You’re eating clean, exercising, meeting your responsibilities, and pushing through every demanding day, but you’re still exhausted.

Here’s something every overwhelmed woman needs to hear: you may not need more discipline. You may need to stop fighting your body and start listening to what it is trying to tell you.

In this eye-opening episode of Women Road Warriors, Shelley M. Johnson and Kathy Tuccaro talk with Katie Hardie, a Board-Certified Holistic Nutritionist, FDN Practitioner, and founder of My PEAK.

Katie explains how constantly pushing through stress without adequate recovery can affect your energy, sleep, blood sugar, hormones, digestion, metabolism, mood, and overall performance. Even symptoms we have been taught to accept—nighttime waking, afternoon crashes, brain fog, stubborn midsection weight, bloating, and feeling unlike ourselves—may be signals that the body needs something different.

Katie understands burnout personally. Years of working harder, overtraining, under-fueling, and ignoring her body’s warning signs eventually took a physical toll. Functional testing helped her connect the dots between her stress hormones, recovery, and a serious injury—and taught her why pushing through symptoms is not always a sign of strength.

In this episode, discover:

• Why symptoms can be common without being normal
• What nighttime waking and afternoon energy crashes may be telling you
• How emails, social media, caregiving, shift work, and constant demands can keep your body in fight-or-flight mode
• Why chronic stress can disrupt cortisol, DHEA, sex hormones, digestion, thyroid function, blood sugar, and metabolism
• How short “micro-recoveries” can help your nervous system reset—even during a demanding workday
• Why gut health and regular bowel movements provide important clues about your health
• How real food can support more sustainable energy than sugar, caffeine, and heavily processed convenience foods
• Why intermittent fasting may help one person but create additional stress for another
• The difference between merely avoiding a disease diagnosis and identifying patterns before they become bigger problems
• How functional testing, personalized nutrition, movement, sleep, and nervous-system support can help you build a roadmap for better health

Women are frequently taught to push harder, eat less, ignore exhaustion, and treat rest as something that must be earned. But there comes a point when more pressure produces less performance.

If you have ever been told that you are “fine” while knowing you don’t feel like yourself, this conversation could change how you think about your symptoms. Your body may not need more punishment or discipline. It may need you to start listening.

Connect with Katie Hardie and My PEAK:

Website:

MyPEAK365.com

Instagram:

@MyPEAK365

Facebook:

Hardie Peak Performance

LinkedIn:

Katie Hardie

Explore more empowering Women Road Warriors interviews at

WomenRoadWarriors.com and discover podcasts created for women at

WomensPowerNetwork.net.

Please Follow Women Road Warriors on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode.

#WomensHealth #FunctionalNutrition #HolisticHealth #HealthyLifestyle #WomensPodcast #MyPEAK365 #WomenRoadWarriors #ShelleyJohnson #KathyTuccaro #KatieHardie

This is Women Road warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Tucaro.

From the corporate office to the cab of a truck, they're here to inspire and empower women in all professions.

So gear down, sit back and enjoy.

Welcome.

We're an award winning show dinner dedicated to empowering women in every profession through inspiring stories and expert insights.

No topics off limits.

On our show, we power women on the road to success with expert and celebrity interviews and information you need.

I'm Shelly.

And I'm Kathy.

Have you ever felt like you're doing everything right?

You're eating clean, you're working out, you're pushing through your day, but you're still exhausted.

Maybe you're waking up in the middle of the night dealing with stubborn weight around your midsection or just not feeling like yourself.

Well, what if those things aren't normal and they're actually signs that your body is not operating at its peak?

That's exactly what we're diving into today.

We're joined by Katie Hardy, a board certified holistic nutritionist and FDN practitioner and the founder of My Peak, a company dedicated to helping high performing individuals get their energy back, stabilize their bodies and truly operate at their highest level, physically, mentally and emotionally.

Katie takes a really powerful whole body approach, combining functional lab testing, nutrition, movement recovery and even nervous system work.

It helps people who are doing all the right things but still not getting the results they want.

And what I love about her work is that it's not just about another one size fits all plan.

It's about reconnecting with your body and understanding what it actually needs to thrive.

She also brings such a unique perspective coming from advanced training in performance, psychology, strength and conditioning, and even culinary arts.

So this isn't just science, it's practical, real life application.

And yes, it's about food that actually tastes good instead of like cardboard.

Katie, Kathy and I are so excited to have you here.

Welcome to our show.

Jelly and Kathy, thanks so much for having me.

And thanks for the warm welcome.

I'm just gonna say, wow, you're quite the powerhouse.

I'm a nerd.

I like to keep learning things.

So a perpetual learner.

I guess that's a good thing.

Oh my goodness.

And you've got a lot of information and knowledge you can share with us.

Before we dive into your really cool insights, could you maybe give us a brief background of who you are and how you began in helping everyone thrive at their best level?

Sure, yeah.

I grew up in the Midwest and I know we all have some mutual Midwest connections.

There so, you know, being in the Midwest, you are known for having a great work ethic, which is awesome for whoever wants to employ you or benefit from your hard work.

And sometimes that taken to extreme, like any great trait taken to an extreme extreme can become a problem or a deficit.

And I found myself into that, working harder, working more, and not really recognizing or respecting the role of recovery and getting into a spot of total burnout.

And it wasn't just mental burnout, that was for sure there, but it shows up physically, too.

And so even as young as high school, my hormones were kind of all messed up.

And that was from this overstressed, you know, routine where you're just grinding early to late and then, you know, just trying to kind of build the resume, just, you know, it's never enough.

Like, there's more and more and more to be done.

And you can sleep when you're dead, keep working out harder, under fueling, under, you know, recovering.

And before you know it, your hormones are all messed up.

And it starts with the stress hormones and it trickles down to the sex hormones.

And, you know, a female could have her period and then lose it.

And that can be because of over exercising, under fueling, under recovering, complete, you know, you know, stress, burnout with mental things, work things, you name it.

And it can show up physically like that.

And so that was my first taste of, oh, something's off.

But, you know, the conventional way of thinking is, oh, what's the band aid we need to put onto that to mask that.

And it's like, well, let's just pump you with some progesterone.

But not really digging into why, like, why did that happen in the first place?

So, you know, I didn't really think twice about it at the time either.

Fast forward 20s, 30 years.

I'm now in a spot where I've, you know, as you mentioned, taken on the strength and conditioning, the culinary background, the wellness coaching, nutrition, and then I took on the functional lab training.

And that's where it struck me the first time when I actually saw my numbers on paper because, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, that stuff applies to other people.

I'm tough.

I can push through it.

It doesn't really bother me.

It's just like, oh, you know, know, lost my period, whatever, I have to take a drug.

But I didn't really understand all the ramifications downstream of that.

And it was not really until I was going on a backcountry hut trip, it was right before I left for it out here in Colorado.

I had Run all my labs.

So hormones.

So it's urine, saliva, to understand your stress and sex hormones.

And it was during a very stressful time in my life.

On those tests where you check all the life stressors, I kind of had all of them checked.

And not to mention, on top of that, was probably eating crappier, drinking more, sleeping less overtraining, under recovering, and we're skiing out of the back country hut trip like 10 miles from the car at the top of a mountain pass, and it was maybe the fifth turn down, and my ski caught on the snow underneath.

You know, it was like kind of thick snow.

And then I fell, and I was so embarrassed because we're going down one at a time and waiting till one person got down, till the next went like, oh, my God, I have to get my ski back on before anybody sees that I fell.

And I'm like, by the way, why did I fall?

That's uncharacteristic.

And I went to pop my foot back in this in the binding, and my knee bent backwards, and I was like, oh, I know.

I was like, that's my acl.

And so I tried turning, and then it would buckle and I'd fall.

And then I tried snow plowing, and I'd buckle and fall.

And so I had to ski all the way out and crawl all the way out.

And you could just feel like the.

The.

Like, you know, where your calf is, the lower part of your leg, like, kind of like pop, sliding up, shouldn't.

Yeah.

And, you know, we get down.

Everybody's like, I was like, I think I messed up my knee.

Like my acl.

No, no, there's no way you did.

I was like, no, I definitely did.

Something's not right.

And sure enough, a few days later, I found out, totally gone.

But after that is when I got my lab results.

And that's when I saw on paper, my cortisol is through the roof.

My dhea, which is your counter hormone, which is more like repair, recover.

Cortisol is actually very much a breakdown, your body hormone, when overdone, in excess for too long.

DHEA is the counter that you want to have in balance with cortisol.

And DHEA is upstream of testosterone, estradiol, all the growth components of your body.

And that was completely out of whack, out of balance.

And basically on paper, everything was.

You're a disaster waiting for an accident or an injury or illness or something to happen.

And I cognitively knew all these things, but just very much dismissed it.

And it's like, okay, Yep.

I need to not just like, dish out the advice.

I need to actually listen to it for myself too.

Imagine that.

Right.

So that's kind of the journey that I got on and now can help, you know, myself.

But other people understand what their unique bodies need because we're all so different, right?

And unfortunately they look at baselines, they look at one size fits all, and you go to the doctor, it's like, eh, no big deal.

And like you said, they give you a hormone to counter the other hormone and then your body's going, what the heck are you doing to me?

And they don't test normally for the cortisol and the DHEA and things like that.

So it's fortunate you had that.

How do you get people to basically come back to their natural level so they can feel better and have the energy that God gave them?

Right.

So that's what's really great about seeing a lot of these numbers on paper.

I can gauge a lot of that from questions and assessments and answers.

But I think a lot of us, especially women, have been conditioned to ignore and push through the feedback our body's giving us.

So I think what's helpful, right, because you're incentivized for it, right?

Oh, yeah.

Like once a month, here's, here's a hot water bottle.

Just get over it, right?

It's like, oh, everybody who benefits from you doing that is not going to be like, hey, check in with what your body's.

But what I try to do is triangulate the feedback that we've dismissed with what the paper's saying.

So it's kind of a blend of, you know, the measurements from our blood, urine, stool or saliva, along with what is your experience, how is your sleep, how is your energy throughout the day?

Are you having energy dips?

What is the midsection weight?

Because when we have cortisol cranking too long, we start, you know, gaining that cortisol around the midsection.

It starts affecting our detoxification pathways, which affects our overall body composition and then inflammation in the body, which affects our cognitive functioning, our mental, you know, acuity, and just our overall, you know, being of like, are we showing up as the person we can be and want to be, or are we constantly adapting in the background to compensate for something that's off kilter?

And so how we get people back is.

All right, let's, let's look at what's going on.

Like you're saying this, this paper saying this, we kind of blend the two and then it's really the Fun.

The basics, it's nothing.

It's not like this flashy equipment or pill or something that's a quick fix.

It's really getting into the lifestyle and diet.

And so what I've realized over the years is, yes, the diet and all the things that you can check the boxes with are important and being in the right state of that.

So having our nervous system regulated, and that's something many people have some form of a, you can say dysregulated stress response or dysregulated nervous system.

And I think that those words are starting to, you know, be a little bit more buzzwords and people are starting to understand the, the sound of it.

But what does that actually mean?

Well, it means a lot of us are operating in that fight or flight state all day long.

And initially the body's design was so you could either run from the bear, fight it off, or, you know, like survive that minute, right?

And what happens is it's not a bear chasing us anymore.

It's the emails, it's the long hours of bouncing from meeting to meeting to meeting.

People who've got kids running their kids to different sports practices, events, people taking care of parents or other loved ones, you know, caregiving, the list goes on.

And it's not even that maybe any or all of those items may be perceived as stressful.

It's that there's a lack of intentional recovery.

Recovery.

And so if you look at like a sprinter, they're able to have super high output with speed, power, right?

And they look vibrant, right?

And compare that to maybe a recreational marathon runner.

You know, you see them coming in the last six miles, they're kind of like, I just want to be done.

I'm just dogging it.

Right?

And which one has more vibrancy?

Like, which would you rather be?

You see those, you know, those I love, I remember in the 90s, like Jackie, Joy to Kersey and all those sprinters, you know, they're just like pumped before they're running the 100 in the Olympics.

And that is like, that's big, good, solid energy.

And so when we have intentional recoveries throughout the day.

And again, that does not have to be an hour long massage or appointment.

It can literally be taking a minute to sit on the chair and focus on your breath.

It can be a massage, it can be a lot of different things.

But so many of us are like bouncing from thing to thing to thing to thing.

We're very busy, but not necessarily productive with the output.

And then we're drained by the end of the day.

And so it's really about starting with, okay, how do we build in those little mini micro recoveries?

How do we get solid sleep?

Those are so key.

And then how do we give ourselves food that actually nourishes our cells?

And isn't artificial energy like sugars and caffeine?

Or like once we've been jacked up on caffeine all day, then we need, like a downer to bring it back so we can go back to sleep.

So it's getting back to real quality energy and real quality recovery so we can have the highest possible output.

Stay tuned for more of Women Road warriors coming up.

Dean Michael, the tax doctor here.

I have one question for you.

Do you want to stop worrying about the irs?

If the answer is yes, then look no further.

I've been around for years.

I've helped countless people across the country, and my success rate speaks for itself.

So now you know where to find good, honest help with your tax problems.

What are you waiting for?

Welcome back to Women Road warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Tucaro.

If you're enjoying this informative episode of Women Road Warriors, I wanted to mention Kathy and I explore all kinds of topics that will power you on the road to success.

We feature a lot of expert interviews, plus we feature celebrities and women who've been trailblazers.

Please check out our [email protected] and click on our Episodes page.

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Check us out and bookmark our podcast.

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We want to help as many women as possible.

You know, it can be so discouraging when you believe you're doing everything right and your body still isn't responding.

You're just exhausted with today's stress that comes at us 24 hours a day.

Our bodies are feeling it.

Our guest is holistic nutritionist and FDN practitioner Katie Hardy.

She's the founder of My Peak.

Katie says those stubborn symptoms may not be proof that you need more discipline.

They may be Your body's way of asking for something different that changes the conversation entirely because instead of fighting your body, you begin listening to it.

There are things we can all do to keep us from being drained at the end of the day.

We need to build in micro recoveries and food that actually nourishes us.

Instead of getting jacked up on caffeine or energy drinks, Katie teaches people on how to take care of their bodies and have high quality recovery so we can have the best possible output.

Katie, we're all so very stressed today.

You know, I don't know if there's been a study done, but it does seem like what we've got going on today is everybody is doing the work of five people.

And you're right, there's a ton of stress.

You're constantly being pinged by either your phone or your email and people are in fight flight.

And that's certainly obvious on social media.

The amount of aggression you see and anger and that's just gonna up your cortisol, which is not good for you.

And it's not like as human beings we haven't had it hard.

Whereas today we're like, I'm ready to drop.

Yeah, we have a lot of things that just drain us.

So I don't know if you've ever looked at HRV heart rate variability measurements, but I actually know people who have them and when they get on social media and they're laughing at the things they're like seemingly enjoying the situation that they're in.

Looking at the reels heart rate variability, which is a measurement of how recovered you are and how resilient you are, it drops in the moment of watching it.

So even though again, you don't necessarily perceive it as being stressful, but when you're doing those things constantly throughout the day and you're not outside, you know, and back to what you're saying.

Back in the day, there were for sure hardships, very different hardships than we have now.

Like we have first world problems and we perceive them, you know, internally, whether it's a chemical imbalance that you're not aware of or mentally that you are aware of as stressful because you're, you're comparing yourself with others on social media.

What, whatever.

The thing is, it's kind of more of a constant stressor 24.

7 Vs all right, let's get the food.

We got the food.

We got it.

We got the water.

And then we're kind of moving on.

I think a lot of those, you know, times, they weren't maybe like marinating it.

As long as people are now, it's just the speed of things has kind of picked up.

And, you know, we have more toxins, the environment, the WI fi, the electromagnetic fields.

There's just a lot of different components.

And so not to minimize their stressors, because I think those, a lot of those sound more stressful than what we have.

I think the part of the issue with what we have is we're not recognizing the need for recovery because we recognize it is a cushier environment on one hand.

And some of the, I guess, negative aspects that come with that can be more chronically stressful.

Chronic stress is really bad for you.

That can age you in a heartbeat, 100%.

And it's almost like it's taken medical science a while to acknowledge that along with the weight that you have in your midsection.

It's like, wow.

People who have more weight in their midsection are more likely to have this condition or that condition.

I don't know how they missed it in med school, but they're starting to maybe come up to where they need to.

But it.

It does seem like the answers you get from a standard doctor aren't going to give you the answers that you're providing in terms of how people can maybe take control of their own health.

Right, and that's exactly the thing because.

So my dad's a retired physician, and it's very much disease management, not health promotion or any preventative things, because it's how our insurance system and the whole healthcare system is set up.

It's based on reimbursements for a disease state diagnosis that goes along with a corresponding prescription.

Nobody makes money.

When you're waking up feeling ready to tackle your day, you're having, like, amazing energy.

Like, that's not profitable.

And so, unfortunately, our system is awesome at acute care and not so much at health promotion.

And so that's part of the disconnect.

And I know, I remember when I was a kid and, you know, he'd have to study for his boards.

I always loved the nutrition part, but.

But I'd always quiz him on those things when we were driving over to Chicago for him to take his boards, and he's like, I don't know, like, I always refer that out to, you know, a nutritionist or Dietitian or whoever.

But he's like, we don't really need to know that.

Because I was like, oh, that's so crazy.

Now, like thinking about that as an adult, like it couldn't be more important because nutrition is information for your cells.

Right.

Well, I remember my mother saying that eating well was the best health insurance you could have.

Yeah, the, the wisdom from, you know, people who are older, wiser.

Just think about like Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic.

It's this ancient wisdom.

It's been around for thousands of years.

And then we come in with our very young modern medicine and think the rest of that's woo woo.

And you know, we can see where it's taken our population.

Like people aren't, if you look at a picture of people now compared to, you know, 40 years ago, very different body composition.

And you know, I don't know how well they measured things then, but I think mental health is in a very different place.

Happiness.

So I wouldn't say, you know, look at cancer, like all the money we throw into like cancer research, it's not really improving anything.

So I think there's a lot more there that, you know, the disease management isn't properly addressing.

I totally agree.

I heard a stat that back in the early 60s, under 10% of the US population was obese.

Now it's over 50%.

Oh, it might be more.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They said it's, you know, from things like corn syrup, a lot of the pre prepared meals, you know, we're into convenience.

And when you think about the chaotic lives that people have, parents running their kids from here to here to here to here, the kids are exhausted.

Parents are seriously exhausted.

Weekends, they don't get a break.

It's like, oh, we got a tournament.

All right, let's go.

Um, they're not eating well.

I was just watching a video this morning on synthetic eggs.

How they make, you know, like all those breakfast sandwiches.

It's disgusting.

Oh my God.

No wonder people have cancer.

No wonder people are so obese and sick.

I mean, there's a lot of different factors, but the diet, I 100% believe is directly related to a lot of things.

A lot.

Well, in your soul, the story that it's normal to have all these processed, convenient things and nobody can argue that they're not convenient.

So that's going to win every time.

And because so many people are doing it, it normalizes it so you don't realize that symptoms like headaches or bloat or pms, you know, all those, it's like, well, everybody else has it like, well that's nor or that's common but it's not normal.

So it's interesting you mentioned all that because every spring and fall I run this spring or fall cleanse challeng.

And I actually need a different name, I think because people get scared or weirded out by the word cleanse.

But basically what we do is we do all real foods.

So I pull things out of like processed foods like bag like chips, crackers, even if they're gluten free.

And you know, there's some other parameters.

So we're basically trying to support our detox pathways and you know, get to bed, you know, earlier, before 10pm and hydrate.

But the biggest food shift is, you know, no protein shakes, no like, you know, bars, you know, things like that, like get a lot of meat and vegg energies and that is like a vid.

It's a big mental shift.

But then within the first week, people are like, oh my gosh, my energy is so much better.

I'm dropping.

Like my body composition's shifting because it's not so much about pounds, it's more about like the composition.

What the pounds are doing is it muscle or fat?

Right.

And it just within a week you can notice the difference and your body just craves that.

It's just our environment makes it so you're swimming upstream or, you know, you're having to really think it like five steps ahead to do that.

But once you kind of get into that rhythm, people are like, this feels really good to feel good.

And it's just real food.

Sure.

I'd heard on the news that the new thing to do in the morning instead of having cereal is to have soup because it's got more protein.

And that's a better way to start your day.

Yeah, love that.

And if you can do it with bone broth, you're getting all the, you know, amino acids that you get from bones and skin on animals that isn't just in the flesh.

So it's really supportive for your own bones, you know, soft tissue, ligaments, tendons, nails, hair, gut lining.

And it when it's protein forward and hydrating, that really sets you up for the rest of the day to not be feeling those sugar cravings.

Because sugar cravings are a stress response.

Either no hunger is a stress response or after a while it's like, all right, just give me something really quick to digest.

And so if you can tell your body in the morning, hey, I'm safe, I've got Got the materials I need to function and you're going to be in a good spot.

So that's a very Eastern approach to a breakfast.

Like Eastern, Chinese, Eastern.

They do congee or soups or savory things.

So I love that.

Yeah.

And you know, for us not to look at societies that have been around for thousands of years and people live a long time and they live in a healthy fashion to turn up our noses, go, nah, now we got a better idea here.

And then not look around for a few decades and say, hmm, what's going on?

Yeah, that's not working for us.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Stay tuned for more of Women Road warriors coming up.

Dean Michael, the tax doctor here.

I have one question for you.

Do you want to stop worrying about the irs?

If the answer is yes, then look no further.

I've been around for years.

I've helped countless people across the country and my success rate speaks for itself.

So now you know where to find good, honest help with your tax problems.

What are you waiting for?

Welcome back to Women Road warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Tucaro.

We hear the phrase fight or flight all the time.

But look around.

People seem more tense, reactive and aggressive than ever, especially on social media.

And what happens emotionally doesn't simply stay in our minds.

It can show up in our sleep energy, our blood sugar, digestion and hormones.

We still process danger the same way our bodies did thousands of years ago.

The exception is we have it coming at us all the time.

The body keeps participating in the stress even when we've learned to call that stress normal.

This is chronic stress and it's not normal, nor is it good for the body.

It's really bad.

Katie Hardy is the founder of My Peak, a company dedicated to helping high performing people get their energy back, stabilize their bodies and operate at their highest level, physically, mentally and emotionally.

Katie helps people connect the dots and helps them take better care of their bodies so they can stay healthy in spite of the chaos.

She's been teaching us some really interesting things today, like sugar cravings are a stress response.

I didn't know that, Katie.

So what do people need to do?

First of all, what are the warning signs that that we might be doing it wrong.

Right.

So waking up in the middle of the night and a lot of Times people is like, oh, I woke up because I have to go to the bathroom.

Oftentimes it can be blood sugar dysregulation, where when it drops, your blood sugar drops too low.

Your body's, you know, natural feedback loop is to release, you know, stored energy from your liver, your muscles, into the bloodstream, so you have an active source.

So when that happens, your cortisol spikes to release that.

And so that can wake people up.

And when they wake up, they're like, oh, and by the way, I have to go to the bathroom.

But a lot of times they don't.

You don't realize what's actually going on inside.

You just know, oh, I do have to go to the bathroom.

Let's go to the bathroom.

It could be, you know, our organs go through phases throughout the night of repair and recovery.

And usually, like one to three o' clock is when the liver is really digesting or taking care of a lot.

So physically that can be any toxins, like alcohol, pharmaceuticals, sugar, caffeine, any, like, products that are in our skin or on our clothes that just need to be metabolized.

But just general metabolism, like, if you're working out, it's just normal bodily processes that the liver takes care of.

So that's the physical side.

Emotional, mental side would be any stress, irritability, frustration, those are all also correlated with the liver.

And so that's like the nighttime thing, which the reason I'm starting there is because whatever happens at night kind of sets you up for your whole next day.

So when you wake up, are you feeling like, yeah, let's do this, or are you like, oh, my God, I want to hit the snooze button?

Or I like, the only way I'm getting out of bed is if that cup of coffee is waiting for me.

So those are energy, you know, indications.

And then energy dips in the afternoon can be, again, common, but not necessarily normal.

We should have very steady energy poops.

This is one topic that people are like, whoa, why are we talking about poops?

But it tells us so much about our health.

So if we're not pooping every morning before we leave the house, that's not as regular as we could be.

And the reason our poops matter is, well, a, we're eliminating waste and toxins, but also our microbiomes in our gut.

And that is kind of the keystone.

Like, you have, like, the keystone or the good bacteria that you need to really create the majority presence in your gut.

Because most of your immune system and neurotransmitters are produced and housed in the gut and then travel signals along the vagus nerve up to your brain.

So immunity for like avoiding sickness illness, but also detecting cancer cells, because we all have cancer cells floating around our body 24 7.

But if our immune system isn't up to par, it can like dismiss them.

So it isn't, you know, there can be some genetic input, but most of it's epigenetics.

In our lifestyle from the neurotransmitter standpoint, things that like serotonin, dopamine, that make you feel happy or feel good or want, like driven to work toward a goal, those are produced there as well as calming ones like gaba, to help you calm down, to be able to sleep and recover at night.

So our gut health is very important for our mental and physical outputs because if you're sick, you're not out there practicing and you're not going to be getting your skill development and out on the field or, you know, getting the body composition adaptations that you want.

And so the things I like to really focus on are, are you waking up ready to, you know, tackle your day?

Do you have amazing poops?

And do you have energy dips throughout the afternoon or throughout the day?

Because if you don't have those, then you're missing opportunities for your personal peak performance.

And again, everybody's measurement of performance is different.

It can be in the athletic realm, it can be at work.

Like I want to feel solid all day long so I can be the best for like my employees or my boss or my presentations I'm giving or if somebody's a parent or a caregiver.

Again, it doesn't matter the realm, but most people do care to be their best version of them.

Because it doesn't feel good to feel crappy, right?

No.

Just curious because people like me who work these rotations, I work two weeks of almost 13 hours a night for 14 days straight.

Then I go home, I'm all messed up and then I'm home for a couple weeks, then I come back and then I'll do 14 days of 13 hour days and trying to balance the proper nutrition because I'm sitting for 13 hours a day in equipment.

They built us a big gym here.

So I try and make it to the gym.

I it, it's people here.

You gain, you look at food and you gain weight.

Right?

Because I mean, it is what it is.

But yeah.

My question is people who work these rotational shifts, like doctors and nurses and you know, whoever does, does that affect how you Metabolize and, and aging and how, I guess how you process things.

Oh yeah, totally it does.

Because when you're kind of jamming that long, that's a, a pretty chronic or constant fight or flight state.

And our body again is designed to do that.

Like cortisol is not a bad thing.

We need it to spike first thing in the morning and then we want it to kind of drop throughout the day because as it drops our melatonin increases.

And melatonins what allows us to wind down, fall asleep and recover at night.

So when we have a dysregulated response, meaning it's not following that pattern or where it's elevated too high, too long, we can adapt to it for periods of time.

And then we need it to be able to come back down because if it just stays up there chronically and again when it's up, you actually feel awesome because you're, you got like sugar pumping in the bloodstream.

You're, you're going.

It's when it's been doing that for years or decades that that's usually when it starts to sneak up.

And so the problems it can create are more inflammation inside the body because in a short term state that can be anti inflammatory, in a chronic long term state it becomes inflammatory.

And so that's what starts affecting our blood pressure and our lipid numbers.

When you see like cholesterol or LDL numbers rising.

Part of the reason that happens is because our body always prioritizes today's, surviving today's stressors at the expense of tomorrow's quote unquote long term projects.

And long term projects can be making digestive enzymes, producing sex hormones, having an efficient running thyroid, or you know, like your detoxification processes that are happening 24, seven, all that kind of starts to slow down or shuff down.

And when our liver is not detoxifying things, that's where a lot of our cholesterol processing happens.

And that can lead to slower, sluggish thyroid, which can lead to weight gain, feeling cold, all the fun things.

It can lead to higher cholesterol.

And I see these patterns all the time with blood work.

When people have had chronic stress stress, they have lower overall cortisol production because initially it was high.

But over decades it all of a sudden gets too low.

And then the body's compensating by trying to keep that low produce avail or cortisol available by slowing down the clearance or your detoxification pathway, which then could elevate the cholesterol, elevate the blood Sugar levels, elevate your A1C, elevate your fasting, insulin, all those things, things.

So that can create a very inflammatory internal side of the body.

And you can see that through people.

If there's like redness or puffiness or you know, inflammation to the brain is essentially anxiety, depression.

So a lot of the same symptoms for either low progesterone, low gut bacteria in your gut or inflammation can present as anxiety or depression.

So it can be a lot of different things and it's usually a combination of several things.

So yeah, it can have an impact and usually people's next question is, well, I want to keep producing at that output.

How?

I don't want to like quit my job.

Right, yeah, you can do that.

Part of that is back to what I was saying earlier, those like mini recoveries throughout the day, you know, and again, it doesn't have to be I'm going to leave for the massage, it's like, all right, I'm just going to take a moment and just like breathe for one minute.

And it doesn't have to be something crazy, but just allow your heart rate, just your whole focus, everything to kind of recenter and balance.

And just doing that, you know, one, two, three times throughout the day with the same other work intensity can make a really big difference in your recovery by the end of the day.

I know a lot of my co workers and I what what we have found over the years is, I mean just over the last post, Covid I should say a lot of us have found that intermittent fasting for our kind of work works wonderfully.

It really helps.

Uhhuh.

And so there's a couple reasons that can work and for some people it actually doesn't work.

So one reason it can work really well is because if people's food that they're primarily eating is more that processed inflammatory type of food, a lack of input of that just reduces the overall inflammatory inputs.

Right.

The other thing, if people have, you know, excess, we all have days worth of energy stored in our fat regardless of what our body composition is.

And so those cookies, I ate those cookies.

Yeah, but you know, regardless of our size, like we all have like plenty of resources there.

So it is a way to make you more flexible metabolically which with not needing to rely upon external constant sources of energy.

So that can feel good.

It can feel good on your digestive tract to have a big break from food because that uses a lot of enzymes and a lot of energy to digest.

So it can give your gut a nice break.

That is very helpful and depending on the person, if their overall stress load is high, that can actually be for that person one more stressor that they don't need.

So it's like anything it can the same thing that works awesome for one person might like tip over the other person into like a bad spot.

Especially women who are still having periods.

The back half of the cycle isn't as an ideal time as the front half or postmenopausal women and men tend to do better with those, you know, intermittent fasting.

And then the tweak I like to do is actually because I think think it's common for people to skip breakfast.

I actually like it when you skip dinner, which is not socially the acceptable thing, but it physiologically it has a much better impact.

It just feels more awkward.

Right?

Well when you think about it, it's closer to when you go to bed and your body's not working on digesting food, it can heal itself instead.

That makes sense.

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Welcome back to Women Road warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Tucaro.

Katie Hardy is a board certified Holistic Nutritionist and FDN practitioner who helps high performers reclaim their energy.

She's also the founder of My Peak.

Her insight is an inspiration to everybody.

So many women have been taught that getting results means pushing harder, eating less and treating rest is something we have to earn.

But there comes a point when more pressure creates less performance and intentional recovery may be one of the most productive choices we can make.

Katie's approach brings together functional testing, personalized nutrition, movement and recovery to help people work with their bodies.

Again, it's not something we're taught.

The problem too is our medical community is excellent at acute care, but not necessarily health promotion and they don't teach this.

Katie understands how to promote ourselves with good nutrition and a powerful whole body approach to stop dysregulation that's dragging us down.

She educates her clients on the Morning sun and how we can really get empowered with our health.

In our last segment we were talking a bit about the benefits of fasting.

Katie I had heard on the news that gut Health is actually getting a lot more attention and that doctors training at Harvard Medical School are now being trained about the importance of gut health, which is really, really important.

And then, of course, you were talking about the importance of pooping.

Nobody likes to talk about it.

It's inconvenient.

It's.

It's easy, but you gotta do it.

How often?

More than once a day?

Well, one, like every morning's ideal, like between 5 and 7am if you really want to drill down some people, it could be a couple times.

But if you're going too much, then you're not absorbing all your nutrients either.

Yeah.

So you don't want to be like, going all the time.

And some people like, oh, yeah, I'm totally regular.

I go like once a week.

Week.

That might be regular on a cadence once a week, but it's not normal.

I can't even imagine once a week.

I'd be ornery.

Yes.

A lot of things bloated, you name it.

Yeah.

Oh, my.

Yes, I would.

And just going every other day if, you know, once things can get shifted.

Going every day, people feel so much better.

And hydration can be a big part of that too.

Yeah.

Gotta drink your water.

So.

You know, you're the first person I've ever heard say that inflammation can cause depression and anxiety is an inflammation in the brain.

I had not heard that.

That's interesting.

Yep.

So that's very much what depression is.

And it's not just, you know, a serotonin deficiency.

It's inflammation that is causing a lot of that, those same symptoms.

So we just have different, maybe approaches on how to do that.

But so much can be shifted with real food, proper sleep, stress.

I don't say reduction, but management, you know, like, again, working, like having time where you, like, sit and read, or if you don't like reading, like doing a hobby.

And it could be 10 minutes reading a magazine, going outside for a gentle walk in nature.

There's just a lot of those things that all of those will contribute to lesser inflation.

Same state.

But yeah, that is more the functional way of thinking about anxiety and depression is through inflammation.

There is so much that you cover for the next few minutes.

I'm wondering if you could maybe kind of walk listeners through what you do with my peak, what a typical lifestyle looks like, what people can actually do and how you help them.

You do a lot of things, what with functional lab testing, nutrition, movement, recovery, nervous system work.

Work.

Can you kind of encapsulate that so people can really get a handle on this?

Yeah, so what I do with people, I have different tiers depending on how deep people want to go into any sort of lab testing, meaning like what's going on inside my body.

And it could be anything from a GI map, which is a poop sample stool test that gets into your digestive functioning and your microbiome.

Any parasites, yeast, Candida H. Pylori, those sorts of things, things I do, hormones, stress and sex.

I do them both through blood and urine and saliva because they all give us a little bit different information.

So it's nice to triangulate that.

And I think what's cool about the saliva urine is that it tells you your production as well as your clearance.

So that's what's going to tell us more about what's going on with our liver and our thyroid.

But it gets into the, the cortisol, the DHEA, as I was mentioning earlier.

And then also like testosterone, progesterone, estrad, melatonin.

So you can kind of figure out if somebody's not sleeping well, maybe why.

And then the blood work I do is everything you do at the doctor.

But how you were, we were kind of talking earlier.

A lot of those numbers are based on dysfunction.

So you're fine, fine, fine until you're broken.

And so I look with tighter ranges for like where people are when they're functioning really well or feeling good.

And then I also add like a full thyroid.

So it isn't just like tsh, which is your thyroid stimulating hormone, which is traditionally what's done.

It includes the actual active thyroid hormone, which is T3 and the inactive T4 antibodies.

We get into vitamins and minerals and advanced lipid profile because just like a cholesterol number over 200 doesn't necessarily mean a problem.

It's what's kind of the ratio going on with the hdl, LDL and then all also what's the particle numbers and sizes.

And I like to get into fasting insulin because a lot of times that's not traditionally tested.

That's going to tell us a decade before anything's dysregulated with your blood sugar levels and your blood sugar levels.

Your fasting blood sugar can be affected by stress.

And so your fasting insulin is going to tell you how hard things are working in the background.

And very much inflammatory, one of many inflammatory markers.

I look at a lot of inflammatory markers, but that's kind of what I do for my main tasks and then how it works when, you know, I'm working with somebody.

It's all virtual which is kind of like the silver lining from COVID is people realize we could do more of those things that way.

But we start, you know, really getting into, you know, individual goals, but then starting with, like, the nervous system work and understanding how to regulate your body so you can.

Because we can't control, like, when stress comes at us, we can control our reaction to it or how we respond.

So focus on controlling the control bubbles.

And we get into energy balance.

So we don't all have the same nutritional needs.

So I hope people find the right foods for their bodies.

And, you know, some people do better with more carbohydrates, some do better with more proteins and fats.

We're all different.

And then, you know, I dig into sleep and performance pretty early on because that's so important for health and performance.

And then getting into, you know, movement, strength, and conditioning, since that's part of my background, getting into, you know, maximizing metabolism.

Because it isn't just what we eat that is very important.

It's also how we eat.

So if we're standing up, wandering around the island, chomping on some food, you know, we're not absorbing the nutrients in the same way if you're sitting down, because when you're walking around or driving, even you're in that fight or flight state.

Whereas if you're sitting down and you actually take a couple breaths before you eat, now we can transition to a place where our body is actually able to receive those nutrients and assimilate them at the cellulose level.

And so it's very much a progression, kind of taking on a little bit more each time we meet and then integrating the personalized results into the goals.

What's going on with a person, and then what are the action items for, you know, each people, so we can run the same task, have the same topic.

And the pro, the actual content or plan is very different for each person because this is what ancient, you know, like Chinese medicine was all, like, individualized care.

It wasn't this mass.

Like, everybody fits into this box.

Everybody do the same thing.

It's very much based on the individual.

And that's how I like to look at too, because we all have different needs.

And I think it's really important to honor and respect where each person is at that moment, because even for the same person, we have different chapters of our lives where we have different needs.

So I think it's really, you know, imperative to, like, work with each person at the current place to achieve, you know, the steps and the results that they're looking for because that can evolve over time.

Sure, you've got quite a comprehensive program there.

Now, does insurance cover what you do?

Well, no, because I'm trying to prevent people from needing the diagnosis and the prescription in the first place.

Right, right.

And that's what's frustrating about our system.

You know, some of the tests, it might like the lab work, like the GI maps diagnostic.

But, you know, like when I was mentioning the fasting insulin, that's not diagnostic, because what they're waiting for is your blood sugar to be too high.

So then we can prescribe insulin.

But if your fasting insulin's too high, there's not a corresponding code and diagnosis with that.

But I can tell you, hey, we got to make some lifestyle shifts.

We got to start walking after meal, meals.

We gotta get better sleep.

We gotta cut out the processed carbs and eat real food.

So, like, there's stuff I can say, like, see and be like, hey, let's come up with a plan.

What are you able to take on with, you know, the right support?

And so, yeah, that's, that's the frustrating part of our system is it doesn't cover the things that work in the sense of working for optimizing health and performance.

Very true.

But at least you're giving people the feedback that they're not getting necessarily with their annual check back up so that they can kind of take control of the direction.

That's what people are looking for.

It's like, how do I stop it from going the wrong direction?

They don't know.

They don't know.

And there's so many people that come out of their appointments like, oh, my doctor said all my labs look great, but I, you know, I'm like, really moody.

I feel like I'm extra, have excess weight.

I'm tired all the time.

Like, I don't understand why I don't feel great.

Like, my hormones seem like they're off, you know?

And so, yeah, you're in the not messed up range, but you're not in a great range either.

So there's this.

There's something between fine and messed up.

You don't just, like, all of a sudden go one little tick further and all of a sudden, oh, now we got a big problem.

We know, like, there's a huge zone in between where, hey, things aren't trending the right way.

We could absolutely course correct this.

Let's do that before it's a major problem.

But that's not what our system's built on.

Where do people Reach out to you, Katie.

Yeah, my website's my peak365.com I'm there on Instagram as well.

Mypeak365.com yeah, excellent.

Well, I think that you definitely can give people kind of a guide.

And, you know, I think too, you're probably a cheerleader for them, too.

They can check in with you and say, hey, didn't do so good this week.

And you're like, you're getting there, right?

Oh, yeah.

It's all about awareness is the number one thing.

If we're not aware of what we're doing, we're never going to make some shifts.

And then accountability.

But with the support, right?

It's like the loving and challenging support, because if you don't have that, sometimes it's too easy to create the stories to support the same behavior that's not leading to the desired results.

So it's very much accountability and support because people don't need to know how to do it.

They just need to be given the right support tools to help get them there.

And basically a roadmap.

We're running around without a GPS for our own health.

We've got it for our car, but we don't have it for our health.

A hundred percent.

So what is your website again, Katie?

It's mypeak365.com you are a wealth of information.

No, be kidding.

I just woke up from night shift.

And I'm like, bombarded.

I'm like, wow, it's taken me a.

Second to catch up to you.

Just take one thing.

If you just take one thing away, that's the first step, right?

That's all you need.

One step at a time.

Thank you, Katie.

This is really, really helpful.

And I think you've given our listeners maybe a little bit of food for thought on how to rethink their health.

Thank you for doing that.

Yes, I hope I did.

You are more than welcome.

It's been a pleasure.

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