E192: Ready for a Spring Detox? 3 Surprising Things to Focus on for Better Moods and Happier Hormones This Spring

Are you stuck in winter while spring blossoms around you?

Spring is ALMOST here — but if you’re still feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, or just "blah," your body might be craving more than a seasonal wardrobe change. This episode explores how the vibrant energy of spring mirrors your body’s natural rhythm and how syncing your lifestyle with the season can reset your hormones.  

In this episode, you’ll learn about:  

• Why feeling *emotionally stuck* can mess with your hormones — even if you're "doing all the right things"  
• Simple, spring-inspired detox tips (think seasonal foods and simple daily habits)  
• The unexpected ways that creative, feminine energy can uplift both your mind and body  

If you're ready to shake off winter's heaviness and step into a season of vitality and clarity — both in your health and your mindset — hit play now and let’s start your spring reset together!  

NEED HELP FIXING YOUR HORMONES? CHECK OUT MY RESOURCES:

Love Your Liver Guide
Hormone Secrets Workshop
Join Nourish Your Hormones Coaching for guidance

Rate the podcast 5 stars and DM me RATING on IG @leishadrews for $20 off the Restored mini-course on blood sugar balance, a key factor in hormone health!

Use code HHPODCAST for $50 off Nourish Your Hormones

LET’S CONNECT!
IG: @leishadrews
My story+more hormone resources here

Don’t forget to subscribe, share this episode, and leave a review. Your support helps us reach more women looking for answers.

Disclaimer: Nothing in this podcast is to be taken as medical advice, please take informed accountability and speak to your provider before making changes to your health routine.

This podcast is for women and moms to learn how to balance hormones naturally in motherhood, to have pain-free periods, increased fertility, to decrease PMS mood swings, and to increase energy without restrictive diet plans. You'll learn how to balance blood sugar, increase progesterone naturally, understand the root cause of estrogen dominance, irregular periods, PCOS, insulin resistance, hormonal acne, post birth-control syndrome, and conceive naturally. We use a pro-metabolic, whole food, root cause approach to functional women's health and focus on truly holistic health and mind-body connection.

If you listen to any of the following shows, we're sure you'll like ours too!
Pursuit of Wellness with Mari Llewellyn, Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, Found My Fitness with Rhonda Patrick, Just Ingredients Podcast, Wellness Mama, The Dr Josh Axe Show, Are You Menstrual Podcast, The Model Health Show, Grounded Wellness By Primally Pure, Be Well By Kelly Leveque, The Freely Rooted Podcast with Kori Meloy, Simple Farmhouse Life with Lisa Bass

Transcript

Leisha: As we go into spring, I think that it's really common to start to get this new perspective, right? We see the season start to change. We see the sun come out a little bit, and at least for me as an Enneagram seven and an optimist in general, I just feel like everything is possible when it's spring. And I think this is so interesting because.

It reflects our female cycles too, where we go through our periods and then we go into follicular phase and ovulation and that follicular phase and ovulation are actually reflected in spring. This is the kind of heightened fertility season, especially for us as women. Not that you're necessarily more fertile in the springtime.

I don't really think that's the case. It's really based on your monthly cycle and your ovulation. But some, I think there are some things that could make you potentially more fertile in the spring, which is the season and the things that we're doing and the things that we're drawn to, and I'm gonna get into that in a few minutes.

But when we look at the seasons as a reflection of our weeks of our female cycle, this follicular phase and like springtime phase of our cycle really matches the energy of spring in so many ways. It is a time. Where you're feeling more typically, more open, more creative. I personally always get a lot of new life in the spring in me where I'm like, I wanna plant flowers and I wanna plant a garden and maybe I wanna refresh my wardrobe or spring clean my house.

Or these things that honestly go into our nurturing and feminine energy and character where we want to make things beautiful and we want to make things. Peaceful and comfortable and nurturing for ourselves and for our families. And I'm not saying I'm always in this energy. I am definitely not always in this energy, but I do love the energy that Spring brings out.

And I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. And especially for us, crunchy ladies, this comes with a, I think a lot of times a shift of, okay, I can invest in my health in a different way. Maybe I need to do a reset or a detox and just come out of that like more blah slow winter energy of being inside more and wearing sweatpants and just like layers all the time.

And usually not as bright of colors and feeling more, in my experience, just more cooped up and it's harder to get out in nature and take a walk or move or do things that you enjoy. And so we typically are moving. Less in the winter and in hibernation mode. And as we start to come out of that, it's really an awakening of just that more nurturing and joyful energy.

So a couple questions that I have that I want you to reflect on since spring is really a season of new life and of joy is what would that look like for you if you were able to. Renew some of the joy in your life, or even more specifically, what are some things in your life that are holding you back from feeling joy?

If you're not feeling a lot of joy in your season, and I don't even mean you're depressed, I actually just mean you're busy. You're worn out, you're going all the time. You're not maybe noticing the beauty around you or feeling deeply. You would want to feel just the joy of seeing something beautiful outside, or the joy of our kids laughing, or the joy of spending time with people that you love because you're so busy and so overwhelmed and so always behind on all the things it is dampening your joy.

If you feel that and don't even really feel like the switch of energy into spring, I would love for you to just ask yourself in journal in this. And it may be a couple sentences, or it may be a lot more than this, but what is holding you back from feeling joy? And what really goes along with that for me, when we're talking about our hormones and our hormone signaling and safety in our bodies, is what would keep your body feeling unsafe in your emotions.

Whether that's, , if you're not feeling joy, maybe you're feeling sadness or anger or fear or bitterness or. Just not a lot. Maybe you're just not even feeling a lot. You're feeling numb because you are numbing with busyness, with overwhelm, with social media, with screens, with whatever it is. Just continually numbing those emotions that you have and not able to really feel like an awakening of new emotions and new joy in the spring.

And if any of that is the case, there's no shame in that, right? It's basically praised in our society that we stay really busy and that we stay really emotionally withdrawn, honestly, because it's more convenient for everyone around us. But I do really think that when we're in that space and we're feeling really just not feeling a lot or not feeling a lot of joy, it does tell our brains to some extent that things are not safe.

Maybe even not that things are not safe, but that there's not abundance, that we're not thriving, and that can really roll over into our hormone symptoms. So this really might be for you if you're like, I'm doing all the things that I should be doing to have happy hormones, and I'm not having happy hormones, something's not working out.

I'm checking the boxes, or at least I think I'm checking the boxes if I'm checking the right boxes. But it all is this like really transactional energy of I did the thing so the symptoms should resolve, versus looking at the bigger picture of what is still causing stress in my body, what is still not feeling safe in my life, that is keeping me from feeling as much better as I want to.

And I always feel like I have to give this caveat. Maybe I don't, but I don't expect that your life is gonna be perfect. I don't expect that you're just gonna be able to do some journaling and all of a sudden all your stress falls away and you always have abundance in every area of your life. I don't think that life typically works like that, and that's not how my life typically works either.

And the way that we perceive what is happening in our lives does have a lot of power and the words that we're speaking over what is happening in our lives has a lot of power as well. When we're. Clear on what's holding us back from feeling joy or what is keeping our body feeling more in unsafe, then we can make changes, even if there's small changes to speak safety over ourselves or to speak joy over ourselves or to look for joy every single day.

Those things truly do make a difference as much as we can easily dismiss them, feel like they're a waste of time, feel like they won't work. And then the other question that I have as a little assessment of what you're doing and how you're feeling. In your emotions and in your health is, are you being truly honest with yourself about what you're doing for your health?

For example, if I were to ask you, are you eating healthy and exercising? You're like, yes, I am. Okay. And then we look at food tracking and we find that there are multiple days outta the week where you're in too big of a hurry and you're really not eating what you think you're eating for lunch, for example.

Or you're skipping lunch more often than you think, or. You're really not getting any nourishing carbs at your breakfast or lunch every single day, but you just thought that you were getting what you needed. When I say are you honest with yourself, it's not that you're trying to be dishonest with yourself, but are you actually checking in with yourself and giving yourself accountability that you are doing the things that you're doing, and that you don't feel like you're just the exception to the rule?

I'll be really honest. A lot of times I think I'm the exception to the rule. I don't know. My dad is just very much a free spirit, and I think he taught me without probably really meaning to that rules only apply if they make sense to you or if you want them to, or like certain rules apply to me.

Something like that. I haven't quite pinpointed it, but I do think that sometimes I just give myself too much of the benefit of the doubt that, oh, my hormones are in a good place so I can drop some of these healthy habits that I know. Have worked for me in the past because maybe I don't need them anymore.

And there are seasons where that is absolutely true, where you are not needing to support detoxification as much, or you're not needing to put as much energy into really specific macros. Or there are seasons where maybe you're taking a slower pace with exercise versus a faster pace with exercise. There are all these things that there are seasons for, but I would really.

Just encourage you, and this is something that I'm assessing for myself, is just getting honest with myself about am I actually doing the things that I know I need to do to take care of my body on a regular basis? For example, you've heard me say, you've heard other people say you've gotta get some movement and some sunlight every single day, and is it actually happening or is that something that it gets pushed to the back of the list every single day and you go a week and realize, even though it hasn't been super, super cold, I.

We're gonna just project that into the future. But even though it hasn't been super cold and the weather is getting nicer, keep getting stuck in the house because I'm working and because I'm driving and because I have dishes to do and X, Y, Z, this is me. But when we are able to prioritize like that, being outside and just get creative with it, for example, sometimes I've gotta get back to this because it's been winter, but I'll fold my laundry outside on the picnic table.

I will take my computer outside to do bills. I will take my kids to school outside. There are so many things that I can do outside that I just don't do outside because it's less convenient to do it. But when I do, I have such a better mood and I see that benefit of the stress relief of just being in nature.

I just wanna encourage you to assess where you are to do a reset. And if you're really unclear and you're just like, I really don't know what I'm doing right and what I'm not doing right, and I need help figuring this out, then that's where group coaching comes in. And you can come join us at any time right now, this spring in group coaching.

And the first thing that I do for you is I go through your lifestyle and your food and I give you a specific one-on-one audit. And I tell you. These are the things you need to focus on, and these are the things you don't need to focus on that is available to you as well as in group coaching. We're gonna go through those things for four months and we're going to hone in deeper and look at your chart and look at your food, and look at your lifestyle and your stress and go through four months of real life with you and help you understand how to incorporate what is most important.

As you go, that is available to you if you are unclear, but if you're not unclear and you are honest with yourself and, oh, hey, there are six things that I know I have to do to continue to feel good, and it turns out I'm not doing four of them well clear. It's really clear what you need to change and what you need to do next.

That may be the case for you where it's just, okay, these were things that were really helping me and I slacked off on them. And it's a season to reset and it's a season to put. A little more energy back into that. And I think that part of this that I just wanna hit on too, is it's so easy for us who are high achieving women and who are really good at checking boxes and really good at doing the things.

Are we listening to our intuition or are we just letting ourselves get overwhelmed and really just carried away with checking the boxes and not with really listening to. What our intuition says we need and just checking the boxes and doing what someone else says versus actually checking in with our bodies and our minds to see not only does it work physically, but does this actually work for my lifestyle and does this work for my schedule?

And is this sustainable? Because if you're doing something that you think is going to fix your hormones, but it's not sustainable, so say. For example, intermittent fasting or only eating certain hours in the day, or only eating certain foods that are not the foods that you would typically gravitate towards.

These things could work for a short period of time, but then what? Then you're back to not knowing again, what to do next because you're not listening to your intuition or not checking in. Just taking the time to say, Hey, what's working and what's not working, and just spend. 20 minutes writing that down on a piece of paper.

I can't really tell you how powerful that can be to just really ask yourself those questions, because a lot of times you do know the answers, and if again, you come to the place where you're like, I really don't know the answers and I need support, then that's where you reach out for support and you know how to find me.

But. If you don't need that in this season and you just need to be honest with yourself, and you just need to ask yourself what needs to come off my plate so that I can start to fill my cup a little bit more. Even if it's like your cup is at two ounces and you can get it to four ounces and it's not gonna be at eight in this season because you have a little baby, or because you're going through stress or because X, y, Z is happening in your life, wouldn't it feel better to be at four ounces than at two ounces?

I think that sometimes we get in this perfectionist mindset of if I can't fix everything, I can't fix anything, and that is just absolutely. Not the truth. And then as we wrap up this episode and this topic, I do wanna talk about some physical steps to have a spring hormone reset and just start to take care of your body in a different way.

And when we're talking about spring especially, I've mentioned that's the season. Of ovulation and the season of the follicular phase and working up to ovulation. And I think that spring is a beautiful time to be able to support ovulation. And when I talk about supporting ovulation, I'm talking about supporting, making enough estrogen to be able to ovulate and ovulate well, to have the nutrients in your body for optimal egg quality, and to be able to make enough progesterone to last you until the end of that cycle last you a full two weeks.

And even beyond that, if you get pregnant in this cycle and. What that looks like is really filling your body with signals of safety and with nutrients that you need that's going to look like balanced, nourishing food. And to go into a lot of detail on that is what we do in Nourish Your Hormones. There is a little bit of a template that I believe fits women in the reproductive years, but it's not a one size fits all mentality because there are some nuances.

Being able to eat real whole food and focusing on balancing your blood sugar and making sure that you're getting antioxidant rich foods and fruit and vegetables and fiber, all of those things are going to start to create, especially in the right amounts and in the right. Timeframes in your day, they're going to start to create signals of safety that your body knows it has what it needs.

Also, just looking at consuming some foods that are more specific to spring. Those are gonna be things like leafy greens and beets and. Bitter greens, and I'm not saying to the exclusion of other foods by any means, but adding those things in can also be supportive of your liver, which is needed for detoxing hormones well and keeping your blood sugar balanced and just leaning into eating a little bit more seasonally, things that actually could be grown in your season where you live is something that I think is a layer that we're just missing in our modern world.

. Leaning into those spring foods a little bit. I absolutely think that sunshine is just life giving, especially in the spring, and so many of us are depleted in that. So just really prioritizing, getting out in the sunshine and the fresh air as much as possible. I think that it charges us energetically.

I think that grounding, having your feet in the grass, having your. Batteries recharged by nature is so incredible and is such a healing, powerful tool. And then also being in your feminine and creative energy that is that spring ovulation energy. Getting into that feminine creative energy can be so.

Healing and helpful too, and just joy producing, just to be honest. Because when we're in that energy, that's the energy of the follicular phase and ovulation end of spring. And what that means for me is being able to plant flowers in my yard. Maybe it is, , doing something more creative that's a little out of my comfort zone, like something artistic, like painting or embroidery.

Or maybe it is spring cleaning. Maybe it is. Putting some fun colors in your wardrobe. I don't know what those things are, and it doesn't have to be necessarily something cliche, but. That feminine energy is a nurturing energy and creating joy and creating beauty. As a little recap and give you some action steps, number one, just assess where you are.

Assess where you are with your joy, with your health, with your energy, and ask yourself why. What things are contributing in a good way, what things are contributing in a bad way, and then look at what changes you could make that align with. What you actually believe about your health and what you can do in your lifestyle, and are they really changes that are going to move the needle and make a difference?

Or are they band-aids or quick fixes, or just things that sound easy when you know that they're not really the answer, and then being able to take that information from your assessment and start to pour into your health a little bit. In a different way this spring, whether that's specifically focusing on food or detoxification or more time outside, or really even just like enjoying your life more.

We had a podcast last week where we talked about the nervous system and how being creative and having more fun can help settle down the nervous system, which creates those signals of safety in the body that can't be overrated. But it is underrated too much of the time in women who are high achieving and busy and all the things.

I hope that this is just a little bit of a mindset shift for you and gives you some clarity on what you could do to improve your hormones this spring, and I would love for you to share this with a friend if it resonated with you and just be able to give them some encouragement as they go through their week this week.

All right, ladies. I will see you next time.