Getting to Know Your Body - the 1st Step in Feminine Leadership

My life-changing experience with keto/low-carb journey. And no, it's not about weight loss.

Hello lovelies,

I hope you’ve had a gentle and enriching week. As always, this Friday's newsletter greets you with another thought of mine that I find beautiful to share. Before delving into the topic, let me put two preambles here.

The first preamble: despite the title being feminine leadership, I hope this should not deter you, my male friends, from reading the entirety of the post. Feminine leadership is the style, not its gender, so the takeaway of this post might apply to you as well. Perhaps, you might also want to extend this post and subscription link to your female colleagues or loved ones.

The second preamble: I’m afraid I haven’t given enough context or background information about why I chose feminine leadership as one of the main themes of this Substack, nor explained fully what I refer to as this leadership style. You can browse many different articles on the internet, or from the rising number of influencers speaking about this, but they possibly mean different things. Since I try to keep the post short so you can still read it on your commute, please allow me to highlight only one chunk of this feminine movement this time, alright? I scheduled a better general background post for a future date, so please stay subscribed.

Now, let’s begin.

A short intro about feminine leadership: I associate the leading and managing style with softness, gentleness, and more humane ways of treating people around us. Instead of chasing, we are becoming. Instead of running for, we are attracting. Instead of being in a rat race, we are shifting our perspective that we are taking inspired actions.

I came to learn about feminine leadership starting around last year, gradually building up my knowledge this year. When I studied for my MSc degree, I had enough time to explore and learn while healing myself from my past relationships. I embarked on the journey into my feminine essence at first to benefit from this healing process. As some of you in my inner circle know, I was out of a marriage. This is the first time I acknowledge it online. That’s why I preferred to say it in a proper blog post, with sufficient background and nuance, rather than shorter content like Instagram reels, stories, or posts where I’m afraid it would be misunderstood. I won’t talk much about my past now, as it’s not relevant to the leadership part I’m talking about, but it’s the background motivation.

I resonate a lot with the idea of connecting to my feminine power as I realised I didn’t do much to understand my mind, body, and spirit over the past decade. I hadn’t done any inner work; there were years I didn’t connect to my faith in Catholicism and that, one way or another, influenced me to make the wrong decision to marry a person without consulting first with God and my parents. It’s the complete opposite of what I’m regularly doing: checking in every morning with God, daily Bible reading and reflection, gratitude journaling, and calling my parents regularly. Since it’s a continuous practice—a walk of life—the feminine journey is never-ending. That’s how I came to the start of this newsletter and my mentoring activities, which became a foundation for further business ideas on coaching, but let’s save it for another post.

Back to the knowing your foundation: mind, body, and spirit. Despite all three being possible to conduct in parallel, I want to highlight the practice of understanding your body as a gateway to develop sensitivity and awareness of your inner core.

This year, my body kept telling me the areas where she wanted improvements because of the lifestyle changes I took, and I strived to honour her requests.

I stopped eating land animal products (including dairy and eggs) at the end of 2019 out of solidarity with my dad who had stent surgery after his heart attack. The first few months he was out of surgery, he was placed on a strict diet to monitor his biomarkers, and red meat was off-limits. He’s back to eating animal products in moderation, but I still kept the lifestyle: from ditching red meat cold turkey (my last meal was nasi kapau with rendang in November 2019), to stopping chicken and eggs in the middle of the pandemic in 2020 as I had more control towards what I ate due to home-cooking. I still eat fish for personal reasons and a just-in-case for proteins and vitamins. A couple of months back when I was back in Jakarta I ate considerably less fish and substituted it with free-range eggs because of how polluted Indonesian marine and river is.

But living like that didn’t stop me from craving ultra-processed and sweet foods. I developed a sweet tooth in the UK. With how the supermarkets (like Lidl) put the bakery section at the front and the smell of freshly baked goods invades your nostrils, one bread became two, sourdough became bagels, and loaf became cakes. There was a point when I attended a school trip to Germany, my entire breakfast was 2-3 trips to the hotel bread station for all-you-can-eat bread. I was that out of salvation. Slowly but surely, I couldn’t live without eating high-carb foods.

My breakfast in Edinburgh and Germany (notice the gradual dependence on high-carb or sweet foods) vs Jakarta (keto/low-carb) and current UK (low-carb).

In general, since I often took pictures of what I made for dinner or lunch as well, I ate way more carbs than I should back in Edinburgh. My lunch and dinner had always included too much noodles, pasta, rice cakes, and white rice. Sourcing carbs only from beans and leafy greens was totally unheard of.

It wasn’t until I came back for a 3-month stay in Indonesia, visiting family and starting my current job in product management, that I realised something was completely off. I took a chance to do an annual lab check only for the blood glucose and lipid biomarkers. My glucose test showed I developed reactive hypoglycaemia (RH) or low blood sugar 2 hours after eating, which was <70 mg/dl. In normal people, blood sugar should still be slightly elevated post-prandial (post-eating), while mine dropped to 63 mg/dl. That somehow explained the symptoms of post-eating fatigue (I felt pressure on my crown) that even before my important meetings such as job interviews or dissertation advisory, I fasted for a couple of hours to not feel drowsy.

Overcoming Sugar Addiction with Keto

When I was in Edinburgh, I started listening to podcasts or videos and reading about health topics. This spurred from the recurring chest pains that sent me to cardiologists in Indonesia or A&E in the UK, although everyone cleared me from cardiac reasons for the problem. I spent my last allowance on health insurance in early 2022 before moving to Edinburgh to take a complete check on echo and CT-scan, and a year before that I was stress-tested on a treadmill. All clear. Since I kept assuming the worst that it might be cardiac-related, I became health anxious and super aware of what I took to my body. I was in cognitive dissonance since those podcasts and books told me that sugar is detrimental and ultra-processed foods are a big no, but I kept taking them in like a helpless addict. During my dissertation final month in Scotland where I lived in Stirling with a friend, my sugar addiction worsened. There was a coffee shop and a bakery I frequented only for their cakes/desserts. Only the Lord knows how much sugar they put into those sweet treats.

In retrospect, I realised that my RH symptoms weren’t as prominent as when I was in the UK because I walked a lot. Physical movements before and after eating help stabilise blood sugar, so mine didn’t spike and crash much. In my hometown and Jakarta, although I didn’t have access to high-sugar treats as Indonesians do desserts differently and with much less sugar, I had an ugly RH episode right at the Gambir train station when I moved from my parents’ place to start my job in Jakarta. It was an early morning train so I only packed with me 2 baos (Chinese buns) with sweet peanuts and black bean filling, my favourite. Because I spent the next 5 hours on the train sitting down, with no physical activities to stabilise the blood sugar, when I reached the station all the ugly symptoms manifested: shaky hands, feeling about to faint, blurred vision, and lightheadedness. I was so scared I bought bread (I know, a vicious cycle) from a mini market to raise my blood sugar again.

I knew something’s gotta give. Those that I read aligned on 1 solution for this problem: a ketogenic lifestyle, or the so-called keto diet.

Ugh.

The first time I heard about keto circa 2015 when my work colleague experimented with keto catering to lose weight fast, I was like: what the . . . why do people avoid carbs? Must be a sad life.

So it was a huge slap from the universe to me when I finally had to join the bandwagon. I’m an avid believer in fixing my lifestyle first, not rushing to medication before doing the simpler changes. So I studied more on keto. I stopped eating meat cold turkey and I’ve been a consistent pescatarian (with occasional egg consumption) for over 3 years, so I knew I could pull keto off without being miserable.

I experienced the usual keto flu, night leg cramps, metallic taste on my tongue, and all the bells and whistles.

Benefits

Miracles started happening out of consistency:

• I no longer craved sweet foods after a fortnight

• Stable energy level throughout the days

• I could still focus till evenings after office, e.g. doing my content or mentoring meetings 

So I was more productive. I challenged myself that I wouldn’t get tempted the next time I was back in the UK with the bakery aisle in the supermarkets.

Which I’m not. Now I can get in and out of supermarkets and see baked goods are just treats. I might buy some pitta bread to make vegan pizza for Christmas, but it’s not a daily must-have.

Keto rewired my neural pathway, like a Pavlovian response, but in its negative reverse: sugar is bad, so avoid refined or simple carbs like white rice, flour, and sugar.

Is Keto Sustainable?

Not for me, I don’t think so. That’s why instead of a strict keto diet, I just stay at low or maintenance carbs with complex unrefined starches. I don’t like counting macros and my body fat is < 20%, which puts me at risk of being underweight, so I don’t want to go even lower. I love fibrous foods as well, and they’re healthy. So I eat beans and legumes every day. Plus, I’m afraid being too strict on my carbs intake, which mainly comes from plant-based whole foods, will deprive me of certain nutrients. So I make sure I still eat my rainbows. Instead of counting carb content, I do mindful eating. I stop eating when I’m full.

As I explained above, since the early weeks of keto reset my satiety index and cured my sweet tooth, I could confidently say I was full when I was indeed full, so I didn’t overeat and overload with sweet desserts after eating. I still monitor my blood sugar (with the finger prick test device) occasionally, and my fasting glucose is still stable around 70 - 85 mg/dl, so I take that as my lifestyle is sustainable and useful.

My blood sugar maintenance practice consists of a physical and mental diet.

Physical:

• Taking high-fat and moderate protein foods from plant-based and fish, such as seeds, beans, legumes, salmon, and cod

• Avoid or cut down processed carbs such as white rice (because it’s stripped of its bran and germ), bread and flour-based foods (e.g. pasta, rice noodles, etc). In Indonesia, where shirataki is affordable, I eat shirataki noodles when I crave pasta

Mental:

• Stop looking at foodies’ posts that don’t align with my diet. I’d rather filter them out and follow other accounts

What do I do when I want something sweet?

Ah, the million-dollar question for a low-carb lifestyle, isn’t it? I tried the keto-friendly sweeteners, but I couldn’t find myself enjoying them.

For example, monk fruits (luo han guo). I brought the dried one to the UK and chipped it away to boil with my chai latte, but I don’t really enjoy the taste. So I’ve still got much leftover of the dried fruit.

I dislike stevia as back in Jakarta I ordered a keto-friendly chocolate spread which was sweetened using stevia sugar, and it left a bad aftertaste in my throat.

When I casually strolled at Pacific Place Mall near my Jakarta office, I saw a booth of keto desserts, which mainly used erythritol. I sampled a bite and didn’t like the taste, either.

And I definitely don’t want more processed sweeteners, so I leave it at fixing my taste buds and enjoying salty or savoury foods than sweet ones.

Carb craving experience so far?

Pizza and tteokboki (Korean rice cake). I bought a small/personal size of non-meat pizza at Pizza Marzano and didn’t wolf it down in one sitting. I split the 6 slices into 2 meal times in two days, so I considered my craving was manageable

But my experience with eating tteokboki at a Korean food shop near my office was bad, my blood sugar rose to 200 2 hours after eating it. I thought it was partly due to eating the rice cakes on an empty stomach because my early lunch was around 11 am, and I went to the office for offline catch-ups and had that tteokboki at 6 pm with colleagues.

On the ground floor of my Jakarta apartment tower, there was a mini market which also sold steamed dumplings. During breaks, sometimes I went down and stood silently in front of the steamer or the bread shelf, buying nothing LOL. That struck me that most of the cravings were visually-induced. By pleasing my eyes but putting nothing into my piehole, I was good. Hence, the mental diet as I mentioned above helps.

The downside of keto?

Late period.

Well, to be fair, it was due to lifestyle changes, which my body is sensitive to. This could be a topic on its own. But this year, my period schedules are out of whack. Timezone changes, diet changes (I used to be in a calorific deficit lifestyle around March - April this year), climate changes, and jet lags all contributed to this.

My Current Diet

I now become more intuitive about what I eat. The principles are the same, which agree across the board of different lifestyles:

• less refined sugar

• less grain

• less processed foods

• less deep-fried foods or seed oils

As per this video, Dr Gardner narrows down the common themes among well-touted diets for reducing risks of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. I put “less” instead of “no” because I’m being realistic here. There are times when I’m out or sharing food with someone else and I can’t stay away from the “bad”.

My day-to-day lunch/dinner. Sweet potatoes and beans are relatively high in carbs, but they’re rich in other nutrients, so I eat them every day.

End words

Despite continuously engaging in a diet that is friendly to my blood sugar level, I still face physical symptoms that sometimes trigger my health anxiety issues, such as chest pain due to gas from what I eat: beans and legumes, or cruciferous veggies. I keep reminding myself that a few cardiologists have cleared me, and my heart tests are normal. My lifestyle is good and I don’t even drink alcohol nor smoke.

On one hand, my occasional fluttering sensation or chest pain, which I sometimes couldn’t tell whether it was an actual fluttering or gas-induced, made me realise how fragile and fleeting life is. Having a heart-related issue connotates that I can be dropping unconscious at any moment (this is my anxiety speaking). Regardless of the diseases, there’s always this thought on my back burner to cherish my remaining time on earth and not waste it. That’s what motivated me to set and honour a writing schedule as I’m typing my draft now, because who knows I would go back to the Lord.

On the other hand, I also actively engage in behavioural techniques to ease my anxiety and health-related panic attacks. It’s not perfect and it’s not gone, but I’m trying. If I get chest pain or skipped beats (or so I thought) when lying in bed on my right side, I lay on my left side. I wrote down in my journal if I bent over and got that chest sensation. I wrote down what I ate and my suspicions. I started connecting the dots of feeling gaseous in my stomach and frequent burping or farting (I’m sorry, TMI), that it might mean I had too much gas in my GI tract, and that one of the manifestations was the chest discomfort as well.

Very Important Note: if you’ve got chest pain, the first step is to seek medical help first. I tended to rationalise and dismissed my symptoms as non-cardiac-related because I’ve been cleared by cardiologists and GP from the test results, and it was them who suggested that I should manage my digestion first, so that’s what I’m doing. Do what your medical provider suggests, okay?

To tie the topic back to feminine leadership, my journey inward to understand what triggered my reaction is the first step to knowing myself better. This is part of the shadow work so that I can serve the community and work on my business better because I’ve got fewer unknowns from my own body.

This is me taking charge of my leadership to steer my life. Keto did more than what I asked for. I tried that lifestyle for a couple of weeks merely to see its impact on my blood sugar level and to reduce my risk for metabolic problems down the road. But keto restored my taste buds and affinity to sweet foods, returning my control over what I eat, so foods have less grip on my life. Keto and low-carb lifestyle gave me a sense of freedom and increased my confidence in foods and social situations that warrant foods. It’s part of nurturing the leadership and advocacy over my life.

The next post is about my circadian rhythm, still related to my health anxiety as well, and has an external example of exercising my advocacy in the snooze department.

Stay tuned for the last newsletter in 2023 next week!

Added this section because I’m going to share with you the benefits of subscribing to my newsletter next week. I’ve been toying with the ideas of how I can add value to the community, and I’m coming up with a plan.

So, stay tuned for next week’s post, the last The Gentle Roadmap’s post for this year!!

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