Healing Your Body Through Gut Health With Amanda Rigby

Nika is joined by Amanda Rigby, a Registered Dietitian, Functional Medicine Nutritionist, and Certified Lifestyle Eating and Performance Therapist, to discuss the pivotal role of gut health in maintaining overall wellness. Amanda utilizes functional nutrition to identify and treat the root causes of diseases, advocating for a personalized health strategy that centers on nurturing gut health as a fundamental aspect of achieving optimal health. Through her approach, Amanda aims to build therapeutic partnerships with her clients, providing tailored guidance to enhance their well-being by focusing on the gut as the cornerstone of good health.

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*This podcast and its contents are for informational purposes only and are not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your physician or a qualified health provider for any questions concerning a medical condition or health objectives. Additionally, the advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every individual and are not guaranteed for business or personal success. Use discretion and seek professional counsel when necessary.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:15

Hey everybody, welcome to the show. I am super excited to introduce my guest today. She is a registered dietitian, a functional medicine nutritionist and a certified lifestyle eating and performance therapist. Her name is Amanda Rigby and she also uses functional nutrition to address the underlying causes of disease and works to build therapeutic relationships with her clients to offer individualized approaches to health, something I truly, truly love. I think we're kind of kindred spirits in that sense, so I'm super excited, Amanda, welcome to the show. I'm so glad to have you.

Speaker 2: 0:53

Thanks for having me. Yeah, I love talking about this. I love people who speak my language, so I am ready.

Speaker 1: 0:59

Yeah, me too. It's awesome. So, amanda, can you tell me a little bit about what made you interested in becoming a registered dietitian, and especially about, like functional medicine, nutrition and what that looked like? Walk me through your story yeah, all right.

Speaker 2: 1:15

Do we have all right yeah? Go for it um, so I think I I mean I remember trying every diet in the book growing up, grew up in a household of dieting, so I struggled a lot with my weight, with just kind of my worth and revolving food and just body, what I feel almost every you know teenage girl kind of goes through. So I mean I feel like I tried every single thing but it wasn't until I I kind of shifted this relationship with food and with exercise through a really great trainer who incorporated more of the lifestyle piece of it so I could follow anything, we could do anything for a month straight.

Speaker 2: 2:02

But it wasn't until I kind of like healed that relationship with how I saw food and it wasn't just a number and I wasn't just like tracking things and weighing things that I really then did begin to heal from the inside out, mentally and just when my body was doing what I had wanted to manipulate it to do finally eating food, and I was just so confused that I thought, you know, it was more, everything had to be restricted and we couldn't have things, and it was just a mess, um. So I think, I mean, I kind of went through that on my own and I was like wait, there's like a whole world that I know everyone else is living here, um, and just kind of immerse myself in that, and just kind of immerse myself in that, I guess that put me into nutrition school where I did not know the rigorous process it was to become a registered dietitian.

Speaker 2: 2:56

Yeah, very deep into it, I think. I don't tell you on purpose. Yeah, it was a super competitive program that I tiptoed on getting kicked out and staying in for the five years of college. Um, it wasn't until we call it well, we called it the hunger games, but called match day where you then, if so, get matched with a program where they ship you anywhere in the country to do your supervised practice. You then sit for the boards and become a dietician and I think there was maybe a handful of people who had the opportunity in my college, like maybe five out of our whole group who'd come together for five years. So it was the most terrifying, like I said, hunger Games thing. You just kind of are looking around the room yeah only a couple spots.

Speaker 2: 3:45

It's me or you. So, um, yeah, it was wild and, like I said, I don't think they told us that when we started um but made it, um had a great experience in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina. Oh thanks, practice. Um came right home, yeah, of being under well, not paid at all, um, and just ready to like hit the ground running. I was just so inspired. But also, um just had a real fire for seeing chronic disease at that level. Of course we study it, we read about, we memorize all of the things, but when it was, I mean it was the most wild experience ever.

Speaker 2: 4:31

But the day before I left for my internship in North Carolina, I live here in Rhode Island, so it was like a 13 hour difference and I had met this woman who had gotten rid of 24 different chronic diseases in her household. She went from being like paralyzed and there was just all of these IBS issues, skin issues, cancer, all of this craziness in her household where she thought she was living this like healthy life. I met her and she was talking about this idea of functional nutrition and just using food as a medicinal.

Speaker 2: 5:11

You know, source, right. I was like a little, a little shook because I was like, wait, I'm going to do my residency to be, you know, a registered dietitian and I've never heard about this before. Like you know, like I said, I've memorized every lab, every nutrient, every pathway you know that the body has. But why weren't we talking about the fact that, you know, inflammation is fed from the food that we feed ourselves, that stress impacts our gut and like how things talk to each other, our hormones in our brain? I wasn't learning that stuff in college, so I was like, wait, where am I going? Yeah, I had like a little identity crisis while I was doing my, my residency, because I was just treating like sick people and I refer to it as like sick care.

Speaker 1: 6:08

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We're just managing the symptom opposed to the cause. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 6:16

Oh, there was no, no talk about like why this happened. It was just kind of like we say like there was a pill for every ill and we and I was just watching it from a different lens. So it was interesting the background of having that formal education, um, marrying this new perspective and it's coming Cause now. I mean you and I get to have this conversation. We have podcasts now, like I'm glad that we're there's so many brains that are just on the forefront of this and bringing it to light. I know we're now like playing with insurance companies, with accepting and treating preventable stuff, yeah.

Speaker 2: 6:54

So yeah, I kind of struggled through my residency. I was like the angsty one. My friends were like you were miserable and I was like, because I couldn't partake in just again managing Right, I would come home and I would cry and I was just really struggling with the fact that I knew I could help people but the system was so flawed that it didn't let me, I would get in trouble for some of the things I was saying, for spending too much time with patients, because I just wanted to hear their story and I could piece things together and I'm like this is why this is happening.

Speaker 1: 7:29

Right.

Speaker 2: 7:29

Well, like the questions that they're in and out of office is being passed back and forth, um from person, from doctor to doctor, with no answer. And if we just like, step back and look at this whole picture, which is what functional medicine is, it's connecting the dots, not seeing each organ as a separate entity, but that everything stems from each other and works off of each other. So I was kind of I mean blessing and a curse, but to go into a residency like that with that mindset was it was a struggle.

Speaker 2: 8:02

Yeah, I bet yeah Morally it was a moral struggle.

Speaker 1: 8:06

It's interesting because you see physicians go through med school and they're not even taught about nutrition or physical exercise, let alone functional medicine. So I can't even imagine you know a dietician program including that either.

Speaker 2: 8:21

Right, it's just, I mean, and it takes anywhere from you know, 15, 20 years for research to hit a textbook and we're going to be behind for a while. So it's going to be people like us who are just trying to be as loud, I guess, as possible platforms. It's the only way we can teach people at this point. But, yeah, I mean, I have so many colleagues, I've partnered with so many physicians to piece that together.

Speaker 2: 8:45

Those who recognize I may not be good at this, I really didn't get this education, but I need you on my team because I get that this is a big deal. So, I love these people and these are my people Like we're really like building a nice army. That's fantastic, that's awesome.

Speaker 1: 9:02

Yeah, I think it's so important to build those relationships, especially in the kind of the health community, is because you know individuals, we can't know everything. It's the same with you know doctors don't know everything, and so we need to share those relationships so that we can kind of collaborate together in order to heal our clients or our patients or whoever is looking for that service.

Speaker 2: 9:26

Exactly, I call it the circle of wellness. Yeah, I love that In medicine you know it takes us all a lot of time to get through the schooling and we're the best of the best in our craft and let that guard down and say I actually don't know that. Yeah, we don't see that happen often.

Speaker 1: 9:43

No.

Speaker 2: 9:44

Yeah, when it's placed like we say oh, just do this. You know, I hear these recommendations that my patients come to me saying, oh, my doctor just told me to, and I was like why would they say you know? And then you know, I don't know for what they're good at. If you break your arm, do not call me.

Speaker 1: 10:00

Right, yeah, yeah, no, western medicine totally has its place, absolutely yeah. But yeah, I love the, I love the. Just the idea of you know when you're trying to fix something internal, you look at the cause and you know Western medicine isn't always going to do that, so, yeah, so you also really kind of specialize in gut health and genetics. Can you kind of walk me through the importance of gut health specifically, but then also you know what was your interest in specializing those?

Speaker 2: 10:38

Yeah, it wasn't until I learned that process of kind of pulling back these layers of a person like an onion, that the center of everything ended up being fixed, the gut.

Speaker 2: 10:50

Everything was stemming from the gut, the microbiome, because there's more genes in there than there are in our entire body. There's more. I mean, that's where our immune system is held, Like it's just, it's our DNA coding comes from there, so it kind of dictates what's going to happen to us. So it was it. It doesn't for me. I hate to use like the word answer, but it gave me so many answers that, again, people were asking these questions for years. They're dealing with these conditions for 20, 30 years, asking the same questions, and I felt like I found the answer. You know, like it was almost like a heat code. I was like, yeah, let me guess, do this in the beginning and we wouldn't even be here. Um, there's just, there's just so much that's happening in that, that little organ, but also the fact that it's impacted every single day. The only thing we do consistently as humans is eat. You know, definitely don't exercise consistently, we don't drink any water, but God knows we're really not missing meals.

Speaker 1: 11:53

Right.

Speaker 2: 11:53

Yeah, so it's the thing that gets the most attention. That doesn't get it's needed attention.

Speaker 1: 12:01

So what are some kind of basic tips or maybe, um, get healthy food that you could recommend for us listeners to kind of implement into our life. That would be something easy to implement now.

Speaker 2: 12:14

Yeah, so the first thing that I think of when trying to just to love on the gut um is not only I call them like our gut loving foods and I have a little download list on my website. They can totally go. Yep, um, so we think of these things called prebiotics, and you guys would be familiar with them. These are, and I call them, like the fertilizer for our our gut microbes, the good guys to grow and flourish out of.

Speaker 2: 12:40

I picture like the gut, like a garden and we want to um you know fertilize it with good soil and then love on it, make these little flowers grow. I don't know Right yeah, and every time we eat what I would refer to as like inflammatory foods or over-processed things, added sugars and just you know, crappy foods, that's kind of like raining on this garden, and that is one of the things that we do consistently is take in outside toxins in our water. You know the packaging of our food.

Speaker 2: 13:12

we're just kind of inundated with these bad bugs that we have to be more proactive with putting the good ones in, and that would be in the form of these prebiotic foods. So when I say those we're thinking about, I mean it's really simple, Like it's the fruits and vegetables that kind of like lay the framework. It's the onions, the garlic, the broccoli, the asparagus, like the things that we, you know we're supposed to be getting in every day.

Speaker 2: 13:37

Those simple as that, like incorporating those foods into our, our each meal lays that nice foundation for things growing and then kind of like the I don't know the nice like water to put on them to help them grow, would be probiotic foods. So we need a balance of both of them and I call the probiotics the good guys, and those are things we have to take in through food form, which, again, we're taking the bad guys in through the toxins from the food, the water, the air, etc. We get to take also in the good guys and probiotics our foods, um, we think about ones that are kind of they call it fermented, um, so kimchi, sauerkraut, those kind of things that we walk by or sometimes we get them in a sandwich and we're like, oh, that's pretty good, but we definitely don't incorporate them daily. Greek olives are really good.

Speaker 2: 14:28

Some yogurts are a good source of probiotics you just got to watch the sugar balance that out a little bit Same with kombucha is really popular tea drink right now, but again, good to watch the sugar in them so it doesn't balance it out too bad. Pickles, things like that, just things that are pickled in general would be great veggies that are pickled, so those would be the good guys that we can add back in that will feed off of all of those the onions, the garlic, the things that we use and grow some more.

Speaker 1: 14:56

What are your thoughts on taking probiotics like in pill form or the?

Speaker 2: 15:01

powder form. Yeah, no, I personally I usually will recommend them. I wouldn't off the bat unless I knew a little bit about a person. Sometimes people will have what's called small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, or SIBO.

Speaker 2: 15:16

And they actually react negatively to a probiotic sometimes. So I don't just want to say across the board, blanket great. But in that same idea that the bad guys don't take a day off, that's a good foundational support to have the good guys in if we're not going to eat things like sauerkraut, kimchi every day consistently. But for me it's like a nice buffer.

Speaker 2: 15:38

I personally utilize them and we want to look for a probiotic that has multi strains and billions of what's called CFUs and those are kind of the bugs, because we have a microbiome in so many parts of our body. We have an oral one, we have our gut one, we have a vaginal one, we have one in our ear they're talking about the other day so each body has a microbiome to be kind of, kind of flourish and, you know, head. So we want to multi-strain one to hit all those those parts Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 16:09

Yeah, so what are some of the issues that you see your clients struggling with most? What? What are some of the most common things when they come to see you? And then how do you use diet and lifestyle changes to help them overcome those issues?

Speaker 2: 16:22

Yeah, so my biggest complaints are going to be, um, belly stuff, always bloating, um, but also, I mean so I will say all the, all the belly things you think of right away, so bloating, constipation or the opposite, completely like just diarrhea, gas, um, reflux, things that you would associate with the belly, but then also like brain fog and joint pain, depression. I mean these symptoms as well, nasal stuff, all actually would stem from the gut as well. Why, it's my favorite, but it's a lot of those similar. I mean, you know, if you have one, it's kind of this afterward yeah, piles on. The thing to me is that people just think that it's normal and I really trying to like shake that conversation up, because everyone's bloated after dinner, right, and I'm, yeah, not really. Yeah, see, um, it just has become such a I don't. Is it our culture?

Speaker 1: 17:20

I don't know such a norm yeah, it's hard too, because I think you know, especially here, such a norm. Yeah, it's hard too because I think you know, especially here in the U? S, we eat out so much and and we think we may be eating healthy when we ordered the salad at the restaurant, but we don't necessarily know, like, where the vegetables came from, what kind of toxins are on those vegetables, what kind of um. You know what types of fat are used in the dressings, you know what kind of meat's being cooked that's added to the salad. So even when we think we're eating healthy, there's a lot of factors that are unknown that I think really affect people, especially belly issues and stuff.

Speaker 2: 17:56

but across the board, Right, yeah, we think that everything is connected. We can get it all back there. So, yeah, so they're all coming saying the same thing. Like I said, their pants by the end of the day, like they're unbuttoning their button. They're like I'm done, they're embarrassed, like they don't want to go out, they don't feel comfortable. They're constantly in and out of the bathroom all the time, like having to know where it is If they go to a restaurant, like they got to have eyes on it.

Speaker 2: 18:22

Um, they don't want to have sex, like they're just, they're just not comfortable in their skin and they keep getting this answer that like like yeah, you can see bloating, but a lot of their symptoms you can't see as much. So people tell, they start to feel that like it's all in their head, so you know, and they can't really explain it. They're just like. I just don't feel like myself. We know us better than anybody, so that's what's really it.

Speaker 2: 18:50

That kind of like pulls at me because it's we're trying to get these people back to knowing themselves again and to recognize, you know, triggers um things that put them off, but I really believe that people don't even know how good they can feel, because they're so used to feeling so crappy, I would absolutely agree with that.

Speaker 1: 19:04

I think you know chronic fatigue, especially for women, but men too, for sure, you know, I think we just think it's. We have these busy lives and we're taking care of kids and you know our job and all those things and those are added factors. But a lot of times it comes from poor nutrition or a poor diet too.

Speaker 2: 19:23

There's just so much like in that same breath that we can control when everything feels so out of control. So that's what's empowering for me and what I work to help with people is that like just to look at their entire situation and find the areas that they do can gain control over and to actually make that change. So to go off your question of what we would do with somebody say they were coming with these things, the first step for me is going to be to take away any sort of factors that are going to make it worse in that moment. So when I say that, I think about like the inflammatory foods right, not to say that like gluten-free diet everyone should do. We just know, by nature, things like gluten, dairy, crappy fats, like soybean oils, vegetable oils, canolas you know, excess refined grains, added sugars off the cuff by nature are inflammatory. Right, we were to take those out for three weeks, a person would really start to heal simply and quickly.

Speaker 2: 20:27

Then we assess other things. I mean there's this whole thing called eating hygiene. So we also, you know our lifestyle. We're on the go 24 seven. I mean I eat in the car I should not, but we don't like sit down, we don't chew our food. We talk while we eat, we work while we eat and that digestion starts in the mouth. So we have to kind of like really take at the beginning food and just eating as this moment. And I tell people to take these five big, deep breaths at the beginning to move from this parasympathetic to sympathetic state where they're either in fight or flight all day because of jobs, kids, work, finances, to sit down to sympathetic state where they're either in fight or flight all day because of jobs, kids, work, finances, um to sit down to just shovel whatever.

Speaker 2: 21:09

They can jump back in the car if they didn't need it in the car, um, you know, and keep going with the day. We don't you think of like other cultures who just sit and eat and just like take their time. Um, I was in spain earlier in the year and like we just it a, it was an event, yeah, yeah, yeah, I loved it and I was like no wonder all these people look great. We're just go, go, go. So that response that our body gets when it gets this, the food, it's not in this digest mode, so feel the bloating, the reflux, like it's. Of course it's going to happen. So there's a big piece about like not only stress management because that's a whole nother world with gut function or dysfunction, but absorption of nutrients. Like our body just doesn't perform properly if we're in a stressed state. So, beyond food choices alone, we could be eating great, but if we're eating coming from that state, it's not going to promote digestion or absorption.

Speaker 1: 22:10

So we work on that a lot as well, and I love that you mentioned earlier things like vegetable oil or canola oil, cause I think a lot of times people think that they're eating healthy, like a good example might be nuts or trail mix, where you think that you're eating healthy and maybe it's like dried fruit or something like that, but then when you actually look at the ingredients, all of the nuts or the fruit have been soaked in some type of sugar or canola oil or vegetable oil and those are all inflammatories that we thought we were eating Okay, but in reality we're really taking in some toxins.

Speaker 2: 22:46

We do our best, like and that's really another thing that just drives me crazy is like about our food system.

Speaker 2: 22:48

Oh my gosh, why do we have to put this stuff in it like, yeah, you don't have to, it's perfectly good without it? Like, and it stinks because, like you said, yeah, then everyone will get the. I did it like we get the 100 calorie packs and we get the. You know the low fat, I don't know cookies and stuff, thinking we're making a better choice and it's probably so much worse than just the original thing, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 23:14

Diet soda. You know, if you're going to do it like don't get me started, like don't get me started. So yeah, we're up against a lot. So a lot of it, too, is just education. And just why didn't we learn this stuff, like how to flip over a label and identify these words? Because people have no idea and, like you said, they've been going around living this healthy lifestyle. I think that woman with the 24 diseases in her house, they were like marathoners. They ate the low fat, like you know healthy American diet, and they were sicker than they could ever imagine. Yeah, and that's our, that's my patient and that's our clients. Like they're trying, they're not ignoring or, you know, naive to the fact that you know what's healthy and what's not, but our food system is going to match this effort.

Speaker 1: 24:03

Absolutely yeah, and I think it. I think there's a mental issue there that happens as well, because, you know, people think that they're eating healthy and they're like I've done everything, you know, I'm trying the best I can and stuff is still not getting better, like you know. So they end up thinking that they're failing or it's their fault or their body sucks or something like that. Reality is is they just don't realize that there still is so much, you know, inflammatory foods or toxins in those healthy foods that they're eating, just because we simply haven't been educated on it.

Speaker 2: 24:38

Right, and then I think we do like a swap for swap. So then they complain that it costs more to eat healthy. I might, if I hear that one time today, um, no, but I get it because again they they'd swapped for the I don't know the low fat cookies which were organic, quote, unquote, like because they're trying they get the words they know that they're supposed to be. You know so it's tough, but there are really great options nowadays. I say every day as well, like this is the easiest time to be healthy, with the amount of food products and food manufacturers that are really trying to make waves. So that's exciting for me. We do just need more of the.

Speaker 1: 25:21

The education piece and the accessibility is an issue at this point, but yeah, I think accessibility is definitely a huge issue. It's something that I definitely focus on a lot. And then I think you know, for those who do have access, using their checkbook to empower those decisions, you know, be very strict about where you shop or how you buy items. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 25:47

So you talk a lot about focusing on the root cause of, or like the imbalance within the body, rather than just treating the symptoms. So, going back to functional medicine and functional nutrition, how are we able to improve our health through that kind of approach, like kind of deep dive in what that looks like and how somebody might really solve their problem, their chronic disease?

Speaker 2: 26:14

Yeah, so it's so funny because I obviously, as this job would have it, you think I would talk about food all day and I that's probably most like the last thing that I get, because this approach requires again that like onion layer unraveling of the human, and that's going to take into account so many things, and that's where I think we've done ourselves a disservice, not on purpose, but because of what everyone's, what everyone does, right, someone started this rumor, but we put ourselves in these boxes, like of these diets and of these labels, and try to make our unique body fit into it and hope that that would work for us.

Speaker 2: 26:56

Like to pick on I'm not going to pick on any diet, but that's just easy. Name Keto, right? Everyone thinks they should have done keto when it was popular last year. Whenever it happened, great. Maybe it works for people, but for some people it doesn't. So again they're going to do this spiral of I've. I've tried everything. I thought keto was it for me.

Speaker 2: 27:16

Like, it's not personalized, it didn't get to the reason why these things happen in the first place. So, besides taking someone's like health history and really understanding, looking at a recent set of labs and just knowing their baseline, right, like, are there quick nutrient deficiencies? We could fill right in quickly and then get their cells back to working properly, can we look at their genes and see, oh, you have an affinity to, you know, storing I don't know storing fat because of X, y, z. So we need to go after that, you know, as opposed to just put this label of a diet on us and try to blindly follow it because a lot of other people are doing it. So we have to take into account like people's lifestyle, right? We're all day. Do we travel all the time?

Speaker 2: 28:07

There's just there's so many factors that come into someone's current health situation that need to be addressed before we even start to think about what's going to go on the plate. Because how can I give someone like I do not give out meal plans, I'm, I will not write one, I mean, I can't. It's too, it's too restrictive for me. But also, how can I tell you to eat salmon and vegetables for breakfast if you are in the car at 4.30 am? You know, it's just not personalized, right, right, you really have to like pull back this whole person's again, their physical being and then their day-to-day, and build this structure for them that works for them, because clearly something hasn't, worked in the past and they've tried everything Right.

Speaker 2: 28:49

Right but there's pieces that are missing, um, and I think that that's the approach we got to start. We just got to look a little deeper. Um history of you know dieting what's worked before. Is this person do better with accountability? Do they love tracking their food? Do they do Weight Watchers forever? And they know points and they can, but there's a whole thing to unravel there, you know. And just checking that food and the labels, do they know how to read one? Are they the ones grabbing the low-fat organic cookie and say there's, there's a lot of stuff um to consider before we would then start to talk about putting probiotics in their diet? Um, because it's, it's just going to be another. Another thing they have to follow until they understand why this happened in the first place. Assessing their stress response, assessing their sleep. You know their habits. Everything comes back down to this person's habit.

Speaker 2: 29:41

That's how we got here you know we are what we repeatedly do. So, yeah, um, we have to. That's all the stuff we're unpacking at the beginning to get this picture of who they are, and then we'll look at it from that lens. Connect, of course, the health history, you know. Do they have multiple rounds of antibiotics in their childhood? Do they have a c-section? Were they vaginally delivered? There's so many physical things in their health history that are going to point us in such a great direction. And then again, the person, the person sitting in front of you. Yeah, yeah, the conventional medicine treatment. It's all I mean. It's paperwork and it's insurance claims and it's ICD-10 codes, like there's a person here.

Speaker 1: 30:28

Yeah, no, I totally. I mean, I think it's such a huge thing. I think, you know, even even when I do business coaching, let alone health coaching, I spend the first couple of weeks just doing kind of a mental deep dive. So you know, debunking some of these beliefs that we're telling ourselves, you know clearing, clearing out all of the kind of uneasy issues we have around specific topics. It really is like a mental shift that you have to make first, and then you can start working on more of the. You know food and you know functional implementations of things.

Speaker 2: 31:06

So yeah, these are all tools like in our toolbox eventually. But absolutely because and people get a little like wait, what are we doing? The meal plan? Well, they probably know I'm not going to do that off the bat, but they're like we're not going to talk about food and I was like we got a lot to do. No, I'm not going to do that off the bat, but, um, we're not going to talk about food and I was like we got a lot to do. No commitment to, I mean, and that's what I think a lot of people aren't used to or don't expect, because we're so used to jumping on these quick diets or summer slim down, you know, whatever is happening, um, and we want the results so quickly, but we didn't get here overnight happening.

Speaker 1: 31:42

And we want the results so quickly. But we didn't get here overnight and I think I think the idea is is shifting them from the quick fix to the long-term permanent fix. You know, like you can get a quick fix and you can lose those 20 pounds, you're still going to face, you know, the eczema or the bloating or what you know, the brain fog or whatever else you're facing. Instead, if you do the long-term fix and you remove all those other issues, imagine how much better you're going to feel.

Speaker 2: 32:06

They really have no idea which is so exciting. I love that, yeah, yeah, knowing what's coming for them and when they're slipping and they're just like I can't, how can I do this? And just like sitting there, like no, you got it, like, and it's going to be so much better than you even imagined.

Speaker 1: 32:22

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 32:23

It never felt that good because we don't address that stuff in our current system. We weren't taught it anywhere. Yeah, takes too much time, honestly, so we don't have time right.

Speaker 1: 32:35

We're busy. I know this is a little bit of a loaded question, so feel free to jump around it. But you know the reason I say this is a little bit of a loaded question, so feel free to jump around it. But you know the reason I say loaded is because we are all. So you know we're individuals and every approach is different for each person. But are there any basic lifestyle changes that you can recommend to somebody who is struggling with a chronic disease and wants to feel better? Is there something that they can start doing now at home?

Speaker 2: 33:02

Yeah, absolutely there's always we can we make a decision. Every day we wake up and every time we make a meal. When it comes to food, we get to choose. Right there, the first thing that I would do, like just off the bat again, is take out the inflammatory stuff and just take and I keep saying that word, but it's, it's so everywhere, and we are so inundated with just a toxic burden from our current society. I mean, please don't even talk about the mental half of toxicity right now. Um, but we really are like just covered in it. And if we just, first of all, we're able to identify the sources of it food, but also environmental are the products that we use every day the lysol that we're spraying everywhere and the hand sanitizer um

Speaker 2: 33:50

you know, just kind of taking an audit of everything that we're going through and just being educated on that and finding a nice alternative. Um, because so we take in functional medicine and we call it the 4R approach. So we oh God, now I'm going to blank we reduce, no, reduce, replace, repair, re-inoculate. So it's this whole step process Remove, we remove. Number one so that's the first one. I should know this because I talk about this all day. So we remove, we replace, we repair and re-inoculate. Those are like the four R's and anyone I would guide.

Speaker 2: 34:25

I would rather someone do this guided. But like, let's do number one and let's just remove the crap. Like, take a pantry audit and just get rid of this stuff. That we keep our hand finding the bottom of this bag. We know it's not great. You know. Like let's start looking at labels and finding those words and those hidden sources of the soybean oil and the trans fats that are sneaking in left and right, the added sugars that we thought weren't there. I really it is such a big difference If someone went three weeks without those additives, like I, it's really wild. They're mind blown. I get my blown every time. I just love the fact that you know, food is so healing, Um, but yeah, you can start doing that right now, I mean and I think it's important to say, too, that you know you can.

Speaker 1: 35:14

You can remove toxic foods without removing enjoyable foods, Like there are alternatives, Like if you love potato chips, there are alternative versions that don't have all those toxins.

Speaker 2: 35:26

That's what I'm saying when I'm saying it's easier than ever to be healthy nowadays, because these companies are making us the best chips, and I like them better than the other ones. Most of the time they're much better.

Speaker 1: 35:36

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 35:36

Like crispwrap and pasta left and right over here for cauliflower. I would have never believed it, but my Italian family only eats it now. Like it blows my mind at how simple those transitions have been. And that's all that it is. Health is not restricted. Like we have to stop coming at it from that perspective of like, oh, what is she going to take away from me? Or she's going to tell me I can't have this. Like all of those negative terms around it make us not want to do it. Of course, right, right, that mindset shift of, of more of an addition. What can we bring in? More color? Can we bring in more water? Can we bring in more nutrients, more vitamins, more sunshine? Like let's add to what we're currently doing, instead of saying, oh, you can't have ice cream tonight, we're not going to make it if we keep talking like that.

Speaker 1: 36:26

I love that too, because adding in the more you more good you add, in the less interest you have in the bad like you just kind of lose taste for it.

Speaker 2: 36:37

We're honestly going to read like reprogram ourselves by doing that. So, like on my sneaky detective end of things, I'm just like re fixing your jeans. They don't know that, they just know they're getting more sun and get a little tan. But I'm just like change the framework now so that your foundation you're coming, like you said, from a different place. You don't even need it. You don't want it anymore. People come to you with these cravings left and right. I need chocolate all day, you don't. You're really lacking protein and some zinc. Let's get you eating some food. I haven't needed chocolate in my. I'm like wait, we know.

Speaker 1: 37:16

Bouncing off of that, actually. So how can you tell if you're not caring for yourself enough, like, what are some of the signs? Like cravings, things like that?

Speaker 2: 37:24

Yeah, for sure. So of course, besides all the belly stuff, that I hear all day.

Speaker 2: 37:29

um, yeah, cravings are a sign that there's some sort of nutrient deficiency. Think about it Like our body is not. Of course, our brain's telling us we want chocolate and ice cream, cause that's a quick dopamine hit, but our body is signaling us in that form of craving. You can't even think straight because you're like I need something. Your fingers are tapping, your body is saying somewhere something's not getting fed. We don't want it to pull from other sources. I see this a lot with people chronically under eating.

Speaker 2: 38:00

You don't want tap into muscle for energy. We want to preserve our lean muscle mass, but by not eating, because we're, you know, products of diet culture. We chronically don't eat enough. We're scared to eat a banana in the morning. So our cells are just yearning for those nutrients that we're kind of restricting them. So cravings are a huge sign. The thing with the concentration, the rise of ADHD and autism I think there's a lot to be explored here with the brain and our intake of foods. But we know that. So if you feel like you just can't concentrate or you know, just like you said with brain fog, just yeah, well, click, and you're slow to respond, I mean, if it's a struggle to get out of bed in the morning, we're gonna start to look inside a little bit. Or that two o'clock hour who, at two o'clock is not like hitting a wall, gotta take a take a nap, can't possibly, but we get a power through. These are all signs to me that we got to start looking inward a little bit.

Speaker 1: 39:08

Absolutely, I think. I think that you know the ADHD and stuff, a lot of that, I think, may even be found to be a deficiency in omega threes and and like um, dha and stuff like that.

Speaker 2: 39:22

It just our kids aren't eating enough and so they're not able to reach both the six to threes, and our diet is so off so, oh my gosh, yeah, that mean the omega-6s that are coming in, are it's terrifying? So yeah, so you mentioned a little bit about chronic dieting.

Speaker 1: 39:47

Can you explain why that's so bad for us, like why it's so unhealthy Cause I know you know we we go from the latest trend. You know we went from um Atkins to paleo to keto to who knows what's next Like. Why is that so unhealthy for us? How is that damaging our bodies and maybe even our genetics?

Speaker 2: 40:10

Yeah, for sure. So it's so cool to be able to see when you, when you can read genes, you can actually see which type of diet your body prefers. Which is like a heavier carb base. It utilizes them properly. Mine does not. Which?

Speaker 1: 40:26

I know.

Speaker 2: 40:27

But it's so cool to know that because I would completely like tank on a certain diet of that source. But with diets in general, like you, end up again it's that restriction where either cutting a whole macronutrient out or trying, which is terrifying, because we need that balance of them. We need I don't know who who started that rumor that we could just take out carbs and that's it, you know.

Speaker 1: 40:52

I mean our brains literally function on carbs. So yeah.

Speaker 2: 40:56

So like love healthy fats, trust, like, love them, but we and fruits and vegetables are carbs. So that really drives me nuts, cause I'm like, really, you're not going to eat spinach ever again. Like, oh, I can eat spinach, like, okay, perfect. No, I mean diets in general, and they're bringing your, just putting your metabolism through the ringer you know, trying to keep up with the back and forth, the restriction.

Speaker 2: 41:25

I mean it really comes back to the restriction because if you're in such a deficit, and then what happens with diets? We yo-yo, we overeat, we put the 20 back on, we lost 10. The hormonal mayhem that is then cascading from this back and forth, this up and down impact on our blood sugar, which is it's just, it's a mess, and we're recovering. Above all of this, there's a lot of work to rebalance and it's a hormonal issue because weight gain loss is all hormone based and we're really trying to manipulate them in a way that we we don't know what we're doing.

Speaker 1: 42:00

You know diet. You don't know what you're doing.

Speaker 2: 42:03

You're just following and, god knows, today you're just following what someone's doing on Instagram. That's terrifying. Yeah, therapeutic diets Absolutely, that is my job, like that was what I went to school for. We put people on keto for specific conditions. We put you on you know, we know how to do these things for therapy, um, for a specific condition. But for the average person to jump from thing to thing, to drink only juice, to drink only water, no other food, and just like all these things that we're jumping around, what it does internally it's yeah, it's damaging are there?

Speaker 1: 42:40

are there ways, uh, that people can still lose weight without dieting, like Like, what are your suggestions? Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 42:47

Cut the bad stuff. Um, no, I mean yeah.

Speaker 2: 42:53

Um, I like, I think right now fasting is really popular and right, I tend to err more on the side of um, just eating when it's light out. Um, we're seeing a lot of we call it a time restricted eating, I guess and we're seeing a lot of research benefits there. As opposed to fasting, I think fasting has amazing benefits, Don't get me wrong at all. But the average person is not doing well on it because it's that thin line between starvation and getting the benefits of fasting, that thin line between starvation and getting the benefits of fasting. Cause that shorter window doesn't mean you just don't eat two times, for you know, you took out the breakfast and, like the nighttime thing, you got to get all of your energy needs in in that shorter window. And for the person that's busy running around all the time doesn't have time to prep healthy food as it is, you got to be really well calculated to hit those goals in that shorter period of time. So I'm finding people really backfiring with doing trying intermittent fasting because they just tend to now again be under eating. So the signals that are coming from that, you know the cascade that's going to follow.

Speaker 2: 44:01

So I like the time restricted eating has a little more flexibility but also has a lot of science behind it. So you just don't eat when it gets dark. And because what are we eating when it gets dark out? That's when the ice cream and chips. Right yeah, Number one will help you lose weight Managing stress. A stressed body isn't going to let go of weight, it's vulnerable. In that sense, Getting adequate sleep will do so much because, again, weight loss is hormonal.

Speaker 2: 44:31

So, if we are messing up our sleep patterns. Our circadian rhythm is all out of whack because we're eating when it's dark, so we do that kind of like eat when it's light out. We're setting our body's circadian rhythm up to rest in the night, to replenish, to restore, to come back up in the morning and signal you that you're hungry, that you're ready for the day. We've lost those satiety signals, We've lost the hunger cues with all of this manipulation with diets. We've tried to shut them off and again, if they are hormone-based and weight weight is hormone based we can successfully do that. But it's not a good thing, Right? We become sensitive to not feeling full. We just over you know, we just binge.

Speaker 2: 45:17

It's, it's so, it's all hormonal. So getting adequate sleep, managing our stress, cutting out that inflammatory food, because an inflamed body is going to weigh more, yeah, yeah, inflammation, it's fallen off. It's so wildly simple. Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 1: 45:37

No, that was a but human you know, yeah, I think a lot of times that that last 10 pounds, a lot of times that is just inflammation, that is getting it in, like you said in those sources that we thought we were doing good with you know.

Speaker 2: 45:51

so I would really audit um the stuff that we're eating, I mean if it's coming out of a bag, box or window like flip it over and let's look at it.

Speaker 1: 46:02

Yeah, I love that bag, box or window.

Speaker 2: 46:04

Um, yeah, I mean, eat real foods and we just got to get creative with them. I find people think it's boring, you know, maybe they don't know what to do with these random vegetables. We've got Pinterest. We've got air fryers. Now, oh, I need more.

Speaker 1: 46:18

Yeah, it is the easiest time and I think I think the hardest thing people struggle with is is making their health a priority. You know, we look at all of these other things going on in our lives but we don't take time to actually cook food or make breakfast or sit down and chew our food. We just inhale. Do you have ideas on how people can you know, change their approach to personal health or maybe even change their their um?

Speaker 2: 46:49

their habit. Yeah, does it come back to habit with that?

Speaker 2: 46:53

I think I think so yeah because we make time for what we want to make time for. Um, we all have the same 24 hours in that sense, unless we're Beyonce, because she definitely has. Yeah, this is. Everyone always says Beyonce is 24 hours and I'm like, no, I don't know, we have the same ones. It is about the priority, though, and I think a lot of that would come back to like what you were saying when you're coaching people, and that mental shift of what is important to you. Where do you see yourself over the next five years? Because chronic disease is going to cost you a lot more than it's going to cost you these five extra minutes in the morning.

Speaker 1: 47:29

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 47:29

Whether this beautiful oatmeal bowl that takes me 30 seconds. Um, it's all about setting yourself up and your environment up for success in anything but like think. Let's think about food and simple things that people could do. I just did redid my uncle's pantry the other day. He went on vacation and he's a disaster, um no, but he works a lot. Um, this is what he was saying. Um leaves early. You know how the heck am I supposed to eat? I just grabbed something on the way that I said all right, let me add this pantry first of all, cause they're just going to grab some sort of maybe bar, maybe if he remembers it, otherwise he's not going to eat all day and the bar is sugar.

Speaker 1: 48:12

Right yeah.

Speaker 2: 48:13

So I'm like, why can't you just do these overnight oats that I do all the time? I was like we'll get you the little jars, we'll put all the stuff you need and you just put it all in one jar and like, grab the jar, it's all the same motion Right, ego, in the, in the toaster where we're making the pancakes. Like we're doing it, we eat consecutively, every day.

Speaker 2: 48:38

It's just that physical choice, right, and it's it's setting your fridge up to grab ingredients and not just a package of something you know, and it's a lot of relearning, like you were saying, with the beliefs, but it's the same movement. So that part to me doesn't feel that difficult to overhaul. We just have to find a better swap. And that's why I'm saying it's so simple, because we can still have a huge chicken parm Italian dinner, and you know we didn't fry our, our chicken, we did it in the air fryer. We made cauliflower pasta. You know, we made our own sauce, or we bought a jarred sauce that didn't have, um, a lot of sugar in it and what else. I mean that's it. It's the same dish.

Speaker 2: 49:19

It has so much protein, it's so good, um, it's just a lot about setting up your, your environment. So I have like a bag of those big bags of nuts, um, in my car all the time because I'm not going to try, I'm not going to get like sucking traffic or have this crazy long day and have no food. My body's going to be a little, a little hormonally mad at me, um, so setting your car up, setting up your work, desk your fridge at your work and just having stuff in place, cause we're making these motions every day, whether it's to the vending machine or it could be to your work fridge to grab the Greek yogurt and the handful of nuts, the banana, peanut butter, like we do the motion. So I don't think I'm asking that much of people to swap things or to implement these new routines.

Speaker 1: 50:09

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 50:10

Do it already. You know, I think there's these extra steps, but we're doing it.

Speaker 1: 50:17

Yeah, I think the other thing too is is I'm a huge fan of meal prepping, so same kind of thing. So you know, when I cook on, say I'll cook a big meal on Sunday, cause it'll be family or something, I'll make enough for a couple extra meals, and so right, you know, and so I try to meal prep on Sundays and try to meal prep on Wednesday nights, and that way I can get through the next days with easy meals. And then, you know, instead of grabbing something to microwave it, I already have my prepped meal.

Speaker 2: 50:48

Yes, so I will always have a crock pot rolling.

Speaker 2: 50:51

So, like you guys can start doing this right now. It's a crock pot all the time that has something in it, whether it's a little Pinterest recipe or it's literally just chicken breast with some sort of like. I put hot sauce on it and make it buffalo. Then that chicken is going to be used, like in wraps, on a salad with eggs in the morning, like it gets a few side of um, but I I don't cook for the rest of the week, like you were saying.

Speaker 1: 51:13

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 51:14

Um, and I don't put this huge pressure on Cause I remember, like back in the dieting days, of having like lining up the Tupperware all over my counter and like meal prep. Like I was so obsessed with it that it felt like another job and that didn't feel realistic for people that they couldn't spend five hours on Sundays doing it.

Speaker 1: 51:31

I'm like, guys, this takes 30 minutes, like it's a meal that you would have cooked anyways.

Speaker 2: 51:36

Let's just make another one, like maybe two times. Um, the crock pot's always on the counter. I will put the veggies in the oven, all roasted on a sheet pan, and then just throw them back in the fridge. I will put the veggies in the oven, all roasted on a sheet pan, and then just throw them back in the fridge and I'm just reheating. Like you said, with the microwave, we're going to microwave something. I mean I'm just throwing it all in a saute pan and just each meal, like we have it ready.

Speaker 1: 51:57

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 51:58

Yeah, always some veggies roasted, worst case. And then I love overnight oats for morning or on the go. So it really it's simple. We just gotta and it's five extra minutes um, put your podcasts on, put Grey's Anatomy on, like you deserve that time too. And I think a lot of what you were saying is people don't prioritize their health yeah, prioritize their self. There's so many things all the time pulling at us from so many different angles that we have to sometimes just like stop everything and like put our hand over our heart and be like this is what matters, because we can't show up for all these people. If we can't show up, we can't. We can't drop dead tomorrow because of chronic disease. We don't have time, right? Yeah, we're busy.

Speaker 1: 52:46

It's funny, because I find it really ironic because, you know, naturally we come from a pretty selfish point of view, just in the sense of like how is this affecting me? You know why? Why are they doing this to me? You know, how is this going to make my life better? Yet, when it comes to actually taking care of ourselves, we are the least selfish individuals there are, like we just give and give and give a great thought process because we are so inherently selfish.

Speaker 2: 53:12

Yeah, yeah, what's in it for me? Why would I do?

Speaker 1: 53:15

that absolutely exactly. But then caring for ourselves selfish goes out the way for an exploration.

Speaker 2: 53:21

Somebody's gonna look into that. Yeah, definitely, definitely. But I mean, yeah, it comes back to like your, your why of why. Why do we do things in the first place Right? Like why do we drive ourselves crazy going to these jobs and having our kids in 10 different sports? And like what's the goal of that Right Is to just be better providing humans. Why don't we look at what, what we do internally, as the same, you know, the same expenditure?

Speaker 2: 53:47

We don't do all of these things. We're willing to drive three different kids to three different practices at night to better their future and to make them better humans. But you know, I don't know why we don't prioritize ourselves the same.

Speaker 1: 54:00

But their future is not going to be great if If you're not in it.

Speaker 2: 54:03

Right. Yes, you got jeans to give off. Yeah, love it. Making super humans, that's the goal, right.

Speaker 1: 54:14

Well, amanda, I have one more question for you Before I get to that. Where can the listeners find you online? How can they connect with you?

Speaker 2: 54:22

I hang out on Instagram. I guess I love your relationship with social media. I want to be present. I guess I have a lot of relationship with social media. I want to, you know, be present but love it. I love hanging out with you guys there. So it's just my name, amanda Rigby R-D is my handle. I have a Facebook page, a little Facebook group, where I hang out. You guys get to see my like little rants. Maybe with some wine, go into my supplement cabinet. They get to see, like the real life, that private page Cause you know, some things are censored elsewhere.

Speaker 2: 54:53

So that's where we're just free to be healing on our own terms and no judgment. It's a great little community, but yeah, I mostly hang out on Instagram, awesome.

Speaker 1: 55:05

Love it All right. So last question what advice do you have for someone who wants to make change in their life, in their community or around the world?

Speaker 2: 55:15

Oh right, yeah, Um, what advice would I have for that person? I think the first thing, the first thing that comes that my body said was just go in. Because, like we were just saying, like everything that we need is already inside of us. We just don't tap into our potential. We don't, we don't spend enough time in silence with ourselves, exploring ourselves, loving ourselves, respecting ourselves enough to get a solid answer for that question. We can be not superficial, but we could say, like you know, I want to join this. You know philanthropic, you know march, it was a word. Philanthropic, yeah, the planet. But like, if everyone just went in and focused on healing themselves, we would save the planet. Right, we would be softer versions, healthier versions of ourselves. That would be great contributors. That's what we need more. We need more people just acknowledging self and what we're worth asking for it. And because the moves that come from that place are so different than those that come from scarcity, jealousy, comparison, right.

Speaker 1: 56:43

Yeah, I mean, I love it. Yes, I absolutely.

Speaker 2: 56:46

I don't know, it just came to me. No, it's fantastic.

Speaker 1: 56:51

I love it. It's perfect. Well, thank you, amanda. So so much for your time and your knowledge. I just want to recognize you for all you're doing to help your clients and help change the world by helping to change individuals. I think it's fantastic.

Speaker 2: 57:05

Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 57:06

Thank you, yeah, awesome.