Episode Summary
In this episode, Erin Skinner welcomes Haley Smith, a Certified Fertility Awareness Practitioner and the founder of Innate Rhythm and the Fertility Freedom Podcast. Haley’s mission is clear: to empower women overlooked by the traditional healthcare system with body literacy, self-trust, and fertility awareness. Together, they discuss how women can optimize fertility through nourishment, mindfulness, and lifestyle adjustments. Haley explains how adding nutrient-dense foods, improving sleep, and managing stress can create the right environment for conception. She also shares her personal experience of how emotional and physical stress impacted her menstrual cycle and fertility. Erin and Haley dive deep into the connection between safety signals to the body and successful conception, emphasizing that fertility is about more than just biology—it’s about creating space in your life for new possibilities.
Episode Highlights
- Mindful Eating for Fertility: Haley advocates for adding quality high proteins and whole foods to support fertility, rather than cutting things out. It’s about sending safety signals to the body through nourishment.
- Body’s Safety Signals & Fertility: Stress, over-exercising, and emotional turmoil can signal to the body that it’s not safe to conceive. Haley shares how her own stressful breakup and calorie deficit caused her to stop ovulating for nine months.
- Fertility Awareness & Tracking: Haley highlights the importance of tracking your cycle and temperature to understand when you’re ovulating. She explains that even if you’re bleeding, you may not be ovulating—something only tracking can reveal.
- Foundations of Fertility: Before diving into supplements or other interventions, it’s essential to focus on the foundations of sleep, stress management, exercise, and nutrition. Haley emphasizes starting with small changes like getting sunlight in the morning and increasing protein intake.
- Tailored Health Protocols: Haley explains her approach to working with clients, which starts with gathering data through cycle charting, lab work, and health intake forms. This helps her create personalized health protocols, with a commitment to at least four months of focused change.
Resources Mentioned
- Haley’s Practice: Innate Rhythm.
- Check out a ‘Free Discovery Call’
- Group Program: Fertility Freedom, launching later this year.
- Haley’s Instagram: @haleysmith.fa
- Fertility Freedom Podcast
- Tests mentioned: The Dutch Test for sex and adrenal hormone metabolites.
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- Follow us on social media for updates and health tips.
- Subscribe to our podcast and leave a review!
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Subtitles:
Hello and welcome back to the Empowered Nutrition Podcast, Erin Skinner, your host. And this episode I hosted Hailey Smith, who is the founder and practitioner of innate rhythm.com. Her mission is to empower women who are overlooked by the traditional healthcare system with body literacy, self-trust, and fertility awareness. As founder of Innate Rhythm, Haley has helped hundreds of women overcome negative body image patterns, find their answers to sub fertility and carry healthy pregnancies to term. Haley is a certified fertility awareness practitioner and has a master’s degree in nutrition from the National University of Natural Medicine. I felt like Haley and I were sisters from a different mister. We completely connected on this topic. We went all over the place around this world of women’s health conception as it relates to menstrual cycle awareness as a vital sign for women, how women are reflected in medicine and in research, all kinds of interesting places. But hopefully most importantly, you’re able to pick up some tips around nutritional lifestyle factors that can help to optimize not just your fertility. I, I mean I felt like it reinforced a lot of healthy practices for me and I’m done having babies. So just overall women’s health. I think we talked about a lot of the important foundational things. So enjoy the episode and if you enjoyed this, talk with Hailey, of course, check out the show notes and we’ll list where you can connect with her. Take care.
Hi Haley. Welcome to the podcast. It’s so nice to have you.
Hello. So good to be here. Thank you for having me.
Thank you for joining. I can’t wait to hear more about what you’re doing. It sounds like you’re doing a ton of really great work around the preconception and fertility space, which is so needed. I think most people hopefully know that unfortunately there is just a really increasing rate of infertility and fertility challenges. So like you’re so needed.
Mm, thank you for saying that. I do think I’ve seen in my work too, there is this upcoming wave of understanding the importance of it and the realization that we weren’t taught what we should have been taught from a young age, starting with like fifth grade sex ed. So I am very encouraged by, by this way, that I see in my professional work.
Yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. I just thought of six questions, but first let me just ask you this, like tell me a little bit about how, you know, you got into this space. There’s so many different health problems and medical ways you can go. Like what made it be this topic for you?
Yeah, it’s taken me a while to figure out how to best answer this question. And where I’ve landed today is in the past, in my experience personally, professionally, it’s been this collision of passion meeting fury and here I am, I think passion for how, what I’ve learned over the years of how the women’s body works. It gives me full body chills, menstruation, pregnancy, birth, lactation. It’s, it’s incredible what we can do. And then fury for how quickly it’s suppressed. The first, at the first sign of imbalance, it’s, you know, doctors are suggesting to shut down our menstrual cycle and
Not even telling you that they’re suppressing like
A hundred percent, like no informed consent whatsoever.
No.
So it’s been a combination of that and I, I feel myself at the intersection that of advocating for women, helping them give or get their autonomy back on the fertility journey or healthcare journey and then just the passion for this work, it’s always kept me on the edge of my seat learning more and more how our body works and how to optimize it and putting the power back in women’s hands. So it’s been like that from a young age. In my undergraduate studies I started looking into the impact of exercise and diet on gestation and fetal development. I grew up in southwest Michigan and after under undergraduate degree moved out to Portland, Oregon to study nutrition and was very lucky to have who I consider some of the top mentors in the field to be learning under. And again, just learning more and more about how it works and how it’s suppressed and just eating it all up at this time in life.
When I was in graduate school, I also had a very personal experience with my hormone health. I had quit the pill cold Turkey in 2014 and you could describe what I went through as perhaps post birth control syndrome. My skin exploded. I had terrible digestive issues. So at this point it was also a personal journey of figuring out how to support myself. And somewhere along the way I learned the fertility awareness method towards the end of my graduate studies in nutrition. And at this point I was in my late twenties and hearing for the first time that we can’t indeed get pregnant every day and there’s actually only a short window right into cycle that we can actually conceive. And our body has these incredible built in birth control mechanisms that actually prevents pregnancy most of the cycle. So that was like once I, after that weekend, I was like, this is exactly what I need to be doing. And I went on to become certified as a fertility awareness practitioner and learned, started learning how to use the metro cycle as a diagnostic tool. And that was the platform to get me to where what I’m doing today and supporting women on fertility journeys.
Oh my gosh, I love that. I think that the menstrual cycle as a diagnostic tool says a lot to me in, in terms of like I have also had hormone imbalances in my twenties that were just basically, I was offered, you know, go back on birth control, get a hormonal IUD. That’s really, I think women aren’t, like you said, given a form consent that if you do that you’re not repairing anything. You’re just suppressing your body’s own natural cycling and hormone production and really masking some underlying thing that really does need to be understood and addressed. ’cause it’s an underlying dis health, it’s a way of, it’s like a, it’s like an, it’s like a vital sign for women that should be routinely like looked at I think
A hundred percent. And just from the get go it’s, it’s such a domino effect into the big pharma medical system. You know, birth control, I can’t think of the number, but it’s like, you know, it’s a million dollar, billion dollar industry. Yeah. And doctors are telling women, oh, to stay on the pill up until you wanna become pregnant and then just come off and start trying to conceive. Yeah. But whatever problems were being suppressed through the years of the pill are going to come back often stronger. It’s kind of like this fire breathing dragon that’s been suppressed. So you come off the pill and it’s, you know, the problems haven’t gone away. Right. And then
You’re trying
To conceive and it’s not happening the way that it, we were told it was gonna happen and set aside the physical symptoms. Like a lot of shame and mental health issues can come with that. And then IVF is suggested and just like this round and round circle of Of misinformation medical.
Yeah. Yes,
Exactly.
Yeah, exactly. Well, tell me some of the big threads that you see in terms of like what are some of the causes of this, like underlying dis health that will cause problems with the menstrual cycle?
Yeah, that’s a great question and there’s so many different directions that we could go with it. You and I, before we hopped on, we were talking about the impact of preconception health on creating healthier generations. And this gets into the epigenetic conversation and I think it’s really important to be asking the questions of why are there such high rates of PCOS and infertility and menstrual cycle challenges. And there’s good research now that we have that is stemming back to environmental factors that are starting from your mom or your grandmother, whether it’s a diet, environmental toxins, certain stresses or traumas. That’s all starting when you’re in gestation. It might not be the whole reason that you’re experiencing what you are as an adult, but we have to ask the questions of what foundation are you being given from, from an being from an infant or when you were in the womb and those your DNA blueprint was being developed.
So, you know, we can go that deep. We can also, you know, ask the questions of, what I’m really passionate about is women have been suppressed in a lot of health related research for many, many years. I think it’s, I can’t remember the exact year, but it it, it’s not too long ago when women finally started being included in health and wellness research. And that’s because we have these fluctuating hormones that makes research really complicated. We don’t have a steady streamline of hormones like men do that make research consistent and easy to understand. Our hormones are different every single week. So, and of course women also aren’t jumping up at the idea of doing research when trying to get pregnant or when they’re pregnant for good reason. But for that reason, the health and wellness protocols for many years have been, have been done or based off of results for men and then apply to women hoping it works the same. Right.
So
I talk to a lot of women who are coming to me with things like intermittent fasting or
Yeah, these
Medications or protocols that were designed for men and aren’t gonna work the same way for you. So those are two big things I’m seeing. Yeah, there’s many others that we could dive into as well.
Exactly. I mean there’s so many ways to go, but I think that’s, that’s really important. When you highlighted that not by accident, but intentionally with good probably intent of across science, women have classically not been used as subjects just because the fluctuation of hormones introduced introduces like more variable. And the idea with science is to control everything you can and change your one variable that you’re intentionally changing. And so I think what was missing from that was like, okay, well then you have all these, this research has been done on men and now you, you, you really shouldn’t clinically try to apply those research findings to women because it wasn’t done on women. And so there really isn’t enough research to even say what is good for women or what helps women. And aside from that, it’s not usually a medication because of what you said it a lot of times the underlying dis health is, I mean, related to things like you said, epigenetic things or even in their own environment those similar things. So like nutrition, environmental triggers, environmental toxins, stress levels. I’m sure that’s probably a lot of like the work that you do is like focused on those things.
Yeah, definitely. And I do see a lot of women too where like that’s what they’re coming in with. And the other big pillar that I see and I work with is the unrealistic societal norms that are often put on women. Yeah. To look and look a certain way with their body and you know, to not speak up or to challenge a doctor. You know, that’s, I think that’s part of the picture too. But we’re giving these unrealistic norms about how our body should look and fighting to fit that picture. What we’re learning is really detrimental to our fertility. You know, having really low body fat or over exercising and undereating in the way of intermittent fasting that I see a lot of women doing these days. And that’s just one example. It’s not, it’s having the opposite effect on your fertility. So I work a lot with clients on how do we rewire our mindset of what, what does health look like for you and for your fertility. I see that being an equal part of this conversation too.
Yeah. Oh completely. I mean, and I guess as clinicians it’s like you always get the classic sort of education around this concept of like, okay, the, what used to be the female athlete triad, now you have like red s so okay, if it’s like a distance runner or gymnast that’s like very low percent body fat, you’re thinking about this. But I think what you’re alluding to is that this is actually something that is a lot, that there’s a spectrum of that and that’s like the one extreme of it. But that there’s a lot of women that are on that spectrum short of that extreme, that are still impacted in terms of their fertility. And they might just be, they might, they could be anywhere on the weight and BMI spectrum. They could be underweight or normal weight or overweight in experiencing this.
That’s such a good way to put it. And I, I use the same language of hypothalamic a amenorrhea or the loss of your period. It’s a spectrum. And I experienced this personally with myself too for many, many years of being on the spectrum of yes, I always had my period, there was a time I think my sophomore year of high school when I was running cross country playing soccer at the same time. And I did lose my period for four months. I didn’t have the language or education to know what was really going on. But I do know that when I stopped cross country it came back. But since then I have a complicated relationship with food and exercise myself and have now identified, like I’ve been on that spectrum for a really long time. And while I, while I maintained my period or and monthly bleeds, my fertile parameters were always so deficient because, so body temperature, cervical mucus and short luteal phases that were indicating to low, low hormone production that were affecting things like digestion and sleep and anxiety. And I had a big wake up call somewhere along the way and I was like, oh, like I’ve been on this spectrum and a, a lot of women are, which is why I’m so passionate about that, that pillar.
I love that. I love, I love that you’re kind of getting more into the specifics of like, what does that even mean to like look at your cycle and try to like interpret from that what health, whether it’s healthy or not, because it’s a lot more than just the, the cycle length. It sounds like there’s some specific patterns you helped people to identify around like multifactor, so like not just the cycle length, but like within that when you ovulate how long your follicular in your luteal phase is and like your cervical mucus. Like what are some of the other things?
Yeah, great question. And that’s a, it’s a really good point where women coming into work with me and what I was taught growing up too is our period is the main event of our cycle. But what I’ve since changed that to is ovulation is the main event of our cycle and we can pinpoint ovulation and see what’s happening before and after. That’s where we can gather a lot of really, really critical information. So the fertility awareness method, it’s a way of tracking your cycle yes. To know when you’re infertile and fertile and when you can conceive. But it’s also, we can look at it strategically of how are your fertile parameters, how are they leveling out and are they in this optimal range? So like we mentioned, basal body temperature, this is testing, this is insight into your metabolic rate, which is huge for fertility and menstruation.
I think it’s often not understood that menstruation, pregnancy, fertility, lactation, these are all really, really big metabolic events and we need strong metabolism to pro to function properly within these. So basal body temperature is a beautiful way to get a day by day determination of that. And then cervical mucus. Cervical mucus is the best way to predict ovulation. Your basal body temperature confirms it. And cervical mucus, we want it to be abundant bef after a period and before ovulation leading up to ovulation. It’s a great sign of strong nutrient stores and estrogen is rising and preparing for ovulation. And then if we’re not seeing that abundant cervical mucus, I wonder about nutrient deficiencies and, and cervical health and things like that. And after we ovulate, we know we have that progesterone rise with Joyce has a thermogenic effect on our body and that’s why we can confirm ovulation with our basal body temperature as well as look at into that metabolic health.
Is there, what’s the, is there a way you recommend women to start with this? ’cause I, I find that women often they don’t even know, have any idea when they’re ovulating, they don’t know the first thing on this. Is there like some kind of app or log or something that you use to just kind of get them going with this of like, okay, here’s, here’s where to put your basal body temp and
Yeah, great question. I if you, if you’re completely new to this, I don’t think apps are a bad place to start, but I do caution you that apps do often work with an algorithm so they work off like a textbook cycle of like a 28 day cycle, assuming that you’re gonna ovulate on day 14, which is not the case for many women. So if you’re have no idea where you’re starting, you know, put it in like of when you start your period, the first day of your period is cycle day one. And from there, you know, tracking observations of how long is your period, how heavy is it, are you seeing clots? What’s the color of your blood? Just getting really curious about the consistency and what you’re seeing. And in a healthy cycle after our period we’ll have a, a dry phase where hormones are starting to wake back up and the first time you see cervical mucus, that is the start of your fertile window.
So that’s a, that’s a place where I often encourage women to start of just getting curious about after your period, when do you start noticing cervical mucus? This can look all different ways. We know that it can kind of look like white hand lotion or as we get closer to ovulation it starts looking like those stretchy egg whites. So just making note, it could even just be a note in your phone of when do you see that? Yeah. And typically in healthy cycle towards once we get closer to ovulation it’s going to look more clear, more stretchy, more watery. And then after ovulation it tends to dry up. So just starting by getting curious about those patterns and making note of that. I like cervical mucus because it, it’s free all, you just have to start observing right. Every time you go to the bathroom.
Yeah.
With that said, I do understand and I respect that starting with cervical mucus can be, it’s really intimate, you know, in fertility awareness Yeah. Training, you know, we’re taught to to wipe a certain way and finger tested and pick it up. And for some women that can be a lot whenever. Yeah.
Not ready for it.
Interact with our body in this way. So some people do like starting with basal body temperature because it has that more like scientific or numbers feel to it. Yeah. So that can be an easier place for people to start. And again, I started off just by recording my temperatures in a note in my phone, but there are a couple apps that I, that I do like Read Your Body is my favorite for one reason because it doesn’t use an algorithm. It’s not going to predict when you ovulate, which is really important whether you’re trying to avoid or conceive. There’s another app out there kandara, which is really good, which I believe they have a free version. Read Your Body, there’s a small fee, but, but even if you’re not ready for an app, just observing cervical mucus. Yeah. Observing cervical mucus. Cervical mucus is always gonna be the best prediction of ovulation. And then your basal body temperature confirms ovulation. And I’d be happy to go deeper into either one of those.
I had the most interesting experience this morning. It is gonna be the most weird story, but I I I’ve been like watching the, I you know how YouTube will like take you down like all kinds of paths, right? Like I, my lately I’ve been watching videos about like, like more like extreme like religious groups. Sure. And like one of ’em that I was watching today was about like, it was like this orthodox Jewish family and they have like where they’re living out these like very ancient traditions that have been practiced in their community for like thousands of years, which I think is like beautiful. And I thought it was so interesting ’cause they kept talking about the weird stuff that like the wife had to do. And it’s basically, I don’t know if you already know this, I didn’t know all the depths of this, but basically it’s like when she’s, they were saying the thing, they were like alluding to this what we’re talking about without saying it, but it’s basically like when she’s on her period, her husband can’t touch her and then it’s like for 12 days after it starts and then she goes to get some kind of special bath and she can’t sleep in the same bed with her husband and then 12 days after her period starts, she goes to get her special bath and she’s clean and then she can like sleep in the same bed with her husband until her period starts again.
And I just thought, okay, well this is clearly about like she’s getting in with her husband, like when she’s ovulating, like there, nobody’s saying this, but like that’s obviously what’s happening.
Interesting. And
Like these, this is a c you know, like an ancient community where like it’s like, it’s almost like we think this is new and like cool but it’s actually like a traditional practice for women to be where they’re like actually very aware of their cycle. That’s what kind of hit me of like, oh my gosh, like this has been, this community has been, the women have been closely tracking their cycle for like millennia and it’s actually maybe the mo more modern and weird thing is to not be in touch with your cycle.
Like we’re the ones catching up today.
Yes, yes. It’s like the thing that seems new and cool is actually the more classic way, you know, I’m
So glad you brought that up. I was just speaking on this, have you heard of like the red tent white tent stories?
No.
So I think it’s a book, but essentially it is tapping into that ancient wisdom where back in the day before our modern technology and all these artificial lights, it’s very common for women to either bleed with the new moon or the full moon. Okay. And vice versa. So if you’re not bleeding with the new moon, you’re ovulating them and if you’re not bleeding with the full moon, you’re ovulating. And the idea being is that whenever women were on their period, they would go live in a red tent I think together like as a community. And the women who were ovulating at that time would go take care of the women so they could rest and not do anything and just be taken care of. Wow. And then vice versa. So then women who were bleeding with the full moon, they would go to the white tent and the women in the red tent would take care of them.
And there’s all different stories around this and ideas. I, I think it’s said that women who bleed with the new moon are more ready for motherhood or in that season of life where women who were bleeding with the the full moon were more career oriented at that time. Like oh. So they were like taking care of women who were bleeding with the New Moon. Really, really interesting. But it’s similar to that point that you made of women were expected I guess, I guess to isolate themselves or just being taken care of by other women on their period.
A societal acknowledgement about around this that like women are, that’s a great, not the same every day across the month. Like there’s a cycle that’s happening here that’s, yeah. Important to be aware of. And it reminds me too of like, it’s like a little bit different, but just I think tying in nutrition like that there’s traditional practices around foods to eat during different periods of your cycle. And like that’s not something that I think is a part of like western society at all, that there’s any awareness around that, but it’s, I think, you know, again, like an ancient wisdom to that.
Yeah, exactly. And I think just the word you said is spot on of just acknowledgement that this is happening and it is a time to rest and it’s something to acknowledge and just not suppress or push through but take care of and and honor because it’s, you know, it’s how we bring children into this world and it’s this really, it’s very specific to women. We’re the only ones that can do it, so let’s honor it and let’s take care of it.
Absolutely. It’s, it’s like almost like our society is formed around this sort of like male dominated way of being that never changes. And if it was that women had designed say the workspace, it might be that you like come in on Monday and everybody’s like, what phase are you in? Yes,
Yes. I know
I order lunch accordingly.
I can’t think of the companies, but I know I’ve heard recently where it’s like women either wear like a red necklace or something like when they’re on their period, so people know, and I know there’s like some, there’s specific companies that are actually like letting women have paid leave when they’re on their period. So I think you said it exactly right of like, we’re the ones catching up to this and it’s kind of like going back to how things were hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
Yeah, yeah, totally. Tell me some of the other nutritional things around, I mean I guess there’s different timelines of this, but maybe on more on the long timeline to start, like when you’re seeing maybe like you mentioned, okay there’s, you’re not having, your cervical mucus isn’t looking the way it should look or maybe your cycle length isn’t the way it should look or you’ve just lost your period. Tell me some of the main like nutritional factors. I think you kind of hit on like an energy deficit as being like a, a big driver, but like what else are some things that you’ve seen? Yeah,
Absolutely. So I think of it as, you know, there’s foundational factors of fertility that we need for strong fertility and I recommend, you know, focusing on these no matter where you are in your cycle. And then when you’re in specific phases we can get more nuanced with it and focus on specific nutrients. But yes, being in a calorie deficit, and we always look at this as like a unique situation is gonna be dependent from person to person and and where you’re coming from. But the number one thing I see women under eating is protein. And when you know, no matter what you’re dealing with, whether it’s PMS, short luteal phases and ovulation, a lot of things will fall into place whenever we start eating adequate protein for our body. It’s a building blocks of human life. So if you think of it that way, whenever you’re preparing for pregnancy, a lot of women are eating enough protein to support themselves.
Yeah. And then we’re asking the body to build another human and we’re gonna need a lot of building blocks for that. So eating adequate protein is huge and we know that we’re gonna get the most bioavailable protein from animal sources. So that’s not to say it can be done with the vegan or vegetarian diet, but we just have to get a little more creative because those amino acids will be most bioavailable to our body from the animal sources. Yeah. So I recommend starting there, working with someone to figure out the best range for you and your activity level, your body size, those will all be important factors to consider fatty acids. So making sure we’re having adequate fat, I think of, you know, amino acids and fatty acids as a backbone of our hormones. So making sure we’re having adequate fat for women who are just coming off birth control and thinking of where to start and preparing their body. You know, I, I focus there of adequate protein and fat, but carbs are just as important. We don’t wanna dismiss carbs but we do wanna be mindful of making sure we’re balancing our blood sugar through nutrition. Yeah.
So a lot of women are experiencing fertility challenges because of irregular or dysregulated blood sugar. So using smart nutrition therapy to have adequate carbs but you know, always pairing it with fat and protein to minimize blood sugar spike. Those are some of like the foundational pieces that I, that I think about for strong fertility. Getting into like the micronutrients, you know, making sure we have adequate iron specifically around our period is a wonderful practice and routine to get into thinking of cervical mucus and if it is deficient and there is cervical imbalance, folate is a really important nutrient for to think about. Cervical mucus, vitamin D, vitamin B12, these are all really important to test and things that we can’t get from cycle tracking. We can see a lot in the mest cycle chart, which I love. But some of the more specific micronutrients like vitamin D, vitamin B12, and iron are all really important to test I say in preparation for conception and that I think about.
Yeah, absolutely. And what I love about what you said is like, because I’m completely in alignment with you on what you said on the macronutrients and the micronutrients, but like one fascinating thing about this is just this is how the cake is made is that when you do the, when you do implement all the things you said about macronutrients, so you’re getting sufficient high quality fatty acids, you’re getting truly sufficient protein of high quality when you’re getting real food, whole carbohydrates that are a little glycemic and that don’t spike your blood sugar. All of those foods like with them rides the micronutrients. Yes. So you kind of get with like win-win situation because it’s those, those whole foods are gonna be displacing those more like nutrient, poorer poop foods typically.
That’s a great way to say it. Like the yes, it’s always gonna be this domino effect. And that’s what I love about holistic health. Like it’s not, it’s not separate. Like once one thing comes into place, a lot of other things are going to have be positively impacted. So Yeah, beautifully said.
Yeah. ’cause it’s not like some made up fertility diet that you cooked up in your dreams. It’s, it’s human health, it’s what, it’s the diet that humans and women are made to be eating to build babies. So it’s like Yeah, correct. In many ways and will be correct healthful in many ways, even aside from like fertility as well.
A hundred percent. And I think, you know, just like the common thread and in these different parts of our conversation is so much, it’s like getting back to the roots of how did we eat back then? And like even like circadian rhythms and lights, like it’s so much about getting back to what we used to do and clearing the noise and the nutrition space specifically. I think some of the confusion, just frustration and, and problems that can be causes, like these extreme diets that are like no carbohydrates or vegan or vegetarian. Like anytime you’re being told to follow this extreme diet, I would caution you to, to question that because our body should be able to handle a well-rounded diet and if it can’t, like let’s dig into that and why can’t you handle these things and how can we get back to just these whole foods and create a microbiome that can support all these foods.
Yeah. I mean once you start practicing and become experienced, I feel like this gets into like a really complicated place in terms of, here’s how I see it typically going, woman grows up in western world, eats western diet, has health challenges, wants to fix health challenges, sees extreme diets, tries to implement that as a way of fixing health challenge, thus causing new health challenges. Maybe meets with a professional, is maybe told the exactly correct thing of what human diet should look like. Then confronts this mismatch between our society and like what’s easily achievable for her. And what I specifically am talking about is, you know, with the economy, I need to make a full-time income to pay our mortgage. I’ve got kids that have, you know, activities and homework after school and our whole evenings are consumed by that. And like feeding, fitting in self-care is difficult.
Cooking full meals is extremely difficult. Not to mention the cost of food. I, I find that it tends to be a little bit of a trap that a lot of women find themselves in where it’s like, it’s not as easy as just snapping your fingers and suddenly eating a whole foods diet. I find that it’s, it’s i we’ve grown away from a way of living that supports doing that in terms of, and I’m not saying women shouldn’t be able to have careers. I work full-time and I have three kids at home. I’m not against it, but I, what I am saying is that in a, in a more traditional home, I would have all day at my house to work on creating these like whole foods meals and like how am I supposed to do it now? Like, do you ever feel like you run into that?
Yeah, it’s a great point and I think it’s, I hope become a more well recognized that, you know, we’re asking women to do multiple full-time jobs.
Yes. Whether
It’s home taking care of the home, taking care of your kids, like those are two separate jobs in itself. Right. And then, you know, work full-time and take care of ourselves. Like it’s, it’s a lot and it’s not, yeah. It’s not lost on me and I, I see it all the time, you know, in different situations whether women have, are coming to me later in life wanting to have kids because they’ve focused the first half of their life on growing this incredible career and it’s very, very inspiring. Yeah. But like to your point, it’s like society, once they, you know, are ready to step into this phase of their life, it’s you have to jump over like hoop after hoop to get there and unwind so much of the lifestyle that you’ve been living of like the hustle culture. Yeah. So yeah, it’s, it’s not easy and no, if I can encourage women to, you know, start with the foundations and start with one thing and some of the most powerful things that we can do for our health and fertility are free.
And I don’t wanna say simple because of all the things you mentioned going on, but lately I’ve been really into, you know, focusing and educating on the circadian rhythm. Yeah. And you know, if we can, like sleep is a foundation of everything, period. If we’re not sleeping well, a lot of things aren’t gonna be going well, but prioritizing getting like 15 or even just five minutes of sunlight in the morning and shutting down the lights in the evening to support that circadian rhythm can be one of those powerful things we can do for our fertility and supporting our melatonin and cortisol rise and fall. So I think about things like that of what are, what’s the low hanging fruit that we can do that’s gonna make the biggest impact on our hormones and fertility while you have all these other things going on.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Doing what you can do and just kind of stepwise working your way into a routine that’s sustainable. And I find that you can do that with food as well. It’s just that you kind of have to get outta this mindset of like crash dieting. It’s more of like evolving a new lifestyle around food that involves often some batch cooking and weekend prep and things like that. But it, I find that it can be achievable. It’s just, it is kind of sometimes hard to see that it’s like, okay, two people have a full-time job, two people share children and like, you know, this scenario. But like if, if the, if the woman is having hormone problems and wants eat like a whole foods diet, it’s typically gonna be her that’s gonna have to like do all the work to make it happen. And yeah, like you said, it’s like multiple full-time jobs
And to your point, letting go of perfectionism. Yeah. Nothing is ever gonna be perfect, but don’t negate letting it be good because it can’t be perfect. Like yeah, you’re not gonna be able to do everything and that’s the reality. But can you do one thing? Can you get five minutes to sunlight in the morning? Can you eat breakfast within the first hour of waking up? Can you add an extra egg to your breakfast?
I was gonna say eggs, that’s funny. Like with eggs, chicken eat eggs.
I enjoy someone’s like, I don’t eat eggs and egg like I eat eggs. You do. But just like those simple mindful actions, like it can go such a long way and that’s what’s gonna build up to supporting your fertility.
Yeah, absolutely. And like I love that you highlighted the adding because I think our society is really programmed around like what should I cut out? What should I take out? What should I eat less of? Like, you know, what time should I eat, you know, less food and like how short should I fasting would nobody or I like how long should I pass and all this. But I find especially with this topic, it’s a lot about adding those nutrient dense foods, adding the breakfast, adding snacks, adding whole foods because it is about nourishing yourself and almost making your body sense. I think it is a physiological way but your body has truly senses around like safety in terms of like the most obvious one is just energy availability. That’s like a safety signal to your body around like the safety to get pregnant and have a baby.
I love that you said that. And that’s, you know, taking a bird’s eye view. That’s what I share with women of if they’re not getting pregnant as soon as they thought they would or it’s not happening or it’s unexplained and asking the question of what in your life isn’t working for you or is there something signaling to your body that making your body believe that it’s not safe to conceive? And this could be a wide range of things, maybe it’s just do you have space in your schedule to conceive, you know, women come to me from these corporate careers and we look at their calendar and it’s jam packed and they’re flying overseas two times a week and it’s like, where in your life is there space to have conceive? And you know, this gets into like the spiritual space, but I do think there’s this mystery quality to this fertility world of your baby knows like when it’s time and we have to create space and create safety for them to come in.
And this is, this is, it’s hard because a lot of this might be subconscious of, is it past trauma or past experiences that your body’s holding onto that’s not deeming it to be safe? You know, I’ve had my own experience of being in a severe calorie deficit and over exercising and really stressful breakup and my body was like, there’s no way we’re gonna let you conceive right now. No baby, no baby. Like absolutely not. This is not a good idea. And I stopped ovulating for nine months. Wow. I wasn’t trying to conceive, I, I didn’t want to, I was interested in conceiving but I stopped off at for nine months and it was just a really big wake up call of your body’s response to, to those emotions and to our outside world it’s listening and it’s really, really wise.
Are we life twins? ’cause I also have that in college. Did you under over exercising bad breakup? No. Period for a long time. Yeah. What was
Interesting about my experience is I still, I was still bleeding but I wasn’t ovulating.
Oh, interesting. Yeah.
Yeah. So I like this piece because if it wasn’t for tracking my temperature I wouldn’t have known it wasn’t a period and if I was trying to get pregnant, let’s just say in that situation and it wasn’t happening, it would’ve been really confusing. But because I was using the fertility awareness method, I knew that it was a breakthrough bleed and not a true period ’cause I wasn’t ovulating. So it can be really supportive in that way whenever just gathering information and getting your own answers.
So good. Tell me, so I’m sure it varies by individual quite a lot, but when you work with someone, do you have kind of a flow of like what you do? Like are you gonna do certain labs on them or is it gonna be that you have them keep a log of their vital signs of their period? Or like what are kind of the main things that you’ll do with them?
Yeah, great question. So I always, you know, I I I like, you know, setting expectations of, you know, let’s work, commit to four months here the first month being a month to collect data. And this can look several different ways depending on the situation. But I do like getting lab work done in accordance with your menstrual cycle. So, you know, testing in the follicular phase and luteal phase Hmm. There’s standard labs that we can get in certain ca situations. I love you relying on more functional lab work like the Dutch test if you’re familiar with that, looking at sex and adrenal hormone metabolites. So I, I set the expectation of it taking a month because we need to give your body time to cycle and wait for the correct day at that time. I also look at a comprehensive health intake and if there’s interest, look teaching women to track their cycle and building what I call a baseline chart.
So we wanna make sure we’re speaking the same charting language. So there’s a lot of education around how to track your cycle, how to collect the certain data, and then building your baseline chart to see what’s your normal, because again, I don’t wanna work off of this 28 day cycle. I wanna see what’s normal for you. So after collecting that data, the cycle charting lab work and health intake, then you know, I set the expectation that I’m gonna build this specific health protocol to you and we need to give it at least three months to work. And this is due to the 90 day follicular development that we often see in the, in the menstrual cycle. And when we’re taking this holistic approach, we know it’s not gonna be an overnight fix. So doing our due diligence and committing to it for a solid three months.
And that’s when we often see the sustainable change happening in the metro cycle chart. So depending on their situation and what they’re dealing with, we’ll do a variety of those labs and I’ll build the health intake. And I always start with no matter what the, the foundations of fertility that we’ve briefly mentioned, sleep, exercise, stress and nutrition and making sure that that’s in place first. I think of those as, you know, the bones of our house and if those are shaky, anything else we pile on isn’t going to have the same impact that it would. Yeah. We can’t just pile on supplements into a, a shaky foundation. Yeah. So making sure those are in place and then getting strategic with supplementation of how can we finesse and nudge your body back into balance. So brief overview of where I typically start.
Yeah, that’s amazing. I mean I’m sure it’s a lot for them to kind of go all in on this all at once. Like even the things, the foundational things, that’s a big life change for people.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I’m thinking of like one client where we haven’t even had the supplement conversation because we’re getting her sunlight in the morning first and focusing on adding even more protein and those two things right there, like when done consistently, those can make a big difference. Yeah. So not bypassing those first steps.
Yes. Love it. I can’t just put some peanut butter on a piece of bread and have a, it’s call that a high protein breakfast. Whatcha talking
About? It’s the start. It’s the start. I feel like the concept of no naked carbs and you know, adding that fat protein bread. Yes,
It’s true. We’re adding some fat, we’re on the right path. Well Hailey, this is amazing. I’m sure people will like, love to learn more about what you’re doing. I’m fascinated. I love your approach and your thank you. Just the way that you talk about it is so wonderful. I like, I kind of am like, oh my gosh, like if, if I had fertility problems I would totally wanna work with you. Thank you.
It sounds like we have a lot in common.
Yeah. So tell people how they can connect with you.
Yeah, my practice is called Innate Rhythm and that’s my website, innate rhythm.com. I am on Instagram at haley smith dot fa. Fa stands for fertility awareness. So those are the best places to define me. I offer group programs that will be launching again later this year called Fertility Freedom. For now I’m working with women one-on-one and we, I meet you wherever you’re at, whether you’re just needing that, if you feel like you have that strong foundation, you just need some of that more functional lab work, we can do one or two sessions. If you want that full commitment and transformation, then I recommend that four month commitment. But sign up for a free discovery call through my website and that’ll be a wonderful place to start so I can see if I can help you.
Awesome, thank you Hailey. We’ll put all that in the show notes for sure and we’ll definitely link up the free discovery call as well. And I checked out your Instagram, it’s great. So we’ll link that as well. Thank
You. Awesome. Thank you Erin, this was so fun.
Same. I’d love to have you again some time maybe when you have your group program launching or some other time you can let me know and I wanna talk more.
I love that. Anytime.
Alright, take care. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to the Empower Nutrition podcast. We love offering insight to help you optimize your wellness. If you enjoy this episode, feel free to leave us a rating on whichever platform you’ve streamed from and consider subscribing. Also, you can learn more about our practice at www dot Empower Nutrition Health and that link is also in your show notes. Take care and talk to you soon.