Episode 6: The Metabolic Wake-Up: Lab Shock, Overwhelm, and Choosing a Starting Point

In episode six of The Jamerrill Show, Jamerrill shares the unexpected turning point in her 70-pound weight loss journey: discovering that weight loss did not automatically mean metabolic health. After losing 60 pounds, shocking lab work in summer 2024 revealed high inflammation, pre-diabetes, elevated fasting insulin, and chronic stress markers. What followed wasn’t panic or perfection, but a decision to slow down and choose a sustainable path toward healing.

Instead of extreme elimination diets or rushed hormone therapy, Jamerrill focused on insulin resistance education, anti-inflammatory food swaps, gentle movement, and nervous system regulation. Over four steady months, her labs dramatically improved, reversing pre-diabetes and lowering inflammation markers. The heart of this episode is a reminder that lab results are data, not a verdict, and that healing happens through calm, consistent support not fear-driven decisions.

Listen on your favorite platform

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.

Key Takeaways

Weight Loss Does Not Equal Metabolic Health
Losing 60 pounds did not automatically reverse inflammation, insulin resistance, or elevated cortisol.

Chronic Stress Raises Cortisol and Inflammation
Ongoing trauma and stress can drive high hs-CRP levels, insulin resistance, and metabolic dysfunction even with consistent movement.

Insulin Resistance Can Be Reversed
Simple, sustainable dietary adjustments that support blood sugar regulation can significantly improve A1C, fasting insulin, and inflammation markers.

Extreme Dieting Isn’t Always the Answer
Sustainable metabolic healing often works better than aggressive elimination protocols when nervous system stress is already high.

Lab Results Are Data, Not a Diagnosis of Failure
Healing can show up in bloodwork before it shows up on the scale and numbers are tools, not verdicts.

Resources Mentioned

• Trim Healthy Starter
• Function Health
• THM Meal Planning Guides
• coachmamafox.com
• Food Peace
• Foxy over 40
• Dr Ben Brinkman
• How Not to Get Sick
• YouTube videos on my main channel discussing those lab results
  • The Health Update I Didn’t Want & Massive Meals for 10 or 30!
  • Coming to Terms with My Health (what I’ve decided)

Transcript

I was a brand new 45 and I was like, “Oh, there’s this thing called metabolic health.” Okay. Welcome back again today, friends, to the next episode of The Jamerrill Show. I’m glad that you’re here. This is a podcast for women who are rebuilding their life right in the middle of ongoing hard seasons. And I share what I’m learning as I go. I haven’t waited to the end of this journey or what I think the end of this journey is going to look like when I when I’ve made it and I have the answers to my questions and there’ll never be a season where there’s nothing new to learn or discover or to share.

So, I am sharing my personal experiences what I’m learning about my health and movement, grief, and healing. And I’m sharing with you from my experiences how to learn to take care of yourself when life just doesn’t offer a full reset button. It’s definitely not about having it all figured out. This is about staying present and building strength one step at a time and walking forward together. And as I’ve shared, one of the questions that I receive daily is for women all around the world who want tips and tricks and answers to my up to 70-pound weight loss that I’ve experienced over the last several years. Women have seen me walk out this journey slowly over time and everybody wants to know my best tips and supports I have learned to help make it happen. And my story is one that has been unfolding for well over a decade.

So in episode 4, which I will link down in the description below, you can also find all the show notes and every episode and resource I reference at Jamerrill.com. So in episode four, I shared all about my health decline that I was experiencing over several years from August 2023 backwards. And then in episode 5, my episode before this one, I shared when the weight really started coming off which led to the up to 70-pound weight loss. So this episode and these episodes are not medical advice and this definitely is not weight loss advice because my experience is very bio-individual to my own body and my lived experience. But I do hope that you can take some encouragement and some resources and inspiration to help you on your own journey and for your own research for your own body and health because I believe that we can be our own best advocates. And I believe we deserve good care just like we have poured good care into so many others. We need to also pour that good care back into ourselves. We deserve that and that’s okay.

So picking up where we left off, by summer 2024, I had my full lab work done again. And for me, I had that lab work done just to check in, just for maintenance. I wasn’t expecting anything bad. If anything, I was expecting good things. I was expecting a happy lab report. I did have lab work done in fall 2023. Things were not fantastic, but my whole life was a nightmare. So, I was not focusing so much on what those lab results said. I knew it would be a good baseline that later we would have that data and I could check in on. And my doctor was able to give me a plan to have some good basic supplements to support what they saw with that lab work. And the things I was happy about at that time is my vitamin D over several years had come into normal range. I had been supplementing for years by that point and had brought my vitamin D, which was seven in 2021, up to a normal range by fall 23. And I have fully documented that experience and that journey with my health, bringing me all the way up to summer 2024.

And by summer 2024, I had lost 60-pounds total. I was continuing with my daily step count that felt great on my body. I was participating in more local running events. I was considering doing my first half marathon in October 2024. And movement wise, I felt good. I was still learning about chronic stress. My nervous system at that point had been in a constant flare for a year. And I remember feeling like I was burning, like my body was burning and just this sensation I had to move forward. And that’s what my daily walking helped me work through and process. But nowhere in my cognitive abilities was I assessing my inflammation level and my stress levels and these other life factors.

And by summer 2024, I had good trauma and grief therapy every week. That was something I invested in for myself. And I felt like then and I still feel like it was super important for me and my therapist was encouraging me to continue my daily movements. She said that was fantastic for my bilateral processing. And so my lab work that I had done summer 2024 really told the story of what a year of chronic stress had done to my body. Even within the framework of me moving my body, of me nourishing my body. I was not thinking anything about the internal damage the stress was causing because I was at my limit and I was doing every day the focus things I could do to make it through and take care of myself. And I know you can say this with me, but it was my gentle movement and it was nourishing my body. I don’t know where my lab work would have been if I didn’t have that framework in place to begin with.

Even though I didn’t have full understanding, I knew what I was doing was supporting me. And the professionals in my life, my therapist, my doctor, and my running coach all supported my good, gentle daily movement and my daily nourishment. I will also say summer 2024 had its own list of traumatic unexpected events and I felt those events very much in my body and my nervous system. I got my lab work back maybe two or three days before my birthday and I’m trying to think now. I’m 46 now. So I was about to turn 45 and it just made me so sad because the way the report read it was not good. And my doctor does a fantastic job doing a write up on every single marker on what it means, what the parameters are, what the risks are, and and things that I can do to correct those.

I felt like I had made so much good progress. I wasn’t expecting the negative labs and it was honestly very shocking for me. And so my hs-CRP was 5.7 which which is an inflammatory marker and that was high risk for heart attack and stroke. I was a pre-diabetic. I had elevated fasting insulin. I had high inflammation, high cortisol, high adrenal stress. And so even after losing 60-pounds, my lab work was on fire. So I remember the weight of that just made my body feel very weak and fragile. I knew that I was carrying a lot of stress before I saw the inflammation and the pre-diabetes and the insulin resistance data. And it was a picture of what the stress was doing to my body. And so the chronic stress was not just one event. It was ongoing and it was layered. And the weight loss didn’t protect my body from the stress and I didn’t know what to do about it. Because like a lot of women in hard situations, many times we may not have full autonomy.

We may be learning that we have personal agency, but that’s also a journey that has to be walked out. And so yet again for me it was another experience of no one’s going to save me. I have to save myself. And so I shared my lab work with some other experts and I was taking in a flood of information and I was going to learn but I didn’t know yet that cortisol and elevated cortisol which can stay elevated from chronic stress and trauma leads to high inflammation and insulin resistance. And because I felt so fragile and that lab work was so shocking, I just I didn’t know what my body was going to do next because something that I was learning in my journey, learning more about chronic stress and trauma recovery. And part of that learning is listening to the stories of other women that have gone before us.

A high percentage of women develop autoimmune diseases. And there’s actions we can take to support our body and give our body good care. But also after years of chronic stress and trauma, we don’t always get to decide what our body is going to do. Our body has held us. Our body has been through a lot and we have held a lot of stress in our body. And so there were a couple options that were given to me. And I didn’t feel comfortable with either of them. One was an extreme elimination diet similar to what would be the Lion’s Diet. I have read the stories of many people on there. It seems like there are people who are very very sick and based on their lab work and their bio-individual needs. They make the decision to do the Lion’s Diet, even plants are causing harm for them. And so I was not against the Lion’s Diet. I’m not against the Lion’s Diet now. I read about it and I honestly considered it. And I was told if I do the Lion’s Diet for about 30 days, maybe 60 days after my body totally detoxes off of everything. then like many elimination diets, we slowly add different food items back in and see how my body reacts. So that was option one.

And then the other option that I was told, again, I was 44, just turned 45, is that I needed to go on HRT, that all of my hormones were screaming for hormone replacement therapy. Now, at that point, I did not have the bandwidth to do any hormonal research, any HRT research. I know many women are educated on their complete 30-day or 28-day hormone cycle. I knew the basics, but I didn’t feel I had a good hormonal understanding just as a woman, what my body goes through completely over that 28 to 30 day cycle and what I needed to do to support my body even with food during different phases. And the topic of HRT felt like a whole other big burden I had to learn about. So, I had to learn about insulin resistance and reversing pre-diabetes. I had to do an elimination diet. I also needed to go on HRT. It was too much. One year into the worst trauma of my life with my chronic stress load.

And then my lab work was screaming at me, heart attack and stroke. I did do the Lion’s Diet protocol for a couple days. And honestly, it just I felt so sad. Within all of that, there’s also an element of coming off of any gluten exposure and dairy. And there’s all kinds of symptoms that people can go through as they go through that process. And so for me at that point, it was it was too hard, too fast, too much coming in on me. So I had to figure out what I could handle and how I was going to move forward myself being my own best advocate. And I was experiencing decisions made from fear and stress and I was experiencing this pressured decisions from a position of fear were only adding more stress to my already very stressed out body.

So dipped my toes for the in the elimination diet came back out because also I’ve shared about my fragile framework of joy and the few things I get to hold on to. And if frying my zucchini in bacon grease or having sweet potato bring me joy that there’s also value there. So over those weeks in August I just I broke it down very simply. Okay, what can I actually do right now that was not extreme elimination that was not going to make me feel rushed to make hormone decisions I did not fully understand. I wanted permission to slow down and to learn before acting and to learn more about protecting my nervous system.

So, through my own research and a referral from a friend, I found Coach Mama Fox. And you can go to coachmamafox.com. Coach Mama Fox is an insulin resistance and anti-inflammatory menopause certified coach. That’s my timer letting me know where we are in life, of course. And she had a very simple course. I loved the name of it. It’s called food peace and I checked in. She still has it. It was affordable. And over two days while I walked, I just listened to her course. She had some food peace hacks. I listened to those. I listened to her videos while I walked and everything made a lot of sense. What I loved is it took the food that I already enjoyed. I got to keep a good bit of it. And she taught me some very simple swaps I could make. Like I learned through the course that peanut butter for some people can be inflammatory and I could switch that out for sugar-free almond butter. And I have since had a total love fest with crunchy sugar-free almond butter.

She also confirmed in her teaching that gluten and dairy can be inflammatory for some women. And she taught a structure of eating protein and fat and vegetables and berries that made a lot of sense to me. And again, we’re dealing with food I already had in my house and I already enjoyed. So, I was not learning to eat anything different, but I was taking the food that I already loved. I got to keep most of it, right? Just little swaps like sugar-free almond butter. And she taught me in a very easy way how to eat those foods that supported my insulin, my blood glucose, and that were also anti-inflammatory. She had a very nice active Facebook group. I think it’s called Foxy over 40. I’ll link it for you in the description below. And I was able to look at people’s meals there. And it felt like just a step forward into another layer of healing. It did not feel extreme. It felt very doable and manageable.

But I did have to take it day by day and meal by meal. In about two weeks, I was feeling pretty confident in building out my meals in an insulin and hormone honoring way. And so, at this point, I was not looking at the scale at all as far as weight loss. I was focusing 100% on healing my metabolic health, which is it’s I never thought about my metabolic health before August 2024. So, if that encourages you at all, I was a brand new 45 and I was like, “Oh, there’s this called metabolic health.” Okay. And statistics that I learned from Dr Ben Brinkman was 87% of Americans are not metabolically healthy. And so beginning August 2024, September 2024, October 2024, November 2024, and December 2024, I just did Coach Mama Fox’s hacks. I kept my meals very simple but was able to keep a lot of the food that I loved. And she taught me some very easy breezy tweaks that I was able to implement that also brought my stress down about the whole situation. And since the lab report was so sad and itself caused me a lot of stress, I felt like moving calm and steady with this framework I stepped into was another of healing and I had also decided I was just going to move forward with the food peace basic teachings to reverse my insulin resistance and to reverse my pre-diabetes. That was my hope and also to bring my stress level down making food very easy.

I was going to continue with my walking and running because again my my high cortisol was not coming from my movement. It was coming from my chronic life stress. And if anything, the gentle movement from my walking was helping my brain process and was also a way to bring my cortisol down. And I run gently. I don’t run to win races. And because again, lots of expert, lots of noise externally, I figured during those four months, I listen to a lot of information from Dr Ben Brinkman. If you are on just the audio podcast. I’m holding up the books in the video, but I will link them down below. So, Dr Ben Brinkman is a metabolic scientist, and I’ve probably been mispronouncing his name as I do. It’s Dr Ben Brinkman, not Binkman. So, sorry. I mean, it’s me, you know, this is what happens. So, Coach Mama Fox has one of her certifications through him, I believe. And one of the books that she referenced a lot is his How Not to Get Sick. It says the practical companion to why we get sick, a cookbook and guide to prevent and reverse insulin resistance, lose weight and fight chronic disease.

So during those four months where I just try to keep things as simple as possible, I did read the hard copy of How Not to Get Sick. This is not available on audiobook. Later, much later, like in 2015 [2025], I’ve made more of the recipes that are located in the back. They’ve got I mean, he’s got some beautiful things. Hold on. Now, now I want to show you recipe pictures, right? Because you’re my friend and this is what I do. I show recipe pictures. Yes, blackberry cheesecake squares. Highly recommend. But the first third of the book is the teaching on reversing insulin resistance. Then there’s exercises in here. And then there’s a generous cookbook in the back.

And also during this time when I got my sad lab work, which I did YouTube videos on my main channel discussing those lab results and I’ll also link those in the show notes because that was more real time. I had the lab work in front of me and I was reading directly from the reports. I kept my meal simple. I lurked in Coach Mama Fox’s Foxy Over 40 group. You got to love that name. and I read this book and I saw a lot of these teachings walked out through Coach Mama Fox. I’m not sponsored, not sponsored. She just truly helped me and opened my eyes to tools to help support my metabolic health, and I’m forever grateful.

Some other tools I gently learned about in fall 2024 was about wearing a continuous glucose monitor. I also got an inexpensive fingerprint glucometer from Walmart. was like $25 and I could prick my finger just like I would do for my patients at the hospital or the nursing center. But I learned to use my glucometer to show blood sugar trends and keep an eye on that. I also learned to compare those numbers with finger stick numbers during that season. I was taking my fasting blood sugar in the morning before I got out of bed. And I was learning to use that data in response to how my body reacted to different meals and different food and movement.

My labs were not bad because of food, but food became yet another tool to support my next layer of healing. And so then in January 2025, about four solid months, eating in this particular insulin supported way, I had fresh lab work done and so many things were reversed. My A1C was out of pre-diabetic range. My fasting insulin had come down within normal limits. By my lab work, I was metabolically healthy on so many levels and also my hs-CRP which was 5.7 in the summer was down below 0.5. So I want to be really clear that I’m not sharing this information as a quick fix or a guarantee. I hope that this shows you what can be possible when you listen to your body instead of pushing and panicking because there was definitely I’ll say a week to two after those lab results where my stress levels increased more and I did feel very panicky because it’s all very serious. It’s my life and I learned through that experience that healing does not require that I do everything. Healing requires me doing something that I can sustain.

So if you’re looking that scares you. You’re not broken. Lab results are information, not a verdict. They’re data. They’re a data point that we can use and they can be helpful. You do not have to fix everything at once. Your body responds to support, not punishment. The big shift for me wasn’t a lot of new food rules. It was part a big shift was for me learning about lowering my stress levels. I chose a path where I learned to reduce food noise and that honored insulin and lowering my inflammation. And what I chose for me was based on the peace that I felt that brought calmness to my nervous system.

Okay, we’re going to do this one thing. I’m going to do this over several months. I’m going to support my body and I’m going to walk this out. And movement can be supportive, gentle, consistent movement matters. Walking, running at a moderate pace, and moving your body in a way that feels regulated counts. Movement can lower cortisol, help process trauma, and support healing right in the middle when life still feels so hard.

You are allowed to trust your capacity, and you are allowed to choose what feels manageable for you right now. You’re allowed to say, “I need to simplify.” You’re allowed to get new data and change your mind. And you’re also allowed to say, “I need more information before making big decisions.” And that’s not failure. That’s lived experience. And that’s wisdom. Sometimes the scale is in a season where it doesn’t change. Sometimes healing shows up later in your labs first. And sometimes the big win is healing showing up in sleep, energy, and steadiness. If my body can respond after everything it’s been through, yours can too. You are capable of learning and adapting and supporting yourself.

And so, in my next episode, I’m going to share with you more about learning to be your own health advocate. And I’m going to share many more books and experts and resources that I have learned from and that I continue to learn from through from December 2024 through now, winter 2026. And I’m going to share from many of the books and resources I have read over the last several years that I’ve shared about at different points in my YouTube videos. I’ve shared about these books in Instagram stories and women have written to me when I’ve mentioned a book or I’ve mentioned an author, I’ve mentioned an expert and they’ve wanted to hear more about them. So, I’m going to share with you some of my very favorites that I’ve received a lot of good information from and I’ve taken what I’ve wanted to for my own unique journey.

If there’s one thing I hope you take from this episode, it’s not that your body is working against you. It’s communicating to you. Healing doesn’t come from panic or perfection. It comes from learning how to listen, how to support yourself, and how to choose what you can actually sustain in this season. You don’t have to have all the answers today. You just have to stay with yourself and keep taking the next doable step. Thank you for being here for this part of the story, and we will keep walking this out together.