On today’s episode, I’m joined by Michelle Hoover who shares her powerful journey to healing Hashimotos.

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Episode 89 Links

Episode 89 Transcription

On today’s episode, I’m interviewing Michelle Hoover, a blogger who wants to talk all about how you can powerfully heal from Hashimoto’s.

Cassy Joy: Welcome back to another episode of the Fed and Fit podcast. Today I’m joined by the most lovely Michelle Hoover. We’re going to talk about healing Hashimoto’s. and to tell you really quickly before I let Michelle introduce herself more in depth, I’ll tell you a little bit more about her. {laughs} I’ll tell you more about herself.

See Michelle, this is one of those moments where if I did edit my podcast, I probably would have edited that part out {laughing}.

Michelle Hoover: {laughs}

Cassy Joy: Oh anyways. I just told her that unedited I feel like is just more fun. Ok, so more about Michelle. After living the first 17 years of her life feeling chronically unwell, Michelle Hoover was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease, which is an autoimmune disease that attacks the thyroid and affects weight, energy, mood, hormones, and pretty much just about everything else you can think of. She spent her early college years medicated and in a fog, until she discovered the autoimmune-gut connection, and everything changed after that point.

After her diet changed, lifestyle, and targeting her gut health, she lives a drastically different life, free of debilitating Hashimoto’s and digestive symptoms. Michelle works one on one as a nutritional therapy practitioner; an NTP, and blogs about gut healing, living with Hashimoto’s, and autoimmune friendly paleo recipes at her blog, www.UnboundWellness.com. This January, she is releasing the 30-day gut healing diet plan and guide, which is designed to lead you on your own gut healing journey, just like she did to address her Hashimoto’s. Welcome to the show, Michelle!

Michelle Hoover: Thank you so much, Cassy. I’m so excited to be here.

Cassy Joy: Oh, I’m so excited to have you here. When Michelle emailed me and told me a little bit about herself, I really felt compelled to invite her immediately onto the show, because we’ve never; or have not ever, in the last 80-plus episodes, covered Hashimoto’s specifically. And I know it is probably one of the most prevalent autoimmune diseases afflicting more folks than any other, and I really wanted to bring you on because you have such a beautiful success story, you’ve got such a really good head on your shoulders and perspective, and I wanted folks to be able to hear from your firsthand how you’ve really confronted things head first. But yeah welcome to the show! Is there anything that I missed in your bio that you’d like to share in additional? In addition to that? {laughs}

Michelle Hoover: {laughs} I think those are the things. If you hear any tiny pony galloping in the background it’s my cat, Stinky.

Cassy Joy: {gasp} Cat Stinky! I was really hoping you were going to say, “If you hear any tiny pony galloping, it’s my tiny pony.” {laughs}

Michelle Hoover: {laughs} He sounds like a tiny pony. He like gallops; it’s weird. So if you hear that, it’s my cat. {laughs}

Cassy Joy: Ohh, Stinky, that’s so cute. If you hear a Clydesdale galloping, it’s my dog Gus. {laughing} The opposite of tiny pony. He’s a big pony {laughs}. Oh man. Well this is great. I’m really excited to chat with you. So can you share a little bit more about; you were diagnosed at 17.

Michelle Hoover: Yeah.

Cassy Joy: With Hashimoto’s. What was that process like? What was the diagnosis process like? Because there’s also probably some folks listening; maybe they don’t have a diagnosis, but they’re kind of suspect that something is going on.

Michelle Hoover: Oh yes, so many people.

Cassy Joy: What was that entire journey like when you finally went into the doctor, got your diagnosis, and then you were prescribed medications to help manage before you really started to turn to diet.

Michelle Hoover: Yeah, it took a really long time to get to that point; from where I was showing symptoms to when I was finally diagnosed. Like you said in my bio, I was a chronically unwell little kid that I always like to say; this started at 17 but it really started way before that. I was constantly; when I was a baby, I had an ear infection every single month, and then I had strep throat, and then I had sinus infections. I was always having some sort of illness, and eventually my first sign of Hashimoto’s I remember super vividly; I was sitting on the couch with my dad, just watching a movie, not an exciting movie at all, nothing to get too worked up. And I just feel “dd-ddd-ddd” my heart just hammers for like 10 seconds and then it slows down. I had been chronically unwell but I had never felt anything like that before. I was like, whoa, dad my heart just started beating really fast. What just happened? I was worried. He was like; oh it’s a heart palpitation. That just kind of happens; it shouldn’t really be a big deal as long as it doesn’t happen again. I was like, ok.

So it happened again, and again; and it kept happening, and I started feeling these, almost fainting spells when I was just doing things like walking around, standing, not really exerting a lot of energy. My parents started to get a lot more alert about it; and then it really just came to a head; I was standing at my job as a cashier; and I’m 16 at this point, and it’s after school. And I’m just standing, checking somebody out, and I just fall over and pass out. And it’s like; ok, this is really serious now. This needs to be a thing that we address.

So at that time I was still seeing a pediatrician. I was 16. And they ran my weight, they did all the stuff, all the things, all the normal things. Thyroid problems run in my family, and we brought that up; and they were like, no we don’t think so. You probably just drank too many energy drinks. I was like, actually I never said I drank energy drinks. Ok, well too much coffee. Well I don’t drink coffee. They were like, yeah, you’re fine.

Cassy Joy: Mmm.

Michelle Hoover: So they just really just brushed me off, and I went home, and I just got worse and worse. I was presenting in the beginning as hyperthyroid, which is not typical with Hashimoto’s; usually you present as hypo. And I kind of spent my whole life in that state. So I was presenting hyper; I started getting really extreme the other way. And the doctor wrote me off. She did initial blood work on my thyroid; which we’ll talk about in a minute, the blood work that you should be asking for. She did the initial blood work and didn’t find anything; I started going to all these specialists. It was like once a week during school, I was out. Like, well we’re off to another specialist. Now we’re at the cardiologist; now we’re at the chiropractor. And nobody had any answers. Everybody was just rolling their eyes; like, please, you have a thyroid problem. Please ask them to check again.

And they did, finally my TSH showed something that indicated there was a thyroid problem. And this was like 6 months later. I had lost a ton of weight, I had just gotten worse and worse and eventually I get to an endocrinologist, and he ran the entire panel and he was like; oh yeah, you definitely have Hashimoto’s. And what really stuck with me when he told me that I have Hashimoto’s, is that my pediatrician at the time told me, “There’s no way you have a thyroid problem, that’s only reserved for women who are older. You’re a teenager, you wouldn’t have that.” That’s why they were so adamant that I didn’t have it.

And I went to this pediatrician, and he said, “You have Hashimoto’s, and you’re the third girl from your high school to come in this week and get this diagnosis.”

Cassy Joy: Oh my goodness.

Michelle Hoover: Which is like; isn’t that insane?

Cassy Joy: Mm-hmm.

Michelle Hoover: Like, high school girls.

Cassy Joy: That’s amazing.

Michelle Hoover: I know, I know.

Cassy Joy: My goodness. So what was his prescription after that point, or what was his recommendation on how to treat it?

Michelle Hoover: Well, at that point I was just put on a normal just thyroid medication. At the time, I believe it was levothyroxine, and I’m pretty sure it was a little bit of a higher dose. It’s similar to Synthroid, what they usually put people on with thyroid medication. And all I was told is, it’s an autoimmune disease, it’s attacking your thyroid, so we treat the thyroid. And that was it. And I just kind of went along like that. I remember I started taking levothyroxine, and all of a sudden, my hair starts falling out, and I started getting really sad and depressed feeling. I was like; maybe this is worse, you know?

Cassy Joy: Oh my goodness.

Michelle Hoover: So I went like that. I think they eventually switched me to Synthroid, which is another really common thyroid medication, when I was, you know, later in college. And my college experience is totally similar to yours, Cassy. How you talk about driving from College Station to San Antonio, and having to pull over and sleep. I was totally the same way. I was taking these medications that were treating my thyroid hormone, but not treating the process of autoimmunity that was going on in my body. So I’m taking this thyroid hormone corrector, and my thyroid hormone really wasn’t even that wonky, it was my autoimmunity and antibodies that were wonky. But I wasn’t doing anything to correct that.

So I was a junior in college, and I was sleeping 18 hours a day. I was pretty much only awake to go to class and do homework; that was it. And I remember one experience where; you know, your thyroid throws off your weight, and I was gaining weight. And I was in the gym; I’m like, ok I’m going to have energy and I’m going to do this. And I was just sitting on a little workout machine on really low weights, and just trying to push it; and I was just so exhausted and I couldn’t. I was just wanting to sit there and cry; like what is wrong with me? I’m doing what they tell me and it’s just not getting any better. I have no energy.

Cassy Joy: Oh my gosh, I totally know what you mean.

Michelle Hoover: Yeah.

Cassy Joy: I’m sure there are people listening right now that are all nodding their heads. Yeah, that’s a really helpless sort of feeling. So what happened when you decided to look at things from a lifestyle, gut healing perspective?

Michelle Hoover: Yeah, so I had always leaned towards nutrition. I had taken dietetic classes in college, and I think the first inkling that I had about being gluten-free first, because that’s the first step that people usually take in Hashimoto’s, being gluten free because the molecules in gluten are very similar to the molecules in your thyroid, so your body is attacking your thyroid, and then it sees gluten which looks similar to your thyroid, and it starts attacking that. So the first inkling I kind of got of that is I was in a dietetics class in college, and I think I saw something about celiac disease and gluten, and I saw this was an autoimmune disease, and I was like; oh that’s what I have. Maybe that’s somewhat connected.

This was a long time ago at this point; this was like 7 years ago, so this wasn’t as big of a thing yet. This is just about when you were able to go to Sprouts and there was a gluten-free section. But it was not like, gluten free everything.

Cassy Joy: Cheerios.

Michelle Hoover: Yeah, no it was not like that yet. So I figured that out, and I started just gluten free. But I was still eating, so I was like; ok I’m not going to eat. I was a terrible eater. I was just like, sandwiches every day. The most “vegetables” I would get would be like tomatoes and ketchup.

Cassy Joy: Oh my gosh.

Michelle Hoover: And that makes me want to die, even equating those to vegetables right now.

Cassy Joy: We’re such birds of a feather, Michelle. {laughs} I was totally the same.

Michelle Hoover: Oh my gosh. So I just saw gluten, and I was like; ok, I’m going to take out gluten and go gluten free. So no more pasta, but gluten-free pasta. Then all of a sudden every day, three meals a day, I’m eating some sort of processed gluten free thing. Which in moderation, I just had gluten free rice pasta, you know, four weeks ago and it was fine. And I didn’t even really want it as much as I want zoodles now. But in moderation, those things may be ok, but I was having it constantly and I was not healing.

And eventually, we had somebody who; I was in this state where I was just crying in the gym, sleeping 18 hours a day, and I told my mom; I was like, I can’t do this anymore. I need to see somebody; there has to be something else. I’m trying this gluten free thing, it’s not working. And I just wasn’t keyed in to this paleo/gut healing thing yet, so I was like, I need somebody. And we had a friend who told us; hey, there’s this doctor who I think can help you. And this was my first doctor that I had ever seen that told me, “Wow, you’re definitely dealing with leaky gut.”

I got a food intolerance, like IgG test.

Cassy Joy: Yep.

Michelle Hoover: Which, in retrospect, I have very mixed reviews on, because I had gotten it a couple of times back then and looking at it, there were a lot of things that came up as positive that I could eat that I know really don’t work for me. So it’s a yes and now, the IgG test, but at that point it was really necessary for me to just be told; yes, you have like 50 foods that you’re reacting to. You have rashes all over your face, you are falling over exhausted; you have gut issues.

Cassy Joy: Mm-hmm.

Michelle Hoover: So, that was the really number one step, where I was like; well I think I need to explore this whole world.

Cassy Joy: Yeah, that’s great. That’s really fascinating. You know, and something that’s important to point out that I’m sure you found; of course, following your own journey and then working with your clients, is once we heal our gut, so many of us those food intolerances and what we react to, that list can decrease over time.

Michelle Hoover: Oh, totally.

Cassy Joy: It’s kind of like, we have to pull out the aggravator, allow ourselves to heal, and then we can tolerate a little more of it. Just like you said, you had the gluten free rice pasta not too long ago; I like to tell folks that our bodies are incredibly resilient already, once we heal we’re able to tolerate indulgences. It’s kind of the way the Fed and Fit Project is set up; I want folks to get to that squeaky clean reset, but it’s really just the point of it, is to heal the gut and to deinflame and deactivate our bodies, so that then we can tolerate those indulgences every once in a while.

Michelle Hoover: Exactly.

Cassy Joy: But yeah, that test is really, really fascinating. I’ve actually never done it; I have not taken it myself because I’m a slow learner. {laughing} I want the really long route, but I think that can be an important tool for folks who just want some answers.

Michelle Hoover: Exactly. And it depends at what point you’re at in your journey and how educated you already are. For me, I wasn’t educated on it at all, that I didn’t even know that leaky gut and autoimmunity was a thing. I had to be told that I had it, and then I made the connection.

Cassy Joy: Yeah.

Michelle Hoover: But now it’s way more just popularized that autoimmunity; one of the things to turn autoimmunity on, where your immune system starts attacking one of your organs or systems as if it were a foreign invader; one of the things that really turns it on is a leaky gut.

Cassy Joy: Mm-hmm.

Michelle Hoover: So basically what’s happening with; and it’s hard to say the word “leaky gut” and not kind of roll your eyes and think it sounds kind of weird.

Cassy Joy: Mm-hmm. It sounds hokey, you’re right.

Michelle Hoover: Yeah, yeah.

Cassy Joy: I mean, intestinal permeability for folks who would prefer a different phrase.

Michelle Hoover: Exactly. Increased intestinal permeability. So what’s happening is our intestines are permeable; our skin is permeable, we have pores in our skin, so we’re eating food; for me, I was eating lots of ketchup and French fries.

Cassy Joy: {laughs}

Michelle Hoover: And I was already stressed. I was already tired. I’m eating this food that is not good for me, and I’m not chewing it. I’m driving, it’s terrible food, so this food is hitting my stomach. And there’s a book; I believe it’s called the 7-Day Detox Diet miracle, which also sounds; it’s a good book, I promise. But it had really good information in it; I read it for my NTA program. But it has a quote in there that says, “The lining of your intestines is no thicker than your eyelid.”

Cassy Joy: Mmm.

Michelle Hoover: Isn’t that crazy?

Cassy Joy: That is. That’s a really good perspective.

Michelle Hoover: Isn’t it? So you think that you’re going to wherever and you’re eating a burger and fries, and you’re not chewing it, and your stomach isn’t breaking it down, you have low stomach acid, you don’t have a lot of enzymes, you’re stressed. Whatever reason; there’s a huge list of reasons. And as food is hitting your gut, and it’s a really thin lining, and food is starting to leak through your intestines. And your gut itself is your host to your immune system; 80-90% of your immune system is located in your gut. All of those stents I was having as a kid where I had all of these infections started to make sense all of a sudden.

Cassy Joy: Mm-hmm.

Michelle Hoover: My gut; my immune system has kind of always been hit by all this stuff that I’ve been doing. And eventually it just came to a head, where food that you’re eating; the particles of the food are leaking into your blood stream, into your body, and your immune system starts to attack it as foreign invaders; like, girl this ketchup does not belong in the blood, what is happening.

So I was eating lots of gluten, lots of bad stuff; and a lot of us do. And a lot of us, even when we eat good food, we’re eating in stressed states. We’re not breaking our food down. Or we just naturally don’t have enough enzymes; our enzymes wear down as we get older. We don’t have enough stomach acid. There are so many things that can go wrong, and then it just compounds and gets worse and worse. And at the time, I didn’t understand that. And now I do {laughs} and it just totally changed everything for me.

Cassy Joy: That’s awesome. Yeah, it really is fascinating. I tend to think of foods and leaky gut or intestinal permeability as; there are really aggressive, almost bulldozers in our sweet little eyelid thick gut {laughs} you know they come in and they really do actual physical damage.

Michelle Hoover: Oh, yeah.

Cassy Joy: And damage over time, right. It’s not like one meal; unless you have, for example, like an autoimmune flare for example. You have an autoimmune disease. That being the exception; folks can endure. I can probably go out, eat, order a meatloaf, maybe it’s got breadcrumbs in it and I’ll be fine. Yes, I’m eating damaging particles that are going to cause some damage but it’s just a one-off.

Michelle Hoover: Mm-hmm.

Cassy Joy: Now, in a standard American diet, when we eat those things over and over again is when we really chip away at this precious protective lining. And just to your point, then we allow all the food particles in. and then sensitivity to all those things which should not be in our body without having been absorbed properly through the digestive process. Those things come in as large invaders, and that’s where we develop those sensitivities to random foods, like beef.

Michelle Hoover: Exactly.

Cassy Joy: You know, so many people, or whatever. So that’s interesting. Once you heal, you find that those less aggravating foods become just fine. And it’s just all very fascinating. So after you got that IgG test, did you then eliminate all the inflammatory foods?

Michelle Hoover: I did. So I did it kind of backwards. I’m 20 at this point, and I get this test, and it’s like; you have these 40 food intolerances. Cut them out for 60 or 90 days, and then reintroduce them. Some of those foods that came up were grains, nightshades; but some things that were on there, some grains, some dairy, and I still was just not really keyed in with quality.

Cassy Joy: Yeah.

Michelle Hoover: So I was still being like; oh rice and milk are on here, so I’m just going to go out and get a sugary rice cereal and drink it with low-fat conventional milk. So I did that {laughs} when I was 20, and you know, that made me feel better in some capacity, that I was getting out the really inflammatory foods, but it didn’t actually heal anything and I didn’t really thrive with that.

And then several months later, I was just back in the same place. And I had kind of went up and down with that, and I think it was probably when I was around 24-25 I was just on Pinterest. And I knew at that point; I was like, ok nightshades are something that I can’t reintroduce, and I was just looking for; ok, I can’t have eggs, I can’t have grains, I can’t have nightshades. And then I was introduced to the autoimmune protocol. And I was like; these are all of the things that I can’t have. And this is the person that I am. That really introduced me into this world of nutrient density, and not necessarily what you don’t eat, but what you do eat.

I was probably 23 at that time, so that was about 2 years ago or so. And that’s when I was really thrown into; ok, even though my IgG tests say I can have dairy, I’m going to cut it out for a little bit. Even though I could probably get away with eating sugar, I’m going to cut it out. And I’m going to eat really nutrient dense foods, like liver and bone broth and I also went through the NTA program, so I worked really hard on my digestion and my blood sugar.

And you know; I’m talking a ton about, and we talked a ton just about the gut and autoimmune disease begins in the gut. But there’s really so much more than that, and there’s so much that I did to really help with that. The gut was the number one; but I would say, if I’m talking top 3 things that have really kind of helped anchor me in, and when I try to help other people and inspire other people on my blog to anchor them in with is that number one was just really adding in the nutrient density, really focusing on the gut healing, digestion. And then I would say number 2, which kind of goes in with number one, but for me it didn’t, which was blood sugar. And I was just one of these people that I heard blood sugar forever, and I was like, “Well I don’t have diabetes, why do I have to worry about my blood sugar?” But you do. Sorry everybody, we need to pay attention when people say blood sugar.

Cassy Joy: Mm-hmm.

Michelle Hoover: And your blood sugar; even when I was eating “AIP” and avoiding a lot of these foods, I was still just really, really carb heavy, and kind of low-fat. So when you’re just eating, even good quality carbs, if you’re not balancing it well and you’ve spent all of these years basically being insulin resistant, if you’re just not balancing your diet right, it’s just not going to serve you well. It’s definitely not going to help your gut heal, it’s definitely not going to help your thyroid stuff because all of that blood sugar is so deeply tied in with our endocrine system. And then just; I would say number three for me would be just mindset and outlook on the whole thing.

Cassy Joy: Mm-hmm.

Michelle Hoover: You know, I can sit here and say; Yeah, I have so much more energy, I feel so much better. But I would totally be lying to you if I said I was 100% perfect and my health was perfect, because it’s totally not. I still; this is a life-long journey, and I do this every day, and I still don’t eat bread. I still, if I were to eat gluten I would get really sick. So it’s having that mindset that when things are going to be thrown at you that you can bounce back from it. And for me, a really big thing for me has just been my faith in god and trusting him, that even before all of this happened, and before I started getting into AIP and all of that, that I’ve just been healed by my faith, and I’ve been able to hold onto that. It’s that mindset and that faith that there is, you know, just so much more than this. To where when I’m at a party, and I’m watching everybody drink beer and eat pizza, and I’m sitting there nibbling on an Epic bar in the back.

Cassy Joy: {laughs}

Michelle Hoover: It’s that faith and that mindset of being like; ok, is this really the end of the world, that I cannot eat this food right now? Or is this a really positive thing that this autoimmune disease, maybe part of it happened for me, that right now I’m able to help so many more people and I’m able to work with other people who have the same thing. You know, having that mindset to really just handle the things that are being thrown at you and the faith that, you know, this is all for some greater purpose and it’s a bigger reason. I would say those are kind of my top 3.

Cassy Joy: Oh my gosh, that’s beautiful! Beautiful! I would applaud you, I love it so much. I do believe that we are given exactly what we can handle.

Michelle Hoover: Totally.

Cassy Joy: And I too, when I look back on my struggles with health as helpless as I felt then, and I really, really did feel helpless. It was a really dark, ugly place and I don’t talk about that a whole bunch because it’s so much fun to live in the shiny, bright, new now.

Michelle Hoover: And you are so shiny.

Cassy Joy: {laughs} Oh, you are so kind. But it is. It was a really dark, ugly place, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Michelle Hoover: Mm-hmm.

Cassy Joy: I’m so thankful for that experience and I’m thankful for those struggles, because it has allowed me one of the greatest joys in life, and that is to share my story, and the fact that it helps. Have you ever heard the analogy of the starfish?

Michelle Hoover: No, but tell me, it sounds adorable.

Cassy Joy: Oh my gosh, it’s precious. It’s precious. It was one of my favorite college advisors; I’ve actually talked about him recently on a recent episode, Dr. Joe Townsend. It’s funny; wow, he’s come up a lot. Maybe I should write him an email, I’ve been thinking of him. But he told me this analogy once upon a time about what it means to help people, and how do you stay motivated. And he said, he told me the story, let’s say it’s a real story. Let’s just pretend; it may be.

Where there was a storm coming in, and there was this little boy who lived on the beach, and they were on their way back from a walk on the beach, he was there with his mom. And this storm was coming in, and all of a sudden there were these big waves, and these starfish started getting washed up on the beach. And there were hundreds of them, just starfish everywhere. And they really shouldn’t be out of water. So he was picking them up and he was throwing them back into the ocean as furiously as he could, and trying to get to as many as he could, and his mom said, “Honey, what are you doing, you’re never going to be able to help them all.” And he picked one up and threw it into the ocean, and he was like, “Well I helped that one.”

Michelle Hoover: Mmmm.

Cassy Joy: And that is really; that’s why I would never change those awful dark days for anything in the world, because of the one or two people; it may be more than that, but when someone writes you a note, and I’m sure you’ve gone through this with your practice and working with clients; but that makes it all worth it. It really, really does.

Michelle Hoover: Oh my gosh, yes!

Cassy Joy: To know that you’ve helped somebody. So I totally get what you mean, being thankful. And that mindset really does go a long way in healing, again to your point. I think being thankful for our circumstances, even though they’re not necessarily desirable, and this is actually what I talked about on last weeks’; or excuse me, a show in late December. {laughs} Obviously we’re recording this in late December.

Michelle Hoover: Yeah, I heard that one, I loved it.

Cassy Joy: Yeah, but I mean that goes with it. I think that being thankful is healing in and of itself. So really, props to you. And I think it’s really encouraging; not just that you’ve started this great blog, you’re sharing your story, specifically about Hashimoto’s; autoimmune at large, but Hashimoto’s specifically because I feel like it’s one of the most; in addition to being one of the most prevalent autoimmune diseases out there, I think it’s also one of the most undiagnosed.

Michelle Hoover: Mm-hmm.

Cassy Joy: And it’s the one that probably folks think is really easy to just treat with medication, but there’s a whole world of possibility available when it comes to healing for folks who are willing to approach it from a diet and exercise mindset, holistic perspective.

Michelle Hoover: Mm-hmm.

Cassy Joy: So I really support what you’re doing, and I want to tell folks about your eBook. You just came out with this fabulous new eBook.

Michelle Hoover: Yeah!

Cassy Joy: With a 30-day gut healing program. So tell folks about it. I know this is a way; it sounds like you and I walk very similar paths and a lot of perspectives, but I too got to the point where working with folks one on one, and I’m just like; gosh, we just need to share this with more folks!

Michelle Hoover: Totally.

Cassy Joy: And that’s when I first launched the Project online. So tell folks about your eBook, the purpose behind it, and how they can find it.

Michelle Hoover: Yeah. So first you can go to my website, www.UnboundWellness.com/guthealingbook and I’m sure there will be a link somewhere; show notes, blog, somewhere. But {laughs} so I wrote this book, it’s called the 30-day Gut Healing Diet Plan and Guide. And I wrote this book really for me, and all the people like me, you know, 5 years ago that are heading into this gut healing journey, or they need kind of just a little bit more support on it. And when you look at this huge world of, you need to eat this, you need to eat that; you need to eat a really nutrient dense diet. Maybe you could have SIBO; maybe there’s dysbiosis; maybe there’s enzyme deficiency. And there’s just all this confusing stuff, and I really just wanted to break it down into a really simple guide.

One thing that I struggled with in the beginning was, I knew what to eat. I was given a food list of what I can and could not eat, and I just didn’t know how to really put that into practice. People were telling me; eat a nutrient dense diet. And I really didn’t know what that looked like. So with this book, I went through and I gave you those food lists, and I talk about dysbiosis and stress and all these other things that can mess up your gut, and all the other factors that you should be working with a practitioner for to kind of help heal you further. But I also have; it’s 4 weeks in total, so it’s 30 days of shopping lists and prep guides to help you. Because I’m a big meal prepper; that’s one of my big things. I’m a really busy human being, so I do not have time in the kitchen every day.

Cassy Joy: {laughs}

Michelle Hoover: So, it’s just a prep guide to teach you how to prep everything in just two rounds, and then meal plans for the 30 days with pictures of every single day to make it easier to follow along. And then there are recipes, some information about reintroducing foods, and yeah. So that launched on January 1st, and I have a giveaway going on right now that if you snag it in the first 12 days you’re automatically entered in a giveaway for a bunch of bone broth, of course.

Cassy Joy: Yes!

Michelle Hoover: {laughs} And bone broth paraphernalia. Because there’s tons of broth in the book. But yeah, that’s the book. And that’s kind of the approach that I tool holistically to really heal my Hashimoto’s and get all that stuff back on track.

Cassy Joy: I love it. Well I love what you’re up to, I love your mission; and yes, like she said. If you’re listening and you’re driving, don’t worry, I will provide links to all of it. I will provide a link to her eBook, and to her awesome blog. In the show notes you’ll be able to see that.

Michelle, thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing your story.

Michelle Hoover: Thank you Cassy! I’m so honored to be here.

Cassy Joy: OH my goodness, the honor is truly mine! Truly! Remember you can always find full transcripts of the show and if you like what you’re listening to in 201 and you have not done it already, head to iTunes and leave Fed and Fit podcast a review. You can go ahead and give it a star rating to your liking; and if you ever want to engage in more questions and comments on this show, a great place to do that would be on the blog at the show notes page. So head to my website, https://fedandfit.com, pull up the show notes where you can find a graphic for the show, all the links, the full transcript, and scroll down to the comments if you have more questions. If you have any specific questions for Michelle, leave them there and I’ll make sure she gets them. {laughs}

So thanks again for joining me on the show, Michelle. And everybody, we will be back again next week.



About the Author

Cassy Joy Garcia, NC

Cassy Joy Garcia, a New York Times best-selling author, of Cook Once Dinner Fix, Cook Once Eat All Week, and Fed and Fit as well as the creative force behind the popular food blog Fed & Fit.


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4 Comments

  1. Hi Cassy! I’ve been following you and cooking out of your awesome cookbook for a few months now, and I have come to SO appreciate all the good, healthy vibes you put out into the universe! So thank you for that! <3 I wanted to let you know, in case you're not aware; I listen to your podcasts via the Overcast app, and they haven't updated through the app in a looong time (the most recent one I can access is the one with Dr. Scott Mills in October). Just FYI!

    1. Oh thank you so much for letting me know!! I had no idea. We’ll troubleshoot!

  2. Thank you so much for having me, Cassy!! It was such a pleasure 🙂