92: When Your Body Is Asking for Change

What do you do when you’re doing a lot of the “right” things for your health—but you still don’t feel good?

At eight months postpartum, I’m halfway through losing the 60 pounds I gained during pregnancy. I’ve lost about 30 pounds, my sleep is good, I’m managing stress, and I’m not overexercising. But recently, I’ve been dealing with increasing joint pain in my hands and wrists, along with chronic back pain that I’m tired of accepting as normal.

So I’ve decided it’s time to investigate.

In this episode, I’m bringing you along as I begin an elimination diet using the Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) as a framework. I’m sharing why I’m choosing to experiment with my diet before jumping into expensive testing, what I hope to learn, and how I plan to track my symptoms and eventually reintroduce foods.

But this episode isn't really just about AIP.

It's about learning to pay attention when your body is telling you something—and being willing to make changes even when the timing isn't convenient.

With trips to San Diego and Minnesota coming up, four kids to feed, work, holidays, and normal life, there is no perfect time for me to follow a restrictive elimination diet. And that's exactly the point.

Sometimes we have to stop asking, “When will this be easy?” and start asking, “Is this important enough to do while it's hard?”

In this episode, we talk about:

• Why weight loss and health aren't necessarily the same thing
• The joint and back pain that made me reconsider what I'm eating
• My previous experience with food sensitivities and elimination diets
• Why I'm choosing AIP as an elimination framework
• What the AIP diet temporarily eliminates
• Why an elimination diet shouldn't automatically become a forever diet
• The importance of systematically reintroducing foods
• Why I'm not starting with expensive food-sensitivity testing
• How I plan to track pain, stiffness, digestion, energy, and other symptoms
• Why changing 15 things at once makes it nearly impossible to know what's actually working
• How I'm preparing my kitchen and creating simple default meals
• The difference between a willpower problem and a planning problem
• How I plan to navigate AIP while traveling
• Why there is never a perfect time to make a difficult health change
• Finding a “why” that's stronger than inconvenience
• Why persistent symptoms shouldn't automatically be blamed on food
• When symptoms deserve medical evaluation rather than another dietary experiment
• Why the ultimate goal isn't restriction—it's learning what your body actually needs

I'm not sharing this experiment from the finish line. I don't know yet whether changing my diet will resolve the symptoms I'm experiencing.

And that's why I want to bring you along.

Over the coming weeks, I'll share what I'm eating, what's difficult, what happens while traveling, how my symptoms change, and eventually what I learn as I begin reintroducing foods.

Because the goal was never just weight loss.

The goal is building a body—and a life—that you can live well in.

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