Inspired with Nika Lawrie

Transformative Functional Nutrition: Empowering Women’s Hormonal Health and Wellness with Brooke Rozzie

• Nika Lawrie • Season 2024 • Episode 82

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Unlock the secrets to reclaiming your health and wellness with Brooke Rozzie's powerful insights into functional nutrition and its transformative impact on women's hormonal health. In this episode, Brooke opens up about her own journey, from struggles with body image to overcoming societal pressures, and how these experiences have fueled her passion for empowering women in their 30s and 40s. Learn how she and her team help clients understand their unique nutritional needs, move beyond harmful dieting practices, and challenge the cultural norms that often hinder true well-being.

CONNECT WITH BROOKE ROZZIE: Instagram.com/brookerozzie

NOTE: I apologize for the audio issues on this episode. We did the best we could to remove the echo in post but couldn't prevent all of it. Thanks for understanding. 

CONNECT WITH NIKA: https://mtr.bio/nika-lawrie

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Nika Lawrie:

Welcome to the Inspired with Nika Laurie podcast. Brooke, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you here today.

Brooke Rozzie:

I'm excited to be here. I mean, we've chatted before right online, so I feel like I'm just we're just catching up from relax. I know we're like good friends right online, so I feel like I'm just we're just catching up from our last couple of days.

Nika Lawrie:

I know we're like good friends at this point. We've done a bunch of things together, so yeah, well, thank you for having me on your show and I'm super excited to have you on mine. I know we're kind of kindred spirits in the sense that you are a functional nutritionist, I'm a functional nutrition counselor, so we really look at the functional approach to eating healthy and keeping good tabs on the food that we're putting into our body. So I'm excited to have that conversation with you today.

Brooke Rozzie:

Yeah, same, it's always fun to talk about it Absolutely so.

Nika Lawrie:

I know we're going to talk a lot about hormones and kind of how that plays a role in our body, but before we get into that today, can you just share a little bit about yourself, your backstory, and really I'd love to know what got you interested in functional nutrition.

Brooke Rozzie:

Yeah, so I run a team of coaches and we work with women that are specifically more in their 30s and 40s, who genuinely are just tired of not feeling like themselves in their skin, who genuinely are just tired of not feeling like themselves and their skin. Um, and the coaches that I have, I specifically scouted myself because, um, we've all been in that boat. We've all felt what it feels like to not feel like ourselves and our skin, and we all have different backgrounds. Some of us have kids, some of us don't, um, but we all, kind of like, have been at this place where we've searched for answers in the wrong places, we have done different things and we finally reached a place where we started to learn how our body works as a woman and started to tune into that and support that and feel better now in our I'm 35, I've got coaches that are close to 40 now than we ever did when we were in our twenties and I was like there's something to this and I started to see it in a lot of my clients, um, that just similar to me.

Brooke Rozzie:

You know, growing up we're probably snack wells generation, as I call it. You know, low fat, everything, um, and then we were probably put on birth control at a young age to regulate our hormones. Um, because it was really, honestly, the only thing that we even really knew at that time that could support, and some of us that worked for it right, some of us that didn't. And then that led us to. You know, we never really understood how to support our body. We were just always kind of like masking things, and then it led us into these places where we maybe didn't have the best relationships with food, a lot of the things that were advertised to us.

Brooke Rozzie:

I thought today, you know, this is why women our age have a messed up relationship with their body, because our magazine articles at that time were like these are the best and worst summer bodies, right, and like showing celebrities who were overweight and maybe had cellulite versus like showing celebrities that didn't.

Brooke Rozzie:

So that's what we were growing up and exposed to, and this message that we were constantly getting whether it was from our moms or, you know, women or magazines or whatever it was was that if we wanted to feel good in our skin, we needed to do a diet. And we did diet after diet after diet, and it led us into this place where we metabolically kind of created this adaptation in our body where I call it a metabolic shitstorm, essentially, where we just genuinely feel like we've reached that place where our metabolism has slowed down, as everybody tells us, which is really not what happens, but we start to feel like we could look at a cheeseburger and gain five pounds. And we started to see that with a lot of women and so we really started to dive in and kind of shift the way that we coach women to really understand why your body is functioning that way. So we can fix that, because it's fixable, but just not in the old ways and patterns that we've been treating ourselves.

Nika Lawrie:

Man, I love that. I think you know. I mean, I know I relate to your story. I think pretty much every woman listening can relate to your story. All the you know friends that I know can relate to that story. You know we all are kind of in that 30 to 40, you know, just hitting 50 kind of range. You know most of us have kids and it's all the same story. It's like we've been given this unattainable expectation that's not even real anyways, it's just kind of this fictional thing. And then we haven't been given the tools to actually understand how to heal our body. We've just said, you know, don't eat fat and count your calories, like that's basically the only knowledge that's ever been given to us and neither of those are good things to really think about. Right, and so I love, I love your approach to really providing the tools to help women actually change how their body's functioning.

Brooke Rozzie:

Yeah, I um, I think it hit me the most once I became a mom and I had my daughter and all I saw was like, all right, it's wine o'clock. And like, mommy, wine culture and and, um, you know, you're just going to be exhausted, that's just the way it's going to be. And um, I've always been a little bit of a rebel, not buying into things. And, um, I've always been the one to like ask why, and I'm sure I drove my parents crazy all the time. But, um, I was like, well, why, why do we have to feel that way? Why does it have to like right? Cause that's not what I pictured motherhood being like. I wanted to like be present and feel joy and experience and love these moments like growing up.

Brooke Rozzie:

And um, I was like, why are all these women not feeling good and exhausted? And I was noticing that a lot of these women were the same age range as me, had similar backgrounds and how you know they were treating themselves. And then they got put into these positions where, like, they wanted to have kids and they thought that, like, this was going to be this amazing thing, but they still weren't feeling good themselves. And then you added pregnancy and labor and the recovery from all of that on top of it. And then they really weren't feeling good, yeah, and then they're in this place where they're genuinely not feeling good, they're exhausted, and then they feel like it's motherhood when it's really not.

Brooke Rozzie:

It's all these other things that are coming into play to impact how you're feeling motherhood.

Nika Lawrie:

Man. I think that's so key too, because you know it's kind of this compounding effect. It's one a lot of us come into our thirties and your body naturally starts to change at that time anyways, because your hormones are kind of shifting. Two, we have children, and children have a huge impact on the way our bodies function, right. And then I don't remember my third point. What was my third point, I don't know. But anyways, you know there's these compounding factors that really play into that, into that role, and then we're just overwhelmed. Oh, I remember my point, my point, you know. And then we're told you feel like crap because you're a mom and you're a busy mom, you have all these expectations. I'm like, yes, that kind of plays a role into it, but it's also, even if we've been healthy on the outside, our bodies are a hot mess on the inside right, and so that's why we're exhausted and moody and tired and hungry and grumpy and all of the above.

Brooke Rozzie:

Yeah, then we're told to just, you know, drink some caffeine and make it through the day and have some wine to relax at night, and that's kind of the culture and that's what we're taught to basically how to survive motherhood versus like being taught that like you actually can feel amazing and you can feel really good. And yes, there are absolutely days that are more difficult. We all have them, but it doesn't mean that that needs to be your overall arching theme.

Nika Lawrie:

Absolutely so. I think it's really important to note here and I know we're going to talk about this today. Hormones play such a big role, you know, in both men and women, but especially women and mothers. And after you've had children, your hormones are kind of all over the place reworking themselves out. What do you think some of the most? What are some of the most common misconceptions when it comes to hormone health, especially in women?

Brooke Rozzie:

Yeah, I'll have a lot of people who they're like well, I went to my doctor and they did my blood work and they said my hormones were fine. I'm like okay, first of all, let me see what they pulled right. Let's look at the levels. So the biggest thing that I say to women is like, if you feel like something is off, it probably is. You're not crazy, right.

Brooke Rozzie:

And I have a lot of women who come back and feel like well, my doctor just kind of dismissed me, said everything's fine. He told me to to lose a few pounds or to start exercising a little bit more. And I'm like well, that was clear, right. Like how, how helpful was that? It's more so, unfortunately, we used to look to our doctor to like be all things when it comes to health, and unfortunately it's not to knock physicians. They just don't have the time, resources or sometimes the education to support you and do that. And so really, we need to kind of one take a little bit of a different approach to hormonal health with women and blood work.

Brooke Rozzie:

Unfortunately, when you pull it unless you're pulling it like on the 21st day of your cycle, which is probably going to be the most ideal, that's still not going to be a full picture into what's going on in your cycle as a woman. We have a 28-day cycle, which on average right, and it doesn't mean that you have the same hormones at the same levels through that entire 28 days. But sometimes that's our conception, or our like our conception of what we think is going on. Whereas a guy has the same hormones in a 24 hour cycle, we don't. So the truth is you're not actually meant to feel the same through an entire month and that's not a bad thing.

Brooke Rozzie:

But that does mean that you need to be aware when you go to get blood work done, you need to be aware of what stage of your cycle you're in when they're pulling the blood work, to know is that actually a normal progesterone or estrogen level for where I was at, or is that what my testosterone should look like in that stage of my cycle? But a real preview of your hormones would be if you did a full monthly cycle. We call it like a cycle mapping. There's different companies that will do it to get a full preview of what the actual fluctuations in your hormonal cycles look like. So sometimes when your doctor's telling you your blood work's fine, it's not in your head. It actually might look okay on your blood work, but something still might be off.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, I think that's so key and it's missed. You know, with so many times, when we do these tests, whether it's blood work or urine tests, you know we put so much weight on the result of the test. But the reality is, is that just a moment in time. It was just what your body was doing when you had that blood work drawn and, like you said, there's so many other factors that play. You know, it's the same kind of thing when you look at A1C and glucose and things like that. It's a moment in time, there's a lot of factors that play into that and I think that's a. It is a big misconception. Back to the question you know about what physicians are looking at and using as a determining tool to diagnose someone.

Brooke Rozzie:

Yeah, and then I'll have people.

Brooke Rozzie:

The other big one that I get is you know, my friend was taking like this hormone balancing supplement, so I started to take it because they told me that it could be estrogen dominance or they told me it could be this, and just throwing supplements at the problem is not going to be your solution.

Brooke Rozzie:

You're literally throwing a dart at a dartboard in the dark and hoping that you're hitting the bullseye. Um, so those are the two biggest things that I see is well, this worked for my friend and she was having the same symptoms as me, so I was thinking it would work for me and unfortunately, the biggest thing with that is the symptoms can be the same for a lot of things. Right, we could have two totally different things going on in our body but have various similar symptoms. So just going off of symptoms alone is not going to be your diagnosis. Um, and what we need to go off of to you know we're not diagnosing you when we're putting supplements or things with you, but it's not where we're going to go off of to, um, you know, recommend anything.

Nika Lawrie:

Absolutely. Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think, you know, one of the biggest questions I have is like, well, can't you just give me supplements to like? You know what supplements going to make me feel better? And it's an impossible question to answer. It's, you know. Yes, there are things that we're likely deficient in, but are you deficient, I don't know. And so there's so many, there's so many factors that play into those kind of decision making situations.

Brooke Rozzie:

Yeah, yeah, and we know right, Safety wise. Magnesium glycinate is probably a great thing for a lot of women to be taking in. Right, we know that there's certain things that you probably should be taking, that most people should. But you know, if you really want us to get specific, you're not asking me for the general things that you should take. You're asking me for the solution to what's going to make you feel good, and if you really want that answer, then we need to dive into it.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, absolutely. That's such a good point. Yeah, definitely. What do you think truly influences our hormones? What are the big factors?

Brooke Rozzie:

Yeah, a lot of times we think, you know, we'll get told to take birth control because that's going to fix it. Birth control is not fixing. What it's doing is it's essentially masking, and that's not to knock it. If you choose to take birth control, that is your absolutely your choice, right? But I feel like you should be empowered by that choice to know why you're doing what you're doing. You're not fixing anything, you're not aligning anything. You're not, you know, solving any problems by taking birth control other than birth control. That's it. Yeah, that's what it's there for, um, but if you are going to take it, you need to be aware of the implications it has and know how to support your body there. But the biggest ways to truly support your hormones is not birth control. It's more so, actually, your everyday lifestyle habits that make the biggest impact on your hormonal function. And a lot of times I'll talk to women and they're asking me about their hormones and I'm like, great, how's your gut health? And they're like, well, my gut health's fine. And I'm like, well, how often are you pooping? And they're like, well, you know, every couple of days. And I'm like that might be our problem, right there, right, so it's not it's.

Brooke Rozzie:

I always say like, think of a triangle of function. We've got our thyroid, we've got our sex hormones, we've got our adrenals and we've got our gut health in the center. All of those things influence your hormonal function and if you really want to support those, you really need to start with foundational things. I'll work with clients in the beginning, working on those foundations, and they're like when are we going to dive into hormones? And I'm like we are. We really are.

Brooke Rozzie:

When we're talking about you drinking enough water, we're talking about supporting your hormonal and metabolic health. When we're talking about you eating adequate protein to support your blood sugar regulation, we're actually talking about you supporting your hormonal health from that. When we're talking about you moving efficiently and consistently, we're actually talking about that. When we're talking about you strength training and lifting weights, we're actually talking about supporting your hormones. And one of the biggest ones that we overlook is when we're talking about you needing to get quality and consistent sleep at night. That's the number one place for your hormonal restoration to take place. So the biggest thing I always say is if you're throwing all these supplements at things but you're skipping the sleep, drinking the water, eating the protein, adding fiber into your meals, making sure you're skipping the sleep, drinking the water, eating the protein, adding fiber into your meals, making sure you're pooping regularly and balancing your stress and your lifestyle. You're literally tripping over $100 bills to pick up dimes.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, man, that's such a great way to put it. Absolutely, I think you know stress is such a big factor too that people don't necessarily correlate the two together, but it really has a massive connection.

Brooke Rozzie:

Yeah, when we think of stress, we think of like, oh, I just had a bad day at work, right, but stress is more. I'm not worried about that one bad day or that one stressful time that you had. Maybe if it was a traumatic event, we might need to dive into it. But I'm more worried about that like chronic, slow drip of stress that you're getting day in and day out and you're not incorporating any restoration to support it. Yeah, we can't control all of our stressors, right? Kids? I've got a four-year-old and a two-year-old. They're stressors. I'm not. I love them, but they're stressors.

Brooke Rozzie:

Um, youors, when I get woken up in the middle of the night a couple of times, it's going to be a stressor. I can't shift those times, but I can support the things that I can control. Meaning like, if I didn't get great sleep for a few days, which I haven't I'm not going to go crush my body with a workout. I'm going to focus on taking it up, some salt bath and doing a lower impact workout like a yoga or Pilates or something. Instead, so prioritizing and not just thinking of stress as mental and that one day looking at the daily stressors that you have and then how are you incorporating some restoration to those things.

Nika Lawrie:

Absolutely. I think you know there's such a cycle that you touched on a little bit like if you're not sleeping well, you're not going to push yourself really hard like in a HIIT workout program, but I think so often people lose the connection between you didn't prioritize sleep, so you get a bad night's sleep and you're exhausted, so the next day you're grumpy and tired and that triggers your stress, right, and then that's going to mess up your hormones and because your hormones are messed up, you're going to have a hard time falling asleep and it's just this continuous cycle that ends up holding you down.

Brooke Rozzie:

Yeah, or we throw in the next day. I'm exhausted, so I'm going to get an extra large double shot of coffee this morning, and then I'm wired and I'm feeling anxiety through the day, and then I'm going to drink some wine to relax at night because it's been a stressful night and day, and then that wine disrupts our sleep quality in the next night, right, and we're just kind of creating this cyclical pattern with ourselves.

Nika Lawrie:

Absolutely. Yeah, it can be a really difficult thing to get out of sometimes, I think too. But once you understand those triggers and how they kind of trigger each other, it makes it a lot easier to manage that situation. Once you start prioritizing the sleep or reducing the stress or increasing the nutrition, it's easier to manage in that sense.

Brooke Rozzie:

I think that's a really good point too, the prioritizing right.

Brooke Rozzie:

A lot of times, especially as women, we love to be the caretaker, we love to support and help and we try sometimes to be all for all things right and we have to maybe recognize like we're maybe taking on too much and it's usually at the sacrifice of ourselves and we usually feel selfish.

Brooke Rozzie:

You know, prioritizing the things that we need, and one of the things I always say is, if you're feeling overwhelmed, I'll encourage my clients.

Brooke Rozzie:

In the beginning, I'm like I want you to make a list of all the things that feel like a stress to you in your life, that don't feel good when you do it, that either are causing stress, you dread, whatever it is.

Brooke Rozzie:

I want you to make a list of those things.

Brooke Rozzie:

And then I want you to go through those things and the things that you actually don't need to be doing but you're doing out of guilt, shame, feeling like you should, whatever it is, I want you to cross them off and you're not doing them anymore and you're either delegating them to somebody or sometimes it requires having an uncomfortable conversation of like, hey, I just don't have the capacity to have this on my plate right now. But the biggest thing I say is like if pissing somebody off to make you feel better in your skin and support your energy so that you can show up better to what I call like your VIPs in your life and the people who, like, truly need you, then you might have to piss somebody off, but that's going to help you feel better and show up better. And you might be surprised that, honestly, most of the time people understand when you explain like I actually don't have the capacity to do this right now. Most people, if they genuinely love you and care about you, are understanding.

Nika Lawrie:

Absolutely. I completely agree with that. I think having those hard conversations are scary at first but ultimately everybody's kind of having the same struggle and so people relate and it actually makes you almost closer in a sense sometimes, because you're like, oh, I'm not alone in the same struggle, yeah, yeah, so you, you kind of touched on it already. I know we've kind of had a conversation around this whole question. I'm going to ask but if you can give some kind of more specific, um, maybe bullet points on it, but why is caring about our hormones so important? Like, what are the specific things that they are doing for our body that make it a priority to care for?

Brooke Rozzie:

Yeah, as a woman, energetically, your hormones play a huge role in your energy and how you're feeling day to day and kind of, like I said in the beginning, you actually weren't meant to feel the same through the entire month. So I'll break it down without getting too sciencey through the entire month. So I'll break it down without getting too sciencey, but over a 28-day cycle, the first half of your cycle, or think of right, when you're coming out of your period. We call it your follicular stage, but this is where your estrogen is really on the rise and estrogen to you is like testosterone to a guy. I call it like your superpower hormone. This is when you feel really good. This is if you know or are aware of, like, masculine and feminine energies. This is almost a little bit more of your masculine energetic stage of your cycle where you're much more focused, driven, task-oriented. This might be the time of the month where, like, you decide to go organize a closet in your house or, like, redo something, because you just have that energy and that motivation to go do that. It also might feel easier for you to go to the gym, to follow a nutrition program, to wake up and get your workouts in, to go take a walk outside. You might feel motivation to. You know, go do something with your girlfriends and get out and be social. And this is leaning up to your ovulation time, where your testosterone actually does a little bit of a peak, which, if we're talking primally, is when your libido is probably at its highest. Your partner probably is very excited around this time of the month because you're probably more in the mood than you normally would be and you usually feel your best. And then we kind of come out of that stage and we come into our luteal stage and our estrogen and progesterone do this little dance with each other and our progesterone starts to kind of take a little bit more of the dominance in this stage of our cycle and this is usually where women feel that energetic shift. This is usually where we feel great in that other time. And then this is usually where we get to the time of the month where we're like what's wrong with me? Why am I feeling this way? I feel crazy. I felt so good last week and now I don't.

Brooke Rozzie:

Your progesterone is a little bit more of a calming hormone and your progesterone in this stage of our cycle is actually a little bit of a natural sleep aid. So you actually need like a good 30 to 45 on average minutes extra of sleep in the stage of our cycle. So you might find in the stage of your cycle that if you set an alarm and you're used to going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time, that you have a harder time waking up in this stage of our cycle and this is also when you might be more prone to need to reach for that caffeine if you are doing that and not honoring that sleep. And this is also where that cycle can kind of happen, where we talked about with the caffeine. Because your serotonin is lower here, which is kind of a feel-good neurotransmitter, and if we're adding more caffeine into that mix we're not getting as much sleep, our anxiety can naturally spike a little bit more in this stage of our cycle. This is why we can sometimes feel more hormonal, as we'll call it, or emotional, in this stage of our cycle and the other thing that happens is progesterone is a pro-thyroid hormone, so we get a little bit of a metabolic boost essentially in this stage of our cycle and our caloric needs increase by about 5% to 10% on average, so we can feel hungrier. So take how we were feeling before and take how we're feeling here and now. All of a sudden, we're hungrier, we're feeling a little more emotional, we're more tired because we're not maybe honoring and getting the sleep that we need and we can start to feel like I'm crazy, right, and hate our hormones.

Brooke Rozzie:

And but one of the biggest things that I say instead to support that, is just be aware of that, right. Know that you're going to have those shifts. Capitalize on that, if you can. You know, if you work for a corporation, you can't be like, hey, I'm not in my follicular stage, I can't go give that presentation right now because I'm not super focused and I'm feeling a little emotional. Right, they're going to be like okay, cool, you still need to do it.

Brooke Rozzie:

But if you're in your luteal stage, what you can do is know that and know that all right, caffeine is going to make me feel more anxious. Maybe I'm going to scale back and go to like decaf. I need to get a little bit extra sleep, so I'm going to go to bed a little bit earlier. My body's not responding to stress as well in this stage of my cycle, so maybe my HIIT style workouts are going to become like yoga or walk or something more restorative. To help support my energy here, and maybe the other thing that you can focus on in this stage of your cycle is that little bit of a caloric increase. If you don't track food, it could be adding a couple of squares of dark chocolate into your day, which can give you some magnesium and also chocolate's delicious. So why not? Those are small little things you can do in that stage just to help support that energy and making a big difference in how you feel going in like leading up to your period.

Nika Lawrie:

Absolutely. I mean, I think that's such a powerful tool that so many of us can use as women and mothers, and I love that you brought into that kind of our careers or professional activities too. I think one of the things that once I started to learn about my menstrual cycle and the hormones and those kind of things one thing I started doing I used an app just to track my periods right, just so I knew where the cycle was, and that was my first step into it, and so at least I knew where I was in the phase, and so that gave me kind of tangible information that I could then start to plan around. And maybe you don't have complete control over that presentation, but maybe you can do that presentation in a different portion of your cycle. You can plan it ahead of time and target those specific days where you're most focused and energetic to do something like that, and so having that information gives you that power. You're empowered from it, I guess, if that makes sense.

Brooke Rozzie:

Yeah, I love that. That's one of the first things I'll tell women to do as well Track your cycle, and not just for 30 days. Track 90, because you need to notice trends and you might have a fluke month. Sometimes people will text me and be like, oh, I just felt a little off on this month and I'm like, all right, it might've been a little bit different, Maybe you had more stress, Maybe things were just a little bit more chaotic around the house or work or whatever it is. Pay attention again next cycle and make that note in your app and pay attention to like all right, started to feel this, this and this and then note it. So the next month you can be like am I feeling that again? And then you could do it again the next month and see, and if it's becoming a trend, then it's something for us to pay attention to. If it was just one month, it might be a little bit of a fluke type of a thing.

Nika Lawrie:

Absolutely, I think. You know, for me, one of the things that it gave me too, was understanding.

Nika Lawrie:

I never like I knew I had a period pretty regularly but I never thought it was like to the date kind of regularly until I started tracking and what I realized is I was just not paying attention to the dates. It really was pretty dead on. And then I tend to average like a 29 to 30 day cycle, and so each of us can be a little bit different in that sense. But it gives you that idea that even with our cycles, even though the standards is kind of that 28 days, some of us are going to range a little bit different, depending on our body structure too.

Brooke Rozzie:

Yeah, anywhere from a 21 to 35 day cycle is actually very normal, but that doesn't mean you should have a 21 day cycle one month and then a 35 day cycle the next month. Right, you should be within a couple of days on a 35 day cycle and next month, right, you should be within a couple of days. Um, I'm anywhere from 27 and 29 usually, um, and that's very, very normal, very average Um. But anywhere between there is, if you're normally like, okay, I'm always 23 ish days, probably a pretty normal cycle for you. Yeah.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, absolutely. I want to ask a question too, just on your thoughts. Um, I I have we'll get to the last few questions here, but what are your thoughts on birth control? That's impeding your cycle, right? So there's lots of women that are on birth control that either take the sugar pills and it starts their period, or they skip them and they have no period at all, and I have some opinions on it, but I would love to know your thoughts on that.

Brooke Rozzie:

At the root of it. Intuitively, my thought process always is if you are interrupting your body's natural process of doing anything, there's going to be a consequence down the road and you have to know and decide. If that consequence is something that you want to deal with later on, you're going to deal with it. It's just a matter of when. So I truly operate on.

Brooke Rozzie:

If it is for birth control, right, there's a lot of options you can do for birth control. So don't feel like that has to be your only form of birth control. But also you need to be aware of what that is doing. When you're shutting down your body's natural ovulation, which is how your body produces progesterone, or you're shutting down your cycle, you have to be aware that there's going to be a consequence to what you're doing and just being told like, oh, birth control is safe, it's fine, all these women are taking it. Actually, just do a little research, look it up, look at the birth control insert. You might be surprised at what is in there. Um, I'm not anti-birth control, but I am very much prone for consent when it comes to a woman putting anything into their body.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, I completely agree with you on all those facets. I'm by no means anti-birth control, but I do think it's really important that women become informed of what these hormones are actually doing, what kind of chemicals are also in them and what the alternatives are, cause there are lots of options that a lot oftentimes our general practitioners are not sharing with us. So, yeah, it's unfortunately our responsibility to take that extra step and get educated.

Brooke Rozzie:

Yeah, natural family planning, when you do it correctly, is just as effective as birth control or condoms. But there are a few responsibilities to that right. There's a responsibility of being aware of your cycle and tuning into it and knowing when your fertile window is and paying attention to those things. So is it easier to pop a pill? Yeah, absolutely, it's a lot easier to just pop a pill. But you also need to know that every time you take the easy route in anything right If I'm trying to take the easy route in nutrition, I'm trying to take the easy route with my body I'm going to have a consequence down the road.

Nika Lawrie:

Absolutely yeah. So you also talk about rewriting the narrative. What does that mean to you and how does that play a role in our health?

Brooke Rozzie:

Yeah, I kind of alluded to it in the beginning, right, my coaches and I work with women in their 30s and 40s too. I call us the snack wheel generation. Everything was low fat, there was metabolite in our homes, the magazine spreads were you know, women with cellulite and things like that, and so we created this like fear around how we look, and so a lot of the things that we did and chose nutrition around was is that going to make me fat or skinny, right? Or I'll always like hear my mom and you know, it's just the generation, right, she doesn't do it out of like harm. But they'll say like, oh, we're going to be really bad and go have a dessert. And I'm like why does that mean you're bad Because you're going to go get this cheesecake, right, but it's more so? Kind of rewriting like why are you doing what you're doing? You're not doing this.

Brooke Rozzie:

And I've watched way too many women I've been doing this for over 14 years go on diets, get to the number on the scale that they really wanted to be at and still feel like crap in their skin. They still don't feel good, they still hate the way that they look, they're still self-conscious, they still don't want to put a bathing suit on in front of people they're still kicking at parts of their body. So, at the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves is it really the number on the scale or is it the way that I think about myself? Is it the things that I'm viewing and why am I really doing this? Do I want to feel good? Right, and then, more so than not, it's that we genuinely want to feel good in our skin and we think that getting the abs, or whatever it is, is going to be what makes us feel that way.

Brooke Rozzie:

And the reality is it's not. Um, I've done it, I've I've had the abs and I still didn't feel good. I still had hormone issues. So I think, when it comes to really rewriting narrative, when it comes to food, absolutely there's discipline. Right, there is. Yes, you cannot live off of Oreos and cheesecake and pizza and call it healthy. At the end of the day, there's going to be consequences for that. But choosing a salad should be choosing it because you want the nourishment for your body, not choosing it because you want to fit into your size four jeans, absolutely.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, I think that's so power. I know, when I first kind of started getting into health myself, part of it was looking at I think Instagram played a big role in that right, or social media in general is I wanted the. You know the perfect body. That the the the quote unquote I hate saying perfect body, but you know the quote unquote perfect body that we see all these 20 something fitness models that never had children and right and and this is all they do all day long, and and it's. It's a. It's a unhealthy and unrealistic view on what's beautiful. Because the reality is feeling good and feeling your best is what's beautiful. Um, because the reality is feeling good and feeling your best is what's going to make you happy.

Brooke Rozzie:

Yeah I. I always say like when did we decide that a woman with a six pack of abs was what? Like being healthy men, right and honestly you and I probably both seen it. A lot of women with the abs actually are not healthy and really unhealthy hormones and are not in a good place.

Brooke Rozzie:

So you really have to ask yourself why am I going after this? And I always ask women what is this going to change for you? What are you genuinely looking for this to do for you in your life? Is it that you want to have more energy to keep up with your kids? Is it that you want to be able to go to the pool with your kids or your spouse or friends or whatever, and feel comfortable with where you're at? So it's more of a confidence thing that you're looking for, not just like not having a roll over your skin right. And, to be honest with you, like after both of my kids, I am leaner now than I have been before. But guess what? I still have rolls when I sit down and like my belly still is there. So none of those things are ever going to fix that. It's more so learning to accept and be content, and it doesn't mean that you can't want to change things, but doing it out of love for yourself more so than because you hate your body.

Nika Lawrie:

Absolutely, completely agree with you. So I have a couple of quick fire questions. But before I get to that, where can listeners connect with you? Where can they find you online?

Brooke Rozzie:

Yeah, Instagram is probably the easiest. I'm probably on their way more than I should be. Yeah, it's Brooke Rozzi, so that's probably the best place to just shoot me a message or just come hang with me over there?

Nika Lawrie:

Perfect, I'll include it in the show notes. Just make it as easy as possible. Definitely so. Brooke, are you ready for the quick fire questions? Sure, yeah, okay. So my very first question for you what is your favorite or most impactful book, podcast or documentary, and why? Um podcast so actually I'm gonna say book um, the big leap have you ever heard of it before.

Brooke Rozzie:

I have I've not read it, I have heard of it yeah. Yeah, I'd say the first one that actually came to my mind. But I really like it because it really talks about upper limits. Like every time that you're getting to a point where you're starting to achieve something that you've desired for yourself, we psychologically can start to kind of create these problems out of fear. Right, it could be that you all of a sudden have a fight with your spouse out of nowhere. It could be that, like you know, you're making decisions that you wouldn't normally but as more of this, like you're upper limiting yourself or telling yourself like you don't deserve this right, or this is where a lot of that self-sabotage can start to come in in many different forms of our life. But I really loved it for that.

Nika Lawrie:

That sounds great. I'll definitely have to check it out. I'll find the link for that at the show notes as well. Definitely. My next question for you what is your best toxin-free or eco-friendly living tip?

Brooke Rozzie:

An air doctor in your home to clear out the air. We experienced it because we've been in the home with mold before and I diffuse essential oils through our home more, so I got rid of all the candles. I diffuse the essential oils and purifying our water Probably the three biggest that we I mean we do a lot, but those are the three biggest that I feel like make a huge impact.

Nika Lawrie:

Love those. Those are definitely great suggestions, for sure. Yeah, and my last question for you what does living consciously mean to you?

Brooke Rozzie:

To me, it means when I know better, I'll do better. It just genuinely means like doing what's going to be best for my body. And when I do what's best for my body, it means that I'm doing the best for what's for those around me, because it helps me feel my best, and when I can feel my best, I can serve others my best.

Nika Lawrie:

Love it. Yeah, I think it's so powerful to just kind of take care of ourselves, because it really frees us up to do so much more in a positive manner.

Brooke Rozzie:

Yeah, that whole like you know, you can't pour from an empty cup is so cliche to hear but it's genuinely very, very true.

Nika Lawrie:

Yeah, absolutely Well, brooke, I first I want to thank you for coming on the show. I'm so grateful for you taking the time to speak with me and share all of your information with the listeners. But I also want to just commend you for the work you're doing. I think it's so powerful. Obviously, I relate in the functional nutrition world, but I think it's such a needed service for so many people, especially women. So I commend you for the work you're doing and thank you. Thank you, thanks for having me, absolutely Thank you.

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