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Summary
On episode 261 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan sits down with Phoebe Lapine, a gluten-free cookbook author and food blogger behind Feed Me Phoebe, and author of The Wellness Project, a memoir of the year she spent addressing her Hashimoto’s disease one lifestyle change at a time.
Phoebe explains what Hashimoto’s is, the autoimmune attack on the thyroid that can cause fatigue, brain fog, and weight changes, and how years of denial and information overload finally led her to build a 12-month curriculum, tackling one change a month instead of overhauling her whole life overnight.
The conversation moves through her biggest experiments: quitting caffeine, sugar, and alcohol together, rethinking hydration, running an elimination diet, and using meditation and journaling to manage stress, all built around finding her own sustainable middle ground rather than a strict, one-size-fits-all protocol.
Links
- https://feedmephoebe.com
- https://phoebelapine.com
- Episode 475 – SIBO Made Simple with Phoebe Lapine
Key Takeaways
- Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune disease that attacks the thyroid and slows metabolism. Phoebe lists fatigue, brain fog, muscle pain, skin issues, hair loss, and depression as common symptoms, and notes she lost weight rather than gained it, which made her case harder to recognize at first.
- She asked wellness experts one big question: the single highest-impact, low-cost change they’d recommend. The answers steered away from superfoods and boutique fitness trends and toward bigger-picture habits, which became the backbone of her 12-month curriculum.
- Changing one thing a month beats trying to overhaul everything at once. Phoebe found that isolating each change, from detox to natural beauty products to movement, let her actually tell what was helping instead of guessing at which of ten changes made the difference.
- She quit caffeine, sugar, and alcohol together because they reinforce each other. A practitioner linked her skin issues to an overworked liver, and she found that coffee can create estrogen dominance that interferes with thyroid hormone conversion, so removing all three at once broke the cycle.
- A soda water with lime became her go-to strategy for social situations without alcohol. It let her skip explaining her autoimmune condition to every acquaintance, and she now takes one alcohol-free week a month rather than abstaining completely.
- Hydration works best paired with fiber, minerals, and sodium, not just water alone. Phoebe treats hydration as three “water meals” a day, starting with a morning glass of water with lemon juice and sea salt, since water without anything to slow it down can flush essential minerals straight through you.
- An elimination diet of at least 21 days is her starting point for anyone confused about what foods are causing symptoms. Removing common allergens and then reintroducing them one at a time in isolation makes it much easier to pinpoint a real food sensitivity.
- A food and symptom journal, including tracking digestion, reveals patterns you’d otherwise miss. Phoebe recommends noting energy, bloating, and sleep alongside what you ate, since a lot of low-grade reactions get lost when foods are eaten together.
- Meditation and morning journaling became her core tools for managing stress. She trained in Vedic meditation and writes morning pages to get negativity out before ending on gratitude, a practice she credits with improving both her mood and her sleep.
“I decided to take a step back and go the slow and steady route back up Health Mountain instead of trying to turn my life upside down overnight.”
Phoebe Lapine