Episode 259: Eating for Energy
In this episode, I’m sharing:
How my approach to eating for energy has evolved through the lens of Human Design
The two markers I look to for red flags in my health
A recent 3rd Line experiment I’ve had in curating a 10-day detox program to shape what eating for energy looks like for me
Listen to the Episode:
Mentioned in the Episode:
Episode 094: Creating A Solid Nutritional Infrastructure for Health
Episode 193: Human Design Profile Lines - What's Your Personality?
Connect with Naomi:
Connect on Instagram
Share the Episode:
“Human Design is all about our energy, and eating in a way that supports how we manage our energy is really what health is about. To manage our energy, we have to recognize where our energy leaks are and do something about them. It’s all very nuanced, which is what we must keep in mind when we decide the best way to manage our energy for each of us individually.”
Read the Transcript:
Hello there, my friends. Welcome back to The Live FAB Life Podcast. I'm your host Naomi Nakamura, and today, I'm excited to have a conversation on a topic that some might consider controversial, and some might adamantly disagree with me. But, I'm going to share a personal experience and my perspectives about it because, having a 3rd Profile Line, I thrive on trying and learning new things - it's where my wisdom comes from.
I also have a Defined Throat center, with Gates 31 and 35 active, which are gates about storytelling, and craving new experiences - it’s very much where my personal growth comes from, and that’s what we do here on the show, and this is what I'm sharing with you today.
Today we're talking about eating for energy. Eating for energy was a focal point of my health coaching practice. I taught workshops and coached group programs specifically focused on eating for energy.
Then when the pandemic hit, our lives shifted; my focus shifted to Human Design, and I completely immersed myself in it.
Now I bring the two things together, and some of the topics we covered in the past will be revisited in the podcast through the lens of Human Design.
Today, we’re talking about Eating for Energy, as I've recently experimented with it.
On Instagram, I’ve shared that my sleep has been the best ever in my adult life. It's amazing - I never knew what sleep like this felt like.
But when we changed times and sprung forward by an hour in March, it messed with me - I struggled. Most people turn to things like herbal remedies or different hacks when this happens.
As someone who’s struggled with sleep for most of my adult life, I’ve tried those things which never worked for me.
My Oura ring helps, but this time, I decided to revisit an old approach that I use with clients and focus on eating for energy and crowding out some of the foods I’d been eating that, if I’m being perfectly honest, was draining my energy.
But before I get into that, because I haven’t shared this in a while, I want to set the table and get real about how I eat.
Personally, I eat gluten-free and dairy-free foods. I can’t tolerate dairy at all. It's been this way my entire life, but I ignored it until my body forced me not to ignore it anymore.
I've eaten gluten-free for the past 11-12 years. While I can tolerate gluten in small amounts on rare occasions, it’s not something my body can always tolerate. Besides affecting my digestion, it also affects my brain function - the headaches and brain fog are real.
I also don’t eat soy in any form, as it definitely doesn’t agree with my stomach.
I avoid canola and other rancid oils, only using avocado, olive, and coconut oils, and sometimes on occasion will also cook with ghee.
I eat well-sourced animal protein and anything with dark chocolate, provided it’s gluten-free.
Before this, I had my “healthy living awakening” in 2004 but was more focused on fitness but still ate the standard American diet because, truth be told, I didn't know how to eat healthy.
It wasn’t a skill that I was ever taught. My parents certainly didn't teach it to me because they didn’t know either. Even today, if I were to have a conversation about eating healthy today with them, they’d tell me it meant to eat less.
So when I went through my “healthy awakening,” I focused on exercise and didn't really know what healthy eating meant.
Then I started endurance training for marathons, which helped me educate myself on how to eat to fuel my athletic performance.
But then I overtrained and developed adrenal and thyroid dysfunction, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and other associated symptoms that came along with those things.
That shifted my focus on nutritional therapies and using nutrition to repair my health.
Because so much of that involves fatigue and burnout, that's really when I focused on eating for energy.
Theoretically, eating to fuel my workouts is eating for energy, but this shift to using nutritional therapy for healing is different.
I tried different programs like Whole 30, which I did once, and while a good program isn’t one that I could never do, nor do I want to do again.
I followed the Low FODMAP program, which is very challenging if you're unfamiliar. It’s specifically for those who have digestive disorders like Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
And then, of course, I’ve done the programs I’ve coached - seasonal cleanses rooted in Chinese medicine and the 21-Day Sugar Detox.
Programs like these are meant to be short-term, and to varying degrees, they positively impacted my health.
But, to make a long story short, each experience helped me get to know myself better - increased my body awareness. I learned more and more about myself and what eating for energy meant - for me.
And throughout these collective experiences, I’ve taken away what works for me, and I’ve been able to curate my way of eating. There’s no name for it, but it’s what works for me, what I find enjoyable to eat after trying many different things - again, 3rd Profile Line energy.
Then along came Human Design, and learning how to approach health and digestion through the lens of Human Design has further expanded my perspective on eating. How what it’s really about is nourishing our body, which isn’t just about what's on my plate, it’s not just the timing of when we eat, but it’s also the circumstances around how we eat and above all, the one question to ask is, “Is this nourishing me? Is the food on my plate nourishing me? Is the timing of when I eat nourishing me? Is the environment that I'm eating in nourishing for me? And not just nourishing my body but also my mind and spirit.
So how I'm currently eating, lately, I've been eating a lot of seafood and poultry - not a lot of red meat simply just because I get my red meat from a friend who’s a rancher, and he's been out of stock on what I usually order.
Besides seafood and poultry, I've been eating a lot of white rice, which, to be perfectly honest, has been a little bit too much for what my body can tolerate.
I've been eating less veggies simply because I don't like cutting vegetables - it’s the bane of my existence. I hate it. I love eating vegetables, but I hate the prep and cleanup.
I’ve been more than enough gluten-free treats than I need for nourishment. And while they’re gluten-free, free of high fructose corn syrup and other junky ingredients.
I don’t want to demonize treats or any foods, but ultimately, it’s still sugar and has the same effect on my blood sugar, and too much of it isn’t nourishing for me.
And while I'm not here to demonize any food, I also don't want to be someone who says it's fine to indulge in treats all the time. Being a 21-Day Sugar Detox coach, I don’t want someone who has a chronic medical condition who’s been instructed by their healthcare providers to avoid sugar for the sake of their health, I don’t want them to think it’s “healthy” for them to indulge in treats which will perpetuate a blood sugar imbalance.
It's a fine line, and as someone who supports people with their health, I have a responsibility to be careful in how I talk about these things because everyone consumes information according to their own context and perspectives.
So, for me, eating an entire tray of brownies all by myself in a couple of two days, followed by nonstop Simple Mills chocolate chip cookies, which again, are good, simple ingredients, but when you drive to the grocery store to get more as soon as you run out of them because you can’t be without them - its problematic. As is going through bags of dark chocolate chips within a couple of days.
All of these things weren’t nourishing to my body, and then as a byproduct, weren’t nourishing to my mind or spirit.
My blood sugar was all over the place, and when this happened, I didn't sleep well because blood sugar imbalance is a huge culprit in disrupting sleep.
But here's the thing - sugar is addictive, right? And breaking up with sugar is hard.
But I didn’t want to break up with sugar, I just wanted to reign in my consumption and bring things back into balance.
But just as difficult as that is, so is changing our routines and habits. That's hard too.
A few months ago, I watched a friend’s Instagram stories, a fellow health practitioner who is also a licensed nurse, where she shared the most delicious-looking salad and said it was part of a detox program she was doing.
I wanted to hear more about this. I needed to learn more about it.
Because with a 1 / 3 Profile Line, even if there's no need, I had an unquenching curiosity to know what it was and what would happen if I tried it.
So, I asked her about the program, and when she told me about it, I realized that this was the same program my acupuncturist had recommended for years. Every time I went in for acupuncture treatments and saw how off-balance my Qi was, she’d mention the program, but I’d been non-committal about it.
At a checkup with my integrative medicine doctor, a couple of months later, we talked about my blood work. I mentioned my difficulty transitioning my sleep with the time change and brought up the program.
She said she was familiar with the program, recommended it often to patients, and even had the supporting supplements in-house. She thought it’d be a good thing for me to try.
It had been a while since I'd done any program like this, but given my sleep challenges, blood sugar balance issues, and curiosity, I was game, so I ended up bringing everything home with me.
I’m going to get real with you for a minute - when it comes to assessing the state of my physical health, there are two markers that I look at first:
Sleep Quality Poop
If this is the first time you hear me talk about poop, poop is commonly mentioned on the show because poop is a good indicator of what's happening inside your body and your general health.
The frequency and consistency of poop matters. If you want to know more about this, google the Bristol stool chart. I'll even link to it in the episode's show notes, which you can find at www.livefablife.com/259 for Episode 259.
Disrupted sleep and poop are red flags to me that something is off in my health and that I need to pay a bit more attention to figure out what's going on.
So, given that both of these two indicators had been things that were current issues for me, I decided to try this 10-day detox program and give my system a reset.
Even just saying that - a 10-day detox program - made me cringe because of how misused detoxes have become. Detoxes have a purpose to them, but it's been misused so often as a weight loss solution when really it's meant to bring balance back to the body. I'm not here to demonize detoxes, nor am I here to glorify them.
There's a big movement right now for intuitive eating and related topics, which I believe are much-needed conversations to have and long-overdue perspective shifts to make.
But I also don't subscribe to demonizing something because it has been used out of context and devaluing it for the original purpose that it was created for.
Here's an example of what I mean by this. The Atkins diet - you’ve heard of it. It was all the rage a few decades ago. Everyone wanted to try Atkins because a bunch of people had lost weight on it. It was the dietary program that carded the demonization of carbs.
But when I was in nutrition school, we studied a ton of different dietary programs, with Adkins being one of them. And when I looked at why the program was created, the problem it was trying to solve, and the use case it was created for - its purpose, intended audience, and targeted solution, it’s actually a terrific program for that group of people dealing with those specific problems - diabetes and blood sugar regulation.
But then mainstream media touted it for weight loss, and it became all the craze. It was mis-marketed and misused.
Context and nuance matter.
So today, I’m sharing with you my experience with this 10-day detox program in my attempts to use eating to increase my energy by regulating and balancing my blood sugar so I could sleep better.
First, here’s an overview of the program - fundamentally, its framework is very similar to the seasonal detoxes that are based on Chinese medicine that I ran as group coaching programs, and to a degree, along the framework of a 21-Day Sugar Detox program.
Phase 1 is a transition period for preparation, Phase 2 is the actual detox, and then Phase 3 is the reintroduction period.
This program had a two-day Phase 1, a five-day Phase 2, and a three-day Phase 3 - 10 days total.
In Phase 1, processed foods were eliminated with a heavy emphasis on fruits and veggies, select grains, select fats, and oils with animal protein allowed.
Except for the sweet treats and multiple handfuls of chocolate chips, I’d have every time I walked into the kitchen, this wasn’t any change in how I ate.
Phase 2 is where there were more significant changes for me.
Again, no processed foods with a heavy emphasis on fruits and vegetables.
But now, fish was the only animal protein allowed, and grains, nuts, seeds, and dairy alternatives were to be completely avoided.
And then Phase 3 was a slow reintroduction of these things.
Besides following the standard detox framework, it’s also more or less an elimination diet - the difference? Intended use - what problem do you hope to solve by doing it?
This particular program also included consuming two supplements - one in capsule form and the other in powder form. I don't like to take supplements and try my best to limit what I take - currently, vitamin D, iron, kelp for iodine, and a probiotic.
I’m not going to lie, these accompanying supplements made me hesitant to do this program in the first place, but when I looked at their ingredient lists, it was all just vitamins and minerals. They’re kinda like super multi-vitamins - nothing shady.
So now that you know what the program was, let me tell you how I modified it.
Now something you should know about me - I’m a rules follower - at least I was. From my perspective, part of the reason I was a rules follower was that I didn’t have confidence and couldn’t think for myself.
My mom would get frustrated with me during my teenage years because I couldn’t think for myself.
In hindsight, I realized that at the root of that was not feeling confident enough to trust my thoughts, points of view and abilities. I struggled with this for longer than I even realized until I learned about my Human Design and having an Undefined Head Center.
If you’ve listened to Episode 255 on Overcoming Overwhelm, you know I like templates. I function so much better than I have a template to follow. It takes the thinking out of things for me. It’s why I like working with a personal trainer. They set the plan and course of action, removing the overwhelm I feel by having too many options - a blank slate, if you will.
This is just one way that learning my Human Design, then aligning my life to it and living it has helped me to have more confidence in thinking for myself as I have a better understanding of my thought process, and then as a byproduct, I’m able to trust my own decision-making, leading to a deeper understanding of my body, how my energy works, and what’s the best way for me to support it.
This is what following a dietary program is for me - it’s a template to be customized to fit me that takes away overwhelm and provides confidence that it’s okay for me to customize it in the way that I want to because I truly know what’s best for me.
So that's a long way to say I was a rules follower. Except this time, I wasn't, and I modified the program to fit me.
When I read through the program guidelines, I remembered my reason for doing it - the whole objective of the experience - my why- to balance my blood sugar and sleep better.
With that in mind, I permitted myself to listen to my body and modify the guidelines, trusting that I knew what I needed to make it a positive experience for me, and that meant I couldn’t feel deprived.
I have no problems removing most things, but there are certain things to go without that would make me miserable.
And what good would feeling anxious, irritated, and miserable do for my nervous system? What impact would that have on my overall health if I’m truly taking a functional and holistic approach to body, mind, and spirit?
So, I made two trade-offs that I made.
First, I didn’t eliminate nuts as the program called for. Look, I understand why nuts were eliminated because it’s a common food that people react to.
I've tested my reaction to nuts many times, and while I understand that our bodies can change and things that we weren’t reactive to before we can react to now, nuts aren’t one of those things for me. It’s not processed food and doesn’t impact blood sugar.
So, I continued to eat nuts because I love them. Almonds, especially, are one of my favorite foods. I've had a smoothie every single morning for about the past 18 years, and I can honestly say that it brings me joy. My morning smoothie brings me joy. People depend on their coffee; well, I don't drink coffee.
I go to bed every night looking forward to my smoothie made exactly how I like it. I have a Markets environment. I like things custom-made, especially how I like them - made to my specifications, which is how I make my morning smoothie.
I even hate traveling because I can’t have my smoothie made just as I like it. You're probably wondering, “What the heck is in this smoothie??”
Well, let me tell you - I have a cup of mixed berries, usually raspberries and blueberries, because they're my favorite. I use a coconut almond milk blend. I add some Italian parsley and dandelion greens because they're detoxifying. I add some powdered herbs, specifically ashwagandha, and then a blend of chlorella, maca, and I forget the third one. And then I add in cacao nibs and raw almonds because I love crunchy textures. I also add a cacao powder mix with many other Ayurvedic ingredients blended into it. I add camu camu for vitamin C and collagen protein. Almonds are what make the smoothie for me. They’re the prime ingredient because I just love their taste and texture.
When looking at this 10-day program, I kept thinking that I would have to eliminate almonds for six whole days, and it didn’t make me feel happy. It made me feel dread. And that’s not what I want to feel for one day, let alone six.
It would’ve stressed me out, and I would’ve felt grumpy, resentful, and unhappy - and how is that conducive to my nervous system?
The whole goal of the experience was to bring my system into balance so I could sleep better, and mindset and emotions play a big role in that, which is something not enough credence is given to.
So, modification number one was that I didn't eliminate almonds. I continued to add almonds to my smoothie, which meant I also continued to drink almond milk even though it’s a dairy alternative because if I’m eating it, I may as well drink it.
I also top fruit with either almond butter (my almond butter is just grounded almonds - nothing else added) or chopped almonds, so I continue to do that too.
The second modification was not sticking to the specified fish guidelines specified for Days 3-8.
Listen - I’m trained in addressing environmental toxins for better health. It’s part of the approach I take in my health coaching practice - addressing environmental toxins exposure that’s hurting health, and seafood is actually a big one.
I’m a huge seafood lover. I mean, I was born and raised in Hawai’i and spent a little time in my early childhood years in Alaska, so seafood is just a staple in my diet.
But when it comes to addressing environmental toxins and detoxing, the only fish recommended is SMASH -and I know I’ve discussed SMASH in past episodes.
SMASH stands for salmon, mackerel, anchovies, sardines, and herring. These are the fishes that are the best when it comes to minimizing environmental toxins exposure. So, I understand why the program’s guidance was only to eat these fishes.
But here's the thing - of these five fishes, I only eat salmon. In fact, I don't even know where I’d even begin to find mackerel and herring.
So I only eat salmon, and I'm sorry, I wouldn’t eat salmon for five consecutive days. Just by my third meal alone, I was over it. But I’m someone who needs animal protein - that is just how my constitution is built. So, eating only salmon as my animal protein wouldn’t cut it, so I modified it.
While I stuck to seafood only, modification number two was eating poke bowls - custom-made just the way I like it - with a little bit of tuna, tako, aka octopus, and some shrimp - of course, sustainably sourced. safer source resources.
So those are my two modifications - I didn't stick to the SMASH 5 and ate nuts.
Neither of which was going to impair my blood sugar. I understand why they were part of the guidelines, but when I stepped back and looked at the whole picture, following the program exactly the way it was written would make me feel anxious and stressed, which ultimately also impacts sleep. How was that going to help me with eating for energy?
So, the program gave me a framework - a jumping-off point, if you will - a template that I could use as a base and then customize to suit my needs and help me succeed with it - given my specific goals.
It helped me work with my Undefined Head Center and, as a Projector, my Undefined Sacral Center of not knowing when enough is enough.
So I use programs like this one to give me parameters to start with, built-in boundaries that, for someone who is challenged with not knowing when enough is enough, help me break the routine of eating an entire tray of brownies in a matter of days, all by myself, or not knowing when to stop with the never-ending Simple Mills chocolate chip cookies.
None of these things, consumed at this quantity and pace, are nourishing for me - and avoiding nuts and only eating salmon for five days would be either, and this is how I approach my health.
Is this nourishing for me? And I keep saying “for me” because what's nourishing for me may not be nourishing for you. There's nuance and context to everything, which tends to get lost in the mix.
With the goal of blood sugar regulation, better sleep, and stopping draining my energy, this was one way to address an energy leak. It was something I was curious about and experimented with.
Human Design is all about our energy, and eating in a way that supports how we manage our energy is really what health is about.
And to manage our energy, we have to recognize where our energy leaks are and do something about them. And this was one way for me to do that. And it's all very nuanced, which is what we have to keep in mind when we decide what's the best way to manage our energy for each of us individually.
We also need to remember that how others manage their energy may not be something we’d agree with and not project our perspectives and judgments onto their decision because context matters. Nuance matters. Bio-individuality matter matters.
None of these are easy shifts to make; a lot of self-observation, self-examination, and catching yourself in the present moments are required.
When I’ve been inclined to project my opinions or judgments, I’ve had to ask myself, have they invited me to offer my opinion (being a Projector who waits for invitations), and why do I care if somebody is doing what they’re doing?
Secondly, I don't know their motivation for doing something or what's going on in their health.
I know many people have strong feelings about nutritional therapy programs, detoxes, and cleanses, and I get it. I understand, and I agree too!
But I also think there are legitimate reasons why SOME of these programs were created, and when they're used in the intended way can be very beneficial.
And as I say that, I did modify this 10-day program, so technically, I'm not using it for its intended use case, but I'm using it to help me rebalance my blood sugar and reset some habits to minimize my energy leaks so that I can feel better and more energized. This is how I eat for energy.
So I'm curious about your thoughts and perspectives - how do you eat for energy? Is it even something that you've considered or thought about?
Come over and leave a comment for me on the show notes for this episode at livefab.com/259 for Episode 259, or you can find me on Instagram at @livefablifewithnaomi.
Thank you so much for listening. These are kinda of conversations that get me going, and there’s more to come.
And if you have anything, you'd like to hear about.
So with that, thank you so much for listening. I appreciate your time and your attention, and your energy and I'll see you right back again next time. Bye for now.
Naomi Nakamura is a Health x Human Design coach who’s creating a healthier society through aligned energy.
She blends a bespoke mix of Functional Nutrition and Human Design to help others shift into alignment to leverage and correctly manage their energy to support their body, mind, and spirit.
She believes that when we embrace our authenticity and lean into our bio-individuality, we naturally live a life of freedom, empowerment, and optimal health.
Naomi resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can often be found exploring the area with her puppy girl, Coco Pop!
Connect with Naomi on: Instagram
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