype. Just give it to me and I will bear it. No isolating is an energy drainer. You need to notice this, especially for your clients who are binge eating, especially for your clients who have, um, a little bit of low self-esteem, especially for your clients who have body image challenges. These are people who will be oftentimes isolating because who wants to be public around that. And isolating is a profound energy drainer and it feels like a good strategy. Yes, sometimes we need to be alone. I'm not knocking that. But you need to catch when your clients are isolating, which often means they're really not agreeing to be here, which means they're living in shame. And we always have to invite our clients into the game of life, which will feel like it will drain their energy. But their nervousness is really excitement that hasn't fully figured out how to be excitement quite yet, lying is an energy drainer. Oftentimes, it takes a while for you to know your client before you can figure out the places in their life where they are not being truthful or where they are indeed lying. It takes a lot of energy to maintain a lie. It takes a lot of energy to cover for that lie because oftentimes we have to do all kinds of other little lies to cover for the original lie.
So if lying is a challenge for your client, understand that it is an energy drainer that's a little bit difficult to spot. I will say, uh, a lot of people are living in an immature lifestyle that's as best as I can say it. You've seen that in some of our case studies where, you know, people are ready to grow up.
We talked a little bit about who was it in the section that we're dealing with now, energy and fatigue. Talking about the young mom, 34 years old Jolene, who really needed to step into more maturity around her new lifestyle, around being a mom, around being in very close relationship with her parents who, who are constantly being good grandparents for the kids. Um, she kind of wanted to, part of her wanted to be in her old lifestyle,
so she wasn't really living in an immature lifestyle, but in her head, she wanted her old lifestyle back wasn't working. We've also seen some other case studies where, you know, people really needed to up their game when it comes to finding a partner and looking for love in all the wrong places. You know, another energy drainer is there's some people, some clients just have a lot of no energy. Like they're a no to everything. They're not much of a yes to life. So they're constantly saying, no. I, I've had clients who really wanted to get out there more, wanted more of an exciting lifestyle, wanted to be more in relationship just with people and they would simply constantly turn down opportunities because they would get so specific. Well no, this isn't exactly what I wanna be doing and these aren't exactly the people I wanna do that with. So, you know, that's fine. Sometimes we're very specific and I'm not saying that's a bad thing. What I am saying is sometimes for certain people there's just a lot of no energy. Do you know anyone like that? I'm just asking you to see if you can spot that in your client, because that often means that they're shutting down opportunities.
We saw that in one of my clients meadow, who kept saying no to the man who was interested in her, who was very interested in her, that she was interested in which she just had to have an automatic no, that was her automatic response. Too much. No, some people have too much. Yes, they don't have a boundary. They don't know how to say no, literally. Um, and they go in social engagements that don't work for them. They go on dates that don't work for them. They're in a relationship or a dating relationship that doesn't work for them. They take on things that work. They don't say no that are even not their responsibility. They might be too much of a yes to their kids, their children, and they don't create boundaries with the kids. And consequently they feel not respected and run all over. You have to notice that that's an energy drain. Okay? On a different kind of practical level, we've talked about lack of some energy drainer, lack of nature. We've mentioned that before. I'm on it about that one just because in part I'm a nature boy, so I'm very biased here. But at the same time, even though I am biased, I am noticing that we are human beings and we are creatures, uh, in some way, shape or form from the natural world. And nature heals in whatever little bits and pieces we can get it in. Let's talk about some more energy drainer. I want you to notice your clients who talk too much. Sometimes people don't know when to stop. They don't know how to manage and monitor their languaging. Talking too much can be an energy drainer, even though some people have a lot to say. Some people actually need to talk a bunch because their energy, their tension is so built up that they need to deliver a lot of words. So we need to understand that it's a fine line. Sometimes too much talking means not enough listening. Sometimes too much talking means not enough feeling. Sometimes too much talking means I'm not actually present to the people around me. I'm not present to what's going on around me. And consequently,
good things don't always come from that. When we're not aware of our environment and we're just talking, talking, talking, talking, talking. Um, media obsession.
Uh, in my very strong personal opinion, if we're hooked on media, we're in trouble. If we're addicted to media, we are in trouble. A lot of people are just, you see it, they're hooked on their phone, they're hooked on the computer, they're hooked on surfing the internet. They're hooked on whatever nonsense they're hooked on. And we don't realize that that pulls our energy from other places in life. So I just want you to notice your client's style of living, their lifestyle, their relationship to media. Why, when I say media, I mean the tv, I mean the movies, I mean the computer, I mean the cell phone, I mean the magazines. I mean the people that they follow on social media and how they go about doing that. Is it an obsession? Is it taking over their life? Is it taking so much of their energy that they're missing out on other things in life?
It's a bit of a subtle catch to notice that, but I see it more and more. It's very disturbing to me that a lot of people are living less and less in the world and they're occupying more and more of the virtual world. Use the virtual world for sure, get in, but get out. Don't live there. Don't make that your world because it's not your world. The world is your world seeking and need attention. You have to pick out the clients noticing. You know, the clients who, who are just attention hungry. A lot of people are like that. Males, females, for whatever reason doesn't matter. Doesn't matter what the reason is. If you notice that, that's what you client is getting stuck on, I'm calling that an energy drain. You have to notice it. You have to pick it up. You have to raise your hand. Anytime we're trying to change someone, especially a significant other in a relationship, trying to change someone equals a wonderful, great, predictable energy drain is gonna be frustrating. Change yourself first. Yes, you can raise your hand. Yes, you can alert someone to how they are being unconscious. You can alert someone to how they just stepped across a boundary line. You can alert someone to how their words or their actions harm you in a certain way. That's all fair game. Trying to change a person doesn't necessarily work. It's an energy, it's an energy drain, especially if that's our modus operandi in our significant relationship. And that's how we're trying to make the relationship better by changing the other person. A recipe for unsuccess body hate is a massive energy drainer. You know that. I'm not gonna go into that. Here's one lack of planning.
You may notice clients in your life that are floating, that are, and maybe even with you, they are constantly canceling sessions, forgetting even a session, oh, I didn't, I forgot to write it down. I put it here, I put it there. I forgot to pay you. Some people are not planning their life
and they might have an eating challenge. You might be seeing them for a health challenge. They might have a challenge with fatigue. It is fatiguing if life feels like it's being hurled at you. And we're not really planning ahead. We don't have an action plan for our education. We don't have an action plan for work. We don't have an action plan for the week. We don't have a calendar. We don't. There's just no forethought. There's no structure that is a major energy drain.
Yet. Another energy drainer of note my friends is financial irresponsibility. You know, so many people these days, we don't really learn how to balance a checkbook. We don't know how to create a budget. A lot of people don't know how to manage their energy when it comes to money, energy, money is energy. Financial irresponsibility or just simply unaware is really connected to everything in our life. You know, talk about something that can cause us to be depleted in so many ways. You know, a lot of people are not in their bodies. They're accident prone, they're not really present. One form of disembodiment is being accident Prom. That's an energy trainer. Um, not acknowledging needs or desires with others. We're in all different kinds of relationships with friends, family, loved ones, our significant others. We need to learn how to communicate our world to them. Um, inability to make decisions. Some people just constantly go back and forth and they're indecisive. That's an energy trainer. Refusal to learn a life lesson. Do you ever know someone like that? Do you ever have a friend or a relative? They keep, they seem to keep learning the same life lesson and they don't quite get it and it keeps coming back to them and back to them. That's an energy drainer when we're not paying attention to the workshop called our Life. 'cause the workshop called our life is always teaching us. And by the way, everything that I'm mentioning are the kinds of things that you are here to take note of. You're here to notice. You are here to listen for these on behalf of your client. Your client's not gonna come to you and say, Hey, I'm draining my energy because I have a refusal to learn a life lesson. You're just not gonna hear that from most human beings. Um, but that doesn't mean you ought not look out for that unexamined complaint. Have you known someone like that? They complain. They complain, they complain oftentimes about the same things. When we don't really examine the nature of our complaint, especially if it's a continuous complaint, then we haven't really looked in the mirror and we're not necessarily growing. Unexamined complaint is an energy drain. It's an energy drain for the person living in the complaint. And it's an energy drain for the people around them. You know, a lot of people in general avoid body wisdom and feedback. You know, some people are just not in tune with it. They haven't been taught. And once they start to learn their eager students of their own body wisdom and they can now listen for some feedback,
others avoid it. They don't wanna know, they don't want to hear outta sight outta mind. I just don't wanna notice that this symptom is related to what I eat. I don't want to notice that how I feel is related to how I've been not taking care of myself. Many people are literally in protest. They wanna avoid body wisdom because that means they can be irresponsible, which ultimately drains energy. We've talked about feng shui and really what I mean is that a, a home environment will always have a connection to our internal environment within us. So when our surroundings that we live in are messy and overburdened with junk, how could that not affect us? Some people are very manipulating, manipulation, you know, initially can give energy in the long term it drains it. So, you know, these are traits like something like being manipulative. If I notice that in my client and it's a client who is a fatigue client, any client really, I'm always at some point in the relationship wanting to coach my client up to be a better person. Okay? Wanting approval or credit.
Some people are really on it because they might not have received credit for something they did. In fact, somebody else might have received the credit for what they did or the approval for what they did. So that's often a difficult experience and it can live in the system if we hang onto it. Sometimes we want approval or credit for things that ah, we might not necessarily deserve or for whatever reason it's simply not forthcoming. And to keep wanting that and wanting that and wanting that in the universe ain't giving it to us. Is an energy drain yet Another one. Attachment to any single outcome. When we're attached to something happening, whatever it is, I don't care. I want to get something. I I wanna own something and I didn't get it. I don't own it. Um, I am dating this person and I want something more. And that doesn't happen. Sometimes when we get overly attached, whether it's in relationships, whether it's in things that have to do with work, with career, with money, with certain social interactions, with certain opportunities, we can get very pouty and mopey and gropey if we don't get what we want. It's understandable to feel disappointment when we don't receive the outcome that we were desiring. That's perfectly human. To continue to be attached to receiving an outcome that just didn't happen is an energy drain. We've talked about disappointment. When it continues to be unresolved and living in us as one of the more difficult to process emotions and is one of the bigger, not easily noticed energy drainers that people can have. I'm always scanning to see where my client is in disappointment. Apathy is an approach to the world. It's an approach to life. It's an emotion that overcomes us based on our internal religion at the time. Ah, who cares? Ah, you're born, you die. Ah, entering the state of apathy is entering the state of low energy. The two go hand in hand. We mentioned before, you know, there are certain people that you can be with them. And if we're with them too much, it's an energy drain. People can either help us uplift our energy, they could drain it and everything else in between. So important for us as the practitioner, for us as the coach, to work with our client around their relationships, the people they spend the most time with. Especially for my energy challenge client, I really wanna see how they're spending their social energy. I want to see how they're spending their relationship energy, who they're in relationship with and how they're doing those relationships. Whether it's with parents, friends, a loved one, children, um, managing the energy in those relationships. So at the very least they're neutral and for sure they're not energy draining.
Let's spend a little more time on energy drainers.
If we're energetically living in our parents' house, you've heard me talk about this, a lot of people, even though they don't live with their parents, they still act as if they are the children of their parents. Meaning, I expect my parents to do this. I expect my parents to do that. My parents disappointed me in this. They didn't do that. They were bad parents. They should have done this, they should have done that. And I wish they would now step up and be a better person than they were. And meanwhile, your parents are being the person that they always were. And it's predictable in such cases. We're still living in our parents' house even though we're independent of them. That's an energy dream. If a client hasn't agreed to be here, how could they possibly receive energy, enough energy from their life?
How can they continuously feel renewed by the world if they don't even want to be here? Any toxic nutritional belief, I wanna say is an energy drainer. Go back to all the toxic nutritional beliefs you've learned about and see how they are powerful drainers of energy.
They can drive a person. Bonkers food is the enemy that is crazy making. It is illogical and it is insane and it's understandable that we have that because that toxic belief is hammered into us from so many different places. So any toxic nutritional belief that we've learned about in this training is ultimately an energy drain as is. It's an energy drain. When we're not stepping into our potential,
there's a natural unfolding to life. There's a natural unfolding to being a human being. I believe that that natural unfolding is a good one. I believe that natural unfolding takes us more and more into who we are meant to be. And for any reason when that process is interfered with, there are many reasons why that can happen. That can come from our own inability because we simply don't know how. We haven't been taught to claim our power to claim our growth. The world doesn't always support us in that. Our relationships don't always support us in that. Our job doesn't always support us in that. So a lot of people are walking around with power that they have that they haven't really claimed. They don't even know they have it. A lot of people are walking around with creativity that they have and they haven't claimed it. There's a part of their sexuality that's unexplored. They haven't claimed that, right? And these can all be energy drainers. Any type of social system that ultimately doesn't support us can be a big energy drain. You know something, a lot of people are very sensitive and if there are humans around them who are psychically attacking them for any reason, energetically attacking them, not liking them, bad vibing them. Some people pick up on that and that's an energy drain. Uh, I don't discount that. I've known people like that who are extremely sensitive in that way. Um, it's, it's, we have to learn how to be with that sensitivity. We have to learn how to strengthen our psychic immune system. But we will often pick up on the energies around us and that can deplete us. You know, this, trying to live up to the expectations of others is a major energy drainer. We gotta be ourself, especially with the, you know, I see this in young people, but I see this in people of all age groups. Oftentimes they're still trying to live up to the expectation of parents, of a partner.
If we're not being the real me, if we're being inauthentic, it takes energy to have a mask on that's not truly us.
That's why when I'm helping my client be more authentic, and you could just switch all these around. Authenticity is an energy gainer. Letting go of a toxic nutritional belief gives us energy. Agreeing to be here, gives us energy, individuating ourselves out of our parents' home. And understanding that our parents are just people. They did the best job they could and releasing them back into the hands of life and not making them further responsible for our plight in this world. That gives us energy. Having a more supportive social system gives us energy, claiming more of our power, our creativity, our sexuality gives us energy.
Claiming more faith, more trust, more connection to a higher power, gives us energy. A lack of faith, a lack of trust. Notice the people around you who just have no faith in their journey. No faith in life, no faith in something bigger than themselves. They have no trust. That's, that's a difficult existence because we're constantly bracing ourselves against a bad world. We're constantly disconnected from that which created us.
You know, I think it's probably wise given that we've spent some time on energy drainers. Let's talk a little bit about some energy gainers of note. Now there's a gazillion of these and they're different for everyone, but I just wanna call out a few of these. Authenticity, truth speaking, vulnerability. You know, a lot of times I'm sitting with a client and I'm asking of the four questions, where's life calling my client? Sometimes it's calling them to just be more vulnerable. People don't wanna be more vulnerable because they think it's gonna harm them, which makes perfect sense. But oftentimes vulnerability when life is calling that forth from us, is a big energy gainer. Creativity of any kind that's coming out of us. Major energy gainer. Creativity is life. Intimacy. Woo. That's an energy gainer nature. For those of you connected to nature, you know this. For those of you not connected to nature, you ought to know this music. And I'm talking about uplifting music that truly uplifts you. In particular music that doesn't have the kind of lyrics that insult humanity, insult people, insult women, insult men, and so on and so forth. I haven said that term. So on and so forth. I don't think in forever. That was weird. Okay, close friends. Hmm, close friends that we care about that give us energy. Best friends, big energy gainers. Um, I'm noticing that the older I get in life, the more valuable the close friends are quiet. A lot of people don't have quiet, a lot of noise. There's always a TV in the background. There's always a a, a radio in the background. There's always music in the background that we don't necessarily want. If you live in a city, there's always noise in the background. Quiet is golden. Quiet can be a major energy enhancer for people getting organized. You know this, you know that when you're organized, things hum a little bit more. You feel better about yourself. It increases our energy organization in your home life, your work life, all of it. Staying true to our word, saying something and then doing it. Staying true to our word, being who we said we are, doing what we said we would do. Acting as we said we would act, builds a lot of character, builds our moral fiber, builds energy, builds power, energy, gainers. So many little things you've heard me say. We often look for the big things, the lottery win when it comes to energy. It's the little things my friends. So some thoughts. It's often helpful for clients to notice the energy drainers in their life that are not necessarily about food and things that you eat.
You've seen that in this work. Food issues are oftentimes not about food.
So when I'm dealing with a client who has low energy and fatigue, of course I'm gonna focus on their diet first and foremost, as a matter of fact. But afterwards, we're gonna focus on everything else possible because that's my commitment to my client. I want to help them step into their personal power. I'm committed to their highest goal to help them be the person that they are truly meant to be in this world. To step into their highest expression. Food is not the only thing that helps us step into our highest expression. Darn. Is it important? It's a big one, but so is everything else.
So in essence, I want my client to truly expand their understanding of energy regulation to every aspect of their life. Because every way we spend our energy,
we're spending our energy, we're spending it, we're giving it. It's finite. We will die someday. So every way that we are spending and expending energy means something, let's spend wisely. So part of the whole journey to better energy is, is trying new experiments. My friends, making new discoveries, getting out of old habit. One of your jobs is to help people create new habits that are doable for them. That's what your energy gain, energy drain inventory with your client is all about. Create some new habits. Hey, this is an energy gainer. Hey, you said you love doing this. Hey, you could do this every day. You can play your favorite music every day. How easy is that? Let's go.
Another way to say that is more neural pathways, more new neural pathways
equals more energy. When I say more new neural pathways is doing things differently. Taking a different road, being a different person, showing up differently, speaking to yourself, more kindly than you usually do. Having more of a smile on your face than you usually do. That's a new neural pathway, but you're calling yourself into something new just doesn't happen by itself. You as the coach, you are here to help coach your client into these awarenesses. So I'm always looking with my energy challenge client. I am looking for the little things. Another way of saying more new neural pathways equals more energy is more novelty. Uh, humans, like many humans like variation, we like change. We like different. Yeah, sometimes you like to go to the same favorite restaurant all the time and sometimes you like to go to new restaurants. Novelty. When you do something new, oftentimes there's more energy.
Young people have a lot of energy. Everything is new to them. If you're really young, if you're a 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, everything is new to you or so much is new to you. Everything is novel in other words. And when things are new and things are novel, you're constantly discovering you. It just gives you more energy.
Such as the secret to youth. I believe particularly the old ones that I've heard speak who have a very youthful life and who appear and act young. It's because they choose to keep learning. They choose to keep being in the new. Hence they have more energy and more inspiration. Whatever inspires you, whatever inspires you, gives you energy. We have to follow our inspirations no matter how strange they might seem. No, no, no matter how personal they are.
And that would be a great inventory for your client to kinda see, you know, write down a list of everything that inspires you. Person's, places thing starts feeling believe. Anything that just inspires you.
And once you see that list, figure out with your client what they can do more of on that list.
Every once in a while I'll find someone on YouTube that really inspires me. And it's usually people who are working with wildlife or doing good work with the, with nature or the ocean or with animals. Um, I get so inspired honestly when I want to be inspired. I watch YouTube videos of people who are really connected to animals and who are helping animals. And that's their life for some reason that that just, that makes me so happy and inspires me. That's not my life, but it inspires me to live my more authentic life, if that makes sense.
So let's talk about a few discussion points with clients that I wanna highlight. Remember, this is one of the most important ones. Hey, Mr. And Mrs. Client, let's dive into this. How do you think your fatigue is a divine messenger? What wisdom or insight or gift does it have for you? What deeper lessons might fatigue be teaching you? In what way might fatigue be asking you to slow down?
What is the wisdom of life asking you to take a closer look at or to do some important self-reflection upon? How is fatigue asking you to grow as a person and to change or grow in relationship with others?
What great questions. You could spend many sessions with clients on these questions alone. They can take us to so many interesting places where walking through the doorway called low energy, we're walking through the doorway called fatigue and we are seeing where it takes us. We're being curious with our clients, we're being willing to explore. Now I wanna return to something that we've mentioned a number of times, which is that any symptom that we have, any eating challenge that we have, any dis-ease that we have can be a shared symptom.
So oftentimes fatigue doesn't merely belong to the person who has it. It may belong to the relationship your client is in.
I've seen this happen so many times where one person is carrying a lot of load, they're carrying a lot of the financial load, they're carrying a lot of the load when it comes to taking care of the kids. And the other partner isn't necessarily stepping up for whatever reason. Sometimes those reasons are good. They might be sick or they might be working all the time, whatever it is. But oftentimes one person is fatigued because they might be carrying the load for another person, IE the person they're in relationship with. Sometimes you're in a relationship, your client's in a relationship where the other person is very unconscious.
They're not stepping up, they're not growing. Your client is growing faster and more and better than their partner is and they end up carrying a lot of the load when it comes to the maturity in the relationship, when it comes to taking the high road in the relationship. And that can be draining. That's all I'm saying. That can be draining. So a lot of times, yes, my client is fatigued. They are clearly fatigued, but what I am saying is that fatigue might not exclusively belong to them. It's often shared in a relationship. Uh, it may belong to the family system in general. So it's not just with the partner, but it's with the entire family. Um,
one member of the family. Your client might simply be far more responsible. They might be the better parent, they might be more aware, and hence they're carrying more of a load. Sometimes there's someone in a family who is carrying the family secret.
Your client may have been abused and is protecting the abuser in the family
and they're fatigued and they're protecting someone. But that fatigue really belongs to the family system
because there's a truth that needs to come out in the family system. So there's often family secrets that certain people end up being the holder of those secrets.
Sometimes when we're young and we don't quite understand that the disharmony perhaps that might be in the family or in between our parents, we don't get that. It's not our fault. A lot of times children see their parents upset and they feel that they are responsible, it's their fault or that somehow they need to fix it.
And there are children and oftentimes those children go up to be adults and they grow up to be your clients who have this kind of psychological profile. They have this habit, they have this persona where they feel like they have to make everything right and they're the ones that have to somehow create harmony in the family system, even though they were the kid. It's the parents' job to create harmony. Not the kids that can be fatiguing at some point. It belongs to the family system. Sometimes the fatigue that your client is experiencing is because it belongs to a business or a business relationship.
They might be in a business that's not their business, but they're being worked to the bone and they really don't have a lot of options and they have to stay in that business. They have to stay in that job, they have to stay in that location. And of their fatigue is really about the, the business environment, the work environment that they're in. Or if there's a partnership or a, like a multiple business partnership, many people end up carrying far more weight or they end up just with certain kinds of responsibility or holding certain secrets. Or they're being asked to do things that are dishonest
and they're being out of integrity in business because they feel they need to or they've been pushed in that direction. And the result is fatigue. When we're living in authentically, when we're living in lies, we will eventually fatigue.
So our fatigue can belong to a business relationship. We can be holding anyone's secret whose ever it is. And certain secrets are not meant to be held. Some secrets are sometimes there's just certain things that don't belong in the public domain at all. And other times we are not meant to carry that burden. So again, I wanna underline anytime we are participating in a lie, it might not be our lie, we might not have originated it, but if we hop on board with that person or those people and continue to participate in that lie, that's an energy drain. Other people might not get fatigued, but your client might. So we can be covering for others, absorbing too much of the load, taking on other people's responsibility. There's many ways to share a symptoms. So that's why I always wanna know about my client's life, about the people they're around, about work, around relationship, about parents, about family, about their social system
because our symptom doesn't just belong to us. So what this means is I can now work with my client. If I see that they're carrying a lot of the load for their relationship and it's draining them, then that's the place we're gonna be having discussion. That's the place we're gonna talk about. That's what I'm gonna raise my hand and say, Hey, here's what I've noticed. If I was in your position, I would feel drained.
Next, my friends, I want you to ask your client at some point, especially if they're a long-term fatigue client, meaning they've been fatigued a long time. Okay, Mr. And Mrs. Client, I just wanna know, let's, let's set our sights into the future a bit. Who would you be? Who would you be if you had all the energy you wanted?
How would your life be different? What would it look like? What would you do different if you had all the energy? If you had more energy and you had what you wanted, what would you do different? How would your life be different? Who would you be? This is a great journaling exercise to send your client home with. It is potent and it is powerful. Why? Because it helps your fatigue client begin to have a vision for themselves, number one,
because oftentimes we do need to look into the future. And that can give your client hope, that can give your client something to aim for, especially once they write it down, journal about it, think about it, and share it with you. It's a very sweet exercise.
It is also useful because when my client says, here's who I would be if I had all the energy that I wanted, once they come back with that homework assignment, I'm gonna ask them. If I don't read it, if they don't show it to me, I'm gonna, you know, I'll, I'll ask them, what did you come up with
'cause I wanna, I wanna hear the details. I either want to read what they wrote, or I just want to hear them share. Like, okay, who would you be? What would you be doing different? How would your life be D? How would your life be different? And as I'm listening, I want to take note of
what is it on that list that they can begin to do now?
Because for some people, part of the puzzle piece, the puzzle pieces of having more energy is to start to be the person that we believe we will be once we have more energy. Now granted, there are certain things you cannot do. I will run marathons. Okay? You can't run a marathon right now because you're chronically fatigued. I get it. So that's not what I'm talking about.
Some people are gonna be more risk takers and you can still take certain kinds of risks when you have low energy. Some people are feel like they're gonna be more loving. You can be more loving and be tired.
I wanna see what on that list, even if it's one thing that I can help my client do now. Because that's a way to bring the future into the present.
So again, great journaling assignment for your client and your task. Notice everything on that list and find out what they can start doing Now, explore and negotiate because there are some people who will use having more energy as a way to not truly live life, to avoid, to hide, to not take risks, to not step up. It's your job to catch that people use that for weight. Yeah, when I have, when I'm hit my target weight, then when I have the right body shape, then when I'm finally eating the right diet, then when I have more energy, then I'm gonna do all these things. Once again, I wanna say yes, there are certain things we can only do. When you weigh a certain amount, you can only wearing your skinny clothes. Got it. You gotta weigh different, running up a flight of stairs as opposed to walking up the flight of stairs. Got it? Okay. But other than that, there's a lot of things you can do at the weight you're at now. There's things you can do, your client can do at the level of energy that they have right now that they expect they will be doing in the future when they have more energy. So I just wanna mention some further inventories you can do with your client that are that, that, that can relate to these. You might do a forgiveness inventory with them, send them home with the assignment, or write down a list of everyone in your life, everyone who still lives as someone you haven't truly forgiven.
Just write down a list, write down a few sentences for each person. What haven't you forgiven them for?
And who would you be? What do you think life would be like? What would be different if you were ready to just move on and let it go? And no longer hold them responsible,
no longer let them live inside your psyche as a perpetrator. It's just an exploration. You could do a boundary or a no inventory. Okay, Mr. And Mr. Client, what are the places in your life where you need to say no more? Where you need to just create more boundaries? And this, I especially will do if I notice I'm dealing with a client who has a lot of loose boundaries and people walk all over my client and people take advantage of my client. And my client is a nice guy or a nice gal. Nice people need to learn how to be jerks, b*****s, a******s sometimes. In other words, they need to learn how to not please people and not make people happy all the time. Need to learn how to use the word no. So where in your life do you need to say no more? Where in your life do you need to create more boundaries? With who specifically with what situations? And then there's a discussion in place for your client and, and for you and your client. And you just go over that list.
Do the same with a yes inventory. Where do you need to say yes more in your life? Mr. And Mrs. Client, where is life calling you to say yes more? That's a fun one. It's interesting to do a social inventory, especially for your petite clients, for any of your clients if it feels right, given the challenge they're dealing with and the hunches that you have about them and the information that you're gathering. Okay? You know, Mr. And Mr. Client, I want you to write down a list of all the people in your life that you socialize with. See if you can write that list in order the people you see most down to the people that you see list, but write down least. But write down all the people in your social world
and then next to that person, I want you to write down a number from one to 10. 10 means this person gives me the most energy. They just hit the jackpot For me, in terms of giving me energy, one means this person's such an energy drainer. I can't believe I'm still hanging around with them. So rank each person one to 10 and see what they come up with. Talk about that list. Look at the people who are number fives. What do you do with those? Look at the fours and the threes and the twos, et cetera. What do you do with those? My friends, you could do an anger and grudge inventory, write down everything and everyone that you're angry about or that you have a grudge about. It could be people, it could be things in the world. I'm angry at politicians. I am angry at the banking system. I am angry at people who pollute the ocean. I am angry that there's so much disharmony between women and men in this world. I'm angry that whatever it is,
part of an anger and grudge inventory is you get to learn where there's actually a lot of energy for your client. I'm not saying this is a bad thing for your client to be angry. This is a place to talk about because we have a lot to be angry at and there's certain things that we're angry at that it's time to let go of. There are certain things that I'm angry at, I'm never gonna let go of. For the most part. You know, I'm, I'm angry at how the world creates its food. Particularly how big corporations sell us toxic food and toxic chemistry. I'm angry at that. I'm never gonna not be angry about it. Um, but I let that anger fuel me. I let that anger give me energy. I'm angry at the way the world brainwashes us when it comes to food and body. I'm angry at the way the world gives us viral, nasty conditioning around our relationship with our body. I'm very angry at that. Um, but I turn that anger into energy.
But why should I let that go? Um, because I'm legitimately angry at it. And that's a motive force. It's an inspiring force for me. So a lot of times when you do an anger inventory with your client, you can actually learn places where they need to express their anger more. A lot of people are sitting on a lot of anger and for good reason.
Now, if somebody's angry at their Uncle Bob, because 50 years ago, ah, you know, he left the windows in the car open and your, and your and your seat got wet, you know, ah, let it go. Not doing you any good. So with an anger inventory, I wanna see where there's places that my client has energy that they haven't actually tapped into. And to see if they can use that anger as a motive force. A lot of people who have fatigue have suppressed anger.
And I hope you hear me saying that anger ain't bad. And a lot of times it's so darn good. I mean that it's a difficult one. We have to figure that out. Complaint, inventory, same thing. A list of complaints that your client has about anything in the world. Anything in life.
Unfulfilled promise. Inventory. What is your client promise that they're gonna do for themselves, for others,
a promise that they haven't let go of. Meaning, Hey, yeah, I, I, I still, this, this promise is important to me. What are the unfulfilled promises that you've made to self that your client has made to self? Or important promises that your client has made to others
that often helps us learn about ourselves and liberate energy? Okay, my friends, some final musings and reminders. Coach your client to make fatigue their guru. Let your client know that before they can get rid of fatigue. You gotta listen to it. You gotta embrace it. Help your client do the best that they can do to find true rest, time and downtime. Because sometimes one of the cures for low energy is indeed one rest, plain and simple.
What, what is it? God created the world in six days and on day number seven, God rested. So if the, if the, if the biggest deity in the universe needs a day off, ah, chances are we do also, um, fatigue oftentimes has its own agenda. We can't know for sure when it will leave us, nor can we force it to be different. You have to, we have to, as practitioners respect fatigue, respect, low energy fighting. It ain't respecting it. Trying to get rid of it, ain't respecting it. Not listening to it isn't respecting it. You can't force it. It is so
far more powerful than we are. Why? Because we can't get rid of it. It's here, welcome it. Let it teach you. Respect it. Watch what it has as its own agenda.
Go with it. Fatigue is, it's always asking us on some level to slow down. It's always asking us on some level to nourish ourselves. It's always asking us on some level to trust a little bit more. Can't go wrong with that, my friends. I think we're pretty lucky to be doing this kind of work and to be in a position to support others, to help others. What a good thing. The world certainly needs it. Um, the world needs. You really does. The world needs each one of us to be who we're meant to be. Whoever that is, you got a part to play, might as well step up and play. It gives you more energy. That's the end of part eight. We got one more part coming up. We're gonna wrap this topic up. Put a few nice bows and ribbons around it. As always, my friends, thank you so, so much for your time, your energy, your attention. And I shall see you on the other side.

PART 9

Autoscroll:

Greetings. Once again, friends, Mark David here, founder of the institute. Here we are in the final part of the conversation on energy and fatigue. So what I would love to do is to close out with a case story and hopefully leave us with a little bit of good energy. And to begin with, I wanna remind you that oftentimes our clients who experience low energy are multifactorial in nature. There's, there's different things going on. It's oftentimes, oftentimes not just one thing. So there can be different and diverse places to work with your client to gradually help them step it back into their metabolic power. And indeed, nowhere does the formula, personal power equals metabolic power apply more than when it comes to energy. It comes to having enough energy comes to vitality. The more we become the person that we're meant to be better, you're gonna feel better. You're gonna feel in your body. Chances are more energy you're gonna feel in your body. Chances are, I mean, really think of those times. Think of those times when you feel I'm being the real me. I'm plugged into who I am. I'm doing my work in the world, my purpose. I'm with the people or the person I'm supposed to be with. There's something energizing about that. There's something vitalizing about that living in alignment, my friends, with our purpose, with our true nature, with heart, body, soul, is perhaps the greatest energy enhancer we could possibly come up with. I think another way of saying that is that when we agree to be here, when we're wanting to be here, that's our most energy abundant state, at least potentially. Okay. Let's talk about a story. And this case study is about Kim. When I first saw Kim, she was 46 years old. Kim is an engineer, works for a very, very large established company. She's 15 years on the job. Kim has no children, few friends, estranged from her family. Uh, she's single. Her life is her work. Kim is seeing me because she is suffering from very intense fatigue. So every day Kim wakes up five days a week, goes to work tired, she works feeling tired, she comes home exhausted. Fortunately, Kim's medical coverage covers just about everything, and extensive medical testing reveals nothing. So I'm talking to a human being who is very concerned and worried about her health and understandably so. Kim says she's 15 pounds overweight, mostly around her midsection. She has trouble sleeping. She feels a low level depression, and she has arthritis that affects her hands and her elbows. She also says her digestion feels sluggish, not as strong as it could be, and she tends to get tired after meals.
So this is shaping up to be an interesting client. Let's share a little bit more information about Kim. Kim has said to me several different times that she really loves to exercise, but either she doesn't have the time or she's too tired. And I believe her because when she talks about exercise, she kind of lights up. Uh, she's worried because she's losing a bit of her memory. And what she feels is her sharpness. She feels foggy.
Kim happens to talk a lot about work, and I quickly surmise that it, it's work is her life. Um, it's the people at work are sort of her family, not necessarily that she gets along with everyone, but it's her tribe, it's her family, and she really does enjoy work. She loves talking about the people talking about what she does. You know, she won't say that she loves all the challenges, but, but Kim's work just keeps her engaged. Uh, she is. When I ask about friends, when I ask about dating, uh, she's very socially isolated. I'm actually a little surprised about that because she doesn't present as that kind of person. Kim seems very, um, just very friendly, very outgoing, very easy to talk to, easy to get along with. And she's a hermit, uh, except she has a bunch of cats and she's a big cat lover, loves her cats. Talks about her cats. She lives in a big city, but seldom really gets out for anything and says she makes good money, but is still having trouble paying the bills for the home that she owns. So she's experiencing some financial stress.
Let's talk about Kim's diet
7:00 AM Kim has a smoothie with milk and she puts whey protein in it, bunch of whey protein, and she has a piece of fruit At 9:00 AM she'll have a cup of coffee with some cream, no sweetener for a snack. At 10 30, she'll have a piece of fresh fruit, usually eats lunch around 2:00 PM She'll have lowfat cottage cheese with some fruit, maybe a few crackers, or she'll have a smoothie that she brings in. Uh, and that smoothie is essentially the same smoothie that she had at breakfast. Um, IE it's whey protein milk with fruit mixed in Mid-afternoon snack, 4:00 PM Kim has another cup of coffee. She will have a piece of cheese with some crackers. Dinner is always at home. Dinner is at 7:00 PM Dinner is pasta with tomato sauce or pasta with chicken for dessert, she'll have a little bit of ice cream. Kim doesn't really seem to have any problems around overeating. She doesn't really talk about her weight, even though she did mention she wanted to lose the 15 pounds around her midsection. But she's clearly seeing me for fatigue. So this is an interesting diet. I'm gonna get into that. I think her macronutrient balance itself is relatively okay, could be improved. Like many people, she could probably use more healthy essential fats in her diet. Kim describes herself as a very fast eater. She believes, she believes that she eats very healthy. She's actually feels good about what she eats. She feels based on her knowledge, I'm eating healthy. You know, of course I noticed it might be useful to get her an earlier lunch. You know, she tends to eat a late lunch. But the reality is you're eating an earlier lunch based on the kind of fatigue she's presenting with. I don't know if it's gonna make a huge issue, if it's gonna make a huge difference. So I'm looking at this diet thinking, you know, when it comes to her meal timing, when it comes to food quality, ah, her fatigue, there's no easy fix with that. It's not gonna be an easy fix with macronutrient balance, uh, I noticed that she eats a lot of dairy, her smoothie at breakfast. Um, let's take a look at this again. Her smoothie at breakfast is essentially a lot of dairy. Um, dairy is her snack in the late afternoon. Uh, off her lunch is dairy IE either the low-fat, cottage cheese, or once again, the smoothie. And I'm also noticing, you know, dinner every day is a pasta. So it's a wheat based dinner every evening. So that just catches my attention because I'm looking for, I'm listening for, is there something in the nutrition slash mindbody nutrition realm that could be a key factor?
So nothing is a big obvious,
but I'm wondering about food allergies or sensitivities for her, because she's putting in whe protein into her smoothie with milk. Um, she has been, I I, I asked her how long she'd been following this diet. This is probably her diet since she's been at this job for 15 years. I'm sort of hesitant to go anywhere personal or emotional with her as well. She's an engineer. She's kind of a nuts and bolts sort of person, at least on first pass. So I'm guessing, eh, you know, let me focus on the nutritional realm. And I'm also noticing on one level she's keeping it together as we're speaking. But I'm really getting that she's in a bit of breakdown, meaning physically and in terms of how her brain power. And she keeps letting me know that her symptoms are getting worse. She keeps letting me know in little ways that this concerns her. So I get it. And I'm not having any great illuminations or intuitions as we're speaking. So, because I'm just not so sure about this client, it, it just, there's just nothing's jumping out at me. And from that place, when nothing is jumping out at me, uh, I will simply begin with logical steps that can potentially yield some bang for the buck. So I'm approaching this client like a mystery to be solved. I'm looking for the right clues. I'm looking for the right puzzle pieces. I'm willing to step into the unknown. I'm willing to be uncertain, especially because I am uncertain. So sometimes my friends, we need to let things unfold a little bit with a client. That's just the way it is. And that's okay. So I'm gonna work in the obvious places. So Kim, here's your homework for session one. You're very fast eater. I want you to practice slowing down. Of course, I explain to her all the benefits of slowing down when she eats. I explain to her the stress response. I explain to her how fast eating causes a stress response. I explain to her that this could be impacting her digestion. For sure. It could. Chances are be impacting her energy to some degree. I also ask her to take an EFA supplement. I asked her if she's a supplement kind of person. You know, I, I will always, before I ever recommend a supplement, I'm always gonna ask if somebody's a supplement kind of person. And she's interested because she's working with a nutrition person. So for her, that's, that sounds fun. So I think great, that's gonna be an easier fix right now than changing her diet because she's pretty clear she loves her diet. I also ask her to eat lunch between the 12 to 1:00 PM range. And I asked her to do the energy gain, energy drain inventory. So I explained that to her. Hey Kim, I want you to just do a little bit of journaling. Are you a journaling person? Yeah. Great. So this is called the energy gain, energy drain inventory. I want you to write down everything person's place, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, foods, substances, anything, any experience in life that gives you energy, gives you more juice, gives you more vitality, gives you more power, gives you energy. And then I want you to write another list of the same kinds of things. Anything, persons, places, things, thoughts, their feelings, foods, beliefs, substances, experiences that drain your energy. And then just, you know, bring that in. And I would love to talk about it.
So there's session one homework. So notice how I'm starting in obvious places. She's a fast feeder. It cannot hurt for a human being to slow down. And I'm especially noticing around her digestion. It's not gonna hurt to give her an EFA supplement. It's not gonna hurt for her to switch her lunch from two o'clock to 12 to 1:00 PM and it's not gonna hurt for her to do an energy gain, energy drain inventory. So here comes session two. Kim had a very difficult time slowing down with eating. She ate an earlier lunch. Uh, no big deal. Doesn't notice anything. She likes taking supplements. Do I have any more to give her? Uh, I don't really want to. Um, she realized everything that drains her energy, um, relative to energy gain, energy drain exercise, has to do with work. That was her illumination. Hey Kim, how was that exercise for you around energy and energy gain? Did you notice anything? Like what, any insights, any aha moments? Like what really stood up, stood out for you? And that's when she said, I realized everything that drains my energy has to do with work. And specifically, that means her bosses. She's got several of them, the people working under her. She has many of those. Um, she's also very worried. She's due for a raise. She doesn't know if she's gonna get the raise as a whole process to getting the raise. And it's, it's very complex. And if she doesn't get it, it's gonna be another year and a half till she could potentially get another raise. And I commented to her when she said that all her energy drain has to do around work. I said to her, and, and it wasn't really meant to be insightful. I said, well, that makes sense because your whole life revolves around work.
And, um, she kind of looked at me like I had just slapped her or something. Uh, she took it a little bit like an insult. And I, I said, you know, hey, I, I wasn't meaning that as an insult, but you, you don't have a big social life. You're not in relationship. You don't have kids. You do have pets, and your life revolves around work. And sure there's gotta be more to life than just that. Um, you know, maybe, maybe that's something we wanna look at.
So this was really interesting. I, I was honestly, I was very surprised at her reaction to my comment, which wasn't meant to be pejorative, insulting in any way. Um, but I'm taking notice of that.
So we talked a bunch about work. We talked a bunch about the energy gain, energy drain inventory. So here's her session two homework. Kim, I'd like you to continue to do your best to slow down with eating. Let's push the reset button. And I'd really wish for you to continue to practice this until you become a slow eater, because that is going to help put your body in the optimal physiologic state of digestion and assimilation and calorie burning. This could impact your weight and your weight loss. We're talking about getting you in parasympathetic nervous system dominance. So I am making sure with this client, because she's an engineer, she's trained to think very logical and linear and have a very practical scientific mind. Uh, engineers are very practical. So I make sure to come from that place because that's her natural listening. So I am explaining to her with simple science, just about everything I want her to do. And I'm seeing that my assessment about her, despite the fact that she's an engineer, she really loved the energy gaining energy drain inventory, and she really likes getting into the personal stuff, is what I'm starting to see. There's a part of her that presents as resistant to it. And there's another part that is kind of hungry for it. So I'm now getting a little more excited because I feel like I have more places to explore. So given that she took a little bit of offense to me telling her her whole life revolves around work, which it does, uh, I asked her to do a desire inventory. Hey Kim, I just want you to write down everything you could think of that you would like in life. The little things, the big things. They don't have to be, you don't have to problem solve this in terms of how am I going to get those. But if you were writing your ticket, if you were the all mighty deity of the universe and you could make everything so that you want for you, what would that be? What would you want for you? What would you want in life? What would be your 12 wishes or whatever they are? So do a desire, inventory, everything in life that you wish for, that you desire.
I also gave her just, I'm inventing, I'm inventing on the spot 'cause I want to get the juices flowing. Here's a journaling exercise. I would like you to describe briefly the people you interact with at work in terms of how they give you energy or drain your energy. So we're taking energy, gaining energy, drain exercise, and we're getting more specific. I want you to name all the people that you interact with at work. And for each person, I want you to write down how that person gives you energy and how that person might drain your energy. Both. Some people might just be one or the other, some people might be both. Let's just, let's just start to break it down because work is her life, work is what's important to her. So let's start poking around there a little more.
So here comes session three and Kim returns. And she said to me, Hey Kim, how did it go? How did it go with the homework assignments? How you been since the last time we spoke? And she said, I'm starting to get it. Those were her, that's her term about slowing down with food. And she's noticed that whenever she's able to do it, her digestion feels better. And she says she has more energy shortly after that meal. Roughly how much more energy, if you could gimme a percentage, 5% more energy, a hundred percent more energy. She says, oh, about 25% more energy after that meal when I eat a meal slow. So that's interesting to me. That's a little mini success. That's a little mini breakthrough. Is it a hundred percent more energy? No, but that tells me, okay, we're on the right track. We're doing something now for her desire inventory. Kim realizes that she wants a relationship, but she says it feels absolutely impossible. That was her term. Uh, she hasn't been with anyone in over four years. And in her last relationship, uh, the breakup was extremely hurtful for her. She had no interest in talking about it, which I respect. And therefore I'm not going to push her. But she was very clear, very hurtful breakup, uh, hasn't even dated in the last four years. And somehow I think she decided I'm not doing this again.
I said, okay, that's, that's pretty, you know, it's, I I admire that you're able to, you know, just focus in these last four years on yourself, on work, you know, have guys asked you out and just interested. And she said, well, she said, everyone she works with virtually is a man. You know, meaning that most, most of the people in her company are men. She's a minority, uh, in her company, particularly in the engineering section. So most of the engineers are men. Uh, her bosses are men. The only people it at work who are the females, uh, that she interacts with are in human resources and some of the support secretarial staff. So she's around a lot of men. And she started joking, and we had a few good laughs. She said that the engineering world is full of, you know, emotionally shut down men. And she mentioned that that is extremely frustrating for her. So I hear that and I think, you know, something that makes sense to me. The pool of men that she's around is very unappealing to her. Uh, and I get it. I get it. Not her cup of tea.
So here's sort of what I'm thinking of in the back of my mind. I'm getting to know my client a little bit better. I'm starting to see, I didn't initially notice this, uh, 'cause she hides it well, but I'm, I'm seeing Kim as a very anxious person. Uh, and she hides it. But I'm starting to see from her mannerisms, I also am starting to believe that her isolation is draining her energy.
Now that I understand a little bit better that she kind of went into her girl cave after this last relationship. Because in her last relationship, they were more social. They got out, they did things. Uh, and now sh and, and you would never guess she's a hermit. You just wouldn't choose you. You just wouldn't pick her out as that person. So you might remember in a previous conversation when we were talking about energy drainers, I mentioned isolation.
This is what we do when we feel guilt. This is what we do when we feel shame. This is what we might do when we feel afraid of life. This is what we might do when we don't fully wanna be here. This is what we might do. And we're afraid to be circulating and in the game, and I don't want to get hurt and I don't want to get involved. And we isolate. But humans are not meant to be isolated. And after a while, for most people, it's an energy drain. So my sense is, I'm thinking to myself, it'll be really good to get Kim back in the game with men. And when you think of it, that's one of our roles as a coach. A coach gets the players in the game and helps them play that game well. So
contending with relationship, dating, thinking about dating, uh, thinking about being with a love interest, even thinking about having intimacy, oftentimes that's an energy generator.
So I'm also seeing the challenge of her situation. Again, she's around so many men who she, you know, wouldn't get along with on a, on a, on an intimate personal level really. And even on a work level, she just seems to have a lot of conflicts with some of the men in her universe, uh, in her world. One of the reasons is that she's not a wimp of a woman and she doesn't allow herself to be treated as if she's the little lady kind of a thing. Um, she wants her voice to be heard. She wants her opinion to be heard, and she doesn't back down. And she doesn't allow herself to be casually insulted or belittled, which can often happen in an unconscious way, uh, when you're working in a largely male environment. So, as a consequence, um, she has some challenging relationships with some men who are very headstrong and she'll butt heads with them. So good for her. It seems that she needs to learn how to manage her work. Relationships from an emotional standpoint, I'm really getting that her work relationships really fatigue her.
That was the bottom line from her inventory that she did. Her work. Relationships are extremely fatiguing. There's one male, there's a few relationships that give her energy in terms of the men. One is her boss. One is, uh, one of her underlings who's like her right hand guy.
But a significant number of her relationships really drain her energy. And she was very emphatic about that. She, she's really getting this, um, and I'm beginning to see her engineer mind. I could see her making connections. I could see her understanding how our conversations together are beginning to make sense.
I'm also thinking this is a person who needs a vision for her future. She's in, in her late forties, and she's sort of on automatic pilot right now, which is fine, but she doesn't really have a vision for her future.
I'm wondering what that is for her. I'm feeling that she also needs more of the feminine in her life. This is a person who works with men, is in a very masculine, archetypal oriented job. She's in her head a lot. She's dealing with many, many, many technical issues. She's dealing with many, many, many details. Um, you know, the, the, the way I see her being in her feminine really is when she's with her cats. That's kind of it. She doesn't have a female social circle at all. And she doesn't get treated like a woman at all. And she takes care of herself as best she can. But there's a place where, I swear, I feel like I'm talking to a person who is pretty disembodied. She's not in her body, nor is she in her feminine. Her job is to be in her head. And because she can't exercise because of her fatigue and in part, perhaps because of her joint pain, that's a challenge to be embodied. So I'm also now strongly suspecting food allergies as well, because I'm noticing, especially the complex of fatigue. The fatigue is getting worse and worse. Brain fog, which is often associated with fatigue very closely. So they're somewhat similar, but they could be different. I'm also understanding that she has digestive woes that I think have become very normal for her. And she has trouble sleeping and joint pain.
That is not an atypical symptom picture for a food allergy, particularly a gluten or a dairy sensitivity. I've seen it before. So Kim, after session three at the end, here's some homework. We were talking a lot about her, her social life. We were talking a lot about her and actually her as a woman, because that topic has, is really coming up now. So instead of urging her to date men, because she's clearly not ready, it, it, it's, there's, there's way too much of a wall there, way too much fear, um, to me. Let's get into the feminine in your life. I asked her, do you have any women friends? No. Like anybody, well, she does have a best woman friend, but for some reason, you know, her friend moved and neither of them are good about talking over the phone. Um, so kind of outta sight outta mind. Uh, so there was a woman that she was, you know, close with. Um, so I just said to her, are you willing to reconnect with your, with your best woman friend? And just, just put energy out there. Um, make it happen. Talk on the phone. Just, just have a girlfriend. You need a girlfriend for goodness sakes. I mean, really, it is that simple. You know, here I am, my friends, I'm supposed to help this person with fatigue, but I'm being her mentor, guide coach, life coach. I'm looking for what's gonna give this person energy. And this is a woman she presents as a woman, you know, and, and she has a lot of feminine qualities, but it's just not supported in her life in any way. Like, have a girlfriend. And I said, you know, we had a conversation about finding any kind of workshops, any kind of lectures, any kind of, anything that's about women or women's empowerment. I suggested that to her and she really liked the idea. She kind of lit up.
I mean, there's, there's so much going on. Um, so I just ask her to get online, poke around and just notice what you're attracted to. Any classes at a yoga studio, like some workshop center near you. I don't know, you know, what's around you. Just, just start exploring. Is there a woman's support group or networking group in your area that maybe meets on a weekend?
So she actually liked that idea. She liked the idea of expanding her social circle when it came to women, which I was very pleased about, quite frankly, um,
in the energy gain, energy drain exercise as it relates to the people who are draining her energy at work. There are two particular bosses that she has, her main bosses, um, who she, there's a lot of withholds there and there's a lot going on that she feels afraid to tell her bosses. Um, but that kind of need to be told, but she feels like she's not gonna be taken seriously, et cetera, et cetera. So I just asked her to just drop into more honest conversation with both of your bosses. Just be honest. Don't be attacking. Just, just lay it on the line. See what happens.
Start to create the relationship that you want with them. You want an honest relationship. I get that they're the boss. They're supposed to be the leader, but maybe you need to lead a little bit. Maybe you initiate the kinds of conversations that you want to be having with them. She had also been telling me she has one particular male employee who is extremely difficult and who is subverting her and who's actually being not very nice to her behind the scenes, just spreading rumors about her, um, and claiming that he's doing work that she's supposed to be doing, that she's not doing. But meanwhile, she's delegating and she has every right, and she has really tried to work with this employee. So anyway, the bottom line was, you know, I, I talked about it with her, and the human resources department has a mediation service. I said, Hey, just go for it. She doesn't wanna rock the boat at work because she's afraid she's not gonna get a raise. So somehow she feels, if she goes into mediation with human resource, with her difficult employees, Angie has honest conversations with her bosses that she's not gonna get a raise. I said, listen, you're miserable. You're not happy. Uh, worst case scenario, they don't give you a raise and you're still in the same position, but at least you gave it a shot. Try to live the life you wanna live. Like, take some risks here, lady. So she also told me that she has a connection with a few of the women who work in the human resources department at her company. And I just suggested, Hey, just strengthen your connection with them. Eat lunch with them at work. Um, she doesn't mix with the women at work. And I, I asked her, is there any particular reason she just said, no, not really. It's just habit. So
I'm getting the sense that she feels like even though she's been at this job 15 years, even though she's well regarded at work, even though she loves her work, she's, it's almost like she's recreated this dysfunctional family environment where nobody could speak the truth. Where she's afraid to say what's real and afraid to say what's so, and hey, make it work for yourself. Okay, I'm going to
lump sessions four through 12 together and tell you some of the work that we focused on.
Our work started focusing more and more on the feminine. Of course, I'm asking her to reconnect with her woman friend, her best woman friend just over the phone. I'm asking her to connect with the several women at work. I am asking her to start exploring what the feminine means for you, looking for workshops where I, I'm very determined to help her embody because when we're embodied, then we can have energy. If you're out of your body, how are you going to learn how to regulate your energy, even experience your energy? Um, part of getting into her feminine was just nourishing herself. Um, she's been saving up all her vacation time, but she hasn't been taking it like why? She doesn't know what she wants to do. So we talked about it and I suggested what she loves, you know, focusing on, you know, going like to a workshop retreat somewhere. I recommended a few places around the country where there's, you know, week long workshops and yoga and consciousness and health and, and just, just immerse yourself being in an environment where you can meet like-minded people. She was thrilled about that idea. So indeed, during this time, Kim began to create more support in terms of the women in her life at work. Her best friend. They reconnected. Um, and this was really a revelation for her. She was really enjoying it.
It's, you know, for me it was so simple in principle. But you know, my friends, sometimes we, sometimes people, sometimes our clients get locked into these habits. We get locked into a way of being locked into a way of living, and we just can't get out. And here I am just suggesting for her, Hey, get women in your life. Um, so during this time, we were, and, and that was, again, that was a revelation for her, obvious to me. And what I'm trying to point out to you is that which is obvious to you is not always obvious to your clients.
And I'm, I'm really wanting to emphasize here how I'm looking to increase my client's personal power. Personal power equals metabolic power. One way to be in personal power is to have a supportive social circle. Is to kind of have this, is to have the kind of social circle that uplifts you. She needed women in her life. It is just very simple. So during this time sessions four through 12, I did a lot of coaching with her around her relationships at work. Um, she is admitting to me during this time that she's very tired of her job, even though it pays her well. We talked about her leaving. She can't really leave given her age, given her situation, given where she's at, given the goodwill. She's built up at this company, given retirement plans, all this stuff. So I said, okay, you're tired of your job, even though it pays you well. You have all these difficult relationships there that are driving you nuts. You're gonna have to be at this job for a bunch of years. If you wanna get the pension that you're looking for, you're telling me you can't leave. So we have to reimagine how you do work.
So here I am coaching her about the workplace. And I made this suggestion because it turns out I'm discovering Kim is a little bit of a closet, a closet spiritual girl. Um, I asked her to look at the workplace as sort of your spiritual finishing school rather than a bad job. Meaning you're learning lessons at work that are helping you be a better person. You're learning lessons at work that are helping you step up into some uncomfortable areas in your life. You are learning lessons at work that are helping you empower yourself as a person and as a woman. So look at work as finishing school and as you learn the lessons that you're supposed to learn at your job, it will help you slowly graduate.
And she really liked this idea. I gotta give her credit. She really took it on. And indeed, she began to recontact her bosses and her coworkers more as fellow students of life rather than the enemy. She was literally walking into work every day and feeling under attack, feeling like she was
constantly dealing with the enemy. People to her at work were the enemy, even though they're her coworkers. So I found that very fascinating, by the way, I wanna say oftentimes, not always. Oftentimes we reproduce our early home environment in some of our other environments. So we might reproduce our early home environment. In our current marriage and family situation. We find ourselves being our parent or our parents, we find ourselves just creating a similar atmosphere. People also do that at work. And her early life was being very rigid around her parents not being able to share, not being able to be open, not feeling comfortable speaking up or speaking out. She just needed to do as she was told. And here she is continuing that, that same energetic atmosphere that she grew up in. Isn't that interesting? Okay,
so still sessions four through 12, our work was also centering. Yeah, getting her into her feminine, start to connect with women, also gently healing her relationship with the masculine Kim. Just, just, she likes men, there's no doubt about it, but she doesn't like them and there's no doubt about them either. No, she, she loves 'em and hates 'em at the same time. Um, and largely what comes through is she doesn't have a very kind view of men, especially given some of her past relationships. Uh, and that's a bit of a quandary for her.
I mentioned to her, because you don't have a kind view of men, understandably so, given your history. I get it. Can you see that when you're walking around with that kind of perfume on you? I don't like men. Isn't any wonder that men are often popping up and being pitted against you? Uh, one of her chief complaints at work is that outta nowhere, she gets attacked by men directly or indirectly. And I said, you know, clearly that's not okay. Clearly that's not right. Clearly we need to address that on a very practical level. And there's another level we can also work on, which is what's going on inside of you that would help create that or help draw that to you.
So you need to see men a little bit differently. I think, you know, again, her upbringing was very much about education. So our parents really ve valued education. They valued performance. We want you to show up, we want you to do well at your job. We want you to do well in your dance classes. We really want you to do well, uh, in your, in your math class, in your whatever class. It's, it's all about you get a's you win the trophy. She says she doesn't remember any affection or love or touch from her parents. Uh, she described her early home environment. Oh, she said it was very sterile. And that's the exact kind of place she's working in now. It's a very sterile company in a sterile environment.
So I also wanna say that during this time, we are really off to the races in terms of our work together. And Kim was really appreciating the work. And at some point she said, you're like my professional big brother. Uh, and I kind of laughed because it's, it's, it's true. Um, and for her, and she shared very openly about this. Our our sessions were often, you know, her most important part of the week. That's what she was looking forward to. So in a weird way, what I'm wanting to point out is I'm her male relationship right now. So I just have to be aware of that. I'm the guy she talks to once a week that she can have a good conversation with, that's gonna be a positive male influence in her life, which by itself helps her heal her relationship with men. Because here's a man that's attending to you in a good way, yes, you're paying me, but there it is. So she's loving the work, I'm enjoying the work as well. Some more information about sessions four through 12.
During this time, Kim had become a more slow, relaxed eater and very naturally without me doing anything, and with some of the classes she was taking, she developed an interest in juicing and bought herself a juicer and was starting to make fresh juices almost daily, which she was loving. Um, so she did change her eating rhythm, which we talked about. I now had her including a salad at lunch and dinner. I just wanted to get her eating a little bit healthier, just eating more quality. Um, during this time, Kim became far more positive about her life in the future. Um, she developed a very strong interest in discovering her spiritual path. I was really supporting her in that, in that conversation, she would ask me a lot of questions about my journey, and I was just being a big brother to her. Really, her energy in this time improved. When I asked her how much she would, she said to me by about 25%. And towards the end of session 12, she's still very pleased with the work and she wants to do more. She's eager. And I'm also, and which, which, which I'm very happy about. Um, and we're now in, you know, we're, we're now finishing up four months of work. And I'm with a client who's been fatigued for years.
Um, and it's getting worse and worse, and her energy is improved by 25%. So technically speaking, if the work finished right now, success, does she have a hundred percent? No. But she now has a more positive outlook on her life. She has a better relationship with food. She's eating more quality food, better eating rhythm. Uh, she's more squarely on her spiritual path. She's invoking the feminine in her life. She's improving her relationships at work. Of course, you're gonna have more energy.
You know, it's, it's, it's your add all those up together.
And she's seeing work not as I'm coming in to deal with the enemy, but this is my spiritual finishing school. And I'm here to learn lessons about life that are not always gonna be fun, that do I make the best of it. So I'm gonna tell you that we worked together for another three months
and, or for the next three months, I'm going to say, um, we met at least twice per month via phone.
So month five, six and seven, two times a month by phone. During this time I suggested she try an elimination diet. And when I suggested it, when I explained what it was, she was really fascinated and she was really horrified, and she was really fascinated and she was really horrified. It was, it was actually a very funny conversation. And for the first time I explained that, you know, I suspect you could have an allergy or a sensitivity to dairy and perhaps to gluten, and by going on an elimination diet that will give us some information.
Now, she looked at me and, you know, told me that she doesn't know how she could follow an elimination diet, not eating any dairy, not eating any gluten, you know, basically I told her, I want you eating, you know, brown rice, fish, vegetables, and if you're gonna do meat, like, you know, high quality, free range, organic chicken sort of a thing. Um, she wasn't too thrilled about that. And she could still do a smoothie, but it can't have any milk and it can't have any milk protein. So we gotta get some almond milk. We gotta, and we're gonna put our organic fruit in there. So despite her worries, despite her, the fact that she's horrified, and of course I let her know, Hey, this is not forever at all. This is just an experiment. We're gonna see what happens. She decides to jump in. So she's on the elimination diet for three weeks, and during that time, she exclaimed to me the lights came on. I love that. I love that phrase. Um, the elimination diet had a very profound effect on her energy level, her mood, and her alertness. She was stunned. I was stunned. Um, she felt that her energy was now at least 75, 80% back, if not more. So this was a real wow. Um, i, I was, you know, I was thrilled. She was thrilled. And what a great client. Um, turns out out our work lasted. We would see each other occasionally, um, for the next seven months or so. So we, so we ended up working together for about 16 months total. By that time, Kim was done with fatigue. He was done, it was over. It wasn't an issue anymore. Did she occasionally get fatigue and tired? Sure, just like everybody else in the world. Um, during that time, she started training to become a fitness and dance instructor. In her spare time, uh, she was absolutely thrilled about that. Just it was, it was this newfound, well, it wasn't a newfound passion. Uh, she was previously, when she was younger and in college, she was into dance, she was into fitness, she was into aerobics classes, and now she wanted to get more formally trained. Um, during this time we also did some challenging work around her relationship with her brother. Uh, this was a significant male in her life that she was estranged from, but not completely. And without going much into that, it was just a key relationship that, you know, I was intuiting, needed some healing and needed more honest communication. Um, and it turns out she kind of agreed and she really jumped in and did the work. Um, during this time she was feeling far more at home and comfortable at work, and it was clearly a spiritual journey for her. Now, uh, you know, Kim had said originally she had a 15 pound weight gain. During my work with her, she lost five pounds. Um, personally, I believe it was water weight from bloating and from her food sensitivities, because she did indeed lose it. Um, really mostly around her midsection. She was able to notice that. Um, I also recommended to her that, um, she see a counselor or a coach who specializes in women in sexuality because she was wanting to begin to explore this part of herself and explore what sexual healing meant for her. Um, so we were able to find her, you know, both of us doing a little bit of research. We were able to find someone who turned out to be really great for her. Um, and we both agreed that this was, you know, the next place for her to work, to really drop into this part of her that she had a lot of shame around, a lot of guilt around, a lot of hurt around, uh, and she was ready to dive in. And at this point, our work together was complete.
You know, some final thoughts about Kim.
Kim needed to come out of her shell and be in the world in a whole new way. In the biggest picture, I'm dealing with a chronic fatigue client. You need to come outta your shell and be in the world in a whole new way. In our last three months together, by the way, we focused on her getting back into the dating world, this was very difficult for her. Um, and
that's when we segued into, you know, it seems like you still need to do some healing around your sexuality. And that's where a woman's sexuality coach comes in. For her, I felt she really needed that kind of relationship. And she agreed. Um, here's the other thing, 'cause she asked me about this. She asked me, um, because the elimination diet was such a huge win for her. Why didn't I do that at the beginning? 'cause I had mentioned to her that I'd been suspecting that she had food allergies for a long time. And for me, I truly believe that putting her on an elimination diet at the beginning would've been very short lived. And it wouldn't have worked because she, to me, she needed, she needed to learn how to eat slow first. She needed to learn how to embody more. She needed to have a better relationship with food. Um, she needed to make some other tweaks. She needed to, to me just kind of slowly get into that. Um, I didn't feel, I didn't think she was ready. And she needed to hold the frequency more of self-awareness of more wakefulness, more maturity, more responsibility, more nourishment, more willingness to be here. I think it would've been too difficult for her at the beginning. And after I explained that to her, she actually agreed with me that she would've freaked out at the beginning if I asked her to take away her favorite foods right off the bat that she's been eating for, for decades. Really. Um, you know, a milk smoothie with milk, protein, pasta, dinner every night, you know, sandwich or whatever she was eating at lunch. Um, she doesn't want to take that away. She, I don't blame her. So we needed to, we needed to build a little bit of rapport first. She needed to feel confident in our work together. She needed to be more open. She needed to be ready for that. In a way, Kim was now ready to have her energy back. If she would've gotten her energy back right at the beginning, honestly, I have a feeling she would've squandered it again
because she was, uh, standing on very rocky ground. Um, when it came to work, her relationships at work,
she didn't have a good outlook, quite honestly. She was isolated.
So to give up your favorite foods, ouch, is too hard. So overall, you know, Kim was an amazing and very willing and very capable client. Um, you know, we get these kinds of clients. I've gotten these kinds of clients. You, if you've been seeing clients, you've had them. And if you will be seeing clients, you will have them, the clients that just, it clicks, it works. You do the right moves, you do the right things, and it becomes abundantly clear that yes, we're supposed to be working together. And yes, we're on a journey together. And yes, this will be fruitful. Um, notice how at the beginning I was very willing to be in the unknown because that's where I was. I really wasn't sure where I was going with this. But I'm trusting in the relationship. I'm trusting in the journey. I'm trusting in my journey as a practitioner. I'm trusting in her journey to find more energy.
So my friends, some final thoughts. Always be alert to how low energy clients often have the understandable but not necessarily accurate belief that their low energy problem will be solved when they somehow find more energy. And more usually means from some outside source or some magic combination of energy producing supplements or diet. Kim was really wanting supplements from me. Uh, you know, it was fun for her, but it was also, wow, maybe this will gimme more energy. You know, at the same time, I want you to understand diet and nutrition might very well be the key place to work to get a result with this particular client. Diet and nutrition was a key place to work, but it turns out it was, wasn't yet the key place to work. There was a timing involved. Um, the bottom line is our low energy can have so many causative and contributing factors. And I think this case study illustrates that because there was factors around work, factors around isolation, factors around men, factors around relationship dating, sexuality, factors around her outlook on life.
And here we were and factors around nutrition in a big way, especially food allergies. So our job is to be open, our job as a practitioner to be open to nutritional, emotional, personal, and all other possible realms when it comes to working with your energy challenge client.
For me, these are some of the more challenging clients to work with, but the most rewarding. I mean that my low energy clients very rewarding to work with them because oftentimes they're very willing, they're very open. 'cause they want their energy back. I don't blame them.
You know, sometimes people are quite literally what I'm gonna call casualties of the world. Meaning a lot of us, we get exposed to harms or toxins. That wasn't my fault, wasn't my fault that I was born in an area with intense air pollution that impacted my lungs and gave me asthma. Wasn't my fault that I was exposed to heavy metal toxicity from different places. And it impacted my energy and my memory and my brain capacity. It's not your fault. If you have an adverse reaction to vaccines or medication or exposure to any kind of toxicity or unwanted drug or toxicity while in the womb, it's not your fault.
I've dealt with a lot of clients who have trauma or toxicity from military service and they're dealing with chronic fatigue. I've had a lot of those clients, uh, very, very, very challenging because they didn't do anything wrong.
A lot of people, it's not your fault if you get exposure to toxicity from the workplace, you didn't realize it. Or if you get exposed to Lyme's disease because you got a little tick bite because you went into your backyard. So we didn't do anything wrong except become a casualty of the world. So I I, I just feel it's important to be able to help my client identify this when I can and to really make sure my client knows, Hey, it's not your fault. This is an unfortunate situation. This is challenging. And even though it's not your fault, it's fully your job to take responsibility because it's your body, it's your metabolism, it's your life. So a lot of times we're here to help our clients be with the emotional challenge of dealing with a metabolic condition that came from outside of them. And really what it is, is just acknowledging it. You don't have to there, there, there's nothing to fix. It's acknowledging it, it's raising your hand and saying, I see you. This is hard. I get it. I'm sorry this happened to you. I have no problem apologizing to a client on behalf of the world. I'm sorry this happened to you. You didn't deserve that. You didn't do anything wrong. And here we are oftentimes when people hear that, that's very healing for them.
I'll apologize to a client on behalf of the world, on behalf of just all men, all women, doesn't matter. Sorry, this happened to you. You didn't deserve that.
You know, for so many clients working in the realm of various, various mind-body nutrition distinctions, as we have seen, is all we need to truly be of help when it comes to energy. Talking about macronutrient, balance, eating rhythm, stress, state eating, food quality, food allergies. For a lot of people, their toxic beliefs about nutrition in life can also be the key place or a key place to work that can really yield a powerful result when it comes to having more energy. You know, and for countless other clients, at the very least. What I wanna say to you is that the wisdom of life is forcing us to slow down, to rest, to rejuvenate, to reevaluate, to reconnect with ourselves, to do what, what matters most to us.
Low energy is slowing us down and being a great guru, being a great teacher. And when we begin to rejuvenate and reevaluate and reconnect with ourselves and reconnect with what matters most to us and what's most important to us when we reconnect to a higher power from that place, how could life not offer us more energy?
So a lot of times we're earning our energy back. We're earning back that energy to put into our energy bank account. And the way we earn it is by stepping more into our personal power, by taking better care of ourselves, by embodying, by learning to manage the energy we have right now, my friends. You have some of the tools and techniques now to really do some good work with your clients, to really make a difference, to really walk alongside them in their journey.
Remember, you don't have to be an ultra specialist to know everything about medicine, metabolism, nutrition, um, and the intricacies of energy, uh, creation in the human body.
You have to know how to work with people. You have to know how to speak with people. You have to know how to be a good detective. You have to know how to step into the unknown with your clients. You have to start from foundational places. IE learning to help your client manage the energy they have right now as a way to create an opening so that when more energy comes, they're not squandering it.
You have places to work to help discover where people are draining their energy, where people can help themselves gain more energy.
I'm really excited for you on this journey. I'm happy for you. For those of you that are seeing clients and you are indeed seeing clients who are dealing with fatigue, I am very hopeful that you have some great tools to really watch your Work improve. So my friends, as always, there is more to come in this conversation and we're gonna be talking about some counselor tools and insights and shortcuts and guiding stars right after this. Thank you as always for being such a great partner on this journey. I really appreciate you and I'll see you on the other side.

Check this box after watching all videos.

[progressally_objectives post_id="26370" objective_id="7" layout="hide|left"]

Back to Module 4 Overview