Let’s chat about my favorite mineral today – magnesium!! 

Hi friends! How are ya? I hope that you’re having a lovely morning. We are in Seoul right now! I’ll be sharing lots of adventures (probably too many) on IG stories if you’d like to follow along. We are also going to Tokyo and Kyoto.

For today’s post, I wanted to chat about the benefits of lovely magnesium and muscle cramps.

For most of my young adult life, I would wake up in the morning, point my toes to stretch, and my entire calf muscle would immediately seize up in the most violent cramp imaginable. I was genuinely convinced that I was going to perish. (It may sound dramatic but if you’ve ever experienced this, you understand.)

The cramps were even worse during both of my pregnancies. And knowing what I know now as an Integrative Health Practitioner, that makes complete sense, because growing babies draw heavily on their mother’s mineral stores, and magnesium is one of the first things to go. (Babies are AMAZING but they’re little mineral bandits.)

I wish so much that I had done functional lab testing after my girls were born, because magnesium deficiency can play a huge role in how a new mom feels, thinks, sleeps, and recovers. It could have changed my entire postpartum experience.

Since I started supplementing with magnesium consistently, I have not had a single muscle cramp. Not one. (Knock on wood!!) The cramp relief was honestly just the beginning of what I noticed.

If you are dealing with poor sleep, low-grade anxiety, fatigue, or mood swings that seem to have no clear cause, magnesium deficiency could be a major piece of the puzzle, and you might not even know it. This is one of the most common deficiencies I see when I start working with new clients, and it is also one of the most impactful things to address.  Let’s chat about everything you need to know!

In This Post

• Why So Many Women Are Magnesium Deficient
• What Magnesium Actually Does in the Body
• Signs You Might Be Low in Magnesium
• The Different Types of Magnesium (and How to Choose the Right One)
• Why a Full-Spectrum Magnesium Can Be a Game Changer
• Topical and Bath Magnesium: Do They Work?
• Foods That Are High in Magnesium
• How to Test Your Magnesium Levels
• FAQ

Why So Many Women Are Magnesium Deficient

Here is a number worth paying attention to: research from the USDA suggests that nearly half of Americans are not getting enough magnesium from their diet. That statistic does not account for the additional depletion that happens because of stress, certain medications, alcohol, poor gut absorption, or the demands of pregnancy

Join me for a free workshop this Thursday! Details here. 

Hi friends!

So you’re doing everything “right.”

You eat well. You take your supplements. You’ve probably overhauled your routine more than once. And yet  you still don’t feel like your best self. You’re tired, off, or just not quite you, and you can’t figure out why.

I know that feeling intimately, because I’ve lived it.

My own healing journey was full of moments where I thought I had finally figured it out – only to still feel like something was missing. I was doing all the things I was supposed to do, following all the right advice, and still struggling. It wasn’t until I started digging deeper – past the surface-level wellness advice and into the root causes that don’t always show up on a standard lab panel – that things finally started to shift for me. Gut health, parasites, the connection between what’s happening in your body and how you feel day to day – these were the pieces that changed everything.

And once I found my way through it, I couldn’t stop talking about it.

Since then, I’ve worked with clients who came to me exhausted, frustrated, and convinced they were just going to feel this way forever. What I’ve seen over and over again is that when we stop chasing symptoms and start asking the right questions, the body has an incredible capacity to heal. Sometimes it’s gut-related. Sometimes it’s something that’s been quietly lurking for years. Almost always, it’s something that never got addressed because nobody thought to look there.

That’s exactly why I’m hosting a free live workshop called Why You’re Healthy But Still Sick.

This isn’t going to be a list of more things to add to your plate or more rabbit holes to fall down. I’m going to walk you through some of the real, often-overlooked reasons why people who are doing all the things still aren’t feeling well and give you tangible next steps you can actually take. We’ll also have time for Q&A at the end, because I want this to feel like a real conversation.

Workshop details:

Thursday, May 21

10am PST / 1pm EST

Free to attend – grab your spot below

Click the link here to sign up.

If you’ve ever felt like your body is speaking a language you can’t quite translate please join us. I’d love to see you there!

xo, Gina

The post Why You’re Healthy But Still Sick (+ Join Me for a Free Workshop) appeared first on The Fitnessista.

I used to think low progesterone was something that happened to my clients but actually wouldn’t happen to me lol.

I had heard the stories, had helped women work through the symptoms, and understood the physiology. And then, sometime in my early 40s, it happened anyway. All of a sudden, I became inexplicably irritable and rage-y in a way that did not feel like me. My sleep – which had always been one of my superpowers – fell apart almost overnight. I went from sleeping like a happy baby to tossing and turning, wide awake at 2am with a racing mind and a low hum of anxiety I couldn’t shake.

I ran some functional lab testing and found that my progesterone was on the floor. I shouldn’t have been surprised, because it’s incredibly common for women in their late 30s and 40s and often goes completely unidentified because the symptoms look like stress, burnout, or just “getting older.”

If any of this sounds familiar, this post is for youuuuuu. As an Integrative Health Practitioner and women’s fitness specialist, I want to chat with ya about what low progesterone looks like, why it happens, how to test for it properly, and what you can actually do about it – naturally and beyond. (friendly reminder that this is NOT medical advice. As always, talk to your doctor before making any changes with your routine.)

In This Post

• What Progesterone Actually Does
• Signs and Symptoms of Low Progesterone
• What Causes Progesterone to Drop
• How to Test Your Progesterone Levels (and Why Timing Matters)
• How to Support Progesterone Naturally
• When Natural Support Is Not Enough
• FAQ

What Progesterone Actually Does

Before we talk about what happens when progesterone is low, it helps to understand why this hormone matters so much in the first place.

Progesterone is often called the calming hormone, and for good reason. It works as a natural counterbalance to estrogen – while estrogen is stimulating and growth-promoting, progesterone is stabilizing and protective. It is produced primarily after ovulation, during the second half of your menstrual cycle (called the luteal phase), and it does a remarkable number of things in the body:

• Supports deep, restorative sleep by converting to a compound called allopregnanolone, which activates the brain’s calming GABA receptors
• Acts as a natural anti-anxiety agent through those same GABA pathways
• Regulates mood and reduces PMS symptoms
• Helps maintain regular menstrual cycles
• Protects against estrogen dominance
• Has anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective properties
• Supports thyroid function
• Has anti-growth and anti-tumor properties, making it genuinely protective for long-term health

When progesterone starts to d

This post contains affiliate links. Friendly reminder that I only share products I personally use and love, and think you would love, too.

Hiiii! How’s the day treating you? I have a couple of meetings this morning and packing because we’re seeing BTS this weekend (the girls are pumped).

For today, let’s talk about energy and cortisol. It’s a huge topic, something I talk about with clients a lot, and something that I struggled with for years.

For a long time, I thought I was just tired because of… life.

I had a full coaching schedule, was creating content, taking care of the girls, the Pilot was often traveling/deployed/working, trying to keep up with workouts, and doing all the things. Of course I was exhausted. Of course I was wired at night and dragging in the morning. That’s just life, right?

I remember going to the doctor when Liv was little (not my current PCP, it was a doctor on base) and she was like, “You have a toddler. Of course you feel horrible.”

It took me longer than I’d like to admit to realize that what I was experiencing wasn’t just a busy-life thing. It was a cortisol thing. And once I actually looked at my cortisol pattern – not just assumed everything was fine because my basic labs came back “normal” – so many things clicked into place.

If you’ve been feeling off and can’t quite put your finger on why, this post is for youuuuuu. We’re going to talk about what cortisol actually does, the signs it’s out of balance, what drives dysregulation in the first place, and what’s genuinely helped me, including the test I wish I’d run years earlier.

Signs Your Cortisol Is Dysregulated (And What to Actually Do About It)

First, What Is Cortisol Actually Doing?

Cortisol gets a bad reputation as the “stress hormone,” but it’s not inherently the enemy. It’s produced by your adrenal glands and plays a critical role in almost every system in your body: energy metabolism, blood sugar regulation, immune function, inflammation response, and your sleep-wake cycle.

In a healthy pattern, cortisol follows a predictable daily rhythm: it peaks in the morning (this is what helps you wake up and feel alert to start the day), gradually declines throughout the day, and reaches its lowest point at night so you can fall and stay asleep. That curve is everything. When it’s working, you feel like yourself: energized when you need to be, able to wind down when it’s time.

When it’s not working? That’s when things get a lil messy.

Cortisol dysregulation doesn’t just mean “too high” or “too low.” It means the pattern is off and there are actually several different ways that can look. You might have high morning cortisol and crash by noon. You might have a flat curve with low cortisol all day. You might have low morning levels and a spike at night (hello, second wind at 10pm that makes no sense but makes you want to redecorate your whole house). Each pattern has different root causes and different solutions, which is exactly why a standard blood test that only checks cortisol at one point in time tells you so little.

Read more

Last updated: 2026 | This post contains affiliate links. If you enroll through my link and use the code FITNESSISTA, you’ll get up to $250 off and I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

Hiiii friends! I hope you had a wonderful weekend and that you’re enjoying the morning. Today I wanted to chat about one of my favorite topics: IHP.

If you’ve been following along here for a while, you know that I’ve spent years building out my nutrition and fitness coaching practice and that I’m someone who genuinely loves learning. I’ve collected a lot of certifications over the years (Precision Nutrition, NASM Personal Trainer, Weight Loss Specialist, Women’s Fitness Specialist, Corrective Exercise Specialist, 200-hour yoga RYT, and more), and each one has added something meaningful to the way I work with clients.

But there was always a gap.

Working with nutrition clients online, I kept running into situations where I knew something deeper was going on – a hormonal imbalance, a gut issue, a mineral deficiency – and all I could do was refer out. Suggesting specific labs or interpreting test results is simply not within the scope of practice for a nutrition coach or personal trainer. I’d added other practitioners to my team who could run those tests, but as my online practice grew, I wanted to be able to do this work myself.

That’s what led me to the Integrative Health Practitioner (IHP) certification, and after completing both Level 1 and Level 2 (over 100 hours of coursework, continuing education, and some very challenging tests later), I can give you a thorough, honest picture of what to expect.

Interested in Enrolling? Start Here.

Use code FITNESSISTA for $100 off Level 1, or $250 off both levels.

IHP Certification Review: What I Learned, What It Costs, and Is It Worth It (2026)

What Is the IHP Certification?

The Integrative Health Practitioner certification was created by Dr. Stephen Cabral, a Board Certified Doctor of Naturopathy, founder of EquiLife and the Integrative Health Practitioner Institute, and author of the international bestseller The Rain Barrel Effect. (If you haven’t read it yet, get it. It’s free!) After nearly 20 years, over 600,000 pages of research, dozens of certifications in the natural health field, and over a quarter of a million private client sessions…. Dr. Cabral is the real deal.

I’d been following him on Instagram for a couple of years and had him as a guest on the podcast before I enrolled. When we wrapped up the podcast, I knew I wanted to learn as much as I could from him, and when