Episode 7: The Metabolic Learning Journey: Books, Experts, and How I Chose What to Try

In Episode 7 of The Jamerrill Show, Jamerrill shares the next layer of her metabolic health healing journey by introducing the authors, scientists, and researchers who shaped her understanding after reversing insulin resistance and lowering inflammation markers. Rather than chasing every new protocol, she explains how she learned to filter information calmly, look for overlapping themes among experts, and implement only what felt sustainable for her nervous system.

From Dr. Benjamin Bikman’s research on insulin resistance, to Dr. Jason Fung’s work on fasting, Dr. Mindy Pelz’s hormone-centered approach for women, the Glucose Goddess’s glucose-balancing hacks, and Dr. Casey Means’ systems-based view of metabolic health, Jamerrill reflects on how education reduced fear and gave her language for what her body was communicating. The heart of this episode is about becoming your own advocate. It’s about learning without overwhelm, implementing without panic, and supporting your body in layers over time.

“Doctors can run labs. Experts can write books. But I live in this body.”

JAMERRILL

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You can watch the full video episodes on my second YouTube channel, and the audio is available on Spotify, Amazon, Apple Podcasts and other podcast platforms.

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Key Takeaways

Insulin Resistance Is a Root Driver of Many Chronic Conditions
Multiple experts agree that insulin resistance contributes to inflammation, metabolic dysfunction, and disease progression even in individuals who have lost weight.

Metabolic Health Is More Than the Scale
Weight loss does not automatically mean metabolic health. Lab markers like A1C, fasting insulin, and hs-CRP matter.

Hormones Change How Women Should Approach Fasting
Fasting strategies should be tailored to female hormone cycles. Timing and phase-specific eating matter for women.

Blood Sugar Stability Reduces Inflammation and Stress
Protein prioritization, strategic meal timing, food order, and minimizing glucose spikes are consistent threads across experts.

Sustainable Implementation Beats Extreme Protocols
Every expert emphasizes consistency over perfection. Gentle structure, stress reduction, and long-term habits outperform aggressive dieting.

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Resources Mentioned

Transcript

Look for the threads of what all the experts are saying. What are they saying that’s pretty much on the same line?

Welcome back again today, friends, to the next episode of The Jamerrill Show. Today we are going to talk about metabolic health healing and what I’m still learning. I told you in the last episode that today I would share with you many of my favorite authors, scientists, and researchers that I have really enjoyed learning from.

If you’re new here, this is part of my ongoing series where I’m walking you through my story of healing in real time. I am not an expert, and I am not a coach. I am just a woman who has been walking out learning how to care for myself and my body and my whole life through very hard seasons. In earlier episodes, I shared what my health looked like before August 2023. And I’ve also walked you through my 70-pound weight loss journey. And in the last episode, I shared where I thought my weight loss was done, only to be hit with really concerning lab work based on my chronic stress and trauma, and the realization that healing doesn’t end even when the scale changes.

Today’s episode is the next layer. In this episode, I’m sharing with you other voices I continue to learn from, who I listen to, and how I process this information without overloading or blowing up my nervous system. Which, not blowing up my nervous system is always my favorite. I’m not here to tell you what to do. I’m not giving medical advice. I’m sharing with you what and how I learned, how I filtered, how I simplified, and how I chose what felt safe and sustainable to my body at the time. I know many of these authors and books that I’m going to dig into with you today, I shared at different points as I was going through them on my Jamerrill Stewart YouTube channel. And as I would be boiling my broccoli, I would share about the current book that I was reading. And so many of you have wanted more information on these authors and their resources.

Now, I was in and I’m still in chronic stress recovery. At this time when I started to listen to and go through these different expert resources, I was still in active trauma processing, and I still am to this day. And at that point, I was maintaining a major weight loss. And in the last episode, I shared with you how I pared down all of my options after my negative lab results. And I chose some very simple supports and practices that led to me reversing my insulin resistance and my pre-diabetes and lowering my high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (HSCP) from 5.7 down below 0.5. And that entire episode goes into those details.

So I know we’ve talked extensively about my 70-pound weight loss. And this next layer that we are in is my metabolic health healing journey, which I honestly think I’m going to be going through layers of healing for the rest of my life. But during that negative lab work and additional healing season, I was not listening to all these other books and taking in all these other experts. But during that time, I became aware of these resources, and I just said to my brain, “Brain, you’re busy right now.” “Okay, we’re staying calm. We’re doing what we need to do. We’re working on this layer of healing.” But later, as another hobby, another thing I can do for myself, I could read these books or listen to these books on my walk, and I might enjoy that. And so that’s what I did. As I shared also in the last episode, the only book I listened to or focused on in that fall while I was following Coach Mama Fox was Dr. Ben Brinkman‘s How Not to Get Sick: A Cookbook and Guide to Prevent and Reverse Insulin Resistance, Lose Weight, and Fight Chronic Disease. For those four months, I was just reading through this. I still got my little, and that’s actually little recipe markers there. But I have many pages dog-eared. I have this page here about hydrating, protein, fat, carbs, and calories. Just so many, so many good things. So many things that are dog-eared. And I thought that this book and the learning in here was very important, so I kept things very simple.

Now, during that time, I had other audiobooks that I listened to. I’ve listened through all the Anne of Green Gables books, and I had other historical fiction and other trauma recovery books. But as far as metabolic health and healing, I only lived in this book for that four-month period.

And then in January 2025, I had phenomenal lab results. And I will share with you the video I did on my main Jamerrill Stewart YouTube channel where I shared and went through all those lab results. And I felt like I had accomplished something. I was very happy with the work that I had done and what I had learned during that season. So I then listened—I listened to this on audiobook—Dr. Ben Brinkman’s Why We Get Sick. But I also want to share with you some very simple rules I had for myself at that time. I did not have to do everything I read, because I love to implement. I could learn and take in information without implementing, and I could take information that I enjoyed and that I gathered, and I could use overlaps that I found, but I could leave the rest.

So Dr. Ben Brinkman is a metabolic scientist, and he focuses on insulin resistance as the root cause of many diseases. He’s very much research-based, not influencer style. So, I learned that insulin resistance can be upstream for many conditions. And I learned that some people can lose weight and still not be metabolically healthy, and that was part of the science puzzle I was putting together for my own body. Again, Dr. Ben Brinkman is the one who taught me about metabolic disease. And that comes from, you know, I’m also a big fan girl of Coach Mama Fox, and she’s the one who introduced me to Dr. Ben Brinkman. And I learned that high stress and high insulin lead to inflammation. And I learned that prioritizing my protein and having a certain amount of protein with each meal was going to help me. And I also learned that longer breaks between meals help with insulin signaling. So what I learned from Dr. Ben Brinkman gave me a lens, not a diet necessarily. Again, it was a lot of the same foods I had been eating, but a lot of what his particular science refers to is exactly what my labs were screaming at me about. So Dr. Ben Brinkman’s resources made a lot of sense for my particular bio-individual journey.

And then, of course, Coach Mama Fox, coachmamafox.com. She was one of the very first people that I learned from. She was my gateway into learning these different names and experts and exposing me to this community of metabolic professionals. She translated the science into livable steps. And she’s very much hormone aware and nervous system aware. And her teaching was very gentle and not fear-based. That’s why for four months I was like, “I like what she has to say. I have a lot of overall peace listening to her and reading her information and watching her videos. I’m just going to hook in here for this season.” And as I shared in the last episode, she taught me small, easy swaps to reduce inflammation.

And so, I remember that winter, I believe, I was taking the kids to Great Wolf Lodge, and it was snowing. I listened to The Obesity Code from Dr. Jason Fung: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss: Why Intermittent Fasting Is the Key to Controlling Your Weight. I appreciated a lot of what he said in this book. It gave me a deeper understanding of insulin and fasting as options. It gave some more historical context of metabolic disease, which I already had been learning about. And it was proof that reversal is possible for some people. I did not jump into aggressive fasting, and I did not go out and really implement anything in particular in this book other than a lot of what he said is in a lot of the other metabolic health books that I read, and I appreciated it, and it was a great listen. I’m very glad I listened to it. And the back of his book says, “Weight gain is caused not only by what we eat but also when we eat.” “Combining a low-carbohydrate, high healthy fat diet with regular intermittent fasting will improve your health, break the cycle of insulin resistance, and help you reach a healthy weight for good.” So, it was very good to listen to. He also talks about how he’s one of the world’s leading fasting experts for weight loss and Type 2 diabetes reversal. I have taken care of a lot of Type 2 diabetics and I never even knew until I listened to these books that for some people, Type 2 diabetes reversal is possible based on their experience. And Dr. Jason Fung is a medical doctor, and he does share his experience of reversal with real patients, and so that’s fascinating. I absolutely love hearing the experiences and the stories of other people.

Now, this next lady that I learned from, I really enjoyed it. Again, this is my listening and reading stack. I greatly appreciate all these authors. I listened to Fast Like a Girl by Dr. Mindy Pelz and also Eat Like a Girl by Dr. Mindy Pelz. And so, Dr. Mindy Pelz has helped give me my beginning, next-level hormonal education. So much learning about my hormones that I wish I would have known my whole adult life in womanhood. And hormones change everything, and the timing is important along with the food. And so, her teaching is a lot of eating in reference to our hormones. And Dr. Mindy teaches about power phases and how different phases of our cycle need different nutritional support. And she also taught about how fasting can be used strategically based on where we are in our cycle. She teaches that fasting for women, because of our hormones, is very different than fasting for men. Where men’s hormones are replenished every 24 hours, of course, women, we go through a whole 28-day to thirty-something-day process.

And so on page 53 of Eat Like a Girl, she has the power of fasting and your cycle. So days 1 through 10, she calls the power phase; that’s during menstruation. She teaches about the style of food to eat, which is what she calls ketobiotic. She teaches about days 11 through 15, the manifestation phase; that’s during ovulation. She shares different fasting lengths that are okay during that time and how that food is hormone feasting, which Dr. Mindy teaches there’s more healthy, whole-food carbs that your body needs during those five to six days. Then there’s another four-day power phase, days 16 through 19. And then days 20 to when your menstrual period starts is the nurture phase with no fasting and hormone feasting again. And her book goes through the details of all of those phases. And you can see on the video there are different pages. I have lots of underlines. I learned in here about blood glucose levels over time. She teaches about how not all carbohydrates are created equal. She also teaches things like estrogen thrives in an insulin-sensitive body. And I also appreciated it because she additionally has a food list which is so many of the foods that I love, dealing with proteins and fats and whole-food carbs and fiber. She also has recipes in here. And she teaches how you can use food to support your hormones.

And I will say another detail about my journey is when I got to April 2025, I had maintained my 60-pound weight loss for one year where I just went up and down 150 to 153, 150 to 153 for that whole year. In the middle of that year is when I got that very sad lab work, and I worked on just focusing on my metabolic health where I reversed my pre-diabetes and my insulin resistance, got my A1C down, and also majorly lowered my high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (HSCP). So I felt like for that year that was phenomenal. Those were the things to focus on. By April 2025, as I had listened through more of these books gently, and then I listened to Dr. Mindy Pelz and I’m like, “That sounds like fun.” I would like to, in my experiment of one, I would like to take the same foods that I love, the same food list—you know, we got chicken, we got pork, we got sweet potatoes, we got zucchini, we got bananas, we got our sugar-free, crunchy almond butter. I would like to take those foods and just test. I mean, because it’s me, myself, and I here, test 30 days eating according to my hormones and just see how my body responds. And I implemented Eat Like a Girl. I will say some of the numbers from Fast Like a Girl (this was her first book) some of them are a little more tweaked in Eat Like a Girl, like her daily protein recommendations. And I know I personally follow the one gram of protein a day per ideal body weight. And so some days I may have 120 grams of protein. I try to hit somewhere between 120 and 140-ish, and it can end up being an average. Like today I think at this moment I’m 118, and I’m probably going to try to get in a little more, but that is something that has worked well for me.

So in April, when I implemented Eat Like a Girl, which also meant that according to where I was in my cycle, I implemented some fasting they were not long fasts, they were not extreme, and they were only in the time windows when they would best be supported by my hormones and that broke my weight loss stall. I went from 150 to 153 down into the 140s. And of course, how my weight loss journey is, things go up and down. It’s never a straight line down. So I could go from 151 to 149.7 to 152 to 149.8 to 147.8 to 140. It’s just a constant little back and forth, and then my body eventually settles on a new number. And over several months, very gently, my body got all the way down to 141. So again, none of this is quick. None of this is a consistent one to two pound a week weight loss. It might be one to two pounds a month. Some months just maintain, then the next month might settle a little lower but my body really liked testing out Eat Like a Girl. And so officially, the top number was 210, and then I got down to 141 and to 140. And now my body is just really happy in the 140s. And so I’m not going to push it again. I just want to support my body for strength and movement. And the next layer of healing that I’m focusing on in 2026.

Two other books that I listened to in summer 2025, which were interesting, are by the Glucose Goddess: The Glucose Revolution and also The Glucose Goddess Method. She teaches about how the order you eat your food matters. She teaches that eating your vegetables first can blunt glucose spikes depending on the vegetables, and she has a lot of small hacks that can make big differences for many people.

And another book that I really enjoyed listening to was Good Energy by Dr. Casey Means. And her book gets into mood stabilization, sleep, energy, hormones, and also brain health. And it was good motivation that’s not fear-based. She teaches often in here about lab work, about labs we should request, and how to interpret those labs. And she teaches about how our food determines the structure of our cells and our microbiome. And with foods, she teaches many traditional foods and also swaps that you can take for those food items. So if you react or if your blood sugar spikes, as an example, with white rice, there’s cauliflower rice (you know, we love that around here), broccoli rice, sweet potato rice. For flour tortillas and taco shells, there’s, of course, lettuce wraps, there’s egg wraps (you know, we love the egg life wraps). And she also talks a lot about one of my other lived topics is stress reduction.

So Dr. Ben Brinkman gave me a good insulin lens and education. Coach Mama Fox translated a lot of that, plus offered a lot of gentleness and hope and she helps a lot of women in this perimenopause, menopausal, post-menopausal season. Dr. Jason Fung was a lot of good education and knowing a little bit more about the female hormone system. I think a lot of what Dr. Jason Fung offers would be really good for men in particular. From Dr. Mindy Pelz, I learned quite a bit about female hormonal timing and eating to support our hormones. From the Glucose Goddess, I learned a lot of simple glucose hacks. And many of these experts—this is something else I learned from Coach Mama Fox—she shares whenever you do a lot of reading and you listen to a lot of experts and you learn a lot, look for the threads of what all the experts are saying. What are they saying that’s pretty much on the same line? And then Dr. Casey Means was a lot of overall good metabolic health and systems thinking.

And so these books and authors and researchers that I’ve listened to over the past year have really helped me reduce fear, not increase it. Learning more about insulin resistance, glucose regulation, and inflammation helped give me language for what my body was doing. And that knowledge helped reduce my anxiety and help me make calm choices. And I also learned that I continue to love, love, love, love learning about different lanes such as metabolic health and healing. I have since gone on to listen to books about dopamine. One was called Dopamine Nation, and that was very fascinating. And I know I didn’t give you a full, in-depth book report on every author but for those of you who’ve asked me about the different metabolic healing books that I have listened to over the past year, these are many of the authors that I listen to. And these books will be linked down in the description below and in the show notes at Jamerrill.com.

One of the greatest lessons that I have learned through this entire season, through weight loss, through lab work, and through metabolic healing, a big part of that journey has been learning how to support my body. And that this is another example of healing that no one else is going to do for me. Doctors can run labs, experts can write books, and programs can offer frameworks, but I’m the only one living in this body every day. I’m the one that has to notice the signals and ask the questions, and I have to decide what I have the capacity to do next.

And so, the next episode coming up is going in a completely different direction, but it’s all connected. In the next episode, I’m going to share with you about how you are your greatest asset especially when systems fail, support disappears, and life becomes overwhelming. Just like I had to learn how to treat myself like someone who is worth caring for. And so if you’re listening to this and you’re realizing that you’ve been waiting for permission, certainty, or even rescue, this next conversation is just for you. I appreciate you. And again, head to Jamerrill.com for show notes, resources, and links to all these books. And I’ll see you real soon.

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