When does it make sense to do it on your own in your health journey and when should you really lean in and find an expert you can know, like, and trust to be your guide?
In this episode, Kacey breaks down one of her client's year-long journey and what she is considering for the next steps based on all she has learned in her time working with Kacey.
Remember to share this episode if this helped you today and please leave a review!
When does it make sense to do it on your own in your health journey and when should you really lean in and find an expert you can know, like, and trust to be your guide?
In this episode, Kacey breaks down one of her client's year-long journey and what she is considering for the next steps based on all she has learned in her time working with Kacey.
Remember to share this episode if this helped you today and please leave a review!
[00:10] Kacey K: Welcome to the Simply Healthy You podcast, your place for overcoming overwhelm with your health to reach your fullest potential. I'm your host, Kacey Kanan. I am so pumped to have you here. I'm a recovering, burnt out high achiever who is diagnosed with an autoimmune thy condition by my early thirty s. I didn't realize that running myself ragged in the name of being superwoman and determined to achieve all the things in life was killing my body. I created this podcast so that you don't have to continue the struggle like I did for over a decade. I sat down, studied the data, and simplified what it means to prioritize your own health needs so that you can be the best for all the things on your to do list. Everything you hear on this podcast, I have tested and implemented in my own super packed life with my family to bring you the tips, tools and strategies that will keep your life simply healthy.
[01:06] Kacey K: Hey. Hey. And welcome to another episode of Simply Healthy You. I'm your host, Kacey Kane, an integrative health practitioner and certified Holistic Nutritionist with a Master's in Psychology. And I'm here to bring you science based conversations to help you live a healthier and happier life. I apologize for the little bit of sniffles and things that I still have. I know in the last episode I mentioned this too, I thought it was maybe a cold, but it seems like everyone in our area right now is getting hit with some crazy allergies. So I don't know what's going on in central Indiana, but I talked with my physical therapist the other day, I talked with my herbalist friend and we're all kind of struggling with the allergies, so not going away yet. We are treating with some homeopathy and we are using a bunch of herbs which are usually my go to remedies for things and they are certainly helping to mitigate the effects. But this post nasal drip for me is really not cute. It's not cute, it's not sexy. And that's how we're starting this episode today. But it is a beautiful fall morning when I am recording this. I've got the window cracked open. There's some wonderful, like 50 to 60 degree air blowing in. It's fabulous. I hope it is beautiful where you are and where you are listening to this today. So today's episode, when to DIY with your health. How do you know when you can DIY? Or when you need to invest in an expert to guide you? And this was inspired by a conversation that I was having with a client just yesterday because right now we are starting to wrap up this group of Simply Healthy Academy clients. And so we are talking about what their next steps are going to look like, what their options are. As you might know, if you've been here for a bit, clients always have the option to repeat Simply Healthy Academy. It is chocked full of information, and it has been immensely helpful for many clients to repeat Simply Healthy Academy and go through it multiple times. So this particular client that I was talking to, she's completed Simply Healthy Academy three times now, and she's really wondering what the best next steps are for her. She's trying to come from an empowered place, which is what we focus on a lot in Simply Healthy Academy and really building up our belief in ourselves and our ability to take care of ourselves and rebalance our health, all of those fabulous things. But she is in the middle of a Candida bacterial optimizer protocol. She also has a few more protocols ahead of her. We did lab testing with her. She completed three of the major lab tests that I recommend, the Functional medicine lab tests that I work with my clients on. And so she's in the middle of one right now to help with balancing her gut. She had some Candida overgrowth, some bacterial overgrowth, and that's one of the first things that we attack when we see that on labs, because those are living pathogens. Those are a living imbalance within your body, and it greatly affects your ability to absorb nutrients and for anything else to be balanced. So she's in the middle of that right now. That is a twelve week protocol, very simple to follow, but it does take some time to make sure that we really get those fuckers back in line. To have some level of yeast in our gut is normal and beneficial. But anytime anything overgrows in our gut, even if it's beneficial bacteria, it really just throws off the balance of things. So she's in the middle of that. And then after that, we also saw some heavy metals on her hair, tissue mineral analysis, and we've seen some Adrenal exhaustion. We've seen that in her hormone panel. Her cortisol levels, her curve isn't quite where it needs to be for her most optimal health, or any of our most optimal health, really. She is post menopause, so we have to worry a little bit less about her reproductive hormones, but they have been impacted. She's still experiencing some symptoms of menopause, and that really shouldn't be the case post menopause. You don't have to live with those forever. So she's got a few things lined up of what we're working on, supporting her Adrenals, doing these protocols. And while she fully believes that she has the tools now, she understands the tools from Simply Healthy Academy. It's been really interesting to watch her evolve in the rounds of Simply Healthy Academy. The first round, she was very much focused on the nutrition piece. We talk about 17 servings of plants. I've talked about that many times on the podcast here and why that's optimal for health. And so she was very focused on that in the first round. In the second round, she really wanted to focus more on the exercise and movement component and being able to incorporate more movement into her life. And, you know, we have Coach Kelsey, who is our strength and conditioning coach, who works with everyone inside of Simply Healthy Academy on an individual level to help them figure out their optimal exercise and daily movement routine. So in the second round, that was really this client's focus. She was really focused on getting her movement up. And, I mean, she succeeded at these things in every single round, but she always, by the end of each round, realized that there was another piece that was kind of missing for her and that her journey didn't quite feel complete. And in this round of Simply Healthy Academy, she has really leaned into the mental health work, the mindset work, and, I mean, she has just blossomed and transformed and she is a completely different person than she was a little over a year ago when she started doing these programs with me. It has been an absolute pleasure and joy to watch this journey for her and to get to be a guide with her on this journey. I mean, I'm just so stinking proud of her. I'm so stinking proud of her. So she has full belief in herself at this point. She's felt lots of the things in her body start to rebalance and start to re acclimate to a better place. And even after just a month of this candida protocol that she's on, she's noticed a drastic difference in her digestion already, which has been fantastic. But the thing with these protocols and she mentioned this, is she was kind of thinking that she either wants to fly the nest and go out on her own for a bit or she's thinking about my new Simply Healthy Society that I have created for Simply Healthy Academy. Grads so when someone is ready to move on from Simply Healthy Academy, where do they go? If they are in the middle of some of these protocols and things, a program that can still be supportive of them but gets to let them fly on their own a bit? And so she's considering both of those options. Simply Healthy Society is only a once a month group coaching call. It is not going to be nearly as structured. It's something I newly created for my clients because I saw that they sort of needed this middle ground step before they really took things on their own. And so it's going to have once a month calls, but it's not going to have modules. It's not going to be structured programming. It's not necessarily going to be new learning going on. I am going to take it by what I see clients needing. It is really going to be a place for clients who are continuing to do protocols or who are interested in doing deeper dives into their lab testing and being able to help them along on that journey. Being able to help them when they're doing a protocol and they're starting to experience some symptoms flaring or something like that, to be able to say, hey, yeah, that's normal. That's a normal reaction, or, no, maybe we need to scale back your protocol a little bit. Or maybe we need to try this thing a place where they can do retesting to make sure that everything has gotten cleared out of their system or rebalanced in the way that it should be. So that's what I created simply Healthy society for. And I'm really glad that I have that option. And she's really excited to have that as an option as well, because she is sort of in this middle ground when she's in the middle of a protocol now and then has more protocols in front of her, plus learning how to wean off of some of the supplements. Many of the supplements that she's on are meant for a temporary period of time to help build her body back up. And then once she is at that place, she can wean off of those supplements and just have her basic foundation of things that most of us need because we just can't get enough of it from food. And then she gets to live her life after that. And so when you have the tools, but you still need support to get through the unknown parts, I think it's still a time where you need to be investing in an expert to help you. Once you're through that, maintaining gets to be your journey. It gets to be whatever you want it to look like. And I think it's a perfectly great time to be pushing yourself to DIY do it yourself. You've got the tools, you've got the strategies, you've gone through the protocols, you are ready to take the reins fully and be on your way. And I will say we are not handholding in any of these programs. I certainly do when it comes to the protocols, I do lay everything out very clearly for clients. I don't want there to be guesswork when it comes to your protocols, right? So here's what your diet is going to be, here's what your supplements are going to be. And the company that I work with, Equal Life, their protocols that they have put together are just fantastic because it really takes all of that guesswork out as far as the supplements go as to what it is that you need to be doing. And they also have great dietary recommendations for certain ones like the Candida Protocol and Bacteria protocol. You really have to do some specific changes to your diet for that short period of time, for that twelve weeks, in order to make sure that your protocol is going to be most effective. Right, but then once you're through all of that, maintaining gets to be your journey. If you don't have the tools or you haven't been fully able to grasp and implement a lot of the tools and strategies or found something that works for you in particular or I mean, any of those things. Right. You've downloaded free guides, right? I have a free hormone guide that gives you a lot of the foundation that I give. I mean, it is the foundation that I give to my clients, but we certainly do build on that in Simply Healthy Academy. And executing based on your specific needs is an entirely different story than, okay, I've got the foundation. Like I'm good now, right? Most of us, it's not that straightforward. I wish it was. And I do still think that my free guide is immensely helpful because if you can get started with that, you're at least doing something as a step in the right direction. Do I think that following everything on that guide is going to help you magically change everything about your health? No, I don't think it's going to magically transform everything about your health. I wish that I could put together one simple guide like that and that was all it could be. The reality is we are each unique individuals and I really don't know what's going to work for your health until I start working with you, until I start unpacking those things. So I think if you don't have all the tools yet or you're not sure what the right tools are for you to use, or the right program or any of that kind of stuff, this is when you need to be investing with your health. This is not the time to be DIYing with your health. You can download all the free guides from different practitioners like myself and put them all together, but that doesn't mean that these guides that we put out as a general foundation for everyone, that doesn't mean that's going to take care of everything that you have going on. Like I said, for most of us, it's much more complicated than that. Now, if you download my free guide and you implement everything from that free guide, and that's all you needed. I am so happy for you. Because then you embarked on this journey well before things got so depleted and out of balance in your system that you didn't need much to get back to where you needed to be. So, I mean, I am applauding for you on that because that's fantastic. The unfortunate part is that most of us don't realize that this is happening until we are so far into it that it is really debilitating us. In which something like my free guide is absolutely the foundation that you need to start. But what you need to do from there is going to be unique to you and your situation. And this is why we have functional medicine lab testing, right? Every single I have a few clients who are on this candida protocol right now and they all had different markers come up on their labs, same outcome, right? They all need to do this same protocol. But how they got there and how it manifested in their body was slightly different. And that's important for me to pay attention to because what other supplements that they need to add into their build back up routine is kind of what I call it. The twelve to 16 weeks of building their body back up with supplements that looks slightly different for every single client. So the candida protocol is the same, right? The way that we kill that off is the same but depending on how it's depleted each person, they are going to need a different combination of supplements in order to bring themselves back up. This is why it is so important when you are beginning your health journey that investing in an expert is going to be crucial to your immediate success and your long term success. This is why I have so many women that repeat simply Healthy Academy multiple times. I had 100% retention of all of my clients from the last group into this one. That's happening right now. There are 20 modules inside this program. There are 21 live group calls inside of this program and a whole ton of tools and strategies to try out and help you on your health journey. There is a reality that there's some trial and error to this. What works for you is not necessarily going to work for the person next to you. Now again, I stand by that the foundation will be the same and needs to be the same for all of us as women as to the basic building blocks of what our body needs. But the way that that becomes sustainable for you and the way that these changes become sustainable for you is going to be completely different in many ways to your neighbor sitting next to you. So there is no way in one round of Simply Healthy Academy to focus on it all. You can't possibly implement everything that we're teaching you. But I am of the mind of I want you to have all of the information so that when you're ready to come back to it, you have it and you can. I am not gatekeeping here. I do not want to keep these things a secret so that you have to keep paying me. My clients keep coming back not because they have to, but because they want to. Because their experience has been so beneficial in the time that they have been working with me that while they have all of the information they can go back and revisit the modules anytime. They can look at the replays of the live calls because we always record every single one of them. You have lifetime access to all of that information. Many of them choose to stay in the program for subsequent rounds because they want that support and that accountability and they want to hear it again. They want to be able to absorb that information a little bit differently. And every single time a client has repeated, they've learned something new or they heard something different that clicked better the second or third time around. And like I said, this client that sparked this podcast idea that I was talking with yesterday, her journey has looked different in every single round. And she just says how happy she is that she chose to continue and chose to keep reinvesting in her health. Because if she hadn't, she knows that she would have never gotten to this point in just a little over a year's time. For those who are truly committed, like this client, this kind of approach is absolutely life changing. She is an entirely different person in mind, body and soul in three rounds of Simply Healthy Academy, which like I said, has been just a little over a year of her life. She's been struggling with some of the things, both mentally and physically for decades and they are resolving themselves. She is bringing awareness to some mental health things that she hadn't even realized were a big factor in her health journey. I've talked many times on here about, from my perspective, with my background in psychology, about how mental health can truly hold us back in our physical health and is definitely a key to unlocking our optimal health and living our best life. So she's been not only working on the physical part, but now really honing in on the mental part. And we are seeing so many things in her body changing, resolving, rebalancing, all because she invested in the support. The difference between DIYing your health and investing in an expert to help you is truly the amount of time it takes you to reach your goal. Someone like myself can help you get from A to B in drastically less time than if you were doing yourself. And I know that because I lived it. This journey for me has been more than a decade of learning and for my clients it gets to be so much faster. When you think about it, in the grand scheme of things like, yes, a year kind of sounds like a long time, it sounds like a lot of money. Investing all of that in the program, in the protocols, in the supplements, all of that, it sounds like a lot, right? But in the grand scheme of things, this woman is in her 50s. Is this one year and this amount of money really that much more than a Blip in the total picture of her life? And that's exactly how she viewed it. And I think part of it is because she's in her 50s, she had this ability to reflect and say I have spent so much of my life struggling with these things. This is nothing compared to what I've had to go through. And for some of us who might be a little bit younger than that perhaps are not looking at it as much in that way of how long have I been struggling with this thing? Is it worth it for me to invest this money now, invest this time now, invest this energy now, and actually get to spend more of the rest of my life enjoying things and not having these things holding me back. This journey for me has been more than a decade of learning and it's the very impetus behind why I created my business. One of them, because I don't want to see anyone else struggle for as long as I have. And I'm still not at the end of my journey. I am still discovering things about my health. I had two babies in the middle of my journey and that definitely halts things. There's only so much that you can do when you are pregnant or when you are breastfeeding because it's just not safe for your child. And so that definitely slowed things down for me. And I think that's a reality for many women in my age range, right? So I think you have to think about when DIYing is actually holding you back, when it's actually making things take longer for you. Whereas if you invested in help from someone like myself where I can get you from A to B in drastically less time, it's really fucking worth it, right? So if you're considering investing in your health, one, it's the right choice. If you want real results, you need to find someone that you know, like and trust and that will always be the right choice. You will never regret doing that when you find someone that you can know, like and trust and can give you the tools and the strategies that you need on your journey. And two, you will spend less money, less time and less energy when you have an expert to help you that can guide you through this. The amount of time that you're going to spend over a decade investing in your health or researching things on your own or listening to podcasts and reading articles and all the things that you might do that you probably have already done, trying to find the answers for your health, the amount of time that you have spent. You could have been in something like Simply Healthy Academy and already had all of the answers and a better strategy for going about helping with your health. You will spend more money over a decade on the other pills and the powders and the programs and all of the different fad things that will come up that seem like something that's going to help you or even the health issues. Yeah, sure, you have health insurance that kind of makes it seem like your health care, sick care is more affordable, but it's really not. You're paying health insurance premiums on the regular and those premiums are going to go up the more that you use your health insurance. You're still paying money out of pocket for a lot of these things. And if you're trying to see specialists, if you're trying to see functional medicine, doctors, Naturopaths, things like that, they're not always covered. So you are still paying that out of pocket anyway to get the answers that you want, when in less time, in a year's time versus ten years time, you could do something like Simply Healthy Academy and have the answers right there in front of you, have all the research that you need to consider. I mean, I give you more information than you probably want, but I am always of the mind of empowerment, and I want you to understand why I'm recommending the things that I recommend, why I teach the things that I teach. And I want you to be able to decide how you're going to incorporate that into your life. And the same with the other coaches. We all have a ton of science and research behind the recommendations that we make, and it would take you. I mean, between the three of us, we have decades and decades and decades of experience in our belts already. And you get all of that in a five month program, right? Even if you repeat it now, it's a five month program. Now. When this client I've been talking about in this episode started, it was a four month program. So she's done 510, 14 months. At this point, if you were to do three rounds now, it would be 15 months. But really, what is 15 months of your life when you can have all of the answers that you need and actually start to feel results for the first time ever, that you have results that are not going to be temporary, results that will sustain and will keep you healthy for the long term. So that's my opinion as this whole podcast is, I guess, on when you can DIY with your health. I think there's a lot of areas where download my freebie my Simply Nurtured hormones freebie. The link is below the show notes of every single episode. Download that. I think you could DIY those things. Absolutely. That's why I have it in a free download, because that is the building blocks of being able to support healthy hormones. Now, where it goes from there is up to you. I think that's part that you can DIY, but it's not going to fix everything. And if you're looking to fix the rest of the things that you have going on with your health, then you really need to be investing in order to get the results and spend less time, money, and energy. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Simply Healthy You. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast and leave a review. I greatly appreciate all of your support. Stay curious, stay healthy, and until next time, take care.
[23:20] Kacey K: Thank you so much for listening to the Simply Healthy You podcast. If these episodes are resonating with you. Go ahead and click that subscribe button and leave a review with all the great nuggets that you're taking away from today's episode, I promise you I read every single one of them, as your feedback is really valuable to me in creating future episodes. As your host, I look forward to having you join me for the next episode. But in the meantime, remember, keep it simple and eat more plants. Close.