Hannah Aylward (00:05.881)
Welcome to the Nutrient Dense Podcast. I’m your host, Hannah Aylward, holistic health coach, functional gut health practitioner, and the founder of HAN. So many people are continuously failed by conventional and alternative healthcare. We are here to do it differently. Alongside my team of functional registered dietitians, I’ve helped hundreds of women around the world overcome their chronic digestive issues when nothing else worked.

I’ve learned a thing or two about what it really takes to transform your health from the inside out, and I’m here to share it all with you. Please keep in mind that this podcast is for educational purposes only and should never be used as medical advice. Now let’s dive in. Your transformation is waiting.

Hello, hello, my dears, and welcome back to another episode of the Nutrient Dense Podcast. Today, we’re going to be covering the top six gut healing mistakes that we see people making. at this point in my career, I have probably worked with, gosh, hundreds and hundreds of people at this point. And between everyone on my team, we’ve got 25 plus years of experience. So we’ve seen a lot of people, we’ve seen a lot of cases.

And we can kind of see, you know, in our team meetings, we’ll even round table, like what are the common blocks? What are people not seeing? Where are people kind of like falling flat or like, what are we missing? What’s really holding people from getting the results that they want? What’s holding the people back from truly getting better? And I was just chatting with my team about this today because our number one priority is that the people that work with us start feeling a lot better. And it doesn’t happen overnight, but if we see that things aren’t

working as well as we want them to, we start tweaking and we start adjusting and we start brainstorming. And in this process of helping so many people really overcome their chronic digestive issues, we tend to see a couple main reasons why people aren’t getting better. Some of the biggest roadblocks, right? And really these like top mistakes that people are making on their gut healing journey. And this is not to blame or shame anyone at all. I’ve made all of these mistakes myself, of course.

Hannah Aylward (02:18.477)
And I wish I knew a little better at the beginning of my gut healing journey when I was struggling with the chronic bloating, the constipation, the food sensitivities, the chronic, like the constant gas. I mean, it was just a nightmare and it started altering my life in so many ways. And if I knew then what I know now, and I knew about some of these mistakes, I could have avoided things. And honestly, I just could have gotten a lot better much quicker. So we’re going to be kind of like rapid firing some of the biggest gut healing mistakes that we do see people making.

And I kind of was racking my brain for these and rounded up six. So we’re to be breaking down six different topics here. And then we’ll be getting into all of it. So the first kind of biggest mistake that I see people making, and I feel like I shout this from the rooftops. This is like so much of what I talk about because this is so much of my story. But the number one mistake that people make when it comes to repairing their gut, repairing their gut function, getting, overcoming their chronic digestive issues.

is only focusing on diet, only focusing on diet and nutrition, really focusing on stripping out all of the foods, right? We do the elimination diets. We take out gluten, we take out dairy, we take out soy and corn and peanuts and oxalates and lectins. And I mean, the list goes on and on FODMAPs, right? And it doesn’t get us feeling 100 % better. And in my case, personally, it helps me a little bit. I will say like, I feel like a couple things got a bit better when I pulled out

the dairy, but then I tried to reintroduce it and my reaction was so much worse because I hadn’t eaten it in forever. And pulling out gluten, I do think like, you know, what we see with people is gluten’s not really doing anyone any favors. But when we start to over focus and like hyper focus on the diet alone, we miss a lot of the story, a lot of what’s happening in the gut environment. So something you’ll hear me say very often is don’t blame food for what the food didn’t do. Don’t blame food for what your gut environment is doing.

So when someone comes in to work with us and they have a lot of different food reactions, sensitivities and tolerances, they have a lot of bloating and gas. Most of our people have like tried keeping a food log in the past and it has been no help. They can’t really tell what’s ticking them off anymore. They can eat a meal on Monday morning. They can feel fine. They eat the same exact meal on Tuesday morning and they’re sick from it, right? Or they’re bloated and gassy or constipated or running to the bathroom or whatever it might be. And that is a classic sign of a deeper gut environment issue.

Hannah Aylward (04:45.581)
And when I say gut environment, mean like you have to think of where the food is actually entering. So after you swallow that food, what’s happening to that food? When we have imbalances in the gut environment, we will start to mount many different reactions to the foods that we’re eating. And it’s so important to understand this. This is like when I was first getting started on my like personal health journey, I had an idea of this. People were talking about leaky gut. I was like, okay, leaky gut, great. Give me some L-glutamine, sure. But I was really like,

really pretty heavily convinced after hearing a lot of the conversation in the functional medicine space that like the elimination diet would just heal all my gut issues, right? So I just peeled out foods. I took a ton of foods out and I had convinced myself that if I just ate this perfectly clean diet that everything would go away. And you know what? I really tried and it never did.

It really truly never did. And if I could say one thing to like everyone out there struggling with chronic digestive issues, it would be that. Like the perfectly clean diet, it’s not gonna heal your gut. Elimination diets on their own do not repair the gut. We have to think of where the food is entering. for example, if you are dealing with these deeper like dysbiotic patterns or gut infections, so maybe you have an overgrowth of your bad gut bacteria, this more opportunistic dysbiotic gut bacteria,

If you have an undergrowth of your good gut bacteria, we see both of these things pretty prominently in clients. It doesn’t really matter what you eat with these in this state, you’re going to react to food. Maybe it’s a parasitic infection or you have a fungal overgrowth. You can’t get rid of these things on a low sugar diet. The Candida diet will not get rid of Candida. It does not entirely starve Candida. I think some newer research came out.

more recently showing that it can help a little bit, but let me tell you, we are not putting clients on anti-candida diets over here. If you have candida overgrowth or a fungal overgrowth, can it be helpful to pull out like the really high sugar foods? Like, yeah, that’s gonna be helpful for anyone. Fermented foods, things like alcohol, pulling those things can help. More so just for your quality of life and your symptoms while we actually address the fungal overgrowth.

Hannah Aylward (07:01.939)
and address why the fungal overgrowth is there in the first place. these diets like low FODMAP or the elimination diet or the anti-candida diet, they’re not actually repairing A, why you need that diet in the first place and B, like what’s going on in the gut environment that’s actually causing the bloating, the gas, the constipation, diarrhea. So I like to really emphasize this because I was so terribly hard on myself when I was like just deep in my journey, struggling so much with my digestion.

And it got to the point where I always have this one memory flash into my head when I share this, because I remember being on this walk and I was listening to someone’s podcast. And this was like years ago, some health person’s podcast. And I was just like, everything that they’re saying I’m already doing, like there is something very wrong with me. I was like, I don’t know if I need like an ayahuasca ceremony or I need like 10 years of therapy or if I need to just like sob my face off.

or I need reiki, maybe there’s like an energetic block, but like something is wrong because I cannot get through this and I’m already eating clean and I’m already exercising and I’m already doing intermittent fasting and I’m taking the probiotics and I’m doing all the shit, right? And I was like being driven crazy by it. And I call it like my fall to my knees moment because I started to explore these other pieces of healing, like my emotional state and my nervous system because it felt like I had no other option. I mean,

all of the tools, all of the things that I had been educated on, all of the things that everyone was talking about, like they weren’t really helping me. Were they maintaining like some good blood work markers and things like that, like my insulin and my cholesterol? Sure, they were helping with those things, but I could not kick these chronic digestive issues. And they were like ruining my life. And I know that that sounds kind of like inflammatory to say that, but if you know, you know, right? Like it was like really freaking killing me.

these chronic digestivations, having to manage them all the time, being afraid of how it would feel. I like threw up after one margarita this one time, because my liver literally could not handle it. One margarita. And I would react to everything. I mean, it was just awful. And I felt like I had this like inflammatory layer on me and I would be constipated. my gosh, you guys, I took this one trip and I couldn’t use the bathroom for like over a week. And I was starting to absolutely panic.

Hannah Aylward (09:19.927)
And then I’m like, it’s my nervous system. It’s my nervous system. It’s just the stress hand. You have to be less stressed. Meanwhile, I’m like freaking out. Cause I was like, you’re just out of your routine and you’re just really stressed and it’s just your nervous system. And it wasn’t, I had a ton of gut dysbiosis and does the nervous system play a role? Absolutely. But there were all of these deeper imbalances in my gut environment that were contributing to these symptoms that I was having, the constipation and the bloating and the gas. And like, I just felt like things would get so like trapped in my body.

I don’t know if that makes sense, very likely does to this audience. Like, I felt like things were just like stuck, like nothing would move in my system. And then sometimes the constipation would get so bad, I would feel nausea, right? I would feel like I was going to puke because I hadn’t moved my bowels. I mean, you guys, this is why I speak to all of this and this is why I do this work. Like I have been there, I have done it, and it is not fun. So I really like to emphasize the like…

diet, the intensive diets, the restrictive diets are not the long-term solution. And I really like relied on them for so many years of my journey because I didn’t know about the functional testing. I didn’t know about the gut environment, you know, even the books that you read, the books I was reading on gut health. mean, it’s mostly food, right? They’re mostly talking about nutrition and gluten and dairy and sugar and all of that kind of stuff. Like I knew all of that. So I think it’s so important to understand that

If you have, for example, low stomach acid, like taking out gluten is not going to fix that. If you have a parasitic infection, taking out dairy is not going to fix that. It’s not going to get rid of that infection. If you have bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine or the large intestine, the low flat map diet is not going to get rid of that. Eating gluten-free and dairy-free and sugar-free and everything free, it’s not actually going to get rid of that. We have to address the microbial imbalances and we have to also address your ability to actually digest your food. So,

along with your nervous system, right? Your nervous system, the stress hormones, all of these things are playing a role. So it’s really not just about the diet and the nutrition, although of course that’s so important and helpful. And there is a lot of strategy that we can bring in there. However, I just want anyone to know who feels like, you know, I eat clean, like what is going on? There’s just a lot more to the story. And

Hannah Aylward (11:35.41)
I don’t want to mean to overcomplicate it, but every single person’s underlying root causes are going to be a little bit different. And that’s why working with someone and running the right testing is just so, so incredibly beneficial and helpful. Like if we could help our people to the fullest fullest extent without the testing and the one-on-one support and all of that, I would be doing that. If I could sell more like generic quote unquote gut cleanses or whatever, I would be doing that. It would be way less work for us.

We wouldn’t need to be in all of these one-on-one sessions and analyzing, you know, assessing all of these tests and everything, but I just see it like it’s a non-negotiable. People need it so much. all in all, only focusing on the diet, it can feel like you’re on this hamster wheel getting like a little bit better and then getting worse again, a little bit better and getting worse again. And I feel confident in saying that the solution to your chronic digestive issues is not in another restrictive diet. Even when people go on carnivore and they feel like so much better, you know, there are some reasons for that.

They’re basically not eating any fiber. Fiber is what feeds gut bacteria, which we need, we absolutely need to do. If you have bacterial overgrowth, you might feel a little better on a carnivore diet, but y’all, this is not me recommending a carnivore diet. Don’t get it twisted. But there’s reasons why you could feel a little bit better with that temporarily, but we don’t see people do well with that long-term. So this heavy restriction is honestly never the answer. And it doesn’t sound sexy. It sounds super.

we all want the like one thing. We’re like, it’s the creatine or it’s the intermittent fasting or it’s the NAD or it’s the, it’s the this, it’s the carnivore diet. Like what is the one cool fancy thing? It was keto before. What’s the one cool fancy thing that’s gonna like get rid of all of this, right? And it just like honestly does not work like that. But I kept searching for that for years. I was like, I’m missing something. I’ve got to be missing one thing. I’m missing one thing that’s gonna turn it all around. And then I got to the point where I was just like sobbing on the floor. And I was like, maybe it’s just my meat.

like me, maybe it’s literally just me and I need like so much therapy because something is terribly wrong. And therapy is wonderful. And I needed a lot of nervous system support. I was so terribly hard on myself. I would just like berate myself over and over again, but I also hadn’t really addressed what was going on in my gut environment. I had done a little bit of it, but I had done some more generic stuff. And that really leads me into mistake number two, which is truly not taking a customized approach. So on my journey,

Hannah Aylward (13:56.942)
I purchased a ton of these like gut cleanses that I found online and they were by very reputable people who I still respect to this day. It’s kind of a way that these like functional medicine doctors and practitioners try to like help more people, I believe, probably like sell more stuff to which, you whatever everyone go do the thing, but help more people in a more generic sense and probably hoping that like it’ll help more people than it doesn’t kind of thing.

So there are a lot of like generic gut cleanses, gut detoxes, stuff like that on the market, but they are not customized and tailored to what your body needs right now. And I purchased tons of those and they were all, I feel like they were all like four to 500 bucks. my gosh, I probably bought like 10 of them. I mean the amount of money that I spent on this stuff and they would help me feel a little bit better and then, and then I wouldn’t anymore. I think like part of it was just knowing that I was like doing something to support myself that was actually helping.

But there would always be, you know, an elimination diet with it, and then a bunch of supplements, probiotic enzymes, whatever. It would help a little bit, right? And then, but it was like, I still couldn’t break this cycle. And I had never run any testing on myself because I didn’t, I didn’t really know what that was, you know, very, very early on, like before I started helping clients. I was just in it. I was just in my own journey and in my own experience struggling with these chronic digestive issues. you know, I think that a big mistake that people make is

Sometimes we can think that just trying to figure it out on our own or like buying this more generic stuff that’s maybe a little cheaper, that’s like still expensive, but cheaper, or being like, maybe I can fix it with just like raw milk or like bone broth or or myrcalostrum or whatever. And then it just doesn’t really work because we’re not actually understanding what’s going on in our body. And there are flaws with all the tests too, you guys, like there’s not.

There’s not one test that’s like, is the best fricking test out there. It tests for everything. We can miss nothing with this test. But after just like so much assessment and seeing, you know, what do we need to use to get people feeling as best as we can with as little investment in labs as possible. Like we run functional stool testing. It’s just a non-negotiable for us. I have to see that test result on every single client because that’s going to inform what the next steps that we take. And that test itself can also come back.

Hannah Aylward (16:12.662)
very clear and also less clear in some client cases. So you really have to have to work with someone who has seen a lot of these and really knows how to work it too. I like to say that this work is like, it’s kind of like an art form. Being a good practitioner is you have to understand and be like clinically trained, but you also have to be able to read the client. You also have to pick up on the client and their emotional state and what their block is. And you also have to know how to kind of like work the data.

And like, yeah, essentially like search for anything that could be falling through the cracks. And I can very happily say we’ve just gotten a lot better at that over the years. I’ve just practiced like so much practice. You know, we’ve, we’ve seen so many people at this point and continue to see subtly new things and new things happen to the world, you know, like COVID, like COVID coming up, like threw a wrench in our formula, you know, because there was like a situation we didn’t, no one really understood. But my point is, is like, you want.

you know, someone’s got to really know how to work this data, but we need this data. We really deeply need this data on like what’s going on in your body. So when we run functional stool testing and I’m going to do a deeper like episode deep dive on stool testing on like on its own, but this is going to give us a lot of data that’s going to inform the next steps for you. So you can take the more generic route of just like trialing a bunch of like random stuff. like you can trial oregano oil, you can trial L-glutamine, you can trial, what’s another thing that people are always trialing?

Yeah, colostrum or, know, I had this one call with this client and she became a client of ours. And then the intro call that I had with her, she was like, well, I’m going to do this or I’m going to buy the, the supplements from this company. And I won’t name the company. It’s a good company. make good products, but they had something labeled as like gut cleanse or gut detox or something. And it was like one single supplement. And I believe it was an immunoglobulin, which we do utilize with our clients. It can be great for supporting the gut immune function.

And it can be helpful in some cases with like histamine overload. It can be helpful to buy into certain toxins. So they’re great. I love a nice immunoglobulin, but the marketing around this was like gut detox. And it was like, you know, get rid of all these bad gut bacteria, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And I’m like, this thing, this is not what this thing does. I’m like, this is not what this product actually does. And it’s not addressing your gut in a holistic sense. It’s, it’s just simply one supplement. Like one supplements not going to do it. You guys.

Hannah Aylward (18:37.443)
We have to take a much deeper look at all of this. So when it comes to your journey and when it comes to what we see people kind of trialing, yes, you can try. You can just buy all the supplements that you want and see what helps. But there is a big difference in buying supplements based off of symptoms or just like what you see someone else recommending, and then buying supplements based on strategy and data.

We like to do the latter. We also take a look at what you’re presenting with. So if it’s bloating and constipation or whatever, of course you’re a whole human and we listen to you and work with you. But there’s a difference between like, I’m bloated, so I’ll get an enzyme and I test it and my pancreatic enzymes are low. My elastase is low. Therefore, supplementing with enzymes will be helpful. I also have to look at my stomach acid because that informs our elastase production. So you can see the difference there, right? One of them is going to address the root cause. One of them is going to kind of slap something on there.

And one of them could be more beneficial than the other. So we also want to be mindful of like adding in different antimicrobial herbs. We’ve had quite a few clients come to us who have been taking these things on their own. One of them comes to mind and she had a ton of overgrowth in the gut, both bacterial and fungal. And she, and I remember I was like coaching inside of my healing guts and shaking butts group. And I was like, this is why we don’t want to do this stuff blindly you guys. Cause if you start throwing things like oregano oil or

what’s another like common one like berberine at this stuff, you know, we can make things, you can feel like you get hit by a truck. We can make things worse if that’s not what you actually need. And she was like, my gosh, I tried figuring this out on my own. And I felt so sick and horrible for like a week or two after I started taking some of this stuff, I had to quit. And that’s when I signed up for your program because I’m like, this is not right. So it’s like, we, that, that was the case because she wasn’t properly prepped and it wasn’t exactly what she needed.

But if we also, had another client who comes to mind, and we see this often, I can name multiple clients that have presented like this, who have a lot of chronic bloating and digestive issues, but they actually don’t have enough of their good gut bacteria, and their gut microbiome is very depleted. So they don’t have adequate bacterial phyla, they don’t have enough of these good gut bugs, and that’s what’s contributing to the digestive issues. Now, if they started taking oregano oil and whatever else, other antimicrobial that you can Google, or you hear someone talk about,

Hannah Aylward (20:58.393)
You know, they would be causing more damage. Symptoms would likely get worse and they’d be causing more damage to their gut microbiome. These herbals are strong and we want to be mindful with them. We totally use them. We’re very comfortable with them and working with them, but we don’t want to take them blindly. We want them to target what we want them to target basically. So we don’t want to be throwing random supplements at the issue. We don’t want to be like, it’s basically like you’re throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks and hoping for the best.

And I did this for years, like truly, because a lot of the times too, what I was finding is I was learning from all these top functional medicine doctors, but like you couldn’t actually work with them. You know, they weren’t, they either weren’t taking patients or it was like out of, you know, way too expensive and that kind of thing. So I couldn’t actually work with them. So then I would just like listen to they said and start to trial some things and it can cause more harm than good basically. So.

There are tons of different types of probiotics. are tons of different types of digestive enzymes. There are tons of different types of herbals and different interventions that we can use. We have to know what you actually need. We also have to be looking at the dosage and how long we need you taking things. And that’s like very largely missed with people too. People will be like, well, I tried taking this. And I’m like, well, did you try taking this many milligrams for this amount of time? No, right? So it’s still didn’t get the impact that we wanted it to get. So there’s a lot of strategy that

comes into like all of the work that we do with clients. So anyway, I think I made a point, not taking a customized approach to repairing the gut will likely fall flat. Sometimes we can get lucky, but if you’re listening to this podcast, that probably isn’t the case, because you’ve probably already tried a lot, right? And I get it. Once again, I get it. You’re talking to the right girl here. So that would be, I’d say, a big mistake that I see people making that just ends up like cost them a lot of time.

It costs them a lot of time and money because you’re like spending money on random stuff and just like pain. And honestly, like, like elongates the poor quality of life and just like you deserve to feel good. You deserve to feel good. You deserve to take care of yourself and you deserve to do what needs to be done in order, in order to feel better. So that’s my take, but you know, obviously I’m, I’m biased, but I am like, I feel like viciously protective of women feeling at home in their bodies and comfortable in their bodies and healthy and powerful and strong and

Hannah Aylward (23:21.507)
not being bogged down by these chronic digestive issues and not being bogged down by low energy. think it’s so incredibly important. And I think that when women have their strength and they have their mental capacity and they’re not like, their health issues aren’t like dragging them down all day, every day, they’re capable of so much. And that’s like the real, real reason why you do all this work, but I won’t get all my soap box there. But it’s just like when a woman is comfortable and confident in her body, like nothing can get in her way.

And when she has her mental capacity, I’m just like, watch out world. So I love that. And I feel once again, viciously protective of women and their health and feeling very good in their bodies. So I don’t want anyone wasting any time here. Now, the number three top gut healing mistake that I see people making is jumping straight into these hardcore protocols with no prep time. sometimes someone will be working with a practitioner and they’ll jump in on a bunch of supplements, but they haven’t properly prepped.

And this is honestly something that we learned over time with our clients. This is not what we were trained in. And we’ve taken so many trainings and no one really preps you for that. So I used to teach a functional soul testing training where we would train practitioners and I’ll run it again at some point, but I just like to focus on our clients right now.

But one of the things that I was really emphasizing to them, I’m like, you’ve got to prep these people. So when people don’t properly prep for their protocol, they feel really, really bad. And we try to prep clients as much as we can in order to decrease the die-off reaction of that Herximer reaction that we can get when we start to add in a bunch of herbals or we start to eradicate a bunch of bacteria or fungi or whatever it might be. So.

Your immune system can only handle really like what is strong enough to handle. And if you feel like you’ve done all of the protocols and you’ve gotten nowhere, this could also be why. Cause we have to prep the body. So if someone comes in and they’re super, super depleted, we have to strengthen them basically before we move into like the hardcore stuff. And this is something that Dr. Kalish, so he is a functional medicine doctor and he’s been kind of working in this space for years and

Hannah Aylward (25:35.321)
He is really big on prepping first. Like we cannot walk these people into these hardcore protocols unless they’re strong enough. And when I say prepping, I mean working on things like repleting minerals and balancing blood sugar and optimizing these nutrition foundations and opening up your drainage pathways and working on boosting your gut immune function and supporting your adrenal health, right? Like your body has to be strong enough to take these things on. Because as we go through the process of

like yes, eradicating pathogens or overgrowth or anything like that that is present in the gut microbiome that are present, excuse me. It’s kind of a stressor on the body. know, we have to like get rid of this stuff and that’s a really intensive process for the body to be going on. So we have to make sure that you’re strong enough for that. And I have not taken my own advice in the past and the advice that we give to clients. And I have personally jumped straight into some stuff before.

And I felt like horrible. Like my stomach was like absolutely freaking out. And I started taking all of these herbals and I was like, my gosh, like something is, this is just not okay. And I knew that I needed to support like my system before doing that. And I just didn’t. I thought, well, I think I’m good. I’ll just do it anyway. So I didn’t listen to this advice. Don’t be me. And I could feel it immediately. And I had to back off. I had to spend like two to four weeks prepping. And then I had to jump into my protocol from there.

And this was just to do a little cleanup. Like when I, by the time I was doing this, I was in a pretty good spot, you know? So I like to run a GI map every year, about every year or so, just to check in on everything. And I just had a little overgrowth and wasn’t really causing much, but still I, know, you can’t jump into this stuff. And I was coming out of a really like stressful season, very, very stressful season and my body wasn’t primed enough. So sometimes people will be on this like roller coaster of, or this like hamster wheel of.

trying these gut protocols after gut protocol after gut protocol. And there are many reasons why these things can fail. And I would have to like speak to the client and know your background and know all the interventions to be able to tell you like why yours could have failed. But one of them, one of the reasons why is that we’re just not prepped properly. And the other thing that I mentioned here is opening up drainage pathways. And this is really, really essential because we have to make sure that these toxins once we’re eradicating these gut bacteria,

Hannah Aylward (27:54.925)
In the case of something like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or gut dysbiosis, know, these bacteria house toxins and these toxins are then just going to be opened up into circulation after we go and eradicate these bacteria. So especially things like gram-negative bacteria, these things house endotoxin. Endotoxin can contribute to things like brain fog and increase inflammation, and it’s not really something to play around with. So we have to make sure that your drainage pathways are open so that

that these toxins can actually leave the system. And this is something that I also see largely missed. And this can be the reason why you feel like you’re very, very sensitive to protocols. You can’t progress on them. You can never finish them or they make no difference. So there’s a lot here. Like when we’re talking about foundations, think of it as like when you’re building a house, you don’t want to throw a new roof on a poor foundation basically. So you don’t want to just throw a bunch of like intensive stuff or fancy stuff on something that’s not

that doesn’t have a proper foundation. And this is really me walking into like the fourth biggest mistake that I see people making is thinking that all this fancy stuff is gonna save them. And listen, I love the fancy stuff. If you haven’t caught that yet, I love the stool testing. I love the supplement protocols, building them out, all of that kind of stuff, talking about the different types of bacteria, histamine producing bacteria, short chain fatty acid producing bacteria. Like it’s so fun and it’s amazing. And…

you have to have the proper foundation set. So in the same way that you have to prep yourself for a protocol, you also have to make sure that you’re setting proper foundations throughout this entire process. And no one gets out of this. And some people think that they can, but no one gets out of this. Like once again, you don’t stick a new roof on like a foundation that is like crumbling. It’s all gonna fall, right? So we have to maintain.

these good foundations. So balancing our blood sugar and eight hours of sleep and actually like feeling joy and happiness and eating enough and turning off, actually turning off and trying to manage our stress as best as we can and saying no and protecting our peace and setting the boundaries, right? Like you can’t, when I first started coaching, when I first started health coaching, gosh, what feels like a million years ago at this point, and I’m not that old. I just started so early.

Hannah Aylward (30:11.321)
But I used to say, like, you can’t expect yourself to be healthy when you’re, chugging the green smoothie running down the street to make the subway to get you to the job that you hate to then sit all day doing this work that feels unfulfilling and you’re, so stressed and then you, hate your body. Like, that’s not health, right? The green smoothie is not going to override all that. We have to make sure you’re living in alignment.

We have to make sure you’re experiencing happiness. Do you even know who you are? Like, I truly believe that all of this plays a role in your healing journey overall. On top of that, under eating, under nourishing, over training, all of these things can get in the way. We have to set these good foundations. And then after we have these good foundations, we can from there add in all the fancy stuff. And that’s really why I honestly never talk about this program and I need to talk about it more, but I built out.

a program called Gut Happy Eats. And it’s kind of like my mini course or my mini program. And it talks all about nutrition for gut health. And it covers a lot of this foundational stuff. So it helps, it helps you like repopulate your gut microbiome through food and balance your blood sugar. And there’s mineral support in there and there’s like pain free digestion tips in there. And we talk about gluten and dairy and all the yes or the no and what, what they do and what it means. And we really get into all of it. And I really created it as like a step one for people to

to narrow down on these foundations before they take on that next step of testing and supplements and protocols and all of that kind of stuff. for anyone that’s resonating with like, need to get started and I’m not ready for the more fancy stuff yet, that could be a great option for you. It’s called Got Happy Eats and we’ll pop the note or the link in the show notes for you guys if you’re interested. But yeah, it’s a great place to start. And honestly, so many people feel so much better from just that.

Hannah Aylward (32:03.951)
We are big fans of eating enough protein over here on Team Han. Protein is essential for muscle repair, a strong gut lining, balanced blood sugar levels, and so much more. For most of our clients, we like recommending around 100 grams of protein per day to start, and adding in a good quality protein powder can be super helpful for hitting those numbers. It’s an easy add-in. You can throw it into a smoothie or even add it to oatmeal. Choosing the right protein powder can feel so overwhelming.

Half of them are full of fillers and crap ingredients and the other half honestly just tastes bad. Equip Protein is one of my go-to recommendations for our clients and one of my personal favorites. We love it because it only has a small handful of ingredients. It’s 100 % carefully sourced, real foods, no additives, allergens, chemicals, fillers or other junk. It’s gluten-free and it contains 21 grams of protein per serving. Equip’s Prime Protein also offers

a complete amino acid profile. It’s also independently tested to make sure that the protein powder is free of harmful amounts of heavy metals and toxins like glyphosate, which is honestly super hard to find. EquipPrime protein is a grass-fed beef protein. So it is animal-based, but it’s dairy-free, unlike whey or casein protein powders. Grass-fed beef protein is packed with collagen, gelatin, and micronutrients that your body needs.

We also see that it’s typically much better tolerated in our clients with chronic gut and digestive issues over something like a plant-based protein powder. In addition, some of their flavors do contain natural flavors, but they’re distilled vapors from natural and organic compounds or fruits like vanilla, coconut, and strawberry, and are processed without any chemicals, fillers, binders, or artificial ingredients, which once again is incredibly hard to find. Personally, I buy both the chocolate and the vanilla.

flavors of the Equip Prime Protein, but honestly, they have like so many other incredible flavors out now. If you’re interested in trying out Equip Prime Protein, you can use the code HANNAHILWARDHHC at checkout for 15 % off. And we’ll pop that code in the show notes of this episode for you as well. So once again, you can go to equipfoods.com, choose the flavor of protein powder that you want, and then use code HANNAHILWARDHHC for 15 % off.

Hannah Aylward (34:22.383)
So yes, you can be taking all of the supplements in the world, but if you aren’t sleeping enough, if you aren’t eating enough, if you aren’t balancing your blood sugar, if you are like living in a chronically stressed out state, we’re gonna be fighting an uphill battle here. And we forget this. We forget how important the foundational stuff is. And I had someone very close to me today, like text me. I get health texts a lot from my loved ones. And it was just like, you know, what do I do if this is happening? And I’m like, here’s the deal.

Here’s what you need to do. You need to drink your minerals and you need to go to bed and you need to get enough sleep and you need to stop working so much. And once you feel like you’ve narrowed those down and balance your blood sugar and get morning sunshine, that’s the prescription that I give. And once you have those things down, then come back to me, you’re already going to be feeling better and I can almost guarantee it. So we have to start with this stuff and then we can add on all the other stuff. And you know how like

Maybe you don’t know how powerful the other stuff is. I know how powerful the other stuff is. I’ve spoken to it, right? The customized approach, the lab testing. I mean, this stuff is absolutely game changing, but you can’t get out of the other stuff. So it has to all be there together. And that doesn’t mean you to be perfect and you can’t have an off day and you can’t get like a poor night’s sleep here and there. That’s not what I’m saying. That’s happening to all of us. It’s more so like we can’t, we can’t just throw all this fancy stuff on top of a shaky foundation. So.

Number five of the top healing, gut healing mistakes that I see people making is going to be ignoring the nervous system and operating in that stress response all day. So people also tend to think that if we eat very clean and we just like pack in a ton of supplements and we work out really hard that we don’t have to address any of this other stuff. But digestion is actually a nervous system controlled process. So digestion really actually starts in the brain. It starts with the nervous system and whether we’re in that parasympathetic or that sympathetic

nervous system response, that autonomic nervous system. So that’s the part of the nervous system that’s happening without us thinking about it, without us controlling it. So you’ve got your ability to like move your arms, you’re thinking about it, let me pick this up. I’m thinking about that. And then my arm’s moving. And then you have the part of your nervous system that controls all of these like automated processes like digestion, like breathing, like heart rate, things that you’re not actually thinking about or controlling. So if you’re in that parasympathetic or excuse me, that sympathetic dominant state,

Hannah Aylward (36:41.601)
all day long if you’re constantly stressed, whether that’s stemming from physical stressors or mental stressors or environmental stressors, it’s going to be harder for you to heal. And this is something that every round of HGSP, Healing Guts and Shaking Butts, my signature gut repairing program, every round of that that we open up, we have like a welcome call and I have everyone in the program meet my team and who they’ll be working with. And we like, you know, just overview how the program’s gonna go and all of that. And I’m always asking my team like,

What is, what’s your number one tip for people to get the most out of this program? Like how, how are people going to get the best results coming out of this program? And it’s almost always work on the nervous system because we’re going to do all the other stuff, right? We’re going to give you the protocol. We’re going to, we’re going to give you the lab results. We’re going to break all that down for you. I’m to teach you how to balance your blood sugar. We’re going to enhance your Liberty tox. We’re going to work on adrenal function. All of that stuff we have covered blood work. mean, that’s, that’s our bread and butter, you know, so we can take that.

but you have to work on the stress piece. Cause that’s something that we actually can’t do for you, but digestion is, it starts in the brain. So this is not something that can be overlooked. If we’re in that sympathetic dominant state, our digestion becomes an afterthought. We’re setting ourselves up for failure. We’re not in the rest and digest, right? We’re in that fight or flight state. It’s, we’re literally not in rest and digest. That’s what it called you guys. So we got to take it seriously. That’s when we digest our food.

If we’re chronically stressed out, we’re setting ourselves up for failure when it comes to digestion. It’s going to be more bloating. It’s going to be more constipation or diarrhea where stuff’s running right through you. We’re just not going to get the results that we want. So the other thing is that this process of repairing your gut, it’s going to take a couple months and it’s going to test you. There’s going to be good days and there’s going to be bad days. And that’s what we expect as practitioners on our end. It’s not a straight up trajectory. And I like to be very upfront about that with clients. It’s a little bit…

It’s going to go up and down and up and down. And then we’re going to see that a trends upward. And then in a couple of months, your life is going to be changed, but it’ll test you in the meantime. So to stick it out throughout that whole process, we’ve got to regulate the nervous system. We also know that your nervous system impacts your immunity. impacts inflammation levels. it’s like, it’s not that these things are, it’s not like you’re like making up this pain or that it’s all in your head, right? It’s not that the chronic bloating and the gas and everything is all in your head.

Hannah Aylward (39:09.663)
but your head and your nervous system do influence these things. They also influence your perspective and they influence your capacity. I’m reading a very interesting book right now. Gosh, I think I’m blanking on the name of it, you guys. So I don’t wanna say the wrong name, but it’s by, I believe her name is Nicole Sachs and it’s a newer book. And I can try to link that in the show notes for anyone that’s interested. It’s pretty good so far and I think it’s really important.

And it basically talks about how our thoughts and our beliefs and our nervous system impacts the chronic disease state. Another great book there on that topic is When the Body Says No by Dr. Gabor Mate. He’s incredible. His work is incredible. And his books are wonderful. And it’s basically like when the body says no, like the stress and health connection, the stress and disease connection. Like basically, you know, when your body starts to go, nope, I can’t do this anymore. And then we just end up with a lot of different symptoms.

possibly even like different disease states. So for anyone that’s kind of like interested in that, I do recommend picking that book up. It’s great. It’ll have you like look at your life entirely differently and be like, this is not worth it. This dress is truly not worth it for me. But to round out my point here, we’ve got to look at this stuff. Like it’s not just about the supplements and it’s not just about the nutrition. Your nervous system plays such a massive role in this. And the clients that get do the best in…

all of our programs, one-on-one programs and my Healing Guts and Shake-A-Butts program are the clients that can self-regulate and are the ones that just trust the process. They either trust me, they trust their practitioner, they trust all of us, they trust themselves that they’ve made a good decision to be in the program and do the work with us. They trust something higher. Maybe it’s all of those things, but they’re just trusting the process and they’re using their intuition and they’re listening to themselves and they’re communicating. It’s not that it’s like they just blindly move forward, but they’re trusting that they’re going to get out of this what they need to get out of it.

And that is what that is my goal for all of you guys. And that is my goal. Anytime I teach and anytime I record a podcast and anytime I host a masterclass, I’m like, may the people that need this work show up and receive this work and may they be inspired to get the help that they need and may they learn something that helps them have an aha moment. And I try to trust the process with all of that too, in my life, in my work, in my health, all of that. But when you can regulate a bit more.

Hannah Aylward (41:27.589)
you will be able to move through it all so much easier. And then we’ll also see stress hormones come down. Obviously, cortisol will go down, you know, and cortisol, we know it negatively impacts the gut. It damages the gut barrier, the mucosal layer of the gut lining. It decreases stomach acid production. You know, when we’re in a stressed out state, blood flow goes away from the GI organs. can damage gut motility or impair gut motility. So

We know that stress doesn’t stay stress. It becomes other things. It can impact thyroid hormone conversion. it will cause health issues over time. So learning how to better regulate your nervous system and be present with your feelings and process them, move through them is like so, so absolutely essential during all of this. And it can feel really hard because a lot of the time our clients tend to be more hypervigilant because they’re, they’re really stressed. They’re really stressed about their digestive issues.

And they have probably done a lot of research too. So they have a good bit of information. They don’t have quite the information that we have. So it’s like, they have enough to ask a lot of questions. And then we kind of come in and we have to, they’re, they’re looking for a lot of explanation because they’re like, well, I already know about this, or I already know about this, or I’ve already tried this and this didn’t work and this didn’t help. So what, what about this is different? And you can feel the energy in that, right? You can feel the energy in that in your earbuds now.

or whoever you’re listening for this to this. So it’s like that, kind of energy that like hitting that’s kind of a forceful energetic, right? But there’s also this like nervous system dysregulation because the body has been feeling these symptoms for so long. And so, you know, part of, always use my story cause I’m not like, this is not me like blaming or shaming any clients whatsoever.

This is just the pattern that we see in our people. And it’s not a coincidence, right? Because hypervigilance and being type A and being perfectionist and being chronically stressed will cause gut issues. So then they’re here with us, right? That makes a lot of sense, but it can feel really hard. So it’s like when I was on my gut repairing journey, you know, anytime I felt like bloating was starting to form, I would feel it and I would, I would become hypervigilant. I’m like, oh my gosh, it’s happening again. What did I do wrong? What did I eat? What caused it? How can I take that out? How can I stop this from happening? How is this going to impact the rest of my day? Like,

Hannah Aylward (43:40.395)
Like, ch-ch-ch-ch-choo, right? Like, terror, and like, I’m then micromanaging every little sensation that I’m having in my body, and then I might even be, like, absolutely panicking. And that can happen, and other, like, physical states can impact that too. So, like, if someone has histamine overload, you know, that can cause heart palpitations, that can cause, that can contribute to anxiety, that can contribute to flushing of the face. Those are things that are associated with anxiety. So, it’s not that, once again, it’s not that it’s, all in your head.

So it’s all working together, right? That’s my point here. It can be very easy to like start to micromanage and worry, worry, worry, and be like, this isn’t working, this isn’t working, right? And it’s like, well, we actually just have to give it a little bit of time. And that is also why I harp so much on the fact that, you know, don’t blame the food for what the food didn’t do. Because if we start to overanalyze every little thing that we eat and how it’s causing our bloating or our digestive issues,

You know, the food’s not really causing that. It’s like the bacterial overgrowth or the maldigestion or the deeper gut environment issues. So we don’t want to build up this hyper vigilance to these many different foods and then start peeling them all out. And then we’re like terrified to eat out and we don’t, we have to pack our own snacks everywhere. And it just gets really, really stressful. And we know what stress does. Here we are, right? It’s this like vicious cycle. It’s this like hamster wheel that so many people exist on. And I did, I mean, I did for so many years.

So it can feel even harder to regulate your nervous system when it feels like your body isn’t working with you. It’s not listening to you. It feels difficult to listen to your body. It feels like you’re trying to do your best and nothing’s working. So then we start to lose trust in our bodies and we start this relationship that we have to our body gets very, very frayed. I definitely was there too, where I like, I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I thought there was just like something like mentally wrong with me. I didn’t know what it could be.

And I really just started to like hate my body because it wasn’t working. It was never working for me. And that leads to even more, even more nervous systems regulation. And the other thing that I would feel was lack of safety in my body. And this was something I felt like before my gut issues due to childhood and lots of other things, being a woman in society. But, you know, it also is difficult to feel safety in your body when it’s not really like quote unquote working very well. So.

Hannah Aylward (45:57.137)
It can feel difficult, but this is where so much of the personal growth lies is in regulating your nervous system. There’s many different ways to do this and there’s many different resources for this. Things like meditation and breath work can be very helpful. Therapy can be very helpful. I did cognitive behavioral therapy, but I also did EMDR with my therapist. That was very helpful.

I was like, learned to like, like myself more. I learned to be proud of myself more. But in order to get there, I had to really do a lot of the steeper belief work and challenge the beliefs that I had about my body and challenge the beliefs that I had about myself. You know, it was never enough. I was never enough. It was never good enough. I was like really, really searching and reaching for perfection. And I don’t, I mean, sometimes I’m like, how did I even get out of that? It was a, it was a long road, y’all. It was not overnight.

It was years of putting in the work. was years of seeing my belly in the mirror and not judging it. It was years of friendships, deep friendships with other women that, you know, then I learned that we all were feeling the same thing and that made me feel more seen and more normal. It was years of therapy. was years of like so much meditation and deeper like spiritual work and finding my purpose. And so it’s not like simple and clear, clear cut, but there are a lot of resources that you can use to help regulate. Like I mentioned, the meditation and the breath work.

The therapy, somatic therapy can be really helpful. And then like making sure that you’re nourishing enough. You know, we can’t expect to get out of this stressed out state if we are chronically undernourished and our blood sugar is all over the place. And I really spoke to this in last week’s burnout master class too. It’s like, you cannot balance your hormones if you’re running on this, this stress hormone roller coaster. Like you can’t balance your hormones if you’re not balancing your blood sugar. You won’t get off that stress hormone roller coaster. So we have to make sure that the food piece is there, the nourishment piece is there, the rest piece is there.

and then also look at the beliefs and our perspective and the deeper nervous system work as well. So if you guys want me to go more into the nervous system work, just let me know in the comments of this episode. If you’re listening on Spotify, you can always send me a DM on Instagram too. I want to know what you guys want to hear more about and how I can serve you best there. But ignoring your nervous system throughout this process and thinking that micromanaging every piece of it all is going to get you the results that you want.

Hannah Aylward (48:10.739)
I have not seen that to be true. It’s gonna just push you farther and farther back. So we have to make sure that the foundations are there, the nervous system work is there, and then all of the cool fancy stuff is there too. And once again, it’s not about being perfect. Like I got crazy amazing results and basically overcame all of my chronic digestive issues and I was still holding some stress. know, it’s like stress doesn’t go away.

And everyone’s kind of story is going to be a little different there. So it’s not like you have to be stress free or you have to do it all perfectly, or you have to be this like Buddha on a mountain top, right? That’s not realistic for a lot of us. So it’s, like, where can we support mitochondrial function, support hormone regulation, support, like nourish and all of that stuff. So we can also just kind of hold a bit more stress and also regulate the nervous system throughout the process too. And that really leads into my sixth top.

gut healing mistake. I am not even looking ahead, you guys. They’re just all running into each other, which once again is not surprise. The sixth biggest mistake that I see people making is striving for the perfectionism. And this is very prevalent in our clients. Striving for perfectionism, beating themselves up when they are inevitably not perfect because no one is perfect.

And that really holds people back. So sometimes in my Healing Guts and Shaking Butts program, we’ll see people like start their protocols and then stop their protocols because they had a bad day or they, you know, traveled for the weekend and they fell off things and they’re having a hard time starting things up again or whatever that might be. And, or they’re beating themselves up because they ate out and they maybe ate something that they quote unquote weren’t supposed to or whatever.

And this striving for perfectionism, just revs up your nervous system and it just increases cortisol and epinephrine, norepinephrine, adrenaline. It increases all of these stress hormones that’s then gonna cause further gut damage. And what I want to get across here is that it’s really not about like never falling off the horse. Like everyone’s gonna fall off the horse, me included. I have good days, I have bad days. Like I am not on the other side of this.

Hannah Aylward (50:15.211)
with living this perfect life, like absolutely far from it. And I try to be so real with you guys about that. I have a lot of foundations, a lot of them are automated. A lot of it comes pretty easy to me now. I’m not struggling with a lot of chronic gut issues anymore. I overcame a lot of that stuff. So the upkeep is way easier. But I have good days and I have bad days. Like there are days when I eat super well. There are days when I’m like, oops, I just took six calls and I haven’t eaten yet. So I just try to do a little audit with myself and

instead of being like, no, I didn’t do this perfectly. I’m like, well, why am I not really taking good care of myself? Where is that coming from? And where can I shift some things so I can just better, like take some better care of myself and, and mother myself a little bit and nourish myself. And, and yeah, really like from a positive place of like, I really need this love and care right now versus I should have known better or I shouldn’t have made this mistake. Like you can feel the difference in those energies there. So striving for the

perfectionism constantly for the perfect outcome and to do it all absolutely perfectly and not make a mistake. Like it’s not real you guys and it’s just revving up your nervous system and it’s keeping you chronically dysregulated. And then, you know, if we don’t give ourselves this empathy and compassion and understanding, like we can’t trust, we start to try to override our bodies. We’re not working in sync with our bodies. We’re not in alignment. We’re overriding our natural cues that the body is giving us.

It’s just not, it’s not conducive to health. And sometimes like when people think of health, they think of nutrition and supplements. But once again, you guys, all of this stuff is connected. Like if you are bashing yourself for not doing it good enough, well enough, you know, the magnesium is not going to do it. You know what I mean? Like how much magnesium do you have to take in order to support your nervous system? If you’re running on, I’m not good enough. I have to do better. I have to work harder. This is, you know, striving perfectionism like all day long. Like we can’t.

that’s not how it works. And we have to think too, when it comes to root causes, it’s like, okay, so I, for example, I have low magnesium. Okay, cool. So I can replace magnesium, but why, but why do we have those levels? Or if we have low stomach acid, for example, and this isn’t the case for everyone, but for example, if we have low stomach acid that’s contributing to our chronic digestive issues and burping and bloating and reflux and that kind of stuff, constipation, acne, low B12, it’s prominent in all of that. We have to ask why.

Hannah Aylward (52:38.525)
Replenish the stomach acid can be really helpful, of course, we need to do that. But we also have to ask why and sometimes it’s an infection, yes, but sometimes it’s also chronic stress, chronic stress over time. And that’s why we’re not producing adequate stomach acid anymore. So we can once again, we can throw supplements at that, but we have to dig deeper. And if it’s coming from the chronic stress, then that’s something that we have to address. If it’s coming from chronic stress, because we’ve been overworking and we’ve been undernourishing and

We’ve been beating ourselves up and talking to ourselves negatively and you know, all of these things do really matter. Like you’re not a test tube. Your body is listening to everything that your brain is like communicating to it all day long. Your body is listening to your thoughts. I am a firm, firm believer in this and I don’t talk to this too much because I kind of say, I stay with all the like lab work and the supplements and stuff with you guys. I don’t get too into.

into this, but your thoughts influence your reality and your thoughts also influence your health. And we see that because also your perception and perspective on stress can help dictate how intense the stress response is. it’s like, it’s not that it’s all in your head once again, but your mindset is influencing this stuff. It is influencing your health. There’s no doubt about that. So

You know, again, if you’re interested in kind of digging a bit deeper, have that episode. It’s the first episode of this podcast, and that was for a reason. It’s all about trauma and how trauma influences and basically causes that digestive and hormone issues. then Dr. Gabor Mate’s book, When the Body Says No, is it’s yeah, it’s so, so great. It’s not specific to digestion, but it just talks about all of these different like cases of people that ended up with like chronic diseases after years of emotional suppression and chronic stress, basically.

So it’s all connected and it’s not about being perfect. Of course not. The perfectionism just stresses us out more, but it’s like, can you learn to listen and where can you be kind to yourself and nice to yourself? I was so mean to myself for, I mean, most of my life, I guess it’s not most of my life at this point, because I’ve been out of it for, you know, a good bit now, but dang, I mean, you did not want to be in this head of mine. And that’s like kind of rough to say out loud, but

Hannah Aylward (54:52.599)
I would just berate myself internally. And what was interesting is like, no one was saying to me that I wasn’t enough, right? Well, there was some, there was some like childhood influence and programming, but it’s not like people or like my peers or people I went to school with or anything like that were like telling me that I wasn’t enough, but I was telling me that I wasn’t enough, that’s for sure. And I was just trying to be something that I wasn’t and I don’t think that positively impacted my health. So

just to know that it’s really all connected. But let me just run through. Now I’m just kinda talking to the mic, so let me wrap this up for y’all. Okay, top six gut healing mistakes that people make, that we see people making. I’m trying to think if there’s anything else that I wanna add here. I think this is pretty good. These are like where people, you when I’m talking to people on these intro calls and I’m like, okay, what have you tried? What has worked? What hasn’t worked? Like, where have you missed the mark? Where can we come in and help you, basically, is what I’m trying to.

assess and these are some of the things that I see see most commonly and then people just not like totally missing their root causes because they usually don’t know them and the testing really helps with that and proper you know assessment and working with someone really helps with that. So number one only focusing on the diet this is massive huge huge huge people will be like I did this cleanse I did this diet I did this diet nothing’s working I’m like that is like you know 20 percent of this whole equation.

Number two, not taking a customized approach. Once again, just throwing a bunch of supplements at it, hoping that it does something when really like everyone’s underlying root causes are different. That’s where the customized approach really, really comes in and is absolutely game changing. Changed my health for sure once I got that. And we see it in clients as well. Number three, being jumping straight into these hardcore protocols with no prep time.

That’s a huge thing. We’ve got to prep the adrenals. We have to prep the immune system. We’ve got to balance blood sugar, replete minerals, open up drainage pathways, all of that stuff. Very largely missed and very largely missed by other practitioners as well. Probably because like people aren’t really teaching it. We had to learn that the hard way. And then number four, thinking all the fancy stuff is going to save you and totally ignoring the foundation. So you come in to work with us. You’re like, I just want the protocol. And then you just do the quote unquote protocol. That’s like a bunch of supplements. And then you’re not doing any of the other stuff that we’re teaching you.

Hannah Aylward (57:07.499)
you’re not gonna get better. And that’s for anyone working with us or not working with us, right? We have to make sure that we’re doing all the foundations. Number five is gonna be ignoring the nervous system, operating in that stress response all day. This can be a hard cycle to get out of, but well, well worth it. Some of the best work that you could do personally, like in your lifetime. And then number six, striving for perfectionism and beating yourselves up when you’re inevitably not perfect.

And what this usually happens is people just quit. Like people just literally stop. They just quit. And I wish that they wouldn’t, but they think that they can’t do it well enough. So they either don’t even try. Like I remember I would have calls with people, gosh, this was like freaking years ago at this point. And I would be like, cool, like, how can we help you? Are you interested in the program? Whatever. And then I started to hear from women, I’m not sure I can do it. I’m not sure I can follow all the guidelines. I’m not sure I…

I can actually get through it. And I’m like, you are not even allowing yourself to thrive here. You’re stopping yourself before you even started. You’re doubting yourself before you’ve even given yourself a chance. And, we just get in our own way, you know? And this is so many, I find that so many women have this thought pattern where they’re like, I don’t know, like I’m just gonna fall off. I’m like, no, no, no, listen up. We just have to, we have to change the intention underneath all of it. When the intention comes from a positive place,

When the intention comes from a place of self care and nourishment and not trying to fix something that’s broken, we can see massive shifts there. once again, it’s not about never falling off the horse. It’s about how quickly you get back on. Cause we’re all going to fall off the horse and we all do. And the people that get the results, the quote unquote winners or whatever, this people that are successful, whether that’s in health or business or relationship or whatever, they just get back on the horse as quickly as they can. And we can call this like a bounce back rate.

gosh, I’m forgetting her name right now, but someone else kind of calls this like a bounce back rate. Basically, like how quickly can you bounce back? How quickly can you bounce back from the bad day? How quickly can you bounce back from oops, I forgot to take my supplements or I ate this meal or whatever, and just choose to move on with your life. And when we don’t expect ourselves to be perfect, and when we believe that we are good enough, it’s much easier to do that. Because they’re not like hitting our deep, deep inner self worth beliefs. So that’s what I will say to wrap all of this up.

Hannah Aylward (59:31.118)
These are the mistakes we don’t want to see you making. And if you are interested in taking the next steps and working with us through some of this stuff, getting the actually customized approach, having the data, working on the nervous system support, working on a lot of the foundations and everything that I named in today’s episode, we’d love to help you. Our one-on-one client roster, it is filling up a bit right now, but we do have the next round of my Healing Guts and Shakeabouts program that’s kicking off in May.

So we’ll pop the link for the wait list for the program in the show notes for you guys. So you can sign up, join the wait list. Everyone on the wait list gets like massive bonuses. So when you sign up for the program from the wait list, you get early bird pricing. So you save over 220 bucks. You get my Gut Happy Eats program totally for free instantly. So you can get started like immediately. You’ll get a bunch of other bonuses. You get a bonus call with me, like a 30 minute one-on-one call with me during the program. So it’s, if you’re thinking of the program, if you’re ready to take this next step, like,

There’s no reason to not sign up off this wait list because you get like 10 more bonuses. So, would love to have you in the program, would love to help you, and we’ll pop that link for the HDSB wait list in the show notes below. So thanks for being here with me today. I hope this was helpful and big hugs. I’ll see you in the next episode. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Nutrient Dense Podcast. If you found this episode valuable, don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and come back next week for a new episode.

See you then.