On today’s episode of Period Story, I’m so excited for you to hear my conversation with Melissa Ramos, the founder of Sexy Food Therapy. Melissa and I had a fantastic conversation about her healing journey through ovarian cysts, very heavy periods, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, thyroid nodules and fibroids. And of course, we talked about her first period. She is a very inspiring woman!
Melissa talked about her first period and reflected on how she felt not knowing what was happening to her. She says that from the beginning, her periods were so heavy that she would need to plan her schedule based on proximity to a washroom in order to avoid accidents.
Melissa shares the journey she took to understand what was happening to her – going from practitioner to practitioner to try to address her symptoms. She says that thinking back, none of the practitioners ran any testing on her – a lot of guessing and protocols and no testing.
We talked about the impact of unresolved emotional trauma on healing. Melissa says that we need make sure we value the trauma work as much as we value supplements, self-parenting, sleep and eating good food.
Melissa says small things such as going to bed earlier can really make a difference. She says that when we’re sleep deprived, we’re not always going to want to eat well or think positively. She says to never trust your thoughts on a tired brain. Thank you, Melissa!
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MELISSA’S BIO
Melissa Ramos is the founder of Sexy Food Therapy and the creator of the Sexy Lady Balls, an online community and program dedicated to helping women balance their hormones with nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle changes.
Melissa uses her background in both nutrition and Chinese medicine to create holistic healing protocols for both her private clients and the members of her Sexy Lady Balls program (a.k.a. “ballers”). She prides herself on educating her audience in bold and innovative ways on a variety of women’s health topics, from to vaginal dryness, to PMS, to more potentially severe issues like cysts, fibroids, and endometriosis.
Melissa, named one of Canada’s up-and-coming rising stars in the health industry by Flare magazine, has appeared on CTV’s The Social as their resident health expert, written for Huffington Post as an official health writer, and spoken at TEDx while lightheartedly wearing a shirt that read “the poop whisperer.” While she’ll admit to having a silly sense of humor, she brings a lot of compassion and firsthand understanding to those suffering from hormone-related health issues. Not-so-fun-fact: She herself had a cyst that ruptured and nearly cost her her life.
Melissa is also a passionate supporter of global initiatives for women’s issues, and has contributed to organizations such as Femme International and Plan International Canada to aid in their efforts to provide menstrual cups and education to the people of east Africa, and end sex trafficking, respectively. In addition, a portion of the proceeds of Sexy Lady Balls is dedicated to an initiative that helps provide menstrual products to homeless women.
Melissa’s mission is to help women rediscover their inner beauty, spark, and magic, starting with the best hormonal health possible. To learn more about Melissa and her signature program Sexy Lady Balls, please visit sexyfoodtherapy.com.
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Le’Nise: I’m so excited for you to be here. Welcome to the show.
Melissa: Thank you so much for having me. I’m thrilled to be here and talk about periods and more.
Le’Nise: So this is a question I always start with. Tell me the story of your first period.
Melissa: Well, I was 13 years old, and it feels like such a cliché story because I was in class and it was art class, in Mr. Nelson’s class. And of course, I was, I had bled through my pants and I had a windbreaker because it was the times you wear a windbreaker here. You know what I’m talking about, you know, when you’re born, when.
Le’Nise: Right.
Melissa: Anyways, I had I remember wrapping it around my waist and I was mortified. And my friend, like, put a bunch of like that, like the really awful paper towels in school that comes in one big roll.
Le’Nise: Yeah.
Melissa: Ripped it and then put it down and she said, you know, put put the the thing around your your waist. I went home. And I didn’t come back to class that day because I was mortified and I went home and my sister was home who’s seven years older than me and she’s like, “You got your period.” And I was like, “Ahh, there’s something wrong with me, you know, I was terrified. I had no idea what’s going on. And she was the one who told me, like, OK, so, you know, there’s menstrual pads and there’s tampons and stuff. And I guess because there was such a huge age gap, she would teach me a lot of this stuff before even my mom got to it, my mom’s awesome, but just before she got to it. And I remember that evening sitting for dinner and my dad I don’t know what I had said nothing about my period because I wouldn’t tell my dad about it. But I said something and my dad goes, “Well, you’re all grown up now, aren’t you?” Right. And my sister and I said and I replied back and I remember going, “You have no idea.” And my sister started laughing, and he said, “What are you laughing about?” because you know, he had no idea what we were talking about. The great thing was when I did go back to school, nobody made fun of me. And I actually was really terrified that the boys or something would say something because I had blood all over my chair and I was like, oh, my God, that, you know, they’re going to make fun of me when I go back to school. But, like, no one said anything. And so I think I was really, really lucky about that. But that was my first period when I was like only I was 13 years old, which I feel like is much later than a lot of women are getting their periods these days.
Le’Nise: Yeah, and it’s later than a lot of women that I’ve spoken to, but for the age that you are, I feel like that’s actually around the average age. So what’s really interesting to me is that you were 13 and you said that you weren’t sure what was happening to you. Did you, when did you learn about these things in school? I know you said your sister told you about what was happening, but what about in school? What was the Health Ed like for you?
Melissa: We didn’t even learn about it. You know, I mean, I’m kind of in that camp where I believe that kids should be learning about even Sex Ed earlier than they should. I know people say they’re too young. I’m like, but there’s so much shame, I think, wrapped up in the idea of bleeding or having sex or anything. And I don’t, I didn’t really learn about any of that. I didn’t, you know even in Sex Ed, we didn’t really start talking about it more so until I remember being in high school. So, like, it, it, I wasn’t learning about anything about periods. I knew about them from, you know, my, my mom or like my sister. And I knew my mother had really heavy periods. And my mother is Polish born but grew up in Brazil since she was four. So she essentially considers herself Brazilian and she had such heavy periods. She would tell me that she would make her own pads, because she was like, she was raised in a very, very, very poor part of a city in Brazil where a lot of people immigrated after the war.
They were refugees from World War Two. And she would say to me that she would make her own pads because they were really poor and she would have that. But she bled so heavy all the time and she would try to race home to go get some more pads because maybe she didn’t have enough or something. And she said that like there were birds or something that were on the side of the road. They’d always try to stick with her because they would try to like they try to, like, nip at your legs where she’d have stockings and all these crazy stories. But I remember her always having really heavy periods and my sister had very heavy periods. So I just was really used to that. Almost felt like the norm. That I kind of always expected that was going to happen to me, and sure enough, it did.
Le’Nise: So your periods were really heavy, so when you say heavy, what does that mean for you?
Melissa: Oh gosh, they were like, I just remember talking to girlfriends and they’re like, oh, I get my period, like, for three days. And I’m like, what is that like? You know, what is that like? Because I get, I was at that time, I would get them for a full seven, but I would probably have three days where it was like insanely heavy, where I would be, you know, super absorbency plus tampon from OB, which was like you. It’s very actually that tampon, which I don’t use those now because I know how bad and how toxic those commercial tampons are. And they were without the applicator. And I remember how hard it was to get that specific one because they didn’t sell them everywhere. But they were the most absorbent you could possibly get. I’d wear super absorbency plus tampon and an overnight maxi and I’d have to change both in an hour.
Le’Nise: Oh, my gosh.
Melissa: Yeah, and so overnight I would have to, like, set an alarm and I think that it was also hard during the day because you’re moving and, you know, like when you’re sitting and all of a sudden you get up and you’re like that rush and you’re like, oh, why did I just move? You know? But like at night, I think because I was, you’re laying in bed. Maybe the flow doesn’t feel as heavy, but I still would have to set an alarm in the middle of the night, because if I didn’t, then I would have to like, I’d have to change. I don’t experience that anymore. But I had that for probably if I got my period at 13, that would have been until, I probably would say until about my mid thirties and I’m 42 now.
Le’Nise: Wow. So you are you basically had 20 years of those heavy periods?
Melissa: Yep.
Le’Nise: I mean, I want to talk more about the rest of your story because, you know, there is obviously a root cause for for those heavy periods. Tell me more about what that meant for your relationship with your period.
Melissa: Oh, it was like hell. When it was coming, and I’m so glad I’m having this conversation because I was thinking about this today, because when it would come, it was just hell, I’m like, that’s just it’s one of those things, you know, people who have Crohn’s, they have to always map it where the bathrooms are. Oh, that was me around my period. So I like, you know, I wouldn’t schedule, I wouldn’t schedule dates around the first day of my first or second day because those heavy days would last for go to the third day was manageable. Third day I could actually go out and in like I still have to make sure that I was like, you know, not pushing it. But the first two days were like literally would have to definitely go by the bathroom. So I would plan my life, try to plan my life around it so I wouldn’t have an accident. And I still did have tons of accidents. So my relationship with it was so bad at the time that I just dreaded it. You know, you get the period brain. I think I still get a little bit of period brain when it comes, but not to the degree that it was before.
Le’Nise: And so you did a lot of planning in the first couple days of your period because of the heaviness, was it painful as well?
Melissa: Yeah, it was really painful. I had, I wasn’t one of those women who were like I’ve heard of women who they’ve thrown up. They had horrible headaches. I was lucky that I’ve never experienced that I would have cramps, but nothing that was severe, just like pretty uncomfortable. A lot of soreness and back pain, but nothing against severe and just obviously a lot of fatigue because you’re losing that much blood, you’re exhausted. But that probably like I guess I was lucky in that sense that even though the flow was so heavy, I met women and have worked with women in practice who’ve had periods that were light and their symptoms were excruciating during PMS. Emotionally, I definitely was like all over the place where it’s just kind of like I just want to hug and for someone to feed me cake, but that I want to smack your head off and want my own alone time all at the same time. That’s kind of that like, you know, manic sort of behaviour. But, you know, I’m lucky in the sense that I didn’t struggle from extreme pain like a lot of women.
Le’Nise: What was a point where, so after dealing with this for 20 years and then, you know, I guess you got to a point where you were like, OK, there’s something’s going on here. Tell me about the point where you realised actually something, this wasn’t right, something was wrong, and you needed to sort things out with your period.
Melissa: I think it probably, I probably would say around my mid 20s is when I because, I for the longest time, I just felt it was normal. I, my mom went through this, my sister went through this, and I’ll probably be like my mom and have a hysterectomy, you know, and like but this is just kind of what happens. But then in my 20s, I think it’s normal. And I didn’t really care so much about my health in my earlier 20s and even throughout my 20s. I don’t know how much I really cared about it because I think that I like a lot of people, I felt sort of invincible. You know, I was an ad person. I worked hard. I played even harder, a lot of drugs, lots of alcohol. And so you’re not really thinking too much and or even correlating that like, well, what I’m eating or how I’m taking care of myself is greatly affecting my menstrual cycle every month. So I think that a lot of the things I was doing was just adding insult to injury. It was just making it worse.
But I started to go see practitioners and my number one complaint was always like, I have the hardest, like heaviest period. I just don’t know what to do. And I remember seeing a Chinese medical doctor and literally giving her a huge sum of money and just saying, “I don’t like, here’s a bunch of money and just start taking like my sessions off this big lump sum of money and let’s start working on this.” And when I did cycle charting. It was so erratic, I remember like a cardiograph and it started to normalise in terms of the way it’s supposed to look, when I was doing a lot of, like, my periods were still heavy. And she’s like, “Oh, you just have spleen Qi deficiency and you’ve got to take these herbs.” And I kind of gave up on it because I felt like, well, I don’t really feel like it’s like something isn’t shifting still. So which is ironic because, you know, my background is nutrition and Chinese medicine and I do think that both are very powerful. But it’s also the reason why that I find that, like, there’s more to it than just the one modality. It’s why I like exploring other areas and finding like, why is this happening and what are the all these different factors that could be at play here versus just this one thing that was the reason why that this happened. And I’m not entirely sure I believe in that very much. But yeah, I would probably say mid 20s was probably when it was started to become at the forefront. And I had seen multiple practitioners to try to address it. And nobody, not one person ran a single test on me, which is interesting. Like there’s no hormone test, there was no stool testing, there was no hair trace mineral analysis. There’s nothing, you know, it’s just protocols after protocols and lots of money spent.
And in hindsight, looking back and there’s a lot of guessing and no testing.
Le’Nise: And that was kind of like the opposite of, I know you talk about testing a lot on your, in your work, so the opposite of what you do now. So as a practitioner, if you could go back and speak to for yourself back in your mid 20s, what would you say?
Melissa: I really would say go to somebody who’s actually going to go test you like, to really get to the bottom of it. And I think that so many practitioners even now, like I’m not saying hormone testing is not is not valid because it is, but I also believe that hormones are very much superficial in the fact that so many things affect them. And I think that if we actually address what, are there gut infections at play, because if there are well, those can affect your hormones. And for me, you know, I came from a history of having, like, really bad skin for so long and had been on rounds of antibiotics for Lord knows all these respiratory issues and thinking like maybe that’s probably where you should have start. It was just looking at your gut first. And so that’s probably what I would have said, is like, go test your gut. Let’s, let’s start there. And honestly want a huge part that helped me was symptomatically was bioidentical, natural bioidentical progesterone. And I say symptomatically, because I think a lot of women will get on natural bioidentical progesterone and go, “It’s the answer to all my prayers”, just like taking vitex is the answer to all their prayers. And I don’t believe everyone should be on vitex. But I you know, it’s it’s progesterone is so needed to calm those heavy periods, and it certainly calmed mine. My period are still heavy, but they’re manageable and I don’t have to plan my washroom route. But why is the progesterone low to begin with? Why is the oestrogen high to begin with? And I think everybody sometimes needs a bit of symptomatic support, like just cut a gal a break. But, you know, like you got to keep looking at those causative factors while you’re addressing it symptomatically.
Le’Nise: So really, it’s going in and giving someone something that’s going to provide them with some short term relief while you go in and you address the kind of deeper, deeper issues. I 100 percent agree with that because if someone has been going through something for such a long time and then come to you as a practitioner, you just want to be able to show them that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Melissa: Yeah, a thousand percent. And that’s why I’m just like it was it was a godsend for me. But in the interim, it’s just, you keep chipping away at the stuff that’s there. And sometimes it’s layers of stuff. Sometimes it’s not even like it’s your, it’s just your gut. How about if it’s emotional trauma, even stuff that it could have been there from, like before you even had the mental articulation to go like, oh, I remember this happening. It might have been something that was even like transgenerational from your, your family, but you don’t, that you’re not even consciously aware of. Like, there’s so many layers to us as human beings. It’s quite remarkable.
Le’Nise: I was having a discussion recently about epigenetics and how we carry trauma in our genes. And I just find that such a fascinating area. And then you combine that with the whole the the hypothesis of racial weathering. And I’m hypothesising here. But if you just look at something like fibroids, and I know that’s an area of focus, one of your areas of focus, and you look at how prevalent they are within Black women and you just think, well, if we were able to dig deeper, you know, what is going on there? You know, how much weight does, does intergenerational trauma have to do with the prevalence of fibroids? I just think it’s just, it’s just fascinating.
Melissa: It really is. Because you think about. And it’s what I find fascinating is like, I’m a huge fan of breathwork. And I love breathwork, and there’s so many different modalities of breathwork, right, you know, you have Wim Hof that people do, which I don’t feel is very esoteric in nature. He’s just kind of like, “Breath, mother…”, you know what I mean? Not going to swear, but like, he just very like go get it, you know. And then you have Dr. Stanislaw, Dr. Stanislav Grof who does breath work and there’s like all this like music and stuff. And it kind of takes it from, like shamanistic areas of it. But he believes that some trauma can be very much from in utero or even from the birthing process because you think, OK, that was like really traumatic. Like my mother couldn’t speak English. And you’ve got nurses yelling at her to push and she’s crying because she has no idea. So how traumatic knowing that for her, but for my sister coming out of her. But you can’t remember that my mother went through war. She was a Catholic who harboured the Jews in the war. Right. Like you think about this. And so it’s interesting. There’s a guy by the name of Mark Wolynn and he’s fantastic at talking about like traumas that happen through our lifeline and how it actually could be the reason why we’re reacting the way we are or even like why we’re physically manifesting certain things that we do. You know, I think the Black community, it’s so deep rooted that trauma on so many levels, especially for women. Oh, my God. And so I think that, like I think that the the layers are so deep in there. And the beauty of breathwork, which is one of the things that I really, really believe in, into the integration process of somebody, because I think sometimes you tell someone, oh, you’re healing, you’re healing. But I look at the times and you’re healing makes it sound like you’re broken to begin with, like you’re integrating all these puzzle pieces that just need to click together. And when you do breath work that, it’s moving the diaphragm, which then moves the lymphatic system. And the lymphatic system is that emotional shock absorber. So there could be like trauma there from God knows when.
And so I think that when women are thinking about periods, for example, you know, we have to kind of go beyond the physical part and think that, like, this actually could be much deeper and that it’s not about abandoning one thing, but really making sure that we value the trauma work as much as we value the supplements, we value the self parenting and getting her butt to bed at a decent time as much as we value, like eating good food. But I think generally people tend to abandon those things because they just don’t put as much value or weight in where they should be.
Le’Nise: I am just nodding along with you. I agree with everything you’re saying. I think that people, they want a quick fix. And, you know, you can take a pill, you can take a supplement, and that will give you the quick relief that we were talking about earlier. But that integrational work that you were talking about, that that’s really that is the work. You know, that’s the deep work that takes can take months and take years to really go through the layers of what is actually driving this. And I think that people can be afraid of that because it pulls up so many things that they just, they haven’t really wanted to deal with.
Melissa: Yeah, and it’s interesting because when it does come out. Is it important for us to mentally articulate the why? Like, if you experience something, did you experience it first in your mind or did you experience first in terms of like, well, no, when I experience something, this is how I like I felt at first I felt an energetic resonance. Then our brain makes the mental articulation of what that meant. So sometimes when women say me like I’m doing the breath work and I feel so sad and I feel so angry and they’re trying to articulate the why and I wasn’t held enough as a child or this. And does it matter? Like maybe we just need to release that that that stored emotion that’s been sitting there that is causing us to react in so many ways, like allow yourself to feel that. But people don’t want to feel because it’s uncomfortable.
Right. So I think it’s just all those things I think are really ingrained and deeply stored into the human psyche. Like I woke up or was trying to go to bed and I was so I don’t even know why. But I was, I felt angry. I had this feeling of anger and I don’t know why nothing caused me to create to feel that way. And I could not for the life of me, go to bed because of it. So I got up and sat down and I did 15 minutes of breath work. And partway through it, I started bawling my eyeballs out and I had no idea why. And I still think maybe I just was not meant to know why. Maybe it’s OK that I just released it like the do I need to rationalise it? Do I need to create a perception of what what it was and how or why? Like, maybe it’s just important that I just let go. You know, so I think that, yes, I think that when it comes to periods and any part of your hormonal healing, you got to look deeper.
Le’Nise: I want to go back a little bit and talk about your, your story and your journey to where you are today, because you have quite an interesting story. You were saying about working in advertising, you know playing hard, working hard. I used to work in advertising as well. So as you were talking about that, I thought I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, got it, been there. But then you had a really dramatic experience. Can you share kind of an abbreviated version of that story for listeners who aren’t familiar with it?
Melissa: So I left advertising. I started to actually kind of dabble in the healing realm around that time, studying nutrition and left advertising to fully pursue it. And after that point, I was really interested in Chinese medicine. But I had when I went into that whole field of nutrition, Chinese medicine, I went to do it with the idea of like digestion. Like that was kind of my thing for the longest time. And it still is, right. It’s usually where I like to start. But fast forward down the road. I had an ovarian cyst that had ruptured this was years after my studying and I was graduated from the Chinese medicine school, but I had an ovarian cyst that ruptured. It tore off a piece of my right ovary and I got sent to hospital and I had no idea was going on. All I knew that I was in a severe amount of pain. My abdomen is distended, thinking in my head and what if the pain isn’t fixed? It’s like moving left to right of me with my appendix and all the diagnostic things in my head. And they said, “Well, we have to do a CT scan.” They did.
And they said, “We can’t see anything other than blood and it’s right up to your lung cavity. And it’s the reason why that you can’t breathe very well right now because blood outside of your organs is an irritant to your organs and it hurts. They’re supposed to be on your vessels, in your capillaries, in your veins.” And so, yeah, it was up to there and they said, “We have to do an exploratory surgery to find out what it is.” They did a six inch vertical incision, they took out about two litres of blood, which was a lot, and they had me for over an hour, hour or two of surgery or so. And now they have like four of the best surgeons in there from different walks of life. They didn’t know they were going to see an ovarian cyst that had ruptured, tore off a piece of my ovary. They stitched my ovary back and said, “It’s fine. It’s in good working order. Sidenote, We didn’t see any endo that was in there” and it was months of recovery. I had 24 staples in me and I, yeah, it took me a while to recover. It was really, really challenging.
And so that was when I really kind of started getting into the hormonal area and obviously spurred from that. And then from there, fast forward even further found out that I had fibroids by mistake because I was experiencing very weird sensations in my pelvic region, not understanding. Is it an ovarian? I don’t know. And then I went into the hospital and luckily the radiologist was still there, did an ultrasound. And then the doctor said, “We didn’t find anything. Did you want a copy of your ultrasound report?” I said, “Sure.” Grabbed it, really sleepy, stuffed it in my purse next and looked at my purse and opened up the results and it said 2 fibroids: one intramural, one subserosal. So and I’m like, you wouldn’t think to tell a woman who came in experiencing pelvic pain that she has like a couple of fibroids, probably a good thing, right? That’s why I felt weird, because I, unlike a lot of women, felt my fibroids, you know, and I have one that’s shrinking right now. And so I had later discovered that I had Hashimoto’s, an autoimmune thyroid condition and who knows how long I had that, that maybe it hadn’t been diagnosed for years. It takes about 10 years for Hashimoto’s to develop. And I say that because it’s not like, OK, well, one day you just get an autoimmune condition, but your thyroid can really change your periods quite a bit, that how it functions. So who knows how long I had it for so long.
And maybe that was something that needed to be addressed too. But I never really had proper bloodwork, which is an ongoing issue for so many women to get complete blood work. And they’re just told that their normal or that it’s all up in their heads. So I experienced that and had a bunch of thyroid nodules. And through a lot of work that I’ve done, my last ultrasound, which I always show on the masterclass I’ve done, on one side, all the nodules are completely clear. And then the one that I had that was one millimetre away from getting biopsied shrunk down by 50 percent.
Le’Nise: Wow.
Melissa: Yeah, so it was like I always tell them and I’m like in my antibodies are almost at almost that normal right now, which is insane.
And I say to women like it’s a thousand percent possible to to get past these things. But you’ve got, it’s not about being consistent. Consistency is BS in my opinion. It’s about being committed. You’re never going to stray for something that you’re committed. Consistency, you tell women to be consistent and her little perfectionist brain starts going mental and when she’s not consistent, it’s like shame follows and haunts her to death versus commitments like well I’m always going to go back to something I’m committed to. And eventually all those slip ups I do are less and less. When I do, I kind of have a little bit of grace with myself, you know.
Le’Nise: You have been through a lot. So you had the heavy periods and then you had this surgery from the ruptured cyst. Then you found out that you had fibroids and then you had, got diagnosed with Hashimoto’s and then the thyroid nodules. And you are, I mean, you tell me if I’m wrong, but from what I see of you, you seem like you’re thriving and all of that would have put someone else on the floor. So what listeners will probably be thinking is well what are her secrets? How did she do it? Can you talk more about what you did on your healing journey and what you were still doing?
Melissa: Yeah, I think that, you know, I was the gal who when I commit to something, I was like, yeah, I’m going to go full throttle. And I think I all I think when I did really dive into health, food wise, I was always on point, you know, I was always on point with that. I had a lot of struggles with addiction for quite some time. But I think the biggest challenge for me was the lifestyle. The sleep was something that, I would eat well. I would drink enough water, work out, but like sleep? I’ll sleep when I’m dead, I will work and I will work hard because it’s where I get validation, right? Like a lot of people, they get validation through the work that they do. And so that was that was the hardest part to integrate, was the sleep, was crushing the co-dependent patterns, the need to people, please, to validate my sense of self-worth, to distract myself from feeling, because, hey, if I can make someone else feel good, then I’ve done a good job. I think that those are really huge catalysts and definitely addressing the trauma and from a food perspective, I’m a huge fan of looking at the gut and I had a lot of gut infections that were at play and that was something that I noticed.
And I ended up actually, I was in Bali last year for five weeks. Prior to going to Bali. I started to experience some pretty intense gut pain and realised it was from an H. Pylori infection that I had. And what I, and H. Pylori, for listeners, listening is the same bacterial infection that creates peptic ulcers. And it’s found in 2/3 of the world’s population and their studies to even show that women who have very low levels of progesterone tend to actually have a higher incidence of H. Pylori, because progesterone is also antiinflammatory in nature. And so we also need progesterone for thyroid help. People who have thyroid conditions also sometimes has H. Pylori and we have H. Pylori, you don’t have stomach acid. So it’s like a welcome party for all bacteria and parasites to come into your gut. So it’s no surprise that I had all this gut pain. I didn’t have Bali Belly. It literally was, it was because of that. I ended up thinking to myself, why is it does it hurt after I eat almost all my meals except for breakfast? And then I realised breakfast was the only meal that was all protein. So I decided I went on this whole quest to kind of go and I say this like loosely, but carnivoreish and I say carnivoreish because it was not a full carnivore. I don’t label myself as carnivore, but a meat based diet. And it was literally like someone just turned off the switch to pain like that and all the gut pain was gone. It was so bad that I thought, I was trying to get a flight home. I was reeling in pain for five, six hours because it was so intense and I just stuck to eating like now I think my diet, I would say, is pretty high fat, but I do eat vegetables and fruit. But when I took the Cyrex test, which is a food intolerance test, it’s done by blood and it showed that I was intolerant to a ton of foods. But you don’t, you’re not intolerant to a ton of foods until you understand why and it’s usually from gut infections.
So yeah, I went carnivoreish, meaning I still eat berries and apples and pears sometimes, but my diet is primarily protein and pretty high fat and it has been an absolute godsend for my gut. It’s been an absolute godsend for my thyroid and my hormone levels. But the breath work has been huge, the sleep has been huge, the bigger boundaries has been massive. Like that’s where a big part of my healing really was.
And working out where I’m like, I’m going to rest today and I’m not going to feel guilty about it, like I don’t want to do high impact workouts, you will never catch me at a boot camp or a cycling class like I would rather die than to do that, like I will do what my body feels is best for it. And for me, that’s usually like a yoga or Pilates where it’s not a high impact thing. So that’s probably the secret sauces are in multiple parts.
Le’Nise: Going back to what you were saying about being on a carnivoreish diet, I know that some people listening will think, whoa, whoa, whoa, eating all of that meat, that’s bad for the environment, we get told that meat is so bad for us. I have my own view on that, that there’s no one size fits all. You know, you’ve got to do what’s right for you. But what I’m sure you’ve heard, if you talked about this publicly, I don’t know if you talk about what you eat publicly, but what has been your response to people who are kind of like, no, the way you’re eating is wrong.
Melissa: I always say one size fits all approach doesn’t work. I also say the results are in the pudding because look at my numbers, it’s improved. I think that meat has the highest bioavailable nutrients other than plants. So I think that there that I grew up in a meat based household, my, my family is Brazilian. You can’t get more meat based than that. But, you know, whether it’s bad for the environment, I think that you have to vote with your dollar. And I think that if you’re buying, I don’t buy commercially raised meat, I purchase organic and grass fed. I also switch up my protein sources. My favourite is beef, but sometimes I try to get what’s local. Where I’m right now, they’re going to have a lot of elk and venison. So I try to switch up because you’re getting more nutrients from different animals.
And also I try to get in some organ meats as well. I think that we strayed so much away from like, people will rant and rave about how bad things are for the environment when there’s like mono cropping of soy and corn going on. I’m like, you don’t understand the amount of life, of wildlife that has actually been killed by the growing of, you know, plant based foods. And again, I’m not demonising plants at all, but I’m also, I think that organic and grass fed farming can be extremely regenerative to the environment. I, a lot of people don’t realise, but with fruits and vegetables, you require blood meal. So there’s actual animal fragments in there to, you know, to grow those. So a lot of people I know that, ‘well, it’s bad for the hormones because of this.’ And I’m like, “but what is?” Because if you look at that, if you look at the oestrogen. And that it is in grass fed organic meat and then you compare that to the oestrogen levels in soy or even other various things, you’re going to see massive differences, a lot of different differences in that.
My issues haven’t gotten worse, my issues have only gotten better. They’ve only improved. But I’m not, I’m, I don’t subscribe to diet dogma. So that’s why I say carnivoreish, because sometimes, yeah, will I ever eat grains? Rarely. I mean, one day out of the blue, I really want oatmeal. I never frickin eat oatmeal. I don’t know the last time I ate it, but I bought some and I made some. Oh my God. Is the world crashing? No. But that day my body really wanted it so I had some, I didn’t feel terrible after eating it, which is a bonus. But I think that you have to, I think that sometimes the dogma of various eating regimes, even carnivore, can be so extreme that it’s something.
And I think that we strayed so much away from like food that back in the day when people eat meat, they ate like especially in Brazil, you know, you’re talking about people who were slaves, who were poor, they ate every single part of the animal, because they had to, you know, they looked at. And that’s why even now, it’s like if I can eat some organs, I will. And for those that I know that I’m not going to like like kidney, I think it’s gross because just personal taste preference, I will end up probably getting that in dessicated form from various supplement companies to supplement what I have, because you’re getting a lot of those micronutrients. I think that eating muscle meats alone, you’re really straying from that.
Look, even if I’m making a stew, I’ll put bone in there because I know I’m going to get the collagen from that. Like when my dad made it’s a Brazilian dish called feijoada. A lot of it was like actually from the African slaves in Brazil who would make it and they would make it from every part of the animals, a bean dish with lots of meat. And I remember when my dad made it when we were kids, you make it for a big amount of people. And there is like there’s ear, there’s tongue. There’s like a hoof in there, like there’s everything that’s in there. But you kind of grew up in and I was just normal will eat. Right. But now everyone wants this pretty cellophane packaging. And I’m like, that’s not that’s so far from what it is, you know. So yeah, I definitely try to respect as much as humanly possible from the animal.
Le’Nise: I am nodding along because I’m in this world and I I agree with what you’re saying, but you know, what we hear from a lot of mainstream health people is vegan is best, vegetarian as best. And you and I both know, we both said it. There’s no one size fits all. So I’d say for listeners who are confused about what to eat, it goes back to listening to what your, your body is telling you. So Melissa said she craved oatmeal, so she went and got some oatmeal, you know, really tuned in to the signals and the science of your bodies and don’t feel like you have to stick to these templates just because, you know, some influencer is saying everyone should be vegan. You know, that might not be right, right for you. I feel so passionately about that.
Melissa: Oh, I totally agree, because even, you know, I have some patients of mine who do really well with higher vegetable count. I do believe that most women are probably not eating enough protein. As we age, our muscles breakdown, we need the protein for blood sugar balancing, and unfortunately, when you’re vegetarian and vegan, you have to combine various foods, starches, legumes, etc. A lot of these foods have a lot of anti nutrients in them like lectins, things that prevent the assimilation of those nutrients. And that high starch can be very problematic for a lot of people, especially for insulin levels. So is that protein combining actually right for you? And I think that that has to be a really integral part before someone really commits to a specific diet. Is it right for you?
Le’Nise: Look at what’s right for you. So tell tell listeners more about what you’re up to now in your business. I know you’ve got a lot of things going on. Tell us what’s coming up for you.
Melissa: Yeah. So right now we have a membership that has been running gosh, for probably about five would say five years or so. Sexy Lady Balls, everything I do kind of kitschy. So I’m on Instagram, you see Sexy Food Ttherapy. You’re going to go, wow, this girl just dressed up as a big vulva or a big fibroid. Yes, that’s me. And I, I like to have people to laugh and learn some of these very complex topics. So we have this membership called Sexy Lady Balls, Lady Balls referring to your ovaries and there are women from all walks of life in there. And it’s great because we have women there, whether they have fibroids, like we really specialise mainly in those oestrogen dominant conditions. The fibroids, the endo, the adenomyosis, the ovarian cysts, the polycystic ovarian syndrome. And there’s so many women in the programme in the membership who have thyroid conditions and pretty much all of them across the board are struggling with their adrenals. So it’s not to say we don’t have women in menopause because we do. But that’s a huge part of my work.
And I’m in the process of developing something that’s not going to release for a while, not until probably the fall of 2021. It’s an autoimmune programme. And but right now, that’s right now is Sexy Lady Balls. And at some point I got to get my book together. So that’s a labour of love. But yeah, that’s kind of where I’m at right now. And it’s been extremely fruitful and amazing and wonderful to chat with women and to support them, because I think especially with hormonal work, it’s not like, OK, you did this for 30 days and you’re healed. It’s you want to give them ongoing support, which is why the membership has been created. And that’s really where, you know, these women join at a really low priced monthly fee and then they have the opportunity to upgrade, to get testing. And my job is to really fight tooth and nail to try to get them to get complete blood work. So we have women in there from Australia, from all parts of Europe, from the States and Canada. And I want these women to get answers like that to me is my number one goal, because like I said, who knows if I had thyroid issues in my 20s and 30s and it was just undetected, you know, and that’s why I think especially blood work is so key. So we try to make sure that we get resources for women so that they get answers.
Le’Nise: So someone’s listening and they’re thinking, how do I fight to get the right blood work done with my doctor, how do I have a conversation with my doctor? What would you say?
Melissa: I think the hardest part is I think I don’t think it should be a fight. If you’re having a fight, then I think that it’s time to look elsewhere and to just, you know, manage your energy accordingly if you’re not pushing up the stream. I think it’s important to look to work with an alternative care practitioner, whether it’s someone like myself, a naturopath, the functional nutritionist, what have you, who may have those resources for you. And usually those resources will require you to pay out of pocket to get testing. Now in the States, people are used to paying always out of pocket for their health in Canada. It’s like, oh, go into the doctor and just get bloodwork done and we’re good. You kind of feel like it’s free, right? And sometimes I find that that’s probably the most challenging to work with our my fellow Canadians. But, you know, I say I’m like, you gotta, I think there’s a weird thing, especially with women, about investing in themselves.
That it’s like, you know, and I’m not talking about fashion and I invest in myself all the time on Amazon. Sure. But is that actually investing in yourself like something that’s going to be like fruitful and abundant to your body? Like, are they distractions or are the actual investments? Right, like, are you spending or are you investing because those are two very different things, but most women really struggle with investing in themselves, though, like, you know, and that’s why we try to keep the membership rate low and then we have upgrades for stool testing and all the rest. And even that I try to keep as low as humanly possible. But yeah, it definitely comes to a distraction issue, a self-worth issue. And these, again, come down to those very deep core patterns that I think a lot of women have so deeply ingrained that are a huge part of why they’re struggling and then still looking for that pill to fix everything.
Le’Nise: So for listeners who they’re listening, they’ve heard everything you’ve said. What would you want that one thought that they would take away to be?
Melissa:I would say probably the biggest one thought would be if you’re struggling and you’re confused and you’re overwhelmed, I think that sometimes you have to sometimes let go and seek the help of somebody. And if you seek the help of somebody and they haven’t done any testing, that should be a red flag to you. I think that you also have to be mindful and think like, is there trauma that’s here? You know, is there co-dependent issues that are here? Like sometimes something as small as like just getting your butt to bed earlier. I say this to my husband all the time, like if more women just got sleep, so many other issues would improve. Now ask yourself these questions, ask yourself these hard questions, because when you’re really sleep deprived, you’re going to want to eat everything on your fridge. You’re going to think that you suck. Never trust your thoughts on a tired brain, no matter. I don’t care if you are the most evolved human being. I still say that to myself to this day. So remember to say that to yourself. Like I’m feeling really, I’m really beating myself up today. Am I tired? Yes, OK. I can admit that I’m tired. I’ll never trust my thoughts on a tired brain. Got it. Cool. So I would say that that probably.
But I would always say, look, when it comes to your health, the number one thing is like start with your lifestyle first. Because you can eat all the made in foods, but in the end, if your lifestyle sucks, you’re never going to stay on plan. That’s why most people are falling off the bandwagon. This just because you don’t have a food problem, you have a lifestyle problem. So that probably would be where I would leave people with.
Le’Nise: So look at your lifestyle. Look at your sleep. Look at your, look at your trauma, I think. Amazing. Thank you so much. You brought so much to this conversation. I’m so, so thrilled to have you on the show. Listeners can find you on Instagram, on your website. So it’s it’s Sexy Food Therapy. And all the links will be in the show notes. Thank you so much, Melissa.
Melissa: My pleasure. Thank you.
