Episode 177 Empowering Self-Healing Therapy: Interview With Ashley James

Chris McDonald: Are you struggling with health issues and wanting to move onto the path of wellness? Or maybe some of your clients are. Join me today as we explore the empowering journey of self healing and uncover the secrets to tapping into your body's innate ability to heal itself. Today's guest is Ashley James, author of Addicted to Wellness.

She shares her profound insights and experiences guiding us through practical steps to embrace holistic health and harness the power With easy steps you can start using right away. This is an episode you don't want to miss. This episode will have you rethinking how you can take steps to change your health and how to integrate more holistic health strategies in sessions on today's episode of the holistic counseling podcast.

This is holistic counseling, the podcast for mental health therapists who want to deepen their knowledge of holistic modalities and build their practice with confidence. I'm your host, Chris McDonald, licensed therapist. I am so glad you're here for the journey.

Welcome to today's episode of the holistic counseling podcast. I am thrilled to be with you here today. We're going to go deeper into the realm of holistic wellness. I think it's easy to be frustrated with the medical model, traditional system that we have and the limitations. I know I've been there before and have had health issues that traditional medicine could not help.

And that may lead you to want to look for other ways to find a healthier life, more holistic ways. I'm here to tell you that there are ways to improve your health and overall wellness, but starting with simple, easy to use ideas from today's guest. Ashley James is a holistic health coach, podcaster, rapid anxiety cessation expert, and avid whole food plant based home chef.

Since 2005, her health struggles led her to study under the world's top holistic doctors, where she reversed her type 2 diabetes, PCOS, infertility, chronic infections, and debilitating adrenal fatigue. In 2016, she launched her podcast, Learn True Health, to spread the truth about health and healing. You no longer need to suffer.

Your body can and will heal itself when we give it what it needs. and stop what is harming it. Welcome to the holistic counseling podcast,

Ashley James: Ashley. I'm so excited to be here. We're going to have a lot of fun

Chris McDonald: today. Absolutely. And I think we have so much in common. This was so exciting to meet you and have you here.

Yeah. You were

Ashley James: telling me about your listeners. Hello, listener. And I was like, these are my people. Yes. So excited to talk to you guys today. This is going to be a lot of

Chris McDonald: fun. And we talk all holistic and go out on the woo here and it's okay. It's a safe place for that. But let's start. Can you share with my listeners some background on what led you on your journey towards wellness?

Ashley James: Absolutely, yeah. So, when I was six years old, I was sickly. I just was sick all the time, not diagnosed with anything particular, just sore throat, tired, brain fog. I'd wake up in the morning and my eyes would be crusted over and I couldn't open my eyes. It was really scary. I had to like pull away all this crust There wasn't anything specifically wrong with me.

I was just eating the standard diet that everyone else ate in the 80s, you know, sugary cereal and cow's milk and bread and chocolate milk at school. And then one day my mom took me to a naturopathic doctor and this is 1986 and I remember it really well. It was Dr. D'Adamo. He's the guy that wrote eat right for your blood type.

And his, his son has since gone on to, you know, carry on the legacy, but that was my first introduction to natural medicine. And he looked in my eyes and my ears and up my nose and he took my blood. He said, you're O blood type and you must never eat again, milk, yeast, wheat, or sugar. And I knew those were the ingredients of my favorite chocolate bar.

So I said, When can I have a coffee crisp? Because I'm from Canada and that's what we sounded like when we wanted our coffee crisp, which is a most delicious chocolate bar that you should not take away from the six year olds who love it. And he said once every blue moon, which I thought was often, so I got excited, but blue moons are not often.

And overnight my mom came home and she threw away half of the pantry and overnight we changed our diet and it felt like within about 24 hours. My health began to change and I started to feel how we're, how we're supposed to feel. I woke up full of energy, no sore throat, no gook over my eyes. I could go from dusk till dawn.

I wasn't hungry. You had to like force me to sit down and eat because I just wasn't hungry. I was just go, go, go, go, go. And I'd be on my bicycle that when school was out, I would just bike and I had tons of energy all day and I felt amazing. And if I ever got a cold, I'd get a fever, I'd go to sleep around, you know, 5 p.

m. My parents would put me to bed early after having a bowl of soup and I'd wake up the next day totally fine. So my entire childhood from 6 years old to 13, I was super healthy. I even, I had German measles and it was, it came and went in three days. No big deal. Like I had, I had no health problems. I was living just the dream and then I rebelled.

As we, as we all tend to do, uh, around 13 years old, I ate all the Halloween candy and I snuck out and ate with my friends at the fast food restaurants and ate the cafeteria food that I wasn't supposed to. And I knew I wasn't supposed to, but I was rebelling against, you know, the system that my parents had me on and I created disease, I recreated disease.

So this is the rags, rags to riches to rags to riches story of really figuring out that what we put in our mouth really matters. Everything we put in our mouth and when we shift our choices, we quickly can get positive results just as quickly as we can start to feel bad. We can start to feel good again.

13 years old, I eat unhealthily and I proceed to create in my body polycystic ovarian syndrome. By the time I'm 19, I was told I'd never have kids after a battery of tests. Type 2 diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue later in my 20s, and later in my 20s I developed chronic infections to which I was on monthly antibiotics for.

I was a wreck. I was crying. That's awful. I was crying because I felt like a prisoner trapped in my own body. Like I felt like my 20s were robbed from me. I mean, I mean, it was all my, my own doing, right? But it's, that's life, right? So my 20s, I was suffering in the worst health I'd had in my, you know, I've, I've ever had in my life and it was in the time of life where you're supposed to be having fun, you know, you're supposed to be

Chris McDonald: carefree.

Ashley James: Exactly. Well, it wasn't carefree for me. I was, I was trapped in a very sick body and I did a lot of mental and emotional work. I, I, I leaned into personal growth. I had no idea really how to get my physical health back, but that's, I was suffering so much that I leaned into personal growth work. And I'm really glad I did because I did not know that I had very severe anxiety growing up as a kid.

I didn't, I didn't know I suffered from it. Cause like, luckily I lived, I grew up in the eighties where it wasn't as common to put children on drugs. But now if I was a kid now, I think I would have been put, been put on a lot of drugs. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Anxiety. Um, like I couldn't do sleepovers cause I was, I had a tat, like severe anxiety.

If it mom and that kind of thing. And it wasn't until my twenties that I. started to really dive into this personal growth. And I discovered how to stop anxiety. And that moment when I no longer had anxiety, cause I learned how to turn it off. I was like, Oh, this is what life's supposed to be like. Just like, just like when you discover how to eat healthfully and you're like, wow, this is what health feels like.

I didn't even know. Right. Cause when we're in it, when we're in, when we're eating, are what the foods our body doesn't want every day. We're habituated. Um, and when we start eating what our body wants, just like when we start choosing positive thoughts and start doing things that are good for your mental, emotional health, just that you get the same kind of reward back.

You're like, wow, this is what I'm supposed to be feeling. This is how I'm supposed to be inside. This is amazing. So through my twenties, I suffered, but I continued to seek answers and grow and my physical health. Because it was so bad led me and motivated me even further to develop more mental, emotional health as a result.

And then my husband and I watched a documentary in 2008, and it was the founder of Whole Foods that said, eat organic and shop the perimeter of the grocery store, which means no, don't go down the aisles. Don't eat the processed food. So my husband, I took on this challenge. And in one month of making this one major change, I mean, it's two changes if you think, because I'm eating organic and shopping the perimeter of the grocery.

But I feel like it was one change because we just went, okay, we're just going to shop the perimeter and we're just going to pick whatever's organic. And it was vegetables, fruit, meat, and I was still doing dairy at the time, but all organic. And in that one month, my chronic infections went away and I no longer needed antibiotics.

I was That's amazing. It was insane. And I was like, wow. And I, I still felt like crap every day physically. But I thought this is really interesting. I made one change and we got one of the things knocked off my list. What else can we change? So we were diving down and I was rediscovering holistic medicine and naturopathic medicine because I totally rejected that system when I rebelled as a teenager.

And I had to basically come to terms with, Oh my gosh, my mom was right. Don't we all, don't we all do that in our My mom was right and she's in heaven and I, I thank her for everything she did for me. And of course now I'm a mom. I'm just jumping ahead. We naturally conceived our son. I no longer have conditions that I, I was diagnosed with.

I reversed all of them using natural medicine. And that's been my journey is discovering how the body, what the body needs, what the body doesn't need. We're doing a lot of that in life. We're doing a lot. Yes. Especially in the western, the western world, we're doing a lot of what the body doesn't need. And so I discovered what the body does need and very quickly reversed all those health issues.

And we conceived naturally, we have an amazingly wonderful son who's turning nine, can't even believe it, and You know, he's the light of my life. We feel so blessed. And every day I'm so grateful for the fact that we turned to natural medicine because our son wouldn't be here. And my husband, I recognize that my husband probably wouldn't be alive if it weren't for natural medicine as well.

There's been some points in some twists and turns in his life where natural medicine saved his life. Yeah. I don't even know if I'd be here if we hadn't started this journey, because I was in really bad shape. I don't know if I would have made it. Sounds like it. Yeah. I started my podcast, I've been working as a holistic health coach under, I got trained under some NaturePaths and then I went on into more formal trainings, but really working as a mentor by NaturePaths was where I received most of my education.

I started that 12 years ago and then Uh, eight years ago, I began my podcast because I wanted to interview and really draw out of every single holistic practitioner that, that gets really great results. Um, and bring that information to the masses because people are seeking this information just like I was.

And people are suffering and going to bed, crying themselves to sleep because they're suffering so much. The answers are, and unfortunately, we have to be autodidacts. We have to be self taught and advocate for ourselves in order to find this information, because your mainstream doctor isn't taught it, doesn't value it, and won't give it to you.

Unless you see like a holistic doctor or a mainstream doctor that's turned holistic misinformation. Um, and it's really devalued in the mainstream medical space because they're, those doctors are taught that, Oh, that's just, you know, that's puppy cock. That's woo woo. That's, you know, it's, if it's not double blind placebo studied, then it's, then it's nothing.

And it's not how the body works. Right. So we need to listen and bring in the information. I say, I'm the biggest open minded skeptic. So being open minded skeptic, be so open minded, brain could fall out and use critical thinking, but, but don't allow your current belief system to block you from new information that challenges your belief system.

So like I say, I don't, I don't prescribe to any diet dogma. Like I believe the whole plant based diet done right, because you can do it wrong. done right is, is the most rapidly healing way to eat. But I would never tell someone you can never eat meat again because we've also seen things like the GAPS diet, like in very specific situations where we can use bone broth, for example, to rapidly heal someone's gut.

I don't believe in diet dogma, just like I wouldn't believe in like drugs. Like if I was an MD, I wouldn't be like, well, drugs are the only thing you can use. It's like, I believe that yes, ethically. Um, not eating animals is an amazing choice ethically. My main thing, or the hill I'll die on is I want to support you in helping your body heal itself and support you in achieving your optimal health.

And whether you do that through a plant based diet or you do that through a different way of eating, I don't like to think of it as a diet. I like to think of it as here's your pharmacy, you know, farm farm. I love it. Here's your pharmacy and, and food is your medicine. So there are so many ways of putting your, your medication on your plate and the more we understand about what we're putting in our body and the phytonutrients, vitamins and minerals and good fibers, all the types of fiber and all the types of pre and probiotic foods that we're going to put on our plate, yes, macronutrients, fat, fat and carbohydrates and protein don't vilify any of them, yeah.

It's more about the specific where it comes from, right? So canola oil, avocado, and hemp seeds all contain fat. It has very different effects on the body. Don't say, oh, carbs bad, or oh, fat bad, or oh, protein bad. It's, it's about the whole food. And eating a whole food, not processing it. And also how we cook it is a, there's a big difference between eating a bean or a lentil cooked on the stove and cooked in a pressure cooker, like the instant pot.

There's actually a big difference to your, to your body, to how we digest the nutrients. The Instant Pot breaks down certain, certain nutrients for us, makes it easier on, on our body and when we eat, how much we eat, when we eat. So when we say diet, we're only thinking of, Oh, we can't eat all this food, but we can eat this food.

That's still too cookie cutter because your body has certain nutrient needs and it's a beautiful process to go through where you go. The step one is. I'm going to eliminate the things that I know, know I shouldn't be eating because I know it doesn't do, do me any good. We have to stop, stop putting fuel on the fire.

You're like an arsonist, throwing fuel on the fire every time you go for the food. So you, you do know, like you do know there's certain things we shouldn't eat. Then you have to ask yourself, what do I feel really good eating? Like what makes me, what makes my body buzz in a good way? Now listen. Twinkies and doughnuts make us feel good in the moment, and so does cocaine.

That doesn't mean they're good for you, right? So that concept of feel good, like, Oh, eating, eating meat or eating bread or eating fried food makes me feel good. Well, it, it, it jacks up your dopamine. Sure. You know, it's, there's a difference between feel good because it's addictive and feel good because your body's buzzing with light and vibration.

And, um, it's increased the frequency of your body.

Chris McDonald: Uh, reminds me of intuitive eating too. Yeah. Yeah. Just kind of noticing where you are. How do you want your body to feel? Cause I think too, like, oh yeah, fried stuff or, you know, that feels good at the moment, but then you were probably going to feel heavy.

Yes, exactly. So how do you want your body to feel? There's

Ashley James: definitely a journey when it comes to nutrition. And then I believe in supplements when they're high quality and they're meant as like to fill in the gaps of nutrient deficiency. And that's really helped me speed up my, my healing 12 years ago.

And, uh, I. I find that especially minerals so important to supplement with. So I've been doing that for 12 years with my clients and I see that it speeds up healing because it's addressing those nutrient deficiencies so quickly. But you can't out supplement a bad diet and you can't out exercise a bad diet.

So diet is foundational. Can I

Chris McDonald: ask you one question before you continue? So I was wondering, since we have mental health therapists listening, so what do you see as the connection between eating and mental health and how has that helped

Ashley James: you? So when I took my training from Joshua Rosenthal at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, he is a mental health counselor and this was years and years and years ago.

He saw that his. Uh, clients who were making as they were working with him and processing and moving through things, the clients that also chose to make some health changes like diet changes, they would have this like hockey stick, you know, rapid, rapid, rapid healing emotionally and mentally that they could process things better.

that they just had bigger breakthroughs emotionally and mentally when they stopped eating garbage. And he was really surprised and he, and so he started to experiment it with himself. And then he started to make food suggestions with his clients, uh, you know, talking about how much sugar they were eating or, you know, alcohol or whatever it was.

And he noticed that when he incorporated, uh, health coaching, eat more of this, eat less of that kind of thing, that there was a rapid shift. in their ability to process emotions and, and heal emotionally and mentally and just overall everything. And I think it has to do with inflammation. We cannot sit here and, and continue to believe that the mind and the heart are completely isolated from the body.

They're, they literally live inside the body. They're part of the body. All interconnected. Right. So what you put in your mouth, make a huge difference to every system of the body and also every level, emotional, mental, spiritual, physical, and the physical is the first part, right? So if we reduce the stress, and here's another thing, stress, right?

We all know autonomic nervous system. The thing is, it's a big bucket of stress and it doesn't matter whether it's stress from environmental, like the client has. had mold exposure in their house, or they drink wine every night. We know that even one, one glass of wine or one beverage, one alcoholic serving increases stress for 24 hours.

Now we see it in heart rate variability. We can measure it. Whether it's a stressor that's something external that you're bringing into your body. Whether it's your thoughts, you know, I can sit here and think about a bear chasing me and I can raise my stress levels or I can talk negatively or think negatively about my future, about myself or about others.

And I can raise my stress levels. So stress is stress and we have this big bucket of stress and people that are revving at 9500 RPM stress, they're like, ready to snap. They're shunting blood away from the logic centers of their brain when we're in that fight or flight mode. Right? So we're not even able to really be present.

To really feel our emotions, to process it, to think critically, you know, to examine, like we're just, we're in survival mode, not easy to counsel someone in survival mode and what you eat plays a role in your stress levels, same with what you don't eat and when you eat and when you don't eat and what, you know, basically what you put in your mouth, eat and drink affects, can actually help reduce stress, and inflammation or can increase stress.

So that's just something to be really conscious of is like alcohol and sugar increase stress. And every fight my husband and I ever had in our marriage, and we, we have an amazing marriage. Like I, I'd make you, I'd make everyone blush with jealousy, but how like healthy our marriages. So it's so odd that once in a while we'd have these weird fights where it was like my husband, it was like Jekyll and Hyde.

I'm like, what is going on? And then it dawned on me, and this was. 12 years ago, it dawned on me. I said, have you eaten something today? And we tracked, we went back and thought of every major argument and we figured out that he was in low blood sugar. Cause he was, he was like pre diabetic and he was in low blood sugar because he had maybe eaten a donut four hours later.

So, you know, he came up and then crashed. And it was so interesting that when he corrected his blood sugar, we have not had any of those types of arguments since. So how much, how much of our mental health is from how we eat or what

Chris McDonald: we eat and what we don't eat? Yeah, there's such a connection. That's why as a holistic therapist, I always like to include that even on my intake form, like about their eating habits and you know, how often they're eating.

Because the problem I've seen, and you might have seen this with some people you work with, is people, especially women don't eat enough and then they go for long stretches without eating. And then they come to me and they're like, I'm irritable. That's you're irritable. Of course you are. You got to eat more.

They're not nourishing themselves. So can you talk about that too? And people don't eat enough, like how that impacts them. And yeah.

Ashley James: Well, I think that's a long, it's a long term problem. It is. Yeah. I would suggest they do a food mood journal to get conscious. That's true. I would suggest they have fruit with them, an apple.

Don't, don't vilify fruit. People go, Oh my gosh, so much sugar and fruit. If you know, eating, eating a whole apple, right, you're getting a soluble and insoluble fiber. It actually enters us quite slowly. So good for the gut. And if you have gut issues, cook the apple. So cook in the Instant Pot or bake it.

Cooked apple, amazing for gut health, but eat the whole thing. Eat the, I mean, obviously get organic, make sure it's not sprayed with a peel or whatever, but get the whole, eat the whole apple, including the peel and cook it if you have gut issues. But I would, if you, can handle raw fruit, then I would always have some fruit on hand, have some organic nuts and seeds in your purse, like some kind of trail mix and have some fruit, like a bag of apples in the car.

And you have to remind yourself to eat it. If you're the type of person that doesn't eat, then they're very irritable. You have to remind yourself to eat every two to four hours, even if it's just an apple. Yeah, there, there, there's, there's so much there. I can't say, you know, general information. Sure. Or, you know, it's very, there's very specific, but I have some clients who don't eat enough.

And I have one client who gets migraines and exactly doesn't remember to eat and then she gets migraines and her whole goal in life is to get so healthy. She doesn't get migraines. So. I've created a remind like we've worked on creating reminders for her to remember to eat and prioritize eating. And if it's not in your visual, like if it's not out on the counter, you'll forget to eat.

So I have her have a bowl of food on the counter. I have her pre cook her meal. So there's like, it's already all she has to do is reheat it. So there's always something in the fridge to reach for. And then I have her have reminders throughout the house. I said, think about Popeye, Popeye, the sailor man. He eats the spinach and gets super strong.

And that's you, you're Popeye. So we have pictures of Popeye around the house. That's cute. So I believe in, you know, it's all about positive reinforcement, obviously. So it's, it's visual cues that remind them that eating healthfully makes them strong and healthy. So she'll wake up in the morning, even though she's not hungry, she'll reach for the healthy food because she wants to prevent her migraines.

This leads me to a realization that I had that. You know how we cannot trust our circadian rhythm? If you acted like you're a teenager, and you just let yourself stay up as late as you wanted, and you waited to feel tired, now you might fall asleep at nine, because you know you're tired then, but you might also stay up till two in the morning, right?

So if we just let our energize, form us. We would not list Our cicadas rhythm is so messed up as an adult population. It's the same with our hunger cues. Our hunger cues are messed up and I don't think we should trust them until we reset them and re educate our body. So just like we kind of fed Cicadas.

Sometimes like on the weekends, we'll just, we'll just, Oh, I'm just going to go to bed when I feel like it. And then all of a sudden we've been binge watching Netflix and it's two in the morning. That's very unhealthy. And same with eating when you're hungry. Uh, for some people, I can't say for everyone, right?

This isn't, but specifically sometimes people have, they are hungry when they don't, they shouldn't be right. So it's like, is that really hunger? Drink, drink some water, check in with yourself. 10 minutes later, you know, you just ate an hour ago. Is it really hunger? Sometimes the sensation of the stomach emptying into the small intestines triggers a, Oh, my stomach is empty.

Therefore I'm hungry. I must eat again. Right. But we don't, we don't need to eat again. We just need to drink some water, do some breathing and check in with ourselves. But that's the, where I say, don't trust your hunger cues. Like just if you're someone who either doesn't eat enough or eats, feels like they overeat and wants to create balance again.

then same with how you wouldn't trust your, your circadian rhythm if it's off. I believe that our hunger cues are off and we need to reeducate our body to get back into rhythm. And that's why I think eating more fiber from whole foods, not getting a, adding some kind of artificial fiber, like, you know, adding, um, processed fiber.

Right. Um, I'm not saying that, although, you know, for some people that helps, but like just eating more whole foods, so lentils and greens and seeds and fruit, eating more fiber is going to make you feel fuller, longer. Sweet potatoes are my number one go to. If there's one thing I could say to have a client add to their diet in the morning or afternoon, is eating more whole foods.

One or two sweet potatoes and I bake a bunch at once and then have them in the fridge and you can even eat them cold. It's like candy. It's so good. But they, sweet potatoes give us nine hours of energy to slow drip. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. And it's great for the gut and it really satisfies that sweet craving, especially if someone's decided to give up sugar, um, or do a little sugar challenge and give up sugar.

Sweet potatoes are amazing food because it's that slow continuous energy and it's fiber for the gut.

Chris McDonald: Yeah, no, that's a lot of really helpful information. I like those tips too with the reminders because I think that that's difficult for a lot of people. For me, I have strong hunger cues and I'm like, I don't understand how you forget to eat.

That's why I'm always like, wait, I don't get it. My stomach will tell me no matter what I'm doing. But, but I realized too, not everybody is that tuned in and everybody's got different hunger. types of cues. So I know a lot of clients don't eat in the morning, so I'm glad you mentioned even sweet potato, just taking something.

So do you recommend people have something in the

Ashley James: morning? So intermittent fasting is a big thing. It is huge. Yeah. I suggest you try not eating dinner. Instead of eating breakfast, I've seen it in my clients and I'm also in myself and imagine if you go to bed having just eaten the biggest meal of the day, because most of us were upside down, right?

Most of us eat almost nothing for breakfast, eat like a moderate lunch, anything. And then most of us consume the majority of our calories after the sun has set. What are you doing with, I mean, and by the way, calories is not a great terminology for measuring nutrition. I'm just majority of our intake of our energy intake.

If you eat the majority of your energy intake, when you're winding down for the day, your body's not, your body's not burning it. Your body's not utilizing it, right? It's storing it. Some of it is stored as, as glucose, right? As glycogen in the liver, in the muscles, and that's wonderful. If you eat fat with carbs, your body will store the excess energy as fat in your adipose tissue.

It becomes adipose tissue. And so what we see is, and also if you're digesting, if you've eaten and then you're going to go to bed like an hour later, you're, you're not actually fasting and repairing. and having deep sleep your body is spending upwards of 60 percent of your energy to digest and assimilate the nutrition.

So we're when you want to be spending all that energy on repair at night. So the best thing you can do is go to bed hungry, eat now eat healthy. I don't want you to calorie restricted calorie restriction. is very bad for metabolism. It lowers the metabolism. It make it, it's not a great thing to do. The only way to recover that lowered metabolism by the way, if you feel like you've harmed your metabolism from dieting in the past, we've seen it.

The way to reset metabolism is through fasting. So I have a great interview. It's episode two 30 of my podcast. A few years ago, I interviewed Dr. Alan Goldhammer, who is one of the world leading experts on fasting. And so that's a great, great interview to check out on the learn true health podcast. And. So what we see is with internet fasting, try having your biggest meal in the morning.

And if, you know, if you're super busy and I get it by before 11, you know what I mean? Like at least, at least have something in the morning, it within a half an hour of waking, eat something. This helps turn on, this actually helps reverse adrenal fatigue. It helps, it helps kick up everything. Um, it takes you out of stress mode.

Because your liver is, if you don't have enough blood sugar in the morning and you're, if you're not burning fat for fuel, like, cause you're not in ketosis, right? Cause intermittent fasting doesn't necessarily create your body to go into, it doesn't simulate ketosis. So what happens is if you're low blood sugar and you burn through all your glycogen stores and your muscles and your liver, your liver will make your own blood sugar by converting muscle into blood sugar.

Have you ever noticed that you on a diet, you actually lose muscle? Have you ever seen that or felt like, Hey, you know, I'm kind of like, or see it in your partner that they're wasting away that they're losing muscle, especially after the age of 40. We very easily lose our muscle. That's one of the things, one of the reasons why is muscle is our protein stores, but protein converts to carbohydrates and liver.

It's called gluconeogenesis. And so when we do these wacky diets where we're like, I'm going to, I'm going to not eat breakfast or that's when you need the most nutrition in your makes sense. If you, if you have a problem digesting, that's a lot, a lot of reasons people, they're like, Oh, I feel nauseous in the morning if I don't eat.

Now we have to address the nutrient deficiency that's led to the lack of digestive enzymes and the lack of hydrochloric acid production. So it's a matter of waking up digestion in the morning and supporting, giving the body the nutrients it to make those that like in the morning have strong digestive juices.

So there's, there's a whole nutritional way of doing that, of turning on digestion. So you wake up the morning and you feel hunger first thing in the morning and you're able to eat a nice, good, healthy meal. And then you feel great. You don't feel weighed down. You feel like more energized from that meal that, that, you know, you're on a good diet when you feel more energy after your meal and you don't feel like you need to go take a nap.

So that's

Chris McDonald: really tuning into how your body's feeling in the moment. Exactly.

Ashley James: Yeah. So try some sweet potatoes in the morning. So you want the most amount of your carbohydrates from plants and also fruit. You can just have a big bowl of fruit first thing in the morning. And some people go, Oh, I'll have a sugar crash.

If I do that, well, we got to work on your insulin resistance. Then we can actually heal insulin resistance and get your body to the, to where you don't have crashes after eating a bowl of fruit. Um, so if you, if you feel like you crashed after eating a bowl of fruit, that's insulin you've got, we've got some issues going on with your nutrition that we need and your cells, we need to, we need to help your body heal itself.

And then a moderate lunch. Still, you could have some still great carbs in there. Sweet potatoes still, yes, yes, yes. And then I'd have an early dinner, like a big salad. You could put, you could put some legumes on there if you want, like that's very filling. But I want you to go to bed hungry. So think like eat six hours before you're going to go to sleep.

And, or more. You could, could be a, you know, if you, it depends on your, Your goal for intermittent fasting and how long of a window, like some people do a four hour eating window, in which case I want you to eat within a half an hour of waking. And then you can, you know, have another meal four hours later and then that's it.

But remember that fasting, when you're starting out training your body to do it, it will raise your stress levels. So I would, I don't do intermittent fasting when I first coach someone, when I'm just get starting out, usually they're We need to support They're already stressed out. They're already stressed out.

We don't need to like I like the idea that Dr. Rosenthal came up with this idea and he teaches it at IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, is that we crowd the plate out. So we add to the plate all the healthy foods and that kind of pushes the unhealthy foods off. So if I had you increase your water intake to 120 ounces a day, spread out throughout the day.

So if you drink 12 ounces of water for, you know, 10 hours, starting When you first wake up in the morning, we're crowding out the coffee, energy drinks and alcohol, right? We're crowding it out, right? So we first start by adding in the things that are healthy. And then once we've got that established as a habit, then we start removing the things that are unhealthy.

Now, some people are just like, I want it all. I want it now. Just tell me what not to do and tell me what to do. And I'm good. But for those who come to and are stressed out, Start by adding in, not taking away. Taking away is like a threat for some reason.

Chris McDonald: There's a lot of negative feelings, speaking for as a therapist.

Yeah. If you're restricting and then there are clients with eating disorders. So we really have to be mindful with the approaches that we take with this. Yeah, absolutely.

Ashley James: So I would not, Do intermittent fasting or any kind of fasting at the beginning of working with someone with eating disorders, especially.

But a lot of times people with eating disorders want to intermittent fast because they, they just want the quickest way to lose weight. And I respect their drive. We don't want to squash their drive. We want to redirect their drive. But take their motivation and their determination and just redirect it to healthier choices.

And, and I say, I never say no, like you can't do that. I just say, Oh yes. If they ask me about intermittent fasting, I'm like, okay, great. So I don't want you to do it right now, but we're going to get you so healthy to a point where that is a really good choice to make. But right now, and I explained that, you know, Increase stress.

And I just explained right now, we're going to focus on nourishing the body and getting you out of stress mode. And then we can start to very slowly in, you know, increase that fasting window. So if they, if right now they eat dinner at eight at night and they go to bed at 10, I would challenge them once, once we get going.

working with them. I challenged them to eat at seven, you know, for a few weeks and then eat at six for a few weeks. And, and also I really believe in the food mood journal. I believe in journaling what's going on, journaling their thoughts, because what's going to come up when you start to change a diet, the way they eat or when they eat, both are very important.

Those thoughts are going to come up, right? The, the, the, the, the thoughts about what their mom said to them. I remember my mom said to me, I was a child. I was not, there was not an ounce of fat on me. I did sports every day. I had no problems with food, but my mom had an obsession. She was obsessed about worried about her, herself being fat.

And so everyone around her, she had to also like control. And I remember being hungry as a child. And for whatever reason, you know, we just come off off the ski slopes or something, and I'm asking for a meal and she turned to me angrily and she did this many times, not just once, but she said, you know, you could, you could skip a meal.

Yes. You could just skip a meal. Wow. Interesting. Right. It's interesting. I can go like as a mom now. So on top of feeding my kid, growing boy, like this kid is growing an inch a day and I know I have to feed him. I know nutrition is really important. And I know that there's that mom guilt when I, when I don't have food, it's like, okay, you're just going to have to be hungry.

Cause we're at the park and you ate all the food I brought and we're, you know, we're going home in an hour and then I'm going to make dinner. So you're just going to have to wait, right? Drink some water. you'll be fine. But you know, I would never say like you could do with skipping a meal. Like, who says that to their child?

I know, it's just these kind of thoughts. And I had buried that I hadn't thought about it in years and it's, it's when we're conscious of and writing out like journaling as we're making health changes, these thoughts of these memories will come up and then they can bring them to you in their, Counseling sessions to process.

So I love the food mood journal concept. Yeah.

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So listening to your podcast, I've, like I told you before we hit record, I've already learned a lot and I love how you have all these really quick, just like the mood journal, right? Something like that to use. And so how do you start with someone who's overwhelmed?

Let's say they want to make a change, but they're feeling overwhelmed with other choices and where do they start? Cause I know a lot of clients I see are already overwhelmed with everything.

Ashley James: Yeah. Right. Well, so I'm, I'm not a mental health counselor. Um, I am a holistic health coach and my background is in neuro linguistic programming and timeline therapy.

So I do have an appreciation for working with, working with the mental body and emotional body along with the. physical. It depends on the individual person, but I definitely believe in tools like deep breathing and focus on what you want versus what you don't want. I do have a technique that gets people out of anxiety in 90 seconds.

And so I would do that with them because overwhelm is focusing on what you don't want to have happen, regardless of whether you're conscious or not. You're just imagining, like, Oh, all this stuff. Oh, you're right. So we're imagining bad things happening. And you know, if you do the exercise of, of imagining, imagining your mind, okay, I have a magic wand or, you know, however you want to put it.

I'm a, I'm a fairy godmother and I have a magic wand and we, I can instantly transform you into exactly the life you want, what you want. So take that image, imagine exactly how you want, if, if anything were possible. Right, because we have to get past their belief system, because if they've been told by their doctor, Oh, you're this way because you're a woman or because you're in your 50s or because you're, you know, you're this ethnicity or because your mom have it, that means you're going to have it like everyone has been told you are the way you are, because and those are limiting beliefs.

It's not true. The genetics. are not the immediate determiner. It is not your fate. Yes, you were, if you're born with blue eyes, they're baked into the cake. But as far as disease is concerned, there's epigenetics, right? So you're not like, Oh, just because you're dead at heart disease, you will have heart disease.

That's, that's bogus. That's a cop out. We can, and we've seen this actually, there's many studies. One of them, they studied, uh, African Americans in America and their direct ancestors in Africa. And they found that, that the heart disease had nothing to do with genetics and it was all lifestyle and diet. Um, but we've seen this with countless studies.

There's, there's one great one just published and they published a documentary on Netflix where they took twins. They took several sets. They have them both do different diets and it's only eight weeks. So, you know, it's not, if they'd followed them for years, we'd have more information. It's so impressive that in such a short period of time, we can see such a big difference in major health markers.

So genetics are like, it's like they say, genetics are the gun, but they're not the bullet or pulling the trigger, right? Like the bullet and pulling the trigger is your daily habits and what you choose to eat. And then your genetics will express based on your stress levels and nutrient deficiencies.

That's what I picture that. Mentor Dr. Joel Wallach wrote a book called Epigenetics, it's phenomenal, you should definitely read it. So for those who are overwhelmed, when they're in, when they work with me, I do exercises to have them focus on what they want. Imagine seeing them a year from now, take that image, like, okay, I'm the manager.

Chris McDonald: And I see, can I just interrupt you? I see the crossover with us too, as therapists, because we ask, Which is called the miracle question. So let's say you go to bed tonight and a miracle happens and you get everything you want in your life and your life is as, as you most want it. What is it like? And kind of walk them through that.

So that's kind of similar to what you're saying.

Ashley James: In the fairy godmother, because I'm like, yeah, I love that. Like as a Christian, you're like, I'm saying, I'm saying magic wand. And some people might really like be triggered by true. One. So I like that miracle, miracle question is good. Yep. That about a miracle, but take that visualizations.

Great. Why? Because the body's always listening. Yes. Body's always listening to what we visualize and the body can't tell the difference between what's imagined and what's real. And there's no concept of time. So if we're imagining something, not, not working out a week from now, the body thinks it's actually not working out right now.

We're really living through it. And then it raises the course. What you focus on and what you imagine is really important, but taking that miracle question and have them like place it a year out in their timeline, having them imagine themselves a year from now. And then they turn around and look back to now and go, okay, what are the choices that we made to get there?

Let's talk about that. You know, let's see it. Let's visualize it. And overwhelm also can come from, you should, you should unpack their belief system. Do they even believe their body can heal? Do they believe they deserve it? Do they believe it?

Chris McDonald: There were, there were they to be putting this time in and I see that a lot, a lot of women, especially,

Ashley James: I look for the biggest outcome, like the biggest return that we can get right off the bat.

So I picked the thing I listened to them. I picked the thing that I know is going to give them a sudden increase in energy, mental clarity, better sleep so that then they have the energy. And the drive to do the next step and do the next step and do the next step. So usually it has to do with sleep or hydration.

Those are, those are the two biggest return on investment. So I have chapters in my book. I just wrote it and it's called Addicted to Wellness. There it

Chris McDonald: is. Look at that. It's got the

Ashley James: most beautiful cover. Thank you. I love, love, love it. I, I had to go through four graphic artists to get this. And I, his name's Rob Williams.

He's on Fiverr. He's amazing. So if you're ever writing a book, go hire him. Uh, he, he took my vision and just in the first take. Yeah, he did such a great job at embodying what the book is all about. So I have a whole section on sleep and a whole section on hydration. Hydration. So one of my mentors is Dr.

Molly Niedermeyer. She was the Dean of the Bastyr Naturopathic University here in Seattle. And she's been practicing. She's a naturopathic midwife, a family doctor for over 30 years, delivered over a thousand babies. And she's phenomenal. What she does with the first year students is. She gets them all in the room and they're, of course, they're all health nuts, right?

They're becoming naturopathic doctors, but they're all super stressed out because they're super competitive. It's a very competitive program to get into. And she says to them, I want you to write down, like in terms of like on a scale of one to 10, do a little symptom inventory checklist. Uh, how's your brain fog?

Do you have headaches? Uh, how's your energy levels? Just like score yourself, write down every symptom you, you know, you have. And you frequency, intensity, and duration, right? I'll scale it one to ten. There's this little self eval. And I also do that with my clients as well. And I do it once a month because it's, you want to do this because as things change, they'll forget how bad it was.

Oh, for sure. Motivator. I'm doing a little symptom inventory checklist. And then she has them drink enough water and there's a formula. I'll, I'll tell you in a second, most of you probably know the formula, but I'll tell you the formula in a sec. So now they're drinking the amount of water they're supposed to be drinking.

And they come back a week later and she says, how, how are you now? Do do a little self check in now. And they're all shocked energy and their mental clarity went way up noticeably and they can't believe it. And she, and she says, A 5 percent reduction in hydration leads to a 25 percent reduction in energy production, meaning cellular energy aids.

We produce significantly less energy when we're only 5 percent less hydrated. So, a 200 pound person requires a hundred ounces of water a day spread out throughout the day. Don't chug it all at once. It's spread out throughout the day, but, but complete your hundred ounces by dinnertime. So they're not waking up to pee at night.

And if you drink 95, that same person, if they drink 95 ounces, that there's a five ounce difference. Is enough to significantly lower their energy production. We are all walking around chronically dehydrated and then self medicating with sugar and caffeine. And then at night, medicating with alcohol to come down off of the sugar and caffeine.

Everyone is self medicating all day and it's affecting their mental and emotional health. Let me say, I pick my first, first, you know, session. I pick hydration and sleep to work on. Or you can just pick hydration, but really they have to understand it's so important because it's practically free and people don't value hydration as a, people

Chris McDonald: forget about it.

Don't they? If you

Ashley James: don't have a water bottle with you at all times. We've got, we've got our water here. If you don't carry a water bottle with you at all times, you are dehydrated. I would bet money, right? So that's,

Chris McDonald: that's the thing. I think that's one of the simple tips too, isn't it? Just cause I, I, even I go to the grocery store, it doesn't matter where I'm going.

It's like, I always have my water with me because you know, I'm going to be thirsty and that helps me keep my hydration up. And if we don't, then you might end up buying something too that you shouldn't be drinking

Ashley James: or, Right there, the sugary crap out there. Always have your water on you. Please get filtered water.

I also love structured water. I, I have an interview about structured water and it makes the water taste better. It's the weirdest thing, but it makes it taste. There's actually some really great things for your microbiome as well. And they have studies on this. So hydrate throughout the day. And then the next big thing is sleep.

And when I listen to women and I think this is a thing, I put the kids to bed or I, or I put my husband to bed and it's my me time at night. Yeah, I hear that a lot too. It's my quiet time. That's great. But it's really dopamine seeking behavior at this point. You know, so, so these, Just because they're not on a substance, they're doing addictive brain addictive behavior.

So, you know, doom scrolling social media or binging Netflix, whatever they're doing, I bet if it's past 11 at night and they're still awake, it's not healthy behavior. It's a dopamine seeking behavior. I relate it to like, Wearing us a binky, like wearing a pacifier, like going for your security blanket.

It's not a healthy behavior to stay up late at night in order to get your me time. That's not, we think it is because it's, Oh, it's my self care. No, it's your self

Chris McDonald: destruction. So that's an interesting way to think about it too.

Ashley James: And it's just, no, it's you're hurting yourself. Because, you know, you, you might feel sorry for yourself because this is my only me time.

So what I, what I tell my clients to do is get everyone to bed at a reasonable hour. Like children chronically are sleep deprived because they, we let them stay up too late on screens. If a child is under the age of eight, They should be going to bed at 730 and it depends on how early they have to wake up for school.

Or if they're, if they're homeschooled, just let them sleep until they naturally wake up. I would love it if the entire world slept until they

Chris McDonald: naturally woke up. I know, isn't that, that would be amazing. So do you think that starting there as mental health therapists too, that looking at, cause a lot of holistic that are listening or want to become more holistic, looking at hydration and sleep is always a good place to start, isn't

Ashley James: it?

I can't make generalized advice for the masses because I think you have to put out the, I think your first, your very first session is figuring out where the fire

Chris McDonald: is. And if those are, those are possible areas to look at

Ashley James: too. If they even have the capacity to change one thing, I would change water, um, but I would maybe integrate it with some affirmation or put something on their water bottle that reminds them about self love.

Yeah. Here's the affirmation is a sticky wicket because you could say, you know, I am thin and beautiful and everyone loves me. And it's like, but you, if you, if you don't believe it, exactly, it doesn't matter and it's really an authentic. So, so in terms of affirmations, it's, for me, it's more of if they're focused, if they're focusing on how much they hate themselves or whatever, they're focusing on something very, and you have them create something to focus on.

That is a positive. Because it's always about turning it into the positive, because the, it's like, I don't want to be fat or I don't want to be poor. Right? And, and people say these things, they say the negative, but actually imagining what you don't want, like don't think of a red apple. Right? We can't negate.

You see the red apple when I say don't think of the red apple. It catch in their languaging, if they're thinking what they don't want and ask them, if you don't want this, then what do you want? Exactly.

Chris McDonald: And that's where you can kind of springboard from that, right? Yeah,

Ashley James: create, create there. And I'm, I'm using the term affirmation, but I mean it very specifically to create their focus on what they do want visualization and take, find like, like water bottle stickers that you can put on your water bottle that prompt them to remember.

So you can carry it with you all the time, sip on it throughout the day, and take your deep breaths to teach them how to do deep breathing. Every time they refill their water bottle, they're going to do one to five minutes of deep breathing, whatever you guys decide. And they're going to remember to, they're seeing the stickers and remembering to focus on what they do want, right?

Or remember to, you know, whatever visualization you want. So, You can have it stack a few really positive things with their hydration. For example, as far as like, what do you, what do you always do with someone? Um, I think just the first session is really figuring out where the fires are and one thing for them to do that makes the biggest difference, like what's going to make the biggest difference between the first session and the second session, right?

For some people it's sleep change. So what I did with this one client, she has two kids, she owns her own business. She would put the kids to bed. She actually was great about getting them to bed at 7 30. And then she would proceed to stay up till midnight, answering emails in her business and not even doing dopamine seeking behavior, just catching up with her day.

And I said, so, you know, at 11 at night, how long does it take you to write the same email you would Like, is there a difference between how long it takes you to write, to answer an email at 11 at night, then at nine in the morning, she goes, Oh yeah. She goes, it takes me about five minutes to answer the same email.

It takes me about a half an hour because I have no mental energy left. And I said, so here's what you're going to do. You're going to go to sleep with your kids. Not like in the same, you can be in the same bed if you want, but just go to sleep. Let's go to sleep. Okay. Put him to bed and then you're going to put yourself to bed.

Naturally wake up. And she would wake up at like five in the morning, you know, full, fully rested first time in her adult life. And then, and then she had a few hours in the morning, before the kids woke up, before she needed to get them to school and all that. And she was praising me the next day. And I always, I tell my clients, you're, The one that did all the work, right?

Like I just, I just gave you a tip and you actually follow through like, cause there's how many people don't do it, right? But she, and she had such a good experience. She said, I can't put so much done in the same amount of time. I just took my me time. Put your me time in the morning. We're backwards. We're eating all our food at night instead of in the morning.

We're trying to get everything done at night. At night, especially for addiction brain people, and I'm one of them, dopamine seeking, dopamine deprived. And we just, we have to remind ourselves that we're not defiant teenagers anymore. We have to kind of own parents. And we have to put ourselves to bed.

Promise yourself it's, we're going to have lots of fun tomorrow because you're a little, the little dopamine seeking brain and little kid in you, but I want to stay up and not wait, promise yourself that you're going to have amazing fun tomorrow and think about something fun you're going to do tomorrow.

And the bed earlier than you ever would get up early and have lots of fun in the morning when everyone's still asleep and you've gotten enough sleep and a mind shift too big mind shift. And you, you'll get a lot So for some people who are like chronic adrenal fatigue, it might take them, it might take them a bit just and get their energy back.

But this is one of the most healing things you can do for chronic adrenal fatigue, along with getting them out of stress response. It's another

Chris McDonald: thing. Yeah. Well, I really appreciate all the tips today. There's so many, and I know we could go for hours. This is so many cool avenues, and I love that you are so knowledgeable, Ashley.

It's just so impressive that you've learned all these tips, but I love it because it's like you do a little bit at a time. It's not like you overcame everything in one day. It's a process. I get the impression that you're a sponge and you just want to learn, learn, learn. And how can I improve myself and my life and my family's

Ashley James: life?

I really value personal growth. That's a, you know, people praise me for how do you remember all this stuff? I'm like, I, it's, you know, it's God, God gifted me with this. This is my, but I look at people who like, for example, can organize or can like, uh, interior decorators. I'm like,

Chris McDonald: it's amazing. This is your gift.

Isn't it

Ashley James: too. I have no other gifts. This is, this is my

Chris McDonald: gift. I feel like this was divine intervention somehow that you came to where you are. It's just, it is amazing. Yeah. So what's the best way for listeners to find you and learn more about you?

Ashley James: Yeah, you can go to learn true health. com. That's my website.

You can search my podcast on any of the podcast directories, learn true health with Ashley James and You can also get my book and I'd love for you to get, especially sure a lot of practitioners have told me they love this book. I even have one of my friends who's a mental health counselor who is buying it in bulk to give to her clients because I go through the foundations of health in a way that is manageable, small chunks, small challenges every week that make the biggest difference.

So doing these yeah. habits. Um, and it's the, it's a workbook. So they get to write in it. So they could even show you their notes. It's so helpful. And I kept it light. I include science in it, but I kept it very light and doable and quick. Uh, so every day they, you know, five to 15 minutes every day for 12 weeks and they will see a lot of really positive changes by doing it.

And you can get my book by going to www. learntruehealth. com and then in the menu. Uh, there is the, is the link to addicted to wellness, which is my book. Yeah. Awesome.

Chris McDonald: And we will put that in the show notes so you can find that there. And I highly recommend it. It's amazing. And I think it's really going to help a lot of therapists, but also we have our reach too, right?

It can help clients as well. And healer, heal thyself. Yes, please. And we talk a lot of self care on the Holistic Counseling Podcast, but thank you so much for coming on today's show.

Ashley James: It has been such a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Chris McDonald: Absolutely. And listeners, that brings us to the end of another episode.

Be sure to tune in next Wednesday when another episode drops. And I have a question for you. Are you struggling with feelings of burnout and emotional exhaustion in your counseling practice? Do you always put others first? Most of us do, but get ready to boost your energy, build your stress, resilience, and discover more balance with a self care for the counselor companion workbook.

In this guide, I provide simple strategies that are not only practical, but easy to integrate into your busy life. Go to hcpodcast. org forward slash workbook. That's hcpodcast. org forward slash workbook. And until next time, this is Chris McDonald sending each one of you. Much light and love till next time.

Take

Ashley James: care.

Chris McDonald: Thanks for listening. The information in this podcast is for general educational purposes only. And it is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are giving legal financial counseling or any other kind of professional advice. If you need a professional, please find the right one for you.

The Holistic Counseling Podcast is proudly part of the Psychcraft Network.