Haley’s Frequently Asked Questions

Haley Scellick, ARNP at Empowered Health, shares her most frequently asked questions she hears in her role as a healthcare provider.

1. How can I eat healthier?

At Empowered Health, we individualize nutrition plans to fit a personalized approach. We pair the person’s health goals, biometrics, labs and a few other items. The short answer to eating healthier is to avoid processed foods, simple sugars, white flours and essentially things that come out of a package 90% of the time.

Another important focus is eating 7-9 phytonutrient servings per day. These are whole plant foods that contain essential nutrients to fight chronic disease. A cliché statement, but it is so important to “eat the rainbow” every day.

2. How can I lose weight?

This is a multifaceted question that involves getting to the root cause of why the person is gaining weight or retaining weight. At Empowered Health, we ask our patients targeted questions to assist that uncover nutritional imbalances:

Are you eating too many calories per day, not enough calories or the wrong macronutrients (proteins, fats, carbs). In this case, too many carbohydrates. There are many other factors that could be driving weight up or causing weight retention and our comprehensive lab panel often uncovers and rules out many variables.

One large driving component is being insulin resistant. This is essentially driving up glucose and causing peaks and valleys of glucoses furthering the retention of weight. Tracking foods with proper macronutrient ratios is an ideal way to determine proper ratios of macronutrients, balance and provide awareness to foods.

Movement is another key component for weight loss. The big win is 150 minutes of cardiovascular exercise per week, along with strength training at least 2 days per week. Restful sleep, stress reduction, and social connectedness are other important variables for weight loss. 

3. How can I balance my hormones? 

Hormones affect everything, from blood sugar to blood pressure, growth/fertility, sex drive, metabolism, and even sleep. Hormones are chemical messengers. We have hormone receptors all over the body. We need to balance and address all systems because they all communicate with one another.

At Empowered Health, we focus on the sex hormones, thyroid hormones, insulin, and cortisol secreted by the adrenal glands. Often imbalances in the gut microbiome, altered nutrition, insulin resistance and nutrient levels are a cause of imbalance. Getting to root cause for the individual patient along with optimizing nutrition, sleep, and stress reduction are imperative.