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3 Steps To End Your Body Burnout

By Filipa Bellette
from Chris & Filly Functional Medicine

Are you stuck on the “busy” cycle – over-doing, overwhelm, perfectionism, people pleasing – and now your body is feeling burrrrrrned-out?…Energy, mood, gut & other inflammatory issues?

Have you hit a roadblock with your GP?

Dr Google failing you?

Even the diets, supps & naturopathy protocols aren’t quite getting to the root?

Because…try as you might, your symptoms keep coming back & you can’t seem to relax?

Yep that was me too – a chronic over-doer, with a body that was screaming at me!

If this is you now – you’ll want to continue reading on to discover the missing steps you likely haven’t taken yet…

Step 1 – Test & Treat Body Systems

After working with over 2500+ burned-out clients in the past 15 years, the three main symptoms I see when a person is in a state of body burnout are energy, mood and gut issues. Other associated symptoms look like: hormonal imbalances, autoimmunity, skin issues, chronic body pain, low immunity, sleep issues, brain fog and headaches.

You might be ticking a bunch of these off in your head!

Now the thing is, you can’t have symptoms in the body without there being a body system imbalance, specifically in your neuroendocrine system (brain, adrenals, mitochondria, sex hormones), gastrointestinal system (pathogens, microbiome, digestive organs) and your detoxification system (detox pathways, methylation, inflammation, oxidative damage). These imbalances aren’t tested by regular GP’s or medical specialist, but they can absolutely cause symptoms and major dysfunctions in the way you feel, if they are out of whack.

So if you haven’t yet worked with a functional medicine practitioner to test these body systems, and therapeutically supported them, this is an important first step to heal from body burnout.

But it’s not the only step.

Step 2 – Heal Deeper “Metaphysical” Root-Causes

Step 2 involves looking at the deeper root-causes, that caused your body systems to burnout in the first place. This is where we start asking WHY? Why do you have adrenal fatigue? Why do you have leaky gut? Why do you have blocked detox pathways?

Yes, some of these things are related to your lifestyle and environment (we’ll get to this in Step 3), but even deeper – and more crucial than that – is looking at how you are BEING.

Stress is a major root-cause in people running “busy” patterns doing allll the things, and it also literally burns-out body systems – your adrenal glands, your neurotransmitters, your gut function, your immune system.

But the thing is – stress isn’t an “outside” thing. Stress is always internal, and how you are responding to your external world.

If there are hidden dysfunctional beliefs about yourself (I’m not good enough, I’m unworthy, I’m broken, I’m flawed), as well as hidden unprocessed trauma stuck in your body, triggering and heightening your stress response, this MUST be addressed in order to end your body burnout.

If you don’t, your nervous system will continue being dysregulated which will block your ability to heal your body systems, and/or you’ll continue running “busy”, overwhelm, stressed patterns that led to the health issues in the first place. This might look like over-working, eating sugar or drinking coffee to get through the day, doing things (even things like healing protocols) out of force and fear.

You will never get better. Period.

So, start looking deeper into why you’re sick in the first place. How have you been programmed? How can you rewire the deeper parts of yourself so that you can heal?

Step 3 – Nutraceuticals & Lifestyle Support

When the deepest part of yourself has been (or is in the process of being) rewired, you are now ABLE to heal. Step 3 to end your body burnout is to optimise your body systems and your lifestyle.

With lab tests back, you can now start therapeutically supporting imbalances in your body systems – with exactly what YOU need. There’s no guess-work anymore. We can see clearly where imbalances lie in your three main body systems, and can create a therapeutic nutraceutical protocol to rebalance and support your body.

And now you’ve reprogrammed deeper dysfunctional “busy, burnout” patterns, you can start dialling in your lifestyle to support the healing of your body and optimise your health long-term, with more ease and flow.

This looks like optimising your nutrition based on what your body needs to heal and thrive. For example, if labs showed up candida overgrowth, a low-carb diet will assist to reduce levels. Or, if you’re recovering from adrenal fatigue, eating regular macro-balanced meals will help stabilise blood-sugar levels, which will then support stress hormones.

Reseting your sleep-wake-cycle is also essential, as the majority of healing takes place while you sleep. Everyone is different in terms of their ideal bed time and wake up time. For example, I am definitely not in the 5am camp! My body much prefers a good solid 9 hours, from 10pm – 7am. The journey for you is learning how to listen to your body, to discover what YOU need to thrive.

Movement is also critical. If you’re in a state of body burnout, and you’re doing lots of exercise or feeling more crappy after exercise, you’ll want to reduce the intensity and load, as too much movement can put more stress on an already stressed out body. Pare it back to walks, yoga or stretching. And if you’re sedentary, start working on increasing steps, and adding in mini 2-minute movements into your day.

Keen To Go Deeper?

If you’re keen to dive deeper into how to implement these 3 steps into your life, so you can finally break-free from the body burnout cycle, I’d love to invite you to our (free) webinar: 3 Steps To End Your Body Burnout, held on Mon 28 May, 7-8pm AEST.  This event is being held in celebration of Natural Medicine Week!! 🙂

More about the author

Filipa
Filipa Bellette
– Chris & Filly Functional Medicine

Clinical Nutritionist & Functional Medicine Practitioner, specialising in ending body burnout (for good!)

Filipa Bellette  is Co-Founder of multi award-winning health practice Chris & Filly Functional Medicine – and author of Ending Body Burnout. She is an accredited Clinical Nutritionist, Functional Medicine Practitioner, Coach & Trauma Therapist. She is also a PhD Scholar & regularly featured in the media, such as nine.com.au, Forbes and Body+Soul.

Together with her husband Chris Bellette, Filipa has worked with over 2,000+ burned-out clients in the past combined 25+ years. Their practice is best known for ending body burnout (for good!) in “busy” people with energy, mood & gut issues, with their ROOT-root-cause approach. They were awarded as the Tasmanian State Winner & National Finalist for the Telstra Best of Business Awards 2022, as well as Winner for the Australian Women’s Small Business Champion Awards 2022.

Filipa’s own passion for helping “busy” people have more energy, productivity and connection, came from her own personal experience of body burnout, after juggling the demands of business, family, and her failing health.