Health & Hormones for Women Over 35 with Kerri Hallman

Jennifer Norman:
Hello, beautiful humans. Welcome to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast, your source for hope, healing, happiness, and humanity. My name is Jennifer Norman. I'm the founder of The Human Beauty Movement and your host. This podcast is here to guide you on your journey of self-love, empowerment, soul alignment, and joy. With each episode, I invite beautiful humans from all corners of the globe to join me for open conversations about their life lessons and the important work that they are doing to help heal humankind. Take a moment now to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. I'm so glad you're here, joining me for today's show.

Jennifer Norman:
Now, when I turned 35, I must say that my whole world changed. I had my first and only child, Kyle, which was an incredible experience. But something psychological and physiological definitely happened after 35 in terms of my relationship with my body. Now, many of you know that I had battled self esteem issues since I was young, but there was definitely a slowing down that happened after 35. That really threw me into a bit of a tailspin. It was harder to work out. My body started to feel stiff, stiffer, and achier. It became harder to get out of bed in the morning.

Jennifer Norman:
Well, if this sounds relatable, I'm so glad that you're here because my guest today is a woman who knows a thing or two about this topic. Kerri Hallman is a women's fitness and hormone specialist who helps women navigate the changes that happen to their bodies after 35. She brings a wealth of knowledge and experience, helping countless women unlock their body's potential and reclaim their vitality. In today's show, you'll discover groundbreaking insights into the intricate relationship between fitness and hormones. From understanding how hormonal changes impact your metabolism to uncovering the most effective strategies for sustaining healthy body weight. Kerri is here to guide us through it all. I'm so happy you're here. Welcome Kerri to the show.

Kerri Hallman:
Thank you, Jennifer. It's so nice to be here.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you so much for being here. Now, so many of us over the course of our lives have been focusing on losing weight, losing weight and struggling with not feeling great about our bodies. And then we become obsessed with the scale. We've become self critical. Now you have knowledge that helps people have healthier relationship with their bodies, especially going through midlife changes. Can you please first ground us in your background and your experience?

Kerri Hallman:
Yes, absolutely. So thank you again for having me. So my background is actually as a fitness instructor and personal trainer. I did that for ten years. I decided along that way that exercise was the be all and end all that. I was like, this is it. This is all we need. We just need to be active, eat healthy, which I thought was healthy.

Jennifer Norman:
Calories in, calories out.

Kerri Hallman:
Yeah, that's all we needed, right? And sure, in my twenties, maybe that early thirties, it may have worked, but along the way, I decided to make a few changes because I had been an owner of women's fitness studio, and the people that I used to train and see come in on a daily basis, they were working hard, but their body wasn't getting any changes, and I couldn't figure out why because they were exercising. Right. So I went and I started studying stress reduced fat loss, and became a practitioner in that. And what that does is it opened my eyes to way more than just calories in versus calories out. It opened my eyes to how stress affects our body, how each hormone that we have in our body affects what's going on. So it could be anything from sleep. Maybe you're not sleeping. So if you're not sleeping and you're trying to work out to feel better in your body and have your clothes fit better, it's not going to work, because sleep is the foundation.

Kerri Hallman:
So we need to fix the sleep to fix the other problem. It was actually fixing the inside. Everything that we don't see other than the exercise is important. Don't get me wrong, it's just there's so much more involved. And starting with stress, reduced fat loss is what started my whole balanced bodies program.

Jennifer Norman:
Wow.

Kerri Hallman:
And then I dove a little bit deeper and became a certified hormone specialist as well because I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into the hormones. And I became certified in saliva hormone testing, which helps us determine exactly what is going on with your body. So it's like a blueprint where we can say, okay, this is how your cortisol graph is. This is what your estrogen is doing. This is what we need to fix.

Jennifer Norman:
Interesting. And now, I've never heard of that before, but I want to talk. You mentioned sleep, and I want to get to that because that is such an important topic and it's something that we had all taken for granted for so many years. Who needs sleep? But first of all, let's talk a little bit about hormones, because I know that as we're aging, that becomes such a key point in terms of what is going on with our body. So can you tell us in a nutshell, like, what hormones have to do with metabolism, energy, and weight management?

Kerri Hallman:
So everything. So basically, hormones are chemical messengers that take messages from one point of the body to another to tell it what to do. And what happens when we say our hormones are out of balance is that there's something stopping that message from getting to, from point a to point b. And usually those come in the forms of our sleep patterns, our exercise that we're doing, the foods that we're eating or not eating, those are the typical ones. But hormones have always been there. We talk a lot about when you're a teen, oh, it's their hormones raging. Yeah, I remember hearing that and going, okay, I had no idea what these hormones did. Then when you get pregnant, oh, my gosh, her hormones are out of whack.

Kerri Hallman:
Well, yeah, no kidding. Like, I'm producing a child, right? And then all of a sudden we hit menopause and think, why am I having all these issues? Why am I getting this belly fat? Why can I sleep? Oh, it's just menopause. Well, it's not. It's these hormones that we've left unsupported for our entire life. So the reason that as we get to the age of 35 and up, usually 40, 45, we're in that perimenopause stage, that stage can last from anywhere from five to 15-20 years. So it's really undetermined. It just depends on where you're at in your body. But we need to support these hormones in order to have perimenopause and menopause be successful and not be such a terrible thing.

Kerri Hallman:
We can get through this part of our life and feel amazing with just few simple tweaks to what we do every day. And unfortunately, we've gotten away from it because this is like, this is my little analogy that I like to have. So when you're 20, your hormones are there, right? Everyone, we've got our hormones in our body all the time. And let's say you go out for a night on the town with your friends, you're up late, maybe you have street meat like the hot dogs at the outside of the bar. You've had a few drinks, right? This is all fine and dandy. You could probably even wake up the next day, 08:00 in the morning, go to work and feel fine. Compound that over time, right? Where all of a sudden, oh, I'm just a nighthawk. I go to bed at 01:00 every morning because I can't get to bed earlier.

Kerri Hallman:
I unwind every Friday night with a bottle of wine. Or we do take out Wednesdays where every Wednesday we go out. Okay, so that's all common. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Compound that over time, and maybe in your twenties, it wasn't so loud, but there's this little voice in your head going, hello. Maybe don't do that, right? But it's really quiet. Then you get to your thirties and you're like, okay, I've got a few aches and pains.

Kerri Hallman:
Feel okay, but like, I probably could do a little bit better, right? It's in the back of your mind, and then your. The voice is a little bit louder. It's going, hello? Hello, do you hear me? But by the time you get to 40, you've ignored all the signals that your body has given you. So it's like, I'm done. I just need to shout this from the rooftops. So it's screaming at us at 40. And this is why women are like, at 40, I just woke up one day and boom, everything changed. It's because we've ignored the signs and we've ignored that voice that's saying, I need help.

Kerri Hallman:
I need support. So really, we need to start with our teenagers, and we need to start helping them and teaching them how to support their body at this stage so that as they get through the stages, once they get to 40 and are in perimenopause, their bodies aren't screaming at them because they've done everything right. You know what I mean?

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Jennifer Norman:
So many questions. But first, I forgot to do my disclaimer up front, and that is, this is a show for information as well as for entertainment. It's for your knowledge, but it is not medical advice. We don't treat, prevent, or cure any diseases. Definitely talk to your medical professional or somebody who is licensed, somebody who is certified in order to be able to give you specific and personal information and guidance for your needs. When we're talking here, we are talking about generalizations about saying, like, your hormones are this way. And certainly there are certain folks that have endocrine issues and a lot of very specific needs that we're not going to be able to address here in the realm of one show. However, I think that what Kerri is saying is so interesting because there are a lot of times where we have just kind of brushed our health under the rug and we've taken our bodies for granted for so many years.

Jennifer Norman:
I know I had, and I was hating on my body ever since I was young and not realizing what a gift and a precious commodity our bodies truly are. And it is so easy to just dress and strain it to its nth degree because that's how we've been brought up, frankly, we've been brought up to be competitive. We've been brought up to do as much as we possibly could with our bodies. And frankly, because of society and the way that our lifestyles have been arranged and we become more sedentary, we aren't really, for the most part, treating our bodies with the kind of care and attention and becoming more educated and informed, such as what Kerri is providing. I often wonder, like, what do they teach the kids in school these days? What do the health classes look like? Do they learn this kind of stuff in elementary school or high school? I'm not sure. I don't know. Maybe they do. And they're way more informed.

Jennifer Norman:
I know that there's a lot more free flowing information out there because of Google and because of YouTube, which is amazing. But truly, I think that hearing it and doing it are two very different things. And so it's kind of like whatever we can do. And this podcast is all about helping to shine a light on ways that we can offer ourselves a little bit more love, a little bit more care, and continuously improve ourselves. And so by understanding a little bit more about what hormones do, how they are messengers, how they're going to rise and fall with the seasons of life, shall I say, it does become important on knowing, like, well, okay, now that I'm 40, I've had this crash. Now what? It's like, okay, I can't go back and change the way that I was for the past 40 years, but what can I do now to help me at least get myself to a place where I'm feeling a little bit better? So let's talk about stress for a second, Kerri, because I know when the body is under stress, oh, boy, you know, that unto itself can do quite a bit of damage to the body.

Kerri Hallman:
Yeah. So stress, we all know the stress where we're like, oh, my gosh, I'm so stressed out at work or my kids are driving me crazy, right? That's stress. But there's also internal stress that we don't see and we kind of forget about and we don't do anything about it until, like I said, it's screaming at us, right? So think of this. We need stress in our body. We need cortisol. Cortisol is our stress hormone. We need cortisol. Cortisol gets us up in the morning.

Kerri Hallman:
It reacts if we're being chased by a tiger, right? Like, we need that cortisol to exercise. It gives us a cortisol boost, right? We need it. There is some good cortisol. The problem is we've become a population of chronically stressed individuals because of the food we eat, the hours we keep. Right? We don't go to bed regularly, the artificial light, the phone in our hands, the environmental toxins. There's all these things that we don't even think about, like you said, take for granted, that are causing the stress on our body. So a natural stress response is you're running through the forest, a tiger comes up behind you. Okay, let's just say.

Kerri Hallman:
Let's just say we're in a world where tigers are in forests, and your body is going to pick up the cortisol, and it's going to make you run because it's trying to keep you safe. It's going to shut off digestion, it's going to shut off bowels, it's going to shut off any function in your body and just work on keeping you safe. Right? So you run along, the tiger gets tired and it leaves. Stress response is gone, the stress goes back. That's a regular stress response. Okay. What happens is we live our lives in such a chronic state that our bodies are always feeling like we're being chased by that tiger and there's no end. So it's like it doesn't know the difference between a tiger and a kid's stress or a tiger and a food stress.

Kerri Hallman:
It just sees it as one.

Jennifer Norman:
It just sees as it's the end of the world. And yes, everything is a crisis.

Kerri Hallman:
Yeah. And cortisol's job is to keep us safe. So it's not doing the job wrong. It's just we have to learn how to manage the stress so that it's not always in this chronic state. So if you think of a coil, right? We all know what a coil looks like. Your body in a chronic state is like you're winding that coil every minute, every hour of the day. And if you don't stop that cycle, it's going to keep winding and winding and winding, and that leads to no energy, that leads to poor sleep. That leads to maybe the excess around the midsection where your clothes aren't fitting you right.

Kerri Hallman:
It might lead to brain fog. It might lead to, like, forgetfulness, headaches, insomnia.

Jennifer Norman:
You're describing my life right now.

Kerri Hallman:
So we need to learn how to even just release a bit of the coil sometimes so that it's not constantly tightening and tightening and tightening. And I had to learn that the hard way, too.

Jennifer Norman:
Okay, so now let's talk about things that we can do in order to address a healthier lifestyle, including sleep. Let's talk about the importance of sleep because, yeah, a lot of people are like, oh, I can live on 4 hours of sleep. I don't need to get any more than a few hours of sleep. I'm just one of those people that just up and I'm like, well, congratulations. I love to stay in bed for, like, 10 hours if I can. Tell us about sleep.

Kerri Hallman:
Okay, so sleep is the foundation, right?

Jennifer Norman:
Yes

Kerri Hallman:
We can't build a house with a foundation. We can't live in our bodies healthily without a foundation. And sleep is that foundation. So when we sleep, our body does some repair work, and it slows our digestion. It helps our gut because there's no food incoming. So there's these little bugs that, like, go around and sweep through your intestines and clear out everything. Right.

Kerri Hallman:
Growth hormone is one of the big hormones as well, that we don't really talk about because we hear a lot about cortisol, stress, estrogen when we're women, progesterone, testosterone, as men. Right. Like, we hear those things. Growth hormone is one of the big ones. So there's insulin, cortisol, and growth hormone that are the three big factors in stress. Okay. Growth hormone is when our bodies repair, because we all know that our bodies get better with rest.

Kerri Hallman:
So growth hormone, it produces between 10:00 p.m. and 01:00 a.m. every night. That's it. So if you go to bed every night at 12:30, it takes maybe your body, like, 20-30 minutes to get into a deep sleep. 01:00 a.m. is the cutoff for growth hormone. So what's happening? Your body isn't getting the repair it needs. So it's not actually resting.

Kerri Hallman:
If you go to bed at 12:30 and you wake up at seven and you need to take a nap every afternoon, you're never going to get that growth hormone back.

Jennifer Norman:
So it doesn't change based upon when you fall asleep. It actually just, it's like a circadian thing where it just hits between ten and one for everyone? Wow.

Kerri Hallman:
So think of it like prehistoric times when we didn't have lights, we didn't have clocks. They ran by the sun, right. So as soon as it got dark, it was quiet time, and our body was preparing for bed. And they eventually went to bed at whatever. I mean, it wasn't there. I don't know. But I'm assuming, like, if it got sick by eight or nine. Yeah.

Kerri Hallman:
So we don't do that anymore because of our technology, because of electricity because of our high paced life. And so we've gotten out of that pattern. Going to bed at that time and ten might sound absurd when you're used to going to bed at 12:30. So my advice, 10:00 is when I tell my clients, let's aim for 10:00 to go to bed, right? You got a little bit of grace period. 10:30-11:00. Let's make 11:00 the cap. 10:00 is like the time that you want to get to bed. Then you wake up at the same time every day as well.

Kerri Hallman:
That's another part of the story, however. So let's say you're 12:30 to bed every time. Like, you've been doing that for years. And it's like, I need to change this up because I heard that sleep is important to go to bed by ten. So what I always say is, if it's 12:30, back it up to 12:15 for a couple days and you might lie there, be wide awake. Right. Don't go on your phone, have a book, dim the lights, get your body prepped for sleep. Then once 12:15 feels good, try 12:00 and just go back 15 minutes increments until you can get to a point where your body is like, wow.

Kerri Hallman:
And I bet you you'd feel a thousand times better if you could back your bedtime up to ten and wake up at 6:00 or 7:00 every day.

Jennifer Norman:
Interesting. So, in terms of having growth hormone versus not having growth hormone, what is the results of not getting enough growth hormone?

Kerri Hallman:
A lot of things can happen, but rest and repair are the biggest ones. So we all know that our body rests when we sleep, right. It also does a lot of repair work. So in that time, if you won't get it. So a growth could be stunted. If you're going to the gym and trying to build muscle, it won't happen. If you're trying to perhaps lose some weight, it's not going to happen because we know that these things have to happen with rest.

Kerri Hallman:
And this is the time period. Now, having said that, there are certain times throughout the night that different things are happening. So between 1:00 and 03:00 a.m. your liver working and cleaning itself out and doing the repair on the liver between three and five, that's when, like, oxidative stress is kind of being released into your body. So if you have stress, meaning like chronic stress, gut health stress, things like that, that's what's going to keep you up at 03:00 in the morning. But if you can work through that, your body is, like, filtering that out at that time. Right. Then we've got our adrenals working between five and seven.

Kerri Hallman:
Right. So there's all these times throughout the night that our body is doing a lot of work that we don't know about.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. I had no idea that it was so systematic like that.

Kerri Hallman:
Yeah. So who knew that our liver was replenishing at 01:00 in the morning? Like, I didn't know that.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Kerri Hallman:
And it's like, it makes sense because that's when we're supposed to be resting. It's not going to do it at 02:00 in the afternoon when we're, like, foraging for our meal. So if. Yeah, if you don't get that time one, all of those things that I mentioned, weight loss or muscle building or just repairing your body, like, even your gut health, if you're not in bed at those times, that process isn't working and there's a big break in the chain. So it's very important to be getting to bed within. Like I said, ten to eleven. I'm like, 10:00, I'm done.

Jennifer Norman:
Wow, that is impressive. I feel like sometimes I'm just. I've always been a morning. I literally was having dinner at midnight last night.

Kerri Hallman:
Oh, my.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, yeah. I'm one of those. And that's the interesting thing, is that I think that becoming aware is one thing, and it's like, great, you know, now I know what I should have been doing. And it becomes like, okay, Kerri, now let's be real. Like, here is my lifestyle. This is what I'm dealing with. And how in the world am I supposed to be able to do this without creating more stress on myself? That, oh, gosh, I'm doing it wrong, or that I'm just messing myself up. And there's no hope.

Jennifer Norman:
I think that the interesting thing is, like, I often wonder if, because we are evolving species, no question, we've been evolving for hundreds of thousands of million years, that what if the way that we are behaving in our lifestyle and in our changes in environment, and what if we are forcing evolution of our bodies in such an almost like a parabolic rate, if you will, that could be possible. And it's also kind of married to the fact that a lot of people are like, okay, there are so many quick fixes out there now. Like, just take a pill or take a supplement or take melatonin to get to sleep. Like, so a lot of people are trying to, like, use external things and even potentially things that a lot of nutritionists tell them that they should be doing in order to be able to get themselves into a healthier place quicker, like these biohacks and things like that. I would love for you to just like, comment on what your take is on certain of these quick fixes and even frankly, Ozempic. I mean, let's talk about Ozempic. I know that you probably got a whole lot of opinion about that, but because we've gotten ourselves into this place of just being used to fast fixes and saying like, well, it's easier to do that than to change my lifestyle, what would you say?

Kerri Hallman:
Okay, so you might have to bring me back for like, if I go on, but we're gonna start with, how do I make these changes? So when I work with the ladies in my group, it's very systematic. So I start with one thing, and then we grow and we grow and we grow. So it's not like the next day from you join, your life is changing because remember, it's stress reducing. So like you said, how do I do this where I don't really need my stress? Okay, so I start with one thing. We remove things that are causing inflammation. Because inflammation is a big stress inducer, causes a whole host of problems in our body. So we're removing the inflammation first and then we go step by step. Now, without being guided, why not just make small, simple changes, right? And the unfortunate part is, yeah, they're not gonna happen overnight.

Kerri Hallman:
You might see a difference in 30 days your sleep if you are consistently going to bed at ten and waking up at six. I'm just using those timeframes. It can be different for everybody, but you will see some changes. But, so the problem is, like you said, we have been so designed and so marketed to, that these quick fixes are what we need. The problem with the quick fixes is they don't touch on the basics. So one, they're restricting your calories super, super low because there's no other way you can lose a lot of weight. Let's go with the weight, because that's usually what the quick fix is. You can't lose a lot of weight in 30 days and expect to keep it off.

Kerri Hallman:
Right? So one to one and a half, maybe two pounds max every week, if that's what your goals are, is ideal, because then your body is able, like, the slower it is to go off, the longer it's going to take to come back on in 30 days. So I'm just going with the 30 day model. 30 days, you can't fix your sleep, you can't fix your gut, you cannot fix your cortisol, you cannot fix your estrogen and progesterone dysregulation. And that's the part that we're missing. And when you do these quick fixes, guess what happens? What? You increase your cortisol, you throw off your balance of other hormones, which then makes everything worse. So each quick fix that you've done over the years has added to the stress on your body. Okay? So if you go back, I was there, I did them all, right? Like, I was an exercise a holic. I was the one that, like, when I owned my gym, I did three, four workouts a day.

Kerri Hallman:
I taught three classes, I did my own workouts, I went for runs. Like I was the energizer bunny. Meanwhile, it was doing all this stuff internally to me that I'm like, I ignored for many years and it just compounded. So all of a sudden, I hit 41 and my body's like, nope, you're done. And I got injured. I had massive gut issues because I wasn't taking care of my body. And that's what happens, is that these quick fixes, sure. In the moment, it's great.

Kerri Hallman:
I've got a wedding in 30 days. I want to lose this weight to fit into my dress or I just want to feel good. Right. So I'm going to go on this juice cleanse that's going to clear me of everything and I'm going to feel good. Okay. But then what happens, right, like, you're not sustainable, how to live.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Kerri Hallman:
Right. You're just taught this thing, you can't keep it going.

Jennifer Norman:
Right?

Kerri Hallman:
You can't do a juice cleanse for the rest of your life. You can't do the cabbage soup meals for the rest of your life.

Jennifer Norman:
Are they supposed to be done just intermittently so that you clearing yourself out? Is there any real benefit to doing a juice cleanse or water cleanse?

Kerri Hallman:
No. So, okay, yes and no. However, the problem is, is that you can cleanse your body by eating real foods.

Jennifer Norman:
Good point.

Kerri Hallman:
It's just there's a systematic way to do it. You don't have to starve yourself, you don't have to drink liquids, you can actually chew food and they're better for you. So, yeah, it's not going to be a three day juice cleanse. It's going to be a month or two where we clean your body out. But the end result is way better than this 30 day juice cleanse. Because usually in the 30 day juice cleanse. You're starved because you're only drinking vegetables and fruit.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Kerri Hallman:
And you're going to binge when you're done.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, you're.

Kerri Hallman:
And then this again, throws off your cortisol.

Jennifer Norman:
Mm hmm.

Kerri Hallman:
Right. So that's the problem with quick fixes, and they're quick. So you're gonna, like, the weights gonna be released, you're probably gonna back on because you're gonna do all your regular things again because it's not long enough to make your habits. Then you're gonna do another quick fix, and then the same thing's gonna happen, and every year something's gonna change. And then you go, well, I don't understand why my weights going up or my pants don't fit or why my energy is so lagging or all of a sudden I can't sleep. This is why. Because we haven't been treating our bodies with respect. We haven't been treating our bodies, we haven't been nourishing our bodies, and we haven't been giving it the love it needs.

Kerri Hallman:
As far as the Ozempic, the only thing I have to say is that anything like it, like that, that you inject in your body and you don't have to eat. Your body needs to eat. Like a lot of people that take it, go, I'm not hungry, so I'm just not eating. Well, where's your body getting the nourishment from? We forget that food is fuel. We look at food as celebration, as emotions, as parties. Right? Like, we look at, it's so much tied to emotion, but really, in essence, it's fuel. It's repairing, it's fueling you. It's doing all the things that we need it to do, but we have taken it for granted.

Kerri Hallman:
So if you're taking something like Ozempic that's causing your body to not be hungry, where is it getting the nutrients from?

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, I mean, but isn't it getting it from the fat stores? And that's why people are losing weight as well? Not necessarily?

Kerri Hallman:
They're not getting nutrients from that.

Jennifer Norman:
They're getting energy, but not nutrients. Yeah.

Kerri Hallman:
So your body needs the nutrients. And from the few people that I've talked to that have done it, I've had to keep my mouth shut when I like.

Jennifer Norman:
Sure.

Kerri Hallman:
I'm purely talking to them, asking them for, like, information, what's this doing? How do you feel? And they're all like, I've never lost weight this fast in my life. And, oh, my gosh, I used to be so hungry. All the time. And I'm not hungry. Like, I only eat dinner now. And it's like your body can't function on that few calories. It can't do any of the things that it needs to do. Like, we forget that our body needs food, it needs calories, it needs fat to do the normal processes and to keep the hormones happy.

Kerri Hallman:
So this person that maybe have lost weight, they're going to feel good because they've lost weight, but there's a whole bunch of other stuff that's happening inside that is going to come down eventually.

Jennifer Norman:
Your perspective is that maybe for a year you might be happy, or even that, like, you might be happy because you've been able to lose weight. Maybe it's even much more condensed time frame than that because you can't, to your point, go without nutrients for that long. But then after, it's not something that can be sustained, to your point, before, it's not a healthy lifestyle solution for you longer term than just all of a sudden having this dramatic weight loss and looking a certain way for a period of time, there's going to be some price to pay afterwards. This sounds like you're protective. Yes.

Kerri Hallman:
Because, one, you can't put a drug in your body for the rest of your life.

Jennifer Norman:
Some people would argue.

Kerri Hallman:
Yes, it's not good for your body to put a drug into it for the rest of your life. Right? Like, let's talk about stress. So you're putting a drug in your body that your body doesn't recognize. It's then your liver has to filter it through and it's gonna say, oh, I don't know what this is. And it's gonna go into a fat cell, it's gonna be toxic. And you can actually get toxic overload by having so many chemicals come into your body. And it's not just drugs, it's tap water. It's the environment that you're breathing outside.

Kerri Hallman:
It's from the gas station, it's this and that. Drinking plastic water bottles. There's so many things that we have.

Jennifer Norman:
It's an amazing thing that we are alive, isn't it? It's amazing that we haven't poisoned ourselves to oblivion, but we are resilient. The body is incredible. And I must say that, yeah, I mean, there's more and more just rare diseases coming up. My son has a very rare genetic disorder. Lord knows where that came from, but a defect in particular gene that was passed on from us and just the rates of these ailments and conditions and allergies and all sorts of things. Certainly we are symbiotic with our environment and looking at what we're doing. And everybody knows I'm a proponent of cleaner living in terms of just, like, making sure that we honor our own homes, we don't have to go out and try to clean up the world. If everybody were to take care of themselves first, their bodies, their lives, their families, and then it spreads out to the community, and ultimately the world becomes a better place because we're all much kinder and more loving towards ourselves.

Jennifer Norman:
And to this point, I love that you are helping people with healthy, longer term solutions which are not quick fixes and which are not like, fixes at all, frankly. I mean, it's kind of like these are the things that we want to address, and these are the ways that you can help yourself to be healthier, to be more comfortable in your clothes, to be able to do things that you want to do and live the kind of life that you want to live because you have the energy and you have the strength and you have the stamina. Those are the best solutions. They're the ones that we can adopt little by little with healthier habits stacking on top of each other, that we incorporate and become a bit wiser about ourselves, especially as our bodies are changing. What are some of the things we talked about? Sleep. We talked a little bit about getting, like, cleaner nutrition. Anything else that you think is just like, on your top five, let's say, of like, if you are able to address these things, then you're going to be in a better place. And of course, we can titrate and we can do things that are very individual based upon you and your top five go tos in terms of recommendations.

Kerri Hallman:
Yeah. So go back to basics. We have become such a complicated species and we over complicate everything. So we want to have our cake and eat it, too, right? Like, we want all the things, but you can, like, if you want to have more energy, if you want to feel really good, if you want to, like, get rid of joint pain, if you want to get rid of the brain fog, just go back to basics. Right? And by basics, I mean have breakfast, have lunch, have dinner, have a couple snacks in between, remove inflammation, which is, I'm going to get a lot of. And I'm going to. I know people are going to be like, nope, I'm not listening to that. Sugar is one, like, a major, major, major cause of a lot of problems.

Kerri Hallman:
So, so sugar, wheat, dairy, those are the top three. Corn and soy as well.

Jennifer Norman:
So sugar, wheat, dairy, corn, soy, eliminate.

Kerri Hallman:
If you can even just eliminate those, you will feel a thousand times better. So, but go back to basics. Start eating one ingredient foods. So get rid of packaged foods, get rid of processed foods. Go to the grocery store and be like, do I understand what's in this label? Right? Don't look at the, you know, in the label where there's new nutrition guide and then there's the ingredients. Everyone goes to the nutrition guide and goes, oh, that's too much fat, or, oh, that's too many calories, you know what?

Jennifer Norman:
And carbs.

Kerri Hallman:
Shift your focus over to the label. Yeah, go to the label. Can you understand? Do you know what they're saying? What's the first three ingredients, if they're clean ingredients and you can, like, the less the better, for sure. But go spend a lot of your time in the produce section and the meat section. Like, that's really all you need, right? I guess that would be to reduce inflammation. Eat your meals, drink your water. So, so many people are dehydrated, right? I get so many, I forget to drink during the day or weekends are hard because I'm not on schedule. I just set reminders, set alarms on your phone, remind yourself to drink, because if your body is dehydrated, this is a whole probably other episode.

Kerri Hallman:
But if your body is dehydrated, your cells aren't going to function properly, your muscles aren't going to function, your digestion isn't going to function properly. Your poop. Right? Like, we need to poop. Those things all need to come into play. Don't worry about doing these crazy, intense workouts. And take it from me, because I.

Jennifer Norman:
Used to be the workout queen.

Kerri Hallman:
Yeah, right? Like, just go for a walk outside if you can. Like, that's the best thing you can do. And don't avoid the sun. So those would be my five.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, my gosh. Those are great examples.

Kerri Hallman:
Basics, right? Nothing that you can buy in a box, nothing that you can like. And oftentimes when clients come to me, it's just they want to be guided, right. Because we have kind of messed up the natural processes of things. So all I'm doing is bringing you back to basics, and your grocery bill is probably going to be less. You might have to cook at home a little bit more, but you're even drinking water, your face is going to start to glow. You're going to get like, like, your skin's just gonna be brighter.

Jennifer Norman:
I started to be more mindful about my drinking of water and my neck started to look a little less crepey. The sleep thing is tough for me. I have to get up in the middle of the night because I have a disabled son. I'm his caretaker. So I work the night shift pretty much as well as I work a day shift. So my sleep is like, you know what? I'm just gonna have to take the "L" on that one.

Kerri Hallman:
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, for you, you've got to do what you can. Right?

Jennifer Norman:
Do what you can with what you have.

Kerri Hallman:
Also working around your lifestyle. Because I do work with people that are shift workers. I do. Right. Like you, you can't go to bed at 10:00 when you're starting your work at.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Kerri Hallman:
So there's ways around it, but in an ideal world, obviously you go to bed between ten and one. Right. But there's ways that we can work.

Jennifer Norman:
Together, support other areas of your healthfulness and. Yeah, then beating yourself because you're working a night shift, for sure.

Kerri Hallman:
Yeah, yeah.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, my gosh, Kerri. Now where can people find you if they want to work with you? Find more information about you. Tell us all the goods.

Kerri Hallman:
Yeah, so I spend a lot of time on Instagram and Facebook.

Jennifer Norman:
I kind of do your Facebook, by the way. Oh, my God, your following is like insane.

Kerri Hallman:
I like them for different reasons. Right. But Facebook, I'm just my name, Kerri Hallman. And then on Instagram, I'm Kerri Hallman.fit. So go message me there if you'd like. Come have follow. I also have information on my website which is fitlifestyles.CA, and you can get a lot of information there. I've actually got a free guide for you.

Kerri Hallman:
Just hop on there. It's called shrink your belly fat. It gives you like tips that we were talking about today. So if you didn't take notes and you still want to do it, hop on there. And you can always grab that free guide as well.

Jennifer Norman:
Amazing. And I'll put all of your information in the show notes, everybody who is listening. Kerri Hallman is an amazing, amazing hormone specialist, fitness health expert. She helps particularly women over the age of 35 to feel good about their bodies, giving lots of wonderful health tips that are very easily digestible, pun intended. So please look her up. Thank you so much, Kerri, for joining me on the show today. It was such a wonderful conversation.

Kerri Hallman:
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you for listening to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. Be sure to follow, rate and review us wherever you stream podcasts. The Human Beauty Movement is a community based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media, and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more at TheHumanBeautyMovement.com. Thank you so much for being a beautiful human.