Healing Your Metabolism for Optimal Health: Insights and a Practical Guide from Deborah Jeann

Christine Li  0:01  
Welcome back to the Make Time for Success Podcast. I'm Dr. Christine Li and this is episode number 137. 

Today we're going to learn all about stress hormones, diet and what you can do very simple, pragmatic, effective steps for nurturing your health and your metabolism. I have on the show my very special guest Deborah Jeann. She is a functional medicine health coach who specializes in women's hormones and she's also the CEO of Deborah Jeann Wellness. She helps working moms reclaim their energy and vitality by balancing their hormones and healing their metabolism. She's passionate about helping women understand how their bodies work, why they have certain symptoms, and how they can use food as medicine and build sustainable lifestyle habits. I learned so many different mini lessons while recording this episode with Deborah. I hope you enjoy the episode and that you take away many lessons as well. Let's go listen to the episode together now.

Hi, I'm Dr. Christine Li, and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped 1000s of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they can begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn a powerful strategies for getting your mind, body and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy, and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the Make Time for Success podcast. 

Hi, there everyone. Today I have a special guest, Deborah Jeann on the show. I am really looking forward to learning everything that she has to share with us today about women's health, stress, hormones, metabolism, and getting our health on our best track. Welcome to the show, Deborah.

Deborah Jeann  2:15  
how are you? Thank you for having me. It's really an honor.

Christine Li  2:20  
It's an honor to have you here today with us. Thank you for being here. Can you please get us started by telling us more about yourself? And how you got to be interested in all things women's health?

Deborah Jeann  2:33  
Yes, sure. So yes, so I'm Debra. I'm a functional medicine health coach, and I specialize in women's hormones. And mainly I work with working moms, I help them reclaim the energy and the vitality by balancing their hormones and restoring their metabolism. So how I got here was really a result of three passions of mine. So I've always been interested in health and wellness, in business and in personal development. So the health and wellness interests was mainly because I for over 12 years or even more now, I trained Capoeira I don't know if you've heard about it, but it's Brazilian martial arts. And it's very intensive. So I was always curious about how I could optimize like my nutrition and how a good condition my body to basically endure sort of those intense Capoeira trainings. So that's how I got interested like in the health piece. And I studied business management. And I'm passionate about business in general about marketing, and especially about creative business models. And I'm also interested in personal development, I've devoured countless books, and I'm always learning something new, like every day. So just as I was about to go on maternity leave, in 2017, I stumbled into this health coaching certification, which basically combined the three passions of mine like health and wellness, personal development, and then the business aspects. And so I enrolled in that. And I was basically mind blown by everything that I was learning in terms of like gut health, the human microbiome, I learned like over 100 different diets and sort of the pros and cons. And of course, I learned coaching skills, so which was the core of the program? So after I finished this certification, I didn't quite feel ready to work with clients yet. So I decided to pursue functional medicine, which is basically a personalized method for getting to the root cause of symptoms and then restoring balance to the body. So in parallel well to that, that's when I got into the online business coaching programs and I got into different programs to basically help me set up my online business, my health coaching online business. And oh boy, this was like where my imposter syndrome like really got the best of me and I procrastinated on actually launching my business for about two years. And I was literally doing a lot of busy work with no results for about two years. And then in the middle of 2020, like on top of COVID, and everything else, I had, like a major burnout from the demands of my nine to five job because I have a nine to five job. And I was really, like, burned out from it. In basically I was in bed for three weeks. Yeah, just completely fried. In Yes, this experience was really a turning point for me. And that's when I made the decision to prioritize my health. And what this meant was setting clear boundaries and focusing on my my self care, you know, and it was really ironic that with everything that I knew, and that I learned, I managed to get myself in this situation. So that's when I actually started using everything I knew to actually get myself out of it as well. But yeah, but the excessive stress that my body went through, completely trashed my hormones in my metabolism, and it really took me quite a while to recover from it. So basically, I gained a lot of weight and I was never I never had my problems. I could wait because as I said, I I trained like insensitively calculator so, so again, the way I had digestive problems, I was constantly exhausted, I had like weak hair, and nails. I mean, you name it. And that that's when I discovered this world of hormones and metabolism. And I really took a deep dive to really understand what was going on in my body and what I could do to feel better and feel like myself again. So I was really shocked. As I started learning more and more, I was really shocked about how little as women, we know about our body, and we are not taught things, or we are taught the wrong things instead. So I basically spent the last two years working with normal one to one, basically, to help them understand how the female physiology works, why they're having certain symptoms, and some nutrition and lifestyle habits that they could incorporate to start feeling better. So yeah, so like, in a nutshell, that's how I got here.

Christine Li  7:55  
Okay, wonderful. Thank you for sharing all of the backstory. I'm sure there lots of mini stories in there, too, that we haven't covered. But I'm really looking forward to ask you different questions about your journey. I was listening to your story and thinking, Oh, wow, I finally have a guest who doesn't have a negative experience along the way. But then you started talking about the burnout and the breakdown of the metabolism. And I'm sorry, you had to go through that. And I'm really grateful to know that you're in full health afterwards. And that that deepened your commitment to your study and to your interest in bodily healing and helping others heal as well. So I'm grateful to know that you're on the other side of that journey.

Deborah Jeann  8:43  
Yes, yes. In in Yeah. I mean, I think for me, it was having bad experience of burnout. I mean, I mean, you hear about burnout, and I hear a lot about, like women struggling with hormones, but actually experiencing it. It's like a whole different thing. And, yeah, and it's something that I don't want to go back to and I don't want any one of my clients or anyone really to have that experience because it's it's really not. Yeah, not the best, but I'm actually glad that it happened because, as you said, actually, like solidified, like my commitment. And yes, and what I'm here to do,

Christine Li  9:25  
okay, wonderful, man. I asked, Were there many symptoms leading up to the burnout?

Deborah Jeann  9:33  
Um, yes, they were. Yeah, like, yeah, I was working a lot. So basically, prior to COVID, I was in this position I was covering for a colleague, but that was basically like to break up so I was doing work that it was above my grade. So I was working beyond my capabilities. And I think the thing is, I did that for a while. On time, so yeah, so of course that implied working long hours, not eating, not exercising, I mean, not taking care of myself. So yes, of course that happened. But of course, after we'd COVID, like working from home, and then at the time, my son was about two and a half, three years old. So like the worst age to be locked with a kid. So yeah, it was myself and my husband and our son, in then the both of us working in all that stress that went, that we all know. So yes, there were signs, and I didn't listen to them.

Christine Li  10:40  
Gotcha. And it's interesting how, as I mentioned, that, so many people who are healers, and special guests of mine in particular, it seems they have a deepening experience and experience where the all the negative factors are coming in and causing the body and the mind to be challenged. And I just wanted to point out to our listeners, that if you happen to be in the midst of something like that, in the midst of a breakdown, or a crisis, or a slowdown, even that to really take the time to heal, take the time to educate yourself. But also understand that there's so much that we can learn from these moments, and there's so much that you can benefit from because your body is telling you these things. Deborah, can you share with us what you've learned about the body's system and how the body takes care of us just any tips or strategies that you know, or anything that you think we really should take away and always remember?

Deborah Jeann  11:47  
Yeah, so when I work with my clients, I focus on healing the metabolism, which is sort of the core of of our work and our function. So when we talk about metabolism, a lot of people just think it's just about burning calories quickly. And it's a bit much more than that, actually. Because your metabolism is actually the sum of every metabolic process in your body. So this means how efficiently your body takes the nutrients from your food from what you eat, and then turns them into energy or into heat. So your metabolism basically impacts every function that goes on in your body, from your digestion to your immune system, to your reproduction, your hormones. And basically, if you're not able to convert your food into energy, like on a cellular level, so then that means that your cells don't get the proper nutrients in them, they will not function properly. And of course, that in turn results in your homework starting to get out of whack. So the goal, actually, that I try to teach to my clients is that you want to aim to have a high functioning metabolism, because that is what's going to give you health. So a high functioning metabolism generates energy and heat. So that's what you want to aim for. But unfortunately, many women when they think of health, they are only aiming to have like a fit body with nice abs. And while that is nice to have, it is actually not a sign that you are healthy. So you can be the fittest woman on earth, and you can still struggle with with health, especially Hormonal Health. So to be and feel healthy, it's important to have a high functioning metabolism. So we need to move away from prioritizing how we look to prioritizing how we function, because that's in the end of it. That's what our body is asking of us. So our bodies like. It's like it's like a machine. And Its job is to keep us alive. And your body will do the weirdest things to actually keep you alive. And you might actually think that oh my god, my body's against me, I can seem to lose weight to reproduce. But all of this little nagging things that your body is actually doing is actually doing that to protect you to keep you alive. So the main thing actually, that your body needs is fuel because it's a machine it just needs you to eat properly, like the right combination of protein, fats, and protein and carbs. And to be able to generate heat and energy so it can perform its function so that that's it. So this actually reminds me of a scene from from the Matrix. I don't know if you remember I did having breakfast and They're eating like this, like very unappealing porridge. And then you ask, so what is this? And I think it's Bulldogs with a reply. So it's a, it's a single cell protein combined with synthetic amino acids, vitamins and minerals, everything that the body needs. Because, exactly, that's how your body feels fuel. It doesn't necessarily care about gourmet food, it cares about everything, like protein, fats, and carbs to make it function appropriately. So in terms of a few signs that we want to look at, instead of just focusing on our aesthetics, which, as I said, it's nice. So we want to sort of redefine health to having a high functioning metabolism. So a few signs that happen that you can start noticing when you have a high functioning metabolism is that first you get hanergy Like all day, throughout the day, inconsistent. It's not like you wake up groggy, and then you have a cup of coffee can you find and then in the middle of the day, you have that crash? No, you have like sort of steady energy throughout the day. You also start having like warm extremities, like your hands, your feet, your nose, instead of feeling cold all the time. So you also have like a strong immune system, and you're not sick. Often. You also have like one to two daily bowel movements, instead of like being constipated, you have like good digesting a digestion with no bloating, no gas is also a great as a great sign of healthy metabolism is like your sex drive. And whether you are fertile, and not so often one that you you might not know. But like paying, you should be paying only five four to five times a day. So if you go to the bathroom, like 10 to 12 times, then something's off with your metabolites. So you also experienced like healthy hair, smooth skin, strong nails, you fall asleep easily, you have like deep uninterrupted sleep, you feel happy, positive instead of moody and all the snappy, like with no patients like around your kids, and you are able to maintain your weight easily without dieting or without excessive exercising. And like two critical points of a healthy metabolism is like first your body temperature. So when you're you have a healthy metabolism, your body temperature should be around 97.8 in 98.6 firing out. And your pulse rate should be between 75 to 90 beats per minute. So these two are really, really, really important to look to look for.

Christine Li  17:55  
Okay, wonderful. Thank you for listening all the ways, we can see evidence of a healthy metabolism. And we can recognize if we're not quite there yet as well. What do you do with your clients to help them to see that they have the power to kind of improve the entire system and to improve the way their body serves them?

Deborah Jeann  18:20  
Yes. So the first step should be like awareness. So it's very important to know where you are at, and whether your metabolism is slow or not. And then we take the next step, which is optimizing it, and actually have a resource specifically to to so so you can find out whether your metabolism is slow or not. And we do this by tracking like your body temperature and your pulse rate through like a period of time. But then in terms of like optimizing your metabolism, I focus on five pillars. So the first one is managing stress. So stress is a very, very, very negative impact on your hormonal health, especially on your thyroid. And your thyroid is one that is linked to your metabolism. So you're tired and then your metabolism. So basically when you are stressed whether physically mentally, emotionally, you activate like your fight or flight response, and then your body secretes like stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. But you might not realize that you are stressed. This is because your body perceives things that you don't think are stressful. So things like not eating enough. Not sleeping enough low blood sugar, like over exercising like a lot of cardio like skipping breakfast or having like coffee on an empty stomach. These are small little things that we do like unintentionally because we're not aware but really have an impact on our metabolism. So it's very, very important to To make your body feel safe, so it's not chronically stressed, because that is the number one thing that that impacts your your hormones. So the second one is balancing your blood sugar. So most people think that only people with diabetes should worry about their blood sugar. But that's not true. So basically, when you eat things that spike your blood sugar, like refined carbs, saying like a bagel, your body like quickly spikes, and then comes crashing down. And if you're not having like an optimal diet, and you will do this quite often throughout the day, so the problem is actually having like this spikes and then crashes. So you don't want to have that because that's also a stressor that will increase your blood sugar, what you want to have, so when you eat your blood sugar will spike, but you want it to spike slightly, like sort of a wave, and then come back wave and come back and not like this big, huge, huge spikes up and down. So to do this, you want to eat meals that are balanced, like all of your meals from main meals to the snacks need to be like a combination of fats, protein, and carbs. So the third piece is eating a nutrient dense diet and eating enough. So women's bodies are very sensitive to scarcity. So if your body doesn't feel like it's getting enough, it will assume that it's not enough food, and it will slow down your metabolism basically to conserve energy. Okay, it's natural. We don't view it like that, Oh, my God, my body's against me. No, no, no, no, it's keeping you alive. So and also variety is very important and making sure that you are getting like bioavailable forms of nutrients, and especially like protein. The fourth piece is your gut. So healing your gut is very, very important. So you are not what you eat. We've been told that for a long time. So you are what you eat, digest and absorb. So it's really important that you are absorbing your your nutrients and in minerals and everything else. So if you've got this not functioning properly, you might eat the best diet. But if you're not absorbing that, then it doesn't count too much. So make sure that your digestion is working properly. And the final piece is decreasing your toxin exposure and loving up on your liver. So we are exposed to so many toxins in our environment that can interfere with like the normal function of our hormones. So this can either increase or decrease the production of hormones. So we need to aim to implement like a lifestyle or environmental changes that reduce the toxic burden and avoid that can because that disrupt hormones, and really making sure that we are supporting on our liver our I think is one of the most important organs because it basically transforms and removes any excess hormones from the body, it's really important that we make sure that it is functioning properly. So these are basically the five steps that I take my clients through. Yes.

Christine Li  23:30  
Okay. Wonderful. Thank you What a fantastic list and very helpful. I wanted to comment on number four, about the gut is our diet, the primary way of strengthening our gut.

Deborah Jeann  23:44  
Yes, not only the diets, but also a lot of lifestyle factors. Like for example, one of the one critical thing that in simple thing that I start my clients off with is because we are working on improving our digestion in our digestion actually starts in the brain and then in the mouth. So the actually when you chew food, so you need to make sure that you are chewing it appropriately. So just this if you make sure that you are Yeah, chewing like 20 to 30 times and your food is like all mushy and in not undigested particles. So that already helps quite a lot in terms of your digestion. So it's not only what you eat is how you are eating. So that's one advice is the major one, make sure that you're chewing your food. The other one is make sure that you're eating. When you are eating, you're not distracted. So you're eating in a calm environment. And you take the time and you're not in a stressed state because if you are eating in a stressed state, you basically suppress the your digestive enzymes and then you will not digest your food. So All of this, they are little sort of habits that you need to also develop that will help you with your digestion. It's not only about the food, yes,

Christine Li  25:11  
yeah, lovely. I'm also thinking as I'm listening to you, and learning from you that stress is is such a common factor, or such an opponent, that we really have to keep our eyes open to the ways in which stress creeps into our every day. It could be a tech issue, it could be a parenting issue, it could be I feel like I'm starving issue. They can be small stressors, but they can really build if we don't protect ourselves and really nurture our calmer way of being is that how you see things as well?

Deborah Jeann  25:49  
Yes, it is. Stress is really critical. So as I said, it's in there are there are the things that we know. But then it's the things that we don't know, and how, basically when you start to understand how your body thinks or interprets stress, so that's really important. Yeah, so. So it's the stressors that we don't know about. Like, for example, if you are eating like a diet, that you are sensitive, you have food sensitivities, and you're eating food, that that causes inflammation in your body that is a stressor, but it's like a physiological stress, you don't see it, but your body is dealing with it. And actually, the problem is that those sorts of stress become chronic, because you can take a long time until you find out that you're sensitive to something. And until you actually take care of it and resolve that your body is going to be dealing with that quite a lot. The other one that I want to mention, especially for women, so we've been we have this thing about like demonizing carbs, eating low fat, carbs, and etc. But actually, our metabolism strike prefers carbs, as few. So when I talk about carbs, of course, I'm not talking about refined carbs, like pasta, and not not that like potato and rice in vegetables. So your body actually prefers carbs as their fuel. So if you're not giving carbs, if you're not eating carbs, and giving your body the preferred fuel that it needs, your body will, in the spirit of keeping you alive will actually break down parts of your body to produce glucose, which, which is what it gets from carbs. So if you're not feeding it carbs, it will produce it will raise cortisol and will break your body down to actually produce what it needs. So in the end, you have long term, of course, this is not a very efficient, that's when we start having lots of issues in the end, especially with our hormones.

Christine Li  28:16  
Okay, thank you so much for this education, I want our audience to know that you might not realize this, but Deborah has just given us years and years of education summarized in just about 25 minutes. So Deborah, I want to thank you for being so generous and so wise and knowledgeable. And for being just really wonderful. And coming here and sharing with us all of this wonderful information. It can be a really wonderful beginning, or maybe even a middle part of our listeners process for really optimizing their health and well being right. So it's not just about fitness. Fitness is a part of great health. But there's also all of these wonderful ways that we can support our bodies in supporting ourselves. So thank you, Deborah, you're doing amazing, amazing work. You're a fantastic teacher. I just wanted to give you that feedback as well. That already

Deborah Jeann  29:14  
thank you so much. It's really a pleasure to be sharing all of this year.

Christine Li  29:18  
Okay, great. You mentioned a sheet that you have for our audience, perhaps to share. Can you describe that document for us?

Deborah Jeann  29:28  
Yeah, so basically, it's a three step process for you to assess whether you have a slow metabolism or not. So and you do this by using two simple things that you might have in your house, or if you're not, you can easily buy which is a thermometer, and like an oximeter. So basically, you're going to be tracking like your temperature and your pulse rate to assess whether you are your metabolism is slow or not. So it's really it's really a nice practical guide in it all. also then, in those that's like helps you interpret the results that you get. But that just this exercise will give so much insight in terms of how your how your body is behaving. So I really, really hope it is helpful. In Yeah, you can learn a lot from it.

Christine Li  30:21  
Okay, terrific. Thank you for sharing that as well. We have collaborated to make a URL for that download, and we've decided it's going to be make time for success. podcast.com/metabolism Again, make time for success. podcast.com/metabolism Deborah, Can you also tell us how people can stay in touch with you perhaps social media or your website or both?

Deborah Jeann  30:48  
Yes, so I am mainly on Instagram. So you can Yeah, just come to my Instagram page. Just give me a shout out in my in my DMs.

Christine Li  30:59  
Okay, terrific. Could you give us the Instagram handle please?

Deborah Jeann  31:02  
Yes. So it's Deborah dots. Jean with two ends. Yeah.

Christine Li  31:08  
Okay, it's J E A N N Yes. Wonderful. I want to absolutely support our listeners going to follow Deborah Jean's Instagram, I have learned a lot just from these little squares on social media in her account. So she provides a lot of factual knowledge, a lot of tips and ways of thinking about what you can do for yourself and things to look out for. So I definitely want to support you all staying connected with Deborah Deborah, I plan on staying connected with you, I plan on getting your metabolism download. And I want to thank you thank you. Thank you again for being here and sharing your wonderfulness with

Deborah Jeann  31:45  
us. Thank you. Thank you so much. It was a really pleasure in and really nice chatting with you.

Christine Li  31:51  
Terrific. I had a pleasure as well. Thank you so much, everyone, take this information, run with it, and also live as stress free as you possibly can arrange. I'm looking forward to hearing about your progress. Deborah is too, I'm sure. Thank you all for joining us today. See you next week. Bye. 

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time for Success podcast. If you enjoyed what you've heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com for past episodes, show notes and all the resources we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name procrastination coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success. We'll talk to you soon!

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