Happy early fall to everyone in the Northern Hemisphere and summer to those in other places and spaces in the world. It’s been so hot and humid in Chicago that I’m very excited about fall this year. In fact, I’ve had my first Pumpkin Spice Latte within the first day or two that Starbucks started offering them again. And did you see that Pumpkin Spice Latte commercial with Martha Stewart and Belmont Cameli? It was really cute. Anyway, I’m ready for sweater weather.
I’m also ready to tell you one of my deepest, darkest secrets. Here it goes. I go through fits and starts of taking care of myself. In some periods, I’m really on top of my stuff. I work out, drink my water, get my sleep. In the last year or two, not so much. I’m working more, sleeping less, and feeling like garbage. And the biggest secret of them all? I lie to myself that I can work through it. I keep thinking I’m still 25 instead of almost 50 and that all of this “extra” that I’m trying to squeeze into my days isn’t going to catch up with me. Wrong.
My guest today, Katie Hardie, confirmed that I need to get back on the health train. I cannot ignore the damage I’m doing by not taking care of myself. As the famous book says, the body does indeed keep the score.
During my conversation with Katie, we chatted about:
- Her personal burnout and pivot story
- Her company, My PEAK, and how she works with her clients
- How familiar she is with the ego story of “I will be different” than others when it comes to neglecting our health
- The small steps we can take to regain our health
- How the corporate world could learn a thing or two about athletic routines
- How we can break the cycle of self-sabotage
Overachieving, Under-Recovering: Breaking the Corporate Burnout Cycle with Katie Hardie
Happy early fall to everyone in the Northern Hemisphere and summer to those in other places and spaces in the world. It’s been so hot and humid in Chicago that I’m very excited about fall this year. In fact, I’ve had my first Pumpkin Spice Latte within the first day or two that Starbucks started offering them again. And did you see that Pumpkin Spice Latte commercial with Martha Stewart and Belmont Cameli? It was really cute. Anyway, I’m ready for sweater weather.
I’m also ready to tell you one of my deepest, darkest secrets. Here it goes. I go through fits and starts of taking care of myself. In some periods, I’m really on top of my stuff. I work out, drink my water, get my sleep. In the last year or two, not so much. I’m working more, sleeping less, and feeling like garbage. And the biggest secret of them all? I lie to myself that I can work through it. I keep thinking I’m still 25 instead of almost 50 and that all of this “extra” that I’m trying to squeeze into my days isn’t going to catch up with me. Wrong.
My guest today, Katie Hardie, confirmed that I need to get back on the health train. I cannot ignore the damage I’m doing by not taking care of myself. As the famous book says, the body does indeed keep the score.
During my conversation with Katie, we chatted about:
- Her personal burnout and pivot story
- Her company, My PEAK, and how she works with her clients
- How familiar she is with the ego story of “I will be different” than others when it comes to neglecting our health
- The small steps we can take to regain our health
- How the corporate world could learn a thing or two about athletic routines
- How we can break the cycle of self-sabotage
Important Links
About Katie Hardie
Katie Hardie, Board Certified Holistic Nutritionist and FDN Practitioner, is a comprehensive provider for holistic health and performance programming! Her company, My PEAK, helps performance-minded individuals who value high output wake up ready to tackle the day, have amazing poops, and find the right foods for their bodies to skip the energy dips. If these things aren’t happening, you’re missing out on peak physical, mental, and emotional peak potential. Just a few of many normalized symptoms of untapped output include waking up in the middle of the night, increased body fat especially around the mid-section, and burnout.
Katie holds advanced training in nutrition, sport and performance psychology, strength and conditioning, and culinary arts. With this comprehensive knowledge, her programs bridge the gap between scientific principles and practical application, helping professionals achieve sustainable peak performance. Each of her carefully designed programs uses functional lab insights with personal feedback to create unique nutrition plans, strategic movement and recovery practices to help clients reconnect with their bodies and break free from one-size-fits-all solutions.
She empowers people who are doing “all the right things” but not seeing results to finally thrive, with clarity, energy, and the resilience to reach their fullest potential. Drawing from her own experiences as a former endurance athlete, ex-corporate professional, and mother, Katie understands firsthand how following mainstream “healthy” advice can lead to burnout, dysfunction, and missed signals from the body. Now, she guides clients to realize their peak potential through energy management in the forms of increasing nervous system resilience, stabilizing blood sugar levels, optimizing hormonal and gut health, and mastering the art of intentional recovery for the greatest output possible.
Katie is based in Colorado and loves traveling with her family, experiencing new places and foods together. In the mountains where she lives, she enjoys downhill mountain biking and skiing, but being landlocked doesn’t stop her from learning new skills like wingfoiling and surfing! In her free time, when Katie’s not out on an adventure, she teaches “hands-on-nutrition” aka: cooking classes to athletes and adults in her local community, demonstrating that good-for-you-food could and should taste amazing!
Welcome to the Brave Women at Work podcast. This is your host, Jen Pestikas. I’m so glad you’re here.
Happy early fall to everyone in the Northern hemisphere and summer to all of the other places and spaces in the world. It has been so hot and humid. It feels like a jungle here in Chicago. I’m being dramatic, but seriously, I’m very, very excited about fall this year. I’m sure if you went back to some of my fall episodes before I’m always excited about fall, but this one I’m extra excited and I’m going to give you an example.
I saw this commercial with Martha Stewart and Belmont Cameli for Starbucks because they’re a marketing machine. And I can respect some good marketing. It’s a fun commercial, so listen to it or watch it rather, and they were talking about the pumpkin spice latte. And I am not really a PSL girly, but I went and got me a PSL within the first day or two that Starbucks started offering them again.
A couple days earlier, I don’t know if you saw the unicorn Frappuccino was back. What was that about? It was sparkles and purple and pink and my daughters were, oh my goodness OMG. But I did, I was, yeah we’re gonna opt out of that. That looks a little unhealthy. It looks like a sugar bomb. Not like the PSL isn’t, but I really enjoyed it and cannot wait for some sweater weather.
I’m ready to tell you also one of my deepest darkest secrets. Here it goes. I go through these fits and starts of taking care of myself. And there are some periods where I’m really on top of my stuff. I work out, I drink my water, I get my sleep. I do not have an Apple Watch or an Oura Ring or all the gadgets because I think they would make me crazy, but I do the basic health taking care of myself, those things.
But in the last few years, I’m gonna be honest, not so much. I’m working more between Brave Women at Work which I love and my corporate work and my kids and all the things. I’ve been sleeping less. I’ve been feeling garbage because hello perimenopause. And the biggest secret of them all, this is the part that I want to share and out myself, is that I lie to myself about it. I lie to myself that I can work through it. I keep thinking that I’m still 20 to 25 years old instead of almost 50. And that all of this quote unquote extra that I’m trying to squeeze into my days isn’t going to catch up with me.
I know it’s wrong, and my guest today, Katie Hardy, she confirmed indeed that I am wrong, and then I need to get back on the health train. I cannot ignore the damage that I’m doing by not taking care of myself, point blank and stop. And as the famous book says, the body does indeed keep the score.
If anyone wants to be an accountability buddy for me, just go onto social media, send me a message and be let’s be accountability buddies or email me at hello@bravewomenatwork.com because I need some accountability right now to put my needs, my health needs first.
During my conversation with Katie, we chatted about her personal burnout and her pivot story. Her company, My Peak and how she works with her clients. How familiar she is with that ego story I just shared that I will be the different one than others when it comes to neglecting our health. The small steps we can take to regain our health and get back on that health train. How corporate and the whole corporate world could learn a thing or two about athletes and athletic routines. And how we can break the cycle of self-sabotage because I’ve already burnt out once, maybe even twice quite honestly, and I don’t want to go back there and I don’t want you to even go on that merry-go-round once.
Here is more about Katie. Katie Hardie, board certified holistic nutritionist and FDN practitioner is a comprehensive provider for holistic health and performance programming. Her company, My Peak helps performance-minded individuals who value high input, wake up early, and ready to tackle the day, have amazing poops, yes, she has that in her bio, and find the right foods for their bodies to skip the energy dips. If these things aren’t happening, you’re missing out on peak physical, mental, and emotional peak potential.
Just a few of many normalized symptoms of untapped output include waking up in the middle of the night, increased body fat especially around the midsection, and of course burnout. Katie holds advanced training in nutrition, sports and performance psychology, strength and conditioning, and culinary arts. With this comprehensive knowledge, her programs bridge the gap between scientific principles and practical application, helping professionals achieve sustainable peak performance.
Each of her carefully designed programs uses functional lab insights and personal feedback to create unique nutrition plans, strategic movement, and recovery practices to help clients reconnect with their bodies and break free from one-size-fits-all solutions. She empowers people who are doing all the right things but not seeing results to finally thrive with clarity, energy, and the resilience to reach their fullest potential.
Drawing from her own experiences as a former endurance athlete, ex-corporate professional, and mama, Katie understands firsthand how mainstream healthy advice can lead to burnout, dysfunction, and missed signals from the body. Now she guides her clients to realize their peak potential through energy management in the forms of increasing nervous system resilience, stabilizing their blood sugar levels, optimizing hormonal and gut health, and mastering the art of intentional recovery for the greatest output possible.
Katie is based in Colorado and loves traveling with her family, experiencing new places and foods together. In the mountains where she lives, she enjoys downhill mountain biking and skiing, but being landlocked doesn’t stop her from learning new skills like wing foiling, which I did not ask her about, and surfing. In her free time when Katie’s not out on an adventure, she teaches hands-on nutrition aka cooking classes to athletes and adults in her local community, demonstrating that good for you food can and should taste amazing. That sounds awesome.
Before we begin, please be sure to share this show with a family member, a friend, or a colleague. And of course, you know the ratings and reviews they matter. We’ve collected a few more just recently that I’ll read on a future show. Those ratings and reviews also motivate me. Leave that rating and review in Apple Podcasts. I promise it takes just a minute and I would so appreciate it.
Finally, if you haven’t downloaded any of the freebies from my website, check them out at bravewomenatwork.com. I have five ways to managing your imposter phenomenon, 24 leadership and career affirmations, and 10 tips to winning your next negotiation. Download one or all of them for free from bravewomenatwork.com.
All right, let’s welcome Katie to the show.
Well hello Katie, welcome to Brave Women at Work, how are you today?
Jen, I’m doing great. I’m so glad to be talking to you today.
Oh, yes, of course. I wanted to start, let’s dive right into you, your background, and a little bit more about your story. Tell us all the things.
I’ll just tell you some of the things because that would take a while. I think probably what would relate to you and your crew is I was always one of those hard workers from the Midwest. That’s what people take pride in is that great work ethic and it’s the thing that makes you successful or other people benefit from, you receive accolades from. And it can also be the exact same thing that drives you into the hole, into the ground. It just burns you out.
I had my first taste of that in high school. Just overcommitted across the board to the point where by my sophomore year in high school, my hormones were impacted and lost my period. I had already had it for a while, so that’s not healthy, that’s not normal. The response was, “Let’s just pump in some progesterone so you get it back.” Not, “Why did that happen in the first place?”
Fast forward out of college, working a sales job that I really was not amped about, and it involved a ton of time in the car. I lived in Denver at the time, driving down to the Tech Center, up north to Boulder, and then back to the Tech Center. It would be a couple of hours in the car every day that pulls from time in the gym, time to make real food, time to just chill, do anything else. This was before podcasts and things that would be productive in your car were happening, so it just felt like a total time suck. It was the first time I really noticed my stomach hurt all the time.
Again, my dad, so well-meaning, just wants to help his daughter, he’s a physician at that time. “I’ve got a sample of this for that symptom, and another sample of this for that symptom.” Just provided this arsenal of prescription meds that would help me with my symptoms, trying to make it go away. Still, I didn’t get that there’s a why behind this, that this probably doesn’t need to be happening. What I’ve learned since is all those situations were cries or my body trying to communicate, “Something’s not right inside, we’re trying to let you know.” Our current system is, let’s just put a band-aid on it and manage it to the point where it’s not as bad, but we’re still not actually solving the problem. You just keep on with that.
The thing that really got me waking up was when I was on a backcountry hut trip, which is skiing backcountry. It was a period of extremely high stress on paper. All the things you could check that would be stressful were checked. I was learning how to run and interpret functional labs at that point. Functional labs meaning blood, urine, stool, saliva, to understand what’s going on inside the body to help you identify optimal or peak performance or health, not just wait till it gets to the point of total breaking down and a diagnosis or a disease. I had just sent in a bunch of my fluids for labs and was on this trip. When I was skiing out, I fell down. I was like, “This is weird, embarrassing, why did I fall?” I went to stand back up and put my foot back in the binding and my knee bent backwards. I thought, “That’s got to be my ACL, that can’t be good.”
We got out of that situation. Once I got home, I had my results. My ACL completely tore. I got my lab results back and it was measuring stress hormones and sex hormones. Outside I looked fine. Inside my body was totally breaking down. My cortisol was through the roof. My DHEA, which is your repair, recover hormone to counter the cortisol, was completely tanked. I could go on and on about the results, but the point being my body was in a breakdown mode, not a repair, recover. That’s the exact time that either you get injured like that, you get an illness, or you’re burnt out, or all the above.
Even though I had all these experiences of my body not being happy with the chronic stress, it really took me seeing it on paper to be like, “Oh, this is why.” You can feel it and you can know it, but to see it, it was like, “Okay, that’s what’s happening.” That was my journey to just constantly driving for performance, achieving, all with the right reason behind it. Without the proper checks, balance, and strategy to incorporate recovery, we’ll end up in that hole of burnout, injury, or illness.
So were you in corporate at that time and did this all collide for you to exit your corporate journey? Tell me about that because you were in corporate. Did the whole corporate warrior thing like all of us. Let’s be honest, I was just talking to my mom about this recently, we often just don’t know there’s another option or another door to go to. We go to college and then we’re like, well I guess I have to start making money now, and then we bomb out in corporate if we don’t have a pre-defined field. So I was curious, what was the tipping point? Was it this or was it something else for you to leave corporate?
My tipping point to leave corporate was more around the stomach stuff hurting and me realizing in the cubicles, “This is not the ladder I’m excited to climb.” If there was that goal at the end, I could get through the hoops, but I was like, “This isn’t really what lights me up when I wake up in the morning.” That was when I decided to layer on more instead of doing it the right way. That’s when I went back for grad school and I was really burning the candle at both ends. Teaching fitness class before work, going to work, teaching another fitness class out of my lunch break, going back to work, then coaching, and then going to grad school from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m. And then rinse, repeat.
My brain and my body were not registering that that’s not sustainable over years and decades. It was, “This is the grind, this is what we do in the Midwest, this is what hard workers do, we’re not lazy.” It really took probably being sidelined. A forced recovery when you’re not planning it yourself is never the right timing. It really took sitting on the sidelines for a couple different things to be like, “Okay, the body needs to repair, recover, rebuild at some point to maintain that optimal output, not just physically but mentally, emotionally too.” Because as you talked about the burnout, that’s that mental, emotional overwhelm where you just don’t get reprieve from it. Maybe I’m a slow learner. It was a series of events.
So it wasn’t the knee. How close was the ACL tear to what you talked about or was it years in between?
Years. Oh yeah, years. I would get little pieces like, “Okay, this grind for something I don’t care about is not working,” but then it was a grind for something you care about versus keeping things into balance. I have a sport and performance psychology background, a strength and conditioning background, so I got these concepts on how I could apply them for other people, but sometimes applying them to yourself can be the hardest thing. You know it but you don’t always practice it.
I cognitively knew these concepts, but for me to actually recognize my body is no different than anybody else’s body. The best athletes prioritize sleep, human growth hormone production. They prioritize sleep, naps, nutrition, and everything around optimizing their recovery. Why did I think I was something special and didn’t need that? It took, “Alright, you are going to be sidelined and you can really think about it while you have all this extra space and not be moving.”
I guess then I’ll throw in something and I think this is ego, I think it’s complete denial, whatever. I have this thing where I think I’m different. I don’t know if your clients feel this way. “No, I’m superhuman. No, I can do all the things and I’m going to be the different one. I’m the one that’s going to play the roulette wheel and spin it and it’s always going to land on the right color.” Does that resonate with you when you talk to your clients?
Yes. And I would say to the ego piece, sometimes it’s somewhere on that ego spectrum, it’s a lack of value in your own needs. The ego is the output, the outcome, the accolades, the recognition, and we all have our own needs, and sometimes we don’t want to acknowledge that we actually have needs.
Yeah that makes total sense. So after being sidelined, years apart, is that what drove you to build your company My Peak or what was the impetus for the company build?
It was after the corporate stint where I was like, “Yes, I would like to basically create something that’s my vision and I can create that balance or lifestyle and how I want it to be.” That’s when I created my business and it evolved over the years as I took on different degrees or specialized certifications and training to really tailor it to what I saw people needing. You’re always seeing what people need because of what your experiences have led you to as well.
And I assume there’s no regret in all of these moves and building this business, correct? You are like, “No, I’ve been doing this and I really love what I’m doing.”
Yeah. That’s why you come to offer the things that you do, be the person you are, take on the shifts that you take on, because of all those challenges you’ve gone through, you learned so much more through them. While they’ve been maybe some of the higher stress points in my life, they’ve also been some of the most beneficial teaching opportunities and growth opportunities.
And going back to the corporate world, one thing I wanted to ask you there is how the corporate world could benefit approaching routines like athletes. I will give you an example where I know this is not right. I have had days, many days, I will out myself, where it’s six, eight meetings in a day. Where it’s boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I wonder why when I come home I’m a zombie. Or on Friday night, if I’ve done that a whole week, again I’m outing myself, why I can’t get off the couch on Friday at 6:00 p.m. or 6:30. So I was wondering if you could comment on how the corporate world could benefit having a different routine, more like a high-performance athlete, versus how we’re taught to run in corporate.
What you just described is basically a marathon. A marathon is going to take a recreational person probably four, fiveish hours, maybe six. What you just described is longer than what it would take to run a marathon. What pace are you going at during that? Are you going 50%, 100%? What percent would you say you are operating at?
It depends on the day. It depends on who I’m in front of. If it’s higher stakes meetings, lower stakes, one-on-ones. But remember, we’re Midwesterners. I would say I’m burning at about an 80% octane. Probably all the time and some are higher than others. That’s probably a fair Midwestern response.
Fair. Yeah. How many days in a row are you doing that?
I would say sometimes it’s week after week after week.
When you translate it to what an athlete’s doing, they have a strategic training plan. And then they have performance days that they’re training for. A marathon at 80%, that’s a pretty rigorous intensity to go. If somebody were to run a marathon day after day after day, week after week, that’s really going to take a toll on the body. You’re either not going to be able to maintain your 80% or your body’s going to start breaking down, slowing down, becoming less efficient, becoming less engaged, becoming less productive. That’s frustrating, which contributes to that downward cycle of, “My performance isn’t where I want it to be, I’m not as satisfied,” more of that negative side.
The flip side of that is thinking maybe more in terms of a sprinter mentality. Going 100% and then taking a little breather. In order to go 100% and give everything you have capacity-wise out, you actually need a recover. Recover does not have to mean a vacation, a sabbatical. It doesn’t even have to mean an entire day off. It can be strategic recoveries throughout the workday. When you said back-to-back meetings, are they on the hour like 12, 1, 2, 3 for the full hour?
Yeah, it can. Where I try to end them but then it goes hour to hour to hour to hour, literally like I’m a deli counter.
It just never ends. Just little things when you’re the person in charge of planning a meeting, take that hour and shrink it down to 45 minutes. Guess what, most people will get the exact same content covered in less time, they’re just more efficient with it. Then you’ve got that little breather in between where you can walk around, you actually have time to go to the bathroom. You can fill up your water, you can have a bite to eat, you can step outside and get some sunshine, fresh air. It’s not like you’re getting less done, you’re actually getting more done and then filling your tank. You have time to fill up your gas tank so you can continue driving. Because if you keep driving, driving, driving without going to the gas station, it’s going to stop at some point. At some point you need to get more gas.
We look at our days as minutes that are zero-sum. We are busy with a lot of the minutes, but not necessarily productive. If we can find little ways to fill our cup up throughout the day, energetically you’re just in a much better state to go. It’s like, “Alright, I can get through this chunk because I know there’s a little breather at the end of it,” versus, “Oh my god, this is an 8-hour stretch of meetings.” That has a very different intensity and heaviness to it than, “I can do 40 minutes, 45, 50 minutes,” and then be able to stand up. A lot of times we get this black and white thinking where it’s I’m either working or I’m lazy, I’m either doing something or I’m not. Reframing it where when I intentionally focus on those 10, 15 minutes and use them in a productive way, not doomscrolling, but doing something that’s actually going to expand your energy for the next meeting or the next task that you’re doing, then you’re much more efficient and you just feel better about it.
Okay, so that is the difference. Corporate is like slog, slog, slog, especially as you get to higher levels. I don’t want to say it’s a badge of honor, but it’s almost like, “I’m busy, so therefore I’m important,” versus having those breaks. Or going, “Does it really need to be an hour meeting? Can it be a half-hour meeting?” and forcing ourselves not to book anything for that half hour instead of trying to squeeze something else in. And the idea of prioritizing our needs, which I think is its own podcast. One thing I want to ask you is what do you find there? Is that its own psychology in and of itself that you work with your clients? Because it sounds like some of them, or many of them, don’t even believe that they deserve to take the break or have that downtime. How do you deal with that if they have that issue?
There can be a lot of subconscious beliefs going on that people are unaware of actually taking place below the surface. Figuring out, once something’s brought to somebody’s awareness, because they might not realize, “Actually my energy is much better if I drink 20 ounces of water before 10:00 a.m.” Sometimes it’s just raising that awareness and, “Oh, I can do that.” Other times it’s beliefs that have been downloaded upon us through the media, through our families, through people that we’re around.
One is calories are bad. Reframing that to, “My body gets nourished from the food and I need that for performance, for doing the best job I can do at work or on the field wherever that is.” If that doesn’t resonate, then there’s some deeper subconscious things going on where sometimes people find they are not creating space on their calendar to go grocery shopping or do the quick meal assembly so they can have breakfast. It’s because they are taking care of somebody else’s needs or doing something for somebody else all the time.
We get to the what, why is that behavior happening? Because the same behavior or lack of behavior can happen for completely different reasons. That’s where you can find out, is it I’m overcommitted? I don’t feel that my needs are more important than everyone else’s, so you’re constantly caregiving. You figure out what that is and then get into the next steps for how to work with that. Awareness is the first thing. “I didn’t even know to consider doing that,” or, “That’s great, I can do that.” It can go from there. The answer is tricky because it can be all the above.
Okay, so when I’m thinking of how do we break self-sabotage, it’s really an exploratory discussion. It’s not a cookie-cutter, where everyone has the same stuff.
Totally. Exactly. That’s where I find when you personalize conversations and approaches, that’s where you make the biggest breakthrough and transformation. Because we’re all so different. From a physical perspective, we all have very different nutritional needs. We have different physiques. We have different inputs that we come into the world with. We have different routines. Would one cookie-cutter approach make sense? In my opinion, no. When people try to follow something that worked great for somebody else and it doesn’t work great for them, they’re like, “Something must be wrong with me.” No, you’re just following the wrong approach for you.
Let’s be real, and I’m not downing Western medicine, I think it has its place, and I will say P.S. we’re not doctors. But I also think that we don’t have these kinds of conversations when we go in and get a physical.
Correct. Because the way our system is, the doctors don’t have time for that. They want to, but they’ve got 7 to 12 minutes most likely with you and you can barely get an intake in that amount of time, let alone a meaningful conversation with strategic action items specific to that person. That’s what medicine used to be, very personalized. When we tried to make it more efficient, that’s where it became mass-produced recommendations and people following recommendations that likely aren’t written for them so therefore not getting the results they want.
We also have this system that really keeps people settling versus wanting to excel or optimize or feel great and loving life and loving what you do. It’s a system that keeps people very dependent on managing symptoms, so nobody’s really operating at their best. Between the mass production of everything and the disease symptom management, we’re missing a huge opportunity for excellence or just feeling great and loving life and loving what you do.
Okay, that makes total sense. So with that, and I think this will speak to, I know it speaks to me, I talked to you before we hit record on this, increased body fat, perimenopause is, I’m just going to swear here for a minute, it’s an ass-kicker. It’s an ass-kicker. Poor sleep, check. Burnout, I’ve already had that happen. So the question is how does that triad represent an opportunity? Is it the wake-up call for that peak output, versus I’ll just say this, and I’ve said it on the podcast, and it’s very sad to me, and I am still on an anti-anxiety medication, so I’m not here to down anyone that is on them. But when I went through burnout, I’ll never forget I had a physician’s assistant prescribe their symptom management and say, “Do you know how many times I prescribe this to working moms every day?” It broke my heart when I heard that. It was not, “Are you doing too much?” or “Do you need to slow it back?” There was never any conversation about that. It was only the dispense of the medication, which again, it has helped me, and I have decided to stay on it, but I also know that I am symptom managing versus getting to the root of it. So I wanted to talk about body fat, poor sleep, burnout, and that triad, and how is that the news flash to be like, “Hello, what you’re doing is not working, and what can we do about it?”
That’s exactly what I was starting to mention with your body giving out these little cries for help, and it’s very quiet at first, and then they get louder the more we push through it. We very much have been trained, conditioned, and rewarded to push through them or ignore them. When you go to a provider, instead of asking you about your diet, asking you about what’s going on in your life right now, they go straight to the antidepressant or anti-anxiety medications. This is extremely common.
What’s interesting is if you were to look at somebody’s gut, the microbiome or the bugs in our gut, so much communication happens between our gut and brain. So much of our neurotransmitter production and storage happens in the gut. Things like serotonin, dopamine, GABA, these are neurotransmitters or chemical messengers that quickly talk with the rest of the body that help us feel happy, help us feel motivated to go do things, help us then be able to calm down. Just be able to mentally function. Our immune system is very prevalent in the gut as well.
The other thing, hormones. You mentioned perimenopause. When we look at sex hormones, they are actually downstream of our stress hormones. The stress hormones being that cortisol, DHEA. Cortisol is the stress hormone, DHEA is that repair, counter-balance to it. On the DHEA side of the equation, that is upstream of your testosterone, estradiol. Now we’re getting into the sex hormones. When our bodies crank out cortisol, which is a very healthy response and necessary for our survival, you need cortisol to be able to run away from danger. You need cortisol to get your butt out of bed and go hit the gym or deal with emails and meetings. It should spike in the morning and then it should continue to drop throughout the day. It should be within certain levels as well.
If it is chronically elevated, or just a completely dysfunctional pattern, you’re starting to pull from resources from tomorrow. Tomorrow’s long-term projects would be things like reproduction, sex hormones, digestion, pancreatic enzymes, anything that’s going to help break down your food. Thyroid, immune cells. All those things don’t matter if you’re not here tomorrow. Our bodies’ responses are built upon a very ancient system of primal survival in the wild, man versus beast. We have these exact same physical responses to perceived threats, emotional threats, mental threats, our thoughts, perfectionism, high achievers, those thoughts and some of those subconscious things going on that we’re often unaware of. Those can all elicit that exact same stress response of the cortisol elevating.
When our cortisol has been elevated, all of a sudden it’s going to start compromising our progesterone production. Progesterone is that hormone that helps people feel more chill, things can roll off our backs, it helps us be able to sleep through the night. What happens when somebody’s progesterone is low, or their microbiome is deficient and isn’t producing the neurotransmitters? The exact same symptoms as anxiety, depression. So which one is it? But the go-to is put them on some drugs, and yes, band-aids do feel good, and sometimes we need a band-aid. It’s not a judgment call of right or wrong, because I’m very much in support of a band-aid if it allows people to then have motivation to do the work, to then what is the plan for maybe not being on the band-aid at some point. Versus you’re going to be on this for life.
For example, eczema, if skin’s all itchy and red and painful, does that happen because of a lack of skin cream? No, because we know tons of people who don’t have eczema and they don’t use skin cream. But our solution is skin cream if you’re going from the outside in. If you’re going from the inside out, it’s very much about what foods are we having, what inflammatory things can we remove, what’s the immune system doing, what’s the leaky gut. You can reverse that naturally within a month, and that is going to speak more to why is it there in the first place, whereas the cream, you’re dependent upon that forever, unless you start changing. Same with any of those anti-anxiety or anti-depression medicines. I don’t want to discount, there’s a place and a time for those things, and often it’s lacking that discussion about the whole picture. We’re really zoomed in on this one thing and just slapping a band-aid on it because that’s all we have time for in a 7-minute appointment. Doctors get rated on how well the patient felt like their symptoms went away. They’re also asking the doctor for that because our pharmaceuticals are marketing directly to the consumer, which isn’t done in most countries in the world. The doctors are under extreme pressure to do what the patient’s asking for because that’s what’s going to help them in the short term, but it doesn’t address the longer-term issue.
Yeah, it really doesn’t. It just goes slap, slap, but all of the stuff underlying is an issue. I totally get that. The women that listen to the show, I know they’re very smart, they’re very astute, they’re very well-read, but I want to go through this one more time from your perspective. The idea of real foods versus perimeter shopping, all that stuff. Tell me what your definition of real foods are.
Anything that you can tell by looking at it what it is or what’s in it. For example, an apple, a whole apple, that’s an apple. If you gave somebody applesauce, if they were really young, they might not realize that’s a mashed up apple. Let’s take potatoes. That looks like a potato, pretty much looks like how you’re going to eat it, especially if they’re chopped and roasted. Now bread, what’s in that? A lot of people don’t necessarily know all the ingredients in it because it’s processed.
The further you get away from its state in nature, that’s considered more processed. Usually there’s some additives and things added to it to make it more shelf-stable. Those are the things that become more and more unrecognizable by our immune systems and our bodies, and can likely create a more inflammatory response. Inflammation is the root of all issues in our bodies. When we’re talking about what are real foods, I think proteins like meats, and then vegetables, fruits. For some people, grains work well, but think about a whole version, not many people are eating wheat berries, but tons of people are eating bread. The origin is the same, the end product is very different. Keeping it super simple, meat, veggies, and then maybe more starchy veggies or grains depending on how people eat for their bodies.
Okay, so very, very simple eating. And if someone were to go away from processed foods into more of those real whole foods, how long would it take, and maybe it depends on the person, for them to start seeing a shift in energy, mood? Obviously, body composition was one of the things that I looked on your site, but that probably may take food and movement, right? I don’t want to take that, but let’s talk about energy and mood. If they make a conscious, intentional decision to move to real whole food eating, what would it look like and when would their energy and mood start to shift?
It depends on where they’re starting from and how big of a shift they make, how quickly, but days, within a day. It can be as quick as that. I’ve had people who’ve been in a very dark spot mentally with all the McDonald’s and processed foods that they’re doing, and just within a couple days of switching, just a completely different person. Completely different outlook on life, things aren’t heavy, they’re not just sleeping in and laying around, they’re excited about things again. That speaks to that inflammation.
Those foods that have all those extra ingredients that we don’t need, and the bad oils, and no nutrients, they’re calories but not actual nutrients, those are very inflammatory and really weigh us down. The foods that offer the most information and the most building materials for repairing your muscles or the cell membranes, or producing neurotransmitters, those are the ones that are very energizing and create vibrancy. That’s what leads to people just feeling awesome.
Okay, alright so it can be really quick. Talk to me about gluten as a sidebar. Gluten-free, it’s a trend, all that stuff. How do you know if you need to be gluten-free or not? Do we have to test? Should we just be gluten-free? It’s so confusing in this nation. I was curious about that.
So many good questions because not all gluten is created equally. The quality of food in pretty much every country except ours is much greater, higher quality. Gluten in Europe is more in the native form and people who have gluten issues here can often tolerate it fine there. I’m not saying celiac, but people who have more of those gluten sensitivities. Yes, gluten sensitivity is a real thing. You can measure it with your immune system, with a blood test. You can see how reactive your white blood cells are to different substances including the proteins in gluten.
As far as should people go gluten-free or not, how should they know? More symptoms are actually not GI-related than are. A lot of times people say, “My stomach feels fine after I eat it, I’m fine with it.” That’s a small subsection of people who have GI symptoms related to it. If you do, then yes, your body does not like that at least right now. A lot of times when we have a leaky gut or a hyperpermeable gut, meaning we have these barriers in our intestines that separate the outside world, which your GI tract is the outside world, to the inside world, where our blood and everything is moving. Anytime you eat gluten, it opens up those gates, those channels, so the outside world can talk to the inside world.
The more often that happens, the more leaky your gut is, and the more our immune systems get flared up with any environmental thing. It can start becoming reactive unnecessarily to very neutral threats. That’s where you see people responding to eggs, or peanut butter, or salmon, things that actually should not be a problem. Their immune system doesn’t like it because it’s been on hyper alert with the tight junctions being opened too much.
Symptoms people could be looking for maybe 30 minutes or so after you eat, your joints, or just in general after you’re eating gluten, are your joints stiff or achy, headache, some people get bloated. Some people hang onto that midsection weight, or retain fluids even more than they want to, it’s harder to lose weight. With some people it can be phlegm in the back of the nose or the throat. Brain fog is a big one. More ADHD symptoms, just having a hard time calming down because it can be exciting for some people, or numbing for others, we’re all a little bit different. Yes, from the physical GI side, gas, bloating, those are signs that your body doesn’t love it.
When we work on the leaky gut and not have it be open all the time, it’s meant to open and close, but we just don’t want it open all the time. When we work on that, the goal is for your body to actually be able to handle more of those things occasionally. We don’t necessarily need to eat pizza and cake every single day, and it is sometimes nice to enjoy it occasionally. Finding that balance between if we don’t have it every day, then our body can actually tolerate it much better when we do have it. Our culture likes to be all in or all out, it’s either right or it’s wrong. It’s what’s right for your body and how frequently, how much can your body handle it right now, and that can change with time.
Okay, that’s really, really helpful. You mentioned briefly about inflammation and I know for a fact that inflammation is the root of all of it. But I’ve also read that there are sometimes inflammatory foods for some people, not others. Is that where you would say working with someone like yourself where you know what’s inflammatory to your body, because you can’t go to Target or your local grocery store and be like, “This one is a no-go for you but this is a yes for you.” It’s confusing. How do we know?
If people really want to know, you can do a mediator release test, it’s a blood test, and that’s what’s measuring what your white blood cells are doing with 176 different foods, additives, it gets into the meats, the veggies, the fruits, the seasonings, like vanilla and mint and coffee, it gets very detailed. People can see right now what their body is reacting to. Now this isn’t a life sentence, it can change, and upstream of that is the leaky gut. We always want to go upstream. With the sex hormones, we have to go upstream to the stress hormones. That’s where that burnout thing really starts impacting our sex hormones and our digestion. When those stress hormones are chronically dysregulated, it’s also going to throw off our gut, and that can make our gut more permeable or leaky. It’s all related, and it all comes back to how is my body reacting and adapting or not to my current stress load.
Okay, so it does come back to stress. Darn it.
Dang it, I know. But I will say, this is what’s great about hard workers and go-getters, is the thing that gets you into the hole potentially is exactly the thing that gets you out, when you have the right strategy and understand what your body needs. It’s not like, “I can’t work hard anymore.” It’s, “How do we work smarter, not just harder or more?”
When you understand, if an athlete’s doing sprints, some athletes can go at a faster pace, some athletes can recover in 10 seconds, somebody else might need 2 minutes and 10 seconds. We’re different. When you find out what your body is capable of right now, which can change, then you know what you can do. That’s really that personalization to it, the personalized medicine versus the mass recommendations, that’s what it comes down to.
Those are actually some of my people who’ve had the biggest transformations are the ones you’re like, “Wow, they’re really doing all these things, are they going to feel comfortable making some shifts for a period of time to get through it and then on the other end come up higher?” Because of that dedication, those people have the fastest results. “Holy cow, I didn’t realize for a period of time doing less, eating more, my energy increases, my body fat decreases, my skin’s glowing,” things that are counter to the message that we’ve been downloaded: calories in versus calories out, period. That doesn’t take into account the hormones. The stress hormones included. That’s where when people start getting a little taste of that, “Okay I get it now,” but you have to feel it.
You have to feel that change, right. What would you say, because this show is about bravery, what are one to two ways that you believe women can be braver at work today?
That’s a great question. I think clearly understanding your needs and then creating your structure of your day around that. That might involve communicating some things. Clearly communicating those boundaries, if you’re the one in charge of the meetings, we’re starting on time, we’re ending on time, period. If you can’t get your things organized, I’m going to give you the five-minute warning during your time.
Things they can do are, I’m actually going to block out time for myself to eat. Not stand around and walk around as I’m eating, but sit down in a chair, chew my food, and prioritize my body’s physical needs, which ties into your mental needs and performance as well. Being really clear with what are your needs, doing a little exercise for yourself, lining that up with your calendar, and then really actually blocking out space on your calendar for those things. It might be being more efficient with the things you’re doing and cutting out the clutter, the inefficiencies, energy leakages in our days, in the meetings we go to, however the structure is, but then actually claiming that space on your calendar.
It might be to go grocery shopping. I’m going to grocery shop for 15 minutes on this day, it does not need to take longer than that. I’m going to sit down to eat and nobody can have access to my calendar for this 15 or 30 minute chunk, because I need to fill my gas tank so I can perform the rest of the day. Think about bookending your day. Morning, when you’re transitioning out of bed, and right before bed. How can I transition into the day, and how do I wind it down before I get to bed so it can be a really effective recovery.
Okay, that’s really helpful. How can women, or any of our listeners, find you and your work with My Peak online?
My website is mypeak365.com, and for anybody who wants an action item they can do, go to mypeak365.com/shoppinglist. I have a 10-minute shopping list. I have a culinary background, and I did not grow up loving or knowing how to cook. I like to give people the cliff notes of how do you make this approachable, fun, and taste delicious without spending a whole bunch of time. It’s a 10-minute shopping list, gets you in and out of the store, a little bit of that perimeter concept. It focuses on the proteins and veggies and carbs and fats that are great to just have. It also has a few super quick recipes to go with that. What do I do with them? Or some people use it just to have those ingredients in the house so they have some options. That would be a great way. Or if people are on Instagram, I’m at @mypeak365, throw up some videos and quick tips and just some good action items for people to think about and implement into their day.
Oh that’s amazing. Well Katie, thank you so much for being here. This was very educational and informative for me, and a kick in the pants to get back on it. Thank you so much for the work that you do and for being here.
Well hopefully it was a nudge and not too big of a kick in the pants, right?
I know, I think I need a kick in the pants right now to look at those stress hormones, really get back in it. And you obviously are very well-studied in this area, so I really appreciate you being here.
Well Jen, thanks so much for having me, I really enjoyed our chat.
Well, that’s a wrap on my discussion with Katie today. I hope you found our conversation both valuable and inspiring.
Here’s a practical question from today’s conversation. What is one action step you can take to improve your health over the last quarter of 2026? Like I say to my team, my own family, even myself, we still have some time to go, we have over 90 days to go, folks. That’s more than enough time to start a positive habit and make some real change. So to that, I say, let’s go.
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Until next time, show up, take care of yourself, and be brave.
