Weight Loss Resistance, Hormone Chaos & What Your Body’s Trying to Tell You with Becca Chilczenkowski

This is the transcript of an interview hosted on Ruth’s Feel Better. Live Free. podcast.

Ruth Soukup: I don’t think there’s anything in the world that messes with your confidence quite like not feeling comfortable in your own body, especially when you’re doing everything right and still gaining weight or feeling like crap. You’re eating clean, you’re working out. Maybe you’re tracking every bite, and yet you’re still miserable.

If that sounds familiar, especially if you’re over 40. Today’s episode is going to connect a lot of dots because spoiler alert, it’s never about willpower. It’s about how all the systems in your body are actually functioning and there’s a real science to fixing it.

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Ruth Soukup and I’m the founder of Thinlicious and the creator of the Thin Adapted System. As well as the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, and today we are chatting with Becca Chilczenkowski.

It’s a hard name to say, a board certified hormone specialist and the co-founder of Fit Mom of Functional Health Practice that helps women heal from chronic issues like hormone imbalance. Gut dysfunction, autoimmune challenges, and stubborn weight loss resistance. Becca’s own story started with intense workouts and a major health crashes in her twenties, but now she helps women who are doing all the right things, but still feeling completely stuck.

And in today’s conversation, we are diving deep into how your body’s systems all work together. Your liver, your lymphatic system, your gut, your hormones, and why ignoring one can keep you from making progress in all the others. She even walks us through a real client case study to show us exactly how she works through symptoms and creates a healing roadmap that actually works.

It’s fascinating. This one is packed with so many eye-opening insights and I cannot wait for you to hear it. So let’s jump in with Becca Chilczenkowski. Becca, thanks so much for being here today. I’m so excited to talk to you. 

Becca Chilczenkowski: Thank you. I am super excited for this conversation. I feel like we already, we already have a vibe going, so I think it’s gonna be great.

Ruth Soukup: Yes. Well, I mean, I feel like the topics that we’re gonna cover today are pretty relevant to everybody, but let’s just start with like little background. Tell us who you are, what you do, and how you got to be doing what you do now. 

Becca Chilczenkowski: Yeah. Uh, so my name is Becca Chenowski. I am a board certified functional practitioner and I specialize in female hormones and metabolic dysfunction.

So I have a private practice, uh, of, you know, a team of five of us that work with what I consider very complex cases. Um, I’m not sure how we ended up in that place of, it seems like the people that can’t be solved anywhere else. Come to our doorstep. Um, but we work with all females dealing with chronic issues, whether it’s autoimmune based, gut-based, uh, hormone based, weight loss, resistance, uh, we kind of see it all and, and we see people that are already doing everything right.

Um, which I think is a lot of people I’m sure listening, uh, and they still struggle. And those are the people that we love helping. And that’s, you know, kind of my journey and, and why I got into it. So. That is, that is me in a nutshell and what I do now. 

Ruth Soukup: Awesome. Well walk us through that a little bit. Like what does it look like?

What, what is it? Give us an example of a complex case and how you would sort of walk somebody through that. 

Becca Chilczenkowski: Oh, great question. So I have one case that comes to mind in particular, I’m working with her currently. Um, so she came to me, she has a history. She actually did bodybuilding shows and physique shows, so you can imagine kind of the extreme diets that her body was put through and conditions that her body was put through.

And she’s in her thirties. Um, she’s a mom of three and she’s a personal trainer right now. So leads a very healthy lifestyle, right? She works out quite often. She eats very healthy, lots of protein. Um, but she came to me because she was dealing with pretty debilitating symptoms. On all accounts. Um, so she had her gallbladder removed after one of her pregnancies.

Um, so we know without a gallbladder we’re gonna have a lot of issues with detoxification and bile flow. And typically it leads to, at some point lots of digestive nervous system, sometimes, uh, estrogen based issues. And so she was having 24 day cycles, um, so very short cycles at the age of, you know, early, mid thirties.

And they were. Basically half of her month was awful. Um, so she, she basically gets horrible breast tenderness leading into her period. She gets extreme mood fluctuations to where she can’t handle any type of stress. She struggles to be the mom that she wants to be. And then when the period comes, it’s extremely heavy.

Uh, very big clots, lots of bleeding, uh, just. All, all around horrible. She also has bloating after she has a bowel movement. So a lot of people feel like more relieved after they have bowels. She actually gets more bloated and distended after bowel movements. Wow. Um, and she. Has bloating after water and drinks even, um, and basically all meals.

And she goes to the bathroom, but still experiences a lot of these horrible digestive symptoms. Um, her energy is pretty low, and so all around, just like for someone that lives a very healthy life per se, um, she’s. She’s struggling on a day-to-day basis. 

Ruth Soukup: Yeah. I, I feel bad for her just listening to this story.

Yeah. I’m like, this poor, 

Becca Chilczenkowski: this poor woman. I know. I know. Um, and she’s actually a good friend. She’s someone that, that reached out to me and, and I’ve known and, uh, so even more so like I’m attached to helping her feel better. Um, but the, the crazy thing is a lot of people would think like, oh, really? Heavy periods, bad periods, her hormones must be imbalanced.

Hormone levels were totally normal according to lab work. Um, so this is a situation where some people genetically feel their hormones more than other people. So this can be sometimes due to inflammation levels. It can be due though also to certain genetic mutations that cause you to experience your hormone fluctuations a lot more intensely.

Uh, and we see this with like PMDD, it happens, uh, where they just can, they may have totally normal levels of hormones, but they. They feel the hormone changes that happen in your cycle so much more. Um, and so. With a client like this, we have to, in a lot of cases, go through the trenches of like, we might feel a little bit worse before we feel better because she is not detoxing well.

We know that she doesn’t have a gallbladder. She’s dealing with this horrible bloating and distension every time she eats. So we know she’s not moving bile well, that typically is a clear indication. Um, and bile is kind of like a taxi cab for your toxins. And so if you don’t have good bile flow with a lack of a gallbladder.

We know right off the bat like you are not clearing things from your body. And so when we start with every client, we typically do a pretty drastic diet adjustment. Um, main reason being because most of the people that come to us. Eat very similar foods all the time because they have narrowed down to like what they feel they can handle, right?

They’ve removed all the foods that they think are causing the issue, so they’re on a very limited diet. Uh, and that can become part of the problem because if you have an immune-based issue and if you have a. Leaky gut and all those things going on. What happens is those foods that you’re eating can leak into the bloodstream and the immune system starts to create an attack.

’cause it’s a foreign invader. Food particles shouldn’t get into the bloodstream, just nutrients, hydration. So with a leaky gut and with all of these issues going on. Sometimes the foods you’re actually eating are perpetuating the problem. Hmm. And so we do pretty drastic diet variations with our clients upfront because that alone can start to calm down inflammation.

It’s basically like interesting blank canvas, right? You, you basically take away all the things that the immune system might have been responding to, including some of the healthy foods you were probably eating. 

Ruth Soukup: Yeah. 

Becca Chilczenkowski: To get things calmed down at first. Yeah, because that’s part of the problem is like there’s just so much inflammation and so much activation.

Ruth Soukup: So, can I ask a clarifying question before you keep going? Yeah. Um, I don’t wanna interrupt your flow, but I’m curious, is it like that they’re, because they’re eating a limited diet and they’re eating so many of the same foods, that their body is now building up resistance to those foods, even though those foods may have been fine before.

Or is it because they’re eating too many foods and you have to eliminate even more? 

Becca Chilczenkowski: No, so it’s, it’s basically the foods were never the beginning of the problem. They became part of the problem. Okay. So they were dealing with these, you know, they probably started to limit their diet because they were experiencing symptoms already.

They were experiencing, you know, bloating or constipation or loose stools or energy issues or weight issues. So they started to narrow down their foods and maybe it helped initially, but. Now it’s, you’re feeling awful all the time, and you’re like, but these are the foods that I feel like I can handle.

Kind of, but now those foods have also become part of the problem because mm-hmm. Most people don’t eat a very varied diet. Right. If, and they eat healthy. But if you really think about it, a lot of people eat the same vegetables, the same fruits, the same proteins, um, yeah. And they’re healthy foods, but diet variation is, is such a huge key to overall health and microbiome health and all of that.

And so. What I, what I’m talking about with the calming of the immune system and changing of the diet is that when people have this over-responsive immune system due to basically for a lack of, to kind of simplify it, a crossover of too many chemical, physical, and emotional stressors. So that could be a bacteria, a COVID infection.

You know, that was part of a really high stress time that you were already dealing with low hormones, and now you just have this crossover of too many things, right? And so it’s this activation of the immune system that the immune system starts to get too launched. We know when the immune system goes off, inflammation happens, right?

Mm-hmm. That’s how it’s built. It’s supposed to do it that way, right? But the problem is when that inflammation happens too much too frequently, and the body’s cleaning service that comes around after that initial inflammation can’t keep up. And so now we just have this chronic inflammation that just builds and builds and people keep trying to diet it away, and they keep trying to exercise it away and it just makes it worse.

And so with the diet variation, what I’m talking about as part of the problem is you have now, because of this inflammation, because of the stress, whatever is going on, you’ve developed an basically poor gut function. So like whether it’s low stomach acid, whether it’s inflammation in the GI system. We start to develop this leaky gut where the cell lining wall opens more than it should.

And like I mentioned earlier, the only things that should really get out of the GI system. So your GI system I say, goes from your mouth to your butt. It’s basically there’s a long mucusy tunnel and it shouldn’t go. It’s basically like imagine a tunnel underneath a a, a ocean. Like you don’t want things getting in and outta that tunnel other than what is supposed to.

And so what is supposed to do is nutrients from broken down food and hydration. But when we get this leaky gut and these cell walls start to open too much food, particles, bacteria, all of these things can start to get into the bloodstream. And so that healthy salad that you just ate, that you eat every day and you have for the past six months, those food particles are getting into the bloodstream.

The body sees that, sees that as a foreign invader. And so now it starts to create antibodies against those food particles. Okay, so now the food has now also become part of the problem. Does that make sense? 

Ruth Soukup: Mm-hmm. 

Becca Chilczenkowski: Okay. So and then, but 

Ruth Soukup: but then again, just to clarify, is it that because you’re eating that every day, your body is building up a specific tolerance to that specific?

Yes. 

Becca Chilczenkowski: Okay. Yeah, so that is where the diet variation and the. The way that we often will do it at some point in the process is we do carb pulsing every few days. ’cause you have this zero to 72 hour window of the immune, the initial immune system. And so if you’re changing foods every three days, going from maybe high carb to low carb or carnivore to keto it, honestly, it really doesn’t matter.

Mm-hmm. It’s just that you’re drastically kind of changing back and forth in a healing process. It’s not like. People need this. People are like, oh my God, I need to do this for the rest of my life. No. Yeah. Like in an acute healing phase, this is one way we calm down the immune system because it’s never able to build this attack against these foods.

You can start to calm down the inflammation response and calm down the immune activation. 

Ruth Soukup: Interesting. This is very interesting ’cause I have not heard this specifically in terms of like, I know the importance of variety, right? Like you talk about all these different elements, but specifically that if you’re dealing with.

You are doing everything right, but you’re still having problems that this could be one of ’em. Mm-hmm. That, that’s very, very, very interesting. Yeah. Okay, so keep going. ’cause I’m like, I’m invested in this story now I gotta know what happens. 

Becca Chilczenkowski: So we take every client through what we call kind of like an initial cleanse phase.

And the main reason we do this is we pull back stressors. Because most of the people coming to us, their body is just at max. Like they cannot handle any type of stress. They’re mentally, emotionally taxed, and they’re not recovering from workouts. Like it’s just their bodies can’t handle anything. And so we look at what can we control?

We typically pull back exercise. ’cause for most of these people, even though exercise is great, if you are in a super stressed and inflamed state, exercise is a stressor. And if your bo, if you, especially if you’re working out five days a week, yeah. Your body can’t recover from that, especially if you’re a personal 

Ruth Soukup: trainer and you’re used to working out hard 

Becca Chilczenkowski: and she, she knows how to push your body.

And so in her case, we actually took exercise away completely for two weeks and just walked, did I? She was not happy with me so. Just, just walking, just, you know, incline walks. I’m okay with some sauna and cold therapy if you wanna do that. Um, stretching. But yeah, would just pull back that stressor. Yeah.

And then we also, again, drastically change up diet. So we bring in. Essentially overhaul lots of fruits and vegetables, like 60 grams of fiber a day. No one eats that much normally. And the reason being is because what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to open up liver detoxification pathways, support lymphatic flow, and at the same time stimulate the adrenals.

The thyroid, the gut, and the liver. Main reason we wanna stimulate those is I am typically feeding people up during this time, so I wanna make sure they use that food and calories properly. And we don’t store it, right. We don’t get inflamed more or gain more weight. And we’re doing typically, you know, adaptogens or adrenal glandulars, thyroid supports, whether it’s a multivitamin or a glandular based on blood work.

And then we typically put in. Lots of B vitamins and medical foods we call them, but they’re basically like powders that have a ton of nutrients and vitamins and are specific to liver and inflammation support. Gotcha. So we do smoothies. We do lots of fruits and vegetables. We have them eating regularly throughout the day, and we actually do a ton of water upfront.

And then pull back water a little bit. So we do like a a gallon and a half to two gallons a day, and then we pull back for two days. Only two days, huh? And then we pull it back. And the reason this we do this is because it basically floods the lymphatic system and it gets it to flush. And so it’s kind of like a little manipulation of water weight and people tend to drop a lot of inflammation then in that first week or two, which helps them immediately feel better usually.

Um, but the whole goal of the process in this first few weeks is to basically build back up adrenal function and get them fed and renourished as much as possible, as well as drastically changing diet to calm down the immune system.

Ruth Soukup: Interesting. 

Becca Chilczenkowski: So we gotta open up liver, open up detox, and then we usually get into like.

Gut shocking and microbiome manipulation. And that’s where we do the carb pulsing usually. Um, bring in some, you know, eradication agents bring bacteria levels down a little bit. And then, then we get into the fun stuff of, you know, truly calming the immune system of Yeah. Fasting and autophagy. This is 

Ruth Soukup: intense.

So how do you handle, how do you handle the gallbladder? ’cause I, this I find with a lot of my clients have had gallbladder. Absolutely. Removed. And so that becomes an issue. Mm-hmm. For all the reasons that you mentioned. Also, because it’s harder to process fat and we’re, you know, advocating for a lot of healthy fats.

So how do you handle that? 

Becca Chilczenkowski: Yeah. So in a gallbladder situation, we have to kind of understand how extreme it is for that person. Right. And that’s why we don’t usually bring in like any type of high fat or ketosis based diet until we’ve tested the waters a little bit. And whenever someone has a gallbladder remover removed, I almost always.

I do always include bile, additional external bile support. Mm-hmm. So that could be, you know, beta plus is a really common one. Um, but because the gallbladder serves a lot of purposes and although medical world sees it as like a non necessary organ, it’s pretty necessary. Like it, right. Our lymphatic system drains through the gallbladder in the liver, and so.

Now we have a detox system that doesn’t have as adequate of places to drain to our gallbladder stores, the bile, and when we don’t have that, it leaks into the small intestine improperly, which causes a lot of cases, SIBO or autoimmunity. Those are really common on the back end of gallbladder removals.

And then we also see nervous system issues because when there’s chronic stress, what a lot of times we’ll see, and most women can relate to this, but. You go through life and you just never stop. Like we don’t, we don’t honor downtime in our lives anymore as females. And so we’re constantly stimulating cortisol, which results in an adrenaline release, and that affects the hormone aldosterone, which impacts sodium and water.

And so if you think about chronic cortisol, chronic adrenaline, and now the aldosterone basically. Stressing out your sodium water balance constantly. You’re now stressing the lymphatic system. And this is why chronic stress leads to, for most women at some point, swelling, inflammation, rapid weight gain.

Because you’re swollen your, your lymphatic system can no longer handle the stress that you’ve been putting on it and the detoxification. And now we don’t have a gall bladder and so we don’t have that drainage system open. We don’t have the bile, which I mentioned earlier. Bile is basically the taxi cab for removal.

Of any type of toxin, hormone, whatever it might be. So if you don’t have a healthy place to store that and release it as you should think of like a faucet, when you need to turn on a faucet, really hard to get a ton of water out, that’s your gallbladder. Being able to push a ton of bile out or slowly if you need it.

When you don’t have a gallbladder, all you get is a drip. And so you don’t have that resource to help support the highs and lows that your body sometimes needs to go through with detoxification. So the lack of a gallbladder creates a ton of issues. Honestly, long term. It’s like the one thing I wish it, I think it’s probably the most next to hysterectomies, probably the most unnecessary surgery in a lot of cases.

I’m not saying never, I never say never, but like it is rare that a gallbladder has to be removed. 

Ruth Soukup: Yeah. It’s 

Becca Chilczenkowski: just, it’s the tool that the medicine is, it’s just so 

Ruth Soukup: common. Yeah. Now, yeah. I know we could, we could probably go off on a big tangent Yes. About modern medicine and all of the things, but we won’t.

Yes, we won’t. My, my audience has heard me rant about that before. Bile 

Becca Chilczenkowski: support. Bile support, bitter foods. Um, okay. I like bitters. Digestive bitters are great for bile. Um, bile flow and supporting the gallbladder. Uh. Exercise, all of those movement, hydration. So there are things that you 

Ruth Soukup: can do if you’ve had your gallbladder removed, but you have to be very intentional about it sounds like.

Yeah. Yes. Okay. Okay. So keep going. 

Becca Chilczenkowski: Yeah. So anyways, we went through the initial cleanse phase, and here’s, here’s the thing that a lot of people, and hers is an extreme case. I, I gave you an extreme case, but in her situation, she started to feel worse. And the reason that she started to feel worse was because remember, I took away her exercise.

I took away her stressors and I took away the things that stimulate dopamine. Her body was so used to such a high level of dopamine because again, she comes from that background, that hustle background, that always push, always do more. And as soon as I brought her dopamine levels down from sky high to kind of normal, she felt like death.

Because what we get over time is basically an insensitivity. It’s called, um, anhedonia, is what it’s called. It’s basically dopamine deafening. But when you go from this extreme dopamine level. To now. I can’t, I, I feel like I don’t feel anything that is this res sensitization that has to happen and it, it’ll typically last about 30 to 60 days or so.

Ruth Soukup: Whoa. And so 

Becca Chilczenkowski: depending on how extreme the person is, 

Ruth Soukup: yeah, 

Becca Chilczenkowski: hers is an extreme case. And so what I usually do in those cases, we know adrenals are likely shot. We know she’s been used to this like extreme. You can do a couple things. Lion’s, Maine can be helpful. There’s some peptides that could be helpful too for base.

Okay. And, um, phosphatidylcholine all help with cellular health and like sensitivity to hormones. But then we overhaul the adrenals, so I’m talking like four to five grams of vitamin CA day, adrenal adaptogens, B vitamins, all the things because the adrenals are just gonna soak it all up. They’re, they’re so fatigued that they need, like heavy hitters.

I’m not like a, a normal dose of gon is not gonna do it in this case. So in her situation, we are now overhauling the adrenals and slowly opening up detoxification pathways. So we go about a month and things have not improved, which I didn’t, honestly, I expected they weren’t gonna get that much better before we went through the hard, and I knew that was gonna happen.

Yeah. And it was a constant discussion with her. Like, she’s still staying 

Ruth Soukup: your friend and not through all 

Becca Chilczenkowski: of this. Yeah, she is. And she knew she had to do it. Um, she also didn’t disclose all the symptoms that she was experiencing. Oh. Until we started. And I was like, okay, well, I. I didn’t know this was going on, right?

And so once we get to the gut work, we’re finally starting to get a little bit of improvement around the cycles. Um, and we were using more of like a yam based support for progesterone called Provo B, but I decided to put in progesterone HRT because in these types of cases, they do better with actually lower estrogen and strong progesterone support.

So we’ve been pushing estrogen detox pretty heavily, um, on top of. I brought in a progesterone support and we actually brought in a low dose GLP one, um, because they are very anti-inflammatory and in her case she, and a lot of people use them for weight loss, obviously blood sugars, all of those things, but mm-hmm.

In cases, a lot of times I actually use them to help. Calm, inflammation down faster. Interesting. Um, and so with those on top of diet variation, we actually went three days of carnivore, three days of Mediterranean, back and forth, back and forth. Okay. Um, those few things together have now gotten her to a place where her periods are 28, or her cycles are 28 days instead of 24.

Ruth Soukup: That’s great. She doesn’t 

Becca Chilczenkowski: have any breast tenderness, any mood swings or anything of that nature, and she doesn’t even really notice her periods coming. Um, and so we’re much, much better on the hormone front, which I figured would probably happen first. And then we’re working on, the bloating has gone down like 50 to 60%, still there a little bit.

That will take some more time. We haven’t gotten into the deep fasting with her. Um, and the energy is starting to slowly come back online, and so that’s kind of like an extreme case that 

Ruth Soukup: we, you know, yeah. So it’s a process. Yeah. I think, uh, but I think it’s so fascinating to hear this and hopefully most people listening are not like feeling to this extreme, but it’s possible, right?

Mm-hmm. But just to hear that, because I think one of the things that I find with my clients when we start going through, I. You know, like you start changing the way that you eat and, and obviously there’s these kind of extreme cases where even when you’re doing everything right, there’s still gonna be issues and, and that’s why it’s so helpful to have like, have this conversation.

But I think also I. It’s so, we’re such a instant gratification culture. And even like, I, I like Blame the Biggest Loser, right? Like we used, used to watch that show and I used to be obsessed with that show, but where they would lose like 20 pounds every week. Right. And they’d have, they’d go get on the scale and be below the yellow line, but they’d.

Like weight drops every week, week after week after week. And so then my clients when I’m like, no, you’re half a pound in a week is like normal. That’s what you’re, that’s like where you’re supposed to be, right? You’re just, you’re healing your body. This is gonna happen. Like you’ve gotta be patient. It feels like nothing’s happening, but things are actually happening.

Mm-hmm. So, but when you hear like. Really talking about that. I mean, what you’re doing, ’cause I don’t know how long this has been now, it sounds like a couple months. Yeah. That you’ve been working with her and you’re, you’re not there yet. And that this wasn’t even a weight loss case necessarily. Mm-hmm. But just to heal your body really like it takes.

Time and it, and, and it’s so hard for people to find the patience to actually like go through the, go through the muck in order to get to the good, good stuff on them. So how do you deal with that? 

Becca Chilczenkowski: Yeah, absolutely. So one, we always talk to our clients around expectations, right? And having worked with as many cases as we have, we’re pretty good at understanding like how long something’s gonna take for someone.

And then the other piece that I always, I always go back to is like, I don’t control what you do. I give you the insight on what to do, but like, I’m not living with you holding your hand every step of the way. So that’s gonna play a role too, in terms of how much you’re adhering and how much you’re telling me and how, you know, and I never blame my clients, but like I.

I can give you all the information and all of the knowledge, but you have to implement it and actually adhere and be consistent with it. Okay. And so there’s, there’s that piece, but it’s always a conversation and, and I think being able to explain to someone physiologically what’s going on in their body helps them understand I’m getting through the hard piece.

Yes. So, like in her case. She had such sluggish and backed up detoxification. Once we started opening that things start moving around the body and when that happens, it releases inflammation through lipopolysaccharide release. Like there’s things that start flowing that weren’t flowing. They were there creating issues, but they weren’t, they were a little bit more silent issues.

Mm-hmm. And now once we start moving them out of the body. You’re gonna start feeling a certain way for a little bit, you’re start feel like we’re gonna have to work through the symptoms of that time. Yeah. And so I always say something like, in a lot of cases, symptoms are a good sign because you are having them either way.

Now we’re actually moving through stuff and moving things outta the body. Yeah. And so those symptoms all take sometimes and we minimize them as much as we can. Right. There’s a lot of tools you can do better hydration, lymphatic massages, Epsom salt baths, binders, things like that. But in those cases, like.

It’s a process and I need to get to the point where we can get your body to handle the stress of exercise or fasting or some of the deeper work that we need to do. And you came to me totally bottomed out. Yeah. And so I can’t put you through the ringer of what I need to do until you can handle that ringer.

And so that’s the time that sometimes it takes to get people more resilient. Right. To be able to handle the deeper, deeper work that sometimes we need to do. Yeah. 

Ruth Soukup: So at what point do you, do you go, like, what’s the, what’s the cutoff for people? Right? Like, I don’t know if this question is making sense because I’m just making it up on the fly.

Totally going off script here, but, okay. So. Because I, I’ve been thinking about this, right? Like for most people, the vast majority of people who have been eating a standard American diet, which is highly inflammatory, right? They’re eating all the crap. They’re eating all the sugar, they’re eating all the nonsense.

You switch to a program like mine where we tell people like, let’s get more protein. Let’s get more healthy fats. Let’s cut out the sugar, right? Like the basic stuff that is going to help you feel better for the vast majority of people that. Is gonna be enough. But what you’re talking about and where you take your clients is when they’re doing the things, they’re doing the right things.

They’re eat, they’re living a healthy lifestyle, they’re eating the right things, they’re cut out sugar already, and they’re still not seeing progress. So how do you know? Like how do you know you’re just being impatient, right? Because it takes time no matter what you do. If you’ve been, if you’re here and then you need to get here, it’s gonna take time.

How do you know that you’ve actually hit that like point of resistance where this isn’t working, this isn’t enough, and I, there might be a deeper issue that I need to deal with. Like is there a certain, yeah, it’s a great question. 

Becca Chilczenkowski: Is there a certain, I go off symptoms. Yeah, I go off symptoms and timeframe of symptoms.

Okay, so like some examples if someone has bloating and, and the way that I explain bloating, ’cause a lot of people get bloating confused with, is like extra added belly weight. And it’s not the same like bloating is you eat and you have either pain or distension in your stomach after eating like that is bloating.

If you are having pretty severe bloating more than a few times a week. For more than a month, something’s going on. Like that is, that’s a symptom and a timeframe that I would be like, this isn’t normal. It, you know, check the foods, right? Are you trying dairy? And dairy is not a great food. Like, look at obvious things that could be going on.

Um, are you chewing your food? Are you drinking too much water around your meals? Right? Like those things that we, we always think about, but that’s one example. Another example, you aren’t sleeping and, or you’re sleeping, but you wake up Unrested. So you’re waking up and you have no energy, or you need a nap throughout the day.

If that is going on and there is no immediate known reason like you were sick, or you’re in a really high stress period and maybe you are getting less sleep like I’m talking, no, you’re doing the things and you’re still not sleeping well and you’re still not feeling energy throughout the day for at least a few, three to four weeks plus.

That’s another one that I would say, okay. Okay, something’s going on. Cycles. Cycles. I always give two to three. So like any pmms or period related issues, I always give two to three cycles because any type of change you make to influence hormones are gonna take a full three months to reflect, mainly because of how our follicles develop and they take, they have about a three month life.

And so you need, what you’re doing now is like planting the seed for what it’s gonna feel in two to three months. So anything cycle related, I give it two to three months to kind of monitor. Okay. Um, is that true? 

Ruth Soukup: Even if you’re in perimenopause? 

Becca Chilczenkowski: Not necessarily, because if you’re having I regular periods in perimenopause, it’s hard to obviously, you know, measure month over month.

Yeah. Because you’re not having, you know, things normally happening because it’s just all messed up anyway. Yes. 

Ruth Soukup: Yeah. 

Becca Chilczenkowski: But what I will say is that inflammation and metabolic dysfunction are the two biggest drivers of worsening P perimenopause symptoms. Mm-hmm. So like night sweats, hot flashes. Bleeding, irregular cycles, all of those things are worsened if you have underlying inflammation or metabolic dysfunction.

So it matters a lot lifestyle wise. And if you’re making those changes and you’re still seeing issues, then you know we’re talking, something else is going on. So I, us kind of general theme here, things are going on that don’t make you feel great for more than a month or two, 

Ruth Soukup: for more than a month after making.

So how long would you give it to make the lifestyle changes? Yes. And then no. 

Becca Chilczenkowski: I would say three to six months. 

Ruth Soukup: Three to six months, lifestyle changes consist and then you’re still seeing those issues for, yeah, for a month. 

Becca Chilczenkowski: For a couple of months. Yeah. 

Ruth Soukup: Yeah. Okay. Yep. That’s good to know. I think that’s really helpful to, to understand that time timeframe, because again, like we always want that instant gratification.

Like, I’ve been doing this for two weeks. Why I, why am I not seeing more changes? Why have I not lost more weight? Right? Like, sorry, it doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t work that fast, but it doesn’t. That there might not be an issue. And it’s like the definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

So if you have been doing it for a while, but I love that to give that like three to six months lifestyle change, if then you’re still seeing issues, there might be something else going on. 

Becca Chilczenkowski: Yeah. And so like baseline things that should be should be happening in an optimal body. You should be having a normal non straining bowel movement one to two times a day.

So like if you’re gonna the bathroom twice or three times a week, that’s not okay. That’s a huge issue. Mm-hmm. You should be being able to sleep seven to eight hours without waking up much and wake up feeling energized. You shouldn’t feel tired midday. You should have energy to exercise and recover. You should have an overall stable mood for the most part.

Like those things are kind of givens in my book. They, 

Ruth Soukup: yeah. 

Becca Chilczenkowski: You should be able to function on that level. 

Ruth Soukup: Yeah. Yeah. Those are just kinda the markers for a healthy person. Yeah. But I think we forget, right? Like we’re so, most of us are so used to feeling crappy all the time that we don’t even necessarily recognize how we’re supposed to feel just on a, on a normal basis, which is so crazy.

Yeah, it is. 

Becca Chilczenkowski: So that’s kind of, at what point 

Ruth Soukup: do you recommend h like hrts? 

Becca Chilczenkowski: Yeah. So hormone replacement therapy, I think. Should be mandatory if I were in charge of the world and any female at perimenopause menopause, the earlier you go on it, the better. You want bioidentical, you need hormones tested before going on it and during the time on it.

Everyone does well on different forms, in my opinion. Um, but hormones are very protective. They are cardiovascularly protective. They are insulin protective. They are bone and collagen and skin and joint protective. Like there is a reason that in menopause, the risk for females of breast cancer and cardiovascular disease and obesity and cholesterol issues and type two diabetes, all of these things skyrockets.

It’s not become, become a little bit less active like it is. I would say 80, 70 to 80% hormone related. The problem is if you try to use hormones as a golden ticket, hormones are not a weight loss Drug hormones are not going to help you walk around the block more to get more steps in. They’re not going to feed you healthy food like you need to have a overall healthy foundation for them to function optimally in.

Because if you put hormones into an inflammatory environment, they are going to create more inflammation. Really, I always say estrogen does not cause cancer, but it can influence cancer. 

Ruth Soukup: Yeah. 

Becca Chilczenkowski: And so what is all cancer? It’s metabolic in nature. It’s meta, it’s growth that shouldn’t be happening. Growth happens in a insulin resistant state.

Yeah. And so we’re huge on Yes. Hormones. Absolutely. But. But you have to be doing things and in hand. Yes, 

Ruth Soukup: lifestyle changes. 

Becca Chilczenkowski: Yes. You have to be doing things alongside them. 

Ruth Soukup: I love that. So good. I feel like we could talk about this stuff forever, but we are out of time and my dog is telling me that we are out of time.

Becca Chilczenkowski: He’s ready for a walk. She’s ready for 

Ruth Soukup: Becca. Yeah. Becca, I would love to know as we’re wrapping up, just where could people find out more? How can they work with you if they feel like they need more guidance, more help, um, give us all the things

Becca Chilczenkowski: Absolutely. So I am mostly on Instagram at @thehormonequeen or you can find me at my website, fitmom.co where we work with private clients.

And you can get Becca’s Hormone Factor Guide HERE. We take most of our clients through it. It’s like general version of that.

Oh, awesome. So I will, I will give you that to put in the show notes to, to give to everyone. 

Ruth Soukup: That’s amazing. Thank you so much and, and thank you for all of this. This was so interesting and so helpful and so informative, and it’s just so great to meet you.