What Your Body Actually Needs This Spring

Spring brings more light, more energy, and a natural push toward movement and growth. But for a lot of people, it doesn’t feel that way.

Instead of feeling better, they feel more activated, more overwhelmed, or like symptoms they thought were improving start creeping back in.

In this episode, I talk about what’s actually going on.

Most people I work with aren’t doing nothing. They’re trying a lot—learning, adjusting, experimenting, taking in more information. But the results don’t hold.

And it’s not because they’re doing the wrong things.

It’s because their body doesn’t yet have the capacity to respond to what they’re doing.

We get into:

•  why spring reveals your reserves instead of creating the problem 
•  why more information isn’t the answer 
•  how trying too many things can actually slow your progress 
•  what it really means to build capacity in the body 
•  and why consistency matters more than intensity 

I also talk about one of the most overlooked foundations for digestion—bitters—and how something simple, when done consistently, can start to shift things in the right direction.

👉 You can find the bitters I mentioned here:
 https://divine-health-from-the-inside-out.myshopify.com/products/original-bitters-by-herbalist-alchemist?_pos=1&_sid=dc34c4bfb&_ss=r

Bitters work by activating receptors on the tongue that signal the body to begin digestion, helping support enzyme, acid, and bile production. 

This episode is really about slowing down, working with your body instead of against it, and creating the conditions for real change to happen over time.

If you’ve been doing a lot and not seeing results that hold, this will help you understand why—and what to do instead.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to Enjoy to Be Meeting, a podcast sharing the magic of minerals, microbes, and return back to earthways. Tune in to learn how to nourish yourself emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually. I'm to reconnect with and deep in the fundamentals of human health so we can return to a wild state. I'm your host, Lydia Joy. Let's celebrate this wild ride we call the human experience. Well, hello everyone, and welcome back to the Rewilded Wellness Podcast. I'm your host, Lydia Joy. I truly hope you are all settling into this glorious spring. Now that it's April, I think April might be one of my favorite months. We got through March, the longest month of the year, it feels like every year. And now everything is popping off, starting to bloom. There's an this sense of emergence coming through the land. For those of you who might be new here, um, beyond my functional nutrition practice, I am also an avid forager, gardener, and foodie. So I'm just pretty smitten with April right now because we are seeing life again. And I've gotten back to my foraging, um, back to barefoot walks at my creek trail and being able to see what's all coming up and collect. I'm also barefoot in the garden as much as possible. I've been able to gather fresh nettles, excuse me, um, some other things, patient stock, and uh, but also dandelion greens, garlic mustard greens, and you know, some other things, but those are mainly the ones that are prolific right now enough to collect and actually eat, you know, put into a meal. Um, been able to eat nettles every single day. I highly recommend um learning how to identify nettles and collect it. It is a food, it is something you can eat. Um, it's not just an herb to put in an infusion. Um, and it's a great preparation for spring to help people deal with the changes in the spring. So if you haven't gotten that far in your journey, definitely think about it. Also, I have a garden. I talked a lot about the garden last year in the podcast. Um, you know, and of course, it's only producing so much right now, right? Because it's still early spring. So I've only been able to get some things, but I've been able to get a handful uh of something every day, right? Or I'll go out and pick some herbs and put it in my meal, or some greens, or um, some shives, or something, and make sure I have something in every meal, which has been really nice to get the greens back. Not to mention the different bitter plants that are coming back. Spring is when the bitter plants come back. And the bitter taste does so much for the human body, and it's very initiative, quite frankly. Um, it's a great initiator for our digestion. I really love bitters so much. Um, I geek out to them all the time. They just make me so happy. They're so, they're such a staple, right? Um, and so right now, like we're gonna, it's only the beginning. We're gonna be getting many more bitters coming through. Um, and they do initiate the cephalic phase of digestion, stuff like that beginning phase of digestion. They wake the system up, right? And with so many of my clients, once they actually get up to a full consistent dose with bitters, um, you know, they they do notice real changes, like less gas, greater ease between meals, less bloating. Even people with like long-term dysbiosis and, you know, like a lower miner mineral capacity, and maybe they have complex test results, something that simple can help them notice shifts in their body. So I personally think of bitters as a staple or a maybe we could call it, I don't want to call it a macronutrient, but and I don't want to call it a supplement. It's really not a supplement. It's, you know, it's an aspect of our diet that we were designed and created with bitter receptors all throughout our body. So it's literally a staple. It's like a necessity. It's like, you know, how we know we need protein and we know we need fat and we know we need carbs. Well, guess what? We also need bitters. Um and, you know, every single one of us needs them, right? Um, it should be a part of our daily routine or our, you know, our lives, something that we consume. So that is my first reminder for spring. Um and the other nice thing is like if that's all you took away from this episode, you know, when people actually work with one thing at a time and they put it into their routine, right, for long enough, they notice the changes. Um, and for some people with bitters, you might feel benefit like almost right away. I've had people tell me that. Um, some people it takes a little more time. It just depends on how well you're tuning in. And, you know, if you're doing 52 things all at once, it's hard to know what's doing what, right? But if you just start with bitters for a week and are really intentional, you know, you could start to notice, right? And sometimes the cumulative effects might take a couple weeks for in some people. Uh, if you have like a lot of inflammation in your system, right? They might not feel all that dramatic at first, but they're still doing their work uh supporting you in so many ways, right? It's kind of like, you know, you gotta have salt every day, you gotta have certain things. You can't slack on these certain key elements that the body really needs, right? So to me, it's just a staple, it's as foundational as food. And to me, spring reminds us of that piece every single year. So I'll link my favorite bitter formulation in the show notes for you, in case you want to get started with them. Um, and you know, some people have been using them or they dropped off, or maybe they're not taking them enough, or maybe they're forgetting to take them. This is a great reminder for you as well. Um, right now I am making my own because I've been doing this for so long and I can target now to what my body specifically needs, plus eating them when uh, you know, when they make their way onto my plate. So I think most people initially just need to get more bitter foods into their life. Foods are great, do the best you can, but sometimes that's not enough to really help support your cephalic phase, your digestion, your vagus nerve, all these things. Um, so using those bitter tincture formulations as a part of your dietary intake is a lot more um targeted and very helpful. So, anyways, you know, something that seems like, I don't know, not so exciting, but to me it's exciting. It may seem like a boring fundamental can make a pretty significant difference for you. So get them in, create a baseline, and build from there. All right, before I get into the heart of today's episode, I want to remind you that this podcast is listener supported. That means no ads, no paid promotions, nothing like that. It also means I really appreciate when you share an episode or leave a review. That's how other people find their way here. And if you want to go a step further and financially support the show, there's an option for that in the show notes as well. Of course, it's totally optional. I have hundreds of episodes here for you. So if this work has been valuable, any of those things means a lot to me. And I just thank you so much for being here and for whatever way you want to contribute. All right, so what I've been observing. So today's episode, um, actually, before I go into it, I want I kind of want to name who this is for. This is for the person who is already on a health journey, they've already done a lot of things, they feel like they know a lot of the foundations. Um, you know, they've done a lot of cleaning up in their lives, they've done a lot of learning, they know about a lot of things, but there's they they say things like, I'm stuck, I'm overwhelmed, things aren't really actually moving forward enough. I'm still in the same pattern, things aren't really holding. Or, or sometimes there's a person on the other end of that. They've taken in as much information as they can find, like eating it all up all over the place in the holistic health online spaces, all, you know, who knows what they all are these days. There's so many. And they're to the point where they're like, oh my gosh, everyone has a different opinion. Everyone's saying something and it makes sense to some degree, but there's very so many variables. I don't even know where to start anymore. I don't even know how to filter through all the noise, through all the differences. So then what do they do? They sit there and think, well, there's a whole bunch of stuff I should be doing, but I don't even know where to start. So they don't start. And both of those patterns are actually pointing to the same thing, and that's what I want to talk about today, you know? Um, because it's coming up with the people that I work with, my clients, people who message me in in my inbox. Um, so so most people who are here listening to this podcast are not doing nothing. They're, you know, committed to some level of a healthy lifestyle, right? They're not totally checked out. You know, you're not ignoring your health. Um, you're trying to do a lot of different things, right? Consuming a lot of information, you know, trying this supplement, that supplement, doing dietary tweaks, right? Like, you know, okay, I need some minerals. Okay, something going on in my gut. Okay. Um, let me do this little bit here and that little bit there, and this little bit there. And I feel like I'm covering a lot of the bases that I've read, but like uh it's not thorough enough to be effective for me to actually make progress, right? People are like genuinely, sincerely trying, right? But what they're all saying to me is like, okay, I can only get this far on my own. The results are not holding. And like the symptoms are still there, that I certain symptoms are still there, or certain symptoms cycle back, or something works for a little while and then stops, right? So they feel stuck in a way that they just can't explain because it doesn't make sense from the outside. Like they all say things like, How can I be doing all these things and still feel like this? Like I still feel like I'm get almost getting nowhere. And so here's what I want to offer you. Okay. It's the bottom line is your body isn't actually able to hold what you're doing. It doesn't have enough capacity, right? Um, so this is a different problem and it requires a different solution. So if you checked out my last episode, you know I talked about spring. I did a little quickie for you. Why people say they're feeling worse in spring. So if you want to check that out, go back. It's short and sweet. Spring changes things up real big for us, right? Okay. We enter spring. It's really revealing of where your body's at. This is the thing that I keep coming back to, right? Spring arrives. We all expect to feel better. We all expect to be like, okay, great. More energy, the sun's here, you know, more motivation, more lightness. And, you know, for some people that happens to some degree, right? But for a lot of people, something else happens first. They feel more activated, they tip into overwhelm, they feel more wired, you know, all kinds of things, right? Um, and it's not because spray is the problem. It's because it's just honest, right? When we have more light, we have more biological demand. So the body's getting that signal to activate, cortisol rises naturally, the mitochondria are being asked to output more, the immune system shifts gears, right? That activation requires fuel. It requires reserve. It requires a body that has something in the tank to actually meet the moment. And so if your reserves aren't there, if your minerals are low, if your gut is still leaking, full of endotoxins, if your nervous system has been on edge all winter, um, the spring activation doesn't feel like energy. It feels like overwhelm. It feels like your body's asking something of you that you don't have to give. Okay. So I want to go into the garden with y'all for a minute because I think this is an honest little analogy, a little teaching that I can offer you. So this is the time of year, if you're a gardener, maybe you're not, but you can really you can understand. Like this is the time of the year where we start seedling, certain seedlings inside. Like I live in the north, I live in the northeast, so we want to get a jump on our tomatoes and peppers and warm season stuff, right? So we start seedlings inside. Or you just go and buy them at the nursery, like when it's time to plant them, right? But they started the seedlings inside for you, right? So there's this phase, right? Every single year without fail, right? Um, if you've ever tried to grow something like peppers, for example, like you put them in the soil and you watch them, you give them light, you try to keep them warm, you water them. And sometimes they just sit there doing nothing, nothing, nothing. And then you're just like, well, okay, hold on. Are they gonna grow? Did some, did I do something wrong? Um, is the soil off? Did I mess it up? Is are they viable, right? And then one day, and it's always like seemingly sudden, although it's not, it's very based on conditions. Um, you know, these little green sprouts start break breaking the surface, and then within a week, they're just like reaching towards the light. And you have little baby plants and you're like, yes, woohoo! I did it. Um, I said pepper simply because I I feel like they take longer than almost any other seedlings that I try to grow inside. Right? So nothing actually changed dramatically the day they arrived. It's just the conditions were right, the time had passed, you know, and biology does what biology does when it has what it needs. Okay. And our bodies are much the same way, although we're not as simplistic as a pepper seedling. Um, you basically can't rush what requires time and the right conditions. You know, you can provide the inputs, you can reduce what's working against you, you can be consistent and patient and present. And then you have to trust the biology because it just has to work on the timeline responding to the conditions that you may have only recently started to create, right? And the problem is that most people give up during the nothing seems to be happening phase, right? And they switch things up or they add 10 new things really quick. Um, or maybe they just assume what they're doing isn't working. Maybe they try to, you know, I don't know, reset the clock, if you will, and start over and do something else, or whatever, right? This is where people get really tripped up, okay? Let's just be honest. And the reality is, is most people are trying to fix um like one single issue at a time. Maybe that's not true. Maybe some people are like, I have this label of thing in my body, so I'm gonna do these things for that. Then I have this other thing, so I'm gonna do these things for that, right? I have this symptom, so what do I need to treat this symptom? Or let's say they have, I don't know, um, SIBO, or they have MCAS, or they're like, okay, I need a specific protocol for this in my body. Um, but that's not how our body works, right? Like you're never dealing with just one diagnosed or labeled or like thing of a symptom or condition or syndrome or whatever. Right? You're you're dealing with a whole system, right? Your nervous system, your nervous system is at its own place, right? As compared to someone else's. Your specific mineral pattern and reserves. Where's your digestion at? What's going on north to south, man? You could be, it could be have bottlenecks all along the way, right? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe one person has more problems in the north than the next person, and someone else has, you know what I mean? And then your gut environment, right? Everyone's is going to be different. You might have leaky gut and endotoxins and all the things. So, and then you have a whole history of what your body has been through. Okay. You always forget this. Like, we have we have our whole lives to contend with here. And all of those things have to work together. So before you can even get into the deeper repair work, you know, everybody wants to do detox and gut rebuilding and whatever it is. Um, your body usually has to stabilize first. And most people skip that. They try to jump straight into fixing, fixing, fixing, fixing without having a system that can actually tolerate all the things they're doing to try to fix the specific labeled problems they've come to believe they have, or maybe they've been diagnosed with. But if your body can't hold the input, it doesn't matter how correct it might be. And I've said this before, and I'll say it again: more isn't always better. Like more things, like 82 things, a million things, right? I want to talk about what's actually getting in the way because I don't think it's a lack of a million inputs or even information or even effort on many people's part. On many people's part, it is too much input, right? Too many changes happening at once, not enough consistency with any one thing, and not enough respect for the fact that the body has a finite capacity to integrate change, especially when it's already under a hefty load. You only have so much space, so much time, so much reserve. Your body only has so much bandwidth at any given moment. And when you're chronically depleted, you know, like burnt-out minerals, you have a compromised gut, your nervous system is in some imbalanced state, right? Your bandwidth might be narrower than you actually think, which means the thing that would actually help you might not be adding more. It might be doing less, more consistent of some important things for longer than feels comfortable, right? Um certain foundational things done consistently every day, making sure like you're actually moving your bowels every day, you know. Um, you know, so I there's so many things that I could go into because there's so many things people come to me with. But the point is, is you know, if you do certain basics, you gotta do them every day. They are non-negotiables, right? And you need to give it time. Now, when you come to realize you are not making progress in any area of your health that feels stuck to you, um, it's important to get a read on why and only implement so many things at a time. Because if you do, if you dump 15 supplements into yourself, right, you could be overwhelming certain things, even if you feel like something's working and you, it's crazy, right? So it's really important to be consistent, slow, steady, you know. So if you're gonna try something, like I said, with the bitters, you know, like everyone could, if they're not doing bitters right now, you could all start bitters and go slow and just stick with it for a couple weeks and see how it's going, if it improves your digestion, if you're moving your bowels better, right? And then it's like, okay, this is holding, this is landing. Maybe there's another thing I can do that's very foundational that I can support myself with, right? The goal is not always to just like hurry up and optimize. Like, okay, I have these things I want to get rid of. I want to optimize myself so I don't have to deal with them, right? It's more about building the conditions that your body needs to actually respond. And I'm so sorry, but that is slower, quieter, more patient process than wellness culture makes it look. So I mentioned the cephalic phase, the cephalic phase earlier, um, and how basically digestion starts in the brain. So I want to I want to circle back to this for a second because it's really simple, really practical, and super important. Because if I'm talking about conditions and capacity and integration, I want to give you something you can do today that demonstrates all of it, right? So digestion starts in the brain, okay? It doesn't start in your stomach, it doesn't start all the way in your gut, it starts in your brain. So before food ever reaches your mouth, there's a Phase of digestion called the cephalic phase. It's triggered by sight, the smell, uh, the anticipation of your food, right? So you're hopefully you're cooking your own food or someone's cooking it for you. You're not pulling up to the drive-thru window and smelling that, although that will that will signal you. But your brain signals your body to start producing digestive enzymes, stomach acid, bile, right? Some people's bodies can't do this as well right now because they don't have a lot of reserve, but you can still do it, right? Your brain can signal that. And basically, what your body is doing is it's trying, it's preparing to receive the food. Okay. And I've been told, and I don't remember the exact amount, but I'm gonna say it's somewhere around 20%. This phase accounts for like 20%, a significant portion of your total digestive output. So the thing is, is you have control over this, okay? It only happens when you are present, you are getting into a place where you have the spaciousness to eat your food, right? You can actually sit down, you can relax, you can chew, you can appreciate. You're not like in hypervigilance, like thinking about the 82 things you have to do as soon as you're done your lunch. Oh my gosh, I have to do these things. Let me hurry up and eat, right? No, no, no. Eating is not something that's like you have to shove it into your day because you have 80 things else to do. It's like you the eating part needs to be with presence, okay? Um, so if you're like distracted, scrolling, you know, stamped and stressed, rushing around. You're basically bypassing a key phase of your digestion that contributes to potentially 20% of your overall digestive function. That's a big deal to me. Like, so your body hasn't had the chance to prepare if you skip this phase, and then you wonder why your belly feels gross or you feel bloated or whatever, right? And this is where the vagus nerve also starts to get to work, right? You know, getting those bitter receptors hit has uh an element of support to the vagus nerve, that wandering nerve that connects your brain to your gut, that communication line for all of this, right? So chronic stress, shallow breathing, a nervous system stuck in activation, all of it impairs the vagal tone. And when you have impaired vagal tone, it means you have the impaired phase of the cephalic phase, which means you have impaired digestion, which goes through the whole track, right? So every single meal before you've even taken a bite, and you're in that pattern of rush and stress and not slowing down and not actually being present and not actually chewing really well, you know. So you're you're automatically contributing to your own digestive discord, if you will. So the simplest thing I can offer you, simpler than any supplement, simpler than any protocol, is this before you eat, like sit down, pause, like be intentional, take some breasts, like look at your food, smell it, give your give your brain a chance to register. Get those bitters in your mouth while the food's being prepared, right? This is f physiology, and it costs you almost next to nothing. The bitters are so cheap. Um and by the way, this is exactly what those bitter plants are initiating when they hit your tongue. That bitter signal activates receptors that begin the whole cephalic cascade. Your body recognizes it, it responds. Okay, spring, initiative. All right, good deal. So this time for us all to pay more attention, wake your digestion back up. All right. So let me bring this all together into something that you can actually use, right? If you're not, you know, um, working with anybody right now and you're just on your own, pick one or two foundational things this spring, not 10 things that address the train directly, such as bitters before meals or a mineral-rich herbal infusion daily. I talked about nettles just a minute ago. If you can go out and forage for nettles and dehydrate them and sprinkle them on your meals, I mean, that is amazing. Um, if you can go on a short walk after eating to support motility, right? Um getting that pause before every meal. You know, there's like, I just said like three or four things, right? I promise you, most people are not doing these. Do them consistently. I know it sounds boring. I know it sounds lame. I know it doesn't sound complicated, but it's effective. So do it. Do it consistently every day for long enough to actually see what they do. And give your body the chance to respond before you doubt it or before you add a whole bunch of things or change up the plan. Like, give yourself a full two weeks at least, and then observe, right? Um, you know, like just be genuinely curious. Like, just see if you notice anything. Um, you know, what what is your energy like? Feel between meals? Like, what does your belly feel like after you eat a meal? You know? Um, this is a great way to actually build a relationship with your own body when you do one thing at a time long enough and just tune in to how it's going. You're paying attention in a way that most people never actually sustain because they're always on to the next thing and they're getting way ahead of their own bodies, right? All right, so I wanted to keep today's episode super simple because I think it's important uh for people to go back to the basics always. Um, and I think most people don't need tons and tons and tons of more information all the time. I know a lot of people love researching and they want to know all the things, they want to read all the books. And there's nothing wrong with that per se, but like when you can't actually integrate those things, right, in the moment, you know, it can feel like, you know, this over deeper overwhelm as to like, oh my gosh, I can't even do all the things that I know I'm supposed to do. Like if that's how you feel and you feel overwhelmed by the amount of information you're researching and you want to just do them all, but you can't, it's like pause, you know, put some of that down, you know, and then maybe, you know, what you really need is enough of the right information for where your body is right now, and then the conditions for your body to actually respond to it. And that's what I work with people on. I work with people who've been dealing with symptoms for a long time. Usually they've tried a lot of things. They're not new to this, they're not uninformed, um, but they're still stuck and not enough has really held. And they usually are missing some of the basics, not gonna lie. And it's okay. It's not a judgment, it's just a reality. And so what we do is we look at what's actually going on in the body, right? We look at the minerals, the nervous system, the gut ecology. We look at those three key things, and then organize a plan that helps the body build things back, but really more so in a way the body can actually tolerate and respond to. Like it's very body-led, right? It's like, all right, here's what we need to do right now, but like let's start to test out one thing at a time and see how your body responds before we load you up, right? And we sequence things, we paste things. It's slower and more intentional than most people are used to, but it actually sticks. So if that's what you're looking for, if you're ready to stop cycling through things and start actually building your inner terrain, um, that's what I do with clients in my minerals and microbes uh work. You can find the information about it in the show notes below. I am onboarding a few clients this month now as I'm recording this in April. Read it over. If you have questions, you're welcome to email me. I'm always happy to email chat with folks. Um, but that's there for you, for those of you who feel ready to get the guidance to go through this uh very intentionally together. So I appreciate you guys tuning in for this quick spring episode. I hope you uh have a takeaway from today and you actually go out and do something from this episode. I'm sure there's something here for you that you could do. And I hope you all stay wild, stay well, get outside as much as you can, put your hands in some real soil, eat something bitter, and I'll see y'all on the next episode.