138: She’s Pregnant! Here’s How to Reverse ‘Unexplained Infertility’ – with Kela Smith

She reversed her own infertility, along with many others. 

Kela Smith is on a mission to get 100,000 women pregnant. 

She’s capable of reaching that goal. So many women working with Coach Kela are now mothers and have had a baby (or multiple babies) after struggling with infertility for years. With so many couples out there still wrestling with infertility – they need to hear this podcast!

Kela is now the CEO and Program Director of the Hormone Puzzle Society, a women’s health hub for fertility, hormones, and training those who want to become fertility coaches like Kela and spread joy to desperate couples. Kela still coaches alongside her team, helping women with hormone imbalances and other fertility issues. She coaches women on getting pregnant naturally while eliminating symptoms of hormone imbalances.

For 20 years now, Kela has coached women wanting to get pregnant, so she knows her stuff! She holds four different qualifications as a Certified Holistic Health & Wellness Coach. Her unique Hormone Puzzle Method helps her clients learn how to cycle sync, which leads to pleasant periods, boosts fertility, higher “happy” hormones, hotter sex lives, and more creativity, productivity, and wellbeing for their career. 

Running her own virtual holistic health and wellness coaching practice has been a dream come true for Kela. If you share a similar vision of becoming a coach in health and wellness, Kela’s story will inspire you. And if you happen to be interested in fertility coaching, this podcast episode could change your life! 

In this podcast, we cover:

• Kela’s personal story of infertility struggles
• The proper diet to encourage fertility (includes some surprises)
• Why Kela avoids counting macros and instead teaches the ‘magic plate’ approach to eat for fertility
• What is ‘cycle synching,’ and how does it boost fertility?
• One simple little thing men can do to help their partner when she’s menstruating
• The signs that show when a woman is at her peak point of fertility
• Exercise adjustments that help your chances of getting pregnant
• Why women who are not trying to get pregnant should ALSO track their monthly cycle

How long does Kela’s program usually take to succeed?

When a woman struggling with infertility comes to see Kela, how long it will take for her to become pregnant depends on where she is starting. 

A woman who has never gone to a gym and eats whatever she wants starts at a much different place than someone who works out and watches what they eat. So ask yourself, where are you starting? Be honest with yourself and start there. 

Someone else starting may only need to make some tweaks here and there. Like, perhaps their diet needs a few simple adjustments? Maybe this person needs to incorporate a meditation practice? Simply adding a few healthy habits to their repertoire can be enough to get pregnant. 

Wherever you begin – start small. Give yourself some grace. This is not a contest. You don’t get a medal for doing this right. Getting started is the best thing. 

The old saying says it takes 21 days to create a new habit. Kela says putting her protocol together and making the new routine a practice typically takes 30 to 60 days. 

Kela’s fertility program typically runs for six months. Many find success in that timeframe. You will know what to do by then, but you can continue getting support from Kela if you need that.

What the initial starting process look like with Coach Kela   

The first thing you do to become a client of Coach Kela’s is to opt-in to her website email list. She will then schedule a phone call with you. She listens to your specific situation, and then if one of her programs can help, she shows you how. 

If you qualify and get started, you will then undergo a comprehensive dried urine test, where Coach Kela looks at your hormones, what they’re doing over a 24 period, and how your body is metabolizing those hormones. If your partner needs testing, Coach Kela has a way to do an at-home semen analysis. 

Coach Kela analyzes the results. She reviews the data. Then you will fill out an in-depth health questionnaire.

Then, you will receive a customized plan based on your medical history, lab work, everything. There is no guessing involved. Coach Kela sees precisely what is going on in your body and draws up a customized plan. You can do this program through one-on-one coaching or Kela’s group coaching program. 

Do you want to have a baby the natural way, but pregnancy eludes you? Do not let this moment pass by! Listen in as Coach Kela not only shares her fertility secrets, you will also hear two incredible testimonials of clients Kela helped get pregnant. One case involves a woman who stopped having a period at age 25 and didn’t menstruate for ten years! She’s a happy mom today, thanks to Coach Kela! 

Tune in or pass this episode along to someone who you know is grappling with infertility. Help make baby dreams come true!  

Episode Resources: 
Check more about Coach Kela: bioptimizers.com/coachkela
Coach Kela on Facebook
Hormone Puzzle Society on Facebook
Kela_healthcoach on Instagram
Kela Robinson Smith on LinkedIn
The Hormone Puzzle Society YouTube Channel 
Coach Kela Smith on Pinterest

Read The Episode Transcript:

Wade T. Lightheart: Good morning. Good afternoon. And good evening. It's Wade T Lightheart from BiOptimizers another edition of the Awesome Health Podcast. And I am really excited about this particular topic because it's something that comes up over and over and over. There are women and couples, but particularly we're going to focus on the woman's side of things today, dealing with infertility infertility rates, as many of our listeners know have skyrocketed. And it's, it's a huge problem. We see a lot of the information that's coming is coming primarily out of the medical community, and it's not addressing some of the fundamental causes. And today, ladies and gentlemen, we have an expert who not only reversed her own infertility, but has helped a lot of people. And she's on a mission to get a hundred thousand women pregnant. If I said that I would be in big trouble if she says it where, okay, so the good news is our guest today, Kela Smith, who is the CEO and program director of the Hormone Puzzle.

 Wade T. Lightheart: So [inaudible] a woman's health club for fertility hormones and the business of coaching. She is also one of the coaches at the society. Kela works with women who are struggling with infertility and hormone imbalance, and coaches them to get pregnant naturally and eliminate symptoms of hormone imbalance. Kayla brings over 20 years of experience as a professional fitness trainer, wellness educator, and author to date. She has published multiple books on fertility and hormones as well as four distinct online courses. We'll talk about those in a minute. She holds four different qualifications as a certified holistic health coach and a wellness coach. And of course she realized her dream of creating a virtual holistic health and wellness practice and helps women all over the world solve these issues as the creator of the hormone puzzle method. Kela helps her clients learn how to cycle sync, get that cycle sync. I'm excited about that. I want to, I want to know what a sync to cycle is. So they have pleasant periods, boosted, fertility, happy hormones, hotter sex lives, and greater creativity, productivity, and well being at work. Kela, welcome to the show.

 Kela Smith: Thanks. Wow. What an introduction?

 Wade T. Lightheart: Well, I mean, this is an awesome topic to get involved with. There is I think we're w w before we get into your story, I think I want to touch on the emotional and psychological stress that women, women generally now are getting married or into your thinking about children. Certainly a lot different than say my parents did back in the day where it was quite common. People were married in their late teens and early twenties and had a family well-established before they're 25. And now with all the options available to women that prov the use of birth control, which has been, you know, wasn't really available to the sixties and widespread use and all these sort of things and women taking on bigger roles and careers and all this sort of stuff, it's really put in a tremendous amount of pressure on women. And, you know, they get to their thirties and all of a sudden, you know, they've been working on their education and their career and they're kind of tracking up. And then all of a sudden this big baby, I want to have a baby I'm running at a time where for us guys, we're a little bit w we don't have to get our crap together as fast as women like, right.

 Wade T. Lightheart: It's, it's, it's the UNF UN fair component of being a woman. Relative. If you look at two people entering the work force, two people entering the education force, two people getting into a relationship, the biology of a woman puts a significant more amount of pressure. Would you agree with that?

 Kela Smith: For sure? Yes, definitely.

 Wade T. Lightheart: So talk to me how you dealt with this in yourself, because you have a very interesting story. And I think that let's, let's qualify you as the person who is struggling with infertility, and you want to share that story with our listeners

 Kela Smith: Or, yeah. So it, to break it down into one word, it freaking sucks. It's two words, by the way. It was awful. You know, I, I got married later in life and I thought you have sex. You get pregnant. That's what I was taught my whole life. And that's not the case. And so I thought, you know, we would get married and it would be fairly easy. I was healthy. I was already in health and wellness and nutrition, and, you know, I worked out and I thought it would be super easy. And I learned very quickly that it is not so easy and it does not work like that. And so I was on an emotional roller coaster every month that I got my period thinking, like, what am I doing wrong? I don't understand I'm doing it. You know, why is this not working?

 Kela Smith: And so that led me down a rabbit hole of figuring out why my body wasn't working the way that I was told it should. And I'm a researcher at heart. And so I just started researching and trying to figure out, and that was, that was kind of how I dealt with the emotional piece of it, of being frustrated. I was like, what can I do? Like, I'm super type. A like a lot of people I'm sure are, and I wanted to do something. And so that kind of led me, you know, first we went the medical routes, you know, I thought something's wrong. I'm going to go to my doctor, because again, we're taught your doctor has the answers. They can help me. Well, I learned very quickly as well that they wanted to pigeon hole me into you're 36 years old. So you need to do a medical procedure.

 Kela Smith: You know, you, you, you're kind of the prime of fixing this naturally, you need to do an IUI. Or if that doesn't work, we'll put you on, you know, you'll do an IVF that was pretty cut and dry. You qualify what those things are for sure. So I, UI is an inner uterine insemination where they actually take your partner's sperm and put it directly into your uterus right next to your eggs. So it has a more likely chance of fertilizing. They don't mess with it going through like the reproductive track and getting it up there. They put it up there. And so th and the success rate of an IUI is about 10% for women under 35. So I'm 36 years old that probably had about a 5% success rate. Why the hell would I do that? Okay, that's one. And then IVF is in vitro fertilization where they actually take the sperm and the egg, and they fertilize it outside of the woman's womb.

 Kela Smith: And then they implant an embryo into her uterus in the hopes that it will implant and it will develop into a baby. So again, it's kind of like meeting those two together, making it easier for that baby to form, and then the embryo to implant. But again, women after 35, it goes way down. I think it's about maybe 20%. Don't quote me on that, but it's around that. So again, not great odds, you know, for a $20,000 procedure for one cycle. So yeah, 20,000 a shot here when he thousand for an IVF cycle estimated you know, some places you might find it for 15, some places will be 25, and this is in the U S if you go overseas, it could be cheaper, but there's risks for that as well. So,

 Wade T. Lightheart: So, so basically you're telling me that we're looking if it's a one in 10 chance on the first round, that could, if you, if you hit it on the 10, let's say you took 10 times, that's going to cost you somewhere around a quarter million dollars in, you only get one shot a month. So let's say you miss it. Something goes sideways over the course of the year, you're going to spend a quarter million dollars to get one fertilized egg. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to bring that to term. Exactly. Exactly. If you go the other right. Where the, the in vitro, you got a one in five chance of doing that. And of course these odds that I guess every year, that you're older start to diminish exponentially. Would that be true?

 Kela Smith Yes, exactly.

 Wade T. Lightheart: So that's a very expensive and risky component. What was it like when you got that kind of, what was the, what happened when you're in there? It's not working out, you're married. You want to have kids they're telling you this numbers, right? Like what, what was that like for you

 Kela Smith: For frustrating? Because I didn't, I didn't want to believe that I didn't want to hear that. And in the back of my head and in my gut, I knew I was like, wait a minute. There's nothing medically wrong with me. You. So I was diagnosed with unexplained infertility, which is basically saying they don't know why you're not getting pregnant there. Isn't

 Wade T. Lightheart: Well, we don't know, like the unexplained, that's just an interesting topic. Right?

 Kela Smith: It's an actual diagnoses and it's so I'm like, okay, that's ridiculous, but, okay. So political. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they, they, you know, and that's when I was like, wait a minute, there's nothing medically wrong with me. So I don't understand why I need to do a medical procedure only because my one thing was, I was 36. That was it. I was completely healthy. My weight was normal. Everything else was healthy. So, yeah.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Whoa. So here's the thing, like the part that I'm a little suspicious of when people are kind of given us, it's like, well, we don't know why you're not pregnant, but guess what you can spend, you can come to the baby casino and start loading up 20,000 on the black Jack table. And hopefully you hit it. Exactly. Mods in a casino are way better.

 Kela Smith: Exactly. It's ridiculous. And it's so crazy too. When I talked to somebody in there, they tell me I can't get pregnant. I'm just going to do IVF. Like, that's a guarantee. I'm like, no, you don't understand. That is not a guarantee. And you might as well take your bag of money and flush it down the toilet because most people it's not going to work. And definitely not on the first try.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Yeah. That seems like that's, that's the equivalent of lighting cigars with a thousand dollar bills, forget a hundred dollars. So, okay. So you're in this thing, you're super frustrated. They've given you the unexplained infertility diagnosis, which, and there's, I, I, in my personal circle and I'm relatively ignorant on this, I know at least a dozen women who are in my friend's friend is fear. I'll call it. Who've had similar diagnosis and it's devastating, but somehow you've said, no, no, no, no. What, what, what, what made you say, hang on a minute here, like, I'm going at this myself? What, what, what happened there?

 Kela Smith: Yup. So I walked out of that office and I said, I don't think so. I'm not taking that answer, Mike, my type a personality said, okay. W w I just started researching, researching. I was like, okay, there's gotta be something I can do to optimize my fertility. There's a reason I'm not getting pregnant. So let me see if I can figure out what that is on my own. So that's exactly what I did. I dove into that research and I realized that there's a difference between eating healthy, which is what I was doing. I was a personal trainer. I was eating healthy and eating for fertility, which is two different things. So, and we can dive into that a little bit more what that means, but I really overhauled my diets and looked at what can I do to optimize my nutrition for fertility? And so that was one piece of it. The next piece was I was exercising way too much. I thought I was healthy. I was super thin. I, I equated being thin with being healthy because I was a trainer. That's what we're taught, right. That is not what you want for fertility. You do not want to be super thin with no body weight working out all the time. Not, not good. So I adjusted that.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Yeah, this is a big topic because you know, my original background was in the bodybuilding world. And of course now during that the fitness figure in all the different categories and now have bond that came out, have put tremendous amount of pressure on young women, particularly let's start there. So if you walk into any store, you were going to see the magazines with some girl with fake boobs, great abs you know, in low double digit or single digit things, many of which have already lost their cycle because of the low body fat level, because a woman needs a certain amount of fat to be. And then of course, when they're interrupting this early in their careers, when they're generally like women, usually if you look at the fitness world and I'm going to just give a little background, people, the women who tend to get the leanest or more successfulness are usually on the older side as the, as their estrogen levels drop the, you know, and they get in that 35.

 Wade T. Lightheart: And over that, that's when they kind of get the look that successful. And as girls try to do this early on, not only do they struggle getting there, but then it becomes a disaster afterwards, they have a hard time managing their weight. My old coach Scott Abel talked about, he was the first guy to identify metabolic damage and the dysfunction about this. And then of course, there's the whole psychological about value and worth and in my sexy and attractive. And can I compete with these other people in this? And now we've got social media on top of that. So every person is comparing themselves with, you know, I call it the, the, I call it the the Kardashians construct. You know, it's kind of like the Hollywood, you put this kind of face on the back, but you go behind the, you behind the city walls. And it's just like boards and stuff that was there. And it's kind of like that social media. What did you learn about the difference in diet to what I would say a cosmetic idea, which is really what you're looking at from a fitness perspective versus a fertility ideal. What was the differences that you discovered?

 Kela Smith: So most think that eating healthy is eating lots of salads, eating grilled chicken, very few calories, you know, calories in calories out. We want to eat fewer calories. We want to work out harder. They think fat is bad, and it's really the opposite for fertility. You want to eat, be eating a good amount of food. You want high quality food. I even go into cycle syncing, which we'll talk about in a minute. You want good quality fats with every meal. So for me, somebody who's trying to be thin and healthy when they told me, or when I realized I needed to eat more fat, I was like, Ugh, I don't want any more fat, are you crazy? I'm gonna get fat, but that's exactly what you need for a fertility to optimize your fertility. You need those healthy fats, you know, fat controls. So many systems in the body.

 Kela Smith: It's what fuels the baby's brain. Once you get pregnant, it fuels your brain. It fuels many of your hormones. So definitely higher fat, lower carbs, and protein is another one. You know, protein. You need to eat a good amount of protein, not too much, but not too little. I feel like a lot of times, especially with veganism is so popular these days, and people are afraid to eat animal fat, but really for fertility, you need animal protein for iron. You need the connective tissues. You need the collagen, all of that. So, so definitely eating a more balanced, more clean, high fat, low carb, medium amount of protein.

 Wade T. Lightheart: So just, I want you to expand on that. So if you were looking at generally say the macros that you were following, which had become common and running the fitness stuff versus what you do for fertility, what would you say? The

 Wade T. Lightheart: Breakdown on that? I don't teach

 Kela Smith: Focusing on macros. I teach something called a magic plate where you don't have to count macros. You don't have to count calories. You split your plate into thirds and you do a third protein. You do a third vegetable, you do a third slow-burning carb or grain, and one to two tablespoons of a healthy fats. So I would say that breakdown is probably about, I would say, 50% protein, you know, 30, 20, something like that. So yeah, and, and paying attention to obviously whole foods clean organics, those types of things.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Right? So, so for people that doesn't mean that you have a Kentucky fried chicken on one side, a fried broccoli on the other one. And what type of stats, because, you know, my business partner has been on the ketogenic diet for a very long time, and he's very versed in the different types of fats. And I've been on a plant-based diet for, for 20 years. He's been on keto for 26, and then I've learned about certain particular fats that need to be mindful on my dietary stuff. What are the type of fats that women need to be looking at? Because I think that's one of the big areas that people are really struggling with to, you know, to get how much fat, what type of fat, where do I get that fat, all that sort of stuff, because there's lots of fat in people's diets, but it's really bad fat, right?

 Kela Smith: Yes. Yes. So I recommend one to two tablespoons per meal. So it's not a ton of fat. It's not. And we can talk about the difference in keto. I think keto is wonderful for men, for women. You have to be very careful with Keto. I like to put myself into ketosis, through intermittent fasting. We can talk about that. I think that's a great way to do

 Wade T. Lightheart: It, but fertility, right?

 Kela Smith: It's the fine line. It's a fine line. Fasting overnight 13 to 15 hours is perfect. You need to eat breakfast within an hour of waking because you need to give your body foods to make hormones that it needs. So, and again, the woman's body goes through a 28 day cycle or the man's is a 24 hour cycle. So you really need to focus on cycle sinking, those foods and calories and cycles sinking the intermittent fasting. That's a whole nother topic we can dive into. But to go back to your point on fats. So I recommend seed cycling. So getting some fats through seeds, getting avocados, fatty fish is another one. I use an acronym called smash salmon and [inaudible]  salmon, anchovies, mackerel, herring, and sardines. I think I said that backwards, but you got the gist of the fish.  and  oils. I do olive oil or coconut oil, all of those types of things. And again, it's just one to two tablespoons per meal. It's not  you know, a whole ton of fats and it's not a huge piece of animal fat. That's another thing. I think a lot of people on keto think they need to be eating steaks and bacon and like all this really heavy animal fats. And it's really not the case with fertility.

 Wade T. Lightheart: And that's interesting because you're basically, what if I heard you correctly, what you're dealing with, like almost like unrefined, regular fats that haven't really been denatured cooking or rancid rancid, the kind of things that I think that's the point. And then the other thing is, is you're not just saying, oh, I need my three tablespoons of whatever oil today. You're having a little bit of fat with each one of those meals throughout the day. That'd be that you're and your eating cycle, correct? Yes. And then what about eating frequency frequently? Because I noticed one of the things that I've noticed with intermittent fasters is that men seem to do well by fasting in the morning, but it's in women seem to do better by fasting later in the day, as opposed to like, they need their, they need to stabilize themselves early in the day, would that correct? And then how many frequency of meals

 Kela Smith: For sure. So I recommend, like I was saying, I try to have my clients do about a 13 to 15 hour overnights. That's maybe you stop eating around six or seven and then you don't need again until 10 or 11. Sometimes that gets into a couple hours after you wake up, depending on when you wake up, you can play with those numbers. So I recommend that overnight. And then about every four to five hours, I say you should have something to eat, having breakfast as your biggest meal. I'm a huge fan of smoothies because you can get a lot of nutrients into a little amount of liquid. Your body can assimilate it a lot easier because it's already broken down. So I say have a really good, heavy veggie smoothie with a little bit of fruit, some fat and protein in the morning, and then have about a medium lunch.

 Kela Smith: If you need to have lunch. Sometimes my ladies, they don't, they say that smoothie I'm full, you know, until mid-afternoon, and then I'll have a little bit of a lunch and then having kind of a supplementation dinner just as a small dinner with some protein, with the magic plates. And trying not, I don't encourage snacking because I don't want, you know every time you eat your body's going to release that insulin. You're going to go in that blood sugar rollercoaster, which is not so good for fertility. So I really try to say, if you're not hungry, then let's go about four to five hours. And that's the other piece that I talk about a lot is really tapping into am I actually hungry and knowing what your body's telling you, listening to those hunger cues, if your stomach is growling, if you're lightheaded, if you're like woozy, then you're probably actually hungry. But a lot of times we're just eating because we're home, it's, COVID, we're bored, we're stressed out we're whatever it is. So really listen to your body and eating based on your actual hunger versus the other things I mentioned. Yeah.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Always every time I hear those type of things, I always think of the movie, the devil wears Prada. The devil wears Prada where the lady's like, oh, you know, I, I eat until I'm almost ready to pass out. And then I have a one inch cube of cheese.

 Wade T. Lightheart: [Inaudible] Unfortunately,

 Wade T. Lightheart: It's, it's somewhat too accurate. Let's talk about this word that you're using or this, this cycle sinking in this 28 day cycle that women have. Yes. That's a big thing because there's a part of the month where there for where a woman's kind of in their optimal fertility zone. And then there's a part of the month where they're not, and then there's correlations. I've been looking at some of the research and there's a big movement around this with women right now is that sometimes with a month they're more motivated to get things done in driving. And other times they're more emotional and things. They might feel more food to explain to an ignorant man like me, what the hell Seco sinking is. And how important is it? Not only just to get this, but I also want to share is about sharing this with your partner, because I think a lot of men want to be supportive, especially if they're trying to get pregnant with their wife, but it's like, you know, we hang out with our guy friends in real life, you know, what's going on like, oh, I don't know. It's just kinda like going crazy. Yeah, I do get it. And that's the extent, right? Like we, we really want to help, but oftentimes we don't know what to do to support. So if you can explain cycles thinking and then how to like to get your partner on board with this.

 Kela Smith: Sure. So cycle sinking as a functional medicine concept. And it's where a woman will partner her food, fitness work life and social life with the four phases of her monthly cycle. So she's either giving her body the food and the resources that needs to make hormones, or she's giving her body the food and resources to detox hormones. Once she goes through her 28 day to 35 day cycle. And so what this does is it creates homeostasis in the body. It makes everything balanced. Your body has all the raw materials. It needs to do what it needs to do naturally. And it's working with pure hormones instead of against them. So you're almost like you're flowing through your phases and your cycle, and it can, it dramatically impacts so many things from how pleasant your period is, how high your sex drive is, how you're able to lose weight, how you can get pregnant, how you you know, optimizing your fertility with fertility signs. It's so many things helps you with business helps you to be a better business person and leader and a speaker. And I mean, I could go on and on and on. It's just, and this is all data that I've seen from doing this with all my clients throughout the years. This is like case study after case study of implementing this and then seeing it work. So it's truly amazing. And we can dive into the phases too, so people can get some context around that. Yeah.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Let's, let's talk about those phases next. I think that would be kind of unpack that a little bit more.

 Kela Smith: Sure. So the four phases, so you start with your ministration week and this is the week you're actually bleeding. So this is usually day one through five of a 28 day cycle. I know some people's cycles are longer or shorter, but this is average. So we're going to talk average. So they, one through five, the day that you're bleeding, your hormones are pretty low. You're really you're shedding in Oregon, which is your endometrial lining. So your hormones are pretty low. This is the time for during business. It's all about self-reflection and really looking within sitting within that feminine energy and tapping into that calming your central nervous system, giving your body foods like lean protein for the iron, eating some kelp or some algae. So you can get iodine supporting that thyroid lots of filtered water, lots of warming foods. So your blood doesn't become stagnant. You really want it to be flowing nicely giving your body extra rest. It's super important during this time to be resting. An this is the time when it's okay to kind of take it easy, take a step back, do some walking. If you want to do, you can walk throughout the entire cycle. Walking is fine, but low gentle, slow movements yoga, Tai Chi, those types of things,

 Wade T. Lightheart: Which is interesting, you know, because if you look historically if you look back to tribal cultures, oftentimes during this, the cycle times, the women would just leave the village and kind of go off with themselves and just not deal with day-to-day life. And that's often looked at as a kind of a patriarchal tyrannical kind of perspective. That's the new common lens that we look at that, but I think there may be another way to look at that as that about, Hey, you know what you got to just, you know, tribal life was pretty rough and a lot of pressure on women and stuff. And all of a sudden they removed themselves from maybe the tribal kind of pressure. So

 Kela Smith: Yeah, they actually called it red tents. All the women who were cycling would go sit in the red tent and just be together and meditate and pray and, you know, just, just do women's stuff. And so we need to get back to that. Yeah.

 Wade T. Lightheart: It sounds kind of cool. It sounds like, sounds like a good,

 Wade T. Lightheart: Sounds like a good way to be hanging out and not having to deal with these, these under ender, none understanding cave guys who do like dude go out and hunt some deer or something. So we got through the first five days or what approximately, and then what's, what else do we, the next

 Kela Smith: Phase is full of killer. So this is day about six through 14. This is when your hormones are starting to rise, especially your estrogen and progesterone. And so you can notice that your energy starts to rise. Last month was all about thinking and self-reflection kind of planning. What you want to do this month is actually sitting down and strategically planning out. So I'll take my whole month during my follicular phase and plan out exactly what I'm going to be doing. My tasks, my business tasks, my workout, my food, everything gets planned in my follicular phase for my foods. I really want to focus on light, fresh fare. So think salads, roll juices, lots of nutrients. Remember your follicles are growing. They're about to release an egg. So you want to give them all the support that they need to be able to do that.

 Kela Smith: And this is when it's okay to focus on cold food versus warm food from last week. So colder foods, those salads and Raul juices and things for exercise. This is when it's okay, your energy is rising. So let's intensify the exercise. You can do some of those harder workouts, those group classes, the spin, the kickboxing, those types of things. You'll also notice that you want to be more social as you head into the next week, which we'll talk about in a minute, but your hormones give you energy. They also make you outgoing. You want to be social. You want to be in those group classes. The week before the group class would have been too loud and too bright, you know, the tube too many senses happening this week. It's all you love it. You're killing it in your group classes. So so, so that's follicular phase then as we move into ovulation.

 Kela Smith: So this is when you are on fire. This is rosy cheeks. This is like, you're the most outgoing, the most charismatic the most on top of your game, you're articulate. You can like nail a presentation and interview a speech, whatever it is you're on fire. This is when your hormones are at their peak. So your energy is at its peak. You can do that hard class. This is if you're running a marathon, if you're trying to beat a personal record, your PR your personal best, this is the time to do it during ovulation. So when your hormones will be really peaking here, I would assume hormones are at their peak. And this is from day what to what? 15 through 17,

 Wade T. Lightheart: So very short window here. Very sad. About three days where you're just 

 Wade T. Lightheart: Like on fire. Yes, yes.

 Kela Smith: And so we talked business, we talked food. So for food, this is when you want to really be supporting that egg that's popping out of that follicle. So think antioxidant, rich foods, anything that's going to help you protect that egg from free radicals, from oxidative stress. So think berries and leafy greens and the darker the better. So think radishes and blueberries, raspberries kale, bok choy even some citrus fruits with the vitamin C content because vitamin C helps your body to make pedestrian. So like your, your oranges and your papayas and your pineapple, that kind of thing. So so that's the food. We talked about business exercise. So that's obligation. So now moving into luteal. So luteal is day 18 through 28. It's the two weeks before your period starts again, if you're not pregnant. And so this is when your hormones are starting to dip.

 Kela Smith: So this is when you'll, and this is really broken into two weeks. So the first week, two weeks before your period, you still might be coming off the high of ovulation. So your hormones are just starting to dip. You might still feel the energy. You might still fill up to doing the hard workouts. And this is when you want to listen to your body. If you still feel up to it, I say, do another week of hard workouts. You're not going to hurt anything for food. It's all about detox. You want to help your body to naturally detox. You want to do things that are going to support your liver and really support that detoxification of hormones, because you do not want to recycle the hormones. If you're not detoxing appropriately, if your liver's kind of sluggish, and you're not doing that, then you can start to experience symptoms next week in your PMs week.

 Kela Smith: So you really want to make sure that liver is working appropriately. So this would be foods like onion, garlic, fennel, any high fiber foods. If you're a grain eater, you can do a little bit of keenwah buckwheat brown rice. And then liver supporting even liver supporting herbs. So dandelion root tea, tumeric a milk thistle, those types of things. And then, so for, we talked about exercise in the first week, the second week, your exercise is going to come back down and it's going to be more low, slow, gentle exercise. This is the time when I find a lot of women want to keep pushing because for two weeks they've been working out hard. And so they'll say, I don't really feel like working out, but I'm going to do it anyways, because I don't want to gain weight. And I'm going to push.

 Kela Smith: If you do that, you're going to do the opposite of what you're trying to accomplish in the gym. You're not going to have the muscle gains that you could have the other two weeks, you're going to tax your adrenal glands. Your central nervous system is going to be lit up and on fire, and you're going to produce cortisol. So you're going to stress out your body and you're going to, it can cause all the symptoms of weight, gain and inflammation and all of these things that we don't want, and that we're trying to fix with exercise. So just listen to your body. That last week is okay to take a break. You can do more slow, gentle restorative movements. What I find is so cool too, is when I work with people like me, who used to be used to working out really hard and I give them permission to take a break, they all of a sudden, they're like, I'm losing weight and I'm working out less.

 Kela Smith: Holy crap, how's this happening? So it all comes down to that. And then for business, this is the time for your right and your left brain are really aligned. So you can focus on big projects, big tasks, always tell people if you have a big project, you need to get done. Do it in that last week before your period, because you'll have the, the mind energy and the focus to be able to do that. You'll also notice this is really cool facts. You'll notice things more than you did any other weeks. So especially if your house needs to be organized, if your fridge needs to be cleaned out, if your car is messy, you might be driving around in that messy car all three weeks, not even notice it. And then all of a sudden it's like every speck of dirt, how did I, how did this happen? Why is this car look like this? It's because that right and left brain are so aligned and you're noticing everything. So take some time, take some time to do some deep cleaning, a big project, some organization.

 Wade T. Lightheart: This is so great. Because you can also observe like, as a guy, but it doesn't go through this. What you've just described to me would appear to be an observable mystery for guys. And they'd say, well, you know, sometimes she's on point that you know, the cars cleaning houses there though, the next thing it's a disaster and things are all over the place. And one week she's working out higher the next week. She knows what to do. Like, you know, like, and we're just like, what the hell?

 Wade T. Lightheart: Yeah. I can't seem to figure out who I'm dealing with on any given week.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Right? And then that causes oftentimes tension between the two sexes. And of course that makes it even harder. And then everybody kind of goes off and feels that, Hey, well, what am I doing? All this stuff? How do you bring this awareness or invite women to bring this awareness to their partner? So their partners can be supportive of this process.

 Kela Smith: For sure. So the first thing is know that it's hormones and know that your wife or girlfriend is not crazy. It is her hormones and it's completely natural and biological process. So that's the first thing, knowing that the second thing is just asking your wife or girlfriend or partner, how can I support you? What do you need from me this week? How can I help you? It's all about that communication and asking that question, because we'll tell you, we'll tell you like, Hey, I'm on my period. I really don't fill up, you know, that great. You know, let me take a, take a break today, let me have a red tent day and, and lie on the couch and watch a movie. And it's just that communication and being supportive of your partner that way. And, and, and I think that's a lot of it too, where couples don't talk to each other, like they need to, you know, it's okay to say, Hey, what's going on, babe? How can I help you? That's all it takes.

 Wade T. Lightheart: So it's, it's so great. And I think a lot of women would be surprised of how many men want to help, but don't know how to ask. Don't know how to support. They, they don't know what's going. So they just kind of shut down and kind of slink off out of the way. Oh, you know, she's on the warpath,

 Wade T. Lightheart: Right.

 Wade T. Lightheart: That kind of thing. This is

 Wade T. Lightheart: Great. Now I guess the next question is, okay, well now, now we, we want to naturally inseminate the woman. When's the, when's the time here that we're looking at this point. Is there any tips around that particular process that we need to address? Yes. So

 Kela Smith: I recommend all my women to track their cycles so that they can actually know where they're at in their cycle and they can be cycle sinking. And then you want to look for certain signs of fertility not to get too graphic, but the best way to know your fertility signs is to look for cervical mucus. And so that will go through a process. And usually I recommend a nine through 18. You start to have sex every other day, watching that cervical mucus, because semen can live in the intestine in the reproductive track for up to five days. But an egg will only live 12 to 24 hours. So as soon as that ad comes out, we need to have semen in there to meet it. So having sex day nine through 18, kind of takes that guesswork out of it every other day, not every day, because every day will diminish the supply and make the weak guys come out. We want our key strongest players. Okay. So I have to down-regulate, you're trying to make a baby, not trying to make a baby. It's a free for all.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Wow. So that's easy. There's things I didn't know. So what else do I need to know about that? That process? Anything else? Yeah.

 Kela Smith: Just again, paying attention to those fertile signs. I like to do three things. So tracking your cervical mucus, taking your BBT, which is your basal body temperature. This will tell you if you've actually ovulated. So if you see three high temperatures in a row that shows you, your progesterone is releasing appropriately, which your progesterone is the hormone that comes out of the follicle that the egg is released from, it's called the Corpus luteum. So right after you ovulate that follicle actually turns into another organ or gland, which is really cool. Only a woman's body could take an organ and change into a different organ. So that's super, I love it. But so that Corpus luteum, the BBT will show you if that pedestrians coming out of that follicle, which means you actually ovulated. And so those are really the two signs that I look for to be able to track.

 Kela Smith: And it's just good process to get into tracking your cycle. In general, you want to know what your period is doing. You want to know your period is your body's report card. So if it's giving you a lot of symptoms, if you have crazy PMs and, you know, terrible mood swings, and even some depression, some some body dysmorphia syndrome, all of that that can actually be signs of thyroid imbalance. But this is your body's way of telling you, Hey, listen to me, something's up here. You need to pay attention. So definitely tracking that cycle and knowing when your fertile window is knowing what your cycle is doing.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Yeah. Super powerful information. Of course, understanding this. Also, if you're out in the world and doing what so many women are like, just understanding of when's the go time, when's the connected time. When's the pump. The breaks time, I think is really both on fitness and in a career cause women are trying to do fitness careers, you know, relationship and family life. And I don't, you know, it's the intensity of pressure I think today on women. Yep. And another, yeah, another

 Kela Smith: Thing to mention really fast is even if you're not trying to get pregnant, it's very important for you to still track your cycle and to track your ovulation, the more obvious Satori cycles that you have between now and menopause, the more likely that you're going to not get dementia, Alzheimer's heart disease, all of these different conditions, your ovulation is like the key indicator of health. And so you want to have as many of those cycles as you can. So if you don't even know if you're ovulating or not, that's a problem.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Yeah. It's, it's a, it's a really big thing. There's an old saying that you know eggs are expensive and sperm is cheap.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Right, right. 

 Wade T. Lightheart: Let's take next piece just in regards to this, because stress management not being fertile for both men and women is often a huge psychological aspect. And I've had friends that have gone through this process and, you know, the first stage is usually the, the wanting to blame the other partner. And then they go through all the testing and then there's all that sort of stuff. And it's like, then it's like, oh, it's me. And it's like, it's like, all this stuff starts to happen. How do you manage the stress of, you know, the self-definition or the ideal self or the not feeling enough, which I think is a very common element is particularly when it comes to having children. What's what's what's what have you learned working with so many women? Yeah.

 Kela Smith: So I'm a big fan of a stress management plan, whether you're trying to get pregnant or not, you need to have a stress management plan in place. And this is more than just relaxed. I hate when people say that it's not about just relaxing, it's actually managing your stress as best as possible. You just take the phone and throw it away. Yes. Putting some boundaries around your phone is a very good first step, whether you're man or female, a man, or a woman. But so yes, having that stress management plan in place and what that looks like is anything that's not serving. You look at your schedule, anything in your life, that's not serving you. I recommend either putting it on the back burner during the season of your life. When you're trying to get pregnant, your main focus right now should be making a baby.

 Kela Smith: And then things that are, non-negotiables your job, your marriage, or your religion, things like that. But, but looking at what's in your life, if it's not serving you, putting it on the back burner until you're through the season of life, or even I would argue taking it out of your life, if it's not serving you, why is it in your life, in the first place? But then I also joke you can't get rid of your mother-in-law or you probably can't quit your job tomorrow. So putting that on the back burner until you have a chance to get through the season in life, and then also you can't control a lot of things that happen. You can't control. If your boss yells at you, if you're, you know, you get into a fight with your friend or whatever it is, but you can control how you react to that.

 Kela Smith: So really learning how to have some boundaries in place, how to react to certain situations so that you kind of have a go-to, especially when you're trying to get pregnant, you know, a key scenario. One scenario I see a lot is, you know, it's a holiday or it's, you know something where you're going to be around a lot of people and your cousin Mary's pregnant and you're not, you're like, I hate. Or you know, what the hell you can't control that, but you can control how you react and you can control having kind of, you know, a scenario that you're gonna do when you're in front of Mary. You're gonna, you know, if she asks, if you're trying to get pregnant, then you just, you have something that's kind of a blanketed statement. We're not talking about that today kind of thing. So, so stress management, having that plan in place also, I find having systems in place is really important. If you have a system for dinner, you know, for your meals, you have a system for your morning routine, your evening routine that will allow things to not feel so out of control. And so overwhelming. So you'll have a plan. You kind of know what you need to do. You follow that plan and it's a lot less overwhelming when you have so much on your plate, especially around fertility. And you're trying to do so many things,

 Wade T. Lightheart: Really good information on that now to put this whole piece together, cycle sinking, getting you, tracking this stuff, getting your dietary stuff, adjusting your exercise, learning the you know, integration with your career and all those sorts of realistically, how long does it take someone to kind of get all this together? If they've been struggling with fertility and is there variances between the ages

 Kela Smith: And it depends on, well, there's two things there. So it depends on where you're starting from. If you are brand new and you've never eaten a piece of kale in your life where you've never gone to the gym, then you are going to be starting from a way different place than somebody like me or you who's been in this industry. And then who's just trying to tweak and Uplevel. So first I would ask yourself, where are you starting from get really realistic with yourself and then start from where you are. If it's brand new, I say, pick one thing and try to make a positive change tomorrow. It's all about progress over perfection, making 1% improvement from what you're doing today, to what you're going to do tomorrow. And then do that again. And again, until you have all these new habits in place, if you're somebody like me or you, who's in fitness, who knows this stuff and just wants to up level, think where in my life can I Uplevel where, you know, maybe my breakfast needs to be tweaked a little bit. Maybe my, I need to add some, a meditation practice or something that will allow me to Uplevel. I find no matter how healthy I am, no matter how much I know I'm always learning something new. I'm always adding something new to my repertoire of, of healthy habits. So, so really looking at where you're starting, but start small, give yourself grace, this is not a contest. You're not going to get a metal if you do it. Right. So just starting and doing something is, is the best you can do. And that's perfect.

 Wade T. Lightheart: So just on-site of that, like, would you say realistically for, for a lot of people it's going to be somewhere in like maybe three months to a year to kind of get this thing dialed in or what, any idea?

 Kela Smith: Yeah, no, it would not take that long. I see women. Especially if you have, well, first let me say, if you have some sort of guide, like a coach that can fast track that, but most people, if you try to do it on your own, I would say 30 to 60 days, it takes one days to make a new habit. So, you know, if you have a lot of new habits you want to make, you can do those coincide with each other, or you can say, I'm going to focus on one thing. Maybe I'm going to get my food dialed in. That's going to take me 21 days and then do it.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Yeah. Okay. That's great. Any other items that you have found that helps us like, is it like, I don't know any of the biohacking kind of ideologies, like whether it's blue lights at night or infrared saunas or cold there, like, is there anything that kind of also can really fire up and optimize a woman's hormones or things they need to avoid from those standpoints?

 Kela Smith: Yeah, so many different things. A couple of things that I really like is one getting a sleep routine in place and doing some sun gazing and moon gazing. And so what this does is it'll set your natural circadian rhythm and allow your body to start making its knighted sleep hormones in the morning, it's wake up hormones. It really kind of sets that clock and helps to optimize again, that fertility helps the cycle thinking work better, all of that. So that's one thing I really like, I do love an infrared sauna. I'm actually in the market for one right now. And supplements are another thing we haven't really talked about and I really don't want to dive into specifics on supplements, but I feel all of my clients that I've worked with or most of them, anyways, we start with food first and get a whole food balanced diet.

 Kela Smith: There's always going to be holes. And so I like to fill in the holes with a really good supplement routine and making sure the supplements are right for you. So always work caveat, always work with the health care practitioner to dial in these supplements. Don't just order something because you hear about it on, you know, you see it on Amazon or Facebook, whatever. But there's definitely a place for supplements depending on what you're struggling with. And that's where it gets into with you know, when you're working with a coach or a practitioner, they'll look at your specific medical history and your diagnoses and say, this is what I recommend for you. Almost like you're biohacking your hormones through supplements.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Yeah. So let's talk about your work as a coach and the people that come to see you. How did that like, so someone's listening to this podcast right now and they're like, oh my God, this sounds amazing. I'm not sure I love what we touched on these topics, but there, I know there's a lot of nuances. I need help. I need coaching. I need someone to guide me through this. Where do they go? What do they do? And how does that process work for you? For

 Kela Smith: Sure. So they would go to my website, which is coachkela.com. And Kela is K E L a. So coachkela.com. And there, you will find tons of resources, a couple for free. I have a cycle sinking, quick start guide and a fertility meal plan. So you grab one of those resources, which will then put you into my where I'll see a note pop up and I can schedule a call with you. So then you can schedule a call with me. We jump on the phone, I talk through your specific situation and I show you how, if my programs can help you, how they can do that. And I have a couple different programs I offer, I do one-on-one coaching. I have a group program that just started up and a couple of things that are different about the way that I work versus some other coaches that might be out there.

 Kela Smith: I start with testing first. I do a very comprehensive at home dried urine test, where we look at your hormones, what they're doing over a 24 hour period and how your body's metabolizing those hormones. So I'd start with that. And if your partner needs, I also have a way to do at-home semen analysis. So we can touch on that as well. Then I look at those results and analyze them. I look at the data, I have you fill out a very in-depth health health questionnaire. And then I put together a customized plan for you based on your medical, your labs, your medical, all of that. So I don't guess I actually look exactly what your body's doing and I write a program accordingly, and that program can be delivered through one-on-one coaching or through my group program.

 Wade T. Lightheart: That seems pretty outstanding that you're able to provide that level and depth of services in to people. And then I guess the next question, I guess, so we're, we're, we're trying to get a hundred thousand women pregnant here. That's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's an awesome goal, I think. Is there any items that I didn't touch on? Like, you know, what, what, what can people expect over that? Cause I know you can't make promises and expectations, but maybe you have a couple of stories that you'd like to share for inspirational purposes. Cause I think those are very, your story's very interesting. I know I had a friend of mine who all about 10 years ago when I first, when maybe it's closer to 15 years ago, when I first heard about this, she had actually suffered six miscarriages and she worked with a coach who works with our with our company now in genetics and epigenetics and did all this sort of stuff. And then boom, you know, within six months she got pregnant and had to ended up having one and then a year or so later had another child. And there was no issues when you like, it was really dramatic because she were at a rope. Like it was probably one of the most dramatic situations. And I was like, wow, this is neat. Maybe having some inspiration stories that you can think of to share.

 Kela Smith: For sure. Yeah. So I had a client recently. She came to me. She hadn't had her period in 10 years, 10 years, she was 35. Her period left her at 25. She'd been on birth control. Then she came off of birth control, never came back. We started cycle sinking. We started on whole food nutrition. She ended up losing about 20 pounds over the course of about and a half months. Her period came back within month one. So we got her period back. She was alive again. She losing weight feeling great. Well then we, we ended working together, you know, it's a three-month program. And so she was, she was happy with the results. She loved it, but she didn't stop doing what she had learned. This is what I teach all my clients. This isn't a quick fix. This is you're going to do this for your life.

 Kela Smith: This is a new lifestyle. So she kept at, it kept doing the program. And in six months she was pregnant at 36 when she didn't think she would ever have a period again, and doctors told her she wasn't going to be able to get pregnant because of that. And she was pregnant and now she just had that baby about a month ago. And it's so funny because she called me whenever she found out she was pregnant and she was like, coach Kela, I'm pregnant now what? Like, I never thought this would happen. What am I supposed to do now? And I was like, well, I can help you with that. So I gave her some tips on what she needed, you know, how she needed to eat for pregnancy versus fertility and all of that. But yeah, just an amazing story. And I have stories like that all the time. I that's one of the best things in the best. The reason I do this is because I love getting those texts and emails and calls like I'm pregnant. Oh, it's amazing. It's truly amazing.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Do you have like a wall of fame with babies pictures? Yes.

 Kela Smith: Yes. I had another lady I worked with recently and she had heard I've been working together for about four four weeks. She was on thyroid medicine. She had just gone through an IVF cycle that failed, or she went through a transfer where she got seven. She had 17 follicles and I think she got like 10 eggs or something like that. It's a pretty low numbers. So she's in her next cycle right now. She went back to the doctor to do her. She was being stimulated. They tested her thyroid hormone. The doctor said he couldn't believe it, that she could even come off of her thyroid medicine that her thyroid completely leveled out was the best he had ever seen it. She had 36 follicles instead of just 17. And her doctor was like, whatever you're doing, you need to keep doing it because it is truly, I mean, your labs are completely different. Like, what the hell are you doing? And it was all just changing her diet around, adding in seed, cycling, helping her with her stress management. Just all of these things we've talked about here. I mean, it can happen so fast. Within 30 days of working together, you can see amazing results.

 Wade T. Lightheart: I think that's a really important thing to finish up with. And that is, you know, our bodies are designed to work the way they are. We have millions of years of evolution built into the cells of everything and this memory. And oftentimes it's not, there's something wrong with you. It's just that our lifestyles have changed so much in the last 80 years, even in the last 30 or 40 years. And even in the last 10 with technology and phones and all this stuff is that we're living very differently than our ancestors did. And we're eating very differently and our lifestyles are differently and our expectations are different. And when you reintroduce these types of things back into the body, the body just wants to work. It wants to offer, rate the way it is. And if it's not, oftentimes you just got it. You're just not producing the right elements.

 Wade T. Lightheart: And seems like you have a really awesome way of helping women in this. And this is an amazing service. Can you share with everyone here today? Because I know there's going to be some ladies, like, I mean, just now, why shut up and let her tell us where do they reach you? You've got a bunch of social media handles, give us the whole nine yards shamelessly self-promote here because I'm very passionate about this topic. I know there's a lot of women that suffer in silence and a lot of couples, maybe there's guys that are hearing this you'd know of a couple that struggling, you know, of a woman that's struggling, you know, have a family, but get this message out to you. Kela, let us, let us have it. Where can they find you?

 Kela Smith: So definitely my website is a great place. Like I said, you can get my free gift, which will send me an email and I will reach out to you to book a call. You can also find me all over social. So I'm on Instagram is my favorite playground. And that is Kelahealthcoach. I'm also on Facebook or I'm sorry, Instagram, Kela, Kela underscore health coach. Facebook is Kela health coach. I have a Facebook group called hormone puzzle. I have a podcast myself called the hormone puzzle podcast where you can hear me interview amazing guests all over the world. And so yeah, those are probably the best places to find me. I also have a couple of books that I've written their own. Amazon called the hormone puzzle solving and fertility and the complete hormone puzzle cookbook

 Wade T. Lightheart: Kela. You are incredible woman doing incredible work in the world. And thank you so much for joining us today on the Awesome health Podcast.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Yes. One of the things, yeah, one

 Kela Smith: Of the things I forgot to mention before we end here is I also work with other practitioners and teach them how to become fertility coaches through my fertility coach practitioner program. So you can find that on the website as well. You're amazing.

 Wade T. Lightheart: That was incredible.

 Wade T. Lightheart: Super exciting. Thank you so much for joining us today on the awesome health podcast for all our listeners out there, make sure that you check out Kela stuff. All the information is here on the show notes and you know what? Don't let you know, the medical industry dictate your fertility. Oftentimes with some few few changes that you can get the right help that you need, demystify things, get back your confidence. And of course start making more babies because you know what, there is no greater thing in the world that to be able to produce another human, to have this wonderful thing called the human experience. Thank you so much for your service to the world. And thank you to all our listeners for listening to this podcast, give your thumbs up, share it for people that might want to listen to it. We thank you so much for joining us and I hope you enjoyed this incredible episode. Take care.