
EMBody Radio
Welcome to EMBody Radio - a podcast devoted to educating and empowering listeners on all things training, nutrition, wellness, and growth. Host Emily Duncan is an exercise science major, bikini competitor, coach, and sports nutrition specialist devoted to bringing you nothing but the best in educational and uplifting content. This is THE show to teach you how to improve your body, expand your mind, and live your fullest life.
Latest episodes

Dec 21, 2018 • 35min
EP 68 What actually IS "metabolism?" | Metabolism Explained
Everyone talks about "metabolism." Slow metabolisms, fast metabolisms, metabolic adaptation, stubborn metabolisms, all that. But... what actually is "your metabolism?" Can you point to it? Today's episode was inspired by a follower question essentially asking me to help her better understand what "metabolism" actually means. So lets talk allllll about -what "metabolism" actually is from a physical perspective (definition time) -what metabolism practically means -the different components of your metabolism -how those components change/adapt in various scenarios -what having a "slow" or "fast" metabolism actually means -a couple examples of why and how metabolisms adapt to periods of low energy -how metabolic rate is tested -lots more! ----------------- Today's episode of EMBody Radio is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic provides the best in adaptogenic/therapeutic mushroom products. You’ve seen me post about this stuff on Instagram and IG stories all the time, and I wanted to take a sec to tell you a little more about them today. I started using them because I love adaptogens, and many of their mushroom products are just that – adaptogens. Adaptogens basically help you respond better to physical and emotional stress. I run a business, run multiple social media platforms that tie into my business, I’m a student, and I have a life outside of all that that I’m trying to live, so stress management is key. Mushrooms can also be used to help everything from your gut health to your skin. My favorites are the Lion's Mane Mushroom Elixir and the Mushroom Hot Cacao with Reishi... Be sure to listen to the whole episode to learn why ;). If you want to try Four Sigmatic products, use the code "EMDUNC" to get 15% off your order at foursigmatic.com/emdunc. -------------------------- Find me here: Instagram Twitter YouTube My Website

Dec 13, 2018 • 29min
EP 67 Training Adjustments to Help Beat Plateaus
I'm done with my undergrad, have a huge weight lifted off my shoulders, and am readaaaaayyyy to talk to you guys today about training and training intensity. In today's show, we talk about: -How muscle actually develops, -What "adaptation" truly means, -Maintaining, progressing, and regressing adaptations, -Newbie gains, -Where your starting point should be if you feel like you've plateaud in training, -The concept of progressive overload and why most people aren't achieving it, -Training intensity techniques for intermediate/advanced lifters to keep progress moving along, -Why it's not "10% training and 90% diet," -So much more! -------------------------- Find me here: Instagram Twitter YouTube My Website

Nov 8, 2018 • 17min
EP 66 Poor Sleep and Bodyfat, and Easy Hacks for Improving Your Sleep
Sleep - it's something that we all love, but that most of us proooobably aren't getting enough of. And that's a HUGE detriment not just to our overall health, but to our performance and body composition. In today's show, we're talking sleep. More specifically, we're talking: -How poor sleep may negatively impact fat loss, -How poor sleep may potentially be catabolic (muscle-wasting), -How poor sleep may promote body fat gain, -Sleep hygiene, -Creating a nighttime routine that works for you and WHY you should have one, -Supplements that help with sleep quality/falling asleep, -The best environment for sleep, -Lots more! -------------------- Study referenced: Nedeltcheva, A. V., Kilkus, J. M., Imperial, J., Schoeller, D. A., & Penev, P. D. (2010, October 05). Insufficient sleep undermines dietary efforts to reduce adiposity. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20921542 ----------------- Today's episode of EMBody Radio is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic provides the best in adaptogenic/therapeutic mushroom products. You’ve seen me post about this stuff on Instagram and IG stories all the time, and I wanted to take a sec to tell you a little more about them today. I started using them because I love adaptogens, and many of their mushroom products are just that – adaptogens. Adaptogens basically help you respond better to physical and emotional stress. I run a business, run multiple social media platforms that tie into my business, I’m a student, and I have a life outside of all that that I’m trying to live, so stress management is key. Mushrooms can also be used to help everything from your gut health to your skin. My favorites are the Lion's Mane Mushroom Elixir and the Mushroom Hot Cacao with Reishi... Be sure to listen to the whole episode to learn why ;). If you want to try Four Sigmatic products, use the code "EMDUNC" to get 15% off your order at foursigmatic.com/emdunc. -------------------------- Find me here: Instagram Twitter YouTube My Website

Oct 12, 2018 • 1h 4min
EP 65 Potential Mechanisms of Breast Implant Associated Illnesses/Breast Implant Illness | with Dr. Brian Lee
This episode serves as a capstone of sorts for the resources I've created surrounding breast implant associated health problems, more commonly known as "Breast Implant Illness." Today I had the pleasure of talking with board certified plastic surgeon and MY personal explant surgeon, Dr. Brian Lee, on all things breast implant issues. We talk about: -His journey into the profession, and how his own struggle with psoriatic arthritis led him down a path that blended his knowledge as a surgeon with more holistic/full-systems healing -How he got involved with the Breast Implant Illness community -What Breast Implant Illness is -Some potential causes of/triggers for health complications from breast implants -How he learned about BII in his own patients -The hot topic question of, "Will it happen to everyone with implants?" -Whether or not he feared the success of his practice if he began explanting women and acknowledging BII -Where the medical/surgical community and medical device community could use improvements for patient health as it relates to breast implants in the future -So much more! This conversation was truly a great one as Dr. Lee remains open minded and non-dogmatic around an issue that tends to polarize many. Find Dr. Lee here: Website Instagram Facebook ------------------ Find me here: Instagram Twitter YouTube My Website

Oct 4, 2018 • 45min
EP 64 Women and Anabolic Steroids, Steroid FAQs, and Being a Conscious Consumer | PT. II with Victoria Felkar
Steroids, particularly anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS), are very popular in all sports, but particularly strength and physique sports (bodybuilding, Weightlifting, powerlifting, and Crossfit). There's a huge taboo around AAS, but an even bigger taboo surrounding women and androgen use. I'm so excited to bring you part 2 with Victoria Felkar, a researcher whose research is quite literally titled, "Women and Steroids." We're diving into that exact topic in this episode. Today we talk about: -Side effects of high levels of androgens in women (whether they have endogenous hyper-androgenism or they're supplementing with androgens) -Are the side effects of high androgens permanent? -Managing female anabolic androgenic steroid use -Coming off of AAS -Hormonal and systemic changes when you take androgens/systems effected when you're on androgens -Things you need to do to regain normal health/function after using AAS -How long does it take to regain normal health after drug use -Is there an intelligent/"healthy" way that women can use anabolics -Being a conscious consumer of your own health -The ignorance surrounding women and AAS -The anabolic:androgenic ratio and what it means -Are your symptoms from AAS or are they something else? -Polypharmacy in steroid use -The purity of non-pharmaceutical AAS -So much more! ---------------- Find Victoria here: Instagram Website Period Tracker ----------------- Today's episode of EMBody Radio is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic provides the best in adaptogenic/therapeutic mushroom products. You’ve seen me post about this stuff on Instagram and IG stories all the time, and I wanted to take a sec to tell you a little more about them today. I started using them because I love adaptogens, and many of their mushroom products are just that – adaptogens. Adaptogens basically help you respond better to physical and emotional stress. I run a business, run multiple social media platforms that tie into my business, I’m a student, and I have a life outside of all that that I’m trying to live, so stress management is key. Mushrooms can also be used to help everything from your gut health to your skin. My favorites are the Lion's Mane Mushroom Elixir and the Mushroom Hot Cacao with Reishi... Be sure to listen to the whole episode to learn why ;). If you want to try Four Sigmatic products, use the code "EMDUNC" to get 15% off your order at foursigmatic.com/emdunc. -------------------------- Find me here: Instagram Twitter YouTube My Website

Sep 27, 2018 • 1h 12min
EP. 63 Hormone History, the Menstrual Cycle, and Birth Control's Impact on Female Physiology | pt. 1 with Victoria Felkar
Do you take or have you taken hormonal birth control? Do you understand your own menstrual cycle? Have you ever tried to go off birth control and had an awful time trying to regain your natural cycle? Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Victoria Felkar once again. She was in some of the first episodes of EMBody Radio (episodes 5 & 6 to be exact), and she is a wealth of knowledge. Victoria is a researcher and she studies the things that other people don't seem to want to touch - women and hormones, particularly exogenous ones like birth control and anabolic androgenic steroids. As usual, we talked on and on, so this is part 1 of 2 episodes. In today's show, we talk about: -hormone history and where the gendering of hormones began ("male" hormones vs "female" hormones) -the back story of hormones -the back story of sports medicine/hormone manipulation -the development of synthetic hormones (estrogen, testosterone, progesterone) -how hormonal birth control pills and anabolic androgenic steroids are both "enhancement drugs" from a performance perspective/when used for sport -hormonal birth control pills, why it's prescribed, drug effects, different kinds of synthetic BC pills -getting to know your cycle and how to track it (get your free cycle tracking download here) -why we need to stop demonizing estrogen -castrating the HPO axis (hypothalamus-pituitary-ovarian axis) via synthetic estrogens, i.e. birth control -the importance of ovulation -does birth control make fat loss harder and why -SO MUCH MORE! ---------------- Find Victoria here: Instagram Website ----------------- Today's episode of EMBody Radio is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic provides the best in adaptogenic/therapeutic mushroom products. You’ve seen me post about this stuff on Instagram and IG stories all the time, and I wanted to take a sec to tell you a little more about them today. I started using them because I love adaptogens, and many of their mushroom products are just that – adaptogens. Adaptogens basically help you respond better to physical and emotional stress. I run a business, run multiple social media platforms that tie into my business, I’m a student, and I have a life outside of all that that I’m trying to live, so stress management is key. Mushrooms can also be used to help everything from your gut health to your skin. My favorites are the Lion's Mane Mushroom Elixir and the Mushroom Hot Cacao with Reishi... Be sure to listen to the whole episode to learn why ;). If you want to try Four Sigmatic products, use the code "EMDUNC" to get 15% off your order at foursigmatic.com/emdunc. -------------------------- Find me here: Instagram Twitter YouTube My Website

Sep 20, 2018 • 24min
EP 62 Why Fat Loss Isn’t Working for You
What's up guys! Today we're back for a solo episode and we're digging a little deeper into fat loss... and more importantly, when it's NOT a good time to try and lose body fat and/or why your fat loss phase isn't going the way you'd like it to. Here's the link the the research review on metabolic adaptations I referenced in this show: https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1550-2783-11-7 Today we talk about: -what needs to be in place before you start a cut -why previous dieting attempts could be thwarting your current one -why coming out of your diet poorly can set you up for future failures/struggles (including excess bodyfat gain) -taking the TIME out of a fat loss phase to get your metabolism and hormones back to normal levels -how long you need to spend out of a diet before starting another one -why consistency matters and the negative impacts of yo-yo dieting -what to look out for during your fat loss phase -changes to hunger hormones when you diet -potential reasons why your fat loss phase isn't going well -learning to work with your body instead of trying to drop kick it into submission -... so much more! -------------------------- Find me here: Instagram Twitter YouTube My Website

Sep 13, 2018 • 59min
EP 61 Using Food to Help Heal Anxiety | with Ali Miller, RD
Do you struggle with anxiety and/or depression? SO many of us do. Did you know that what and how you eat could help heal that? On today's show, I had to pleasure of interviewing Ali Miller. Ali is an integrative functional medicine practitioner with a background in naturopathic medicine. She is a Registered and Licensed Dietitian, Certified Diabetes Educator, with a contagious passion for food as medicine developing clinical protocols and virtual programs using nutrients and food as the foundation of treatment. Her Food-As-Medicine philosophy is supported by up-to-date scientific research for a functional approach to healing the body. Ali is a renowned expert in the ketogenic diet with over a decade of clinical results using a unique whole foods approach to a high fat low carb protocol. In today's show, we covered: -How Ali toes the lines between allopathic (traditional western medicine) treatments and naturopathic/functional treatments -Dietary ties to mental illness -Stress and the imbalances it causes -HPA axis dystfunction -The 6 "R"s of healing and health -Gut health and the neurotransmitters in the gut -Detoxification from a functional and dietetic perspective -How Ali uses ketogenic diets for healing, -Potential problems with zero-calorie sweeteners -So much more! Find Ali here: IG Website (be sure to check out her new book, "The Anti Anxiety Diet." ) ----------------- Today's episode of EMBody Radio is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic provides the best in adaptogenic/therapeutic mushroom products. You’ve seen me post about this stuff on Instagram and IG stories all the time, and I wanted to take a sec to tell you a little more about them today. I started using them because I love adaptogens, and many of their mushroom products are just that – adaptogens. Adaptogens basically help you respond better to physical and emotional stress. I run a business, run multiple social media platforms that tie into my business, I’m a student, and I have a life outside of all that that I’m trying to live, so stress management is key. Mushrooms can also be used to help everything from your gut health to your skin. My favorites are the Lion's Mane Mushroom Elixir and the Mushroom Hot Cacao with Reishi... Be sure to listen to the whole episode to learn why ;). If you want to try Four Sigmatic products, use the code "EMDUNC" to get 15% off your order at foursigmatic.com/emdunc. -------------------------- Find me here: Instagram Twitter YouTube My Website

Sep 6, 2018 • 44min
EP 60 Why I Removed My Breast Implants, My Explant Journey, and Breast Implant Illness
I've been through a lot of weird health complications the last couple of years and tried a lot of different therapies. If you had told me a year ago that it was my breast implants that were causing the problem, I'd have thought you were crazy. My health continued to decline, and then I came to realize that my implants could very well be at the root of why. Today, I talk about: -Some of the symptoms I had -What I tried to fix them/heal -What made me believe my health problems were related to my implants and not some other disease -My explant journey, finding a surgeon, why I chose the surgeon I chose, etc -Why you NEED an en bloc total capsulectomy if you choose to explant -How I'm feeling now/improvements I've already seen since surgery 2 weeks ago -Lots more! ----------------------- My Blog Post Healing Breast Implant Illness Website Breast Implant Illness and Healing by Nicole FB Group ----------------------- ----------------- Today's episode of EMBody Radio is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic provides the best in adaptogenic/therapeutic mushroom products. You’ve seen me post about this stuff on Instagram and IG stories all the time, and I wanted to take a sec to tell you a little more about them today. I started using them because I love adaptogens, and many of their mushroom products are just that – adaptogens. Adaptogens basically help you respond better to physical and emotional stress. I run a business, run multiple social media platforms that tie into my business, I’m a student, and I have a life outside of all that that I’m trying to live, so stress management is key. Mushrooms can also be used to help everything from your gut health to your skin. My favorites are the Lion's Mane Mushroom Elixir and the Mushroom Hot Cacao with Reishi... Be sure to listen to the whole episode to learn why ;). If you want to try Four Sigmatic products, use the code "EMDUNC" to get 15% off your order at foursigmatic.com/emdunc. -------------------------- Find me here: Instagram Twitter YouTube My Website

Aug 23, 2018 • 1h
EP 59 Getting Real with Yourself, Online Criticism, and Recovery from Abuse and Eating Disorders | with Mik Zazon
TRIGGER WARNING FOR THIS EPISODE: We discuss eating disorders, physically/emotionally abusive relationships, PTSD, and mental illness in this episode, so please be aware of that before listening. Today's guest is, to put it simply, a warrior. Mik Zazon has been through so much for such a young person, and she's all about owning her story and using it to help others. Today's episode covers so many topics, including: -Physical trauma from sports that left her without college scholarships and without an identity, -What happened when she first started dieting, particularly yo-yo dieting, -Going through an emotionally and physically abusive relationship -Identifying abusive/unhealthy relationships -Learning to depend entirely on herself as a form of healing -Dealing with eating disorders, mental health, PTSD, and so much more, -The root of your problems, -Her experience being caught photoshopping her Instagram pictures and the realization that happened afterward that prompted her to truly get the help she needed, -Cultivating TRUE self love, -Tips for self care, -Handling criticism online with grace and confidence, -Transitioning from hardcore fitness/powerlifting to a more intuitive approach, -... So much more! Mik is a truly powerful woman doing amazing things for women everywhere. --------------- Find Mik here: Mik's IG Mik's Twitter Mik's YouTube The Rose Retreat Health Undefined --------------- Today's episode is brought to you by Thrive Market. Thrive Market is THE place to go for healthy, affordable groceries that meet YOUR diet needs. Whether you're vegan, paleo, gluten free, whatever it is, you can filter through all sorts of options on Thrive Market. They even have responsible sourced meats! If you want to get 25% off your order and a free 30-day trial of Thrive Market, go to ThriveMarket.com/emdunc ! --------------- Find me here: Instagram Twitter YouTube My Website