Exploring Functional Nutrition with Sheri Mills

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Friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the Https://www.unhealthypodcast.com/althy Podcast, the show where we try to talk about living healthy and being happy. It's not just about our weight and our diet. It's about all things in life, mind, body, spirit. And let's see what we can get through today. I will be having a guest on in just a couple of minutes, Sherry Mills, someone I met through my day job.

00:40
Oh, so many years ago, we're going to talk about functional nutrition. And for those of you that are new to the show, the Https://www.unhealthypodcast.com/althy Podcast has a website, Https://www.unhealthypodcast.com/ You can go there, find our past episodes. And if this is your first time using a podcast catcher on your phone or something, you can find which one of those works best for you. You can subscribe to the show on your phone.

01:09
usually in the podcast or Google apps. But if you have a preference, if you're a podcast veteran, you can find some other apps and subscribe to the show that way and keep up with all that we do. All right. So those of you that have been with me in the past couple of weeks or so, I've talked about my trip to the hospital. I've not shared too many details. I will be doing that. But one of the things that I'll be sharing is...

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how I'm so unhappy with our healthcare system the way that it is. My trip to the ER was, oh, not so joyful. Today we're going to talk about how conventional medicine probably isn't as good as we think it is as well. So Sherry Mills, functional nutrition and health coach. Sherry, how are you? I'm wonderful, how are you, Marvin? I am good. So when we met,

02:08
What was it now 14 15 years ago? Do we ever think we'd be on a podcast talking about health? Sherry and I were both in the tech space. I was doing basically what I do now provide network support to businesses And you were providing internet services and phone services and all the associated stuff and

02:37
Did a pretty good job for some of my clients. So thank you for that. Thank you. So quickly tell us because it's probably something that most people don't understand when they hear functional nutrition. Let's start with that. Okay. Well, functional means I take a holistic or functional approach to find the root cause of your chronic pain or illness.

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and try to work from the inside out through nutrition, mindset, movement, proper supplementation and to heal the body from within. Something we don't get in traditional medicine, do we? Well, we get a bunch of pills to put inside of us. Yes. We can get pills and we can get surgery, but we don't get discussions on lifestyle or nutrition.

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All right. So you say functional or holistic. Now I know that people have heard of the term holistic. But what made the change to bring in the word functional? Well, I went back to functional medicine school. Being a naturopath or a functional practitioner is taking that holistic approach to your body, where we bring in your body, mind and spirit, and we heal it from the inside out.

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So we get to the root cause. We have different tests that we provide that your traditional doctor is never going to prescribe to you. To find out what those idiosyncrasies or inadequacies are within your body that need to be addressed. All right. Now, I know that for most people, holistic kind of, I don't want to say ignores the medical side of it.

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the internet and the Google is that functional nutrition does look at previous medical tests, right? So it's not that it discounts what's been happening medically, but it takes it into consideration. Yes. So some of the things that we do is we'll go over, I'll go over your blood results. I do an in-depth dive with you on your medical history to find out.

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what you have been through, what you've been going through, what you're going through now, past all the way to future, what you want your life to be like, right? We all want to live pain-free and have a more vibrant life so we can live out the last half of it in joy, right? Right. And not on a bunch of medication and depressed and not having any energy and living in pain. So we do look at the whole picture, right? So I do work with physicians

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pharmacists We just take a different approach to how we look at your overall health. Hmm Now, do you still do any sort of? Testing at all when dealing with people Do so if they don't have any recent Test like blood work or anything like that. I'll usually ask them to get their physician to Prescribe that so they can get recent blood

06:05
work. I do all sorts of different tests from PGX, let's say somebody's on a lot of medications, they still don't feel right, they just know they're not their real self. A lot of times medications have adverse reactions with your body. Genetically, there's a way to find out if that prescribed medicine is really going to work within your body or not. So PGX testing really takes a pharmaceutical genetic test.

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to find out what medicines do and do not work with you genetically. And a lot of times we can require them to change those prescriptions to other prescriptions. Maybe another company has a different modality of it, right, a different makeup of it that will present itself better in your body. That works really well. I do hormonal testing. I do genetic testing and food sensitivity testing.

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All sorts of different tests that we can find out if there's a toxicity in your body, you know, whatever your issues are could require one of these tests. And that helps us get rein it a little quicker than doing, let's say, a hit or miss on your diet and your movement and your supplementation. I like to know early on so that we can get to the healing stage quicker.

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and your life becomes a sustainable lifestyle change over the time you work together. All right. So this seems a little bit more in depth than just simply filling out a chart when you walk into your doctor's office and they ask questions like, do you have any of this in your family history or do you have any allergies that you know of and stuff like that? So a lot of this is going deep into each particular person's well-being, right?

08:02
Absolutely. Everybody is made up a little different, right? Nobody reacts to the same medication the same. Nobody reacts to the same supplements the same. Nobody reacts to food the same. So you have to pinpoint and build something for just that person. So now if we're talking about doing a different type of test where it's the hormonal, it's the food testing and stuff, how much different?

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Let me think of a nice way to say this. How much difference in cost is it to go that route as opposed to running to a regular hospital and getting those tests? Well, okay. So those tests typically don't get prescribed by a physician. So more than likely are not covered by any insurance. So if you have an insurance policy, and this is what I find as people age.

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They're looking for the inexpensive way. They won't do anything unless it's something that's covered by insurance, which takes them down a journey of not getting well, right? So it is an investment in your health to have some of these tests, but it is a way to find the root cause and find a way to start the healing. It's not covered by insurance. So that tends to be a problem in some attributes with some people. They don't like.

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to spend the money, but some people are tired. Some people just want to feel better and they're willing to take that step to invest in their health now, not later. And what I mean by that is, if you invest in your health now and you start the healing process, we find out what's truly wrong and get the healing going. So you can have more vibrancy of health freedom, right, later, or you're going to pay for it with your own health.

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your own ability to be the person you want to be, do the things you want to do, and maybe fall into such a disease state that you can't climb back out of.

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Now the test themselves might be a little expensive, but I'll be honest, I've always been under the impression that holistic medicine and if you're dealing with people run to the whole food store or one of those places and you just find that natural medicine aisle, that those would be cheaper than dealing with our current medical system. Is that?

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Accurate or not? Well, our medical system isn't cheap. Somebody's paying for it, right? So the unfortunate thing about things you're going to pick off a shelf, no matter where it comes from, not all of them are really bioavailable for your body. And people will Google stuff and they'll say, well, I need more D, I need more C, I need this, I need that. And they go out and then they have a medicine cabinet that's the size of curio with all sorts of supplements, right?

11:06
Two things can go wrong there. Number one, there is a thing called vitamin toxicity. So not all vitamins work well together in the form you're taking them. So finding some company that has a bioavailability that's high and that knows how to blend the elements you need so that they perform in symphony together is really important. You start taking a bunch of different things because somebody told you to,

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You're on MD now, you know, what is that? MD, whatever, where you look up the web MD and all those sites, or you're Googling it or whatever, and you just start taking all this stuff. You might not be taking it properly. You might not be taking it at the right time of day. You might, they may not work well together or they may just not be quality enough to get absorbed in your system. And there's a lot of stages to that. Um,

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If you don't have a healthy gut, right, that... Are you looking at me? Are you looking at me when you say that? I'm not looking at you, Mark. This is everybody. I had IBS all my life, so I'm a walking talker here. If you have an https://www.unhealthypodcast.com/althy gut in any form or format, that's our second brain, right? There's a gut-brain axis going on. So that can cause depression. It can cause...

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chronic illnesses and pain and inflammation that takes over your body and turns into something that's hard to manage if not taken care of. So if it's not healthy and it's not working right, it doesn't matter what you take. It doesn't matter how well and clean you eat in your diet because your body's not going to absorb the nutrients in what you need. So it's a process, right? We have to look at what's really wrong, what's really going on.

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find out where we need to start so that the healing over time is the quickest ramp up, right? And that could be we have to focus on your gut first. That means we have to focus on your medications first. Everybody's different. So you just, of course, hit a topic that I'm dealing with because I've got the belly that started to develop now that I'm a little advanced in age, let's say it that way.

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in that. I mean, of course, most of us, yes, but apparently not wise enough in this situation because it's common belief and acceptance that, okay, yeah, older men, you're going to get a gut. And we kind of accept it, although I'm like, you know what? I don't want the gut. I also don't want to go back to exercising an hour or two a day the way that I used to because, well, one, I don't think that that's...

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sustainable at my age. I don't need to be in the gym pumping weights and all that stuff. And we've done a little bit of the cardio, the wife and I, we've done our walking and stuff. And that's what they say you need to do. Get active, change your diet and stuff. But you're saying that there could be a chance that, yeah, you could do all that stuff and still have no effect on whether your gut is healthy or not. Right. And it's funny because

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your nutrition and the way you eat really plays a vital part in how your body performs. And you can look up to any of the great scientists and people that are studying nothing but, you know, how to keep your immune system strong and how to how do we get nutrients in our system? Number one, we live in the US. And we've depleted our soul.

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We give everybody easy access to processed foods and garbage, our hormone levels and everything that they pasteurize and all that stuff. Not good for us, right? So, and we all live busy lives where it seems like everybody's on the run. So easy seems to win over, but easy will tear up your health. And when you start getting your mindset around how you deal with your nutritional intake,

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or diet, so to speak, and when to eat, how to eat, making it fun so you enjoy that time more instead of it just being a way to fuel really plays a big effect in your overall health because it calms your mind, it makes you happier. When you eat right, you'll find less joint pain. You'll find less stress.

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It's amazing how that can affect your overall health. And most people just take it for granted, it's food, I need it. Or I want snacks, or I'm bored and I'm going to eat. Or for so many different reasons, people eat and make the choices they make. And that affects us. But having the gut, nutrition can play a big part in sending that out. It's all about what you eat, what time you eat, and how you eat.

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if that makes sense to you. Well, it does because I've looked that up for me, and I don't know if I'm on the right path or not, which is why one of the reasons why I started the show was to talk to people and find out. So I've been following the, I can't remember, the cycle of the Earth. And you should, even though some people call it fasting, where you condense your eating window.

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you know, to eight hours a day. And, you know, when you eat your last meal, it should not be at eight, 10, 12 o'clock at night. It should be earlier in the day, and that time that you finish is technically fasting until the next morning when you would have your breakfast, which is broken down into break, fast.

17:27
Right, you're breaking your fast. So. Absolutely. So I've looked at that. Yeah. I've looked at it, but it's not easy. You shouldn't eat at night. Depending on what time, some people are night people, some people are morning people. Everybody has a different schedule. I'm more of a night person. But I know if I'm going to bed at 11 o'clock at night, I don't want to eat after 7.30 or eight at the latest.

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And if I have to eat closer to that eight o'clock mark, I have to eat a very light meal. I try to have my larger meal in the midday and my lighter one at home at night because that helps our body because our bodies need to digest that. And taking a walk after dinner also helps you digest that food. All right. So we can go down a lot of roads this way. Because

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talking about fasting as part of what we need to do, talking about the little bit of exercise we need to get, talking about nutrition. Let me go ahead and ask because I have a feeling we're going to need to break this into two podcasts because we're not going to get everything done. But in terms of diet, so functional nutrition, eating in a holistic way.

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So I've looked at some websites in the past and everybody's got a list of the 10 foods you should eat to speed up your metabolism and lose weight or the 10 foods to help you clear your body of toxins. And essentially, they're all, all the lists are basically the same.

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And then they talk about adding in the spices of, you know, turmeric and curcumin and stuff like that. So how does functional nutrition look when compared to those types of things you find online? There's a lot of similarities. Functional just means that we take a whole list of, here I go with the holistic, it's appointed. It's appointed.

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way to look at your body internally, from the inside out. So we're not just concerned with, yes, I want to know what your goals are. And I want to know a history. I have a very long intake form, probably longer than the doctors. So I want people to take time with it because that gets me the idea. That lets me know who you are, what you've been through, what your goals are. And I can look at that and say, okay, maybe they've got multiple things.

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this is where we need to start. So we look at the right framework of where to start and where to take you instead of just, let's jump on all of it. So like if you go into the doctor's office and you complain about five different things, they're going to try to give you five different medicines. Right? So we may be able to fix the other three things if we take care of one and two. So if we pinpoint our direction on

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the first couple that are really something that we can work our way through to get to the other ones and they'll all work together and just if your body starts healing. So that's really what function is. You know we take a proactive approach to finding what is the best way we can get from point A to point B but we need to look at these let's say five things that are issues. Okay.

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These two we'll look at a little bit later, but these three we can attack right now. And I think these other two are just going to fade away when we fix these. Instead of just throwing something at a problem, we take a look at it all and find out which way makes sense to start your health journey. Now how long does that usually take? Because I know that.

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You know, most of the problems are programs are 30 days to a healthier you. But it sounds like, you know, we're always told just follow this simple plan. And we're finding out that no, everybody can't follow the same simple plan. So if you're looking at it from an individual point of view, how long does it usually take on average maybe to?

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you know, fix some of our stuff. Well, and this is something I always say. We didn't get this way yesterday and it's not going to go away tomorrow. Everybody wants a quick fix. And that's why there's such things as diets, which I don't believe in, because let's say you're going on a diet to lose weight. Well, what we lose, we eventually find. Right. And usually we find with more pounds when we're going for a weight loss diet, let's say.

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But it's a lifestyle adjustment. If you want a road to a healthier you, it's a lifestyle adjustment. And I remember always being told, if you do something for six weeks, it becomes a habit. But it takes longer for a lifestyle adjustment to really become not so much a habit. Nobody likes to hear the word habit. For your new changes that you're making over a course of time,

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to really set in and become the way you live your life now takes a good six months. And I know my own personal journey and most of my clients, it's usually around months four, three and a half to four, when your body starts releasing any of that inflammation and garbage that you've been accumulating that's causing all these issues. And that's when the real feel good starts happening and what you're seeing.

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So if, for instance, I have a friend that was facing deli knee replacement, could hardly walk. It was, and it was a battle, get him away from the deli at the grocery store and stuff like that. There's nothing healthy about that deli. It's all processed food. Turkeys aren't this big with, you know, breasts that are like 40 pound ball that they slice off, right?

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Once we got past his bad habits and he started acclimating to a newer, cleaner diet, he had started losing some weight, but within the first three and a half months, I think he'd lost maybe 45 pounds, but over 10 months he lost 115. It started ripping off of him around month four. It was crazy. And he no longer needs knee replacement. It's a beautiful story.

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It's all about wrapping your head around changes that are going to...

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Lengthen your life on this earth. That's going to make your time here much more enjoyable and It's like I have always had a bucket list right and I Know we'll get to my story at some point But right now I wasn't looking at any of those things being able to accomplish them Until three years ago and now my bucket list is growing even bigger and I'm going to make all of those things happen All right. Well, you just referenced Go ahead

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I was going to say you just referenced your story, which I do want to get to. But before we do that, let me ask you this because you hit on a couple of things. Three to four months before somebody starts to see stuff and the fact that we are in this microwave society, we are in the 30 minute sitcom, one hour drama where things are supposed to happen fast.

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I mean, we can catch serial killers in 48 hours. Why can't we lose 10 pounds? How difficult is it? Or how?

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How often do you see people not be willing to wait the three or four months? I don't because I'm going to work with the people that are really got their heart and their mind into it. So by the time they get to you, they're willing to commit. Yeah. I mean, I have conversations with people all the time and if they're not willing to commit to that timeframe, then they're not going to work my program and it's not going to be effective for them. So...

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Everybody wants a quick fix. Everybody wants a loose weight. You see it all over your, if you play games on your phone and those ads come up and somebody's got a new gummy out there and somebody lost 100 pounds in four months. Not healthy, but four months is a little bit stretching' it. I don't believe it. No, four weeks someone said they lost 100 pounds. That would put somebody in the hospital. You can lose 35 pounds in three weeks. Taking a gummy.

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If you want to go that route, you're going to waste your money, you're going to waste your time, and your mind is never going to be wrapped around a healthier lifestyle. You're looking for a quick fix that is not going to be sustainable. Every diet you go on, as soon as you get off of it or you think you're taking a medication to help you lose weight and it's not sustainable either, you're going to jump off of it at some point, you will blow right back up because you have not changed what you do.

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Okay, so that brings me to the next point where this is a lifestyle change, not necessarily a program, right? Because you're right, like we've heard, if you're taking this pill to lose weight, it's so easy to stop taking the pill, it comes back. Or if you do a program, you get off the program, it goes back. Or now they have this, you have to go get a shot once a year or whatever.

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I should be paying more attention to those commercials. I don't, but it seems. Usually once a month, but after a while, you can't take it anymore. You can't take it anymore? You don't want to be on some of these prescriptions that are saying, you can still do whatever you want, but you just take the shot once a month. Oh. But that's what people want to hear. That's what people want to hear to make their life easy. Right. So.

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Alright, let me ask this one question and then we're going to have to probably adjust where we were going. You mentioned going to the deli. So one of the hardest things I think it is for us to do is to shop for ourselves, shop healthy. And it used to be said that, well, if you stayed along the outside edges of the grocery store, you'd be fine.

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You know, you head over to the fresh fruits and vegetables, you head over to anything on the outside and those inside aisles are all where you're processed and boxed and fake food is and stuff like that. So of course the deli is on the outer edge of the grocery store, right? So is the bakery. Well, I was going to skip the bakery because I know too much of that is a problem.

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That's one of my vices, I'll admit it. But we think we're getting...

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healthier meat at the deli and we're not? No. Um, it may look like your turkey or your ground your roast beef. Think about it. There's no such animal how many these oversized animals are there to be in all these deli. This step is actually pretty much minced up and put back together again, so it could come in this perfectly formed thing.

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that they can slice strong. I just heard there are chemicals in it. It's got, it's got things to make it last longer. It's got things you don't want to know about that you shouldn't have in your body. Purdue says no antibiotics ever. Oh, okay. Well, yes, but they're not in the deli. Oh, okay. Okay. So they're raising their chickens and it's packaged in the meat department. Okay. So the deli has sliced meat.

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Right. That's not normal. Okay. But isn't there's... You buy chickens, your size and everything can be big or small or, you know, they come in different sizes because the birds are different, right? Well no, all our chicken wings are the same size. They're uniform. No, they're not.

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You can get little ones; you can get bigger ones. They should be different sizes. You know, and everybody says, well, I'm not rolling it in bread. I'm just wrapping cheese around it. No. Cook your own food. I'm a big believer in meal prep. Fix your own food. And you can make it exciting. You can make it in different spices. You can take a couple of chickens.

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Cook them up and shred them and put different spices in them for different kinds of foods. You can do Thai flavor, you can do barbecue, you can do whatever. Make your own spices, your own little recipes and have them. You can have them all different ways, right? So there's all sorts of ways to live healthier that doesn't take a lot of time. I know when I first went on my journey and I figured out meal prep, it saved my life.

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Most of us work during the week. We go grocery shopping on the weekend, right? So you go grocery shopping for what you're going to plan out for the next week or two, depending on the size of your household. And then I'd come home and I'd meal prep. So I'd have all these meals already either prepared to throw in a pot and cook or put on a sheet pan and do a sheet pan, which has all your vegetables and everything.

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and meets the whole nine yards.

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Excuse me, I needed a drink of water. To make life simple and learn how to cook those vegetables and those, the meats and stuff properly. It's amazing how that makes a difference in how your body absorbs the nutrients and how your body digest the food. You're right. So I want to take the time now to talk up your website.

32:55
Your Wellness Redefined.com. There will be a link in the show notes. So if you're listening on your phone or on the website, you'll have the link to that. We didn't get into that because I wanted to get into the story. But let's do this. You're willing to come back and do a second show with me, right? Absolutely. Okay. So let's real quickly talk about your website. And then on our next show,

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and how you got to be here. So your wellness redefined, functional nutrition coaching, what can people find there? You can find that there are, I have the weight loss program, how nutrition, about nutrition. You can find my blogs. You can find out information on my three signature programs. You can find out about me.

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and some of my testimonials, and how to have a healthier life. I try to focus on that. That's my passion, though, is how to take, especially people like you and me, Marvin, who spend our careers chasing our customers and making them happy and not taking care of ourselves. So those are the people that I love to work with to show them how they can implement.

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wellness into their same calendar they still have. There you go. So like I said, folks, your and right there on the front page right now, you can sign up and get a healthy cookbook and 30-day meal plan. Simple guide for healthy eating and living. My friend Sherry Mills.

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is who we're chatting with. We've been friends for a while. Yeah, that fast-paced tech life. It's done, it's fun. Don't know why you ever left. I think I got burned out. And I wanted to get more into a health and wellness aspect because I knew it wasn't happening to me. That’s there we go. All right, well Sherry, like I said, let's.

35:21
Let's put a pin in this right here and we'll set up a time to do a second show. But ladies and gentlemen, I wanted to get her on here. I had been following her on LinkedIn for quite some time. Even though we were tech buddies, I was kind of like, oh, well, let me not really reach out to her while she's doing her health stuff. But now that I've got this podcast started, I said it's time. What you're doing works.

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And I see a lot of testimonials and people thanking you for changing the course of their lives. So wanted to get you on and chat about that. I appreciate that. All right. Well, we'll figure it out when we can come back. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for downloading and subscribing and stay tuned for part two of my show with Sherry Mills, functional nutrition coach. We'll see you soon. And until next time, Holla!