Ep 87- Healing Inflammation Through Habits with Jovonnie Ford
October 09, 2025
Today I’m joined by Jovonnie Ford, a Healthy Habits & Lifestyle Coach and host of the Empowered Plates Empowered Lives podcast. After being diagnosed with endometriosis, PCOS, adenomyosis, and fibroids, she turned to plant-based, mindful eating and juicing to naturally reduce inflammation and emotional eating. Through her M³ Healing Empowerment Formula—mindset, mindful eating, and movement—she helps women reclaim their energy and break free from compulsive patterns.
We cover…
how people pleasing led to her health decline
why having an irregular period is often a sign of something deeper
why pain is not normal and how to love & listen to your body through that experience
the impacts of stress on your health
how to reduce inflammation in a habit-based way
Transcript:
Amber: Hello, confident eaters. We have a special guest on today, Jovanni Ford is joining us. Jovanni, I'll let you introduce yourself.
Jovonnie: It your healthy habits and anti-inflammatory lifestyle. Coach Giovanni, host of the Empire Plates, empire Lives podcast, and I help women with endometriosis, adenomyosis, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and fibroids. Reduce chronic pain, eliminate distress, and minimize irregular or heavy periods through my M to the third degree healing empowerment formula.
Thanks for vibing with me today, Amber.
Amber: Thanks so much for coming on. So can you share a little bit about your story and how you got into this work and what. Really helped you heal all of these different issues and really specialize in it.
Jovonnie: Okay, so Amber, I actually started as a, People pleaser. Back in my younger days, like childhood people pleaser, I didn't grow up understanding or valuing boundaries. Boundary setting wasn't a thing. It was like if we told you to do something or someone asked you to do something, you just did those things. It really wasn't [00:01:00] like a no, or I don't feel like it, it was much conversation about it. And so growing up that turned into a lot of. Toxic things and situations. IE not having boundaries, meaning I'm prioritizing other people. I don't have boundaries around my work. I'm in high stressful states and so one day I'm in a toxic, not so good relationship, not so great work environment. it was April, 2019, and. I got sick and I'm not usually someone who gets sick, and I couldn't really wrap my mind around what was actually happening. and so my nurse practitioner and I said, okay, maybe it's just stress. I thought it was food poisoning, but we were like, let's say it's just stress, the nausea, the vomiting just couldn't get right.
Something just felt off tired. Fast forward to August, 2019, August 7th. I'm driving to work. I'm a teacher, and so this is before students got back into, school, so I'm gonna professional development. Amber, this sharp, debilitating pain [00:02:00] resonated on my right side so bad that I get weak while I'm driving.
I end up swerving into the lane, that's on my right hand side. Right behind me was a 18 wheeler truck. I had just enough strength to get back into my lane before that. Truck was about to hit me from behind, I was like, at this point, I cannot take this pain as nothing. I need better understanding of what's going on inside of my body. I never felt this type of pain before. Called my nurse practitioner. She told me to go to the emergency room. They need to do imaging. They need to see what's going on inside of my body. Told me exactly what to say. This is important, Amber, because so many people, that look like me go to the emergency room in pain and people think they're just here for some type of drug, or narcotic, and that the pain is not real and they don't know what to tell 'em or do anything about it. And so because I was able to articulate what my nurse practitioner told me, I got my imaging done.
CT scan, they saw a large cyst on my right [00:03:00] ovary that possibly had rupture, and it was so big that they were considering hospitalizing me. And I was just like, first of all, cyst scared me. The word hearing cyst is just like, Ooh, we don't know what this is about to be, what's going on?
I said, I'll just go see my ob, GYN I go to see her. She thinks it's endometriosis. Never heard of this before. because of the unexplained facial hair. Polycystic OV syndrome, irregular period. Something I always experienced. I don't know if you've ever experienced that, amber, where you don't get your period every month.
People used to always tell me, oh, well it's because you ate something, or, oh, you might just be stressed, or, oh, your body's going through changes, so you might not always have your period. But not having a period is not normal. And it was something I normalized. painful period, painful bowel movements, stuff I normalized when my period was on.
Amber: Mm-hmm.
Jovonnie: I started that journey of figuring out what was going on and she said, I can be put on birth control. And I was like, I'm not for it. I don't know if you've heard people with period pain and you know, birth control is always that first thing that they wanna suggest. And I was [00:04:00] like, nah, I'd rather know what's really happening on side of my body.
So I did opt for the surgery because I feel like knowledge is empowering. so she ended up sending me to a specialist and guess who that was to her? Her husband. And so it was like, oh my gosh. I have the surgery March, 2020, right before the pandemic, and it was stage four endometriosis adhesion.
Scar tissue had organs. Fallopian tube was stuck together. They removed that large cyst on my right ovary, chocolate cysts everywhere. Some of my app pendants, rectum, it was just all over the place and it made, it took me back. I felt slightly depressed. I felt like, I thought I used to have a pretty healthy lifestyle.
I had a healthy relationship with myself and it told me so much more about me and what I wasn't doing that was being stored in my body and things was just happening and I was just go, go, go, go, go. it just shook me. And one of the, my sorority sisters and [00:05:00] OBGYNs, not mine, said that sometimes diet could help.
Sometimes nutrition could be the thing that supports because there's no quote unquote cure. But I'm excited about having this conversation with you because when we talk about habits and lifestyles, those things really do help us live a better life. I started changing what I was eating.
I started learning more about all those conditions, adenomyosis, endometriosis, polycystic ovarian syndrome. They found two small fibroids at the time of my surgery. I was like, what do these things have in common? How can I start addressing them with my lifestyle? And if I am doing this for me, I wanna be able to help other people too, because sometimes our power is within ourself and not from an answer for someone else.
Amber: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. So what I love about your story is that you chose to listen to your body and your signals and what was going on. Your big advocate of this quote, essentially of like, pain is not normal. Like don't normalize [00:06:00] it in the way that our society has that if you're feeling like something is wrong in your body to listen to it.
And the big thing I work with people on who are struggling with overeating and binge eating is tuning back into their body and learning how to listen to their hunger and fullness. But listening to your body is so much more than just, am I hungry? Am I or am I full? It's also knowing that when I have this symptom that my body is communicating something to me, it's letting me know something and what a beautiful thing that is to have that.
We have these internal communications. I was reading a study about infants who. Are born without the ability to feel pain to some degree. And it's a really deadly condition actually, because they're not able to communicate or cry when they feel pain in their body. And then we can't know what's going wrong.
And so I think a lot of times when people notice, oh, I'm starting to get this health problem, or I'm not feeling my best, or I'm in a lot of chronic pain, it's [00:07:00] really disappointing and even depressing. But if we can reframe it to something that. my body's working properly because it's letting me know now that something is wrong and I can go figure out what changes I need to make in my life to get better.
Jovonnie: Agree. And I love that you talked about the pain part, Amber, because that feeling of pain when I started doing the research, there are people that are in pain every single day. Endometriosis and I was at stage four, so I had the top one, but I didn't experience pain every single day. Amber, my pain came from when my cycle would be on, and it's the bowel movements like that pain was excruciating for me.
The low back pain started to become a big issue for me, but when I did more research, so many of my endometriosis conquerors, my adenomyosis, thrivers were in pain every single day, and they couldn't get that out. So being able to know that some people experience different levels of pain. Like you said, that's your body's way of talking to you, letting you know something is going on.
How long are you going to [00:08:00] sit around and allow your body to keep talking to you and then you ignore it or don't do anything about it? Your body has your back no matter what is going on with it and you don't understand it, and you might not quite be at that place to have proper alignment with it yet, and you're not fully aware of who you are.
Your body still loves you, and your body still wants you to be able to thrive. And it's really staying empowered and motivated enough and getting around the right people like us to know that there's still hope to feeling better and addressing the pain that we're in.
Amber: So what are some of the actionable things you did both like to do wise, but also mindset wise that helped you get to the place where you could heal from this and make these changes to feel better in your life?
Jovonnie: So knowing that endometriosis, adenomyosis, even fibroids, sometimes PCOS polycystic ovarian syndrome was rooted in. Deep inflammation, just high inflammatory conditions, some hormonal [00:09:00] imbalances, but most of them all had inflammation as a part of it. not only did I know eating nutrition could help address the inflammatory spot, but it was also the stress like Amber, the time when my body just couldn't handle it anymore.
It was at a high stress point. sometimes people look at inflammation, they're like, what is inflammation? It's being in a fight or flight mode all day. Every day when you don't give your body the time to rest, be still your central nervous system, the time to breathe. for me, not only was it eating, but it was deep breathing, like the in for five, hold for three, exhale for seven.
When I started doing that, I started realizing in my body scans, like where I was holding tension in my, my neck, my shoulders, my mouth, but most importantly that left side where my adenomyosis is those muscles. Are always tight that you don't even know they're tight until you do the body scans with the deep breathing.
So deep breathing was a big thing for me. Movement. I started feeling so much better. Getting out there and walking with my mom, but [00:10:00] then I ended up getting emotional support animal. my golden dude, Spencer, like he needed a home. I needed someone to love, we needed to take care of each other. And so getting out there, moving and grooving, doing four miles together, you know, two ways, two miles away, two miles back.
And that really started to help me with my energy levels, my mood, reducing my pain, helping regulate my period. And it was so, the movement, the deep breathing, and then understanding Amber. How stress plays a huge role, and I don't mean stress as in a good stress because you have eustress and you have distress.
It's that negative stress that you continue to just keep hustling through life thinking, okay, even though I'm in pain, I still have things I need to get done, and it's like slow down. You need to address the things that are causing you stress because your body keeps score. Your body still knows and holds onto those things.
That's keeping you inflamed, that's keeping you unable to truly live, thrive, and vibe at your highest because you're not addressing the stress. And I think we don't talk enough about making sure the things that are [00:11:00] stressing you out. You address them so you can get them out of you and away from you.
And that was something that I dealt with a lot. Like I wasn't addressing the stress because it was like, either I didn't wanna have the hard conversations or I just had other things to do. And it's like, I'm not even gonna worry about that. I'm gonna just keep going.
So identifying some of the things that are stressing you out and really figuring out a way to process those emotions and get support with it, so you can thrive and allow yourself to not be in so much pain or inflamed.
Amber: Absolutely. I'm a big advocate of when I teach eating habits that in order To stop binge eating. You don't need to get all your ducks in a row and solve every stressor in your life because that's sometimes the mindsets that traditional recovery and therapy methods teach is like, okay, in order to stop binge eating, you have to be not stressed at all.
And I teach a very habit based approach, but what I will say is with everything you've been sharing and like kind of what I teach. [00:12:00] Well, who I see someone like Jovanni for is the next step in after you stop binge eating. When you're like, okay, I've healed my relationship with food. I'm feeling a little bit better, but I still have some of these maybe other health issues that I want to get to the next level with, and I wanna make sure I'm absolutely feeling my best.
But we can't do that if we are still in all of this, all or nothing thinking around food and really having this toxic relationship around food. But once we do figure that out a bit more. Then it's like, okay, we can look at something like stress in our life and how it's impacting our bodily systems to a degree where it is diminishing our health.
And like you said, there's forms of stress that can be motivating and forms of stress that can be debilitating. Can you go over like what, when would stress be good and then when would it be start to be harmful? And how do you know and what do you do about it?
Jovonnie: So I'm gonna start with the good stress. And so the good stress has you motivated it, has you confident it has you. [00:13:00] Encouraged about living and embracing this journey called love like I know you're helping people with binge eating. I'm helping people with mindset, mindful eating, movement in regards to my holistic, habits.
And I know for you and me both Amber, deep down the journey came to loving ourselves on a whole different level that we probably never. Experie until we started going through these things. And that's something else that we kind of don't talk enough about is grieving our our past life, and really truly embracing this new lifestyle with love, with patience, with grace.
And so when you start thinking about. stress is what makes you a confident eater. What makes you somebody who wants to vibe with other people and go from, surviving to thriving? it was that, that distress is, I don't wake up with energy. excited about making decisions that align me with my best self.
But If I continue to allow stress to be a part of my life, externally and internally, things that are happening to me, and then the way I'm seeing [00:14:00] myself, I believe about myself, my feelings about myself, those things start to slow down your digest. Those things start to increase your inflammation.
Those things start to make your hormones go all over the place, and not just hormones that females experience, but even for males as well, like your hormones all over the place. Now we have the bloating that we don't like. Now we have the fatigue where we're not energetic about life and the things that we need to get done or the things we want to accomplish.
Now we're having the joint pain, we're having the pelvic pain, we're having the cravings that you allow us. To navigate through and help us with. now, we're going through insomnia where we can't really sleep because our hormones are flipped and we're not being able to really, show up for our body when it needs to.
We're having those bend urges that you're talking about. And so when we are distressed that inflammation shows up and the things that we don't wanna see in our body or for our life. And so that's when we say, okay, what can I do differently? I now have more. Of a better [00:15:00] relationship with food. Food is fueling me.
food is making me feel good. But now with those feel good emotions, I wanna be around good people. I wanna be in a good environment. I wanna have that lifestyle that makes me feel like the decisions I'm making my future self is gonna thank me for. I'm really excited about this life that I'm living now because I feel so much more vibrant and purposeful because I'm loving me now and I'm making decisions based on that love that I have for self.
Amber: I know a lot of clients that I've worked with who are dealing with some other health issues or I've had a few in chronic pain, they kind of have a hard time with this idea of loving your body through it because you feel like your body's betraying you and is like hurting you. What would you say to those people and like what is the impact of if we choose to have positive thoughts about ourself, like how does that actually help us?
Jovonnie: I would say, first of all, I'm so grateful that you are aware of the thoughts and the feelings and beliefs that you have about [00:16:00] yourself right now. that's something you should be happy about because so many times people are so caught up with life and the world that they're not connected to themselves.
And so just the fact that you're connected enough to be aware, I'm proud of you for that. Your body appreciates that. Find a way to remember who you are and why you want the things you want out of this thing called life. Because it can get overwhelming to the point where some people don't even want to continue to live if this is what life looks like for them and they have to get this new sense of self, this new vision for self, and that takes time too,
And so I really want people that's in that state to first. Understand that grieving a lifestyle is real because you're now embracing a new sense of self, a new sense of life, a new sense of love for you. And so as you're starting on this journey, you got this, this better relationship with food, which is awesome because now you're fueling and giving yourself what your [00:17:00] body needs. Let's start figuring out what are the thoughts that I'm having that's allowing me to elevate my life? What are the ones that are limiting my life, the things that I need? What are the beliefs that I have about my life? What are the beliefs that I have around my lifestyle?
Are they helping me? Are they hurting me? What are some things that I can do differently? thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and then really getting into the places. How am I moving through this thing called life, physically, emotionally, mentally. And those things take time to be on that journey to be real with yourself.
it's really figuring out. The changes that we end up enjoying and liking. And then when we don't like 'em saying, okay, well I'm glad I tried it, but now what else can I do instead of that, that didn't work for me.
And Amber, I don't know if a lot of clients have these, experiences with you, but seeing what works for everybody else is great. That should motivate you, that should inspire you, that should empower you to know that something can work for you. But you have to be intentional on going through that journey to figuring [00:18:00] out what that looks like for you.
And so because now you have that newfound relationship with food, give yourself the love, the grace, and the space to now embrace what it looks like to create your own healing journey. Go on your healing journey because you deserve it. Your life deserves it, and you have to start figuring those things out for you.
So to my endometriosis conquerors, my adenomyosis, thrivers, my PCOS posse and my fibroid fighters, your lifestyle. It's key to how you want to live your life. Start there, but know that those conditions do not define you. They're only a part of you. If you make it a part of you, make that a part of your journey to fuel yourself on knowing how to really show up with your body, knowing that these things that are happening to your inflammation and your hormonal imbalances, let that fuel your insight on how you're going to embrace those lifestyle changes, but not keep you stuck in it.
Amber: So some of the things you [00:19:00] mentioned, around reducing inflammation, I'd love to dive into a bit more. Can you go through what really helped you to reduce inflammation and what might listeners be able to start doing for themself today?
So first it started with, like we talked about for me was the eating the food, and realizing the inflammatory ingredients that are in some of the things that I was consuming. And so being mindful of those ingredients. Like I go into the grocery stores now and I'm looking at nutritional labels.
I have a background as a health promotion degree, certified health education specialist. So I have insight on it. But Amber, they never taught us how to create healthy habits to live a thriving lifestyle. I don't know if anyone taught you that, but that's not something we grew up learning in school, or even within our families.
That was highly valuable. But, really looking at the ingredients I was eating when it came to food, figuring out that relationship with food, but then it really got into stress and stress [00:20:00] management and knowing that I couldn't just allow, Myself to not have boundaries, I needed to set boundaries.
So those of you that are having, you know, some issues around, pain, inflammation, look at your boundaries, check your boundaries. Do you have good boundaries in place? And not boundaries to keep people away, but to protect you, protect your peace, protect your stress levels. Not being a people pleaser, be confident in who you are in your decisions.
Love yourself, and if something doesn't align with you, it's okay to say no because when you say no to others, you're saying yes to yourself and what you believe and what you want for you. I would also go with moving. People do not understand the power of movement when it comes to deep breathing.
The power of movement when it comes to just stretching your body. or even just walking. Those things help with reducing inflammation as well. I would say some of those things are the things that I would say to start with boundary setting. deep breathing exercises. Minimizing and eliminating the stressors in your [00:21:00] life.
Being aware of toxic things in your environment and toxic things you're putting on your body and your clothes, things of that nature as well. And just get to moving, but take your time. You heard those list of things that I'm doing. Choose one. If you're listening to this episode today, choose one of those things to start helping reduce your inflammation because you can eat the great foods, you can have the great relationship with food, but it's still areas where you keeping your body in fight or flight mode With that inflammation, there's so many different ways you can address that and help your body out.
Don't overwhelm yourself with it, but choose one. Really get it into a habit, your flow of your life, and then figure out what you wanna do next.
Amber: Mm-hmm. So something I see a lot of people do when they hear that information, and I just kind of wanna call it out for anyone who. Might be thinking it is like, oh no, you said just choose one, but Like I don't know what's toxic. I don't know what to eat, I'm just confused now, you know, there's so much to do out there.
do you [00:22:00] ever have anyone who gets into that mindset or experienced it yourself, and what do you do with that? If they're getting into, okay, I gotta be good with foods and I gotta be perfect and.
Do it all right.
Jovonnie: So it kind of goes back to this concept that both of us love mindful eating. And so I used to say I'm a mindful eater. and then I took a mindful eating course and I was like, Ooh, I love this so much. It helps people with, you know, their relationship with food.
And it's like if you have a craving, if it's something that you really want, you know, okay, sit with that. What are those emotions that you're having with that? Is it really a craving? If it's so. Go have the cookie. You don't have to have a dozen of cookies, but go have that cookie, enjoy it. Do what it is that you would like to do in regards to that.
So it was the, you don't have to do the all or nothing. I'm plant-based because I saw the benefits. My body thrived and enjoyed being on plant-based. My goal isn't to make people plant-based eaters. My goal is for them to live a anti-inflammatory lifestyle. That's not just food. It goes back into the moving, the breathing, all the other things that keep your [00:23:00] body inflamed, the stress, For me, I just really feel like, we don't do enough. show up and address inflammation because we don't always know. And people who struggle with it, they think it has to be all or nothing. But once you start choosing that one thing and you're consistent and you start seeing the benefits of what's happening, it should fuel you and motivate you to keep going in that direction. And I think too, Amber, and I'm glad you're calling it out. some people say, I'm doing really good, I've been doing good. And as soon as they feel like they messed up, I say it all the time and my followers know. Progress over perfection. Nobody wants a perfect life or a perfect lifestyle. The goal is for you to progressively get better at loving yourself, embracing your healing journey, and doing things in your lifestyle that better support the life that you believe you know you deserve.
And so it's all about progress over perfection. Don't beat yourself up. 'cause when you have [00:24:00] that shame, that shame turns into something negative. And then here we go back with fueling your inflammation. And that's not what life is all about. Like it's all about control and discipline, but it comes in time. It's not supposed to happen overnight. So give yourself the grace if you, are doing good things, highlight the good things that you have, done that day. And don't beat yourself up over the things that you wish you would've done better. Just. Apply that tomorrow, and if it doesn't happen tomorrow, guess what?
Hopefully you get next week to try again. You know?
Amber: Right. So what I really am hearing is that inflammation is coming from more than just what we eat, All our mind tends to focus on is how can I be perfect around food? It's like there's so much else around our health that we can also work on while we're also healing a relationship with food.
And I also just wanna mention that one of the most inflammatory thing we can do is binge eat because we're 10 to be binge eating on very high carb, high sugar foods. And so if that's where you're at right now, like first just having a moment of compassion of, okay, this is where I am. But knowing [00:25:00] that that is a huge inflammatory thing that you're doing to your body, not just because of what you're eating.
But also the way you're eating it, when you're consuming it at a very fast rate, it's coming into your body all at once. You're usually consuming it like. On its own, not with any other protein or fiber to help process it. So it's a big influx for your body that is very taxing on your system. if you are dealing with any sort of health issue, solving your binge eating is going to help that health issue too.
Even if you don't even change what you eat, even if you just change the amount that you eat and the way that you are eating it, and you start eating more mindfully and slower and in smaller quantities of that, that will help drastically. You don't have to make this overhaul of your entire eating habits in life of the what to eat.
It can be like these little things that make a huge difference.
Jovonnie: Agree.
Amber: Okay.
Jovonnie: Agreed. And I love that you even spoke on that, Amber, because even in that there was progress being made, It wasn't, oh, I'm binge eating. [00:26:00] It was even, how much am I eating when I'm binging? And that's still a level of progress of you getting better. And so don't forget to acknowledge the wins. No matter how big or small, a win is a win when you're showing up for yourself, to love yourself and do things differently. And so I'm just grateful that you even mentioned that because that's a win within itself is choosing how much of something that you're eating versus just trying to change the binge all at once.
I'm grateful that, your listeners, your audience, your clients. The people that you've been able to impact are able to get that experience from someone who cares about meeting them where they are, and that's what it's all about.
Amber: Thank you. So Giovanni, let the people know where they can find you and if you have any last minute thoughts for today.
Jovonnie: Okay, so you all can find me. I'm on YouTube Wellness with Jovanni, J-O-V-O-N-N-I-E on all platforms. Instagram and YouTube are my main platforms [00:27:00] that you can find me on. You could also listen to the Good Vibe Studio, by tuning into the Empowered Plates. Empowered Lives podcast, where I'm having conversations with other people.
I've also had some solo episodes really helping you get empowered, about your healing journey, making it your own and having some really good conversations about it. maybe you see yourself in some of those conversations and you find some ways that you might want to, adapt and utilize tools within your healing journey.
That is it. four vibrations.me. Is the website forward vibrations or you can just type in forward vibrations with the S on Google. You can find me there, y'all. It's your healthy habits and anti-inflammatory lifestyle. You have the opportunity to turn your pain into power to go from surviving.
To thriving to live the life that you truly deserve. And it's really looking at some of those cycles that might be in your blind [00:28:00] side of habits that you're continuing to live in. Get you a guide like me. Let's vibe and let's go on this journey to really figuring out where are some areas of inflammation that you didn't even know existed in your habits.
And see what we can do to change and shift those and go on this journey to loving you better.
Amber: Thanks so much for coming on Giovanni.
Jovonnie: Yes, ma'am. Thank you for having me, Amber.