18: Upgrade your Body and Life with Betty Rocker (Bree Argetsinger)

[00:00:00] You guys all can relate to the diet culture messaging that women have been getting for so long, which says I must exercise more and eat less so that I can be smaller so I can show up smaller. And all that is doing is making us show up smaller in general, in the world. We apologize for how we show up.

We apologize for our big. Freaking awesome feet. We apologize for like taking up space. You know, we apologize for all these things when really we should just be claiming them and owning them. And that takes work, I think, to deprogram. So I know I kind of went off on a few tangents there to answer your, I love it question the long way, but that’s why I said that.

Hi there. Welcome to the feel better now, podcast. I’m your host, Jackie Bower. And if you’ve arrived here, no, there is something in here to spark yourself to create a better future in your help in your career. In your relationships for both yourself and for those around you, [00:01:00] just one small action step at a time with so much love and gratitude to be your guys let’s get started.

Better with Jackie Barker. Hey everyone. Jackie bagger here. Wow. We have a true powerhouse in our midst, Brie. Azinger the one and only Betty rocker. Well, of course she teaches us that we are all Betty’s here to share our gifts with the world. Bree is our world renowned fitness and healthy lifestyle coach and entrepreneur.

She has helped millions of people to transform their lives. For the better through her incredible online fitness studio, her recipes podcast, and all of her whole Betty products. I love Free’s concept of the peaceful warrior and she shares powerful stories about what has helped her to flourish and have so much impact into the world.

These tools and strategies you can start using [00:02:00] right away. So without further ado, enjoy Betty. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome the Betty rocker. We are honored and privileged to have such a shiny light here today. Thanks for coming on the show. It is such a treat to be here with you. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Yay. Oh, so Bree, otherwise known as Bree. You know, you really just have such beautiful energy years and years before I even have met you in person. And we have so many friends in common. Now, your energy. Has inspired me. And so what I love about that is that you are impacting people all over the globe without even realizing I think quite the impact that you have.

I mean, it’s just, it’s really beautiful thing. So thank you for what you give I’ve received that. Thank you for making me feel so good about the work that I do. It’s really, really meaningful. And it’s super special to hear when you’ve touched somebody who also helps others like yourself. [00:03:00] So thank you for that.

Thank you. Absolute pleasure, well deserved. And so we recently have been conducting a energy survey. We’ve surveyed over 11,000 people now across the globe on their energy. One of the questions relates to movement and the response astounded me. We are hearing that 81% of people are not moving their body regularly.

Can you talk to me about the impact of a lack of movement on your energy? Oh, my goodness. 81% is the 81% the study. Yeah, that’s really shocking. And a big part of why I set out to create a 15 minute, a day free challenge that over 3 million people have now taken around the world. is because of this, these kind of things that I hear about, I haven’t heard this particular statistic, but I was like, if we can just get people to take that first step to create a health habit, to, to do something because we know that exercise and movement in general has.

Such a big impact on our energy levels. It improves our focus [00:04:00] and clarity and how we’re thinking it makes our heartbeat more. So we pump more blood and oxygen through our entire body, which gives us more energy, physical energy, and mental energy and clarity. And I have been really thinking a lot about this culture of sitting all.

To work a lot, because one of the things that we do in a lot of my programs, not only are we working on fitness and strength and all of that, we’re also working on posture and alignment because these chronic habitual body positions that we get into sitting at a computer or sitting at a desk where we have our legs bent and our core is not engaged and our shoulders are around it and maybe our neck is tilted it down.

And then we’re also looking down at our phone all the time. These kind of chronic postures really lead to a lack of energy. They. Change the way that we are able to functionally move. There was this interesting study that I saw a speaker talk about at Mindshare. Actually, they were talking about how in holding body postures, where you are slumped forward and in that sort [00:05:00] of more depressive looking state, it makes you more.

Depressed. It brings your energy down. Just like if your energy is down, you actually get into that sort of posture. You’re not feeling good. You sort of like protect your chest. Yes. Ground forward. While psychologically we can create that mental, energetic state in ourselves by holding these not good body postures.

So there was. Discussion amongst some cardiologists at Stanford. And I heard about this through my friend, Dr. Huberman, you may listen to his podcast as well. He’s a neuroscientist and he works at Stanford and he was discussing on his feed, how these cardiologists were saying that, you know, people who do like their workouts, they get their heart rate up a few times a week.

They’re following their exercise plan will then they’re sitting more than five hours a day. This basically negates. Yes, the exercise. That they’re doing. So what do you do about that? So it turns out that what you can do about that is have a one to one ratio of sitting to [00:06:00] standing work throughout the day.

So if you’re someone who works at a desk, you can simply add more energy to your body by standing. For part of your work day, if that’s not easily accessible right away, think of some different ways, some creative ways maybe that you could set up a standing station. I got one of those little risers for my laptop that goes on my desk and I just stand up at my desk and, you know, I can rise it and lower it.

And I can sit back in my chair if I need to do a different type of work. But I find that really, he energizes me just standing up. And also the other thing was the sitting to standing ratio at the. Go for a 10 minute walk, three to four times a day. Now this is great. If you have a dog, if you have a dog you’ve already half of that covered, you’re gonna walk your dog.

First thing in the morning, you’re gonna walk your dog in the afternoon after work. These are like nice transition times for you. It’s a nice time for your dog to go outside. And hopefully it’s more than 10 minutes, but you know, 10 minutes at minimum. The other 10 minutes you can get by getting up after lunch, after you eat [00:07:00] your lunch, just go for a 10 minute walk after lunch.

This is very good for your digestion. It helps your system integrate the fuel that you’ve given it again, a transition back between the energy flow of focusing on nourishment and then back into work with, or you’re giving your time and energy to other people. So we have this sort of. Energetic balance between nourishing and focusing on ourselves with these self care activities.

And then the actual work we do of focusing and giving to other people. I like that sort of back and forth exchange of self energy. And I find that that’s personally what’s helped me a lot. And that’s some of the data that I personally have learned out things that we can do to help ourselves. And there’s so many things that I wanna ask you that has really inspired me from that response Brie.

So one of them is functional and I love that you talked about these 10 minute mini breaks. It reminds me of, I don’t know if you have it in the states, but this F 45 craze that we [00:08:00] have had a wave of. Do you have that exercise in the it’s a class called F 45. So it’s 45 minutes of exercise, but you go really hard.

And so what I was seeing in my private practice. Was people were doing their F 45 and then exactly what you just described in that Stanford research. Then they were going to work and they were so pooped from their workout, but then they sat for eight hours. So, you know, it’s not a healthy balance because we are moving so much less than what we did as hunter gatherers.

So I love that you’ve talked about movement and I wanna in on functional movement. I was asking a client last week. Okay. Let’s just start with 7,000 steps a day. Let’s just get, and she said, there’s absolutely no way I can do 7,000 steps a day. And I was like, wow. Yes, you can. So let’s work out how to do that and talk about functional movement and how we have lost so much of what we did as ancestors.

And it’s got to where we are today. I think that anybody can see that our lifestyle has. [00:09:00] Changed enormously from maybe what we started with. And there’s some benefits to that. And there’s some detriments to that, right? Uh, I think that when it comes to functional movement, what I focus on is teaching people to move in ways that are supportive to their day to day activities.

When we’re on the mat, everything that we do in a workout from. The way that we’re moving the way that we’re holding our body, the way that we’re holding space for ourselves, our thoughts, these are all parts of the functional energetics and the functional movement that we’re gonna take out into the world.

Because everything that we do on the mat, in the gym, it’s a practice, it’s an opportunity to practice. We wanna let go of the pressure we feel to perform, to like do it perfectly, do it. So like this performance thing that I think we kind of feel, and I feel like there’s an aspect of, of functional. In that concept as well, because we wanna practice these healthful habits that we can then take out into our day to day life.

So there are functional movements and functional patterns like hip hinges [00:10:00] and the way that we’re holding our chest open and our head upright and the mindful ways in which we use our body throughout the day, rather than letting the body. Take over the mind, right? We were talking about with the computer posture.

For instance, if you imagine here’s a simple example. If I teach you how to squat correctly, when you stand up, you’re gonna use your glutes and your leg strength, your core will be braced. So you’ll be protecting your back. And when you’re squatting, a lot of times you’re gonna be holding a heavy load. If you’re picturing a traditional squat at the gym with a Barb on your sure.

That’s one way you could also be picturing a Golet squat, where you’re holding a weight in front of you. You could replace that with a heavy. Wet laundry basket, right. All the laundry. And you’ve gotta pick that up from the floor and put it on a shelf. Like that’s me when I’m doing my laundry or switching from the washer to the dryer, I need to use my functional strength and the lift so that I don’t hurt my back.

I’m not just bending over, rounding my back, picking it up, carelessly, straining my back. Right. And a lot of people, this is when get. Injured. They get [00:11:00] injured when they’re doing just a simple household thing, because they haven’t practiced the foundations and they haven’t maybe had the opportunity to learn the foundations of movement.

The patterns that help us articulate with how we’re walking and our feet. In fact, wearing shoes, compresses our toes to the point where that natural shock absorption from the muscles in between your foot bones and when your barefoot, your feet are naturally absorbing shock. Now you don’t wanna go walk a run on asphalt or concrete.

Barefoot by any means because that’s not, you know, we’re talking about how we used to move. That’s not how we used to move. Our feet are designed and our joints are designed to absorb impact because the toes separate. But when you’re in a confined into a sneaker or a shoe, oftentimes your toes are compressed.

So you can’t absorb the shock. All the shock has to be absorbed from the shoe. Mm. That translates up through the rest of your body. Also, you’ve got sneakers with a heel lift or an arch support, which you may or may not need that could be torquing. The. Position of your knee, like the way that the femur articulating with the [00:12:00] ti fib at the knee joint, like there’s all these different things that could be impacting you.

So you wanna be very mindful when you’re approaching your movement. I like to train barefoot for yes. I was just gonna ask you that. That’s great. Yeah. I wanna feel the floor, but I don’t recommend just going into barefoot training immediately. If you haven’t doing that before, I just wanna give that little.

Caveat, ease into it. Try walking around your house barefoot for a couple weeks and then maybe do it part of a training session without sneakers on if you’re not used to that, your muscles need time to develop that strength and that balance. But those are just a few random tidbits around what I think around the whole functional movement concept.

And I do have a free foundations of functional. Fitness workshop. It’s like a 14 day free workshop, 15 minutes. And you get to all of the different functional movements with me, and there’s a barefoot training workshop and all that stuff. So you can totally have a link to that if you’re, oh, I would love that.

We’ll put that in the show notes. That would be incredible. And it’s interesting. Isn’t it? I love training barefoot and I am lucky enough to live near the beach. So I [00:13:00] walk on the sand every day. So you’ve got foie next to you and I’ve got a cookie Cavoodle. That’ll be lying on the floor somewhere. but what I love about having my feet earth to the ground is when I learned that we are all energy, that we’re all electricity and that we can recharge from the ground up.

Talk to me about that. It’s such a beautiful concept. That’s not really well known. I feel like that’s probably more in your wheelhouse than mine. However, I mean, there’s just so much to be said for getting your feet. Into the ground and absorbing that yes, those that good earth energy, not to mention the negative ions that you get from the ocean.

If you’re living by a beach, how fortunate and wonderful I have lived by the beach in the past yes times. And I just feel so connected to the earth. I’ve loved being in the woods. Whenever I get a chance to go out in the woods and be in her, I think we can all relate to how good it feels, how it shifts your cellular harmonics being.

In nature in so [00:14:00] many ways. What have you learned about that? Just that when you put your feet on the ground that you recharge, so the electricity just comes back straight up through your body. So it’s a really, really good thing for us not to be in shoes all the time. And then going back to our hunter gatherer days, you know, we weren’t in these, I’ve got sneakers that I bought, cuz I like the look of them.

’em and then I look at them now and they’re, they’ve got a two inch song and you know, and so we are walking around and I love what you said about. It’s changing the shape of our feet. You know, I’ve come from big corporate marketing job. And through years of being in that environment, it’s squashing my feet, my feet are quite large.

I was always embarrassed about my big feet. And so I would squish them into a size smaller than they really should have been, but in high heels as well. So when I stopped wearing knows. Taken years, but I’ve watched my feet spread and that’s been fascinating to me. Right. So there’s more space for your muscle tissue to, and you can take [00:15:00] up and also we need to stop apologizing for taking up space.

You know, like you have beautiful feet, they do so much to serve your beautiful body. Like just let them do their thing and support you. Right. Absolutely. The wider. Feet are the more energy they’re gonna be able to absorb. Right? Jackie oh my goodness. I love that concept, but you’re right. You know, I spent years and I think, you know, there’s one of me, there’s millions, more like me, really not liking the body that I was in, looking at myself in the mirror, wishing that I could look different.

And so really I love that you are like minded in this mission of appreciating who we are and being grateful. I’m also grateful for that experience because I can. Help other people to come to a place of looking at themselves and loving what they see back. I love your quote. It’s beautiful. Focus on the good and know you are exactly where you should be and have everything inside you that you need to get where you want to go.

Tell me more [00:16:00] about what made you put that messy into the world? I think that so many of us. Doubt ourselves, compare ourselves. We’re so hard on ourselves and we have these unrealistic expectations of ourselves and it’s not our fault. This stuff gets programmed into us since we’re young and it takes a lot of work and deprogramming to strip away that sort of layer many layers in some case is that are really keeping us from shining our light and from truly living our full potential.

And I feel that we do have everything inside of us that we need. And very often we have to go through some difficult experiences and lessons along the way to help us get through those layers, you know, by learning those lessons by facing the challenges in our lives, we develop tools that help us face all the other challenges that we’ll in our lives, but it will just be more resilient.

We’re becoming warriors. Every day as we go through this life, you know, [00:17:00] we’re facing our challenges. And I just feel like this whole comparison thing, you know, that great quote comparison is the thief of joy. It really truly is because you and I sit here together and we’ve found already so many things to, to notice about each other and love about each other.

And we’re sitting here looking for way is to build each other up. Now that might not have always been what we would’ve done in different situations at different points in our timeline, because like I said, Many of us are programmed from a young age to be anxious or jealous, or really so self-absorbed and insecure in ourselves that we are constantly trying to find a reason that tells us we’re okay.

But the reason can only ever come from inside of us. So we look at other people and we compare ourselves to them to really what we’re trying to understand. I lovable am I okay? We try to sometimes tear other people down because somehow it makes us. Feel validated or that we’re okay. We’re superior. And these are all very like low, energetic levels of being.[00:18:00] 

And they Rob us of our power and of our ability to truly give everything we can in life and receive everything that’s available to us in life, in my opinion. And I see that on my own. I’ve had many. Opportunities to learn these lessons and many opportunities to gain strength. And I didn’t have these opportunities because I was perfect from the start I struggled in the beginning, you know, I grew up really in a family culture that.

Valued my beauty or my brains. And if I didn’t have enough beauty, then I definitely needed to be smart because everything revolved around. If I was gonna be able to like, be accepted in society or have a husband, but, you know, again, and there’s no blaming anyone who instilled that programming because they were a product of their own programming and a product of their own call to sure.

And this is a. Complex set. It’s not like one person or just my family. This was like a product of the culture that I grew up [00:19:00] experiencing feeling very much, a lot of pressure that I needed to look a certain way back in those days, magazines were my Instagram and that’s where I was getting a lot of the messaging about what it meant to be an acceptably attractive woman.

And. I didn’t feel like I matched any of the images that I was seeing. And I found, I constantly felt myself lacking. I didn’t feel like I was good enough. And so I worked, I overworked as hard as I could. Right? Like we, you guys all can relate to the diet culture messaging that women have been. Getting for so long, which says I must exercise more and eat less so that I can be smaller so I can show up smaller.

And all that is doing is making us show up smaller in general, in the world. We apologize for how we should show up. We apologize for our big freaking awesome feet. We apologize for like taking up space. You know, we apologize for all these things when really we should just be claiming that and owning them.

And that takes, that takes work, I think, to deprogram. So. I know, I kind of [00:20:00] went off on a few tangents there to answer your question the long way, but that’s why I said that. There’s a couple of things in there and, you know, absolutely. We are inheriting other people’s beliefs and programming. So I think one really nice thing is when you can understand that concept.

Oh, okay. It wasn’t even my own to begin with. So, you know, I don’t have to continue and being a victim to these and have these beliefs that are no longer of serving me. Um, but the other thing that I think is really important is how can we get people to take risk? Responsibility for their health, for their nutrition, for their wellness and stop blaming other people.

There might always be some sort of victim mentality. Like maybe it was the mother or something happened or some sort of trauma that’s ultimately holding them back, but we are the only ones holding us back. What do you think of that concept? I mean, it’s spot on as you know, like, I wanna address what you asked about how can we get people to take responsibility?[00:21:00] 

We can’t. All we can do is take responsibility for ourselves and model what that looks like. Mm. You know, show up and play out as big as you can and show the rewards and the results of taking personal responsibility and have patience and compassion and empathy for those who are in a victim mentality, because.

It’s very hard to get out of that and it takes work and, and practice, and it does not help to be told that you are being a victim. I think it really does not help. We wanna help heal that victim. We wanna transform the victim into feeling like a creator of your own life. We wanna transform that sense of blame, that there’s a perpetrator into the fact that instead we’re faced with challenges in our life.

And instead of us needing a rescuer, cuz when you’re a victim, you always need to be rescued. Instead of needing a rescuer. Instead we consciously seek out a coach or a program or something to empower ourselves with that helps us take the action. And [00:22:00] all of these transformative frameworks mentally can really help you step into this power that you deserve to have.

I believe. Oh, absolutely. And it’s interesting. You were so courageous. I thought Bree, when you shared your story last year, how you were not feeling great in your body, and I loved that you were so open and I found that so helpful because we do, you know, I’m the same, I’m in this. Space and you have your ups and downs.

And then, so when you are moving through that, it doesn’t feel good. How did you go from feeling bad to feeling better? How did you get out of that place? Well, let me give your listeners a little context for what you’re referring to. So I was exposed to mold back in 2019 in a house that I was living in, and I had no idea what was actually undermining all of my healthy lifestyle principles.

And I started to lose muscle. And gain body [00:23:00] fat. And you know, I’m a professional trainer. I’ve been practicing health and wellness in a very balanced way for me personally. So I have my little routine pretty dialed in. I knew all the things to do, and there would be times of the year where I naturally would gain more body fat because it’s the holidays where I’m traveling and I’m always, he is okay with that because it’s.

Something that I was conscious of and was totally happy about, you know, this was a time when I had no explanation for what was happening. I didn’t know about the mold yet. I didn’t know that that had been what had been the trigger and I felt a little bit helpless and a little bit unsure of myself. And so I did not become a victim of this.

Uh, fortunately it had. Past experience to where I reached out to the people around me who had more knowledge and experience in this case, it was a couple of different functional medicine doctors. And I started getting a lot of tests done and blood work done, and it turns out that I had been exposed to mold and I hadn’t even thought to test for that or asked it turns out I have a gene [00:24:00] I’m in like the 20% of the population.

Who’s extremely sensitive to mold. All of that really explained what was going on and it made me. Energetically really tired because mold that type of mold attacks your mitochondria, it really impacts your energy. It started to impact my hormones. It impacted my LEIN, you know, my hunger and fullness hormones.

It impacted my insulin sensitivity. It impacted a lot of different things. And then, you know, my body was so smart. You know, the body was helping me with the toxin and. Packaging them up in my fat cells. And that was my body being a helper to me. And when I understood when I actually like did the research and started to understand what this process entailed, I understood that, yes, I need to treat this.

Now I know what it is. I’m going to treat it. However, I’m not going to be frustrated at myself because this is a natural part of this pro process. And I don’t know when I’m going to. Lose this body fat. It might take some time. And this isn’t the whole picture for me. This is just part of this. I wanna work on getting my energy [00:25:00] back.

I wanna work on feeling better. I wanna work on being able to move freely. You know, there’s a lot more to this healthy lifestyle than just how my body looks. And I also. Really noted during the process that as my body changed and as I had to buy different pants, because my pants didn’t fit anymore, I had to buy different clothes because my tailored jackets, my arms didn’t fit as well into them because I had the extra body fat.

This was a reality for me. And of course, I was like, oh, you know, like I’ve worked so hard, but then I was like, you know what? My body’s taken care of me. And I am gonna become an ally with my body and take care of it right back. And I’m not gonna have this expectation of it that it’s gonna change or bounce back.

And, you know, I bet who could relate to that a lot was my mom’s out there. Who’d had kids and. This expectation that your body’s gonna bounce back or anyone who’s gone through a health crisis or something where you lost muscle, because your body needed to break that muscle down for whatever reason, or you [00:26:00] gained body fat.

For whatever reason, you know, like we have these attachments in our identity to how we look and other people do as well. And you are speaking to like, I’m in base, I’m in the coaching space, you know, like it’s true. People look to us and expect a certain appearance because that’s for me as a trainer at.

They expect to see the congruency between what I’m practicing on myself and how I physically appear. And most of the time, that’s what happens for me in this particular time in my life. However, this was a time when that wasn’t happening and I wanted to be genuine with my people and say, look, here is what’s happening.

And you may go through. Seasons in your life. And you wanna just try to be kind to yourself in the process and not beat yourself up and be an ally with your body and support it. And of course, I had some people who were like, well, I’m not gonna do your programs. If that’s how you’re gonna look, don’t you have any programs, that’ll make you look different.

And I was like, you know, it’s okay if you don’t follow me anymore, because I’m just gonna keep showing up as me and being genuine and that kind of [00:27:00] stuff. Like, I hear you, but that’s not about me. That’s about that person. That’s right. That person’s just. You know, they’re also very, very focused on their appearance.

And granted, a lot of people first find the Betty rocker because they see my abs or they see like this vibrant woman, you know, this healthy fit, vibrant woman, and they are attracted to that. But I think they’re more attracted to my energy, but then once they get to know me and they start to hear what I’m about, and they hear the four pillars of health and they hear all or something and they hear all these important messages that have really created like that body, that physical body I have is a byproduct.

Of my life choices, right? Yes. It’s a byproduct of the current state of my health. There are things beyond my control, like my genetics that are a part of how I physically present to you. It’s also the season of life that I’m in. How are my hormones? Right? So there are all these different things that impact how we show up.

So it’s just important. I think to remember that we all go through seasons of life to not make assumptions about other [00:28:00] people’s value based solely on their appearance. To try to look below the surface, to try to have empathy for what people are going through. So those are some of the reasons I wanted to really share that journey.

Publicly. And I didn’t talk about it initially because I had no energy to talk about it. I was physically exhausted for a while. So when I was undergoing the treatment and I started to feel like I had the energy to give, and this is something that’s important for me about my own energy, protecting my energy is to really be able to when I share.

And when I give, I wanna be able to do it for my best self, you know, wanna be able to do it from a place where I have something that’s. Useful for you to hear, I’m not just gonna chatter box about any old thing. I really want. I would be intentional about sharing things and I wanted to have enough energy to give, to be able to answer questions, to be able to have the rapport back and forth with the things that people would ask me.

Yeah, those were some of the ways I managed that whole process. And oh, so true. And I love so much [00:29:00] about what you said. The first thing I loved that you talked about was expectation versus intention. And so your living proof of what you practice. Which is, you know, you set, you are in this bad place, you set an intention, not an expectation.

Like you are gonna get here by this date. Otherwise you are in trouble. , you know, it was about, this is what I was, is what I want. I want my energy back. And, you know, I’m gonna sort of dig deeper to work on how to get there. And then you did the deep investigation. You did the work, you kept asking the questions of about why your body was giving you these messages.

And I love that because we can celebrate those messages that we were given, even though you were flawed with your fatigue. You were inquisitive and wondrous about what was going on and the transformation that you wanted getting the energy back. So it’s a really beautiful story that has helped millions because there are people living in that situation all the time, and we can choose to stay feeling bad, or we can choose, [00:30:00] identify the transformation that we want.

And then. Take small action steps for how to get there. Absolutely. And sometimes we don’t even know what the transformation is that we want. We just have to trust the process and step forward into some action, even if it’s not the perfect action. And this is something that I wanna remind you of is that you can be flossing.

You are awesome, and you can be flawed at the same time. I give you this or use. All the time and remind yourself that you are awesome and you can also have your flaws. It’s all part of it. So true. I was talking to a client, our family recently, or got COVID and I was out of the four of us. I’ve got two children out of the four of us.

I was. Very very, very unwell. And I talked to clients about it and I did a podcast about it. And they were like, look at you. How could you possibly be the sickest? Ironically, a couple of weeks before I got COVID, I had done a DNA stool test, which I know you did when you were unwell. And I was explaining to the clients I could see in the DNA.

This is before I got COVID, [00:31:00] but when I got COVID so badly, it made sense. In the DNA stool test, there’s a marker for how strong your immune system is. And mine was on the floor, like really very, very low. So I wasn’t critical of myself about that. I was so interested and I’ve got a viral history, so it’s not a surprise, something I’m constantly working on, strengthening my own immune.

Them, but it was interesting to me when I tell that story to people I’m just interested in why that immune system is so low and what I can do to take steps to improve it. I don’t look at myself and say, I’m a health professional. How could my immune system possibly be so low? Like what’s wrong with me?

So it’s, it’s just been interesting to see people’s reactions to that. Right? So like you said, approaching it with curiosity. Yeah. And with interest and what can I do to support myself? That’s right. That’s a powerful mindset that kind of unstoppable when you have that mindset. That’s a creator mindset right there.

Yes. Well, and it also helps that I’m a scientist. So I get so down and dirty into the data. I was [00:32:00] like, wow, look at mine and look at marks. And I love comparing people’s, uh, stool tests. It’s super fun. but I think it’s a good point. Like, you talk a lot about sleep, which I love. And you talk about all these other things, even though you do so much around move and you’ve got these beautiful four pillars that you talk about a lot as well.

It’s. So much more than just the movement. Teach me more about that. Thanks for that invitation to talk about my favorite thing because, you know, we, we get so focused on the exercise piece. We think that that’s the thing that’s gonna get a shreded it’s part of it, but without the other pieces, It’s not, it’s just not.

So let’s talk about why that is. So imagine you’re sitting in a chair that has four legs, right? So those are your four pillars and they support your healthy physique. Right? There you go. And they all work together. Now say you’re going through a season of life where you simply can exercise because.

You’ve been injured. Well, girl, you’ve still got three legs of your chair to sleep. So what are you gonna do? You’re gonna focus on those other three [00:33:00] pillars. Say you’re going through a season of life where you can’t get a lot of sleep. What are you gonna do? You are gonna focus on the other three pillars.

This is what I’m talking about. So what are these four pillars? You’ve got sleep. That’s at the top. You’ve got nutrition. That’s the second one. You’ve got stress management. That’s a big one. And then exercise is the last one on my list. If we were looking at them in a hierarchy because without the other pieces and sleep is the absolute top, you’re not gonna reap the rewards of the exercise.

So I like to tell people that exercise is a healthy stress. When you are healthy, right? But if you are overtrained or you are stressed out, you’ve got cortisol already flooding your system. Then you are already breaking down your muscle tissue to an extent where going and adding it work on top of that might be detrimental to you.

So maybe it’s a better idea to meditate or do some more gentle breathing or stretching or some mindful. Movement with breathing like yoga or a walk in the sunshine, soaking up nature to just rebalance yourself rather than going and pumping out [00:34:00] a workout. I think we’ve really been again, diet culture. I feel like we’ve been trained this like no days off approach is like the way to go, but this is not the way this is not good for women.

This is not good for us. We need balance in all things when it comes to sleep, which is really like your number one. Piece. I mean, you need your, you need your sleep. You need growth hormone to be able to rise. There’s important hormones that go through a cycle when you are sleeping. And without that deep quality sleep, you really can’t build the muscle.

If you’re sleep deprived, you’re impacting your metabolism. You’re impacting yourself hormonally. You’re not going to be able, able to control your. Cravings or your urges, literally it impacts your grelin and leptin your hunger and fullness hormones, to the extent where you’re gonna be reaching for comfort foods, if you’re sleep deprived.

So I really recommend getting a tracking device like the aura ring or something like it so that you can. Start to really track your sleep because you wanna know if you’ve had enough deep sleep. This is a really important thing. [00:35:00] And one thing that I find a lot of people are really deficient in is magnesium.

So I will just give a plug to magnesium as something that you may maybe wanna pay attention to your magnesium levels, cuz that can really help your sleep. I also have a formula called whole sleep, which contains a little, the minimal effective dose of melatonin as well as some other organic herbs. And.

Botanicals to help you get into a deeper sleep and stay asleep, but it’s not a sleeping pill, you know, like a sleeping, pill’s gonna knock you up. Are you really getting the quality deep sleep, right? That’s right. So you really recommend working on your sleep hygiene and your sleep habits. You can think about your five senses.

If you’re trying to improve your sleep, like, you know, is it dark enough? For me to actually get sleep. Is it cool enough in the room? Is the fabric that’s touching my body. Is it soothing? Does it feel good? Does it smell good in my room or do I have somebody in bed snoring and kicking me the whole night?

Maybe it’s time to readjust the priorities and, and make your sleep space a little more sacred. So sleep is paramount to. All of these things. And next of course, nutrition, and I will just give a plug to [00:36:00] protein here. Yes. We, women need to be paying attention to our protein. Yes. Intake and all of your whole foods are important.

All of your macronutrients, right? Your complex carbs, your healthy fats, your greens, and all of the fiber that they contain and fruit, but really P protein is the most important nutrient. Why. Because we need the amino acids from protein to do everything from power, our cognitive function, our hormone and enzyme function, our immune system and muscle protein synthesis.

So if you’re not eating enough protein for your needs throughout the day and your body doesn’t have like a storage tank for protein, like it does for carbs and fats. So you need to eat protein with each of your main meals and my these out there, when you’re a little younger, when you’re twenties, thirties, et cetera, you can eat like, you know, that you get away of that 20 to 30 grams of protein per meal.

But when we get a little older, we get past 40, we do not absorb the amino acids from our food as readily. So it’s really optimal for you to up your protein intake. 30 to 40 grams, I would say, would be really, really helpful [00:37:00] because we see that one of the hallmarks of aging aging is this muscle loss, this sarcopenia.

And so if we can actually stimulate muscle protein synthesis by eating adequate protein for our needs, along with all the other. Nutrients, that’s gonna really help prevent the muscle protein breakdown to the extent where you’re really losing that much muscle. Now you need to combine that with exercise, with sleep, with stress management, all of these important factors, but that is one that a lot of people miss and protein is the most satisfying of all the macronutrients.

So if you make sure that that’s on your plate before anything else, you make sure that you eat the at, that’s gonna keep you from like wanting more food or craving. It’s gonna help you with portion control. It’s gonna just help you with. Literally everything that we just talked about with the amino acids as well.

So increasing your protein intake as you get a little older, can be really, really helpful. And then just being really mindful of getting your fuel and your nutrients from whole foods, making sure you’re eating enough for your needs. I mean, 1200 calories is not a diet. That is where you start the day.

Just sleeping, not moving at all. Like this [00:38:00] is your baseline. Yeah. I don’t count calories, but I just hear like these horrible online apps. They’re like. Yes, 1200 calories is how you’re gonna lose weight. I’m like, no, we need to stop. We deserve food. We deserve to eat. We need to fuel our bodies. We are healthy physical people.

Right? And for those of you who are wanting to walk three to four times a day, plus do your workout, you know, like, and your brain needs fuel too. So we need to make sure we’re eating because without the fuel, your workouts will not be effective. You’re just gonna continue to break down your muscle tissue.

Your. Body’s gonna break down your muscle tissue to steal the amino acids from your muscle tissue so that it can do all the important things it needs amino acids for, and you don’t want your muscles to be where you’re storing aminos for later use. No, you wanna continue to build and preserve the muscle that you’ve gained.

This is essential and stress. We talked about that a little bit, but like, This is one of those hidden and plain sight things. A lot of women who come to me and say, why am I stuck at a plateau? Why have I not budged? Like at all? And I’m like, well, tell me about your life. Are you stressed at [00:39:00] all? I’m so stressed.

My mother-in-law’s giving me a hard time. Like I’ve got my, my son is having trouble at school and I’m like, okay, we can’t change these things that are happening, but what could we for you? That’s gonna give you an opportunity to ground in yourself. Balance yourself energetically in some way, because we go to the workout as our like destressor, but it shouldn’t be our go-to for de-stressing really it shouldn’t.

We should have a practice or we should have several practices throughout the day that help us tune into gratitude that help us tune into peace, to calm. And maybe it’s just a breathing meditation. Maybe it’s an app you download on your phone, but like, make that important to yourself, make that as much of a practice.

As you value your workout practice as you value your healthy eating practice or going to bed at the right time. These are the things that work together to create an optimal environment in your body so that you can get shreded doing a workout, but the workout isn’t really, what’s gonna get you. Shreded it’s creating this optimal state in your body with all these other things.[00:40:00] 

And these other pillars that we talked about, all impact. Your hormones. And sometimes there are things outside of the four pillars outside of your control that you need someone else to support you. And you need a resource. You need a doctor, you need a specialist, someone to help give you a different perspective or more data or blood work, or like Jackie, you were talking about, you know, your stool tests, your DNA tests, all of these tests, these are really helpful so that we have more information so that we can integrate this information, but it always comes down to what are the things within your scope within your zone, your ability.

The four pillars. You’re the only one who can get yourself to bed. You’re the only one who can decide to exercise, make yourself healthy food. De-stress your doctor can’t do that for you. They can help you rebalance your hormones, but a lot of it is up to you. Absolutely. Thank you so much. I love the analogy of the chair as well, and I think it’s so helpful for people, especially when you look at the research with movement and some research, I read said that easily, if you’re just moving, [00:41:00] you can end up.

Eating 10% more calories that day. Anyway. So it’s so important to have those other things dialed in. So I really appreciate your holistic approach. It’s so helpful, especially with someone you’re so public with your movement, such a crucial wheel of, you know, such a crucial pillar to say, but so many other things are so important.

So I really like how much education you put out about all of those other things. So Brie, what are you personally working on yourself now? As in something I’m doing just for myself, like personally, like yeah. Yeah. One thing that I’ve been exploring a lot. Has been acupuncture. Like for me, self-care is a big thing.

Getting to bed at like 10 o’clock book ending my day with a great book. I wake up in the morning pretty early because I go to bed early I spend an hour enjoying morning time reading my book and this won’t be possible for everybody, but, you know, I just [00:42:00] have a little dog and I have, I like to wake up really early and start my day in a really calm way.

It stimulates my creative brain and I like to read fantasy and science fiction. Shout out to Brandon Sanderson all time. I’m reading a children’s book series right now that Brandon Sanderson wrote called Alcatraz and the evil librarians. It’s really fun. And if you that’s awesome. It’s great for ages 10 and up, I have an aunt who’s a professional.

Library and a professional storyteller, and she’s always turned me on to great authors and books. But anyway, just, I like to think of things I can do for myself that make my day. Feel good to me that make my week feel good to me. I always go to acupuncture at the end of a busy Monday because Monday’s the day I hit the ground running.

It’s my busiest day. And by scheduling this self care thing at the end of my Monday, it makes me not work until seven. It makes me finish up what I’m doing and get myself out the door. Or, and go and be taken care of because wow, if you’re someone, I’m sure a lot of people listening, you take care of [00:43:00] a lot of other people.

I know you do. You’re a giver. You wouldn’t be listening to Jackie’s podcast. Right? I know that you care about a lot of other people. So we have to remember the importance and value of doing nice things for ourselves of setting ourselves up for success and not letting life just passed you by, without taking those moments to love yourself, to love on yourself, you know, So I really like to start my morning with reading.

If I’m watching a show, my TV’s off by eight 30. I’m always wearing my blue blockers at night. So I can, my body can cycle down for good rest. But I’m upstairs in bed by nine o’clock no later than nine o’clock teeth brush. PJ’s on reading my book again, you know, because this is how I like to, I like to bookend my day with reading.

I feel like I’m in such a good place with myself. I feel. It’s a lot of self respect that I feel when I make time to do things for myself that feel good to me. And everybody has a unique life scenario, life availability of time, energy. It’s all about how you use that time. I’ve had the same amount of time and energy available in the past.

And I stayed up [00:44:00] till 12:00 PM at night. Bingeing Netflix shows and. That wasn’t really great for my brain and I didn’t get great sleep as a result. And then I was mad at myself because I would wake up later than I wanted to. Right. So I had the same availability. It’s all about what you choose to do with the time that you, everybody has choices.

So I’m just, I’m not saying that what I do is so perfect or that you have to do, and I’m doing, you have a very different life than me. I’m just saying this. This is how I’m thinking about it. That’s been helpful to me, you know, I just like to think about how can I bookend my week in a similar way. What’s something on a Friday after work that I might really enjoy.

And usually it’s like, can I meet up with a friend or can I take bohi to a new dog park that he hasn’t been to? Or can we do something special for the dog, you know, or can I do something special for myself? Maybe I’ll get my hair done or maybe I’ll, you know, do something just, that feels good to me. I’ll go to the bookstore, you know, with.

Find a new book. These are the kind of things I’m thinking about on a Monday afternoon, when my week is started, how can I transition into the week in a way that feels supportive so that [00:45:00] I can give as much as possible and be in a good place energetically and be intentional and feel nourished, feel like my cup is full.

So I’m not trying to constantly give from an empty place. And that’s something that’s been really important to, to me and something I’m personally working on at the age of 45. After years of, you know, maybe not being very intentional or having all of this, this thought process around this. But for some reason, this year was a big one for me when I turned 45, I just thought, wow, this could be the halfway point for me.

you know, it’s probably like the one third point. Really let’s let exactly , but I’m saying like, it’s a, a milestone, right? There are certain birthdays that we all have that we all personally feel are milestones for different reasons. And after going through the mold journey, I. You know, just, I feel like I came to a place in myself, just a deeper place of self love than I have ever felt.

And it inspired me to wanna do more things for myself that made me feel good. So that’s where I’m at. Thanks for asking. [00:46:00] Oh, well, it’s just really beautiful to hear your tips at what you do personally. And I think it’s important, you know, when I’m working with someone from a functional medicine standpoint, We make a list of what are the things you enjoy.

And I learned this from Dr. Isabella wins about how to improve your thyroid function. You know, what are she’s? Oh my goodness. Wow. Well, she has impacted me more than she would ever know. And I was doing one of her courses once and we made a list. What are the things that you do that bring you joy and what are the things that you do that don’t, and that could be like empty the dishwasher or mowing the lawns or something.

And Dr. Rella wins is a thyroid expert. And so it’s the things do more of the things that you love and do less of the things that you don’t love. And if you don’t get to empty the dishwasher, don’t worry about it, you know, or ask someone else to I’ve brought that into my practice ever since then. And so what you’ve talked about are things that bring you joy, which.

Literally end up improving your hormone function. [00:47:00] And so I love drawing that to people’s attention. So thank you for sharing that. Thanks for asking. Yeah. Awesome. So if I was your daughter, what is one thing that you would wanna teach me? So that I could feel better. I think it comes back to that modeling.

You know, what we talked about with how the most important thing we can do for other people is to express in ourselves like this love in ourselves, like to model this kind of behavior that we would hope someone would learn from. And for me, a lot of that would come down to like the way that I talk about myself, the way that I love health and the way that I accept myself and how I support myself, you know, I think I packaged all of that up.

That’s really just the type of healthy. Mindset modeling that I would want to impart to any younger generations. Absolutely. And that’s my foundational pillar is your belief system. And the words that you use to yourself, which become the words that you end up using to others. So I completely agree with [00:48:00] you.

Words are so powerful and it can make us go from being powerless to powerful or the other way around. So Bree, you are such a busy bee. I have to also tell you, I was telling my daughter Coco she’s seven this morning. I said, I’m interviewing beautiful Betty rocker on the show this morning. And she looked at a picture of you.

And she said, oh mommy, she is so pretty. She should be the pretty rocker I wanted to know it was. So cute. I was like, I am gonna tell her that. So I needed to remember to tell you you’re such a busy baby. You just tell her that I’m pretty smart, pretty kind, pretty awesome. Pretty blossom. All of those, those other words that I like to have after the word pretty, pretty powerful.

Absolutely. The pretty powerful rocker. you are so much all of those and much more. So you are. Such a go giver and on a life mission with a living legacy, my little busy Brie. What [00:49:00] adventure are you embarking on next? Oh, well we have some very exciting challenges that we’re just releasing in rock your life right now, which I’m very excited about.

We have a lot of different challenges in rock your life and rock your life is my online home workout studio and, um, women’s fitness community. For those of you who don’t know, I do have a lot of. For like different programs, but rock your life is really like the greatest thing that I do, cuz we have all of these super fun challenges.

I personally love a challenge. Remember I was telling you guys earlier about like how you’re the creator of your own life and you’re faced with challenges and you have a coach or someone to help you. Well, this is that in practice, like in action, you are literally creating life using these challenges and the coaches and I are there to support you.

It’s. Awesome. And there are other amazing women from around the world in this fabulous community. Anyway, we just created a brand new challenge series. It’s called iron Betty. It’s like iron woman, but iron Betty. So there’s iron Betty one and iron Betty two. And there’s a challenge calendar. You can cross your workout [00:50:00] off every day.

You do it in our online portal and you have a follow along video, a workout to do. And we’re always talking about all of these same topics that we were just talking about on this show. So you get the full spectrum of support along the way. So I’m very excited about that. I’m also very excited about our new chocolate protein powder.

Uh, we have a wonderful organic vanilla protein powder that’s been available for the past year and I’ve been working hard on the chocolate one. So I’m very excited for that to be releasing in the next. Month or so, so maybe by the time you listen to this show, it’ll already be available. And, you know, I’m just, just excited for all the wonderful creative things that are happening around me and the wonderful women and people that I work with.

And yeah, just also excited to get to connect with you. So thank you. Thank you again so much for inviting me and having me here to talk about all the things that I care about. We both care about. Thank you so much. And how cool. I can’t wait to see what iron, Betty one. And I, Betty two looks like what is the [00:51:00] difference between iron 1 92?

Well, there are a progressive series. Ah, perfect. With iron Betty one. Yes. And once you’ve knocked that out, well, you, you need to take the next step and yes. Challenge, but you want it to be a progressive series so that you’re continuing to build on what you foundation. So, well, miss Brie, you are so gracious.

We are honored and privileged. You’re so generous with your time. Thank you for the gifts you share with the world. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me. If you made it to the end of this episode, celebrate yourself because it means you are truly dedicated to feeling better in your health, in your career, in your relationships.

And I am so proud of you. And if you want more of the. Feel better now show tuning every Monday for new episodes and join our community on Instagram at Jackie Bower for all the behind the scenes action and more. Hey, why don’t you sign up for a chance to have your question answered at feel better.

institute.com/. [00:52:00] Sign up that feel better institute.com/signup, but most of all, please keep reaching to feel better because the world needs you to feel good. So you can share that very special gift that only you have. So with that said, see you soon, he is to feeling better now. Bye bye. Feel better with.