Highly Sought After Business Coach Melanie Parish (Personal Client of Mine) Talks Openly About Health, Family, and Success

I want to welcome an important person in my world to the show. Her name is Melanie Parish. Melanie is an author, a public speaker. She's the host of The Experimental Leader Podcast, which I've been on and it was amazing. She founded an academy, the Experimental Leader Academy. She's a master certified coach, but she's also been my coach for many years. When I say my coach, she's coached me through business relationships and has been pivotal in standing next to me on my journey and my dreams. You can consult with Melanie you consult with coaches and organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to IT, startup companies and everything in between. Melanie's based at a Dundas, Ontario and she splits her time in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Melanie, thank you for being here. I'm thrilled to share with our readers a little bit about your health journey, my health journey, our relationship, and pretty much everything in between.

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I would like to welcome this incredible guest that I have on the show. I'm standing in a place of gratitude for Melanie Parish, joining me and putting power on your plate. Melanie is an author. She's a phenomenal public speaker. She is the host of The Experimental Leader Podcast. She founded the Experimental Leader Academy. She's a master certified coach. She's my coach and has been for many years. As you will see in this conversation, we've gone back many moons ago and through many experiences. Melanie coaches individuals like myself, individuals from Fortune 500 companies to IT startups. She's a phenomenal author and educator. One of my dearest friends and a mentor to me in all things from raising children to killing it in business, to start in communities. Melanie, I want to welcome you and thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me. I was excited about this.

We're going to have a lot of fun, and we're going to share things definitely about my experiences with you that many people don't know I've ever had. Melanie and I go way back. Melanie on a professional level has guided me through publishing books, launching platforms, webcasts, podcasts and you name it. We've had these business experiences together. I'm going to talk on the personal aspect, but I think one of the reasons why the longevity and the quality of our relationship are because Melanie takes this business approach in her books is called The Experimental Leader. Everything is okay to try and experiment with. From a scientific perspective with people walking in my door, my ego realized early on in clinical practice, that everything that we do together has to be viewed from an experiment perspective.

We're going to get into how long we've known each other and what we've been through in our life journey together. I want to design something because we again have experienced a lot of crazy things together. I'm an open book. I have to be willing to go there for my clients and if you have any questions, nothing's off the table. If I suddenly put my practitioner hat on and I venture into something that maybe is more designed for you and me in a clinical setting, I want you to pick like your favorite food, a safe word or something that I can know like, "Let's save that for the office." What do you want that to be?

I am sure I want it to be aubergine.

Do you mean eggplant? That opened a ginormous can of worms. I have a publishing company called Aubergine Justine. Justine's my middle name. That came off a panic call that I had to Melanie when I was first put on the TV and they said, "That's awesome. Send us a cover of your book so we can promote it." Unbeknownst to anyone, I didn't have a book. I called Melanie up and I'm like, "What do I do?" She says, "Let's do a book cover and let's put coming in the fall and self-publish your own book." I had to come up with a phenomenal publishing name. That is how I knew that I believe that's French. Is that right, Melanie?

It is French.

It is French for eggplant. Let me tell you candidly that Melanie was there. She has been a coach to me on many levels from financial to intellectual property. Melanie also coached me through one of my most successful breakthroughs in life and that was the birth of my daughter. Melanie was present for that and poured hot water over my lower back while I was in labor. I had a water birth at home. Melanie, there's nothing you haven't seen or experienced with me or in my world.

It's been a wild ride. At that time that we put out that book cover, I had a graphic design company at the time and I'm still back on that. How crazy was that she put out a cover before you wrote the book?

I'll never forget it was on ExtraTV and they asked me to be one of the extra life changers and everybody had these phenomenal books. I went on to write the book. I went on to self-publish the book and as we've all talked about, I have published a lot of books since then. That was crazy, but that was at the crux of the relationships that we have that to me that foster longevity in health and wellness and in wellbeing. What that is being open and receptive to a solution that maybe you had never thought of before. I know that you've watched me in clinical practice work with many clients and even family members.

One thing that I wanted to ask you and in the spirit of experimenting because I'm learning every day in my clinical practice. What is one thing that you maybe had me suggest from a health perspective that you wish you could share with everybody? Let me say, this comes from you texting me questions whether it's family or for personal reasons and saying, "I am grateful that I have access to you this way." What would be one thing that I'd shared with you that you go, "This has stuck with me?"

I almost have tears in my eyes as I'm thinking about this long relationship that we've had. I have seen you in clinical practice for years off and on. I live a long way from you so I can't see you clinically as much as I have wished. I've had this incredible privilege of access so that if I had a question about my kids, my mother or my father along the way, I could text you a question and you would answer it. I have to say, I've always tried to be careful because I knew I could get you. I knew that you would always be incredibly generous and kind. It's been an incredible privilege to have that. There are two things that popped into my mind right away. One is that I have sons, I've twin, fifteen-year-old sons who are both competitive athletes. One was a gymnast and now he's a swimmer and the other one's been a swimmer always.

One of the best things that you've helped them do is to work on what’s the optimal nutrition should they have? We eat organic, healthy, protein and vegetables. We handle that. There are not too many people in the world that I could ask like, "How do we go to the next level of that?" I love that you've suggested five fruits a day and then my son beg me for your Phase 3 powder so they can have Phase 3 powder with chocolate milk and banana. They love it. They want that to be in the house. I love that this generation of boys is using your products. That's the first piece and the first one. I feel like it's been nice to know what to tell them when they want to take their bodies to the next level. Both of them are fast and super crazy strong and don't have much fat on them. Knowing how to help them take their bodies to the next level, it's incredibly helpful to feel like I have an answer for them.

I've known these boys since before they were born. One of the things that you said that makes me excited is having anybody in their youth looking to put power on their plate and to turn towards something instead of avoiding something. When an individual comes into my office and this isn't 100% across the board and not as much with your family, but typically when people come in, they don't have a lot of great foundational respect for the power that they can put on their plate. They don't view themselves maybe as an athlete, a racehorse, or the most incredibly healthy individual. They don't hold that out for themselves. Definitely, with my kids and with my clients' kids and kids that are clients of mine, I want them very early on to understand how they can empower themselves and how they can take it to the next level.

With the boys and those kinds of sustained cardiovascular aerobic activities, it's important to elevate that natural sugar in the body so that the muscle feels like it has adequate sugar storage. Our bodies hold onto the sugar in the liver and the smooth muscle. When you're swimming like crazy or you're doing gymnastics, you have to have enough of that reserve for the body to let all of the other mechanisms work efficiently. When you short change it from that glycemic value or that natural sugar value, the body will go into a metabolic imbalance. Those boys knowing that they have that power, that's phenomenal.

I say you don't fast before going fast. Make sure that you eat before you exercise. Don't grab a cup of coffee and jump on the treadmill. Don't go swim laps or be in a swim meet without eating. Don't do synthetic sugar like those people do. Fun dips I've seen a lot at swim meets but nurture that muscle. Being able to make a difference from a youth body, that's generational. They're going to be sharing that with their kids and that's all.

It's because of all the things I've learned from you and I know the power of food. My kids will come to me and we will pack them a huge lunch for on-deck. They have a huge lunch and we talk about how long is the race and what will they have first? What will they have? Sometimes they do chocolate milk for recovery. Sometimes I want them to have nuts because they're going to go do a long race and I want something they're not going to burn through fast. Sometimes it's a fruit because I want them to have ready carbs that are going to get them through 50 meters. There's a real difference and I know this between a 50-meter race and a 1,500.

You see this in the animal world. Having a degree in Ag sciences, animal sciences and having horses ourselves, there is such a difference. We know that we feed a horse very differently that's going to do more furlongs than a quick sprint. With athletes, performance is nutrient-based and nutrient-dependent. Whatever you want out of your body, whether it's lean muscle or a better libido performance is based on the nutrients that you put in.

I have a son who's in the top ten in Canada in 8 or 9 events. He's successful in his age group. He comes to me and says, "Let's walk through this. What are we going to do?" That was the first one. You talked about knowing my kids since birth. You helped me get pregnant. I was doing fertility treatment and all of those things, but then I had a history of having a premature baby and you told me to eat 4,000 calories a day and 120 grams of protein a day. I had preemie twins born at 32 weeks. My twins were the healthiest kids in the NICU. I know it was because of those two things. At the time you told me that there are good outcomes with preemies with protein. I was religious about that protein and my kids never had jaundice, which is almost unheard of at 32 weeks. They were healthy. They came out super healthy. They have no respiratory problems, nothing even though they were born at 32 weeks. I'm grateful for that as well.

Especially in that third trimester when we're working on the development of the lung and the eyes, that's why I had to do a ton of those healthy fats. Especially right before bed, I had to do the raw, nuts and seeds and the healthy fats and why we moved to the protein content app. We added those calories through those healthy fats like avocados. I remember this like it was yesterday. I got chills when you were talking about your delivery and having them at 32 weeks. One of the reasons why a lot of times they give women steroids in the third trimester, if they're concerned with premature delivery, or if they're going to do a scheduled C-section early is because of the later development of the lung and the eyes. The vision problems that sometimes can bring up. As I was writing down meal maps and food list for you, I was like, "The boy's eyes and the boy's legs." I use food strategically and purposely. Now, we're talking about them killing it in swim meets. When they were itty-bitties, we were talking about them having healthy development so that they could thrive at 32 weeks. That shows from the beginning of how incorporating targeted nutrients can change a person's life trajectory.

In our last conversation, we were talking about supplements and what's the baseline. What's the thing you do before anything else? I guess I'm a slow learner because I've been around for many years. I've in your community but I changed my behavior because of that conversation. I am trying a new experiment. I don't know if it's exactly what you would recommend. I am trying a newer experiment you said that you might have to go through the things that everybody should take. I narrowed it down to five mostly because I can't get shipments of your product in Canada right now easily. I started taking a multi, which I have Haylie Pomroy Multi. I'm a horrible supplement taker, but I started taking it. I decided if I had to take a lot of them, I wasn't going to take them. I'm taking one multi, one probiotic, one essential fatty acid and one free radical. I'm taking those but one instead of two because it's too many pills. I decided that was my new experiment. I have had so much energy since I started.

I do have a conversation that you're talking about right now. I got off the phone and I made a phone call to someone on our team and I said, "I'm sad right now." I was genuinely bummed because I felt like what a disservice I had done in our relationship. What had happened was I did not set out to start a supplement company. I've been a clinician and a practitioner and even ten steps back from that, I was an individual that was hammered with a health crisis.

When that happened for me, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder after hemorrhaging at nineteen and I was diagnosed with ITP. I did the Prednisone and I did the anti-rejection drugs. You name it and enough steroids to lose significant function in my right kidney. I started experimenting with, although I had had a lot of exposure little too natural therapies. As I got older and I went away to college and I knew better. I was working as a surgical tech and I had access to any medication I wanted and I was tired of working hard on my health.

It was at that point that I said, "I need the magic pill. I need a quick fix." I went a little more of the Western medicine route and it landed me in the hospital on 60 milligrams of prednisone and needing to be hospitalized to come down off of that med at the time. I started searching for different ways. For me, I went back and researched biochemistry and everything. You know I'm a total diehard supplement taker. You've been around me when I was traveling and doing media. You watched me dish it out for my kids. Now, Grayson is the CEO of the supplementation in our household. She dishes it out for everybody every day.

I have a ton of conviction. It changed my life. It saved my life. I feel like out of not wanting to push a product or push my belief system on you, I sold it short of what you should be taking. When you asked me, I'm like, "You have to take this." We talked about like, "Why didn't you tell me this before?" I know when you're here, when we're doing power meetings and we bring the whole team in Melanie does a lot of team building and coaching for our company. I always have metabolism energy for you or Grayson or somebody will dish out because that's the lifestyle that we live. That's what we do as a company.

We flew you in with this huge team meeting and it was in Colorado. Everybody showed up and I always have everything in my pantry and we were out of probiotics. I thought my team was going to meltdown because we looked at one team member and said, "She always rolls with them. Can we roll you for them? Can we take him out of your suitcase?" She didn't have them and nobody had it with us. It was like a state of panic because we had all traveled and stuff. It's sometimes hard when it's right in front of your face to always make sure that you're an advocate for that. I am a die-hard supplement taker myself and it's been lifesaving. As I love you and the work that you've done for us, and I'm glad that you were candid about that conversation. I will tell you I stepped away and I made a phone call and I said, "I feel like a huge epic failure." I forgot to tell you something that foundational.

What was interesting was like, "Why bother with anything else until you do this?" I couldn't remember the fifth thing it was enzymes and I have a question for you about that. Do I take them every day in the morning? Do I take them when I'm eating food that I don't think I digest well? How do I use enzymes? That one is the one I still don't get. The other four, I can see taking on a regular basis and I've been doing that, but the enzymes I've tended to use, I have a corn intolerance and I've tended to use them when corn, wheat, or feel like I might get some heartburn. I haven't used them, but I'd love to know your thoughts on them. 

Enzymes are critical in life. They activate every one of our sex hormones. They regulate every anti-inflammatory hormone. They take macromolecules like protein and break them down into micromolecules or micronutrients like amino acids. We'll use the boys, for example. If they're trying to lay down lean muscle and/or when we were developing the boys and I was saying, "We need 120 to 140 grams of protein," at that point. You have to be able to take that protein and convert it into a bioavailable substance. There's that with enzymes. They help you break down food. They help you recognize and realize in your body, the nutrients that you're putting in.

If you are like your family investing financially in organic fruits and vegetables, organic meats, even dairy products, you might as well leave them on your counter to rot if you cannot break them down and allow them to become small enough to permeate into the bloodstream and gets taken up into the cell to do the magic that they're designed to do. The chemicals being organic take the chemicals off the table so that your body doesn't have the burden of processing those also.

The body must process even organic food in a helpful way in order to get it down to nutrients. There's that breaking down to the food. The enzymes are the lock and key that activate all your hormones. We can talk about inflammatory hormones so we can talk about sex hormones. Sex hormones can produce estrogens, but if we don't metabolize them effectively, they won't bind to the receptor sites and make the magic happen. For example, we have a lot of people that write about vaginal dryness. They go in and they have their estrogen levels taken and they're normal, but their vitamin D levels are low, which is always an indicator to me that they're not metabolizing their estrogen. What they're checking and all the symptoms of estrogen deficiency. We can add an enzyme in and allow the body to metabolize that. They recognize the plumpness in the tissue vaginally in your face. All of those things that are beneficial when your body is utilizing estrogen efficiently. It’s the same thing with testosterone. We have individuals that say, "I go in and I have my testosterone level checked. It's normal, it's stable, but I'm still soft or I'm not carving up or etching real efficiently."

The enzymes will add-in. They make the magic happen in the body and your food. The other thing that's important with enzymes and let me give one little caveat here. If you're an individual or there's an individual that has consumed foods that are high in insecticides, pesticides and food coloring. One thing that those do is it purposefully down-regulate your own enzymatic output, your own enzyme output. It's a defense mechanism in the body so that you slow the rate of those toxins and those poisons. I get a lot of people that have had poor quality of food for a long period of time and they crave sugar and they were craving the refined carbs.

When we put in an organic or natural food, their body and they say "I've been eating super healthy for 2, 3, 4 weeks, I haven't a lost a pound or I don't have any energy." I say, "It takes time to rebuild that my enzyme output in your body." We will supplement those people with enzymes so they can recognize and realize the natural foods more quickly and they can also start releasing toxins that are stored as fat, which brings me the next benefit of enzymes. I didn't prep for an enzyme conversation, but it's exciting to me. Enzymes help also breakdown the outer shell of the adipocytes or fat cells themselves. They will pop the fat cell and allow the fats to come out to be metabolized as energy. Whenever we store historical fat and it's typically because of an inflammatory response, a blood sugar response or a toxicity response that we store more fat than we are designed to. Once it gets in there, it's hard to get it out.

The enzymes can help us break that shell and allow those to be released and burn for fuel. You asked me a simple question, which is how do I take my enzymes? You want to take them with food when you're trying to access nutrients from your food. I take 1 to 2 with each meal. Vitamin D deficiency is a huge red flag. It's one of the reasons why I refuse to sell vitamin D on my website. You love vitamin D. You think it's a cool thing. You totally agree with its immune capacities. However, when you supplement with vitamin D, you mask, you hide, and you muffle your body telling you that you're not metabolizing hormones efficiently.

People come in and they say, "I have a great vitamin D level." The first thing I ask them is, "Are you supplementing with it?" It's the same with high cholesterol and a person's on a statin drug? They say, "No, my lipids are great." I say, "Are you taking a statin drug that's masking that you're not able to cleave cholesterol efficiently?" With a lot of my clients that are struggling, especially if they have had poor quality food.

If you're telling me you've had longevity with high-quality food, and you are not seeing the results in your body that you want, I would first start between meals so that it's in the bloodstream and it goes into the bloodstream more rapidly and it doesn't get busy breaking down your food. I would then incorporate it with meals once you added that level or that layer in. I do have some clients that take it both. They'll take two with a large meal and one between meals. People say, "If there was only one thing to take." I would say, "Ideally they're six, but I need 2 to 3.” Especially now, this has been a pervasive problem, but it's heightened right now. We're using disinfectants like crazy and we need to be.

People are concerned that there's a viral outbreak. They need to be concerned about that. What we forget is that those will annihilate our good flora also, which is our first line of defense immune wise. We need to all be conscientious about taking a probiotic. I always say a trick with probiotics is it's got to be in a blister pack. The process guarantees the effectiveness of it. With an enzyme, it's the one thing that it's hard to get. If you have a vegan formula enzyme and it doesn't have a glandular piece, it's hard to get it to reengage your enzyme output. Those are things that you want to look for when you look at those and then a high-quality multi with methylated. The quicker we can get the micronutrients delivered to the body in the most bioavailable form, the quicker we're going to be able to heal a broken metabolism or take it to the next level like with the boys.

Would you have the boys take an enzyme as well?

If you're using a lot of fresh herbs and spices and if you use organic organ meats. If you were an individual that consumes organic liver, make sure that those are organic and that you're using a lot of fresh herbs and spices. We do some testing in the office and you've had little dental work. Let me put that on the mix too. We see individuals that have had things like root canals or a lot of extractions and braces that have done bite restoration. Things like cranial sacral, orthostatic dentistry, where they ensure that the bite is correct. We see a lot of benefit and pivot in a person's metabolism with the addition of enzymes. I've been in clinical practice for many years now. I don't know something like that. When a person does well not on enzymes I go, "Talk to me."

Those are the people that they're like, "I don't have fillings. I either didn't have braces or I didn't have to have extraction during braces. I don't have a root canal." All of those things are stressors that alter the enzyme secretion that we naturally have in our bodies. If those things have happened and you pull those things forward in your life, it is normal to see that a person needs that support on a daily basis. For the boys, with their largest meal, I would do one enzyme. What I would do for the boys when they go back into swimming for recovery because they're young and they have had a long history of high quality, nutrient-dense foods.

We're not talking about me who's 47. Who's been on a ton of drugs and took antibiotics. I have to work hard to heal and nurture. Let me say this too, as you know and many people know I'm dyslexic, there is a philosophy in dyslexia that's called accommodating as opposed to remediating. There are things that you can remediate or heal and there are things that you need to accommodate. I read it a third grade, a second month when I was tested in college. When I tested again for my Masters, I'm still reading third grade, second month. I would like to move on with my life and not continue to take reading classes. I decided that at about fifth grade. I wanted to move on with my life and flourish, be successful, write books and work on my health.

Part of my accommodation because of my dyslexia is that I have to talk to text devices. I have readers. I have things that accommodate me to be a badass. I look at digestive enzymes in my life accommodating me to be a health badass because I have a deficiency in my autoimmune disorder in how I process folic acid. You will have to pry my cold, dead hands off of that bottle for the rest of my life because I want to accommodate that deficiency for myself. The boys are in this growth arc and I know they're getting tall also. There's a lot of bone growth and development. We have a lot of our cortisol and stress hormones are in that long bone growth. That's why women's bone density is determined by the time we're 25.

In the male child, how they lay down muscle, how they burned fat for fuel, they're in that developmental stage. I would use their digestive enzyme almost as a training process to get their body to be as successful as possible. If they have her go in for a filling, I would probably double down on it for 30 days. In general, I would use one at their largest meal to tease their body and nurture their body to be the best that it can be. With them being super athletes, the one thing that you talked about was metabolism free radicals. It is also why I push your boys to do many fruits and vegetables are because they are high in antioxidants.

When you have a power athlete or you are bone-on-bone with a knee replacement, or you have torn a ligament, the quicker we can repair and remodel without apoptosis, premature rupturing of the cells, the stronger that material will be. If you are going to remodel a bone from a fracture, if you are going to remodel a micro tear in the muscle after a swim meet, and that is what happens, that is why we have the lactic acid buildup. The quicker you can remodel that, the stronger you will be tomorrow. I would microdose the boys after their workouts with metabolism free radicals. Two of them the day after their heavy workouts and not put those in on a regular basis. With someone like myself who has a pro-inflammatory based autoimmune disorder, the goal for me to never go on prednisone or an anti-rejection drug is to keep my platelets at a beautiful level and keep my body from not having too large of platelets, which are then dysfunctional.

Having a strong antioxidant from a supplemental perspective makes me have cherry labs. I don't bruise, I don't spit blood when I brush my teeth. I don't have that crisis. You've seen me go through a flare where I get the dark circles and I can bruise all over. That's a nutrient that I'm deficient in because of my health platform. You can use those supplements, both therapeutically to maximize performance and promote rapid healing, which is what we want for our immune system and for our structure. You can also use them to accommodate for dysfunction or disability in the immune system so that you can go on and kick ass. Is there anything that I've ever told you to do that was crazy? We've been through a lot totally crazy and orthodox and something that even in your world of having a lot of natural health experience and being savvy and holistic in the holistic health world. Is there anything that you went to, "That's interesting?"

What I love about that access that I talked about is if I say I am bad at taking supplements every day and you're like, "Take a few at a time. If you miss a day double up and don't take it all so seriously." That one's useful. I know with FMD and your diet plans, there are things that are off the table. Through the access that I've had like bananas in my kids' Phase 3, you don't have a vendetta against bananas. I've been in your home and you have bananas in your home, too. They're useful. My kids who are competitive swimmers and swim seven times a week have different needs than I do if I'm trying to lose weight. My kids get thinner and thinner sometimes during the training season because they can't eat enough to keep weight on. Their needs are different than mine.

In the thyroid world, is there anything that you would suggest to people? We've talked a lot about T3, T4, and TSH and all of those things. Engaging with a doctor or looking at inflammation. Is there anything that you experimented with that you felt like giving you the power to experiment with your health and having a protocol for, "This was a positive thing?" For example, when we talk about the babies, we experimented with using nutrition when they came at 32 weeks to have them thrive. Is there anything that you've had in your own health experience?

The one thing and it's a long time ago now, but I'm sure it came from you. I can't imagine who else it would have come from. I had done a lot of estrogen as a part of fertility treatment. A few years after the boys were born, I was feeling a lot of anger and frustration in a way that didn't feel normal for me. I think that we figured out that my estrogen was way too high in my body when I started using a wild yam cream. I have this memory and it was something you said, "Go get this brand at your grocery store or your health food store." You weren't selling me anything. It was just a thing. We were on our way to go wine tasting and I rubbed some on my belly in the car after we bought it on our way out of town. It was literally half an hour later, my husband's jokes were funny again.

It's that powerful when you give your body what you need and I remember that. Maybe a lot of people will even relate to this going through like menopause or something when the body is out of balance. We talked about that with the enzymes, it has to breakdown hormones so that they fit into the right receptor sites. When they don't, the body secretes a lot of stress hormones. One of the things that happen with either a blocked receptor site or the wrong key for the lock. It doesn't fit into the receptor site is it suppresses our endorphins, our feel-good hormones. It's funny that you said laugh because a lot of times people can work hard through positive affirmations, therapy or whatever to control a feeling of depression. It's hard to fake a feeling of joy. The feeling of joy, excitement, butterflies and that juicy seductive feel that we can have, it comes from hormone secretion and it is like magnets when the receptor sites bind with the right metabolized hormone.

When that happens and it can happen quickly in an instant. We've all laughed at something or been startled by something or been excited or thrilled by something. It's magnetism. It happens in an instant. Getting the right hormone balance can evoke that feeling quickly and that feeling of joy, lightheartedness, butterflies or laughing at your husband's joke is a great example. I hope that people that are reading don't feel like they have to white knuckle it through whatever struggle they're having and that they can be in awe of their body when they're struggling. Collect data, like the scientists and the experiments. Collect data when you're struggling and share it. Don't take no for an answer. We're not destined to feel foggy or fatigued. We're not destined to feel angry or agitated. I remember when you shared that with me because you recognize that it was out of character for you and you recognize that a lot of the tools that you used in the past to shake off someone running off the side of the road or whatever it is that they weren't igniting the change that you were wanting.

What's interesting is there was a time I used it for a few years and then there was a time and I saw you at the time and I was like, "I don't have that same feeling." I used to feel it when I would put it on. I haven't used it in years now. I also didn't go back to feeling that feeling of frustration. I used to grind my teeth and stuff. I was internally frustrated. I don't feel that way anymore. If I had that feeling, it would be the first thing I would try. It was clear to me that when it stopped feeling good, I didn't need to keep doing it.

You didn't go back to taking fertility meds. You healed from the insult and that's something that I was telling other people. It takes time to rehabilitate from an insult to the body. As I was talking about like dental work and getting the boys to nurture that enzyme output or with you metabolizing that excess estrogen that the body wasn't able to clear. I have clients in situations where there's been a lot of chemical exposure, so maybe their liver is not as efficient at clearing. Sometimes we have to help open those pathways too of detoxification. If you could ask me anything, what would you ask me? I then have two more questions for you.

I have a question because I've been wondering if I should ask you the question, but I'll just ask you. It's probably not the best question in the world because I think I'm okay but I'm curious. We've talked about it. I had some sleep apnea and I got a diagnosis. I started using CPAP and now I'm sleeping. It's almost identical to the footprint of COVID. I got it right before COVID. I'm bouncing back. Is there anything that I should do at this point to shore up, to get me back to some normal now that I'm sleeping again?

What comes to mind is bodywork. With sleep apnea, there are a lot of components to sleep apnea. There's the anatomy and physiology, the structural piece, there is potential allergies and immune response. The why's of that particular "syndrome" the list is long. When we do something to remediate that like a CPAP or some device that helps the body either positionally or by the delivery of oxygen, we've got to reactivate our tissue to receive that. I'm a big advocate for dry skin brushing, for massage and for lymphatic drainage. Acupuncture would even be good too, but I'd rather have somebody lay down and salt scrub the heck out of you.

I'm a huge acupuncture advocate, as you know, but what we need to do is we need to reactivate all of the tissues. You're going, "I'm sleeping, I'm getting rest. My brain is feeling clearer. My adrenal glands are not in such distress from thinking I'm dying of suffocation several times at night." There's some repatterning that needs to happen with that. The biggest thing that I find when we come over that arc of remediating that deficiency is getting the connected tissue in the body back in line. That's a big one.

It's interesting because I can't get a massage, but it's the only thing I want.

You can do dry skin brushing.

That's a great tip.

A hot compress on the belly, a hot compress on the thighs and doing hot-cold treatments. Anything that's going to get your body to do that pump, the lymphatic and the fascia to do that pumping, that exchange of cellular respiration and cellular communication is important.

Hopefully, things will open up and my massage therapist will come back from COVID soon. Thank you. That's helpful. I feel so much better that it's interesting to try to ask for advice around it. I don't feel like I have to nourish my adrenals and the way that I have been for the last years. I don't feel depleted. I feel different and I stay up late. I'm awake until 1:00 in the morning and I haven't done that for years. I was the 9:00 girl, but I also swam in the morning.

Sleep is a good thing. It's the only time that our brain detoxifies. We have a part of the blood-brain barrier and the limbic system. Our body doesn't allow the lymphatic flushing of the brain unless we're in deep sleep. I know it sounds so cliché, but it's an underestimated pillar in an individual's overall health. One thing that you said and I'm going to give you an example. I was diagnosed with X, Y, and Z. I got my CPAP and I'm feeling better but there is that expectation oftentimes. I have a client that was diagnosed with a particular infectious agent. We identified the problem. They got the counts down and she says, "I'm like 35% better, but maybe this isn't what it all was. Maybe there's something else wrong with me and this was one thing that we identified.”

We were working with a lot of different docs. We were going through a lot of different diagnostics and I said, "Let's play a little bit here, but maybe your body is needing the rehabilitation and the physical therapy to overcome and regenerate new tissue from this infectious disease." I knew that we clearly acknowledged that when we have a fracture and maybe we have to have orthopedic surgery. We get put back together and we say, "Rehab is going to take six weeks for the bone to heal, eight weeks for connective tissue to heal and six months for ligaments to repair."

We all recognize that when it's a defined injury, but when we haven't slept, maybe for five years efficiently, you want to make sure that you're intentional about the rehabilitation process of all of the side effects of not sleeping and say, "I'm going to give myself 6 to 9 months to focus on physiologically rehabilitating the insults that are no longer there." Like I said with the fertility drugs, the insult was no longer there. We got our babies now, how do we cherish the positive that came from it? How do we rehabilitate what potentially could have been collateral damage through the process? My two quick questions, what is your favorite fast metabolism diet meal? What's your go-to?

It's smoothies. I have to do one almost every day. The Chili's a close second and on Phase 2, it's always a steak. Steak never tastes as good as when I'm on FMD.

My last one is if I could take any food and Haylie would say, "That's the best thing that you could ever eat. I don't care if I had a magic wand to make anything healthy." What would it be? What do you crave?

I don't crave much of anything right now because I'm naughty on COVID. I'm not sure I'm supposed to say this on the show. Maybe Reese's Snack Mix.

I don't even know what's in that.

It's got little peanut butter cups, chocolate and pretzels. It's like the perfect combination of things.

Let me tell you what you're doing absolutely right with that. If you're going to engage in sugar that's refined, always add healthy fat.

There are nuts in it too.

There's nuts and peanut butter in the cup. One thing that I've learned in my clinical experience is that there is always a way to put power on your plate. There's always a way to make your next meal the reason that you're healthier. It doesn't matter. Guilt is fattening and stress hormones evoke a cascade of lack of health in the body. Naughty is okay but make sure you're having lots of pleasure and make sure that anytime you do your refined sugar, you add that healthy fat.

Melanie, I want to thank you. You've been such a guiding light for me on many levels. I don't know how to interact with individuals from a longevity perspective, whether it's a client or a business associate, and not incorporate the rawness of the relationship and the body being healthy and the economic status of the business, being healthy and nurturing that. I'm thrilled that after years of coaching with you, you've put a book together. Because as you known, I’ve referred many people to you in the past but now I have something tangible that I can hand out to everybody. I appreciate you for doing this with me. It was awesome and talking candidly and I know that your experiences are going to uplift and inspire other people that are out there reading.

I want to share something because I've been behind the scenes for many years. This is our twentieth year together. One thing I want to share is that we have never, ever in many years of business coaching had a conversation about the price of ingredients in your supplements. You always are reluctant to pitch overpitch your products. What I tell people when I refer them to you is that you have created a line of supplements that is the best line of supplements you can create that's possible. If you could create it better, you would and you don't think about the cost as you create it.

That is a special thing in a market that's run on margins and profit and all of those things. I always know that with my last dollar I will buy your product because it's not about profit for you. It is about health. That's one of the astounding things that I get to see from behind the scenes is that you create the best possible products you can both books and supplements for your own health, essentially. In the back of your mind, you're always thinking, "What do I need?" You then allow everyone else to buy it. It's been such a privilege to be your coach to watch how you do that. It's rare to have a client for so long where we're not talking about cutting costs on the backend ever. It's important that your readers know that.

Thank you for saying that and thank you for standing in my corner through that. You know firsthand what I’ve had to battle being in this industry and being in the supplement industry. It's a dirty business. In my darkest hours, I decided I wasn't going to give in and I was going to continue to fight the battle. I will never forget this when you were coaching me through when there was some shortage of products and ingredients and we had options to pivot another direction. We had an individual that we had made some commitments to at the time and I said, "I don't care if it has my label on it. I'm not buying it. I won't buy it and I won't use it. I won't give it to my family." I remember them being upset at the meeting. They said, "I had no brand loyalty even to my own brand." I remember going, "Darn right." I was mad. I was fuming because I didn't have control for a brief moment in my business over what my name was or wasn't on.

I looked him square in the eye and say, "I don't care what I lose. I won't do this." I appreciate having someone in my corner because you do get a lot of different business advice. The biggest thing for me with all of the books and all of the nutrition plans, this is my litmus test, are the meals that you make are there something that you would be proud to give your grandchild a spoonful of. The nutrition plan that you prescribed to, is it something that you would be excited to hear your twin boys, your niece, or your daughter exploring and their own bodies.

If that's never the answer, then you're on the wrong nutrition plan. You're not on the nutrition plan. You're potentially engaging in something that's going to be detrimental down the road. In the supplement perspective, if someone else can make it better, I am game. I am all in. We hold ourselves to that as a company. We're constantly looking and exploring and innovating, but I don't want to do this if I can't do it in a way that is going to change people's lives.

Having an autoimmune disorder, and then getting in a car accident where the 911 calls said, "I just killed her." When you go to the edge that changes you and it changes you in a way that you have conviction, even if you don't always have backing for your conviction, you just don't care. You go, "I'm going to do what I'm going to do and I'm going to invite people along on the journey. I'm going to share my experiences and embrace the privilege that it is to be on this journey with you and on this journey with all of our readers and on this journey with my clients and our communities." Thanks for bringing that up. I appreciate it. I will be talking to you soon. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you for doing this. Everybody is going to love it.

Bye Hailey.

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What a great interview we had with Melanie. It was crazy to go back to all of the different experiences that we've had together. Definitely recognizing that you can turn towards nutrition and nutrients to put power on your plate. As a scientist and an individual that is in a constant state of experimentation with food and micronutrients, with recipes and supplementation. I recognize that the longevity and the health of our relationship is been based on turning towards things that evoke a positive change. I want you to remember whether you're growing babies or detoxing from fertility meds or engaging with your doctor about your thyroid, or trying to empower your children to turn towards food and nutrition. Think about the fact that our body and everything we do with our body is made up of micronutrients, the activation of those micronutrients, the binding of the hormones, and all of the magic that happens when you put power on your plate.

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