Episode 377: Erin Holt’s 6-Month Thyroid & Hormone Protocol Update: What Worked and What Didn’t
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify
Is it really perimenopause, or just stress, habits, and thyroid shifts at play? In this episode, Erin is debriefing her 6-month thyroid and hormone protocol experiment.
After noticing changes in mood, cycle irregularities, fatigue, and PMS, she decided to run a full panel of labs, including thyroid markers, sex hormones, a DUTCH test, and a GI-MAP stool test.
Erin breaks down exactly what her labs revealed, the protocols she implemented, and the results she’s experienced that have shifted her energy, mood, and cycles.
Her biggest takeaway? Protocols aren’t one-size-fits-all. With the right testing, lifestyle shifts, and targeted support, you can move from feeling “off” to feeling like yourself again.
If you’re looking for 1:1 functional support, apply to work 1:1.
In this episode:
Why a “normal” TSH doesn’t always mean your thyroid is working optimally, plus the key marker Erin found functionally low
Erin’s favorite supplements to support thyroid conversion, adrenal resilience, and hormone balance
Why lifestyle habits, stress, and resiliency matter just as much as labs when addressing hormone health
The surprising supplement Erin stopped and what she replaced it with that made a “night and day” difference
Why so many people assume “hormone protocol” automatically means HRT – that’s not always the case!
Resources mentioned:
Applications are now open for the fall 2025 cohort of Funk’tional Nutrition Academy.
Erin’s FREE Hormone Food Guide
Apply to work with us 1:1 here!
Episode 357: Before You Jump to HRT - What Your Perimenopause Symptoms Might Really Mean
Episode 368: Perimenopause Isn’t Just About Hormones: What Every Perimenopausal Woman Should Know Before Starting HRT with Dr. Deanna Minich
Organifi supplement powder (save 20% on your order with code FUNK)
LMNT Electrolyte Replenishing powder (Use code FUNK and get a free sample pack with any purchase!)
OneSkin (Use code FUNK for 15% off your first purchase)
Qualia Senolytic (get up to 50% off and an extra 15% off your first purchase with link + code FUNKS)
Bon Charge (Use code FUNK to save 15%)
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So much of your hormone health is based on your daily habits, how you're living your life. Your hormonal picture, including thyroid, will tell that story, the story of how you're living your life. And so sometimes I wonder, like, is this really a thyroid issue or is this a habit issue? Is it perimenopause, or have you been ignoring your needs for 40 years? We're so quick to pathologize and we're so slow to acknowledge our habits, our behaviors, our patterns, and how all of those things impact our physiology.
Welcome to the Funk’tional Nutrition Podcast, spelled with a K, because we do things a little differently around here. I'm your host, Erin Holt, and I've got 15 years of clinical experience as a functional nutritionist and mindset coach, creating a new model that I call Intuitive Functional Medicine™, where we combine root cause medicine with the innate intelligence of your body. This is where science meets self trust. Your body already knows how to heal, and this show is going to show you how. If you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health, be sure to follow and share with a friend, because you never know whose life you might change.
Hello, my friends. Today I'm here to tell you all about my thyroid and hormone protocol update or my perimenopause update. I'm using air quotes. You can't see me, but just trust me. I'm using air quotes around the perimenopause word. So back in April, I talked about perimenopause and how I was experiencing some symptoms that made me question, is it perimenopause or am I just like nocebo, affecting myself? Because it's all I'm hearing about on my algorithm, on social media. I am being hit in the head with perimenopause content day after day after day. So that was episode 357.
I talked about perimenopause. You can go back to that episode to learn a lot more. I also did another show on perimenopause a few weeks later, episode 368. I spoke with Dr. Dana Minick, and we talked all about perimenopause. So if you want to learn more about perimenopause, those two episodes are for you. This one is about my update. In that episode, I shared that I did run some labs and I was putting myself on a protocol.
So here I am. I've been on that protocol for about six months, and I wanted to kind of give you guys a full debrief six months later. And I think that's kind of an important thing to note that I have been doing this almost six months now. Not a full six months, but almost. Because when we're listening to people on Instagram or TikTok, we might see people sharing their experience after a few weeks, like, oh, I just tried this thing and I'm getting immediate, fast, great results. Which is cool and not necessarily a problem. But when it comes to hormones, and I say this as a practitioner that has been working with women's hormones for years, you really need to give it time to see the different fluctuations. Hormones fluctuations fluctuate, right.
And so when we're starting any type of intervention for hormones, we need to give it a little bit of time. It can take three, sometimes even four months for the cycle to catch up. And not always, but sometimes. So I wanted to wait and give you the full debrief until I was on the other side of that. The other thing that you'll notice as I talk about my actual protocol is that it changed. I had to tweak some things based on how I was feeling, which is exactly how we operate in practice. I basically treated myself as my own client.
And what I always tell people is that protocols can change, they can shift over time. It's not like a set it and forget it. We're not handing somebody a list of supplements and being like, go take these, good luck out there. It's not just a plug and play template. And so I'll explain how I did shift some of my protocol and hopefully that could help you understand this concept and why it can be beneficial to work with a practitioner if you're attempting to do something like this for yourself. And that is exactly the work that we do here at The Funk’tional Nutritionist in our one to one care. So I will link up the application to work with us if that's something that you are looking to do. We do a lot of hormone stuff, we do a lot of thyroid stuff, we do a lot of gut stuff, we do all the stuff that I'm going to talk about today.
Anyway, I posted in my stories that I was doing this episode and I, I said if you have any specific question questions that you want me to unpack, post them here and I will be sure to get to them. And so really what we're going to cover is what my specific symptoms and signs were that made me like scratch my head and be like, okay, something's off here, what labs I ran and specifically what my labs said. You guys wanted to hear about lab specifics. And then also the protocol that I built for myself that I've been on since the end of March, beginning of April. Now one question did come in that I want to address and she said, said, do we need 800 tests to try this protocol? That made me laugh a little bit. So of course the protocol that I built for myself was based on my labs. But you do not need labs to start working on your hormone health. You do not need labs to start supporting thyroid physiology.
I always start with food as medicine. And so what I'm going to do for you guys is next week instead of a new episode, I'm actually going to share a lecture on deep nutrition for thyroid health. Thyroid nutrients, safe supplements. We're going to get into the nitty gritty of actually how to feed yourself for thyroid health, for hormone health. Really, really deep nutrition because this is what builds our bodies and our hormones from the inside out. And so this is like do not pass go, do not collect $200. Like get this on lock first and foremost. And you don't need labs for this.
I'll even get into some safe supplementation that are pretty much safe for anyone to support their hormone health. Even you don't have labs drawn. Also, I want to share with you a free resource that could be beneficial for you if you don't already have it. And that's our free hormone food guide. I will link it up in the show notes. It's really basic, easy to follow plan that can be super, super helpful. So if you're not already doing that, do that. I would even recommend doing that before you spend the money on labs.
Something else that I found rather interesting when I posted this call for questions about my hormone protocol update is that a lot of assumed I was taking prescription medication and hrt. So they assumed that by me talking about my thyroid hormone protocol, I was on hormone replacement therapy for thyroid and sex hormones. And this is like kind of the point I was trying to drive home with the previous podcasts that I did about perimenopause, about how much HRT is at the center of this conversation where people can't even hear hormone protocol without assuming it is hrt. To me, that really showcases just how much we're being hit over the head with the HRT conversation right now. And again, I unpacked that in those two episodes that I mentioned previously. I saw this post from Ebony Alchemy Allard on Instagram that I really loved. She says perimenopause is an initiation and call into deeper self source alignment in sovereignty. Yet for most People, it's another opportunity to be sold an ever growing list of symptoms and absorb a carefully marketed problem so that they'll buy another solution in quotes rather than listen and connect to their own inner authority in knowing.
And I co sign on that statement. That might piss some people off, but I, I do, I do co sign on that statement. I was listening to a podcast recently and it's from someone who works with a lot of female founders. And I like the way that she phrased this. She says stress comes out as physical manifestations and perimenopause confusion. And I really like the way she phrased that because it's like, am I feeling this way because I'm under a lot of stress or am I feeling this way because of perimenopause? And Instagram would have you believe it's just because of perimenopause. And we kind of like away from the call coming from inside the house by just slapping HRT on the problem. And again, I feel like I have to post this disclaimer every single time I say the three letters hrt.
I am not against it. I will probably at some point in the future be on it. But I think that this evaluation work has to come online. Perimenopause is a time when your resiliency can decrease. DHEA begins to drop naturally. Progesterone can begin to drop naturally. These are some of our resiliency hormones that give us that bounce back. So if these are dropping, our resiliency is also going to drop.
When I say resiliency, I mean our resiliency to stress. Our capacity to withstand stuff in our life that begins to drop as well. Which makes this timeframe even more critical for connecting deeper to ourself, deeper to understanding your own needs, for understanding our own stressors, our own belief systems that uphold stress or even unconsciously pile on to stress. So for me, I just used the symptoms that were popping up as an opportunity to do a little bit of self evaluation. And rather than say, I'm just gonna run to HRT to fix this, I'm gonna put that as the magic bullet solution for this. I said, I'm gonna take a look at my life and see what's contributing to the stress. Because the reality is, the fact is I was under stress. And I know, and you probably know too, stress directly impacts thyroid physiology.
Stress directly impacts sex hormones. So of course we have to look at this, my whole health and healing journey. And for those of you guys who have been around for a minute know I've been through a lot. Me and my body, we've been through some, you know, and this whole journey has been a return to self learning and knowing and understanding and connecting with myself on a deeper and deeper level. And that is the gift that I hope to give. That is the gift that I hope to share with all of you guys. It's why I do this podcast. It's why we do the work that we do with our clients.
It's why I train practitioners in my methodologies through the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy. My goal is always to lead people back to themselves because I know that that's where the real healing happens. You know, I'm not the healer. You're your own healer. I really, really, really believe that to be true. And perimenopause and men create this amazing opportunity for us to peel back the layers and become more and more and more ourselves. Like who we came here to be, how we want to show up in this world. And that's a beautiful fucking thing, you guys. We gotta stop pathologizing that.
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So anyway, let me answer one more question before we get into the nitty gritty of the protocol stuff. Somebody asked, do you wish you. And my answer to that is no, I don't. I started when the symptoms popped up. I don't wait for shit to hit the fan with my health to take action steps. Just like kind of like a general rule in life. It's kind of like a been there, done that situation.
Didn't work out great when I was doing that. So we do it a different way. And the other thing to note here is that I've been building good health habits for 15 solid years. I've built a really strong and stable foundation. And it got to a point where my body was just giving me clues. That's the some tweaks needed to happen. So I used lab testing to understand where exactly I needed to make those tweaks. And then I made them.
It was pretty simple, you know, and sometimes we work with clients and that's the case. We just need to tweak a couple of things here and there. It's not like we have to always revamp your entire diet, revamp your entire exercise routine, revamp your entire life. With a lot of our clients, we just have to make some subtle tweaks. But it's the those subtle tweaks that get them from feeling 60% to all the way to a hundred percent. So that was kind of the situation for me where I didn't need to relearn everything and build everything from the ground up. It was just like, oh, I need to little support here, I need a little tweak over here, a little tweak over there. And that made huge changes.
So keep that in mind. But with that said, I do, do, do want to emphasize so much of your hormone health is based on daily habits, how you're living your life. Your hormonal picture, including thyroid, will tell that story. The story of how you're Living your life. And so sometimes I wonder, like, is this really a thyroid issue or is this a habit issue? Is it perimenopause or have you been ignoring your needs for 40 years? We're so quick to pathologize and we're so slow to acknowledge our habits, our behaviors, our patterns, and how all of those things impact our physiology. All right, let's get into these specific symptoms. What were the clues? What were the signs? What were the things that caught my attention and made me say, huh, I should probably do something about this. For me, the first thing is mood.
I was just feeling sad a lot. I was feeling blue, just low mood. Not like myself. That was one thing, my mood. My periods got a little wonky too. They were irregular. I'm a pretty regular 28 day cycle, girly. And some were late, some were early.
It just got a little, little wonky, which is super, super atypical for me. In addition to that, I had a ramp up of PMS symptoms. So my boobs got so sore. I had pretty intense cramps, f swelling, pain. So premenstrual. And then throughout menstruation, I just didn't feel good. And again, that's pretty atypical for me. Usually the first day I'm like a little crampy and then it's fine.
But this was a pretty dramatic shift in how I typically experience my cycle. And then I was also feeling fatigued, like brain fatigue, where by 3pm every single day I just was like, cash. I didn't feel like my days were very productive. I had a hard time focusing. I felt pretty scattershot. My motivation was low. I am not a low motivation person. That is like never been my issue in 41 years.
So that was like, weird. By the way, I'm recording this podcast at like 6pm at night. So my brain is back, baby. I got it back. And then last but like, kind of not least is that I definitely noticed some puffiness around my midsection. But not just my midsection. I just felt like my whole body was puffy. I don't really weigh myself, so I can't be like, oh, I gained all this weight.
I don't look at a scale. So really challenging to tell you if there was actual weight gain. But I could tell you that I felt different. My clothes were tight and I felt when I looked in the mirror, my reflection looked different to me. So those were the collection of symptoms and signs that were going on that made me say, hey, I should look into this. And so I did. I got Certain labs done. And I'll give you the specific labs that I ran.
I did blood work, so I did a full comprehensive metabolic panel. Just your basic stuff. I know we talk a lot on this, this show about functional labs, but it's really, really important to just get basic lab work done. We don't want like a fancy pantsy stool test and hormone test without just like basic bloods. So that is something that we're always talking about in FNA in my practitioner training, but we're also doing that in practice, so just keep that in mind. I was looking at blood sugar markers. I did a full thyroid workup, so all of the thyroid analytes. And then I also tested hormones through blood as well.
So I looked at estrogen, progesterone, dhea. I think those are the chief ones that I was looking at through blood. And then, oh, FSH as well. And then I did a Dutch test for hormones. So that's dried urine. So that is looking at hormones, but in a different way than blood looks at it. I've talked about this a bunch on the show, but it's also showing metabolites. It's also showing how I am clearing hormones out of my system as well, which is an important part of the overall picture.
And if I really wanted the full hormone work workup, I wanted to see that data. And then finally I did a GI MAP stool test because the gut has a lot to do with hormone clearance and just overall hormone and thyroid physiology as well. So again, I wanted the full picture from tip to tail. So all in that lab testing cost me $800. So I pay out of pocket, cash pay. Those are our practitioner rates. And by the way, when you are a client of ours, you get our practitioner rates. We don't upcharge labs.
That's not something that we do. That is not like a revenue stream for this company. So whatever I pay, you pay whatever you pay. I'm also paying when I'm ordering labs for myself. So just so you know that. But all in about 800, which I recognize if you're not used to cash paying labs, that can seem like a lot of money. And it is. But here I am a few months later and feeling like a hundred percent.
So to me, it was really worth it to get that data so I could target my treatment exactly to where I needed it, rather than just like throw a bucket of supplements at myself and be like, I hope this works. I think this is going to work. So what did I find on the labs? First things first. My Sex hormone levels all looked good. So estrogen, progesterone, dhea, it's not a sex hormone. It's an adrenal hormone, but it is an important precursor. All of that looked good, but I wasn't clearing estrogen out very well, which was no doubt part of the symptoms that I was experiencing, especially with, like, the PMS symptoms and the rough periods. So how I know I wasn't clearing estrogen out very well is because there was elevated beta glucuronidase on the stool test.
So beta glucuronidase was high. So high levels of beta glucuronidase is associated with higher circulating levels of estrogen and also lower fecal excretion of estrogens, meaning you're not pooping it out. So even though my estrogen levels were not high, in fact, I tend to be a lower estrogen. Estrogen, girly. I wasn't clearing estrogen out of my body, and so I was having symptoms of high estrogen. So this is why I say it's important to look at not just the hormone levels, but how the hormones are being processed and cleared out of your body, or in this case, not being cleared out of the body. My blood work also showed functionally low T3 levels, indicating an issue with converting T4 into T3. So our thyroid mainly produces T4 thyroid hormone, and then we convert it into T3, which I always call T3, like the active thyroid hormone.
So when T3 is low, we can definitely experience symptoms of low thyroid. And let's talk about this under conversion for a second, because it's a pretty common pattern that we can see on thyroid labs. And again, what it tells us is that. That the thyroid is making enough T4, but something is preventing it from converting into T3. And again, with that lower T3 picture, you can experience symptoms of low thyroid, which I certainly was. So what my thyroid labs look like, I won't go through every single one and every single marker, because that would probably be really boring to listen to. Now, my tsh, we'll call this one out because this is the one that is. Is most often looked at in conventional medicine.
My TSH was 2.5. The lab reference range for TSH is 0.45 to 4.5. So it's a really wide range. Whereas in functional medicine, we're looking for a tighter range for more optimal health. And typically speaking, when we're looking at tsh, we like that to be between one and three. Some people look for an even tighter range in My experience, that seems a little unnecessary, but 1 to 3 seems to be pretty good. So 2.5 I was totally satisfied with. I was like, that's great.
TSH for me. I talked about this recently on a show, but we're also not just comparing it to lab reference ranges or functional medicine reference ranges, but our own reference ranges. And I've had thyroid labs drawn a bunch of times, so I can kind of know what my normal is now. Total T3 was functionally low. Low. Mine was 97 functional reference ranges. We like to see that number between 100 and 180. So I was just on the cusp.
So this isn't something to make me like, clutch my pearls about. But it is enough to say, like, huh, I'm having these symptoms. This is definitely lower than optimal. A lot of my symptoms can be attributed to thyroid. Low thyroid function. This might mean something. My free T3 was 3.0. Optimal is 3 to 4.
So again, again on the lower end of the optimal range. But my T4 levels were totally fine. So that is what led me to say, I think that this is an under conversion issue and I'm going to address it as such. And that's really what this under conversion pattern looks like. You either see low, total or free T3 and everything else looks normal. That's typically how it shows up on labs. And I mentioned earlier that this is pretty common. Why is it so common? Because a lot of different things can impact the conversion of T4 to T3.
Excess cortisol, stress that can block up, block up, block up inflammation. That's another thyroid conversion block. Any type of toxicity or liver issues can definitely impact conversion because the liver is the main site of conversion of T4 to T3. Gut dysbiosis can also do it because that's another site of conversion. And then low DHEA can also contribute to this because DHEA helps with the conversion of T4 to T3. And then there's also some key nutrients that are required for that conversion. Selenium, iron, zinc, vitamin A, iodine, tyrosine. So if you're low in any of these, that can impact the conversion as well so there's a lot of things that can block this conversion into T3.
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So those are the big findings on my labs. And that's why I say there's just like a few tweaks here. This wasn't like, oh my gosh, these were labs of a pretty darn healthy person, which I'm very grateful to say. But there was some suboptimal stuff that just needed to be tweaked and refined a little bit. So here's the protocol that I created for myself. And of course I have to tell you and remind you guys, this is not medical advice. These are not recommendations I am making for you. This is what I did for myself. So just keep that in mind. But the first place that I started was estrogen clearance support to begin to open up that drain.
I really felt that that was contributing to a lot of those PMSE symptoms and wanted to get rid of that estrogen. So I started on calcium D glucurin. I did about a thousand milligrams a day, which actually isn't a very high dose. I just didn't want to take that many pills. I always refer to calcium D glucarate as like a band aid approach, but you know, we need band aids sometimes. So it's a very short term approach to reduce the estrogen load and help your body clear estrogen out. But you also need to pair that with a longer term strategy. And that longer term strategy usually involves balls addressing gut dysbiosis because it's the bacteria that's responsible for producing that enzyme, beta glucuronidase.
So certain prebiotics can really help with reducing beta glucuronidase. If there's overgrowths, you want to address those. I did a little bit of gut cleanup, but I did it by taking higher dose probiotics and then prebiotics. I took qualia symbiotic for my prebiotics. I really, really like that one. My body does pretty well with that. So that was my approach. There, there.
And I didn't stay on the calcium D glucarate very long. I stayed on it for maybe two to three months. But again, short term strategy. Next up was thyroid support. So for me this looked like desiccated thyroid glandular. So this comes from actual bovine thyroid tissue. Now I will say the use of glandulars can be a little controversial depending on what circle you're in. But I don't care because it's my body and I have really, really good success with using glandulars.
I've used adrenal glandulars in the past, on and off for probably like 10 plus years. And I love them. I do really, really well with them. I always notice a difference. My body just really seems to do well with them. The adrenal glandular supplement that I absolutely adore is Vital Nutrients Adrenal Support. So that's the name of the company, Vital Nutrients. This is not a sponsor by the way.
Just, I love this. I, I just love, I don't know I have like emotional connections to some supplements, vital nutrients, adrenal support. So it has adrenal glandulars. It has Eleuthero, ashwagandha and cordyceps. And that one is so good. If you are again, not medical advice, just saying if you are like overtaxed, depleted, I love that one. I'm not on that right now. I was focusing on the thyroid.
Supporting the adrenals. Just as an aside here, supporting the adrenals does also support the thyroid. Supporting the adrenals does also support sex hormones. So it's always a really good idea. But I just didn't feel like I needed to be on like two types of glandulars at once. Again, personal choice. I will say with glandulars you gotta tinker around with the dosing. I do recommend working with your practitioner on that.
If you're a practitioner listening, just note that you do kind of have to tinker around with the dosing. I'm a big fan of starting low and going slow. There can be some pretty clear cut signs that you're overdoing it with thyroid support, especially when you bring glandulars online. Same deal with thyroid medication. It can feel like you're over caffeinated. You can kind of get jittery. It's that feeling when you drink too much coffee. Some people really like that.
They'll start thyroid meds and it like it feels good to them but it's a really good way to burn out your adrenals real fast if you're just like hammering thyroid meds. Same thing with glandulars. And honestly I very rarely see that discussed. I've talked about it within fna. I think I've probably talked about it here. I actually recently heard Dr. Tina Moore mention this on a recent podcast of hers. And I was so grateful that she was bringing it up and talking about it because I, I just don't think people really understand that connection.
Anyway, with glandular, start low, go slow. I'm not going to tell you my dose because that is super individualized to me. And then I also layered onto that some conversion support. So a supplement that is designed to support the conversion of T4 into T3. And here's what I want to say about that. I mentioned earlier that the conversion primarily happens in the liver and a little bit in the gut as well. So just sprinkling some nutrients into the mix isn't always helpful if you're ignoring those other two aspects. So with a true thyroid protocol, you want to make sure that you're addressing Liver and gut health.
I know that this probably can feel frustrating or overwhelming or annoying, annoying. But it's like it's the human body and like, everything kind of impacts everything. And this might be why, if you've tried thyroid supplements in the past without good results, that might be why you're not getting those good results. So I'm just trying to be very real and very honest with you. Supplements can do a lot, but you gotta meet the supplements halfway or even like three quarters of the way. So conversion support for me, because I was already doing all of the other things, so I'm like, my body probably just needs these nutrients. It needs a little boost, boosty boost in the way of this supplement. So that's what I did.
Now, something I tried that I didn't love was maca, which is pretty interesting because I have a love, love relationship with Maca. I love it and it loves me back. And again, another one that I've used off and on for a lot of years. We talked about this in the episode that I did with Dr. Deanna Minick. Maca works on the hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal ovarian axis, and it helps to balance out estrogen and progesterone levels from the brain down. And she talked about a very specific brand called Feminescence, which that is the one that I have used for, I think, close to 15 years now, on and off. I've always used their Harmony, which is designed for women who are still menstruating.
They have a perimenopause version, and it's called Feminescence Pro Perry. And so I purchased that and tried that for the first time. So I've had really good luck with Harmony in the past. Have used that a ton on. Great success. Very good, Very nice. The Perry. I did not like it. I just didn't feel good on it. I'm pretty in touch and in tune to my body. So when I take a supplement and it's a no, I know that. So I didn't really notice. Great. Like, I was still feeling those kind of, like, estrogeny symptoms and I just got the sense it's not what I needed. So I discontinued that after a month. I will probably go back to.
To it at some time in the future because I've had such great success with Maca, but my body's like, this is not what we need right now. And so instead I switched over to Vitex. Another name for this is Chaste Tree Berries. The same thing. And I Took one gram first thing in the morning and that was like magic. So Vitex is really great for healthy progesterone levels. So even though my progesterone didn't look low on the labs, I just felt that this would help to kind of balance out those high estrogen symptoms. Symptoms.
And it did. I'm still taking it. I'm like, I might just like keep taking this. I love it so much. So that was my overall protocol and I am still on everything with the exception of the calcium D glucarate and will probably continue to be on it for a while. So let's talk about results, how I'm feeling. And I want, want to let you know that I haven't had my labs re rerun, so I can't be like, in. All of my numbers have improved.
I really wanted to do that before I recorded this podcast podcast so I could give you the updates, but I just didn't get around to it. And you know, for me, like, without this podcast, I probably wouldn't retest because for me, body trumps labs. And I'm feeling so much better and my symptoms are gone now. So I'm not like, really super motivated to go get another blood draw. But if I do it, I will definitely share the results here. But the first thing that I noticed was that my mood dramatically improved. That was the very first time thing. That must be because of the thyroid is what I'm thinking.
The thyroid support. But that was like, the first thing is like, oh my gosh. Okay. I feel more like myself, which was great. And then my cycle length began to normalize. I. I went back to my 28 day cycle. A normal bleed, much easier period, less pain, fatigue. I'm back to like, yeah, the first day I feel a little crampy. And then that's kind of it. I just don't feel like, like I have to like, lay down for three days, which is wonderful. No more PMS symptoms. So my period kind of like catches me unawares. I'm like, oh my gosh, it's here. So there's no PMS symptoms. None whatsoever.
There's no, like, clue that it's coming, which is pretty awesome. And I have way more energy. Like, I didn't even realize how low my energy actually was until it rebounded back and I'm like, she's back, back. You know, like, I just, I'm like, okay, here we go. This is how I'm supposed to feel. This is awesome. I have much better focus now. Like I said, It's 6pm well, it's past 6pm and I'm recording the podcast.
So much better focus, much more vigor in verve and drive. And then I don't have that puffy feeling anymore. And so this summer I definitely will say that my body composition condition shifted and it's like a big sigh. Big sigh. So the weight loss thing, I'm really deciding if I want to do a whole podcast dedicated to this. I think it might be super helpful for some of you and potentially triggering for others because not everybody wants to hear about weight loss. I totally understand that. And on top of that, I don't know if I want to use my body as an example for this.
I have a very sacred relationship with my body and it gives me permission to, to use it as an example for some things. And I have not gotten the clear green light on this yet. So TBD on that. But I know that some of you might be curious about this and there might be a podcast episode where I unpack it a little bit more in depth. But what I do wanna share with you here today and be really clear about it. I do not think that just taking thyroid supplements is going to help help you release weight, if that is your goal. I've been on thyroid supplements before. I did not see this as a result.
I've thought about this and I think my results regarding body composition change is due to two things. One, I do think that the changes that I made gave me more energy to change the way that I was working out. So like I said earlier, I have like way more energy now and. And I just feel so great in my body and I can go a little bit harder. I can do some different things. I can bring a bit more intensity into my workouts than I was before. And I can do it without burning out. I can do it without feeling tired afterward.
I can do it without it impacting my sleep negatively. All systems go. And so I think that this protocol that I put myself on allowed me to have more energy, which has allowed me to work out a little bit more and harder. So that might be part of the reason for body composition change. I think it's worth noting that I didn't change my diet through any of this. I did not edit my diet in any way, shape or form. I certainly didn't restrict my calories in an effort to, quote, unquote, lose weight. I've been lecturing about this for literally 8 years.
How under-eating can negatively impact thyroid physiology, physiology for women. So I wasn't going to Try to support my thyroid by putting myself on a caloric deficit that just wasn't going to happen. So I think it was the exercise change that probably made the biggest difference. Number two, the other thing, and this might actually be even more impactful than the exercise. It's kind of hard to say, but I shed a lot of non physical weight. I shed a lot of of pressure and expectation on myself. I shed some beliefs that told me I had to be a certain way. I took a look at my energy field and realized where certain people were occupying space that arguably probably should not have been.
I realized what I'm no longer available for and made some decisions with that. I made some decisions about relationships, who I showed up for, how I showed up for them. I made some dramatic shifts in my company with my team, how we do things, how owner dependent the company is. I'm the owner, so how dependent everything is on me, that's part of the pressure. So releasing a lot of this put my body in a position where it felt safe enough to release some physical weight as well. So I think that, that, that is pretty darn impactful. Last week, if you listen to last week's show, I talked about how the protocols that we build when we take an Intuitive Functional Medicine™ approach, which is how I label how I practice those protocols include more than just supplements. It also includes mental and emotional aspects.
And there were definitely some shifts outside of just supplements that I made that contributed to the of the rest results that I had. Maybe I'll do a part two on that. You know, I've been kind of talking about myself and my own experience for a while, for quite a few minutes now. So I will end this episode here. But if that's something that you'd like to hear more on, definitely send me a dm. I take those DM requests seriously. So if I get enough of them, I will do a second show. Kind of talking about more of the specific mental, emotional and energetic shifts that I just alluded to.
But those are pretty powerful and impactful and make me feel a lot more at peace in my body, I will say, which is wonderful. So there you have it. There is my update. I hope you found this helpful. And if this is the type of work that you are looking to do, if you're looking for some support in this arena, definitely reach out to me and my team. This is what we do all day and we can help you. So here, hit us up, fill out an application. We'd love to chat with you.
All right, friends, I'll see you next week and we're going to be talking about thyroid Nutrition. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Funk’tional Nutrition Podcast. Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. If you got something from today's show, don't forget subscribe, leave comment a Leave a review, share with a friend and keep coming back for more. Take care of you.