Live Nourished with Wellness Coach Hally Brooke and Linda Kreter
35:05 Share

Welcome to Wise Health for Women Radio with Linda Prater. Women are pressed daily to give more, learn more, and be more, often at the expense of mind, body, or spirit. Each week with intriguing guests and topics, we'll bring you fresh ways to view your limited time, encouraging a shift to new, healthier perspectives. Wise Health for Women Radio, helping women thrive. And now here's your host, Linda Prater.

Good morning and welcome to Wise Health for Women Radio. I'm Linda Crater and we're going to talk about my favorite topic today, which is health and wellness. Something that we talk about a lot, but a lot of people look at it as sort of overwhelming. Where do I start? What do I do? I don't like to eat artichokes. I don't want to do exercise. So we shift to the word movement. But yeah, this couch is super comfortable.

Or I'm very stressed and I want crunchy, salty things. So there's a lot of things that go on. But I think we all know that the world is a crazy place right now. And it's very overwhelming. So what's the first thing that goes down the tubes often? Your sleep, your gut.

how you eat, how you move, how you treat other people. And we're going to talk today to Hallie Brooke, who is a phenomenal certified functional medicine nutrition counselor and coach. Health and wellness is at the root of everything because if we don't take care of ourselves in all ways, we aren't going to be able to take care of others, have good relationships and thrive in life.

So there's just a heavy load for you to carry. Hallie, welcome. Thank you. It's wonderful to be here. My biggest plus is that laughter is one of the healthiest things we can do. Amen to that. So I'm just delighted to have you here. This is my favorite topic. And one of the things I think would help is take a step back and talk about what health and wellness means to you. That's a great question.

Health and wellness means to me that on a day in and day out basis, I'm living above my baseline. I'm happy. I'm centered. I'm not dealing with stress. I have energy. I have life and I'm able to do the things that I want to do. Now, is that an ideal or aspirational goal? No, I think that's how I live most days.

I think it is an ideal aspirational goal for a lot of people. I do too. I am really grateful that that really is truly how I live most days. But I will say I don't live like the average American. No, but I think what you're saying is it's intentional to live this way. And when you make the decision to intentionally live like that, I doubt there's any listener out there who doesn't wish to live the way you just described. Because who wants to live at baseline?

No one. Well, I always laugh and I say, well, who wakes up and says, I want to be mediocre today? No one. No one does. But you see what I'm saying. It's the same thing. I'm just putting different words because I think we deal in this space together. And it's fascinating to me how small changes can matter. Small changes can matter. And I think, honestly, a lot of people in the U.S.,

operate that way. Like they really do live average. They live below baseline. They don't feel well, but that has become so normal for them because it's normally what they eat and it's normally that they don't move and it's normal that they are super stressed, that that's just normal. That's what they assume life is like and it just doesn't need to be that way. Well, I'll take it a step further. I always think that, and I say this a lot, normal is a setting on a washer.

It is not what we want to live. We may have routines in our life. We may have stressors that come and go that we certainly can't plan. We have definitely learned to live with a lot of uncertainty, but that takes practice in keeping a balanced life.

Mm-hmm. It really does. So that's the resilience I know that you talk about. And it's also a matter of, as we first started, the intentional mindset. What am I going to do today? Because yesterday wasn't the way I wanted it to be, so here's a fresh new day. Mm-hmm. Yep, exactly. So what would you tell someone? For a fresh new day? Uh-huh. Oh, man. It's never too late to start. You can always do something different. Mm-hmm.

If you're going to wake up tomorrow and do something different, wake up and get sunshine on your face within 10 minutes of getting out of bed. Yes. Drink electrolyte water first thing in the morning or mineral water first thing in the morning, preferably filtered, and then eat a breakfast that's rich in protein. Do those three things and your day will be different. You know, it's actually really, really true. And that's why I love that in my neighborhood, people are walking their dogs, you know, at daybreak.

And I always think there's a great reason to have a dog or borrow someone else's. The electrolyte water is fascinating to me because how many years were we told just drink 16 ounces of water? Not the same. Nope, not the same. So talk more about that.

Yeah. So if you're drinking just regular tap water, especially these days with so many water soluble, you know, drugs and medications and all of these things, you're not just drinking water. You're also drinking antibiotics. You're drinking birth control water.

Forever chemicals. Yeah, you're drinking some really gnarly things. And that sounds like a conspiracy theory. It's not. There's some really cool websites that you can go Google water quality in my city, and it will tell you what's in your water. Including things like fluoride.

And yep, fluoride that messes with your thyroid, like just some gnarly things. So then we say, okay, well, instead of drinking tap water, drink filtered water. So then we get, you know, our Brita filters and our Berkey filters and all these really fancy filters and they filter out all of that nasty stuff, but they also filter out all of the micro minerals that our bodies need that are, excuse me, that our water should have in it.

And so now once we filter our water, now we have to put that back in. So we need to put back in the chromium. We need to put back in the magnesium. We need to put back in the sodium and the selenium and the potassium and all of those things that actually keep your cells hydrated. If you just drink straight filtered water, you're actually flushing all of those minerals and electrolytes out of your body. And it will actually dehydrate you, which is backwards from what you want. So filter your water and then put your minerals back in and then drink it.

It's funny because people have moved post-pandemic to a lot of supplements. Thank goodness. There are some good ones that people are finally hearing about and using. But again, you can flush or dilute them if you aren't replenishing. So don't spend all your money just to flush it.

Yep. Nope. Don't spend all your money just to flush it. And, you know, there's some really easy brands. 40,000 volts is one of them. BioLife is one of them. You can buy them on Amazon. Like they're cheap. They're not expensive. Just put your minerals back in your water and you'll start feeling better. They're also tasty. Yeah, they taste pretty good. So you find yourself drinking more fluid than you normally would. And dehydration, especially in an older population, is really a problem. Yeah, it really is.

Well, in the ERs, they now know to check somebody who's over 70 first before they're showing dementia symptoms. Are they dehydrated? Mm hmm. So these are simple. It's so simple. It is simple. So now when you're talking with folks in your coaching practice.

which is a large practice. Are you focused? All right. I know everybody's different. So some people you will focus on nutrition with some people you will focus on self-care, but what do you find universally is needed in terms of an overall assessment before you can truly address what someone's individual needs are?

Yeah, absolutely. So the way that we practice at Live Nourish is we start with what we call birth till now intake. And so, I mean, literally we go from birth till now. Like I want to hear all of your health history, all of your emotional health history, all of your social health history. It sounds like a lot.

But when we're looking at functional medicine, we're looking at the whole person. We're looking at their whole history and we're saying all of these pieces of who you are come together. So, you know, that super stressful event that happened when you were seven and you've been constipated ever since, um,

You know, like that has affected your microbiome. So we can work on your microbiome, but we also need to work on those pieces. And so when we're putting together a plan for someone, we want to see, we want to zoom out and look at the whole, the whole history, the whole process, what got us here? Because we didn't get sick overnight. We're not going to get healthy overnight. Right. And we need to know all of the pieces so that we're not just using kind of a pill for the ill thing.

model, which is, oh, here's your symptom. Here's a prescription. Hope you feel better. But not the root cause. Right. Exactly. We want to be looking at the root cause. We want to be understanding

you know, what's going on in their body, mind, and spirit, because we believe that all of those things are connected. Again, sounds super woo-woo, but it's not. No, it actually doesn't. It's all interconnected. It's all interconnected. It's all interconnected. And we need to be able to see how all of those pieces work. Here's maybe like the most extreme version of this story that I've ever seen. But it just, it kind of helps paint this picture. So we had a gal come to us

who was referred to us from another practitioner for severe constipation. She was pooping once every three weeks. So she was also dealing with, yeah, bad. So she was dealing with, you know, major hormone issues and, you know, major toxicity issues because she's reabsorbing all of her toxins. And so we do this birth till now intake and she had been sexually abused when she was eight. And that's when the constipation started.

Oh, how terrible for her. Yeah, horrible. But she'd never connected the dots on that. And so what we were able to tell her is we said, you know, like we're gut health specialists. That's what we do at LiveNourish Coaching. We can absolutely help you, you know, get some motility back. We can help you adjust your microbiome. We can help you, you know, detox some of these things that your body is reabsorbing because you're not pooping every three weeks. We can fix this.

probably 75% from just a physical side. But have you gone through counseling for some of them? Yeah. And she said, she's like, no, I like, I kind of did some, you know, like talk therapy and like, I feel like I'm in an okay place, but you know, like I've never really,

dealt with it. And I said, would you be willing to talk to a counselor or an EMDR therapist or someone who can maybe help you get a little deeper while you work with us? Because the root cause of your constipation actually doesn't have anything to do with your microbiome. Your root cause is probably this trauma. And she said, yeah, I'd be willing to do that. So we said, okay, cool.

So we start working on her gut microbiome from a food and nutrition and stress reduction side. And we get her connected with an EMDR therapist and counselor to start working on some of those pieces. And within three months, she was pooping every day.

The relief she felt must have been unbelievable. It was huge. And, you know, she'd been on Linzest. She'd been on, you know, multiple different anti-constipation drugs and had very little success. And when we look at that whole person root cause, like, okay, we got to work on your microbiome, but we got to work on your mind and spirit as well. She healed. And that's like, that's really cool. Well, that's totally cool because this is what wellness is.

real root cause functional medicine wellness is all about. And I'm so delighted to see that allopathic medicine is turning to root causes. Now, if you knew about this years ago, I had a wonderful DO who delivered my children and who knew stuff. And so it was a different

but you aren't always around people who are looking for root causes, connecting an old injury to an ache and pain now. But our bodies hold our memories, our histories. They just do, whether we want them to or not. And unless we work through those, it's really hard to do that. I think one of the things that has struck me

in more recent years, pre-pandemic to post-pandemic to now, is who you surround yourself with. Your wellness is connected to the five people closest to you or the five things you do. So if you're constantly feeding your mind with negativity or scary stuff, fear porn, I call it, then you're going to have a different mindset than someone who...

has close relationships with friends or family or has pets. I mean, it can look different for everyone, but what and who you surround yourself with, what you read,

which you submerse yourself in how you get out in nature or don't get out in nature. Are you an indoor person and you can't get out in the sunshine and ever ground your bare feet? I mean, it's so interesting to me, the small things we can do that can make an enormous difference in an overall health outlook. Yep, exactly. Exactly. Well, we have to normalize that then.

Yep, we do. We really do. So your suggestion to do that? Other than getting on this show. I mean, having these conversations. I think the way we normalize that is we start to help people, especially in the work that we do, but just with the humans in our life, we start to help people understand that

their mind, their body, and their spirit are connected. They're not separate. And then we help, we start to help them see how these things are connected. Even things like, you know, every athlete on the planet knows that feeling of having to go to the bathroom right before their race because they get butterflies in their stomach, right? Okay, well, we can connect that back to that's your cortisol response, your stress response affecting your microbiome.

Like that's your brain affecting your gut. So if we can see it from that perspective, you know, I also have a friend who was dealing with some pretty high stress for a really long time. And she was like, man, I just have diarrhea like all the time. And I said, okay, do you have diarrhea on the weekends? She was like, no. And I said, okay, are you stressed on the weekend? She's like, well, not as much as I am during the week. And I said, okay, do you, can you connect those dots?

Like, do you see that your stress is affecting your body? And she just had this moment of like, oh, no.

Um, because she, she'd been doing all the things she'd been taking Pepto-Bismol. She'd been like doing an elimination food plan. And I was like, I don't know if we actually need to do that. I think we just need to address your stress. Um, and it wasn't until she connected those dots that her stress and the way that she was thinking and her thought patterns were, were the cause of her diarrhea. We just have to start normalizing those things. And by, and in order to normalize them, we have to point them out.

So that they're not this woo-woo mysterious thing. It's like, no, here's the actual direct connection. This is what's happening. Absolutely agree. And I think one part of it is self-awareness. If you take the time to think through, all right, I don't feel on top of the world today. What is different today?

What did I eat? How did I move? Who did I talk to? I know that in some cases you outgrow friends.

because especially under the stressors of the last five years, sometimes people are just plain old negative. And if you're constantly around that and you find that your stomach's in a knot and your shoulders are up by your ears after being around them, perhaps this is a person you should spend less time with. It's not always possible, but it's,

You can take steps to make it possible because you can't be, you can't go around in this state of constant adrenaline surging, cortisol busting, adrenal failure. I mean, you can't. Your body will give out on you.

Yep, exactly. You really can't. And so at Live Nourish Coaching, we have four pillars that we take our clients through and it's nourish nutrition, nourish movement, nourish mind, spirit, and nourish relationships. And a lot of times we get a lot of pushback on nourish relationships because people will say, oh, well, my relationships are just fine. Okay, cool. Like if they're just fine, that's great. But let's talk about them. So can you tell me, you know, the three people that give you the most life? And a lot of times people go,

Well, it's like my husband or my kids or something like that. And sometimes that's awesome. Sometimes that's totally true. And then we define life. What does life mean? Well, life means that when you're done being around them, you are overflowing with gratitude and joy and peace and you feel centered. And then a lot of times our people will go, oh, well, I don't know if I have anybody in my life like that. There are a lot of people that there is an epidemic of loneliness where people are

online, but not seeing people face to face, or just things have changed. And so I think

We even need to learn boundary setting better in terms of responding, not reacting to online posts because so many people are connected online, but not so much in person. And so we miss a lot of cues that way. That's why I'm really not happy with AI because it takes the humanness. I read an article was taking the humanness out of art and music.

So when there are music renditions done of your favorite songs done in AI, they lack the emotional depth and intensity of a live performance. Mm-hmm. Yep. Which makes sense if you think about it. Yep. Yep. Totally. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think, especially in this post pandemic zoom world, you know, I work from home. I work remote. I spend two thirds of my day on video conference chats. And, and that's, that's wonderful. Like I can connect with people.

from my computer. And there's actually now science that shows us zoom is never in a hundred percent eye to eye. Like your camera's looking at your eyes and you're always looking three to six inches lower. Right. Um, there's research now that shows that it doesn't provide the same levels of oxytocin, um, serotonin and dopamine that looking another human in the eye does.

And so, you know, like my family, I think this is really cool. My family during the pandemic, I have family in New York and family in Texas and all over the place. During the pandemic, we started a weekly Sunday Zoom call. And so every single Sunday, yeah, my whole family, cousins, aunts, uncles, all of us, we all hop on Zoom and we're still doing it, which is like four years past the pandemic. It's pretty cool.

Um, we're still doing it and it's awesome. And it means that I get to connect with my family a thousand times more than I ever did before. And it's still not the same as looking at other human in the eye. It doesn't have the same level of dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin that releases. Um, and I think sometimes people don't realize that.

Well, I hope they do now. I mean, that's important because we use it as a substitute. But that's all it is, is a substitute. It's not the real thing. Nope. Which is why fellowship and groups and whether it's a garden club or a church meeting or a book club, whatever you enjoy, seeing people in person is so important, even during the pandemic.

You went to the grocery store and maybe you could only see people with your eyes because the rest of your face was covered. But at least you saw humans because we are not meant to be isolated the way we were. Yep, exactly. And I think the damages carry on. There's still people who are living in a lot of fear.

And I think fear never does anything good to relationships, to your body, to your hormones. You know, it's, fear is just really, living in a constitutive fear is not truly healthy. Yep, exactly. So-

In terms of relationships, you said you get pushback on relationships. Do people have aha moments and do they recognize the patterns? Again, we're talking self-awareness. Unless you have self-awareness to notice these patterns when they're pointed out to you, how can you make a change? Yeah, absolutely. The pushback, I think, comes from people come to us

to heal their guts. People come to us to heal adrenal fatigue. People come to us because they're tired, they're gassy and they're bloated. And so people come to us assuming that we're going to talk primarily about nutrition. And we do, like we do talk primarily about nutrition, but then we give them these, these other four pillars and, and they go like, well, I just need to figure out what I can eat and what I can't eat. I don't need to worry about my relationships. That's fine. Um, so I'll give you a fun client story. So we have

this wonderful kind of older gentleman. He's just delightful. He's in his late fifties. He wants to age well. He is feeling tired all the time and came to us because he's like, I just want my energy back. Like, I just want to feel good. We said, okay, cool. So, you know, we're talking about nutrition. We're talking about food. We're talking about mind and spirit and his stress, and he still runs his own business. So he's super stressed. And then we get to relationships and he goes, oh, I don't need that.

And we said, okay, cool. Cause we're health coaches and we meet people where they're at. So I'm not going to force you to talk about your relationships with me. That's not, that's not going to happen. But also you're going to work with me for a year because that's, that's the minimum amount of time that it takes to really overhaul your lifestyle. And so I'm just going to kind of keep dropping this back in your bucket every once in a while. So, you know, we would, we'd hop on our, our coaching call and I always ask my clients what went good and well this week. And then what are you struggling with?

And for about three months, every single week, he's like, well, you know, these things went good and well, I changed my diet in this way. I got to the gym twice. Um, I'm taking the vitamin B, like my energy is coming back. I'm feeling good. Um, it was really hard. Like I had this conversation with my daughter and, and like, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's just going on about this. And so I just kind of took notes. I was like, yeah, okay, cool. Sounds like relationship with your daughter's challenging. Yeah.

Um, like tell me a little bit more about that. And so over the course of about three or four months, I just finally brought it up to him. I was like, you know, um, have you noticed that every time I ask you what's been challenging in your, in your week, you tell me about your daughter and he goes, well, I don't talk about that every time. And I just scrolled back through my notes and I was like, we've met 14 times and you told me about your daughter every single time. And he goes, he was, he was totally surprised.

Um, and so I, I asked him, I said, you remember when we talked about nourished relationships? Um, just tell me like gut feeling, does this feel like a nourishing relationship to you? And he goes, no. And I said, okay. So one of the things that we're working on is reducing your stress. Cause that's, what's going to get your energy back. Just thinking about this one relationship. If you can give me as like zero to 10, how stressful is this relationship for you? And he goes all 11. Oh, I said, oh, okay. Okay.

if there were some things that we could do to help you navigate this relationship in a way that maybe move that 11 down to a seven or down to a six, would that be helpful? And he was like, yeah, I guess it would. And so sometimes it takes people a while to kind of come around and realize that there are things in our lives that are affecting us that

that we didn't really notice. And so, you know, we're not going to like cut his daughter off, but we, we ended up having conversations about what healthy boundaries look like. And, um, you

you know, if you're going to pick up the phone and this is a stressful relationship, you need to be in a, in a healthy, happy place in order to pick up the phone. And if you're not in a healthy, happy place where you can hold whatever it is that she's going to put on you, because she's going to do that every single time she calls, she's demonstrated that then you need to not answer the phone and you need to call her back at a later time. And that was, that was the only action item we implemented from that phone call is, is

Um, from that coaching call is if your daughter calls and you're already in a stressed out place, you need to not answer that call. You need to call her back when you're in a better place. And then you need to let her know, Hey, baby girl, like I've got 10 minutes to talk, not 45 minutes. That's it. Like we just put a boundary around phone calls. Um, and two weeks later we had a coaching call and I said, so how's it going with your daughter? And he goes,

Um, it's going great. Like my stress level is back down to a seven and I feel like I actually like talking to her again. And I said, so important. Cool. And I said, I said, now connect that back to your energy, which is why you came to us in the first place, your energy and longevity and anti-aging. And he goes, um, he goes, when I first started with you, he's in his mid fifties. He's like, when I first started working with you, I felt like a seven year old. Um, I feel like I'm an early 50 year old now.

And I was like, that's a success story. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Definite success story. Because oftentimes our stressors come from those we love. And because we love them, we take it so seriously. And so, you know, relationships, especially familial ones are really important to, to nurture, to nourish, and to also set the boundaries on so that we know that

We are giving the best of us for the best of them. Yep, exactly. If you're giving from, I mean, this is so cliche, but it's also so true. If you're giving from an empty cup, you're not, you're, you're giving, let me rephrase that. Think about a coffee cup. Like when you drink coffee at the bottom, you get all that like nasty grounds, soupy kind of muddy stuff. Where are you getting your coffee? But okay, nevermind. My French press.

Oh, and I explained it. Okay. Anyway, you know, if you're pouring from an empty cup, that's what you're pouring. You're pouring like the dredges at the bottom that are mucky and muddy and nobody wants. If you're pouring from a full cup, you can give like the first and the most fresh to the people around you. But it's your responsibility to fill your cup. It's not anybody else's. And you have to figure out how to do that. Well, and our cups are ever refillable.

And so it's, again, mindset is so very important. If you feel like you're always depleted and deflated, it's going to be hard to give off an atmosphere of happiness and gratitude and joy.

cheerfulness and, and you start to mask how you feel by putting cheerfulness out there when you're really not feeling that way. Yeah. And so that, you know, it's, it's interesting to always tune in to how you feel. What's the root cause? What could you change? Because, because

As a former recovering responsibility-aholic, no, I always thought it was my fault if things went wrong and I would have to change something I was doing. Now, that was true some of the time, but it turns out it wasn't true a lot of the time. And so when we stop thinking it's all about us and what we are doing, that it actually might be someone else's fault,

backpack to carry around, it makes a big difference in terms of how we view it. Because if you're no longer trying to be responsible for everything, then you don't feel that strain as much. Or if you just listen as much as you

Yep. Yep, exactly. I think patterns are so very important to find. Before we go, I want to mention the one thing that I have always found helps even things out for me, so it probably does for other people too, and that's getting sufficient sleep. Yep. Because without sufficient sleep, your body doesn't restore, repair, relax, recover.

And it's very hard to maintain relationships, your jobs, your mindset, all of it if you're exhausted. And one nifty little trick I took recently is I've changed out all the light bulbs in the bedroom to be red. So they don't affect your night vision. They allow you to calm down. It cuts all the blue and green light and it's relaxing.

And if you're a sailor or know how boats work at night, you navigate with red lighting, not with white, because that blinds your vision. But red lighting, which cuts the green and the blue light, which we are all exposed to all the time.

really calms, it sets the stage and it becomes part of your sleep hygiene. Oh, I'm going where the red light is. And it's quite refreshing, frankly. Yeah. Yep. That's a great strategy. We teach our clients that as well. It works. So what else do you tell for people to have better sleep?

Yeah. So we, we talk about sleep starts when you first wake up. So sleep, your circadian rhythm starts the second you wake up and open your eyes. And if you can go get like direct sunlight in your eyes for the first five minutes that you're awake, that will actually help you sleep better. So that's when sleep starts. Sleep continues throughout the course of your day. So especially people who are super stressed all day long.

Um, your cortisol is designed to keep you alive. And so, you know, um, if your cortisol is super high all day long, and then you expect to just fall down in your bed and have great sleep, you're fooling yourself. And so we talk about lowering your cortisol intentionally throughout the day. So setting an alarm on your phone for three times throughout the day to take three deep breaths, like

Three times, just that alone lowers your cortisol. Choosing to eat undistracted. So eat your lunch without your phone, eat your lunch without watching something. Just look around, watch the birds, get outside if you can. That's the next place that sleep starts is intentionally dropping your cortisol throughout the day.

And then the next place that sleep starts is when we start to wind down. So things like putting away the blue light an hour before bed, just like what you're talking about in red light. We want people's phones away, preferably plugged in another room. We want TVs off. We want maybe fireplaces on. So we're getting that good red light. We're reading a book or we're playing a game with our friends. Yeah.

or we're, you know, journaling, we're doing intentional things an hour before bed, before we just go brush our teeth and fall down. Um, and then, and then we go brush our teeth and we fall down. And when we do those things, starting first thing when we wake up, we actually sleep pretty well, but I think it's not great. Yeah. It's not just a nighttime routine. It's a whole day routine that setting yourself up for sleeping well.

Which makes sense. And I do laugh at the meme that says, I love getting up because in 16 hours I can go back to bed. That's great. Yeah.

With that, we have come to the end of our time. Your URL where people can find out more information is livenourishedcoaching.com. Did I say that right? Yep, livenourishedcoaching.com. And you can book a free coach consult right on our website. You can also follow us on Instagram at livenourishedcoaching.com. We've got lots of awesome stuff, tips and tricks for living a nourished life on there.

Excellent. Thank you very much for that. It's always interesting to talk about the things that we can change that are in our control because so much is not.

So, Hallie, thank you so much for bringing your wisdom. I love your laugh. Thank you. And, you know, very little, it takes very little to amuse me and to make me smile. So thank you for that today. You have helped my stress level. Oh, good. Well done. And listeners, please go to LiveNourishedCoaching.com and

And think about that free coaching session and think about the things that you can do to make your life more thriving, not surviving. Make it a great week ahead. Thank you for tuning in today. You can find more shows at wisehealthforwomenradio.com.