Shifts That Free Up Your Energy

Build a Health Foundation: Summary

In this episode, Build a Health Foundation, the guest, Mariana Foley, shares her transformative journey from experiencing severe burnout and health challenges to becoming a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioner. Mariana discusses her early life, growing up around chronic illness and dealing with her mother’s sickness, which led to her developing anxiety and a hypervigilant nature. She describes her career-oriented life and how she eventually hit rock bottom with severe fatigue and iron deficiency, despite being told that her labs were normal. This crisis drove her to explore herbalism and holistic health, culminating in her discovering and enrolling in the FDN course, where she gained the knowledge to truly understand and address her health issues and help others.

Mariana explains that her body was low on vital aspects, from cortisol and sex hormones to iron and good gut flora, which reflected her years of prioritizing everything and everyone else over herself. She highlights the importance of not just focusing on individual symptoms but addressing foundational health aspects such as digestion, stress response, and bio-individual needs. She emphasizes that the path to recovery involves a diligent commitment to whole foods, proper sleep hygiene, stress management, and getting lab work done to understand and tackle unique biochemical imbalances. Mariana now focuses on helping ambitious women who face burnout and exhaustion by addressing both lifestyle and physiological factors to restore energy and well-being.

Concluding the episode, Mariana advises listeners to tune into their body’s signals and prioritize their basic needs to avoid falling into the trap of perpetual stress and eventual burnout. She underscores the importance of listening to one’s body, using an anecdote from her life to illustrate how ignoring basic needs like hunger or the need to use the restroom can exacerbate stress and lead to bigger health issues.