Rochelle Griffin, The Wellness Detective, is a Registered Nurse with over 22 years of experience and a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner. She turned her love for fitness and health into a successful full-time business helping others improve their own quality of life. Griffin shares fitness advice, nutrition tips and recipes on her blog and offers several services to help clients optimize their nutrition. She’s offering a webinar, Adrenal Fatigue: Do I Have It? on January 8, 2014.
How do you start your own day? Do you have any daily rituals or routines?
I start the day with a cup of organic coffee and private time with my God. It’s important that I start with a positive focus to frame my day. From there, I jump onto social media and catch up on my Facebook and Twitter pages. Both are rather hopping, and I love to give back to my followers. Before my son wakes up (we homeschool,) I make sure to get my workout in as well in our home gym. If I don’t do it early, it’s not going to happen. Once I’ve had breakfast, it’s Game On for the day…running my business and homeschooling my son.
What are your eating habits like? Do you follow any specific program of eating?
I don’t believe in diets or in “one size fits all” nutritional plans. I eat specifically for my needs based on my results from the Mediator Release Test. This blood test showed me specifically the foods that my body is reactive to and I need to stay away from, including gluten and dairy. As a result, I avoid those foods like the plague. When they do sneak into my diet, I can tell! Hello mood swings! I also make my own Kombucha tea and kefir for a healthy dose of daily probiotics. Gut health is imperative to our overall health and well-being.
There’s so much research being done and advice being published, how do you tell what’s real and what’s fake? How do you decide what’s relevant and what isn’t?
Here’s reality: When you are looking for information on the Internet, you can typically find articles that are both pro and con. So if you want to find something to support your point of view, you will. Of course this makes discernment difficult for the average person. By nature I’m a very analytical person who gravitates towards data. When I read research, I pay close attention to the source and credentials. This is why I absolutely love what I do with Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. It relies on functional labs (aka hard data) to correlate with a client’s complaints.
Is there any current thinking about diet and fitness that needs to be challenged?
YES! I challenge the thinking that when you are tired or fatigued, you should still push through the workout. I cringe when I hear people saying that. They don’t realize the damage that they are doing their body, especially if they are have adrenal fatigue. Adrenal fatigue is often referred to as the 21st century stress epidemic. It’s harder to find someone NOT dealing with it than someone who is.
Stress of any kind, including working out when tired, will put strain on the adrenal glands. This can lead to an increase in fatigue, among other issues including insomnia, weight gain, and low libido. Not pretty.
Is there anything new you’ve started doing recently, or anything you’ve quit?
Every month I take an extra day off and spend it in bed relaxing, giving myself time to decompress. I’ll work for about an hour, responding to clients. After that, I catch up on reading, movies, whatever I feel like. It’s like a mini-vacation that my body continues to thank me for.
How do you make adjustments to your workout? It’s hard to know what to do when you’re tired or having a bad workout.
I’ve become very in tune with listening to my body and extending myself grace. Because I’m still in the process of healing from adrenal fatigue, it’s important that I’m kind to myself. I know that when my body says “No,” I have to listen. So I may trade out a harder workout for Pilates or walking that day. I’m ok with that. I only have one body and I need to take care of it.
Can you share some of the specific things you notice your top clients doing differently than the average client?
- They are willing to invest in themselves and have the functional labs run. I find that when clients see in black and white what their lifestyle has done to their body, they are willing to take the necessary steps to heal naturally.
- They are patient with the process and don’t allow themselves to get frustrated. We live in a quick-fix society. Recovering from adrenal fatigue and gut dysfunction naturally is not a quick fix. There’s no magic pill to pop. My top clients understand this.
Coach.me provides everything you need to improve performance in diet, fitness, productivity, and life. If you’re feeling inspired by what you’ve read, try adding these habits to your dashboard:
- Workout: A foundational habit for every day.
- The Gluten-Free Diet: more a way of eating than a “diet” in the usual sense.
- Eat Fermented Food: whether it’s yogurt, kefir, kimchee, or kombucha tea, get a probiotic boost to improve your digestive health.
