Simplifying Nutrition and Movement For Enhanced Wellness

Welcome to the Satiated Podcast, where we explore physical and emotional hunger, satiation and healing your relationship with your food and body. I'm your host, Stephanie Mara Fox, your Somatic Nutritional Counselor. Something I've noticed as I brought on more doctors and coaches onto the podcast is that more and more practitioners are starting to understand that nutrition is only one small piece of the puzzle toward health, energy and vibrancy in your body. I've had a fascination with nutrition since my early 20s, and I've discussed here how much I wanted to believe that what I ate would be the answer to every problem and symptom that I was navigating throughout my 20s. I thought there must be a way to eat to no longer have IBS, heal my depression, not constantly feel dysregulated, end the binge restrict cycle. But what I have found over the years is that food can't do all of this. It can be an ally on this journey, but what you eat can only take you so far in feeling like it is safe to be in your body. And today, we continue to explore what else? What else are we not focusing on enough when it comes to feeling energized and well, I discussed this and more today with Dr Alexandra Gajer.

Dr Gajer is a board certified physician and leading expert in peptide therapy and performance medicine. As the founder of the Gayer practice, she specializes in cutting edge protocols and root cause medicine that help patients optimize their metabolism, hormones, energy and overall vitality. With well over 12 years of clinical experience, Dr Gayer has helped 1000s of patients, particularly high achieving professionals and midlife women break through fatigue, hormonal imbalances and burnout by targeting true underlying dysfunction, not just symptoms. She's a contributing author of the best selling book, triumphs of transformation, which was featured on a Times Square billboard and in over 300 media outlets. Dr Gajer has appeared on Good day, DC, good morning, Washington, and multiple health podcasts where she shares practical science, rooted insights on metabolic health and hormonal balance through nationwide telemedicine consultations, she makes Advanced Health optimization accessible to patients across the country, we chat about her disillusionment with conventional medicine, the role of gut health in well being, simplifying nutrition and movement, the overlooked crucial importance of sleep and creating evening rituals for better sleep and building habits that care for you and your body.

Loving the satiated podcast? Ways you can support the podcast include leave a review anywhere that you listen to podcasts, as it helps others find satiated. Check out all of my affiliate links. Join Satiated+ and be able to ask me anything each month. Or check out working with me one to one, I do still currently have openings in my private practice or in any of my programs. The next live three month somatic eating program will be occurring in May, and you can join the waitlist now at somatic eating.com. All links are in the show notes. Now, welcome Dr Gajer! I am so glad that you are here and to dive into our conversation today. And for anyone who is new to you and your work, I first just want to get started with you, sharing a little bit about you and your history and how you got into the work that you're doing today.

Dr. Aleksandra Gajer 03:56

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited for this conversation too. So I'm Dr Alexandra Gajer. I am a conventionally trained MD. I went to medical school University of Maryland, and then did a residency in emergency medicine. I loved emergency medicine. I was drawn to it because I felt like I got to be sort of at ground zero with people with whatever they were coming in with, and, but I enjoyed that. I liked being in those situations with a lot of different things going on and, and I spent 10 years in the ER, including my training years, and I got fairly disillusioned with the work, with the way we were treating people with conventional medicine. You know, I saw a lot of patients with chronic illnesses. I saw a lot of people struggling with weight, and each time they came back, they were worse. You know, I could kind of fix their acute episode, but people kept coming back in worse shape than before, and people in my life and in the ER were asking, well, how do I get healthy? You know, I want to be healthy, and I felt like I wasn't trained to answer that in a real way. You know, I was trying to treat disease. I was trained to solve really intense, acute problems, and conventional medicine is fantastic for that. But a lot of the questions around, how do I feel better? How do I feel good in my body. I felt like I couldn't answer with my training, and I suffered some of my own health problems, and I felt like the answers were really lacking. And so I had the opportunity to start my practice, which I really wanted to build around how do we create a state of health for people, whether they're already dealing with some chronic illness or not. What can we do to help people create the state of health that maybe never develop some of the chronic illnesses, to feel good, to have energy, to sleep? Well, you know, we were given these bodies that kind of carry us around, and they can really determine what the quality of our lives are and how we feel about ourselves. So my mission has really been on how to help people live in bodies that serve them, that allow them to live their lives to the fullest.

Stephanie Mara 06:14

I love that. Thanks for sharing all that. I'm curious, as you were describing that I hear that from a lot of people who I've talked from here. I see it in stories on like social media and things like that, of just like being conventionally trained doctor, and then as you have worked in the field more and more, I'm wondering if you could say more about what disillusioned you. We haven't really gotten into that conversation with anyone here, and I'm just curious of your statement, of like, I wasn't taught around how to have the conversations of health just sounds really interesting to me of like, wouldn't that be like, the things that our doctors need to be learning?

Dr. Aleksandra Gajer 06:52

Right. Yes, oh gosh, there's so much there. And I still have a lot of colleagues who are practicing and in the conventional field, and they are good people, you know, they want to help people. And the practice of medicine has become really challenging, and there's so much pressure from insurance companies, there's so much influence by the pharmaceutical industry where, you know, I didn't realize so much later, how much of our medical education was really shaped by Pharma. You know where the model really is, drug equals disease. So if there's no drug for it, you're likely not to learn about the disease, and we have so little time with patients in the conventional model, you're really taught to be efficiency machines. So I am a little bit of an idealist. I went into medical school. I was a little older than than most. I started at 27 and I wanted to help people. I wanted to help people heal, and I wanted to be a healer. And I found that a lot of my training actually beat that out of me. You know, there's more of a focus on efficiency, on being the best and doing things really well. It's very important. But a lot of training centers around treating people like numbers and and getting them through as quickly as possible. And sometimes it feels like an insurmountable task, the number of people you have to see, the number of things that are now required by the insurance companies. It's just, I think a lot of doctors are really struggling and feel ill equipped to help people in the way that they had hoped. I'm not speaking for everybody. I'm sure that there are incredible doctors out there, but it's, I think, in many ways, our hands are tied. Plus in a 10 minute visit, all you can do is prescribe a drug or recommend a surgery. I mean, you just cannot get the root cause of what's going on with someone, of really getting to know them, of understanding what their lives are like, what's important to them. It's kind of where it was.

Stephanie Mara 08:53

Yeah, and I appreciate all of those perspectives of like, the conversations that need to be happening to actually get to the dialogues with a human being of like, there is a reason whatever you're working through, I know for most individuals who are here listening to this podcast, it might be struggles with their food or their body image, but like, whatever symptom we're working through, like, yeah, a 10 minute conversation isn't going to get into all of the nuance of why that thing is happening, and, like even the wisdom of the body of why it created that thing.

Dr. Aleksandra Gajer 09:29

Yeah, yeah. I think that relationships can be so healing, and weight loss is probably the biggest thing that we do in our practice. But I have a number of health coaches, and we work pretty intensely with people, and I think that's the biggest thing that works, is having those relationships, having a team around you. We generally have people either come in every week or talk to us on the phone and and it's like family, you know, you've got a whole cheering squad, and we know, you know, yeah. Most of medicine is not set up to do that. And now in my practice, I get to have a 45 minute visit when I first get to know a person, and I'm really understand where they are and where they'd like to be.

Stephanie Mara 10:12

Yeah, so I know, and like, this is such a tricky conversation, because, like, I feel like I've been in a lot of conversations lately around weight and its loss, and we are made to believe a lot of confusing things around it. And now with this like GLP-1 era, we've had a few conversations with people on the podcast around it. We don't have to get into that today, but I'm curious, just because I know it's something that you work with people a lot are maybe some more of the kind of groundwork or surprising things that maybe you feel like aren't being talked about to like more inhabit the body, rather than it always being a focus on having to change the body like I'm sure you're in so many conversations around how the body expresses itself that it's much more than just like the gravitational pull of our bodies on this earth that, you know, contributes to the health and well being of ourselves.

Dr. Aleksandra Gajer 11:10

Absolutely. Yeah, so this can be such a tricky thing, you know, and in the last 20, 30, years, most people's weight has changed from what it was before, you know, we see the maps of the United States, and it's not like a few people lost their willpower and gained weight. Everybody gained weight, you know. And I think the saddest part about that is that even though on a population level, we know that this happened to a very large majority of people, people were still made to feel like it's their fault, that it's some sort of willpower failure. But looking at it as a whole, our food environment really changed. You know, there are non food chemicals now that are in our food that are what are called obesogens, which are basically endocrine disruptors or chemicals that disrupt the way our hormone systems work, and our lifestyles have become a lot more sedentary, where movement has been engineered out of our lives. In a lot of ways, it's very possible to have all your stuff delivered and your food delivered, your groceries delivered, and there's pressure on people to work really, really hard at their jobs too. You know this, even 40, 50, years ago, people weren't working these kinds of hours. So here we are glued to a screen having to kind of prove ourselves and work constantly. Convenience foods are often the only option for a lot of people, and those foods have chemicals that make us overweight, and then we experience and then we go to a doctor who tells you, well, you know, if you just ate less and moved more, then maybe. It's a horrible trap, because, you know, this is happening to so many people. So I think that when I work with people, my goal is usually to really think about, how can we rebuild your body to kind of express a state of health? How can we give you the nutrients that you need? How can we start working on building this foundation to create health in your body? How can you choose foods that will nourish you. How can you choose to move your body in a way that feels loving? And how can we sort of start rebuilding and get rid of some of that shame and some of that, you know, self blame and all those things, because this is, this is just the natural result of living in our current environment, and it's tricky and it's hard to get out of.

Stephanie Mara 13:44

Yeah, I'm curious in your experience, because I do take more of the lens here of that health can be at any shape or size. And I'm wondering what you look beyond weight, as you're talking about, like rebuilding the body to express a state of health. What do you look for that shows like someone's body is thriving, and that maybe someone comes to you and they're like, oh, but I feel like I'm quote, unquote, supposed to lose weight. And you like, look into XYZ things, and you're like, actually, your body's thriving, like it's saying that it's kind of happy where it is.

Dr. Aleksandra Gajer 14:20

Great question. So yes, I think that different people do carry different amounts of weight, and that distribution is really individual. So first of all, weight overall is a misleading number. I think body composition is much more important when we look at weight. In my office, we generally do a scan and we look at your percent muscle mass and percent body fat. I do think that the amount of muscle you're carrying is probably more important than your fat tissue amount, and we know that muscle is the currency of health. It's heavier than fat. So if somebody has a really healthy amount of muscle mass, then that is an indicator of health for me and, you know, muscle actually is an organ in itself, and it sends out chemical messengers to other parts of our body called myokines, that actually is anti are anti inflammatory and healing. So just at the basic level, having a good amount of healthy muscle, I think, is really good. Now in terms of other sort of factors. So how do you feel? Are you sleeping well? Do you have good energy? Do you feel pretty good most of the time? And then we look at labs as well. So you know, weight can be highly related to metabolic health. Which metabolic health is basically how your body transforms food into energy, and that and the state of your metabolic health probably matters more than how much adipose tissue or fat tissue you're carrying around. So the way that I look at that is through several labs. Fasting blood sugar is important. I also usually check a fasting insulin level. Insulin is a really important hormone. And again, some of the things that I talked about, some of the result of the food environment we live in has created insulin resistance in a lot of people, which can lead to diabetes and other chronic illnesses. It's implicated in almost all chronic illnesses. So I think that is the important part. How is your fasting insulin? How is your blood sugar, the hemoglobin a1c, which is the diabetes number, even in that pre diabetic range, that really influences your risk of having a heart attack, a stroke, all those other things. So those are some labs that can be really, really helpful and important just to look into your metabolic health and see where you are on that spectrum.

Stephanie Mara 16:42

Yeah, I appreciate you going into some of the more details, because I feel like we are so taught to be glued and stuck to the scale and like this number that literally doesn't tell us anything. And this could be diet culture. This could be wellness culture. Like this was the thing that they could latch on to, that someone could like, buy a scale and bring it into their home and like, but it doesn't track or give you any quality information about how you are doing internally, nor does it, because I talk a lot about the field of somatics here, nor does it inform you of how you feel. And we're not really taught to, maybe even, like, pay attention to how our body is feeling on a day to day basis. So like, even when someone says, well, like, how's your energy levels? I know for a lot of people that even I work with, sometimes we have to, like, rediscover how to track that, like, how to even find the language, or, like, what does that even mean? Like, my energy levels. I'm curious if these are the kinds of conversations you've gotten in with those that you work with.

Dr. Aleksandra Gajer 17:52

Yeah, absolutely. So yes, I think it is really important to look at how we feel, and there's a lot of things that influence that, and there are a lot of people who will have energy slumps in the afternoon, you know, or feel like they wake up and they're not refreshed. And those sorts of issues are something that I think should be looked into. But but healthy bodies, you typically wake up refreshed, and you feel like you have the energy to do what you want to do, in terms of motivation and drive. You know, some people I see tell me I don't find as much joy in the activities that I used to or I just can't make myself do it. And I think some of that can also be tied to our metabolic health, to how our bodies are functioning. I think that the conventional approach to a lot of that is putting an antidepressant on it. But think that's not the only solution. You know, I think some of that loss of pleasure, loss of drive, can be related how to how our metabolic health is functioning, how our hormones are functioning, and even our gut health, how our gut microbiome is doing. So I think, you know, finding ways to nourish our bodies and build ourselves up can address a lot of those things.

Stephanie Mara 19:06

Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I think in my research, I don't know if this is still accurate, because this is a statistic that I found a long time ago was that about like 95% of serotonin is made in our gut.

Dr. Aleksandra Gajer 19:17

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I think that is really on point. And there's also, there's a lot of drivers of how we carry weight and put on muscle that's related to our gut health. So there are some people who do have too much weight, some that we need to work on. And sometimes looking at gut health and mapping the gut microbiome and addressing some of the imbalances there, can naturally bring the body into balance so it can use food more efficiently as fuel. That's what we want. You know, we want you to eat nourishing food, and we want that food to be turned into energy so that your brain feels good, your body feels good, you can be active and you can participate in your life.

Stephanie Mara 19:58

Yeah, and you're listing so many important things, of like, insulin, metabolic health, our gut health. And sometimes I feel like people come to me and their heads are just spinning, of, like, I don't even know how to take care of myself. Like, I don't even know, like, what do I start with? What's most important? I'm curious how we tried to, like, simplify this down.

Dr. Aleksandra Gajer 20:16

Yes, great question. I think the first thing is, if you can remove as many chemicals from your food as you can, that goes a long way. So trying to choose whole foods when possible, it's really difficult to overeat whole foods. You know, you have the same amount of sugar in three apples and a bag of potato chips. You can sit down and eat that potato chips, but I don't see many people eating 3, 4, 5, apples in a row. You know? There's a natural stopping point. So if you can choose whole foods that does a lot for your body, there's no way to kind of replicate the vitamins and nutrients and the combinations that they're found naturally in other foods. So no vitamin can really replace that. And I think just trying to eat as many fruits and vegetables as you can, you know, have your have your meals be a nutrient hunt, and that variety really feeds our gut too. We actually have more microbes living in our gut than we have cells in our entire body, and for those different communities to thrive, to send those healthy signals to the rest of our bodies, we need to be eating different colors and different species of vegetables. So rather than thinking, how fattening is this? How many calories is this? I think it's how will this nourish me? Will I get nutrients out of this? And I encourage people to be looking for, you know, the nutrients and vegetables and fruits but protein as well in both natural foods and in meat, and trying to opt for meats that are not treated with antibiotics and hormones. I think a lot of the research that's coming out now with the risks of eating certain types of meats, I think is starting to be linked more to how those animals were treated, so in terms of what chemicals the animals were treated with, whether they were given antibiotics and hormones. So if we can eat like our great grandparents ate, I think that most of the time, there are times when we'll need to eat convenience food, but just as simple as possible, if you're looking at a list of ingredients, then try to find things that have as few ingredients as you want. And move. Find some way to move your body. You know, there's also, you know, this framework that movement is really healing, but what we also know is that lack of movement actually creates disease. So being sedentary, not moving, humans have been on Earth for about 250,000 years, so like, wrap our brains around that. That's a really long time, and it's only been like 100 years, where we've lived like we live right now. So for most of human history, more than 200,000 years, we built genes around the need for a lot of movement. So we have this machinery that needs that input. We need to put that in in order to build health. And that doesn't mean you have to go to the gym and do what Bob is doing or what Jane is doing. You know, find movement that brings you joy, but our bodies are wired to thrive when we move. It's easy in the current world to just not do that very much.

Stephanie Mara 23:27

I appreciate the simplicity of all of that. Like, first, I love that you're pointing to more nutritional diversity. You know, like, we don't have to shame or judge anything that you're currently eating. It's all just a focus of, what can you add in, you know, can we add in more color? Can we add in more diverse kinds of foods and that, yeah, it doesn't have to be perfect 100% of the time, but just that, yeah, on a general basis, you could look at your plate and be like, wow, I have so many different types and colors of foods on my plate that are all going to feed something different inside of your body. And I find that such a like, non threatening way to view nutrition, you know, there's just so many like, scare tactics around food that it's just like, hey, just like, eat food, and like lots of different kinds of foods. And like you will be giving lots of different parts of you, your organs, your microbiome, all the nutrition it needs to function well and the movement piece. Thank you also for just going in the direction of like just move. We've also so complicated that that I completely agree with you. I think that our bodies love to be in movement. We don't access often enough movement in our day, and sometimes I even like to reframe of like I'm just pointing my finger up and down, like this is movement, that it's just like anything that is available to you, that when we move our bodies, it supports the body in many different ways to like, you know, endorphin, serotonin, moving the lymphatic system. Like beyond what fitness culture wants to tell us, that movement is for like, it just does so many things, just to generally feel that, like you were talking about earlier, that like energy and vibrancy consistently throughout the day.

Dr. Aleksandra Gajer 25:19

Yeah, absolutely. And even simple things, like, when you go to the grocery store, park a little far away, look for the space that's far try to maybe do a couple extra laps around the store. Or always try to find some ways where you can walk a little bit more, move a little bit more. I think walking is so wonderful, especially when the weather outside allows it. Being out in nature and moving can be just really healing.

Stephanie Mara 25:43

Yeah, I agree. So we've got the kind of, like nutritional movement pieces that are often talked about when we're talking about, like, building from the ground up, that experience of health and vitality in our body. What do you feel like people are missing, like, not focusing on enough?

Dr. Aleksandra Gajer 26:01

Right. So what we're eating, of course, is so important, the way we move is important. I think sleep is often overlooked. You know, again, a lot of us are living in this hustle culture, and there are some studies that show that we're getting, on average, two hours less sleep per night than people in prior generations were and and we need that deep sleep. We need that time when we're asleep for repair and regeneration of our tissues. And even, you know, we touched on insulin a little bit. I think that insulin is really the master hormone that's important for metabolic health. And just a quick explanation. So insulin is what allows blood sugar to get into cells. So it's the little key that unlocks the cells and lets the blood sugar in. And a lot of the food that you eat is broken down to blood sugar. So that's what your stomach does, what your gut does. You eat your food, it's broken down to little particles, and then we want the cells to be able to use it, and insulin unlocks that. But for a lot of people, what happens is that the lock stops taking the key, so we become resistant. We say, no insulin, I'm not going to open the door for you. And then what happens is that the body starts trying to produce more insulin and more insulin to try to get that sugar into cells, and that's called insulin resistance. And insulin is a fat storage hormone, so giving somewhat extra insulin will always cause your body to choose to store food as fat. So that's, I think, a really important key thing. We want to be insulin sensitive in order to take care of our metabolic health, to not become diabetic, not get heart disease to not get cancer, it's kind of the foundation of everything, and sleep is really important for that. So of course, what we eat and how we move is important, but just the lack of sleep can make us more insulin resistant. Trying to create an environment for sleep. So sleeping in a dark room without the TV on, there's been some studies that showed that the light from a TV screen during the night raises people's insulin. So the difference between sleeping in a dark room versus the lights, having your room somewhat cool, not overheated, and protecting that time, because it's really important for our bodies to regenerate.

Stephanie Mara 28:19

Yeah, I'm glad that you're bringing up sleep, because I feel like it's also not talked about enough, even just, you know, sometimes I'm even exploring with people of like, how's your sleep, because it also can affect your ghrelin and your leptin levels and how sensitive you are to that. So, you know, if you're struggling with something like, you know, with what a lot of people are here, like things like emotional eating, or binge eating, or things like that. And you're like, I don't know what happened. I was doing so well, and then, you know, suddenly I couldn't stop eating. And so often it's blamed on the food and like this, you know, sense of control. So I'm glad you're bringing up that sometimes just being like, how's my sleep been lately? Like, am I getting good quality sleep? Am I going to bed at a time where my body can get enough sleep plays such a huge factor, and then having the energy to move our bodies, or feeling like we can even feel our hunger and fullness cues.

Dr. Aleksandra Gajer 29:13

Yes, yes, such a good point. And you know, you talked about creating that time, or setting aside the time that we can be in bed and asleep, and growth hormone is also a hormone we don't talk that much about, but we all produce growth hormone. It's a repair hormone, and it's only produced at night, usually between the hours of 10 and two, so if you're not asleep during that and you have to be asleep. So it's an important hormone for for metabolic health and for building muscle and for recovery. So there's just a lot that happens there, and then we can talk about stress as well. And lack of sleep can raise cortisol levels, which will also make you more hungry, make it more difficult to sort of overcome cravings and a lack of sleep. Can raise cortisol, can raise your blood sugar, can raise your insulin, all those things. And again, I think some of it is inevitable. Again, we're living in this sort of landscape where we're constantly connected to these devices people can reach us at any time, and there's more sort of constant stress on a lot of people. So I think having some rituals or activities that allow people to remove the impact of stress from your life, I think we have to be somewhat conscious about that, and I think that's different for different people, but a non screen activity that will relieve stress. So for some people, that's taking a walk, for others, it's taking a bath, for for others, it's doing an adult coloring book. But we need to find ways to activate that parasympathetic nervous system, the common restore system, to counteract the cortisol that'll inevitably be raised just from living in the world.

Stephanie Mara 30:55

Yeah, I find evenings are really tough for a lot of people. You know, it's the quietest time of day, where now you can start to maybe, like, feel the events of the day, or the stress that had been building throughout the day. Or, I've had some people call it like, revenge me time.

Dr. Aleksandra Gajer 31:12

Yes!

Stephanie Mara 31:12

Where it's like you just don't want to go to sleep because there was no time for yourself throughout the day, and so you find yourself prolonging sleep just so that you could have a little bit more you time. But like you're referencing it kind of becomes a vicious cycle of then you don't feel great throughout the day, and then you get your you time, and you're like, well, I don't want that to end. I'm curious what you have found maybe in the conversation of sleep with those that you have worked with, of like, maybe what starts to shift out of that, like you're referencing, you know, some things that you can start to do like you're saying, like lessening maybe screen time can be helpful. You know, I'm curious if there's other things that start to move towards that rest and digest, parasympathetic nervous system state that you found are helpful in the evenings.

Dr. Aleksandra Gajer 32:02

Yeah, and I agree with you. Evenings are so tough. I usually tell people, you know, we wake up with a bucket of willpower, and then we use it up as the day goes on, and you have to use a little bit not yelling at your boss. You have to use a little bit of not freaking out in traffic, and at the end of the day, that bucket of willpower is really low, so that's when it's easy to make bad choices, whether it's food choices or sleep choices or less healthy choices, choices that you know feel good in the moment, but they're not going to feel good tomorrow, so choices that are less aligned with long term goals. I think that rituals are really important, and I think this is different for every person, what kind of ritual will work. But if you're somebody who turns to food or sweets, that kind of de stress at the end of the day, sometimes I think using some herbal teas can be really nice. You know, there are some herbal teas that you don't have to sweeten, that feel really sweet and that warmth and that that ritual. You know, at first it may not hit the spot, but then after you start doing that every day, it's a new ritual, and you have it. And I think it's just really important also to set up your life so that good choices are easy and bad choices are hard.

Stephanie Mara 33:13

Yeah, say more about that, like, what does that mean?

Dr. Aleksandra Gajer 33:18

Yeah, of course. You know at the end of the day when that will power bucket is empty, you want to make bad choices hard, so maybe you don't keep the foods in your house that are going to make you feel terrible. Or maybe you have your tea out and ready for your evening ritual and or maybe you have a partner, and you and your partner make a deal that this is what you're going to do in the evening, and you have somebody who is keeping you accountable. So if your ritual is that you're going to read a book and have a wind down period and then go to sleep and maybe have a conversation with your partner, then you know, having an accountability partner or having those things ready and accessible. And if you're trying to avoid eating sweets at night, maybe you keep that out of your house or, you know, so you'd have to go to the store or something and and I think just being intentional with what you'll do during a time when that will power bucket is not at low because we will all make the easy choice, we'll all make the feel good choice. And you may have to sort of play around with it and find something that feels good, that feels like a good substitute. I mean, I know some women who like started doing evening yoga that really enjoy, like the stretching before bed, some people who read, some people who are taking a bath, some people who are drinking tea and watching their favorite TV show, then going to bed, some people listen to a book on tape, finding some kind of wind down activity that could become a ritual habit, something that you look forward to. And when you start waking up feeling good, it will reinforce itself. And I think the same thing happens with food. You know, once you start start choosing more whole foods. Those foods start tasting better, and your body feels good, and you start craving more of that well being, and those habits can help.

Stephanie Mara 35:10

Yeah, I completely agree with you that I would say, like these kind of quick decisions that we can make, they come from a place inside of ourselves that is so exhausted, and so I love that you are bringing in that we have to sometimes, like you're saying, set up routines or rituals for ourselves at times of day when we know it's a harder time of the day. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not doing anything wrong. There are just some times of the day that are just more difficult. And so you know, some things that I know have come up in conversations with those I've talked with are things like, yeah, if you crash at the couch at the end of the day and you're like, I do not want to get up, what can you have around the couch? Do you need your book right there? Do you need to get some kind of cabinet or drawer that, like, it hangs out by your couch where you have a journal and your books and whatever it is that you need there. Or if you are going into bed and you find yourself, like, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, and then suddenly, like, an hour, two hours have passed by, and you're like, well, be really great to maybe do some journaling before I go to bed or listen to some music that's like, not on my phone. It's like, okay, can you have things that are next to your bed that it's not like, oh well, it's not there, and I'm way too tired to get up and get it. So it's like, these tiny little things that it's like, if you can set them up around your house in like, really intentional places can move you towards, like, oh, yeah, I want to be doing these things, but I need to set it up that way so that they're just as easy to reach for as my phone or food or whatever it is that you find yourself reaching for.

Dr. Aleksandra Gajer 36:57

Yes, great point. You know, sometimes I think about kind of treating ourselves like children at the times when we have very little willpower, where it's like, if anybody's raising children, you know you have to put boundaries around them to keep them safe. And sometimes they don't like that, but like you're the adult, and you have to do that. And I know that for 9 pm me, I have to put boundaries around her to actually keep her safe, and so putting those in place can sometimes be a very loving gesture towards yourself.

Stephanie Mara 37:27

Yeah, that's such a great point, because I find that also evenings are when sometimes, like our inner child or inner teenager can kind of come out. We're tired, we're cranky, maybe our nervous system is just like shot, and we're living a little bit more in that collapse state where we just want to shut down and it's like, yeah, we need to kind of sometimes coddle ourselves, a little bit of like, okay, like, I am not going to be the adult self I know I can be when I, like, first wake up in the morning. I need way more gentleness, compassion, kindness, like structure, even scaffolding for myself in the evenings than maybe earlier on in the day.

Dr. Aleksandra Gajer 38:07

Yeah, I love that. You know, just the focus on self care. I think all of this, everything that we've been talking about is it's all part of creating health. It's just giving ourselves little bits of self care throughout the day. And I think a lot of people approach weight loss or metabolic health, all these things with shame or self hatred or turning against yourself, and that doesn't really work. So I think the more you can show your own body that you love it, you know, give yourself these little gestures of self care that, I think that could be really nourishing, and it can help you to make good choices. And especially as women, I think we're not taught how to do that. We're taught how to restrict and kind of take care of everybody else. But I think that even the act of giving to yourself in a wise way, in a way that you can be proud of, just builds us up in a big way.

Stephanie Mara 39:02

Yeah, I completely agree. Well, I always like to offer everyone kind of a baby step. We've obviously explored a lot of things today, and I'm curious what are like initial baby steps, maybe, for anyone who's listening that, you know, I find we're talking about, like, big things that sometimes take a lot of executive functioning, of just like, you know, setting those things up for ourselves that I'm wondering, how you maybe break things down in some of these areas to be like, here are some initial baby steps that are great to start with.

Dr. Aleksandra Gajer 39:31

Yeah. So if you're thinking about food, then I think one good baby step would be just to think about what you're drinking, to get rid of maybe sodas or things that are very high in sugar, and maybe not at every meal, but replace it with either water or sometimes I'll do like just a little bit of juice at the bottom of a glass and the rest water. And just changing what you drink can make a huge difference where you're hydrating your body. And then with movement. You know, some people have step trackers, and there's this kind of big goal of 10,000 steps, which is a lot. But what I encourage people to do is look at the number of steps that you get on average over the course of a week and the next week, just try to increase it by 1000 so if most days you get 3000, next week make your goal 4000 and that's not so hard, you know, if you just walk around your house a few times, you can get to 4000 and then maybe in a month, you'll make that 5000 but just set some small goals for yourself where you can start doing some of those self care steps.

Stephanie Mara 40:35

Yeah. And what have you found how that in our bigger picture of like, both the hydration and just the walking kind of leads to some of the things that we were talking about of like metabolic health and insulin sensitivity and vibrancy.

Dr. Aleksandra Gajer 40:51

Yeah. I mean, I think it makes a huge difference. They're big needle movers and they're simple things. Walking is just so healthy your body, you become more insulin sensitive, and it helps your body function better on so many levels and being appropriately hydrated, I think it's easy to have large amounts of sugar in our drinks and not notice it, and that's where a lot of those insulin spikes come from, that can lead to metabolic dysfunction and weight gain as well. So just making sure that we're mindful around the drinks and we're keeping ourselves hydrated and doing a little more walking can really move the needle in the right direction.

Stephanie Mara 41:30

Awesome. Well, I just loved our conversation today, and I just appreciate bringing in just this bigger picture of like, these very simple, not expensive, things that we can be doing for ourselves, sometimes free of just like walking around our house, of like, hey, these are the things that are really going to support you in feeling more stabilized in your body. And I'm wondering how individuals can keep in touch with you and the work that you're doing.

Dr. Aleksandra Gajer 41:57

Yeah, so we're on Instagram at the Gajer practice, G, A, J, E, R, and we have a website. It's called thegajerpractice.com, and on that website, we have an option on the first page to do a free introductory call with us. If anybody's interested in working with us, we can talk about what we have to offer.

Stephanie Mara 42:17

Awesome. Well, I will put those links in the show notes, and just thank you so much again for being here and having this chat today.

Dr. Aleksandra Gajer 42:23

Thank you!

Stephanie Mara 42:24

Yeah, absolutely. Well, to everyone listening, please email me your insights at support@stephaniemara.com anytime, and I hope you all have a satiating and safety producing rest of the day. Bye!

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