LOA Today - Your Daily Dose Of Happy

“How many of my patients would I even be seeing if they’d changed their behavior earlier?”
That unspoken question hung in the air throughout Walt Thiessen’s powerful conversation with cardiologist Dr. Bilal Ahmed on LOA Today: Bridging the Gap Between Science and Wellness.
This wasn’t a dry medical lecture. It was an emotional, honest look at how our daily choices quietly shape whether our final 10-15 years are vibrant or spent fighting chronic disease.
Walt opened from a deeply personal place. At 69, with family members who lived past 100, he knows longevity is in his genes but he also knows he could still sabotage it if he doesn’t care for his body. On a recent hike, he and another walker easily outpaced their peers. Many in their age group, he noted, are “hobbling around” or stuck on the couch.
His haunting question: “What are you doing? Or more precisely, what aren’t you doing?”
Dr. Bilal answered from both head and heart. He shared how his grandfather’s heart condition inspired his path into cardiology, and how he now challenges the purely “pharmacology-driven” model by focusing on inflammation and the gut microbiome.
He explained that heart disease isn’t just about “high cholesterol” anymore. Inflammation, driven in part by an unhealthy gut, activates LDL particles, irritates blood vessels, and leads to plaque and heart attacks. A healthy gut microbiome, he said, can even change how well people respond to cancer treatments and influence diabetes and cholesterol.
But the most emotional moments came when they dove into personal responsibility and the mental barriers to change. Walt shared about his ex‑wife’s long struggle to make even small, consistent lifestyle shifts, despite having once reversed Graves’ disease through mindset and emotional work.
Dr. Bilal didn’t dismiss that struggle. He sees it daily in patients working multiple jobs, raising kids, exhausted, and sedentary. Sometimes, he said, it isn’t “willpower” so much as fear of the unknown and a distorted idea of what activity must look like:
People imagine they must suddenly hit 10,000 steps or “kill themselves at the gym.” But research shows huge benefits starting as low as 2,000 steps a day, increasing gradually. “It doesn’t take as much as you think it does,” he emphasized.
Walt pushed a tough question many people whisper: Are doctors even motivated to prevent disease if it means fewer patients and less income?
Dr. Bilal’s answer was raw and direct. He described half‑days with 26 - 29 patients, giving him maybe 10 minutes per person, barely enough for “hello and goodbye,” let alone real counseling.
That’s why he founded Lylah Health, digging into over 79 randomized controlled trials on the gut microbiome and identifying specific probiotics and postbiotics that can lower LDL by 15 - 21%, comparable to some prescription drugs when combined with better eating and activity. No magic pills. No free rides. Just tools to help prevent that dreaded late‑life decline.
Co‑host Anne Marie Young brought it home emotionally, reflecting on her own weight gain and menopause, the danger of being “on my bottom all day,” and the power of small, doable changes like hula‑hooping in the living room while cooking.
Because, as Dr. Bilal reminds us, there is no silver bullet. There is only your body, from the moment you open your eyes the first time until you close them for the last, and the choices you make in between.
Your future self is begging you: start now.
LOA Today Episode Page: https://www.loatoday.net/bilal-ahmed
Bilal Ahmed's Website: https://lylahhealth.com/
Follow the LOA Today podcast:  https://www.loatoday.net/follow
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#HeartHealth #GutHealth #Microbiome #Inflammation #PreventiveCare #HealthyAging #MediterraneanDiet

What happens when the person who “should” know money best hands over her financial power and loses everything?
In this gripping conversation, Estelle shares how her life imploded and how that collapse became the doorway to true freedom, spiritually and financially.
As a child, Estelle’s father taught her about saving and balancing a checkbook at eight years old. By high school, she was an assistant bookkeeper, and she went on to become a CPA with Deloitte, working with companies from tiny businesses to massive corporations. On paper, she was money mastery. And then it all shattered.
After five years of marriage, her husband came home one day and said, “I want a divorce.” Estelle was left with a house she couldn’t afford and bills she hadn’t been watching. Despite her professional expertise, she had done what so many people do in relationships: handed over the money and stopped paying attention. “I had handed over my financial power. I was left with a house I couldn’t afford, bills I wasn’t paying attention to.”
That moment forced a transformation. Estelle had to rebuild financially and emotionally at the same time. Along the way, she noticed something heartbreaking and powerful: in her spiritual and self‑development communities, people were affirming prosperity but couldn’t balance a checkbook.
Two worlds. Same fear. No freedom.
From that realization, Estelle developed a powerful model she calls “Your Word Equals Your World.” She explains how your words shape your thoughts, which form beliefs, which drive feelings, which fuel your actions, and ultimately your experience with money and everything else.
As Jodie Lynn adds, this is where responsibility gets scary. Many people resist the idea that their beliefs create their reality because it seems to imply, “If I’m responsible, I must be bad.” But responsibility doesn’t mean you’re bad; it means you’re powerful enough to choose differently now.
Walt pushes the conversation further by asking: if the global fiat system is heading toward a breaking point, what happens when money itself can’t function the way it has? What if we end up in a world where money simply isn’t as important?
Estelle has heard some intuitives say exactly that: that our values will shift toward community, care, and belonging, and money will lose its place at the center of everything. The pandemic, she notes, was a preview: suddenly, seeing family mattered more than spending money.
So how do you get money flowing now, if “money is energy”?
When Walt shares his listener Elmer’s question -“Seeing money as energy, how do I get it to flow and keep it consistent?” Estelle and Jodie Lynn answer from both spirit and practicality:
Give and receive. “You can’t just sit back on the receiving end,” Estelle says. Money is circulation, and you “prime the pump” with time, value, generosity, and aligned action.
Interrogate your beliefs about receiving. Jodie Lynn suggests asking, “What do I believe it takes to receive a consistent flow?” Then listen honestly and change the beliefs that limit you.
Play with it like an experiment. Estelle recommends treating this like a lab: try new thoughts, new actions, and watch what happens. No failure, just data.
Most of all, they invite you to a radical reframe: money touches every area of your life, and your spirituality is the foundation of every area of your life. When you align the two, money stops being the thing that breaks you, and becomes the thing that wakes you up.
LOA Today Episode Page: https://www.loatoday.net/estelle-gibson
Estelle Gibson's Website: http://www.estellegibson.com/
Follow the LOA Today podcast:  https://www.loatoday.net/follow
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#MoneyIsEnergy #SacredWealth #FinancialHealing #SpiritualAbundance #MoneyMindset #ConsciousMoney

What happens when a woman spends decades trying to be everything to everyone, and her body finally says, “No more”?
That’s the heart of the conversation between Walt, Anne Marie, and wellness guide Michelle, built around Michelle’s journey from overwhelmed, type‑A single mom to creator of the Holy Well program and the six dimensions of wellness.
Michelle described growing up as a classic overachiever with type A parents, then becoming a single mom to two boys just 14 months apart while trying to be the perfect mother, daughter, colleague, and friend.
Eventually, her health broke down, leading to an autoimmune diagnosis that forced a reckoning: “Something had to change, I was trying to be everything to everybody, and my health was what suffered.”
That crisis pushed her back to her public health roots and to a powerful framework: the six dimensions of wellness - physical, social, spiritual, emotional, occupational, and intellectual. Instead of seeing life as random chaos, she began to see it as a “giant game of whack‑a‑mole” where different parts of us pop up depleted at different times.
Walt pressed into the deeper side of this:
Walt asked: “What role do you see those inner world pieces playing in your program?”
Michelle answered that spiritual, emotional, and intellectual wellness go far beyond “Do I like my job?” or “Do I go to church?”- they are about values, creativity, and mental stimulation, and they directly impact our physical and emotional health.
Michelle’s approach is disarmingly simple:
Identify which of the six dimensions is most depleted.
Notice your behavioral pattern. Are you a chaos‑loving Tilt‑A‑Whirl rider, a cautious Ferris wheel rider, or a stuck merry‑go‑round rider?
Start with one tiny “anchor ritual”- a small, repeatable action, to begin refilling that depleted area. “The goal is to borrow from the full to refill the depleted, with baby steps instead of 17 things at once.”
Anne Marie’s response made it deeply real. She shared that she went through a career change, menopause, and the loss of her mum in a short span and “completely lost” herself. Hearing Michelle’s framework, she saw how powerful it is to rate each area of life - “I’m an eight here, a four there, a two there” and then gently focus where you’re running on empty: “It just realigns you and brings you back to you.”
Michelle’s Holy Well Quiz (18 questions that map those six dimensions) becomes both a mirror and a measuring stick. Women take it, see what’s low, start a micro‑ritual, and retake it months later to see how life has shifted. One woman discovered that, beneath her obvious physical concerns, her intellectual wellness was quietly depleted and that this mattered deeply to her because of a family history of dementia.
Throughout, Michelle repeated one critical reassurance: “This isn’t selfish. It’s intentionally meant not to be selfish. It’s meant to make you a better mom, sister, daughter, employee, boss, partner, friend.”
If you’ve been playing life’s whack‑a‑mole game, trying to hold everyone else together while slowly disappearing yourself, this conversation is an invitation:
Where are you most depleted?
Where are you secretly full and could borrow from?
What is one tiny ritual you’re willing to claim as yours?
Because you can’t save everyone else by losing yourself forever.
LOA Today Episode Page: https://www.loatoday.net/michelle-ford
Michelle Ford's Website: https://www.navigatingyourworld.com/
Follow the LOA Today podcast:  https://www.loatoday.net/follow
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#WomensWellness #OverwhelmRecovery #MenopauseJourney #EmotionalHealth #SixDimensionsOfWellness #SelfCareIsNotSelfish #HolyWell #NavigatingYourWorld #SingleMoms #BurnoutToBalance #BabyStepsHealing #InnerWork #LifeDesign

“What do you really want?”
That was the question Marc’s therapist asked him on a beautiful, sunny Atlanta day when, inside, he felt like there was “one cloud raining on just me.” Mark’s answer was simple and heartbreaking: “I just want to be normal.”
In this deeply honest conversation on LOA Today, host Walt and co-host Jodie Lynn talk with Marc - certified personal trainer, nutritionist, strength and conditioning coach, mental health advocate, and podcast host about what happens when therapy feels like it’s failing you, but you refuse to fail yourself.
Mark describes walking into therapy feeling broken and abnormal. His therapist gently pushed back: “There’s nothing abnormal about you, this is your normal. Normal is relative.”
Those words eventually became the seed for his podcast, Relatively Normal, a platform where Marc speaks with therapists, psychologists, and everyday people about postpartum struggles, imposter syndrome, and the crushing loneliness of mental health challenges. His mission: “I just want to make sure people don’t feel isolated and alone.”
Walt relates to his own story - starting LOA Today after a total business “crash and burn” in 2008 and admitting that, at first, he didn’t even think about listeners: “I was doing the podcast because I needed the help. When the first listener email came in, my reaction was, ‘Oh shit, what have I been saying?’”
Marc shares a powerful turning point: he had lost weight, checked all the “life boxes” - marriage, house, better body and still felt empty. He called his therapist on the verge of tears: “I feel like I’ve checked all the boxes. Why am I not happy?”
The therapist’s answer cut to the core: “Did you think losing all the weight would make you feel better mentally?
You have to be intentional with both.”
Marc realized he’d been treating physical health as a cure-all for mental pain. That’s when he decided to treat fitness like therapy, even hiring a trainer as his “therapist for physical health.” He stopped using workouts to escape stress and started leaning into his stress at the gym, coming back with “three or four different resolution strategies” after a hard session.
Today, Marc’s niche is training young people. Before every session, he asks: “Zero to ten - where are you mentally right now?”
If a teenager says they’re at a three or four, he adapts the session. For an eight or nine, he pushes harder. Why? Because: “No one ever asks them where they are mentally.”
He refuses to be the harsh coach parents sometimes request: “I don’t want them to hate coming to work with me. My job is sometimes to motivate, sometimes to inspire, and to help them find things in themselves they wouldn’t find without me.”
Jodie Lynn beautifully ties the conversation together, pointing out how much of our identity gets trapped in roles - athlete, worker, partner, and how Marc is giving kids permission to ask: Do I actually love this? Or am I just good at it?
Marc tells his own daughters, “The first time you tell me, ‘I don’t love this anymore,’ we’re done after the season. I won’t force your childhood to be full of things you hate.”
Ultimately, this conversation is a reminder that:
Normal is relative.
Happy is relative.
And you’re allowed to rewrite both.
You don’t have to choose between therapy and training, between mental health and physical health, between passion and discipline. You can choose all of it, and you can choose yourself.
LOA Today Episode Page: https://www.loatoday.net/marc-paisant
Marc Paisant's Website: https://www.marcpaisant.com/
Follow the LOA Today podcast:  https://www.loatoday.net/follow
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#MentalHealthMatters #RelativelyNormal #FitnessAndMentalHealth #YouthMentalHealth #ParentingWithCompassion #FollowYourJoy #SelfDiscovery #EmotionalWellbeing #NormalIsRelative #HappinessIsRelative

When Walt opened the show by admitting he saw “preparation” and “where are we going?” as almost the same topic, he expected agreement. Instead, Joel gently pushed back.
For Joel, those two ideas live in very different emotional universes. “Where are you going matches the concept for me that there is no destination. There’s a journey. Your journey is where you’re going. There is no destination.”
That single idea reframed everything that followed.
Both Walt and Joel grew up with the same cultural script: work hard, prepare for retirement, and one day you’ll “get there.”
But Joel’s life blew that script apart. He talked about chasing wealth, preparing obsessively for a future that never arrived, then losing everything through addiction, homelessness, and jail. “I dug myself an incredibly deep hole, and the process of digging myself out of the hole is what made me successful.”
At one point, he believed his life was permanently ruined. Yet looking back, he now calls that period the catalyst for everything good that came later. Walt still remembers resisting that idea the first time he heard it: “I remember distinctly when you were telling me that, I thought you were nuts.”
The “worst thing that ever happened” became the doorway to meaning, purpose, and connection with his son.
Walt raised a painful question many of us ask silently:
How do you prepare when you don’t even know what you’re preparing for or if the preparation advice you’ve been given is totally wrong?  
Joel’s answer wasn’t a checklist. It was a mindset.
He described coaching a young man who kept postponing applying for a job. Instead of building a big, complex plan, Joel gave him one clear mental anchor: “When you get to the parking lot, apply for the job.”
That wasn’t just preparing a résumé; it was preparing a mind that actually takes the next step.
Joel lives this daily. He writes five things he’s grateful for every single morning and has done it for decades, including on the day his son died.
“I wasn’t able to be sincerely grateful and depressed at the same time.”
For him, gratitude isn’t a cute slogan. It’s survival. It’s preparation for whatever the journey brings next.
Walt shared a powerful technique: learning to appreciate what you don’t like—not by pretending to love it, but by inching it from -100 to -80 in your emotional “score.” That tiny shift is still an appreciation, because it increases value.
“You don’t have to like it in order to appreciate it.”
Joel calls this “reframing.” He used it to transform eating from a dumpster from a lifelong trauma into a necessary piece of the story that ultimately helped him connect with his son.
As the conversation turned to money, entitlement, and work, Joel said the real lottery isn’t a financial windfall. It’s this: “The ultimate lottery in life is finding a way to make a good living doing what you’re passionate about and love.”
That’s the kind of preparation that actually matters: preparing your mind and heart to live the journey fully, instead of waiting for some mythical finish line that never comes.
LOA Today Episode Page: https://www.loatoday.net/preparation
Follow the LOA Today podcast:  https://www.loatoday.net/follow
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