Ep. 257 Biohack Your Mind: Thrive Mentally and Physically in Middle Age

Connect with Kristin Rowell

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On her website

Transcript

Cynthia: Welcome to Everyday Wellness Podcast. I’m your host, Nurse Practitioner Cynthia Thurlow. This podcast is designed to educate, empower, and inspire you to achieve your health and wellness goals. My goal and intent, is to provide you with the best content and conversations from leaders in the health and wellness industry each week and impact over a million lives.

Today, I had the joy of reconnecting with my friend Kristin Rowell, who is an attorney and functional nutrition therapy practitioner and CEO and Founder of Energetically Efficient. After spending 16 years building a successful business trial practice, she left to create Energetically Efficient so that she could speak to and coach other high performers in how to efficiently navigate food, exercise, and other lifestyle practices. Today, we dove into her pain to purpose story going from being a trial attorney to transitioning to being an entrepreneur. The role of ego and soul work, common limiting beliefs, energy work, why weight gain is not a normal function of aging, the impact of chronic stress on hormones, the role of lifestyle choices, nutritional detoxification, why muscle is the organ of longevity and some of her favorite foods she takes with her when she travels. I hope you will enjoy this conversation as much as I did recording it. 

Well, my friend, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the podcast. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation. 

Kristin Rowell: I’m so happy to be here, Cynthia. I’ve been looking forward to it as well and I can’t believe it’s already coming on to November. 

Cynthia Thurlow: I know for those that aren’t familiar with your background, I think that there’s so much alignment. I know when we first met in Nebraska in 2021, I know that there was a lot of kindred kind of spiritship, if you will. Because you had left a pretty demanding job to pivot and transition into nutritional therapy and coaching. So, let the listeners know a bit about your background because you were this gigantic badass attorney and partner and you had an injury and that probably contributed to this transitional shift in your life. I think for a lot of people listening, they’ve had points in their lives that they can look back retrospectively and identify this with this enormous gift. Although at the time that might not be the way that you were thinking about it. 

Kristin Rowell: That’s true. I love sharing this story because it really is what you raised. There were several things in there about how my journey happened. So, for your listeners, my background is that I was a business litigation– so I was a trial lawyer. I was a business litigator for over 16 years. That was my life. It was very much my identity and I was very good at it and I really loved my job. That was a career that I became an owner of the firm. I was obviously a shareholder and equity owner of the firm. I had partners and clients who I very much respected and enjoyed working with. Transitioning out of that career was not something that was ever on my radar and one of the pieces now, like you mentioned, looking back retrospectively, that was a catalyst for change happened to me in December of 2013. Also, for listeners, it might be helpful to know that I’ve run 25 marathons and I’m an IPE natural professional bodybuilder. The point is, I’m natural, so I get tested. The reason I even share that is because it just means I’m pretty strong. So, I’m not someone who would have thought that I was susceptible to breaking any bone in my body and I frankly never had. 

Well, in December of 2013, when I was at work trip into the sexy city of Williston, North Dakota, [laughter] that’s where I had travelled. I used to go to great places for work sometimes. It was winter and it was 20 below zero and there was ice in front of the airport. I actually was leaving Williston to come back to Minneapolis. In this horrific random accident that I could never recreate if someone paid me to do it, I fell and broke my right leg in ten places, which was horrible, and it was obviously the most painful thing I’ve ever been through. So, they kept me in the hospital overnight in Williston. I ended up getting a flight back to Minnesota, and I had surgery a week later when they put 22 pieces of metal into my leg. So, that obviously set me back a bit in terms of, well, I can’t run now, so what can I do? I knew I could still strength train. So, I continued to strength train for my left leg, my abs, my back, my upper body, my arms. I said the only thing that’s broken is my lower right leg. I’m not going to use as an excuse to not engage in any movement. I was terrified at that point that I’ve never not worked out for a really long time. What will happen to my serotonin levels? Will I be a crabby person all day long? [Cynthia, laughs] Like, I just felt afraid of those things, so that kind of motivated me to keep exercising but long story short, as I started to rehab that injury, I was working with a chiropractor/physical therapist who happened to be an ultrarunner.

I don’t know if you know this, but in the ultrarunning community, those people have been fat adapted and ketogenic for many years. This guy was a wiry, thin guy and he would be working on me, I’d started asking him questions like, “Well, what do you do when you run 100 miles? What do you eat? What do you eat when you run 50 miles?” He would describe to me that he ate fat. That began this quest of me exploring maybe running all these marathons and carbo loading really wasn’t the best thing and my trajectory just took off from there. The transition from the career happened much, much later. The quick version on that is, in 2017, I finally started and committed to a regular meditation practice. In 2018, I got more serious about it and with that meditation practice, I started to get little nudges from the universe. I always call it the universe whether people call it God or higher power or spirituality or whatever you believe in.

For me, it’s always been just saying the universe and little synchronicity started to happen in my life that caused me to awaken to maybe I was supposed to be serving humans in a different way. Maybe there was something more for me. It would be silly things, Cynthia, like, I’d be in a client meeting talking about really sophisticated legal concepts and a client would say, “Oh, my gosh, I really want to lose 20 pounds, Kristin, do you think you could help me?” You seem really fit and so it was nudges like, that where I thought, well, this is weird. No one never in my whole careers asked me for help with nutrition and I was paying attention to little things like that that kept happening. I took a ton of time and a few different vacations to really get still with myself and figure out what I wanted. By the spring of 2019, summer of 2019, I decided I was going to leave and go back to school for nutrition, and do what I really, truly feel as my soul’s purpose. 

Cynthia Thurlow: That’s really incredible and were you osteopenic? What I know of you is that you’re incredibly fit and incredibly healthy. I’m wondering what kind of because that many breaks in a bone, is so surprising that I’m sure it was just equally surprising, were you osteopenic? I’m assuming you probably were. 

Kristin Rowell: I actually wasn’t. I had them tested for all of that. I thought maybe I have latent osteoporosis. Like, I got tested for everything. I think at the end of the day, it really was the universe waking me up. The saying is, first you get hit with a feather, then if you don’t wake up, then you get hit with a brick. If you really don’t wake up, then you get hit with a truck. Well, what’s interesting is in that September of 2013, so just three months before this accident, I had been in Kauai for a girlfriend’s wedding, and I had fallen trying to surf and I very badly damaged my upper right leg. I was in this accident with the surfing thing and because I was so in the mode of just push through it, keep moving, you have a marathon coming up in three weeks, you still have to run it when I shouldn’t have.

I think that was my brick, and I just plowed through it, through pain and the universe was like, “Hey, hello, we’re trying to get your attention, you’re not listening.” So, I think that accident was created as a way truly to wake me up. They told me that I wouldn’t put any weight on my right leg for three months and I was walking on it after two and I was running on it after six. I ran my fastest marathon a year and a half after that accident and I’ve had zero problems with my legs since. I really do feel like it was this random freak thing and the orthopedic surgeon, thank goodness, said, “If someone paid you a million dollars, you couldn’t recreate that fall.” And I said, “Well, good, because I don’t intend to.”

Cynthia Thurlow: [laughs] Of course, but I would imagine you know much like my career in cardiology, and being very intellectually stimulated, and being in demand, and being on the go, and being type A, and being conscientious, and loving what you’re doing. What is the process of letting go of ego? Because much like with my own family, when I said I no longer want to work for this big prestigious cardiology group. I want to step away and do this entrepreneurial thing that my parents thought I was completely insane. Because I know divesting yourself of that title. I mean, you’re still an attorney, of course, but, like, divesting yourself of that experience, that exposure. For many people, the choices of occupation are really ego mediated as opposed to mission mediated. So how did you work through that? I would imagine even in a healthy individual, that’s a challenging transition. 

Kristin Rowell: I love that question, Cynthia, because that’s really what it is. What a lot of people don’t know because we’re not taught this at any level of school, is that we, as the human that we rendered through, that we are, the human that we are, has an ego side and then what is often referred to as a higher self or a soul. Some people refer to the ego as the self or your little self or your personality, and then the soul is your higher self. So really what started to happen for me, and I’m not going to pretend this journey is easy. When people start the journey of waking up to find out who they truly are, are a lot of things you go through in terms of relationships dissolving, dark nights of the soul, shedding this identity that you had, I’m still in the process of it.

Once you start waking up, you really never get done doing it because we’re going to do that for the rest of our lives. So, for me, you’re absolutely right. Letting go of like, my ego loves to tell people about my bodybuilding career, my marathons, the fact that I was top 50 female attorney in Minnesota when I left. My ego likes to get that out and be like, “See, see. Am I still good enough? Do you still like me, am I here?” But my soul truthfully doesn’t care about any of that. My soul genuinely is really desiring to serve and reach as many people as possible and to make them feel better and so that we can all elevate and all lift each other up together. In terms of the process, what it looked like for me is really sticking to regular meditation. Consistent meditation has been critical for me.

I also have a lot of healers and energy coaches around me who I do sessions with, whether in a group setting or individual work. I also go on a lot of spiritual retreats. I know that you and I follow each other on social media, so I post about those things sometimes. I talk a lot about energy because I really believe it’s the most important work we can do. Up until the point that I started meditating in 2017, I had been in what I refer to as the traditional therapy model for many, many years. I was divorced in 2012. My husband and I used to do couples’ therapy. After we got divorced, I did therapy. I did therapy as a single person in my marriage. I thought therapy at the time was very useful and beneficial, until it wasn’t. What I tell people is when you start waking up, what you realize is that model, although it was useful, is just very, very slow. It’s very slow for me anyways. I like to move fast. I like to do things quick. I would be in this model where I would go, see the counsellor, tell her everything that had happened in the last couple of weeks, she would give me some feedback, I would go live my life. I felt like I was doing kind of that all over again on a two or three week or month period like Groundhog’s Day. 

When I started meditating, it was like I finally was able, with assistance from meditation coaches and other energetic healers, get at the root of what some of these things were that were causing me to get in. I’ll give an example for myself, bad relationship patterns or that were causing me to feel like I literally only feel value and worth when I’m highly productive, and always achieving. Why can’t I just sit down and be still and allow that to be enough?

It’s been things like that that I’ve had to do to really shed that ego, like you said, and then also stand in awareness of when it’s happening. I now can observe my ego in a way I couldn’t have done five years ago. I can now be the higher self-sitting here like, “Oh, isn’t that interesting?” You got triggered when so and so said X, Y and Z. I’ll note my triggers and I’ll work to really not judge them, but have awareness around them and then work to release them and let them go. 

Cynthia Thurlow: It’s really interesting because when I met you and for everyone that’s listening, unless someone was at that event, Kristin and I were completely organically drawn together, hung out together the whole weekend, and you were such a positive light amongst a myriad of wonderful people that we’re around. I think when you recognize that someone else is doing the work, you’re just drawn to them in a very kind of healthy way. I echo a lot of what you’re saying that for me, I did the traditional therapy for a long time, and I always say I’m always going to be investing and making sure I’m the best version of myself available for my clients, for my family, etc. Energy work has been a large part of what I’ve done the last four years. It’s sometimes hard to explain to people because you have to be open enough to understanding that there are things you cannot see tangibly, but are there.

I think energy work is something that I will probably do for the rest of my life. In fact, I have two practitioners in my life and I’m very actively involved in my practice of, if I get triggered or if something really bothers me, it’s like, what’s really going on there? What am I lending attention to? For listeners that are listening to this, we can talk about Reiki work or energy work, but it’s things that quiet the autonomic nervous system. They get you into the parasympathetic, this rest and repose side of the body. Most if not all of us are sympathetic dominant. We’re always working on the to-do list, we can’t slow ourselves down, we struggle to sleep, we struggle to turn our brains off. I think finding ways, especially as middle-aged women navigating this process, the women that are doing the work are the ones that are having the easiest transition from perimenopause into menopause. Whereas I think a lot of women fight it for a variety of reasons and there’s never any judgment, but you and I see these people every day, whether it’s on social media or they become our clients, they’re fighting it every step of the way. 

I always say there’s some degree where you have to just let go and just accept that there is a process and you can’t be in control of everything nor do we want to be. It’s so exhausting to be in that mindset or methodology where everything has to be perfect, has to look perfect, we have to be perfect. I always say I’m perfectly imperfect. In fact, I just did reels on this because I kept saying to people, “Yeah, you think this side of the camera looks perfect, but the reality is there’s a whole messy desk right here depending on what day of the week it is, what time it is, how much things are going on. I think it’s really important for people to understand that even high-level women can have these moments where we’re like, okay, we’re given this opportunity where we can sink or swim or we can take adversity and create tremendous opportunity from that. I love that you have this incredible pain to purpose story and certainly one that’s really relatable for so many people.

Kristin Rowell: Yeah. One of the things you mentioned in there, Cynthia, that I just want touch on is this concept of surrender. Because it really has been some of my deepest work in terms of my journey with energy work over the last four or five years. It’s funny you and I started. It’s so interesting to me how synchronistic the world is because you and I literally had kind of the same length of career in our career number one, and we’ve been doing energy work for the same amount of time and building our businesses, which is so exciting. I just love having those common interests with you, because I felt so connected with you when I met you also. It’s that it really has to do with the fact that people, every single person on this planet, vibrates at a certain frequency.

So, I always say if you want to think about it just for your brain to have a way to get your head around it, you could think about it just as tuning into a particular radio station. Some people are vibrating at 88.7, some are vibrating at 100.3, some are vibrating at 106.4. It really doesn’t mean the 106.4 is better than the 88 something. It’s not better than, it simply is the frequency at which you vibrate and the higher you raise your frequency vibration, the easier everything becomes in your life. So, one of the things that’s been exciting for me is although I’m a nutritional therapist, and I coach and help people understand about their bodies, I work with men and women. I work with couples. I do a lot of one-on-one coaching. I teach group courses. I have had now recently a few different people hire me simply for energy coaching. It’s something that I figured that when my business name came to me in, gosh, it was well before I left the practice of law, and I didn’t even know I was going to start a business. 

I was in a meditation and the name Energetically Efficient came to me in meditation and I thought, well, that’s a cool name. What does that even mean? I really understood in my evolution of my own business, I would be doing energy work at some point more significantly with people. It’s all coming into being right now as people are saying, I don’t want meal plans, I don’t need that kind of assistance. What I really need is help elevating my frequency so that life gets easier. I want to get over my things I have. I’ll just give an example. I’ve got one person who has some issues around scarcity with financial abundance, so we’re going to work on that. Another person is they really want to transition their career, and so they want some guidance because I of course did that and so they want help with that. When we start, it’s like you put a penny in a pond and it’s a ripple effect. So, we start working on our energy, we then service clients who start working on theirs, they help other people who work on theirs, and it really is a ripple effect that just goes out into the oneness which makes me the most excited.

Cynthia Thurlow: I can imagine and I think the irony is you can’t see my podcast prep sheets, but the very next thing that I wanted to kind of lean into was common limiting beliefs because we work with so many women. I was like, this is true serendipity, talking about what are the things we put in our way that don’t allow us to reach our full potential or have us in this scarcity mindset, whether it’s about money or opportunities. Let me be clear, all of us can have days, I mean days, minutes, hours where we experience that and that’s completely normal but I know for myself, when I’m in true alignment, when I am very forward thinking in a very healthy way, when I’m energetically where I should be, I don’t even worry about things anymore. It’s like I know what will come.

It’s like you have this mindset of abundance, which I think getting to that point where I am whether it’s chronological or psychological or spiritual or however you want to think about it, really is life changing. But when you’re working with these women in particular, you mentioned money. Money is energy, so common and limiting beliefs, money you know the scarcity, resources and it can be intergenerational. Like maybe someone’s parents had a very much a scarcity mindset about money so that’s embedded into them, into their DNA and then they’re bringing that into a marriage or relationship. Where do you really start between the scarcity mindset or even societal programming to help people renavigate or kind of recalibrate themselves? 

Kristin Rowell: Great question. It starts to me first by having an awareness around, what the thoughts or the behaviors are. So, we can’t change anything about ourselves unless we become aware that we’re actually thinking it, doing it, believing it, not believing it. Whatever the awareness is first, I would say I note that, and then one of the things that I actually took my members and my membership through last Wednesday on our membership was rather than talk about anything nutrition related, we wrote down a bunch of new moon manifestations. Because the potent new moon that happened on October 25th and the potent full moon that’s coming on November 8th it’s a very important time right now to be creating and manifesting things into your life. So, what I said was, “I want to start this meeting by reminding every single one of you here, you literally can be, have, do, achieve absolutely anything you want to. The only thing stopping you is yourself.” When people hear that, they’re like, “Oh, come on, that’s really not true.” But it causes them to pause and I’m like, no, no it’s really true and we all do it. We all have these ways that we not necessarily even self-sabotage, but certainly self-limit. 

I said, as a way for us to just overcome that in this exercise, I want everyone’s homework to be write down 10 personal manifestations intentions and 10 professional manifestations intentions that you want to call into being in 2023. When I say the sky is the limit, I mean literally, the sky is the limit. I don’t want you to worry about, well, how could I actually get that? Or how could that actually happen? Or how could I actually do that? So, one thing for me is, and this is not a surprise I have a very deep relationship with Discover Strength. They’re an amazing gym and facility that’s been franchising now around the country. I have had in the back of my mind for a year or two, maybe I would do a franchise someday just as an investment for something that I want to do personally, because I so believe in the business. So, one of my personal manifestations, I said, I am invested in a Discover Strength franchise, which is kind of fun. Now, I don’t know would I get investors, would I take a loan from the bank? Would I use some savings? Would I use other money? How exactly I’ll do it, I don’t care right now. It’s really about setting that intention out there and then the universe. And I heard this, I don’t know if you ever follow or attended or done any of the Mindvalley work. I’ve never been to one of their conferences, but they bring in a lot of awesome thought leaders each year.

There was a particular woman, I want to say if she was from Australia or New Zealand, but her talk really spoke to me because she had a background as an architect before she went into the spiritual coaching world and so, she analogized it. This is what I always use when I think about my own life. We literally are the architects of our own lives. If you picture that on the other side, that our angels, that the higher power, that God, that the universe, that whatever you believe in or call it, is literally the general contractor, the construction crew, the subcontractors of every kind, and they want you to just hand over the plans. You have to drop your plans and here’s what most people are doing. Not only are they not drawing plans and telling the universe what they want, they’re actually drawing plans subconsciously in their head like, I’m not good enough, I’m fat, I can’t do that, that job is not good enough for me. I can’t be in that relationship. They’re saying these things to themselves, even though they’re not writing them down.

The universe is bringing them more of that. It really is as simple as it’s obviously not the easiest thing for everyone because we have to overcome our programming and really think big. But just laying the slate clean and thinking, if there were no rules, if money was no object, if I had all of the support I needed, what is it that I would create? What would I do? Of course, let’s say someone has an intention that they want to make a million dollars for their business next year. Well, if that’s in alignment with you being of higher service, and having serving more people in nutrition. And it’s not because you want to buy 24 Porsches, you know what I mean? It’s like the universe is going to bring you what’s also in your highest good and the good of all. So, the intention behind what it is that you want also has to be an alignment, does that answer your question? 

Cynthia Thurlow: No, it definitely does. Like I said, there’s so much serendipity to our conversations because even though you don’t know what’s on my paper [Kristin, chuckles] that I do for my outline, we’re absolutely heading in the right direction. One of the more common limiting beliefs that I hear from women consistently, and frankly I’ve heard this from clinicians that are male or female is related to changes in our bodies as we are getting older. Not surprisingly, weight gain is a huge focus, I think, for people that end up coming to see you as well as for me. This concept of weight gain is a normal, “Function of aging.” How do you address that? What is your kind of way that you address that? The reason why I asked this, when I shared with my listeners that we were connecting, they wanted to know what your perspective is. Because I think, obviously we are examples of women that are thriving at this stage of our lives, and doing really well, and are grounded and healthy and happy. This weight gain piece for many women is almost a weight around their necks. They can’t get away from it. It’s like a ball and chain that they cannot get away from. And so obviously, that starts with mindset. But what is your governing philosophy? How do you address this with your clients? Because you’re doing energy work, but you’re also addressing some of these body composition changes that women are unhappy about. 

Kristin Rowell: I’m so glad you asked that, Cynthia, because it is one of the things that frustrates me more than anything about what I do is that there is this belief out there that aging somehow goes along naturally with gaining weight and sort of losing yourself to some degree. I completely disagree with that and what I ask women to first think about is, if that’s their belief, I ask them where it came from and why they think that’s true. They may say, “Well, Kristin, it’s happening to me.” I mean, here I am at 50 whatever, and I have more weight on. I’ll say, okay, let’s back up. Now, I’ve heard your answer. Now, what is your relationship with strength training? We’ll go through, “Do they strength train? Did they ever strength train? When did they stop strength training?” Because the truth is, I’ve been doing BOD PODS and DEXA scans regularly for 15 years and I have the same weight and the same body fat percentage with minor variations over time than I did back then. That’s possible. You would say it’s a reason. I would say it’s an excuse of the table because that’s just not anything else.

And then I say, okay, now that we’ve talked about your relationship with strength training, tell me about your relationship with alcohol. Do you feel like you’re one of these people that’s having wine each night or you’re having wine on the weekends and then we’ll talk about what their relationship looks like with alcohol. I keep saying, I’m probably going to eventually be one of these people that just doesn’t drink at all because my relationship with it has changed so dramatically over the years and I find less and less enjoyment from it. I just feel so much better without it and I’ll go weeks and months without it. And then anytime I introduce it back, I’m like, “Why did I even do that?” So, it’s really about health for me. I’ll say, okay, now obviously we have to get to your relationship with food. So, when are you eating? 

I know this is obviously your wheelhouse and I’ve learned so much from you about that particular topic, but when are you eating? Let’s talk about how are you managing your blood sugar? If I can get them to be following my meal plans for even a week or two, they are amazed at how different they feel, they have more energy; they have less bloat in their belly, they all of a sudden realize that they don’t have to crash at 02:00 in the afternoon, they can sleep better, they have more enjoyment in life, and they feel in better moods. When we can get the strength training, alcohol, fasting, and food components and then, of course, I don’t want to forget about just general movement, which is why I require my clients, if they’re willing to to get Oura Ring, because I really want them tracking steps and seeing what their need is each day. Those things, once we break all of those down, I’m like, okay, did I miss anything in terms of why for you, you think you’re still this outlier who can’t lose the weight. Because I disagree, I know that you can, and I see that you can. I just want to get every single obstacle out of your way so I can help you get there. 

Cynthia Thurlow: Well, and it’s interesting that you say that. My college roommate was with me for the weekend and so were talking about different things. What she focuses in on, what she chooses to eat. And she was fascinated. She’s 50 but she looks much younger and a lot of it is because she lifts a lot and she stayed very lean and really leans into nutrition. So, we were having a conversation about alcohol in particular, and she said, I don’t understand. You just don’t drink at all. She was like you were never a drinker. I said but it’s one of the few things that impacts my sleep. My sleep has now become so important to me that I would rather sleep better than have a martini or a glass of alcohol. The whole weekend we kept having these vibrant conversations and she would lean into it and she said, “You really think it makes a difference?” And I said, “Yes.” I said I’m starting to find when we go to events more and more people in the health and wellness space don’t drink alcohol or they drink very sparingly.

The other thing that you mentioned about the Oura or tracking movement that’s what I said to her was, I always ensure I get anywhere from 12 to 15 thousand steps a day. She was like, “How do you do that?” I said, “Well, we walk our dogs in the morning, walk them in the evening.” I said, I just try to remain as active as possible and I really look at that metric. Not to be obsessive, but I think it’s important for people to understand that we need to be active. Our bodies are not designed to be sitting all day long, but yet that has become the norm for so many people, and they’re really losing out on opportunities to just honor your body in different ways. Like, I know if I’m sitting all day long, if I’m doing a long day of travel, or if I’m sitting at a conference, and I’m doing a lot of sitting, I just feel kind of sluggish. Like, I don’t feel encouraged to get up and move and yet I force myself to do it because it has become such a large part of my life. I love that you encourage your clients to get their Oura Ring because it’s one of my favorite biohacking things that I own. 

Kristin Rowell: It is. I love it. I’ve been wearing one for years, and my minimum for steps each day is 15,000. But I do notice because I tend to overdo it rather than under do it. My heart rate variability will take a hit when I’m consistently over 20,000 because it’s like, wait, wait, wait, you’re not recovering. Then, I’ll have to have a night of 10 hours of sleep and only 11,000 steps or something like that to really get back on track. But I agree with you. It’s one of the most important metrics because it really when my clients can see the data in what the two martinis at dinner did to their sleep or when they can see what having the ice cream late at night did to their sleep. It’s such a behavior modifier because then you feel like, now I’m making a choice from a place of empowerment as opposed to Kristin just told me this or Cynthia just told me this. They told me I can’t and so I can’t. It’s like, no, I’m now making a choice that I don’t want to. In fact, the newest practice that I’ve started and I’d be curious if you’ve ever experimented with this. Is every night before bed now, especially because my central nervous system tends to run so sympathetic dominant, I am doing it’s the most basic, easy, free, Wim Hof eleven minutes of breathwork before bed, and it’s bumped my HRV up by 10 points on average for the last week. 

Cynthia Thurlow: That’s amazing. 

Kristin Rowell: Yeah. I’m trying to work on things that really calm my central nervous system down. I do acupuncture almost weekly because it really stills me. I do network spinal analysis, which is called NSA. It’s like chiropractic care where they don’t touch you and it’s a form of Reiki. You mentioned Reiki a little bit ago, so it’s similar to Reiki because they’re working with the energy outside of your body. Those things are just priorities that I have each week or each month in order to make sure that I’m staying as physically vibrant as possible. Because the other thing and we haven’t mentioned this yet, what people may not understand about energy work is, we have these physical bodies that everyone thinks of as who we are. Well, that’s like a fraction of who you really are. You also have a mental body, an emotional body, a spiritual body. We have these things outside that are 6 feet around us. 

So, when you hear sayings, like, “Oh, the person’s energy introduced them before they even walked into the room, that’s real.” Their energy actually did come into the room before their physical body. When you and I energetically were drawn to each other when we met in Omaha, our energetic bodies were interacting before our physical bodies ever did. So, I tell people, when you really start delving into this, and doing serious energy work, your physical body is the densest part of you, so it will cap how high you can go. If you are going to ascend on frequency level in my opinion and I would say I know and a lot of other healers who would agree with me, you must do things like chiropractic care, massage, acupuncture, physical strength training, or other activity. Like you have to move your physical body to allow your body to keep up with what’s happening on your energy level.

Cynthia Thurlow: That’s really interesting and I would have to agree. I think on a lot of different levels what I do in the evening has become a priority and so I actually bought a PEMF mat.

Kristin Rowell: You did? 

Cynthia Thurlow: I did. I’ve been using it after workouts and you can change the settings and then before bed. I was telling my husband I have some of the best nights of sleep if I get on the mat for the programming converts delta waves. But programming for brain support, heading into bed and I track my HRV and there are specific things that I notice will bump my HRV up. We know that HRV or heart rate variability and some of it can be dependent on age if you’re looking at age-related variances. I would say I wouldn’t expect my HRV to be like a 20-year-old. I do expect that if I’m working towards supporting the autonomic nervous system that it will in fact improve. That has been, I would say, life changing and my husband has now just kind of accepted this is in our bedroom. [laughter] But, I always tell him that I get on this and I put the heater on and it’s just the greatest sleep induction because I have to fight not to fall asleep. I don’t want to fall asleep on it. I’m like “Okay, set the timer, relax, and then I go to bed.” And it’s really been wonderful. I should think about doing the Wim Hof breathing. I think that would be super amazing. 

Kristin Rowell: It’s so easy and it’s on YouTube and it’s got the eleven-minute video, which is just the basic one, has 55 million views.

Cynthia Thurlow: Wow!

Kristin Rowell: So, people are using it for sure. I thought I’ll try it for a few nights in a row and I’m really working to get my HRV average over 50 and it’s not there yet. The only time it’s been over 50 this year is when I was in Costa Rica in March with no technology, with no computer, sleeping in the woods, no Wi-Fi, and of course no alcohol. My Wi-Fi was over 50 for the entire week and I thought this is so interesting these things that people don’t realize, they are so much about our lifestyle and how high wired and high strung and fast moving we can all sometimes be. Because we’re entrepreneurs, we’re building businesses, and it’s just that much more important that we really tune into and pay attention to our central nervous system. 

Cynthia Thurlow: It’s really interesting. You mentioned Costa Rica. We were there for Christmas last year and the second place that went to. My kids of course thought it was terrible. They loved where we stayed, but they had to go to a centralized location because we’re so in the jungle, which was amazing, but I had incredible HRV. Everything was optimized and my kids, of course, they were like, “You don’t understand, I can’t get any Wi-Fi, I have to go to the hotel lobby and sit there.” And I’m like, but this is fantastic. It’s Christmas time, and we’re reconnecting with nature, and we’re sleeping in. Of course, they thought that was you know for a teenager that’s the end of the world in their mind. So, kind of getting back to the impact of chronic stress and hormones and women and really looking at macros. What are some of the common errors that you see women making? Well-meaning women because they’re following my play or they’re following government suggested guidelines, we know what they’re leaning towards. What are some of the common misconceptions? Because you mentioned this blood sugar balancing piece, which I think is so important. What are the things when they come to you that are common errors that you see them making? 

Kristin Rowell: Yeah, great question. I don’t think we can say enough. The facts that I consistently over and over see women undereating protein. So, you and I know are aligned on that. That is a major thing. They seem so confused about how they’re going to get as much protein in their body as I’m recommending. But I said, just let me guide you through this so that you can start to learn this eating the meal plans that I’m recommending for you. But undereating protein is one, a lot of women that I see don’t eat enough, so they don’t prioritize themselves because they’re prioritizing every single other person on planet earth. They come last and so they’re binging typically at night on whatever they can get their hands on because they haven’t been nursing their body regularly throughout the day.

The other thing is, so undereating protein, undereating in general, and then overeating the wrong things because of this blood sugar imbalance. So, I see a lot of and I tell people I’m really working with you to reprogram you or at a minimum deprogram you from what you thought you was healthy because of the way you have been programmed and whether you have ever woken up to it or not. I’m here in part to help wake you up to understand that you have programming around, what you’re putting in your body first thing in the morning, what you’re having on your lunch break? What you’re making your family for dinner? What you’re picking out and taking off the shelf at the grocery store? There’s so much that we receive by way of marketed advertisements that until you have someone actually educate you about how your body really works and that’s what I spend a lot of time doing. It’s amazing to me just how people don’t realize what they don’t know. 

I had a woman recently who hired me who’s a very successful person in her own business, and she was choosing each more morning to have a bowl of Raisin Bran because she thought that that was something that was healthy that it had fiber and I said, okay, go grab the box of Raisin Bran. Here we are on Zoom. I said, I want you to read to me the calories. She read to me the calories. Now I want you to read to me the protein. She read to me the protein. I want you to read to me the fat. She read to me the fat. Said, now let’s look at the carbohydrates. And she read 48. She’s like, “Oh, my goodness,” because we had just done this whole lesson. She’s intending thinking she’s doing the right thing because in her situation is buying Raisin Bran instead of Captain Crunch and because you’re marketed that something like that would be healthier, you have this unconscious understanding about things that I really work to just deprogram. So, when you can be empowered from a place of choice and intention and say, okay, Kirstin said, 30 g of protein at least at this meal, in this breakfast, instead of saving it all for dinner. Not just grabbing a handful of pistachios on the go, but actually saying, sit down to this meal that has at least 30 g of protein in it with a lot of vegetables, and some healthy fats. And then move on to the next meal, however many hours later. Really having that separate from meal time and taking the time to eat and really nourish your body, I think, is a big one. 

Cynthia Thurlow: No, it’s huge. I think on so many levels that is such a common thing to see that women don’t even understand that their 3 oz of protein is never going to hit the satiety cues. It’s not going to help with muscle protein synthesis. It’s not going to help them maintain or build muscle. When we start reconfiguring macros, typically what I see is the low protein, wrong types of fats, too many carbs and carbs shouldn’t be demonized. If you’re insulin resistant, if you have 50 pounds to lose, if you’re diabetic, then carbohydrates, you do have to look differently at them. It doesn’t mean no carbs. It might mean lower carbs, might be ketogenic. It really depends on the individual and when you’re talking to your patients about this reprogramming and being intentional, I’m sure that you’re probably also talking about nutritional detoxification. I know this is an area of expertise of yours, and so when you’re working with them, what is the schedule or the frequency that you suggest them? And you’re doing a real food detoxification. Let me be clear, it’s not a bunch of powders and pills and things like that. It really is working with food. If you don’t already follow Kristin, on Instagram, she has the greatest food photos, [Kristin, chuckles] which is why I’m so glad you’re doing a cookbook, because I’m like, “Oh, my gosh.” I want that. Talk about this, because this is something that I probably haven’t spoken about on the podcast enough. But it’s certainly really helpful to give people a little bit of a reset.

Kristin Rowell: Yeah. I love the topic of detox and I think the word has some confusing connotations because you’re right. Some people think of detox and they would immediately go to juice cleanse or I can’t eat for three days, and it’s like that’s not what we’re talking about here. My detoxification protocol that I personally practice and have been for 20 years. And that I recommend to my clients that I take people through in a course is real food nutritional detoxification. So, what does that mean? Well, and you very well know this, I’m sure Cynthia, but our bodies have two real primary phases of detoxification. They have pathways, so in our phase 1 detoxification pathways certain mechanisms of action, certain processes are happening in our body. In our phase two detoxification pathway, which is the more complicated of the detox pathways, other processes are happening, and our body is always working to open up, and release toxins through those pathways.

But the reality of our modern world is, we are constantly inputting ourselves with things that I’d say close the door, close the valve sometimes on those pathways or at least make those pathways not work as optimally. So, for example, in the phase 2 pathways, there is a sulfation pathway, which requires having a certain amount of sulfur foods in your diet. So, our sulfur foods would be eggs and I always recommend pasture-raised organic, organic onion, organic garlic, organic daikon radish. Those would be things that help the sulfur conjugation pathway. We also have a glutathione conjugation pathway. When our body is in detoxification, which it needs to be in a parasympathetic state, by the way, to detoxify. So, we have to get out of that fight or flight mode for a while. Our glutathione conjugation process, our body eats up tons of glutathione, which is, of course, our master antioxidant. Our body eats up tons of it while we’re detoxing. It’s really important that you put in some of the raw materials in your body to make more glutathione on the spot and keep making it, including some of those amino acids from really high-quality protein sources along with other liver healing foods. So, cruciferous vegetables would be a category in my detox course because the cabbages, the Brussels sprouts, the cauliflower, and the broccoli. There’s also a ton of benefit from citrus. We know we get lots of benefit from dark leafy greens. There’s lots of people get to eat protein, I actually reduce the fat. 

Normally, I would recommend a higher, like, more than 50% of your calories coming from fat. But on the detox, it tends to be a little lower simply because one of the organs that we’re clearing out is your liver. Your liver has to process in addition to all of the toxins that come into your body, your liver also processes all of the fat. A lot of people have livers who have been working on processing industrial seed oils and garbage trans fats and things for years, so their body feels so much better when we can start to get those things out through natural detox. No one likes to hear me say this, which is caffeine does interrupt your phase 1 detox pathway. So, I ask people to go off of caffeine for two weeks when they do this detox and for most people that’s probably the hardest part. I tell people headaches are only going to last for a day or two, even if the most caffeine-addictive person can usually get over the headaches by day three or day four, but it really is amazing how much more energy you have once you get that interrupter of your pathways out of the way.

Cynthia Thurlow: I think it’s so important and really emphasizing that you’re doing this with real food, and it’s attainable, and achievable. Anyone can do anything for a 14-day span of time. Now, do you do these quarterly or do you do them every other month? How frequently are you doing these programs? 

Kristin Rowell: I’m doing these quarterly. So, the next one will be released in January. It starts on January 16th of 2023. That will be January 16th through, I think, the last Sunday in January and then I’ll run it again in April and then again in July and then again in October. So, four times a year and the reality is it’s a really good pace. I always say there’re people that come to me and they say I want to lose weight, and I don’t know where these 30 pounds came from, and I just need to take them off. I said, “Well, look, I’m going to teach you I always say I want to teach you how to become lean and fit for life.” If it’s someone I’m working with for six months, at some point during that six months I will put them through this two-week detox. Some people just hire me just to take my detox course, which is great, but I personally use it, and I like my clients to use it as a course correction if we’ve gotten off track. January is a great time for people to course correct, if they’ve had a little more hedonic deviations during the holidays. I stole that phrase because I’ve heard Alan Aragon, I don’t know if you’ve interviewed him yet, but I’ve heard him making the podcast circuit and he used that term and I just love it. I was in Mexico for a retreat. I had some hedonic deviations. I had some wonderful desserts some nights. I came back and because I was referred to as I had been pushing the pleasure pedal several more nights than I normally would, now I’m pushing the pleasure break for a little bit. It doesn’t mean detoxification isn’t pleasurable, enjoyable food. It just means I’m not escaping anything with chocolate, with a margarita that I had in Mexico or things like that that really should be used sparingly and just enjoyed in very random instances as opposed to all the time. The detox course is really to get the protein bars, the to-go foods, those kinds of things off your plate and focus back on real food. Lots of vegetables, lots of lean proteins, and healthy fats.

Cynthia Thurlow: No, I absolutely love the concept. When you’re talking about strength training because this is an important subject specific to what we’re talking about, how often, how do we eat around our timing. I know that you are someone that embraces intermittent fasting. One of the common questions I get is how do I build muscle if I’m also fasting? So, finding that sweet spot, which I know that we’ll probably end up addressing. I think I saw on a recent podcast that you said you lift every 72 hours. Now, this is interesting because there are a lot of FitPros, I’m sure that are well meaning that are out there that are encouraging women to lift five or six days a week. I’d love to get your reasoning and why that is potentially problematic.

Kristin Rowell: Great question. The science tells us that if you were to do a full body heavy duty weightlifting session, meaning you hit shoulders, you hit biceps, you hit abs and back, you hit your glutes, you hit your quads, hamstrings, calves, big parts of your body, your upper back. If you do that hard on a Monday, you are your weakest then on Wednesday, you’re your weakest 48 hours later and what do most people do? They go to the gym and lift on Monday and then they say, oh, I’m going to take a rest day in between and they come back on Wednesday. The reality is actually you’re strongest 72 hours later, which would be Thursday. So, if I do a heavy duty lift on a Monday, I don’t strength train again until Thursday. Now, it’s not that I’m not moving in those two days in between. I do some cardio classes, I do tons of walking, I enjoy running, so I’m doing other things, but my heavy-duty strength training happens every 72 hours. That’s because my goal when I’m strength training is not to just go and spend time in the gym. My goal is to build lean muscle tissue. That’s what I’m there for. If I’m going to pay someone, a personal trainer, to help me build lean muscle tissue, I want to maximize every single factor that I can control in order to make that happen. 

One of the things I’m going to work on getting really a good amount of sleep the night before I go into strength training. I’m going to work on making sure that when I am strength training, that after I’m consuming high quality protein relatively quickly after the workout. It doesn’t need to be in immediately 20 minutes right after the workout. There was this belief for a long time, basically on the science that the anabolic window, which is this period of time after you get done strength training and when you can build muscle, that the anabolic window was like 20 minutes. It was very short and there’s been recent research has come out, and I spoke at a Resistance Exercise Conference in May of this year and also in October of last year, where there were other scientists reporting on some of this newer research that said this anabolic window is really more like at least 90 minutes after you get done with a workout. You don’t need to get done exercising, still be sweating, have not calmed down your central nervous system and wolfed down a bunch of protein. It’s just not how our bodies were designed. It doesn’t even make intuitive sense if you really think about it, so calming and getting back down in that state and then eating something is great. With the 72 hours or every 72 hours, I tell people on those days is when I’m going to intentionally be a little more liberal with my carbohydrates.

When I say liberal with my carbohydrates, low carbohydrate diet is considered 150 g or less. So, if I would normally have, let’s say 50 or 60, on that day I’m having 100-125 g instead. I’m getting those from sources like banana, gluten-free oatmeal, some sweet potato, perhaps. I have some really more lower carb, but they still have more carbs in terms of breads like that you keep in the freezer that I might use on those days, organic apples, lots of berries. It’s really whole natural foods as much as possible. I’m going to be intentional about those days and then how I combine it with fasting is and I’ve been really interested in a lot of the research that’s come out recently on how moving up our fasting window can be so much beneficial and especially as here we are going into the winter months and I obviously live in a place in Minnesota where it is dark, starting at about 4:30 come November something, it’s really depressing. I’m aware of the fact now that your body really wants to be eating when it’s light out and not eating when it’s dark out. Like this morning, I broke my fast at 9:15ish 9:30 in the morning, but I had already been fasting for almost 15 hours because I stopped eating at 6:15 last night. I’ve really been enjoying playing with that. It’s allowed me to still get all of the benefits of intermittent fasting, all of the opportunities for muscle protein synthesis four times a day, and be building muscle because I strength train in the morning and I’m not artificially forcing myself to wait until noon to eat and then keep eating until 8:00 at night, which also is disruptive to my sleep. I’ve really enjoyed this more 10 to 6 or 9 to 5 type of eating window and I combine that with making sure I’m eating quality protein and a little bit more carbohydrate on my strength 20 days. 

Cynthia Thurlow: I think that’s really helpful and really being aligned with our natural chronobiological rhythms. Like I always say, during the summer, I might extend my feeding window, but definitely as we’re heading. Even in Virginia, by 4:45/5 o’clock, it’s really dark. I always say I make a conscientious effort. What’s interesting is this is very normal for me in this house, but when I have people visiting, like, as an example, my college roommate was here all weekend. She was fascinated with the fact that I didn’t eat breakfast, that I ate late morning, then I’d eat right you know 5 or 6 o’clock. So, of course, with having a friend in from out of town, you’re adjusting your feeding and fasting window to accommodate them. But it had never even occurred to her that there were any changes in insulin sensitivity as the day goes on, and trying to explain to her that if I was going to have a big meal, it would be midday, when I’m more insulin sensitive, when my body is awake and alert because it’s daytime. I think really understanding that daylight savings and the changes that go on with chrono biology during that time frame, like leaning into those changes as they occur throughout the year, is really beneficial. 

Kristin Rowell: Yeah. You mentioned something else there, Cynthia, that I think is important, which is, I had a client I was on with a couple this morning and coaching them over Zoom and he had asked me about using the Zero Fasting app, which I use. I also have the BioCoach app. But the Zero Fasting app, just in terms of tracking my hours of eating, I find it to be just very easy. She said, “Well, how can you do that?” So why are you actually tracking? I said, “Well, I’ll give you a perfect example of last night.” Last night I got done eating at 6:15, so I just set my start fasting timer and I actually had an energy session, of course, last night with one of my meditation workers. I had that from 6:30 to 8:00 on Zoom with a group and I got done with that. I wanted to take the dogs out for a little bit, walk in the dark, and then, of course, was like doing some stuff cleaning up around the house and sweeping. It was that little part of me, because now it’s what would call witching hour, when all of a sudden, it’s 9 o’clock at night. There was something that was like, oh gosh, that peanut butter sounds really good or that thing in the cupboard sounds really good. And so, I know it’s not hunger. I’m very aware of the fact that it’s either habit or lonely or emotional eating, or some other reason. Like I don’t know exactly what it was, but because I had already set my fasting timer. I opened it up and I looked at it and I’m like, wait a second, Kristin, you’ve been fasting for over 3 hours already. You’re not going to ruin it to have a spoonful of peanut butter, have to put it in your chronometer, start over fasting. That just seems so silly to me. And then what? Wait to eat until noon today instead of being able to eat at 9:30 this morning? That’s the kind of thing that I use it for, is the motivation around. 

Because it’s different every night, like you said when your friend was there or I had gone out to dinner with a friend one night, so my eating window didn’t get done until after 8:00 o’clock, which is late for me, but then I set my fasting timer. I ate a little bit later the next day and just made sure I got my three different meals in before about 6:00 or 6:30 so I could get back on track. For me, it’s just one of those tools. I always say that the more tools I can have in my toolbox that I can rely on to just take having to keep all the stuff in my brain all the time. We have plenty of things we have going on in our brain in terms of how we service clients. I want the stuff that I’m doing for me to sought of become on autopilot when I can make it that way. 

Cynthia Thurlow: I think it’s important to understand that there are many of us that like data, we like that accountability, we like to be able to track and monitor. I think for 75% of my clients, they enjoy it and then there’s 25% up it really creates more anxiety and stress. Whether it’s a continuous glucose monitor or an Oura Ring, an app on their phone, I always say take what works for you and leave the rest. If you are a listener and you’re saying, “Yeah, I love all those things, but it stresses me out more, then we have to kind of pare things down.” Now, I want to be respectful of your time, but one question that came up with significant frequency was, “What are Kristin’s, when you are traveling, what are some of your favorite things to bring with you?” Because we all know that 99.9% of what we find in the airport is garbage. What are the things you bring with you in case there’s a delay, in case you get hungry? What are some of your go-to foods, or I hate to use the word snack, but food products that you might bring with you. Again, if you watch Kristin on Insta Stories, I end up trying out things that I’m like, oh, that’s a good idea. I should try that out. What are some of the things you bring with you that are your go-to options? 

Kristin Rowell: I just love that. You also said you hate the word snacks because so do I. What does that mean? Like, what’s a snack? It’s so funny. I have a list of go-tos. My top favorites are Carnivore Crisps, which I absolutely love. Carnivore Snax are another one. Carnivore Crisps and Carnivore Snax are very similar, but one Carnivore Crisps adds water and Carnivore snacks does not. They’re both just really Redmond’s real salt and then grass-fed meat of some kind. So, I bring those with me. I also have really enjoyed and I met the owner of this at Metabolic Health Summit this year and last year is those KEHO bars, K-E-H-O. They are the first savory bars on the market. They are savory not sweet and they’re made with a lot of different kinds of nuts, but there is even one that has olives in it or a little bit of sun-dried tomato or things that actually feel like she and I laughed. She said, “I think if you eat three of these bars, you could effectively call it a salad.” But she like us, she had a corporate job. She worked at Pepsi for years, left to create an entrepreneurial thing, couldn’t do the corporate thing anymore. It was really interesting. So that’s another one. 

I would say Rawr bars, which I know you’ve tried and love, R-A-W-R. Those do need to stay in the fridge, so I typically don’t travel with those as much, but I’ll bring those if I’m just on the go really quick for a day. And then Perfect Amino Bars by BodyHealth. I’ve really started to enjoy those because they add all of the essential amino acids and they really are a better fat source than a protein bar so that’s another one. I tend to always pack little bags of my protein powder with me, so I bring beef protein powder with me. I don’t use whey anymore. My body is far too sensitive to whey protein right now. It’s been that way for all of 2022, unfortunately, because I used to really enjoy it. Whey, when you take it on the go, you can shake it in a shaker bottle. Grass-fed beef isolate does not shake well. So, it tends to be a little more clumpy which isn’t ideal. Then I also am not afraid to bring things like apples and avocados, which are real food. I do bring beef sticks with me, so whether it’s Chomps or I know you and I both enjoy the Paleovalley because I really like those, so I’ll bring those. Some of those EPIC bars are good too and then the only other things that I bring, because I do bring my supplements, so I’ve got a lot of those with me, typically including my creatine, I have that. 

The only other things I would say are every once in a while, just in case I want some little treat and another source of healthy fat, I will bring little packets of nut butter. So, like, that a Leavi nut butter. I don’t know if you’ve tried that one. A Leavi is L-E-A-V-I and it’s based with hemp seed oil and they use only monk fruit to sweeten it, but they’ve got a blue spirulina and then a pink one that’s based in pomegranate and they are delicious. I’ll bring those with me and when everyone else is ordering dessert at the table, I’ll be sucking on a little nut butter because that’ll be my dessert when I’m out. So those are kind of my top. Also, I should mention to your listeners on my website, energeticallyefficient.com I have a tab that I’ve created for Kristin’s favorites where I list all of the stuff out in different sections. 

Cynthia Thurlow: Now you do such a good job of finding less well-known products that are out there, and I think that’s what I really appreciate and value. You introduced me to MariGold Whey, which is generally the one that I recommend, although I don’t consume whey, but that’s what we have at our house and they’re a wonderful company. I think as we are entrepreneurs, I really think it’s important to support other small businesses. So, let my listeners know how to connect with you, how to work with you if they’re interested in your detox program, which I actually purchased and now need to– once I’m done with my Chicago trip. [chuckles] I keep saying every time I have another business trip, I’m like, I need to be home because I have to do so much food prep. Let my listeners know how to connect with you on social media, how to follow what you’re– and let me know when your new cookbook is coming out. 

Kristin Rowell: Thank you so much. My Instagram is MN, and that’s MN from Minnesota, so it’s @mngoldengirl and it really has to do with the fact that I have these two gorgeous golden retrievers, one sleeping under my feet right now. So, Instagram I’m probably the most active. I’m also pretty active on LinkedIn, and that’s just under my name, Kristin Rowell. It’s K-R-I-S-T-I-N. I have a Facebook that’s connected to my Instagram, so that’s just under my name as well. Those are the three primary sites that I use. I do have a Twitter, which is linked to my Facebook, but I haven’t really been using that much. Just quickly, Cynthia, going back to our conversation about frequency, my observation of the frequency of Twitter is that it’s not high, it’s not of a high resonance. I don’t want to be on that app having spending time on it where it’s going to bring my frequency resonance down. Now, I’m not saying any of these social media apps are fantastic in terms of frequency, but they obviously are platforms that if you follow positive accounts and you create positive content that you’ll get more of that, which I think is neat. My website is energeticallyefficient.com and I do have a cookbook coming out. It will be coming out before the end of this year. I’m going to have a link for preorder and I’ll have it on the website. But my cookbook and I’ll release it here, because I haven’t said this to anyone, is going to be called Eating Efficiently- 

Cynthia Thurlow: Love it. 

Kristin Rowell: -which is really fun because it’s really what I teach my clients how to do and it’s what I do each day so it’s going to be fun, easier, simple, less intimidating meals, but also lots of flavors and lots of real food, which is fine. 

Cynthia Thurlow: I love it. Well, it’s been a pleasure. We’ll definitely have to have you back. There are so many things we could have talked about. As I said, I love real, true, organic conversation, especially with people that I know in real life. 

Kristin Rowell: Same. I so enjoyed it, Cynthia. Thanks so much for having me. 

Cynthia Thurlow: If you love this podcast episode, please leave a rating and review, subscribe and tell a friend.