How to Listen to Your Body Without Guilt: Faith-Based Insights for True Health with Dr. Brook Sheehan [Podcast Transcript]

Title: How to Listen to Your Body Without Guilt: Faith-Based Insights for True Health with Dr. Brook Sheehan

Podcast Date: February 10, 2026

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Description

In this fascinating episode of the Compared to Who? podcast, Heather Creekmore is joined by Dr. Brook Sheehan to explore the topic of listening to your body—addressing misconceptions, fears, and spiritual questions that often come up in conversations about health and self-care.

Dr. Brook Sheehan shares her powerful personal story, including growing up in a conventional medical model, her diagnosis with cerebral palsy, and her journey to becoming a chiropractor. Through her experiences, Dr. Brook discusses how she moved from ignoring her body’s signals to idolizing health—and finally, to navigating a balanced, grace-filled approach to honoring the wisdom God built into our bodies.

Highlights include:

• The difference between bodily wisdom and New Age thinking from a Christian perspective
  
  
• How tuning into simple “this or that” decisions each day can help rebuild trust with your body
  
  
• Destigmatizing emotional eating and recognizing that body signals aren’t always black and white
  
  
• Practical cues to listen for—like cravings, random sneezing, and dry skin—and how to respond with compassion and wisdom
  
  
• Encouragement for everyone who feels “broken” or out of touch with what their body needs
  
  
• The importance of grace over perfection in both spiritual and physical health
  
  

Dr. Brook also offers her “Body Signal Decoder” as a valuable resource for listeners who want to decode common body signals from a holistic perspective, covering physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual pillars.

Where to Find Dr. Brook Sheehan:

• Instagram & all resources: @drbrooksheehan
  
  

Ready to step out of comparison and into living with more compassion toward your body? This episode is for you!

For community, encouragement, and support this Lent, check out the “Waiting for Weight Loss” series and free community at waitingforweightloss.com launching Tuesday, February 17!

Thank you for tuning in to Compared to Who?—where we’re always learning to stop comparing and start living!

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is AI-generated and has not been edited for accuracy or clarity.

Heather Creekmore [00:00:05]:

Hey, friend, Heather Creekmore here. Thanks for listening to the Compare to youo podcast. Today's episode is fascinating because my friend Dr. Brooke Sheehan is here to talk to us about listening to our bodies. Now, to some of you, that might sound a little woo woo, or you may think, I can't listen to my body. I can't trust my body. And Dr. Brooke is going to address all of those things, all those concerns, all those thoughts and worries, and she does it.

Heather Creekmore [00:00:36]:

Man with a love for Jesus, with a background in studying scripture. So I think you're really going to love what she has to say. Hey, are you waiting for Weight loss? Yeah. Yeah. I know there may have been some confusing messages on this show over the years, but. But I want you to hear this clearly from me now. If you hold a desire for weight loss, you're not alone. In fact, you'd probably be abnormal not to hold that desire in a culture where we see everyone around us shrinking.

Heather Creekmore [00:01:15]:

But we've designed something special for you for Lent this year. So if you don't have plans for Lent now, you do. I'm going to do a whole series on the podcast, extra episodes every week. And. And through the season of Lent, we're going to walk through something we're calling Waiting for Weight Loss. Now, you might be thinking, why do this through Lent? That doesn't sound like a very Lenten thing to do. Aren't we preparing our hearts for Easter? And you're right, but here's the deal. We're launching this series during Lent because this is the season for us to evaluate what do our hearts love the most? What am I really living for? And longing for Lent propels us to examine what's driving our lives.

Heather Creekmore [00:02:06]:

And so starting next Tuesday, we're going to open a brand new free community called Waiting for Weight Loss and that will accompany this new podcast series. So you can go to the Waiting for Weight Loss page, you can sign up for the community, and you can engage around the content you're hearing each and every week. We pray that this is something really helpful and even training transformative for you during the Lenten season. So stay tuned. It's going to be waiting for weight loss.com but the page will be ready next week right in time for Lent. Can't wait to connect with you in that community and to hear how this journey helps you. Now, let's get to today's show. Doctor Brooke Sheehan, thank you so much for being on the Compare to youo podcast today.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:03:01]:

Heather. I'm so Excited. It's gonna be so much fun. It is.

Heather Creekmore [00:03:05]:

And I would love for us to start with your story because you have so much, like, just a wealth of information to share with us today about listening to our bodies and maybe how we've gotten whacked out on that front through things we've done or tried or heard. But I know that you don't come to the work that you do just based on, like, Internet research. I know you have a story. So, Dr. Brooke, will you start us off just telling us kind of where you've been and what your story is?

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:03:37]:

Oh, my goodness, Heather. I will not stay so much in the weeds. It is a beautiful story, a redemptive story of a journey God took me through. And you are absolutely right. The body of work that I do did not just come from Internet searches, but through a lived experience. Experience. And so just taking you back. I'm 41 years old, and in my early childhood days, we lived in a very conventional medical model as a family.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:04:04]:

And when I say that, I mean Tylenol, Aspirin, aches in the body, headaches, stomach issues, Pepto Bismol, antibiotics for infections, those kind of things. Nothing is wrong with that. Nothing is wrong with that. I just want to be very, very clear. Clear. However, there was no real understanding of what was going on in my body. And understanding why am I getting these headaches? Why am I getting chronic ear infections, why am I always having gut issues? Like, it was just hurry up and cover it up with a pill. So fast forward a bunch of years.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:04:36]:

I'm 26 years old. I get pregnant with my daughter, and I started to really recognize, oh, my gosh, I need to start doing things different for my health. And this actually started as a result of. I guess I should take it one step backwards is at two years old, I was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. So cerebral palsy is not a congenital disorder, meaning it wasn't something that was forming in the womb when I was in my mama's womb. It was something that happened as a result of a traumatic childbirth experience. So I started to lose oxygen. Doctors came in, rushed in, put my mom on oxygen as I came through the process, and here's her healthy baby.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:05:19]:

She didn't notice anything until I was two years old. I was walking, seeing things on my. Walking on my tippy toes. I was doing it only on my right side of my body. So the cerebral palsy does affect the right side of my body. Thank the Lord that those doctors recognize that something was happening, because it does only affect 5% of my body versus I have experienced and witnessed a lot of people with cerebral palsy who have no control of their limbs. They're up close to their face, curled up in wheelchairs, can't speak. It is not because, and I want to be very clear here, for a lot of people who do not understand this diagnosis, Cerebral palsy is not a mental disorder.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:05:58]:

It is a gross muscle, like gross motor muscle disorder. So these people understand what you are saying. They're not three years old in their mind. If they are grown adults, they understand what you're saying. They just cannot use their tongue. The tongue is a major, major muscle of the body. All that being said, so fast forward, when I got pregnant, I was like, I do not want this to be my daughter's journey. Like, I'm going to do everything and everything to try to control the outcome of what my delivery looks like, right? And we know you cannot control every aspect.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:06:32]:

We can try. We can say this is what we want it to look like. But there are variables outside of our control with everything in life, not just childbirth. But thankfully, I, by the grace of God, I was able to have that birth that I was looking for. Natural birth, was able to deliver her with no issues. But a lot of this came because I was doing all these different things now. I was trying to control all these pieces and I was like, I gotta start eating better. I gotta get out of drive throughs, I gotta take these supplements, I gotta get adjusted this many times.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:07:06]:

It was like really obsessive control, what God showed me. And I'll get into that part of the story in just a second. But I went from one end of the spectrum, having so much disconnect with my body to the opposite end of the spectrum where I was idolizing it. It became my worship. And I became the girl who would stand on soapboxes. Metaphoric soapbox is screaming at my family for putting plastic in the microwave or eating, you know, regular dairy, for having non conventional, non conventional vegetables. All these things. I mean, I was a nutcase.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:07:45]:

Like these poor people, oh, you need to take this, you need to take that, you need to do this right? And so through all of this, I, I found a new passion. I left the accounting world. That was what I went to school for. Okay, accounting, left the accounting world and dove into chiropractic. I was like, oh, I want to become a chiropractor. Chiropractors are all about natural health. I want to do this. This is going to be incredible, amazing.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:08:12]:

All of that right now of course there was a lot of internal self talk, like you have cerebral palsy. How are you going to do this again? By the grace of God, obviously. I'm a chiropractor too today and it's been amazing. But I need to like talk about another part of the story is in chiropractic. So I've been very blessed and I, and I do not say this, I did carry a lot of pride about this for a very, very long time. But I never struggled with weight. Growing up was very, very small. What everybody kind of would try to achieve, I didn't have to work towards.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:08:50]:

I could eat what I want, do, do what I do without having to worry about it. I went to chiropractic school. I was eating dairy free, gluten free, organic, all the things, everything that I learned prior to even going to chiropractic school. And I gained 40 pounds. Okay. And that was more pounds than I put on when I had my daughter. After I had her I was like back to my pre pregnancy weight like within three weeks. So there again, yes, there was a sense of pride, underlying pride.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:09:19]:

Like what is your guys issue? I don't understand, like why can't you. What's the issue? Right. Without speaking it out loud. So like I go to chiropractic school, I gain all this weight and it's not coming off. Heather, it was not coming off. It was not just this quick, easy, wow, it's just dropping. No, no, no, no. Then my obsessive idolization took it to a extreme level.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:09:48]:

Yeah. Now I was waking up at 5am Doing two workouts a day, eating raw food. I was trying the keto diet, I was trying the paleo diet. Like back in the time Carnivore didn't even really. Yes, of course we ate meat. But Carnivore diet as a whole didn't exist. But I was trying everything and everything and nothing was budging and I was hating myself and I was forcing my body into these clothes that did not fit me like well. So I'd be wearing sweatshirts and things like that to try to make myself semi look normal.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:10:22]:

I came back, I graduated chiropractic school, came back to San Diego and started working with a doctor in practice. And this is where I started to understand a little bit more about the body. Speaking and understanding that the body has so much wisdom. Yes, that's a big chiropractic philosophy that the body is so wise. We know God gave us that wisdom within our bodies. We know that. But I started to Understand like, oh my gosh, if I do things the way that my body wants them versus what the external gurus outside of us are saying to do. Because I was trying all of that and none of that was working.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:11:00]:

And so finally that was like a two year journey of getting to the point of going, okay, I'm going to do what you want me to do, Bodi, I'm going to listen to you. And so every single morning I started to wake up before going into the office and I'm like, okay, what are we going to do? Are we going to go for a walk? Are we going to do some body weight exercises? Are we going to drink coffee? Are we going to drink tea? And I really started to just ask very simple questions of myself, like of my body and go, okay, what are we going to do? And yes, it took two years, two more years. So I mean I was in this weight for almost four years and but, but it came off and I just look at that whole entire journey that I had to take and go, okay. It's not just about eating right and doing all the things. You know, there could be underlying things. And this is something I talk about with my community, my patients is it's not just physical when things happen. It's spiritual, emotional and mental. And there were so many things that I had to like work through like these limiting beliefs and these, these prideful behaviors that led me into this situation anyway.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:12:10]:

And so any, yes, long, long winded story. But God took me on a really beautiful journey.

Heather Creekmore [00:12:16]:

I love it. Thanks so much for sharing that. I think probably every listener is like, wait, so how did you lose the weight? I guess I am wondering, like my, my not philosophy necessarily, but like my theory would be that you were able to drop the weight because you were less stressed or like, do you have any, I don't know, science terms to put behind that?

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:12:42]:

So here's the thing is I, yes, I left chiropractic school. So the, the idea of grad school being less stressful. Absolutely. But now I was in practice, like straight into practice and like building a practice. So it was just different kinds of stresses. It wasn't okay, I got an exam at 9:30 in the morning. It's like, oh, we gotta prepare for this patient who's got these really complex skills situation going on. We need to do research, study all the things.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:13:08]:

Right. So the stress was still there. I think really the biggest shift for me and, and there is a lot of science to this and I'll talk about some of these concepts is I got myself mentally. And this is what we do as a society. And, and you know this, we talked about diet culture even when you were on my show. And this whole notion of trying to follow other people's advice for our bodies. So somebody says eating the carnivore diet, you're going to drop £50. But you start eating the carnivore diet and you have no bowel movements anymore, you're constipated, there's too much fat coming in, you're sick to your stomach, maybe losing hair, all these things and you're out, like, well, this is not working.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:13:51]:

So then you switch and you try something else. What I did, and, and I can break down this concept. I mean, it's very simple. And I think that sometimes the simplicity of things gets people to the point where they don't want to do it. They kind of throw their hands up and they're like, that sounds too simple for my complex issue. So I'm not going to put it into action. I want to share some biblical principles here. In the book Second Kings, chapter five, there is a Syrian officer.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:14:20]:

I mean, this guy is in the military. Like he is well known within the Syrian government. He's got leprosy. And that at that time is not a good thing to have. Naaman, this guy that I'm talking about, hears about a healer in Israel and he says, you know what? I'm going to take Jack, Joe, all his whole entire staff he's going to take with him to Israel to go see the healer. The healer doesn't even come to the door. He sends his servant and says, go tell him. And the healer was Elisha.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:14:51]:

Go tell him to jump in the dirty Jordan river, the nasty Jordan River. He's tried everything. He's done it all. All the things he's like, are you kidding me? Goes and jumps in that Jordan seven times just as he was instructed. And that leprosy was gone. That is what I'm talking about. Sometimes we over complicate things when it can be so easy. We just need to follow that the direction.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:15:15]:

The problem is we've learned to not trust ourselves. We've learned to not listen to what our body is signaling to us. We've learned to shut everything up because we've been either taught to take pills to cover up headaches or stomach pains or whatever, or we're listening to so many people. So here's the easy concept. This is what I was doing this or that. Every single morning. I always drink coffee the whole entire time I was in grad school. Now, of course, coffee, if I'm drinking that, I wasn't drinking it all day, but I was drinking a lot of it.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:15:47]:

Okay. So that can obviously cause issues to my system for sure. However, every single morning when I woke up, once I got out of out of school, coffee or lemon water or coffee or tea, I would always keep the same variable. The this, I call it this or that. Okay, this or that. So my this was the coffee. My that was something different. And I would just stand there and I don't mean to go quiet, but I would stand there for a moment in quiet for, like, 10 seconds, and I would feel into my body.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:16:24]:

See, a lot of times we are so out of tune with, like, what our body has to say. We can't even feel certain things. So I'm just saying feel into your chest. Like, do you feel opening in your body when you say tea, when you say lemon water, when you say X, Y and Z versus what you normally do, or do you feel tightness and constricting? Okay, then go and have the coffee if whatever you feel. Right. So it's not a matter of trying to get everything right every day. There were sometimes I made the wrong choice, but it's still like, my body is like, okay, she's starting to honor me, and I'm starting to trust her. And we're building a trust relationship, and I talk about it.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:17:02]:

It takes time. Heather, you and I have gotten a chance to know each other over the last couple months. Just seeing little glimpses of each other on social media and like, you spending time on my show and having that conversation. But I can't say if somebody was to be like, hey, what would Heather love for lunch? I wouldn't know what your favorite food is yet. We haven't built that kind of relationship. When you build a relationship with a spouse, significant other, a new friend, a coworker, these relationships get built over time. The relationship with our body gets built up over time. So you practice this or that multiple times throughout the day.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:17:40]:

This relationship is going to form, and you will get the results you're looking for.

Heather Creekmore [00:17:46]:

Okay, I love that. I love that. And I'm just thinking, okay, two people. There's two camps of people. Well, there's more than two camps, but I know my listeners, and there's someone saying, that sounds new age. Does Heather have a new age person on, like, listening to my body? I'm the holy Spirit, not my body. Like, that sounds weird. So someone's saying that.

Heather Creekmore [00:18:10]:

Actually, let's just do that. One first. Tackle that one first and then I'll bring you.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:18:13]:

Okay. I love this one because I am a full on Christ follower. I love Jesus. I'm all about scripture. I live my life by scripture. Here's the thing, New Testament Paul, we always hear, crucify your flesh. Do not give into your flesh. Do not listen to it.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:18:31]:

It is wicked, it is evil, all the things, right? However, there are also moments, parts in scripture where Paul uses the word soma. So you have to understand we're going to pull this all the way back and not use English because English, sometimes those words in Greek get translated incorrectly. So when we read our new King James version, we, or new living translation or whatever translation you like, words don't match up. So the sark in Greek is the flesh. Yes, we absolutely crucify our sark. But when God made the body, he made the body good. That word soma, even in Corinthians, when Paul's talking about the body, some person is the eye. And yes, we're talking about the body of Christ, but the different functionalities of different pieces, right? But he does use the term like, we need to honor our bodies, like our present our bodies as living sacrifices.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:19:32]:

That being said, when I say, listen to your body, Holy Spirit is the boss. So if you feel like you're not getting information from your body, you go to the boss. You take it to the boss. So like me, I can ask Heather questions and maybe get some guidance from Heather. But then if I'm not feeling like I'm getting proper counsel or not even proper counsel or like, maybe I'm just like, gosh, that like, doesn't really resonate with me or my spirit's not. I'm going to take it to the boss. Always, right? We're commanded to test the spirit. So it's not about New Age by any means.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:20:07]:

This is truly. God created our bodies with so much wisdom. He created with so, so much life. It's a masterpiece. It's not intended to be hacked. And so we have to understand that. But if you are doing consistently, you are like die Hard, I'm in the keto diet right now. This, this is all I'm eating.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:20:26]:

And you're in the grocery store and you're walking and you realize, like, you just feel this really strong craving towards grapes. Give in to that craving because that's your body seeking something, something that those grapes have that can actually be beneficial to your body in that moment. Let's get out of the rigidity of trying to do things to A certain way while dismissing what our body is asking for. It's like we're just muzzling it and telling it to shut up every time we go against what it's asking for. And then building back that those trust signals too, those hunger cues that we dismiss if we're not eating or we're practicing super restrictive eating and things like that. I guess I'm talking more on, on a grander scale on Sometimes like people go, okay, well I, I, I'm craving a grape, but I'm going to dismiss the grape because I'm eating keto. And they, they give in to other things. I mean, our flesh will try to do a lot of other things and we could take this outside of food even too, with doomsday scrolling.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:21:32]:

We got things to do and we're just stuck on our phone like that's our flesh in action versus like, oh, let me take a prayer walk with God. Right?

Heather Creekmore [00:21:39]:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I'm kind of thinking like, related to that. Like the other. I think pushback, right. Is going to be. Well, I just don't hear my body or my body only tells me I want Doritos. So body is broken and I can't listen to it.

Heather Creekmore [00:21:54]:

I can't trust it. Doesn't know I should need grapes. Like, like how to, how do we go from there?

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:22:00]:

Yes, yes. Well, no, don't, don't get stuck in that feeling either because that's shame and that's guilt and that's, and that's going to perpetuate the issue I mentioned earlier. It's beyond physical. Right? It's spiritual, it's emotional, it's mental. So there are a lot of other components than, than just your quote unquote flesh and action. If you're wanting Doritos, like it could be it. You are soothing yourself emotionally and that is something your body is seeking because it's like, okay, there's something emotional going on.

Heather Creekmore [00:22:33]:

Okay, wait, pause one second. I think we agree on this. Is that always bad?

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:22:42]:

No.

Heather Creekmore [00:22:42]:

Good. Okay, we agree. Can you say more?

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:22:45]:

So and it might be emotional that you want those, it's not bad to, to want those things if that's emotionally what you're being driven towards. So you have to not look at something as necessarily black or white all the time. Okay. There's. They're biblical. There's truth and there's not truth. Right. We know that there's black and white, certain things with our bodies and taking care of ourselves and stewarding our health.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:23:12]:

Well, is not black and white. We, we have to really recognize that there are other pieces beyond just the physical feeling of what's going on in our bodies. And so breaking down, coming back to maybe the original question too, is people not feeling like they can hear from their body or that they don't have this. They don't understand what it's saying. They've tuned it out for so long, they've listened to other advice because we do live in a culture that's very loud. It's telling you you're not doing enough. I mean, you can simply turn on other podcasts, not Heather's, not mine, but you could turn on other podcasts and they're going to be like, you need these six supplements for this. You need this for this and this for that.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:23:55]:

Right. And you're, you're constantly feeling like you're lacking. You, you are horrible. You're not doing enough. This is, this is not what it's about. It's truly about really learning to connect with yourself just like you do with the Holy Spirit. You build a relationship, being able to hear the Holy Spirit's voice, voice the more you spend time. And sometimes that's just reading the word of God.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:24:18]:

Sometimes it's just waking up in the morning and, and putting your hand to your chest and saying, thank you body for doing all that you did last night to keep me alive. Right. It's, it's starting to just have a sense of gratitude. There's so much science about gratitude and really walking in gratitude that can shift physically, spiritually, emotionally and mentally. Right. And being okay with non perfection. If you don't do it perfectly, that is okay. It's about taking small steps and taking small steps and taking another small step and keep going until these steps build up and you look back and you're like, man, I'm a mile down the road.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:24:59]:

This is amazing, right? That maybe once you came back and you started eating again and you were not having good or bad food, you were just eating right, allowing yourself to have the hunger cues. And then all of a sudden one day you're like, whoa, I don't even feel like I want that anymore. I want this. That is progress. That's amazing. Progress you should applaud yourself for. Because you're starting to tune into those signals. Yeah.

Heather Creekmore [00:25:26]:

So, yeah, I love that. Yeah. In my, in my 40 day body mature book, I talk about living in not the gray, but living in the grace. I love that because that's really where we're supposed to live. And I think so many times we get this ide that there are like. Or that everyone else is doing it perfectly. Yeah, like I'm the only one who can't eat perfectly and exercise perfectly. Everyone else has somehow figured this out and I just, I don't have the willpower or the strength or whatever.

Heather Creekmore [00:25:54]:

And it's like, it's just not true. Like, no one's perfect. No one is doing this perfectly. Right. But kind of like you said, like all of our bodies are different. So she could be doing those things not perfectly and getting a certain result while you're doing those same things and not getting a certain result because were so different. I'm thinking back to, it's probably 10, 15 years ago. My doctor wanted to solve a couple things going on with me and she was like, we're going to pitch you on this vegan cleanse.

Heather Creekmore [00:26:26]:

And it was like, it was like a 21 day program. And then she like added another like seven day program. And so like I spent a month being vegan and I literally like was tempted to start chewing on my thumb. Like it was, it was that like dramatic for me.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:26:44]:

Yeah.

Heather Creekmore [00:26:44]:

And she got my blood work back after this month of veganness was supposed to solve all the things and she was like, man, everything got worse. You must really need meat. And I was like, yeah, I could have told you. Like, I could have told you that. But you know, like, she's the trusted authority and this is what the protocol that she follows for, you know, people that had like whatever I was dealing with at the time. And so it is, it's so true. We, we've been taught that we can't be trusted.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:27:15]:

Right.

Heather Creekmore [00:27:15]:

Like the women I talk to, and I'm sure you're talking to having similar conversations. Like we've been taught, like, don't trust your body. Like you gotta trust like this, this and this and this is what the science says. And this worked for her and you know, this worked for him. And so it does feel really foreign to think about like relaxing the reins and maybe even tuning out all the things.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:27:41]:

Right.

Heather Creekmore [00:27:41]:

And trusting. Like what's the first step there, Dr. Brooke?

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:27:46]:

The first step, honestly, is to recognize that it does take time. So it's not an overnight process. Like this is not something you're learning a new skill. So just like you would learn how to drive a car, right? You had to sit with somebody in the car, driving around, doing all the things, taking the test, all, all the stuff. Stuff. It takes time. And then as you gotten your driver's license for a long time now you get in the car, you can be eating a snack, putting mascara on, while you're not saying you should be doing.

Heather Creekmore [00:28:17]:

That, but you can not advocating for that.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:28:22]:

Your skill has gotten so good that you're able to do all these things right. You don't even think about it. And so it takes time, building that relationship, allowing yourself to just again, practicing the gratitude, waking up, having the. Maybe every single morning you wake up, you go, like, I was. Like I was sharing with my story this or that. If you wake up every morning and you always have tea, then switch that tea to something else. Shift it up a little bit. What I really advocate a lot for is people understanding that less is actually more.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:28:59]:

When we try to do these insane type of workouts, when we're trying to do these insane type of dietary guidelines, you might be doing a workout with your trainer that you've started for the new year and feeling like, man, this is getting a lot. My body is really aching now. I'm having hip pain that I didn't have before because I'm doing all this stuff. Understand that is your body telling you something. That's not something to push through. And I always tell people, your body will always win. So if we dismiss signals, it's saying to us, if we just like, oh, la, la la la la, cover our ears, pretend we don't hear it with the hip pain or the knee or joints or things like that, the body will eventually win. And eventually you'll come to a point where just like, man, I can't get.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:29:45]:

I can't get these workouts. I'm not getting any results. Like all the things. And it's just like less is more. So give yourself the moment to go, okay, I'm just gonna walk for 10 minutes. I'm gonna be okay with walking for 10 minutes because just like Naaman had to do, he had to jump into a dirty river. It was so simple, yet so profound. Those 10 minutes can be so profound to your day to day.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:30:08]:

So it takes time, but build that relationship.

Heather Creekmore [00:30:11]:

Yes. So I am gonna feel like I'm doing commercial for a sponsored product here, but I got an aura ring for Christmas. Okay. And I've been an apple watch wearer forever. You know, Apple watch I think is really good at shaming us. Like, dude, you didn't close your rings and really, you're gonna sit there for that long? And the Oura ring is very different. And I bought it because, well, I got it for Christmas because I wanted to know what was going on with my sleep and I can't sleep with my watch. And I've got a family member who's all about his oura ring.

Heather Creekmore [00:30:53]:

And he's like, this is what you need. And I love it because it tracks rest and relaxation and how restored you are or how stressed you are through the day. And what I am learning from my ring is very different than what I learned from my watch, because my ring, like, one morning a few weeks ago, I was actually sick, and my ring was like, we're turning off all your calorie counting, step counting. We're turning it all off. You need to rest today. And I was like, oh, yay. Okay, thank you. And I felt like, Dr.

Heather Creekmore [00:31:30]:

Brooke, I was like, this is seriously ridiculous. Like, I know I don't feel well, but because the oura ring told me that I didn't feel well and I can rest today, then I feel like I can rest. But even though I know I don't feel well, I probably still would have been, like, looking at the apple watch, like, oh, I should probably try to close those rings. You know, maybe I feel better than I think I feel.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:31:52]:

Right?

Heather Creekmore [00:31:52]:

And so there's been that. But then there's also, to your less is more point, I'm recognizing from aura that my daily life sometimes is enough stress for my day. And, like, candidly, enough, like, not that I'm tracking calorie burn or, like, really trying to do anything intentional there, but that's just one of the things that has. And I know that could be triggering for some of my listeners, so please, please don't be triggered in all of that.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:32:20]:

But.

Heather Creekmore [00:32:21]:

But what I'm recognizing is what it expects of me activity wise. I can meet some days without exercising for a minute. And that's kind of shocking because it's like, you know, that is, I think, a popular concept now that women have been working out too hard or, you know, we haven't given ourselves enough rest days, rest times. But that's really hard for someone. Like, so I'm 51 years old. Like, you know, 1980s aerobics, cardio. Like, that's what I was born into. And to think about, like, taking days off, that's like, well, that's the surefire way to gain weight is what we learned, what we internalized.

Heather Creekmore [00:33:10]:

And honestly, the oura ring is telling me, like, no, you did enough yesterday. You need to take today off. And then the next day, it'll be like, hey, you did a pretty good job. You could probably handle, you know, some more activity today. And it's amazing. My Body would tell me all of that.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:33:28]:

Right?

Heather Creekmore [00:33:28]:

But. But I think that's kind of what you're saying, right? We need to maybe just dial it back a bit, right?

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:33:35]:

Yes, absolutely. And I think it's so beautiful. The way you said that is. Yes. I had the apple watch for a while and I would close the rings. You know, you get. Get all your standing time and get all your movement and get all. And it's just like, oh my gosh.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:33:49]:

You know, It'd be like 10 o' clock at night, and I'm like, oh my gosh. Okay, I need to like, walk around, get some extra steps in, so. So I could get this ring close like you said. And it's just like it becomes obsessive behavior. And we slowly move over out of that period of grace that Heather said. It's not black and white, it's grace. We slowly move over to this idolization. We get into that, okay, well, we got to do X, Y and Z.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:34:13]:

And I think it's so beautiful. You said. One of the things I want to share is. So this is a signal and this is an easy one. And so this is why I'm going to share. This is because people, every single human on earth does this and we dismiss it. And this is the body signal of sneezing. Now, I'm not talking sneezing.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:34:33]:

When you're. You sneeze and your eyes start watering and your nose starts dripping, that's allergies, right? We can say, oh gosh, there's a lot of pollen in the air. I'm sneezing, or I dust in my house. No, I'm talking random trips to the grocery store. You're standing in your kitchen, kids doing something, whatever, and all of a sudden, achoo. Achoo. Right? What do we do? We say, God bless you, God bless you, and we move on. That right there is your body telling you point blank, hey, my immune system is kicking up for battle.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:35:05]:

This might be the time to cut all sugar for, let's say a day and a half. Now, the reason I say like a day and a half is, let's say it's like 2 o' clock in the afternoon and you start sneezing, cut the sugar immediately, that the rest of that day and into the next day. If you are always drinking 60 ounces of water, maybe this is the time he drinks 67, 68 ounces. You don't have to drown yourself in fluid. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying drink a few Extra ounces of water. And this is also the time to get adequate rest. So not burning the candle at both ends, it's not trying to push yourself past your bedtime because your kids are in bed and you're trying to work on your side project or any of that.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:35:45]:

It's going, okay, my body's telling me something, I'm going to listen. I said it earlier in the thing, in the episode. If you try to push past your body, your body will always win. So when you have that hip pain from working out too much, eventually you're going to have issues. And I'm not trying to be dark or, or upsetting to some people. What I'm saying, though, is when you sneeze like that and you don't adhere to what is being spoken, what is being said by the body in that instance is your body's going to win. You're going to push, burn the candle at both ends. You're going to do the thing in a, in a day, two days, whatever.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:36:26]:

And again, I'm not trying to put this on anybody, but you will end up going, man, I got the chills, I got a fever, I got a cold coming. Like, you just feel icky. So I'm saying, hey, listen to that signal.

Heather Creekmore [00:36:40]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was another one you were going to share.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:36:43]:

The other one was dry skin. So I think a lot of us as women, we get caught up too, in the beauty industry with all the lotions and potions and pills and things like that. If you are using lotion and you cannot get your, like you're using lotion, you're using more lotion, and you're noticing your skin is super, super dry still, and you can't figure out, like, man, I'm drinking fluid, I'm doing all the stuff that I would normally do. That is actually a sign of burnout because what is happening. So our lungs require a lot of moisture to work. So when the lungs, when we're going in burnout status, when we're burning the candle at both ends, working, working, working, what are we doing? We're shallow breathing. We're not taking deep breaths. We have cortisol jumping through the system.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:37:30]:

Cortisol being the stress hormone for those who might not know. But jumping at high levels through the system, those lungs are extracting moisture from your skin in order to function, in order to get the respiratory breaths, it needs to move oxygen through the rest of the body. So that's just simply being mindful and going, okay, like, maybe I just need to take A couple deep breaths throughout my day. Because how many times do we actually really consider how we're breathing and the quality of the breaths we're taking?

Heather Creekmore [00:38:02]:

Yeah, that's really interesting. And I know I've seen some studies and wanted to kind of pursue this. That people with thyroid issues are shallow breathers.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:38:11]:

Yes.

Heather Creekmore [00:38:12]:

I always found that fascinating.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:38:13]:

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So the body. The body does speak to us. We in. It's not about understanding. Like, of course, as a doctor, I understand the nuances and the physiology and all the things.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:38:24]:

It's not about necessarily having to understand all that, but really, again, building the relationship and just trusting its. Its signals. It feels like Heather used as a brilliant. Her story the veganism. She's like, I'm literally going to chop, chomp off my thumb. Her body was, like, giving me. Giving me. It was like, almost wanting to, like, eat itself.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:38:46]:

Like, not really, but in a way, you know, it's just like, really, if you're getting these really strong cravings towards something, what I'm saying is don't dismiss things that are. That are happening. If. If you have an ache in your hip, it may be not necessarily always having to try to figure out what everything means in your body, like, obsessing about that too, because we can easily fall into the obsession of, oh, well, what does that mean? And, you know. But no, it's just going, okay. Wow. Yeah, I am having some hip pain. Was I sitting wrong in my desk chair at work? Did I sleep really weird? Like, you can just start to kind of ponder these questions, but it's not about necessarily having a resolution right away.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:39:27]:

Of course, the sneezing and the dry skin, that's something you can start to resolve almost immediately. Right. But some of these do take a little bit of time, and it's just going, okay, thank you, Bodi, for notifying me that there's something going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Heather Creekmore [00:39:41]:

Oh, that's really great. Thank you so much, Dr. Brooke. This has been super helpful. Tell everyone where they can listen to your show and where they can connect with you.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:39:49]:

Yeah, absolutely. So everything is on my Instagram, all my links for my podcast, and I do have a body signal decoder for, like, the top eight different body signals, like chronic migraines or stress signals, that they can pick whatever their top one is and figure out how to work through that, through all four pillars, physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental. Because signals are not just physical, like I mentioned, and that is at Dr. Brooke Sheehan. So. And no e at the end of my name that. That is one tricky part for some people. So it's just B R O O.

Heather Creekmore [00:40:22]:

K and I will put the link to that in the show notes so everyone can find you easy and not have to remember anything.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:40:30]:

Yes, I hear you.

Heather Creekmore [00:40:31]:

Well, thank you so much Dr. Brooke for being on the podcast today.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:40:35]:

Thank you Heather. It's been so much fun and thank.

Heather Creekmore [00:40:38]:

You for watching or listening. I hope something today has helped you stop comparing and start living.

Dr. Brook Sheehan [00:40:43]:

Bye Bye.

Heather Creekmore [00:40:44]:

The Compare to Podcast is proud to be part of the Life Audio Podcast Network. For more great Christian podcasts, go to lifeaudio.com.