Nicole:

Hey, friends. It is officially summertime. I have kids at home, and the older ones are popping in and out, and the little one is in summer camp. A real blessing. I do not minimize the financial privilege of being able to continue to send my child away for several days of the week. So I just wanted to say to all the mamas and sisters and aunties and everyone pitching in to help take care of these babies, bless it, because I think we’re about, like, one or two weeks in and they’re all bored. So I’m just letting you know I’m in it with you. But I’m still excited summer is here because I’m hoping that we can fit in vacations, and I do love having that extra family time, and I’m hoping everything finds you well.

Now, I was driving in to have this chat with you today, and I was thinking, gosh, what is it that I think has been one of the most transformative things that I’ve done in the past year. And I mean transformative in, I tell you about my tactical stuff, starting my business or launching this product or writing my book, but I also want to make sure I’m bringing to you belief systems and ideas and lessons that I’ve actively learned through experiences that I really think are shaping how I’m doing things differently in the future. And when I tell you this single thought process and decision, because I’m holding firm to it, has made me more money. It has improved my contracts, meaning deals that I write are more on terms that align with my life. It has improved my relationships. And I got to tell you, I’m still not even doing it perfectly. So this is one that you’re going to want to lean in on because I guarantee that you’re likely doing it, and I guarantee that if you stop, it’ll change everything.

So I have officially decided as of, gosh, maybe two years ago, maybe a year and a half ago, that I was going to stop explaining myself and over-apologizing. Now, you’ve already heard it. I’m sure there are popular books out there talking about not apologizing. There’s tons of scientific case study, data, all these things where people talk about how women have an inclination to over-apologize. We put it in our emails. We even preface very reasonable requests like, oh, sorry, Jim, didn’t mean to bother you, but, oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. Or I was about to do this just, oh, my bad. We’re always kind of squeezing in apologies, and there’s tons of data around how that is diminishing to our character. It’s something that in the workplace can actually affect how people see you. And frankly, it’s the byproduct of society, right? Society telling us that we have to fit in and be careful and be demure and be meek and be humble. And that we need to make ourselves small in places and we can’t take up space.

So we have a lot of data around how that is not good. And if you are hearing it for the first time, I hope that data also lets you know that this is something you can stop.

Okay, so you’ve heard tons of people talking about how you don’t want to over apologize, particularly as a woman or a marginalized person, that it’s something that really does put you at a disadvantage in the workplace and life in your relationship. So we know that we don’t want to do that. There’s tons of data.

But when I tell you so many of us over-explain ourselves or feel required to explain ourselves in circumstances where it’s not required. Let me tell you a little bit more about what that means. It means that if we come to a decision that we know we feel good about or we come to a decision that we know is backed by data or results or we are wanting to enter a new space and we know that we belong there and we’ve earned it. A lot of us feel the need and when I say us, I mean women and marginalized people and high achievers, feel the need to explain why we deserve to be in that position or speaking on that platform or presenting ourselves as such.

And I want to let you know that for me in particular, I realized that this came from a pretty traumatic childhood. And I do talk about this a lot in my book. It’s available for presale now. It’s called Nothing Is Missing by Nicole Walters. You can get it on Amazon, you can get it in Barnes and Noble. I’m super excited to get this book in your hand. It’s my memoir, but for the first time anywhere I talk a lot about my childhood. And you’ve heard me saying glimpses where I mentioned that I grew up a child of immigrants, I’m first generation Ghanian American and that my parents were very strict.

And a lot of times, whether it’s on Instagram, if you follow me over there at Nicole Walters or on our TV show even, I used to talk about the funny side of having African parents. Having them say, oh, you know, you can work harder, or you can always go back to school, or you can be lawyer, just like I always do their accent. We have jokes around it or my mom calling me, and she still does to this day. My mom calling me and saying, it’s not too late for you to have twins. And God gave me vision that you will have twin boys and I just want you to know there’s still time, like all these things, right. And it’s true. My parents were very much that, right? They are very much funny in some of the cultural norms that they are bringing to raising an American child in so many respects.

But I talk about my childhood also being traumatic because it’s difficult. And I think a lot of you can relate to this just by generation alone, being raised with certain generational pressures from the current society you live in or the current cultural expectations you live in that your parents can’t understand or align with. That coupled with, right, so it wasn’t just, oh, Mom, I want to go to the mall, or I want to watch this show. My parents are like, Are you kidding me? Who does that? But it was also things like my dad having severe anxiety and completely unchecked. And my father was also a narcissist and had a lot of pressures and expectations around what he wanted and how he looked and how he was presented that he wanted to enact through his children and the ways which, again, I detail in the book. And it really does deserve words and pages and not just a few moments on a podcast, which is why I haven’t talked about it elsewhere, but that really shaped a lot of the way that he interacted with me. I talk about in the book and I talk about it in life, but my relationship with my father also really dictated a lot of the men that were in my life until I had decades of therapy.

So all that being said, what happens when you’re raised in an environment where there’s a strong authoritarian figure or a parent that you are not comfortable trusting and for various reasons, or if you are in an environment where you’ve had to trust yourself a lot and pave your own way and just be out on your own, which, again, I think a lot of women and marginalized people can really relate to, you find yourself… Oh, oh and if you’ve had to enter spaces where you don’t see people who look like you and I mean women and being black or brown or just otherwise marginalized. 

A lot of times when we have entered into these spaces or had to navigate new rooms or had to face difficult, powerful, or even assumed power, authoritarian figures. We’ve had to explain why we’re there. And I have to tell you, just because you had to do it doesn’t mean that it was warranted. And having had the opportunity, for those of you who’ve kept up with me, I’ve worked in major corporations. I have had the blessing, if you will, of being in boardrooms where billions of dollars have been transferred and moved around. And when I tell you people with money having been the 1% and having been extremely impoverished, I’ve been on both sides.

One of the number one things I noticed being a poor girl in this rich life, I was like, oh, rich people don’t explain themselves at all. At all. It’s the strangest thing. And you all know our relationship, right? I am your Target-wearing, cheese-eaten, regular girlfriend. It doesn’t matter how much money I have in the bank account or how many commas I have. I will always be a thrifter. I always tell my kids, like, nah, you all got to work. You guys know how I am, right? If you come over, I’m like, fix yourself a sandwich, that sort of thing.

But because of the work that I’ve done and because of some of the things that I’ve accomplished, I’ve been really blessed to get vision into a lifestyle that I just, I don’t think I ever would have imagined growing up, even though I’ve worked to achieve it. And being in places like the country clubs and the private jets and the exclusive member-only clubs and backstage and green rooms and boardrooms and private homes, and I’ve been witness to a lot of conversations around tables.

And I will always tell you all the lessons I’m learning from those things because, frankly, you deserve to know them, and they’re life changing. And a lot of the things that I’ve noticed when I enter these wealthy spaces is that they’re practicing behaviors that you can absolutely practice whether or not you have their bank accounts. And one of which is this not explaining. They act with a confidence, “they” meaning the wealthy, the powerful, the accomplished, the non marginalized, the people who are in positions to make decisions. I mean, they really do move with the confidence that frankly, sometimes is not warranted.

You all know that we all have a boss. We all have a Jimathon who likes to speak on things that they may not be qualified to speak on, but everybody be like, oh, Jimathon’s great in the office, but we all know he’s trash, and you do his work anyways. But a lot of these people will be fairly mediocre, and they will speak with a confidence like, oh yeah, that’s definitely what you want to do. Oh, yes, that’s surely how it needs to go. Or, no, I will not permit that, and they will not explain themselves afterwards.

I realized that 90% of negotiations of getting what you want in contracts, of getting paid what you deserve is approaching it with a posture of that is what I deserve. And you would be absolutely absurd to ask me to explain why that is. And it’s not confidence, it’s not just confidence, it’s almost an internal knowingness that translates in a way where people are just kind of like okay. So here’s how this sort of manifests in my life, right? This is how I’m seeing this show up. When I go into contract negotiations before I enter them, right? Whether it’s for a book deal or a TV show deal because I live in LA, so there’s always multiple things going. If you guys don’t know that TV show deals are the type of thing where it can take like four years till it comes to fruition.

But I mean I signed a several season deal with a major streaming network and so we’re working on that process but it’s the type of thing that could take like four years before you actually see anything on TV if it even happens. It’s crazy. But going into deals like that, what I’ve learned is that I decide before the opportunity shows up what it will take for me to say yes, y’all, that’s free. That’s where you are right now. So I’m not even kidding. Literally I’m like in order for me to do TV of this style, so for instance, one thing that I know that I am in this present season fairly unlikely to embrace would be doing another family style reality show, right? I may be open to a couple show, I don’t know but I just am thoroughly over having cameras in my home following my family. A lot of that has to do with the fact that my littles are in that weird awkward phase. My olders are dating and building serious relationships and it’s just kind of a strange time to be documenting all that for them and also just my relationship is fairly new so I’d like to give that a little bit of time to settle in and feel really good.

I mean it feels good but you know what I mean? So it’s just one of those things where I already know that’s kind of how I feel. BUT, and this is also another thing I learned from the wealthy everything does have a price or a context where it can work.

So I already decided sitting down, like because I am in LA and there are always opportunities and my agent may bring me anything. What would it look like for it to work for me? What would it look like for me to do a family reality show? Would I need to have a clear cut schedule? Would I need to be able to choose who my showrunner and executive producer are? Would it need to be on a certain network? How much would I need to pay and how long would a season be? What would it look like for me to renew? Would we still film in my house or would we have to be offset?

And fortunately, I can draw from all my TV making history and be able to say, okay, well, these are some things I know are typical, but then I’m also able to add to it things that, frankly, I don’t even know if someone would say yes to. But in order for me to move, this is what it would look like. And for you all, I’m not even kidding, it can be like, well, if I’m going to do it, I just need to know that we’ll start shooting at 06:00 AM and finish by three. It may or may not happen, but you can have that list.

So the point being that I am already making a list and I think some of you may believe in manifestation or using affirmative talk to make things come to realization. All that I don’t really consider it that, to me it really is taking a clear cut awareness of what your needs are so that when you enter your bargaining position, you are able to remain firm to that because you don’t have to explain why something is, but you definitely need to know what it is you want. So I’ll never go back and forth with the network on the fact that it’s really important to me to put my daughter in bed by 7:30 because that’s part of our bedtime routine and I really want to make sure that she’s comfortable in her day and she gets grouchy if she stays up past nine. Why do I have to explain that to you? I am her mom. This is what’s required. You have the thing that you want as an outcome. I’m telling you, this is how it can happen and we can meet your need. If you’re unable to do that, then that’s what that is.

When I tell you, you will so deeply weaken your position if you feel the need to over explain where you are. So the same thing applies with your feelings and your emotions. Catch this one. How many of you, whenever you are wanting to make a decision, your relationship, where you’re like, gosh, I really want to take the kids on vacation, or I really want to enroll them in this school. Outside of just sort of illustrating these are the points and bullet points of why I think it’s a good idea, but I also feel like it would be really good for this. I really feel like it’d be good for this. It’s almost like the oversell, where it’s like I’m going into the car dealership. I know I need a car. I need a car that does these things and has these features and this is my price point. But then they’re showing me every single car and they’re trying to buy me up and it’s almost like you’re overdoing it because I’m going to get a car today. but now you’re doing the most. A lot of us do that in our relationships, and we also do that in relation to our feelings. It’s also okay to just say, like, all right, we’re going to keep it all the way real.

This was a huge issue for me in my previous relationship, and when I say a huge issue for me, I don’t mean in relation to, this isn’t a juicy gossip moment, right? This isn’t me, like, trashing my relationship or anything like that, because I don’t do that, and I don’t do that here, and I don’t have that type of feedback regarding my ex. That’s not something I ever want to do. I want to treat that relationship with tact and with grace, if for nothing else but who I am and how I want to show up in the world.

But what I can say is that I will speak all day about things I did wrong, right? Things that I had to grow from and things I had to learn from. And over explaining is one of them. I surely would spend a lot of time explaining if we either had a disagreement or if there was something that I had managed to gain the confidence to really speak on, that I felt I needed changed or that I needed help with or that was a need for me.

And I would just spend so much time explaining why I felt like that need was valid and why I felt like it was important for my partner to meet me in this fashion or all the different elements of how if this thing could be solved or this thing could be helped, that it would change the course of our lives or it would benefit both of us or that it would help the kids. And I would just spend so much time just trying to argue my case. To frankly prove why I deserved love and in a certain way and proved how it would help both of us.

And what’s interesting is twofold. One, I’m in a relationship now where I don’t have to do that, and it’s great because I’ve done a lot of therapeutic work to realize that. One, if you feel like the need to do that, if you find yourself over-explaining around certain subject matters, it’s probably a pretty good sign that something’s not a fit there in general, right? That’s just like sign number one.

But two, it’s exhausting, right? It tires you out in the relationship, whether it’s with a friend that you’re trying to constantly explain boundaries or in a relationship where you’re trying to constantly explain boundaries. That’s just exhausting. It means you’re not enjoying the relationship. It means you’re not enjoying your partner. It means that you’re trying to convince someone to love or treat you in a way that you already deserve to be treated or that you may have confusion around your own worth and all of that is no good.

But the other thing that happens is there’s a power shift, right? Explaining yourself is something that you do to an authority figure. If a parent asks you why’d you do that, where are you going? A teacher asking you, a boss asking you. So when you enter that dynamic into a relationship, into a partnership, it is a power play. And I do want to say just a quick caveat here, quick disclaimer. I am super aware that sometimes when this behavior happens, it may be happening because there is an abusive dynamic in the relationship or there may be a mental health issue in the relationship, or there may be some other traumatic factor where it’s not just you having the nature of over-explaining, right? But that person really is manipulating the situation which is making that occur. So I am not speaking to that specifically. What I’m talking about is when we’re bringing habits in that are learned from our childhood or bringing habits in that are maybe not applicable in that new relationship.

So I found myself doing this at times in advance of what’s required in my current relationship. Where something will occur and then I’m like, so I’m really sorry, but here’s the reason why I did that. And I swear that it was for a good reason and this is the purpose. And Alex will literally look at me and just be like, babe, I trust you. Like it’s fine. And I’ll realize, oh my gosh, I was triggered, basically. And I was doing the thing that I tried to do for years as a safety mechanism with my father and in previous relationships. And it just doesn’t belong here, it’s not required. 

But, you know, in sort of being in this relationship and really exploring, you know, these protective behaviors that I do, you know, kind of knee jerk behaviors whenever I’m nervous about being in the room or nervous about, you know, a big deal, or nervous about a new space, really seeing where else it exists. And I found that, oh my gosh, I had to be careful to not do that in contracts. I don’t need to explain, well, you should pay me this. And here are the reasons why when they’re seeking you out to be signed for.

And there is a difference between sort of explaining the service that you offer, explaining the value around the money in that sort of context. But yeah, explaining just like your sheer worth is just something that I’m not interested in doing it. And call it being a woman who is of a certain age. You can Google it if you want to know, but I just am at that place where it’s just not going to happen. And it’s funny because I remember growing up and hearing the aunties talk about it and seeing the mamas being like, I’m not going to explain myself to you.

Or I think that one thing we always joke about. If you see the memes, you’ll see these older women who will just be really matter of fact and be like, no, I’m not going to do it. Or we’ll see certain celebrities who’ve earned a certain level in status of accolade where they’re just like, no, it’s just a no, and I’m not going to explain why it’s a no. And it’s almost offensive of you to ask me. And I think that sometimes there’s an inclination to label these people as being maybe stuck up or label these people as thinking that they’re better than or thinking that they’ve elevated to a place where it’s like, oh, I’m just too good to say certain things. And I really am hoping that what you’re hearing from me now is that that’s not what it means about you. If you are confident and you know your own worth and you’re aware that in some scenarios, what I’m asking for is not just the bare minimum, but it is literally what I deserve, the last thing I’m going to do is explain my worth.

This actually came up a lot during the gosh, what do we call it now? The racial reconciliation of 2020? I don’t even know. But it was around the time that the world witnessed George Floyd’s murder, and there was a lot of different viewpoints that were entering those conversations in a public sphere for the first time, I should say in a unified public sphere for the first time, because these conversations have always been happening, but just not everybody was listening. But in these conversations, one talk track that was occurring was people saying, look, I should not have to explain that as a black person that I matter. It’s almost offensive and laughable, if you will, that someone would really expect me to explain why my sheer existence has worth.

And there was definitely a segment of people and this is not a judgment around that, but I’m just explaining a talk track that some may not have been aware of, but there was a segment of people who were like, look, I’m not even going to expend the emotional labor to explain the different reasons why my life is valid and the different reasons why my opinion is valid and my work is valid and my existence is valid. I have a right to breathe, and that is not something that I need to litigate and go back and forth on in the comments of social media, let alone on any public platform, because I exist and that’s enough.

And I want to tell you, I find that standpoint incredibly, incredibly empowering. And while I’ve always been a grace-filled conversationalist, I really do sympathize and I’m highly compassionate to our individual growth in understanding around our relationship. So I like to talk and I’m okay doing it so it doesn’t feel like the same weight of emotional labor. But I respect people’s right for that stance. I also really respect the standpoint of I am not going to explain myself around the bare minimum that I deserve.

And so in sharing this with you as we have navigated what it looks like to start over in life and starting over by nature means leaving behind and stepping into something new. I just really hope that you recognize that it’s not just about building healthy boundaries and finding great habits and making more money and building out new relationships. I mean, all these things are true and it is a long list of things that you have to do when you’re starting over. But I also want to let you know it’s about what you leave behind.

And leave behind the apology written emails, and instant deference of compliments, oh, thanks, but I have this old thing, let’s leave all that behind. You don’t have to self-deprecate all the time. Right? But also let’s leave behind the need to explain the bare minimum around what we deserve. We should be insisting on it and we should simply just stay still and make good eye contact until we receive it because we deserve it and know and trust that if someone doesn’t want to give it to us, that doesn’t say anything about us or what we deserve.

And it’s really my hope that you look in the coming week, in the coming months, at different contracts or opportunities or relationships that you have and you ask yourself, do I feel like I’m constantly juggling for positioning here? Because I have to explain why I’m worth spending time with or why I’m worth honoring and respecting and why this boundary needs affirmed and then asking yourself if maybe you just don’t want to use any more energy to do that.

Especially as we’re chasing after these kids for the summer and especially as we’re trying to grow, our energy is so valuable. I talked about that last week with some of my recent health diagnoses. I’m really doing my very best to be intentional about where I spend my energy and you know where I’m not spending it anymore? Explaining who I am, why I’m worth it and what I deserve. And friend, I don’t want you to do that either.

Nicole:

Hey, friends. So as you well know, I have very strategic chats whenever we come here today. And I only bring my closest friends in. And I know that you have all had so many questions about health and weight management and where to start and how that feels. And you’ve seen me take my journey so I brought in the person to talk to, not just because of her wide range of knowledge, but also because of her approach to taking care of yourself as a whole.

And so for that reason, I’m super excited. I have my dear friend Shira Barlow in here. She is the podcast host of Good Instincts. She is the author of The Food Therapist and I mean, you can find her all over the net. You have to follow her. But right now, let’s just get into it. Shira, thank you so much for being here.

Shira:

Thank you so much.

Nicole:

So I’m just going to dive right in.

Shira:

Yeah, please.

Nicole:

Okay. The reason why I love you and your approach to all things food is because you talk about being a food therapist even though you have all the paperworks and degrees and all that stuff too, because that’s important also. But tell me more about that concept that mindset around food.

Shira:

Ya know, I did go the whole clinical route. I did a residency at Mount Sinai, and I studied organic chemistry and biochem and all that stuff. And when I was at the hospital and I was finishing up, I really had a very clear idea of how to counsel people in terms of food. And then what happened is I would meet with people, I started a private practice, I would meet with people. And what I realized is that there was a gap between people’s intentions and people’s actions. People knew what to do. They knew that they should be eating more thoughtfully, whatever that means at this point, but they weren’t actually doing those things on a day to day basis.

And so it became so much more about what those roadblocks were and how to sidestep them and all of that. It became about food therapy. So it was funny because I had all of the food background, but I needed to kind of understand how to help people work through those issues that they didn’t in some cases really knew existed. And so that’s how it started.

Nicole:

That’s so, so good because I think that just to tie it in, not just for me, but for everyone else. How many of us have a profession where we realize people will come in and say, I know what to do, but it’s not working. Or I know what to do, but I don’t know how to do it exactly. And you’re like, oh girl, you don’t understand that. It’s between the ears. So I’ll have people come in for business consulting and they’re like, well, I’ve taken all the classes, I’ve done all the things, but I just don’t know. And I’m like, well, if you know all the answers, then what is the real issue? Do you not believe you can? Because sometimes that’s what it is.

Shira:

Completely. And it’s interesting. I think that what I realized is that so many people think that it comes down to them just not having the ability. They’re like, oh, I just don’t have willpower, I just can’t do it. But in reality, it’s so much more complicated than that. It’s kind of like the pull down of that old Facebook relationship status, it’s complicated. Because food is so much more than just fuel. And I think kind of looking into that relationship a bit more and it is a relationship with food and figuring out what your personal roadblocks and knowing that those may always exist. It’s just about kind of knowing, and we talked about this offline a little bit, having that self knowledge to know what your personal roadblocks are so that you can have a roadmap to working around them.

Nicole:

That’s so good. I think that what I personally love about your work and the way you approach it is that there’s this element, and we talk about this on the podcast all the time, of sort of grace and kindness towards self. You really are big on this relationship being sort of rewritten as a positive one versus beating yourself up on this journey towards whatever health goal you may have or health outcome you need.

So can you talk to us a little bit about that? What have you seen that some of us may be like ding ding ding, that’s me too, in the way that we talk to ourselves about food in relation to our bodies?

Shira:

Completely. I think so many people worry that if we are too kind to ourselves, we won’t get anywhere. That being kind of that drill sergeant, super mean, super harsh, speaking to ourselves that way, that’s going to be the thing that gets us there. But the problem is that feelings of shame and inadequacy actually drive cortisol, the stress hormone, and then in some cases, like for instance, a lot of people will do this thing called eat, repent, repeat.

Nicole:

Oh, oh, oh! I want to make sure I’m absorbing this. So eat, repent, repeat.

Shira:

So say you’ll eat something and let’s say you were stressed and busy and it wasn’t really actually something you really necessarily wanted. Maybe you went a little overboard with it.

Nicole:

Me eating sprinkles in like five minutes eating four cupcakes. Sure.

Shira:

Yeah, exactly. And now in theory if what you did was I didn’t intend to eat that much, what’s going on for me right now? Well, I didn’t eat a great lunch. I went into this meeting. Now I’m here. I’m feeling so stressed about X, Y and Z with kids in school and home. So how can I sidestep in the future? And in some cases, it’s a matter of self-regulation and ways that you can kind of slow the nervous system, pay more attention to what you’re eating while you’re eating. 

And in some cases, it’s how do you bypass willpower altogether in order to make a decision ahead of time? Like, you know what? I know I’m heading into this thing and that thing I think I’m going to bring, there’s a brand called who with chocolate that’s like non refined sugar, whatever. It’s like my whatever treat of choice, whatever, having that in your bag and be like, you know what, I know that I’m going to want something, so why don’t I have this? But then at least I know it’s this and then I’m not.

So the problem is we don’t kind of do that like, OOH, in a really non judgmental way, what was going on for me in that moment? How do I?

Nicole:
We don’t even know how to do that!

Shira:

Exactly.

Nicole:

And this is the therapy portion of it, of the approach towards food. So for those of I talk about therapy all the time. For those of you all who are in therapy or considering therapy, this is actually really in alignment with therapy. It’s not that you’re going in there to find out what’s wrong with you and how to fix it. It’s a lot of it is learning what your triggers triggers exactly how they show up. Because if you can at least understand what your triggers are, because if you’re in a marriage, sometimes your triggers your spouse, and so you got to get rid of that trigger. We can’t always fix and figure out what it is, but we can’t build around it.

Shira:

Completely. To go back to it, I think that a lot of people, the eat, repent, repeat cycle. What we don’t do is that where we’re like, oh, we look at it in a really non-judgmental way, like, wonder what was going on. How do I kind of sidestep in that future? No, instead we’re like, Why did you do that? I’m so mad at myself.

Nicole:

So we do that reflective process, but we’re mean about it.

Shira:

We’re mean about it. And then those feelings of shame and inadequacy and the whole thing spike cortisol spike stress. And then we end up being kind of like, I don’t know if I can swear on here, but I wanted.

Nicole:

Yeah, I won’t do it again.

Shira:

Why even bother?

Nicole:

I’m going to do it again. Eff it.

Shira:

Exactly. It doesn’t even matter. And now I may as well just go off the deep end.

Nicole:

Yeah.

Shira:

So eat, repent, repeat is that cycle. I think everyone can relate to that because it’s like we all do it. And so I think, again, we worry that if we’re too self-compassionate, we won’t get anywhere, but it’s really quite the opposite. And I’ve seen that again and again and again.

Nicole:

It’s so valuable. I know that I’ve shared a little bit about my journey on here before, and the way that I’ve been able to sustain a lot of my loss is, one, I did everything my doctor told me, right? So monitoring the right numbers, engaging in the right experts, and again, I say this on every platform whenever I do. It was a privilege financially to be able to do that, and I don’t miss that. But the mindset work is something that I’ve had to continue to do.

And it’s true. I mean, during the pandemic, I remember at the top of the pandemic saying to myself, girl, you actually have the time to work out every day. You have all the resources, you have a peloton like, girl, get to it. And then I finally said to myself, there are too many things going on right now. You will gain weight in the season, and that’s okay. If you need to feel comfortable having some fudge today, because that is the comfort item that is available to you in this home, and you can’t travel, then eat your fudge, girl.

Shira:

When you and I connected in Austin originally, I remember you telling me about this and I thought it was really beautiful because I talk about it with my clients all the time. Where especially I see it a lot when people are going on vacation or people are about to have Thanksgiving or something like that. I always am like, you can play it a bunch of different ways as long as you’re being honest about it. So what I don’t want, and a lot of people do, are what we call it’s loopholes and moral licensing.

Nicole:

Let’s talk about and these are all therapy terms, y’all?

Shira:

Exactly.

Nicole:

None of this stuff is food stuff. We’re not talking about intermittent fasting and keto, which is what everyone’s always looking for. What is the secret recipe? No, we’re talking about things that are all you all the time here. If you’re doing loopholes and all these sorts of moral bargaining and whatever, you’re likely doing them in your relationships too.

Shira:

This is really good.

Nicole:

So unpack this.

Shira:

So this is what I’m talking about when it comes to loopholes and moral licensing, it’s like it doesn’t count. It’s the summer, it doesn’t count, it’s the weekend, or I really deserve this, I’ve been so good, or I’ve been so good, I deserve to be bad.

What I’m not villainizing is that you deserve pleasure, you deserve a treat. What the issue is, is when we attach ethics to it, because then you’re outside of reality. It’s like, girl, everything counts. It’s just that pleasure. I want people to indulge consciously.

Nicole:

Yes.

Shira:

So if you want to really not think about anything over Thanksgiving or whatever, you may come back from Thanksgiving feeling a little different than you do now. And if you’re okay with that, I’m okay with that, and we’ll just get back to it in January or whatever. But I think that when people do it in this way of like, oh, I can do this, it doesn’t count. It’s like, everything counts. And that’s why I come from this place in my practice where we’re grown ups, everything is available to us. Not everything could be worth it if this is your goal, depending on your goal. But I think it’s really healthy when someone’s, like, talk about seasonality, in this season that I’m in right now, I can’t make this a priority.

Nicole:

This is what I’ve got.

Shira:

Because then you don’t feel like a failure when you actually gain or are ten steps behind where you were.

Nicole:
Sometimes you feel like a success. Post pandemic, I was like, I only gained 22 pounds. Good job. Because somewhere in there, you must have exercised an amount of awareness around your fudge consumption that you did not intend to. Because I gave myself a free pass, I was like, this is the thing I’m not going to worry about, because we’re trying to stay alive. You are not going to sit here and worry about fudge, girl, eat your fudge and keep it pushing. And so when I came out of it, I was like, oh, not that bad, Nicole. So you know what you got to do? Get back to it.

Shira:

Yeah. I think that the reality is it was incredibly honest, and I think that when we indulge from a place of not being in reality, and then our gap between what we want and what we’re doing day to day gets farther and farther away from us, we feel it’s, like, scary. And then we feel like, oh, I don’t have willpower. I don’t have it in me. Exactly. You weren’t that motivated. It’s different. And I talk about that a lot in my practice because people will be like, I’m feeling so lazy, and whatever. I’m like, were you being lazier, or was this just not able to be a priority?

Nicole:

Were you just tired? Which is allowed. I think that what I love about the language you’re calling out that I am constantly trying to reprogram in myself is these absolutes of, I don’t have willpower, I am lazy. Who is telling you you are these things? Aren’t we all lazy sometimes? I’m laziest when I am tired after working very hard. So lazy is not bad. It is an appropriate response to the amount of work I put in. Good job being lazy. But saying things like, I’m lazy or I don’t have willpower is bananas because now you’re telling yourself you’re this thing that prevents you from actually being what you really are.

Shira:

Totally. And the interesting thing about willpower, which is now kind of a dirty word.

Nicole:

It is, sure, in the industry.

Shira:

The interesting thing about it is that there’s all this research that showed people used to think it was a personality trait. Some people had willpower and some people didn’t. But what we know now is that it is a limited resource, and we pull from it from all different things, not just food things. We pull from it for I’ll give you an example for my own life. Not yelling at your child when they’re being crazy, not honking at people on the road when they’re like, whatever, paying your taxes, doing all the things that are like adult things that you have to do that you don’t really want to do. You’re foregoing, like, what you actually want to go for, what you kind of have to go do. 

And so I think anytime you’re doing that, you’re pulling from that same willpower well, and that’s why at the end of the day, after you put your kids to sleep and you did all your work and all your emails, it’s kind of hard not to raid the pantry.

And so I think that then people think that they don’t have willpower when in reality, they’re just all out of willpower. And there are ways to combat that. You can come at it a couple of different ways, but just being honest and being like, oh, wow, so maybe changing that self thought of being like, oh, I am this, I am this. It’s like, no, you’re tired and you’re stressed. There are ways around that you can get out of that. But first things first, don’t be unkind in that way.

Nicole:

That’s so good, because even when you were saying that, I was thinking about, I mean, you even see the memes about how top of the day, I’m eating my salad, I’m working out, I’m doing all my things, by end of the day, I’m eating a half a piece of cake, and all these things.

Shira:

That willpower well ran dry.

Nicole:

It was just empty. And the idea that it’s like, oh, I have willpower, I just ran out by the end of the day because I used it all on important things exactly. Is really, really powerful.

Shira:

And obviously, for anyone that’s listening, it’s kind of like I’m sure there are people like, oh, my God, that’s me, too. I feel like that there are a couple of ways around that, and I really focus on two. The first is we talk a ton about mindfulness, which it’s kind of an eye roll at this moment, because it’s like, we know we have to be more mindful. How do we do that without moving to an ashram for like, six months?

Nicole:

Which means we’re moving everything else. How do I be more mindful without getting rid of my kids, getting rid of my bills, getting rid of my house?

Shira:

Exactly. So a part of it is how do you pay attention to what you’re eating while you’re eating? Well, one really easy way to do that is to eat with your nondominant hand.

Nicole:

I’ve heard these little things like eat with chopsticks. Are these, like, real things?

Shira:

Of course it is, because it’s like, you know when you’re driving along a long road and you’re kind of like, cruise control it, and then you’re kind of like, maybe a little tired, maybe a little distracted, whatever, and all of a sudden that, do you need coffee light comes on, you’re kind of like, boom, it perks you right up. What happens is we all go through these phases. We’re kind of auto.

Nicole:

Auto piloting.

Shira:

Autopilot. Yeah. And so it kind of helps us pay anything you can do to pay more attention to eating while you’re eating. Another thing that I talk about a lot is I think a lot of people, it’s like, eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full. That’s really good advice. But what if you’re not really sure?

Nicole:
Yeah!

Shira:

And I think a lot of people aren’t.

Nicole:
Or if it’s really good, we might listen, guys, I literally have a guy who’s, like, I am announcing that I am full. This is so good. I will continue to eat.

Shira:
Yes. And there are those moments where you’re consciously kind of in that same way. But I think a lot of people know what it feels like to be hungry, and people know what it feels like to be overly stuffed in a non-judgmental way. But if you can access that and be like, when was the last time I was overly stuffed? And it didn’t feel great, again, in a non-judgmental way. When was last time? At breakfast maybe like, before breakfast, you were really hungry.

But I think a lot of people don’t know what it means to feel like 25. Check in at 25%. What does it mean to be, like, 50% and 75%? Just to get back into understanding what those hunger cues are. So that’s one piece of the puzzle that can bypass the need for willpower, which is just engaging the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that’s the most evolved part of the decider. It’s the decider, but it’s also the part of the brain that is most affected by stress and distractions and all of that. So that makes it hard.

The other thing that you can do to bypass willpower altogether is make some decisions ahead of time, so you don’t even need to rely on willpower.

Nicole:

Oh, I love that. Lighten your mental load.

Shira:

Lighten your mental load in the same way that I think very successful people kind of have a uniform. You and I have talked about this.

Nicole:

We talked about uniforms. I’m like, I need, like, five things in my closet that I know look good, so I can just get up.

Shira:

Exactly. You’re not thinking about it. So it’s like, have you I don’t love the idea of meal prep because it’s kind of like, I don’t know necessarily what I want to eat for dinner.

Nicole:

And it also can feel like another thing I’m going to fail at if I which is not a good feeling.

Shira:

Right. I’m very into this idea of meal assembly. So it’s like, do you have, like, to me, I’ll poach some chicken. Some chicken thighs.

Nicole:

That’s what we do in our house. We just call it, like, top of the week leftover prep.

Shira:

There you go.

Nicole:

It’s like yesterday I made chili chicken stir fry, a thing of rice.

Shira:

Okay, so you’re already crushing meal prep.

Nicole:

I don’t even count that. I didn’t know that was I thought meal prep was the pretty bowls and the oh, no divided up portions or whatever.

Shira:

Oh, no. I mean, you’re crushing it because no, you’re making things ahead of time. I think for a lot of people, for me, it could also just be like, even just like, chopping some things up, like having some things, like parboiled, having some things poached so that you could throw together. Assembly, yes, so make some decisions ahead of time. So if we’re just talking about willpower and how I think a lot of people worry that they don’t have it. Everyone has it. You just might be, like, tapped out.

Nicole:

This alone literally throw money at you.

Shira:

<laughs>

Nicole:

Okay. Shira, because I’m over here. Like, when I tell you the idea of being tapped, because there’s so many overlaps, especially as driven, hardworking women and mamas, the overlap of this in areas of our life. I mean, when you end the day and it’s like, look, I’m putting my kid to sleep and bath time is just stressing me out, and I snapped. You’re not a bad mother. You’re out of your willpower. That typically would keep you from snapping.

There’s so many places where I think we are inclined to beat ourselves up because we want to be our best without realizing that we may be coming from this well of energy, and we’re all out! That’s really good.

Shira:

And I think thinking of ways that you can kind of reconnect back to yourself in a way that’s not Ashrami, but then also thinking of ways that you can bypass it all together, like knowing that at the end of the day, around bath time, it’s really hard. That’s also, coincidentally, the time that children typically start to get, like, wild, crazy, the witching hour. So knowing, like, hey, maybe for like, ten minutes before you get ready for the bath, you’re taking like a mental just like “you got this. It’s about to be a thing.” We’re going to come in with the best energy we can bring in that moment. And it may not be perfect, but we got this. And then afterwards, this is my plan to unwind.

I just interviewed someone amazing who is an art educator, and she talked all about having a creative practice. And I’ve talked about that then in my practice, which is that I think everyone’s looking for a way to downshift after bedtime, after kids bedtime, and to unwind in this way. That’s like having busy hands, but not busy hands because you’re like cleaning the dishes or picking up toys. It’s like focusing on one singular thing in the moment.

Nicole:

This is so good. I don’t know about you all, but this is so like I’m having all the light bulbs right now. It’s so transformative to me because it is about this sort of twofold of one building in grace, building, an awareness building in mindfulness, but that bypassing by shifting that mental load. 

So, truth moment, you all know I keep it all the way real here. I got into like a little sniff, snippet, I don’t know, a snafu, whatever you want to call it, because it wasn’t like a full fledged disagreement with my guy yesterday, but he was like bringing stuff. We hadn’t seen each other. He travels for gigs. It was a weekend. I was with the baby all weekend, like all these things. And then he’s wanting to kind of do the download at the end of the night when we finally had finished everything and I’m over here like, can we put on a mindless movie and zone out?

Shira:

You’re tapped out.

Nicole:

Oh, I’m tapped out and I got snippy where he was like, what’s the password again for the TV? A tiny thing, y’all, I am putting myself out here. It was my fault. I’m sorry. I was the one, I’m the issue. Taylor Swift said it. I’m the problem. It’s me calling out, right? So he asked what the pin number was for the TV and I was like, I already told you. Like, I thought you know everything. I was not nice, I was tired, I was in a mood, like all that. But this morning I was like, I am a terrible girlfriend. I’m awful. But I realized and of course I apologize to all that stuff. We’ll talk about it, whatever. But one of the things I’m going to bring to the table is this concept of maybe the end of the day is not the best time for us to do this. We have flexible schedules. Maybe in the morning is when we’ll do our agenda debrief. What do we need from each other over oatmeal versus at the end of the day when we’re tired and we just should just like veg out and cuddle.

Shira:

I love that.

Nicole:

That is so good. And you know what I’m going to do too, to top into that creative part that you just said on the way home, I’m going to stop and I’m going to pick up an art project e thing, because I’m dreading talking about this because it’s the end of the day and my willpower is all tapped out. But I want to be my best self. I’m going to bring an activity for us to do while we talk about it.

Shira:

That would be so nice.

Nicole:

Because that’ll be like talking our issues over with our nondominant hand. <laughs>

Shira:
Exactly. And it’s a connection. And I think that a lot of times, I mean, what he was trying to download may have been logistical, but it probably was also like, I miss you, I want to connect with you.

Nicole:

For sure.

Shira:

But it makes sense if you’re tapped out. I love it so much because it’s so self aware and it’s like, I want this. I love this person. I want those things too. But I know at the end of the day, I just know myself. At the end of the day, I’m tapped out. I literally just hold me and let’s veg.

Nicole:

Like Vegas was in the space. But it’s also still I mean, again, the things he wants to talk about are valid and they’re important and all that. And I just think that, again, cycling it back to this whole process around learning ourselves and being kind to ourselves and knowing that we’re going to build in areas we’re not going to be great. I do want to ask you, a lot of us echo these similar behaviors when we have areas of challenges. And therapy will tell you it starts when you’re young, right? In relation to food and how we are. Is that where it comes from? Do we learn our initial conversation around food from our parents?

Shira:

Yeah, completely. I mean, I think that what’s really interesting is barring any major developmental stuff.

Nicole:

No major trauma thingies.

Shira:

Kids have the ability to self regulate, which is why you see a three year old sometimes eat like a bite of a cupcake and then put it down and then forget about it. Because if they are physiologically full, they’re not going to continue eating.

Nicole:

Because that even if it’s like sweet, yummy, delicious thing.

Shira:

At a certain age, at around six or seven, we kind of start bypassing that. But before that, we will not eat past the point of being physiological full.

Nicole:

So what happens? Is it just our human mind deciding we want more?

Shira:

No, it’s that we’re socialized to eat because it’s someone’s birthday or I made this for you or other kids don’t have or finish all your food.

Nicole:

Finish all your food. Wow!

Shira:

Or is this a celebration? Or this is I’m so sorry that you had to go to get a shot. Here’s the ice cream cone. And I think about that a lot with my son because it is fun to get treats.

Nicole:

Oh, sure.

Shira:

I remember really specifically, and I’ve written about this, that I remember it was actually when they were still getting tested all the time for COVID. He had to be tested every week in school. And it kind of hit him that I have to do this all the time.

Nicole:

And he was just like, dreading it.

Shira:

Crying and so upset. And I remember they were like, do you. Want a lollipop. But the nurse showed me first to be like, is this okay? And I was like, yeah, but it’s not because you were brave or you weren’t. That doesn’t matter. You can cry if you want to, all of it. Sometimes having a treat is like a fun thing. It wasn’t to soothe him, it was because sometimes you get delicious treats during the day. Enjoy that.

Nicole:

That’s good.

Shira:

And so I think that the reality is that it’s really common. And I think we all I mean, listen, the other piece of this is that we tell ourselves that we’re not going to do these things as parents.

Nicole:

Oh, no. But sometimes we’ll be quieter. Here’s a lollipop for sure.

Shira:

So I think let’s be real. Yeah, but also yeah, I think that we’re socialized to eat for all these external reasons that don’t have to do with physiological hunger…

Nicole:

And then that leads to where we are as adults. So I’ve got an eleven year old girl who is just finished elementary school, going into middle school, and for the first time we’ve always sort of it’s interesting because my kids came in and I’ve talked about this a little bit, but they came in with lots of food issues. I actually don’t know how much I’ve talked about this, but with sort of respecting their right to their story, they had difficulties with food insecurity. It just wasn’t readily available. And they each have a very different relationship with food. One of my daughters will eat whatever she can eat whenever she can get it, leaning towards foods that are stereotypically, maybe snack related, because that was what was readily available. It’s just familiar. I have another daughter who does not like who for a long time thought she didn’t like food because she was always spoiled or it wasn’t flavored because she didn’t have choices around her food.

So I had to recalibrate that. And then I have my youngest daughter who’s with me all the time, who I’ve raised to basically say, oh, there’s foods and we want to eat a variety of them, and we want to crunchy and they’re good for your body and they’re fuel. But she’s never had to think about food in relation to will I get fat or will I be small, will I look good? Will I not look good? All these things that enter the dialogue from peers, in a lot of ways, it’s not in our house.

How do I make sure if there is any way to make sure? I mean, this is probably a tall order, but what do you recommend for language as she’s getting into this formative time where her friends will just want to grab a slice of pizza and ice cream and there will be birthday parties and stuff and she’s like, my favorite foods are tacos, pizza, and spaghetti. But I’m like, girl, you got to eat a salad, but not because you need to be skinny. What does a mom do?

Shira:

I think a couple of things. I think the term growing food is a really good term.

Nicole:
That’s good.

Shira:

Because it takes out like good, bad. This is good for you because then people kids will associate something being good for you. It’s also being something that you have to have.

Nicole:

And sometimes that feels negative. It feels like force at that age completely.

Shira:

And then they start to feel like, well, why do I, is it bad?

Nicole:

Well, they feel that way about everything.

Shira:

Exactly.

Nicole:

A teenager literally is like, if you tell me I have to have it, I don’t want it.

Shira:

Exactly. And I think adults feel that way too. So I think the term growing food in terms of like there are all different types of foods. There are foods that are more celebratory and that you have at birthday parties and stuff like that. That’s fun and that’s great. That’s all part of a healthy eating. But we really, also really need these growing foods. Protein, vegetables with all these nutrients, minerals.

Nicole:
I love that, growing foods, celebration foods. So is it tying it to the purpose behind the food rather than tying it to the feeling or the emotion.

Shira:

Definitely. And just taking out that there are like and we’ve talked about this too, there’s no good or bad foods. But there are foods that are going to help you grow that have to be on the plate. And the rule that I have that has really worked for me and clients of mine is that I want kids and some kids who have significant developmental stuff going on, this is really hard, but I think it’s something to work towards. I want kids to be able to tolerate everything on their plate. Obviously, we’re not forcing kids to eat. Some kids have really specific things about things, touching and stuff like that. But you can tolerate that on your plate. You don’t have to have it. I’m not even forcing you to try it.

Nicole:

So desensitizing.

Shira:

Yeah. Where it’s just kind of like this can exist on your plate together.

Nicole:

It’s not tied to an emotion. That’s so good.

Shira:

Exactly.

Nicole:

What I found with my youngest one is that she’s very independent. Choice is really important.

Shira:

Absolutely, all kids.

Nicole:

Especially when it comes to her food. So what we’ve always done, and I have talked about this with raising her, is we let her choose her meals from categories. So I’ll buy crunchies. I’ll buy fresh things. I’ll buy, like, not good and bad, but crunchies might be a pretzel, a cheese it once in a while. We’ll have tortilla chips, sometimes like regular potato chips or cheetos, something. But you have to pick a crunchy. We want a fresh thing. We want a green thing. Green thing meaning like a veggie. We want like a main. So a main might be your sandwich or a drumstick or whatever. And just kind of letting her decide within those categories what her plate looks like.

Shira:

I think that’s great.

Nicole:
A squishy, which would be like a yogurt, an applesauce or whatever, pudding or whatever. So it has allowed her to style her own food choices and kind of know. But my concern as she’s getting older is I do notice she’ll opt out of veggies and I’ll say, did you have a salad? It’s almost like a natural progression towards if I can get away with it, I will. So I don’t know if that’s a flavor palate thing or an understanding thing or is that just a…

Shira:

Well, I think we are programmed to crave sugar and want sugar and that’s always going to be the dry thing. It just is. I think a lot of kids need a ton of different exposures to ways that they might potentially in some cases like 10, 15, 20 different exposures. A kid might think that they don’t like a thing and then you kind of give up. But I think a lot of people might give up too soon and it makes sense because it does suck and it’s hard to waste food and it feels hard.

But I think that another really amazing thing. And again, I know that this can be eye roll inducing because not everyone has time to do this, but getting kids involved in the process does really help because and again, depending on how young it is, even when Oliver was really, really young, I’d be like, hey, can you close the fridge door or something? Or like pouring in like a thing olives.

Nicole:
That isn’t as daunting though, because I think sometimes when we hear get your kids involved, social media thinks that means like, oh my gosh, they’re chopping their thing, I’m cleaning up after them. It can literally just be in the I grew up because my parents are African and that’s very traditional in our culture. I just sat in the kitchen. I literally was just there.

Shira:

My son used to just lie at my feet like a puppy. He would bring his blanket and he, I think, got exposed to a lot of different foods that way. I would let him try little things here and there and let him smell things and feel the textures of different things and stuff like that. Let him drop in olives to this different thing. I think that we have to understand that anytime a kid is involved with helping, it is going to take longer and be messier. So it’s not always realistic.

Nicole:

Listen, that is the nature of parenting.

Shira:

Totally. Yeah. And sometimes that’s the really beautiful thing. We let them get messy and then also, just to be realistic, sometimes during the week I’m like, we got to just we got to keep it going. But I think getting them involved does give them a sense of ownership over it and it ends up being really helpful in the long run. But then also maybe your daughter doesn’t like just, like, traditional salad, but maybe she would love cucumber and tomatoes with, like, vinegar and pickled onions or something. I mean, maybe that’s kind of like.

Nicole:

No, but I know what you mean.

Shira:

Some kids might want crudites, some kids might want roasted vegetables. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as we find the thing and we can find it together. And here’s how. Oliver so, I mean, they all want to just be taught things, and this is how the roasting process happens. And this is how when you get the little crispy bits, those are actually the tastiest bits. And so good, I think getting them excited about it.

Nicole:
Yeah, part of that process. Yeah. We had a garden for, like, two years, especially during the pandemic, like, a full fledged, like I grew up.

Shira:

That’s amazing.

Nicole;

And I just would get her out there, like, water or bring me to this, or it’s just harvest time and help me wash them. And I think that familiarity, it’s easier for me to do because that was something I was lacking growing up, because I mentioned to you, like, offline my parents being African, vegetables came into the house, but then they were pureed before they hit our plate.

So I just really I remember when I finally started taking the veggie discovery journey as an adult, I was like, I don’t know much about vegetables, right? Because they’re mostly ground up. They were in Ghana. It’s really regional, right. So it’s like tomatoes and onions and garlic and just certain things that I knew. But I was like, there’s asparagus and artichoke, and I don’t know how to cook. How come I never eat this? But I had to do work with, basically a food therapist in order to engage in that process.

So all of this is so valuable and helpful, and I think the biggest takeaway for me is oh, my goodness. Grace in the process, kindness. Your kids are watching how you treat yourself. I know you had, like, a moment. You all didn’t see her. She had a yes moment.

Shira:

That’s really important, because when you were talking about, what do I do as a mom? I was going to say get them involved. Don’t feel like if they don’t like it at first, that’s the thing. But the other big thing, and I think you’re probably already doing this, is be mindful about the way you’re talking about yourself. That’s because your kids are watching. Your daughters are watching.

Nicole:

That’s so good.

Shira:

I remember just not having ever known, when I was younger, a role model of a female that was confident in her body.

Nicole:

It’s almost felt, I think, growing up, that that was a unifying point of being female. Correct. We don’t like our body.

Shira:

In fact, someone gives you a compliment, it’s like, oh, really?

Nicole:

Self-deprecating. Or that one scene in Mean Girls reverend’s in front of the mirror, and they’re all like, my arms are too big. My things are too fat. And then she looks at her, and she’s like because she didn’t have issues, the main character, and she’s like, I have really bad breath in the morning. Because she felt like she just had to offer something else that she disliked as part of being a girl.

Shira:

That’s really important.

Nicole:

And it’s like, that doesn’t have to be our reality.

Shira:

It doesn’t have to be our reality. And I think the real I had a client recently, it literally brought me to tears, who kind of was able to combat a lot of this stuff. She was able to lose some weight, but just as importantly, really feel confident for the first time. And she had been in this place, and I’m not saying to me, all bodies are summer bodies. All that is true. But she didn’t ever feel comfortable getting in the pool with her daughter. And so her daughter was two, and she got in the pool for the first time, and her daughter started crying because she was like, I didn’t know you knew how to swim. It was so much beyond beyond it was like, who cares what you eat? But it meant so much to her that she was able to get there. And I think that however we get there, let’s just kind of really try and get there and be what kind of we needed to hear, because I needed to hear more women being like, yeah, I do look pretty good.

Nicole:

Yeah. Or like, it’s so funny because just even in that portion of the conversation, it reminded me of some of the wins that I’m not calculating because I’ve been so big on the non-scale victories, right? So I’m like, oh, my blood pressure went down, or this, and I’ve learned to really celebrate those, but you just reminded me that I could celebrate that. The other day, I was like, oh, I put on a couple of pounds, and I need looser clothing. Not, I need a bigger size. Not that. Like, oh, I need, like I have a really good friend, Ashley Lemieux, who was talking about how she bought a pair of pants with rips in the knees, and when she put them on and sat down, it split, like, all the way up. And the way she described it was, I guess my thigh needed more freedom. And I was like, yes, girl, your thigh needed freedom. And I think that those are some of the things that are big takeaways. That’s a win, too.

Shira:

That’s a huge win, and that’s a huge gift to your girls. It really is. And I think that a lot of us growing up in our generation really, really needed that.

Nicole:

And now we get to be that.

Shira:

And now we can be that and break out of that generational cycle of just like being so mean to ourselves. And getting to watch what that does to that generation of girls is really exciting.

Nicole:

Because even if you don’t lose a pound, at least if we’re still going to be heavy, or if weight loss is even your goal, but even if you don’t change your body to where you want it to be, you’re still in it. So at least be nice to yourself while you’re still in it.

Shira:

I think that that’s really important because I think that there’s this weird thing now where it’s like, I am so all bodies are summer bodies. And at the same time, there is nothing wrong with someone wanting to look and feel their best, whatever that is to them.

Nicole:

Absolutely.

Shira:

But I think that owning that and just being like, yeah, if someone were to give you a compliment and say something like, oh, you look really good, be like, you know, I’m feeling really good. Thank you.

Nicole:

Yes, just taking it. That’s good. And also keeping in mind that while you’re on your journey, you can’t hate yourself along the way.

Shira:

And accepting where you I think there is this wherever you are right now, accepting where you are right now is not the thing that’s going to keep you stuck where you are. If your goal is to move forward, it’s actually the thing that’s going to help you be like when you kind of take a little step back. Because anytime a client’s working with me, they’ll be going, going, going there and take a little step back. And it’s what you do in that moment, because in that moment, you can be like, it’s all over. I was working so hard. Now it’s all over. Now I’m off the wagon. I’m doing this. Or do you, which is harder to be like. That was disappointing.

Nicole:

Yes.

Shira:

I feel just so disappointed. That was disappointing. I’ve been working so hard, and then I feel like, what do I do right now? Well, what do I learn from this?

Nicole:
That’s so good.

Shira:

How do I use that to fuel myself forward in just knowing myself better and knowing what my triggers are and knowing what kind of, like, gets in my way?

Nicole:

This right here. Okay. Everything I needed in this moment. I’m going to listen to this on repeat because I can’t keep you in my pocket, but I will be texting you. Shira, thank you for all of this. And where can we get more of your wisdom? I know that you’ve got a private practice too. So sorry to fill up your books, girls.

Shira:

No, please.

Nicole:

People are trying to grab some of this. So where how can we work with you? How can we get more?

Shira:

Well, ShiraRD.com is where you can find me to email me. I’m also on Instagram at Sherard. You can DM me. We can go from there. I also wrote the book The Food Therapist.

Nicole:

Get it, get it, get it.

Shira:

And my podcast, Good Instincts on Dear Media.

Nicole:

Oh, you’re amazing. You’re incredible. I love you to pieces forever. Never ever leave my life. Where have you been this whole time. Thank you for being here.

Shira:

Thank you so much.

Nicole:

Hey, friends. So this chat is actually kind of personal, but I’m excited to share it with you because I just had like another realization and I was Googling everywhere. You know how whenever you have something that occurs to you, whether it’s an idea or something that happens to you health-wise or an experience, one of the first places we hit is like, Dr. Google, right? We’re going to self-diagnose by looking things up. And I could not find anything about this. So I am excited to share with you kind of what I’ve learned through research and all that jazz and asking questions of professionals.

Now, this is actually about my health. If you’ve been tuning in and hanging with me on these chats since the top of the season, you know that I’ve gone through a bajillion transitions. I got divorced, I fell back in love. I am parenting now as a single mom, but not really because Alex is here and he’s awesome. But I mentioned somewhat briefly, but I’ve had a couple dedicated chats about it, that I had a lot of health issues that kind of initiated or were part of the transition out of my marriage. And what’s interesting was I talked a lot about some of the things that I had noticed initially and how I was just so grateful to really have had the time upon my divorce and that separation season to really just focus on getting healthy again.

Well, I have got updates. So you’ve heard me talk recently about how I’m excited to kind of get my body and my physical self ready for the fertility process. Like, I’m really excited to possibly bring kids into this world with my new partner. And I announced that me and Alex are engaged and we’re getting married. And I’m just very excited to grow my family. And so part of that has been going through the whole fertility thing, checking your hormones, getting blood work, but also knowing that I’m coming off of a season of heavy stress on my body, just really staying on top of things.

So for the mamas who are listening, the sisters, the friends, all of you all just starting from the top, there’s not going to be any horrible news here, but it’s definitely worth listening to so you can breathe easy. I’m not going to say something horrific, but I do want to let you know that I am going to share with you just some things that I’m learning that I think may be hugely eye opening for you, if you’re making certain choices around your health, your body, your environment.

So this past week, I went in for a follow up visit with a dermatologist about a mole on my back. Now, I want to say, just to be completely transparent, I am a sun lover. I am African. It is my natural way. You can bake me in the sun. I don’t even know, if I feel heat in a normal way. Put me outside on a beach, direct sun, 90 degree temperatures, and I am like a happy clam. Okay. I love it. Also, without spending an entire episode talking about colorism and issues around complexion within the black community and the greater racial constructs within the world, I like being black. This really ties in. This really ties in with my loving being in the sun. Listen, roast me until I am the color of midnight. Oil me up so my skin is reflective. I am here for it, right?

So this is a thing that I just have times where I’m like, this is all I need is I just need a good sun soak and obviously that isn’t in alignment with sun health. Yes, I use sunscreen. No, I don’t do it perfectly. And as I get older, I have to be mindful of that for cosmetic reasons, if not health ones. Well, fast forward about a month ago I was dealing with a real stretch of travel. I had three speaking gigs across four different cities. I was traveling from LA back to the east coast. I had a couple of VIP clients.

If you don’t know about my VIP days, I’ll actually drop a link in the show notes below. People and clients and small business owners and people looking to start a small business. Book me, spend a day with me. We build their business. We answer questions. We do pivots, we build products. And I do that all from my office in Beverly Hills. But occasionally I’ll go to my clients. So that said, I had a bunch of those. So I was in Austin. I was in DC. I was in Pennsylvania, I was in Atlanta, and then I was back home. And I did all of this in a span of about six days.

So this is about like a month, six weeks ago. And when I headed out, I remember just not feeling great. And I thought it was just general fatigue, partly because I knew I had this stretch coming ahead of me and because frankly, recovering from the divorce process and the transition, managing a baby, all that, girl, I’m tired. We’re all tired. And so I was certain that that was what it was.

Well, I landed in Austin for the first sort of stretch of my speaking gigs, and I felt like trash. I mean, I was like, I’m just going to rest as much as I can and that’s going to be my goal so that I can at least show up for the things that I am obligated to show up for. And also I was excited about it. I love meeting you all in person. I just love getting out there. And I still think I’m getting my fill after COVID kind of had us all locked down.

So I land and I rest and I’m just kind of chilling and I didn’t feel like. And I think all you all relate. You know, how you can tell where it’s not allergies, it’s not a cold, it’s not whatever. So I just knew that this wasn’t like a sick, sick thing. But my body felt heavy. So I rest and I get going. But I also noticed that my back was aching on my shoulder blade on the right side. It was just aching, aching, aching. And I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It seemed centralized around a certain spot. But I also have this horrible habit of feeling like I’m just going to pull through it. And that’s going to tie into this conversation because I just don’t have time to deal in the particular season.

So I was like, you know, it doesn’t seem that bad. I’ll be fine. So I managed to get to my gig and I do my gig and everything’s going well and I’m rallying. But by the end of the gig, it was a particularly hot day in Texas. I actually almost fainted. Like I was so lightheaded and I blamed it on the heat, maybe not eating enough hydrating enough, whatever it was but by the time I got back to the green room, I was just shy of like a full on pass out. My head was spinning. I was dizzy. I managed to recover enough after getting some water and food in me that I thought it’s just got to be the heat. So I slept a little bit, hopped on a 04:00 a.m. flight back east to continue my stretch. So all along the way, I’m feeling this ache in my back. But I’m just kind of dismissing it. So I finally managed to see my sister.

If you follow along over on Instagram, you’ll see that I got to see my sister during that stretch of travel, which is always so special. And I call her my baby sister, but she’s like in her 30s. But my baby sister and I had her take a look at my back. And she took a look at my back and she was like, Nana, which is what she calls she’s like, nana, there is a spot on your back. It looks like a bad spider bite. Like you’ve got to get that checked out when you get back to LA. And I was like, oh gosh, not a spider bite. Of course I’ll get it checked out. But at least I knew that there was something going on there. But it seems surface even though it ached, like into the bone. But I was like, just a bad spider bite. It happens. So I brushed it off and I continued doing what I was doing. But I knew that because it still ached when I get back to LA, I was going to get it checked out.

Well, when I landed in LA. It didn’t hurt as much after this week of travel. So I was like, well, I’ll put it on the calendar, but I won’t stress it. So I get in and to my doctor’s appointment maybe like a week and a half out from that point. And at this point, a lot of the bump itself had subsided, but the ache was still kind of there. And at this point we’re talking two and a half weeks of like a shoulder blade ache. So the doctor takes a look and says, yeah, maybe it’s a spider bite. We’re going to take some photos and send it in for a better look and do a referral out for you.

But then when they look on my back, they also find a weird looking spot. And they’re like this spot, it looks a little bit concerning. Concerning meaning they were worried about it being a possible melanoma, which is a form of skin cancer. And so they’re like, this spot looks a little concerning. We’re also going to take a picture of this and send it out. Now I want to let you all know right out of the gate, and this is rare, usually I do not share information when I am in the process. I usually share it once I have an answer.

But I think it’s important enough to share this because I don’t know where you may be in your personal journey and I don’t want to delay on this. So I don’t have an answer yet as to whether or not that was a melanoma or not. On the positive side, I don’t even receive, you all know I’m a God girl, I don’t even receive that it was right. So no matter what, I don’t have a formal diagnosis, but I know the diagnosis from a god, okay, it ain’t nothing, right?

But even if it were fortunately slow growing type cancer, easy to treat. And I did go in and get it biopsied, which means that they essentially take it out and send it in to get examined. But when I went to get it biopsied because I’m also team extra, I was not about that, oh, just take a piece of it. We don’t want you to have too bad of a scar. Let’s just take little bit. No, I already have a man. You can take out half my back, okay? If it is cancer, we’re not going to wait for an answer. You’re just going to take the whole thing and then you can come back and tell me later it was nothing and that’s fine. I can have a dent in my back. I do not care, right? I’m too old to care about that.

So either way, the whole thing is gone. But I will find out probably in about a week’s time kind of what happened there, if anything at all. But the one thing I wanted to call out is actually not even that. What if I told you that that wasn’t even the thing? So upside, because I had this ache on my back, I found this spot that could be questionable, possibly could be skin cancer, and got it removed because I never would have known it was there if this thing hadn’t happened. Look at God, right?

But aside from that, when I went into the dermatologist, they took a look at this bite on my back and immediately diagnosed it as shingles. Let’s talk about shingles. First of all, it’s not contagious, it’s not like a weird type of thing. Shingles, you may have heard of it. There are lots and lots of ads for vaccines for, like, American adults, older adults that are, like, I think they say, over the age of 65 or over 70 to get a vaccine for it because it presents as a rash that usually shows up along one side of your body and a lot of nerve and joint pain. And it is extremely painful and very uncomfortable. And you pretty much only get it if you have ever had chickenpox because it is related to the chickenpox virus that literally no one gets anymore because there’s a vaccine for it.

So there’s a secondary vaccine for shingles, which is what occurs when the chickenpox virus pops up again when you’re old. So here’s how this all plays out. One, I am not even 40, y’all? I am not even 40 and my body is breaking out in a reaction to something that is typically presented in people twice my age. First note. Second note shingles is known for being incredibly painful and very difficult to the point where they prescribe very strong painkillers and creams to help people have comfort while they’re dealing with this nerve pain, possibly for months on end. I was working and traveling during this.

Lastly, I completely let this go over this time and didn’t address it till later. Here’s why this matters, y’all? The person who did all those behaviors is very much the me prior to divorce. And shingles is something that typically only represents itself when your immune system is either suppressed or when you are living under high stress. Are you picking up what I’m laying down, Nicole? Yes, talking to self now, but I hope you’re listening in on the conversation I had with me. I said, Nicole, you came out of this divorce situation and you said to yourself, you will never get yourself into a physical condition again, where you are operating at such a high bandwidth with so little capacity that you make yourself ill.

In the past, it was a ridiculously high blood pressure to the tune of 173 over 153 stroke range. In the past, it has been Bell’s Palsy where my face has presented all the signs of a stroke and become fully paralyzed. And now I’m seeing shingles because with all the things that I’m juggling, I had a week here where I just let myself go and the combination of everything and now I had nerve pain.

So the lesson in all of this is this thing that I was googling and searching, which is, I think really relevant to kind of this tide that we’re seeing turn on social media. Have you all seen you can just give me the virtual nod, right? Because I know we’re having this conversation like friends on a couch. Have you all seen this turn towards social media where everyone’s talking about soft life, where everyone’s like, live a soft life, girl, do you, travel by yourself? Relax, like, make time, light a candle, play some Erica Badu? It’s like this whole thing, right? Soft life.

So I want to tell you, I am not anti. Please. We deserve a life that is not hard. We can work to earn it, but we also deserve it without earning, right? Like, you are entitled and you deserve the right to peace, right? That’s not something you have to pay or sacrifice or fight for. But I also want to talk about the fact that friends everywhere online, all this talk of self care is diluted and confused with personal care. I can’t tell you how many friends I have that take “me” days and they do things that are just personal care.

Self care is about nurturing yourself, feeding yourself. I think of it as fertilizing a plant. A plant can grow and bear fruit in ideal circumstances with just water and sunlight. But we know that life, just like for plants, is not always going to give ideal circumstances meaning, you’re going to need to nurture the soil. You’re going to need to add extra ingredients. If it’s short on something, you’re going to have to get that and apply it. There are things that we sometimes have to do to nurture ourselves so that we can actually flourish and bear fruit the way we’re supposed to. And that is what I think of when I think of self care.

Self care is not tilling your soil, pruning your leaves, doing maintenance. Self care is the extra above and beyond to nourish to make sure you are bearing the largest, sweetest, most bountiful fruit and continuing to flourish. Are you picking up what I’m laying down? We will literally post on the internet ourselves, getting nails, eating lunch and buying ourselves new bras because, you know, you wear the same three all the time and the wires been poking you in the side for years and talk about some self care.

Girl, you deserve new bras. You should get your nails done. They just need to be done. You deserve to take yourself out to lunch. You cook for every single body else all the time. You deserve a moment of peace and quiet and a good meal cooked for you. These are totally separate. This is not self care. This is personal care. It’s your well being. Just like I deserve to go to my regular doctor’s appointment, and I deserve to stop working and take a moment to get checked out. Like, all of those things are personal care items that should be better integrated into my life and something I do naturally.

Now all those things are therapeutic things. I tell you when you live for decades where you have not been taught personal care or shown personal care, and if you read my book, Nothing is missing, for the first time, I actually dive into a lot of my childhood and how the way that we learn to treat ourselves is something that’s really based on how we are treated and how we see our parents treat others in the very beginning.

So if you grow up in a home where it is common for the women of the household to treat themselves as second class citizens, or if you come from an environment where basic necessities are not prioritized as needs but seen as luxury, it’s not uncommon that you may treat yourself like that as well.

And I’m not judging any of that based on neglect or abuse per se, but it may be done because of circumstances or poverty or ignorance. They just may not know. And so we then will perpetuate those cycles in our relationships. We will likely bring them into our homes. And until someone calls it out, which hopefully is me doing that for you right now, friend, right? We won’t actually take the steps that are required to change it.

And that, for me, has been an ongoing journey. I have chosen relationships where I have permitted these cycles that are so harmful, literally to my health, where if I’m dealing with a medical condition that is visible and apparent, I don’t surround myself with people that will care for me. I have now, which is great. Alex in particular, is a very great partner in saying, like, slow down, stop, or I will physically stop you. I will carry you in. Are you okay? You don’t look good. Like, checking in and also outright caring for me, getting me things, taking me like, he’s tremendous.

But it wasn’t always like that. And so I really was in a place where self neglect was a priority, and self care wasn’t even on the table, let alone personal care. So the thing that I had to cope with when, my reaction to this doctor’s appointment and I was fortunate because Alex came with me, which, again, is new. Having a partner that’s present during my appointments is just such a relief because it allows me to just focus on my condition.

But I have someone there who’s asking questions and making sure I’m okay and remembering what meds I’ll need to take and reminding me, it’s so nice to share that mental load. But when I was in that appointment, my first reaction, because of so much trauma around neglect and also fear that I’m going to repeat behaviors or I haven’t shaken enough behaviors from before. My first response was, I can’t believe I did this to myself again.

After all my growth, after everything that I’ve done, I cannot believe that I felt something wrong with me and I neglected it for work. And again, grace, grace, grace. We talk about this all the time, especially if some of you are hearing this right now and you’re thinking, my foot hurts, or I have that bump, or I have that thing I haven’t checked out, or whatever. Grace. Grace. Grace. Grace. Grace. Right? It does not serve us to beat ourselves up as we’re trying to learn and grow and do better and all that, right? I’m learning that just when you think you are healed and through, you probably have another year ahead of you.

Just as I’m thinking, gosh, I’ve made so much progress from this divorce. I’m nowhere near where I was before. I’m not as shaken. I’ve healed so much. I have moments where I’m just like, oh, girl, you’re still doing some of the same things in smaller scales, and the recovery is quicker, but I’m still doing stuff. So I had a moment, and Alex could sit. He saw it. I was literally tearing up because I was so mad at myself for letting this even go on as long as it did, or even get to my place where I had that shingles circumstance. And I was grateful that, again, just, like, reducing my blood pressure or the recovery of my bell’s palsy, which that was by the grace of God alone, because that could have been permanent, a paralyzed face.

But I was so grateful that I recovered from this. And I want to let you know, friend, that a lot of times we hear these stories about how people who are young, essentially, like, in their 40s, in their 60s, like, young and otherwise seemingly healthy and with so much promise in their life and lots of great things going on, how they just, like, fall out and they’re gone, right? Like, they drop dead, they have a heart attack, they slip away in their sleep, and we’ll hear about the end line, which is, oh, their heart just gave out, like, too much stress or whatever.

But I want to tell you that the thing I’m learning and really receiving right now is that your body shows you so many signs before that big moment. It’s not like your stress, stress, stress, stress, stress, fall out. It’s stress can show up in your life and reflect it in your physical self in so many ways. It can show up as a rash. It can show up as, I just found out I have Psoriasis, which I didn’t even know. I just thought that I had really dry hands after pandemic, and the dermatologist again said, no, this is Psoriasis.

And you don’t notice it as much because when you are more stressed out, it’s more likely to be activated. I’m just like, not my whole body falling apart based on stress. My other numbers healthy, all my other blood work, healthy. I am healthy and physically well. And every single thing I am dealing with now is stress related. My Psoriasis showed up about three years ago when I first left my marriage. And so the reason why I’m speaking out about this openly, particularly in relation to my divorce, particularly in relation to the transition, is because I really want you to hear that one, your lifestyle can hurt your body.

And not just in using drugs or activities or things like that. But I want you to hear that if you are seeing things like rashes or headaches that don’t seem to be explained or nerve pain or joint pain or heart palpitations or whatever, it’s not just like, oh, maybe I’m doing too much, or I need to eat better, I need more exercise. It could simply be stress. I am an otherwise healthy person and whenever I talk about how I had to find safety for myself and I use that word, and I mean that word, I had to find safety for myself in my lifestyle and peace to keep myself alive because my body was breaking down because of the way that I was living and the choices I made and the relationships, plural, that I had.

The people around me were affecting me in the form of pressure and stress, and I was permitting it. And I say this to you friend, because I care about you. And there’s already so much pressure on us from the grief of the pandemic and there’s so much pressure on us from needing to show up for our kids and our family and our jobs every single day, but you ain’t showing up for nobody if you’re not here. And so I want you to know that if indeed there is something right here and now as I am saying this to you today, that you know you need to get checked out. It isn’t even self care for you to make that appointment. It is personal care and you are deserving. It is necessary and you should do it. Make that appointment and get seen.

But outside of that, I also want to encourage you as you are going along, to engage in self care. And self care is that nurturing, that fertilization, that extra care. It’s not even the massage. A massage isn’t a treat. A massage is maintenance. There’s a reason why they assign physical therapy for bodies that are breaking down and in treatment. It is not a treat. It is actually something that if you ask a lot of doctors, they recommend that you do like weekly. I recognize the privilege of the cost. Yada yada. But I just want you to understand that you deserve and need that self care so you can be as high functioning as you are.

So please, friend, take good care of yourself. Hear that from me as someone who is taking this journey and is three years out from recovering from being at my worst and still feeling the effects of that time. And I’m not so naive as to think that I’m going to recover from decades of living a certain way and having a certain mindset in minutes. But I was surprised, I’m not going to lie to you, I was surprised. I thought I’d done so much better because all my numbers and my blood work and things like that had come in pretty well. But it’s still here.

And so I’m doubling down, I’m creating more space, I’m shifting things around in my business to minimize stressors and responsibilities. And I’m going to tell you, just I’m really grateful because I’m even looking at it and saying to myself, the money’s not worth it. In some areas, my money is not worth my life. I do not want to leave this planet sooner than God calls me because of work. It’s just not worth it. And I’m excited for the ways that I get to show up in our relationship here with our chats weekly, with this incredible book that I think is going to give so much color and insight to the stories that I’m telling now.

I mean, you are going to read this book and say, girl, no wonder. And that’s exciting to know that we can have a richer, deeper conversation. It’s also scary and very vulnerable. I feel very vulnerable putting myself out there that way. But I really, really hope that the book, coupled with our chats here, gives you the tools you need and the lessons so that you don’t have to repeat some of the things that I’ve done.

So friend, make the appointment, go to the appointment, do the things your doctor has told you, set up your systems of self care and make sure that you are leaning into it completely because you are valuable.

Nicole:

Hey friends. So if you have been following me on Instagram you know, one historically I am not a morning person. I don’t know about you but I have always found that whether it’s in entrepreneurship or in being a mom that one of the biggest things that I see online is content around efficiency, but efficiency is always masked as like wake up at 4 a.m, right? The only way to make it happen is if you sneak extra hours in the day and I gotta tell you I have been all over the place in trying to steal back extra hours because as moms, as busy women, as goal-driven entrepreneurs, we have so much going on in our lives that our to-do list never ends.

I mean, I know that this is literally and universally, like right now you’re listening to this probably while doing another task, whether it’s in the carpool line, working out, at the grocery store, cooking dinner. Like, this is just our life, right? But I have to tell you, girl, I love a sleep in. I’m not kidding. I love a sleep in. In a way where It is a treat to me to go to bed and not turn on an alarm and know that I just get to lay. Like I just need to lay. I want to wake up whenever I wake up. Like isn’t this why most Mother’s Day’s and most holidays and birthdays start with like not having any requirements to wake up early.

So knowing that I am coming from that far on the spectrum of loving a sleep in to girl, I need to wake up at 4 a.m. in order to be anything productive, like that’s just not going to happen. And so I have to tell you, and this is so hard to admit, I have actually managed to sneak in an extra 10 hours a week of productivity by doing this one thing. I’m gonna tell you exactly what it is.

I do get up earlier, but instead of trying to do it based on someone else’s schedule, based on some hashtag, tip, miracle morning, strategy, routine, what have you, I’ve actually found my own motivation to do it and I built in structures to make it easier. So here’s what this looks like.

Let’s go back to move forward. Ever since college, everyone always knew me as the person to not really talk to before 11. It’s just the truth. If you catch me before 11, I’m not gonna be nice. I might be up at 9 if I have a class or something to do but if it is before 11 like you’re not gonna get the energy that you’re gonna want to meet because I am like barely functional.

I can’t think. I’m like stumbling. I just do not have it all the way together. And so all Over the past maybe 12 to 15 years of becoming a mom, starting my own successful business, taking on media and TV projects, I have literally had such a jam-packed day that I literally was like, I could work until midnight and not finish everything.

Well, since moving to California and being in Los Angeles y’all some of you may not realize this if you’re an East Coaster but if I sleep until 11 I am waking up when the day is over in other parts of the country and we have to decide if, especially if you’re on the West Coast, if you’re going to work on East Coast hours.

So what that’s meant is I have to figure out how to get up earlier. Now, aside from having a kid and needing to wake up for school and all of those things, you know, the privilege of being able to sleep late and work 15 hour days anyways by staying up to 11, is just one that my old over 30 self just can’t even manage anymore. Right. So what I started doing was I’ve been examining different methods to wake up earlier.

So I’ve tried the whole, oh, we’ll wake up and do like meditation or wake up and just have like a routine that is peaceful. Like I’m gonna wake up and I’m gonna drink some tea and all these things. But the truth is none of it was working for me. If I’m just gonna wake up and do meditation, I can meditate with my eyes closed in my bed. Okay, right? Like that’s what I’m really trying to do. Or wake up and just go for it. Like start your day right away, crank it out, go run, go work out. Like no, that is not exciting. So finally, I started examining a different perspective. And this is kind of what I want to encourage you on. This is part 1, like, or I should say, piece one of my get more hours in your week method. And then part 2, I think is going to just blow your mind with the simplicity of it, right?

Cause you know, I love a regular person strategy for what is otherwise a complex issue. So the regular person strategy, the first part of part 1, is instead of focusing on what you’re going to do when you wake up, shift to thinking about why. That mindfulness is everything. Everything. I have, I’m not kidding y’all, I used to be so worried about I have to wake up to do, do, do, do, do. And 1 of my good friends, Lana Jackson, she’s the CEO of Browne Wellness. She was on our podcast last week. One of the things that she was talking to me about is that, and actually not just her, but also another good friend of mine, Tamika, Tamika Lewis, she is the owner of Women of Color Therapy based in Sherman Oaks, an incredible facility. Both of them are always talking about how our society has really geared women, particularly marginalized women, to believe that our bodies are based on productivity.

Like women are built to do and to serve. And I got to tell you, outside of getting that message from society all the time that my job is to get up and move and do and provide, I don’t need to give that message to myself, particularly as like my starting point – that my first thing I do when I rise is to get into motion. So I knew already that why wasn’t gonna work for me. But what I found was if I attached my why for waking up to my greatest values what matters the most to me and something that would nurture and grow that – that it was just a tremendously different result. Like I wanted to wake up.

So my big why for getting up just a little bit earlier every single day is my babies. And let me tweak this. I know some of y’all are like, listen, sis, okay? I’m already waking up for my babies because they’re hollering because I got to get them food, because I am breastfeeding right now. I hear you. I hear you. I hear you. This is what I mean. I recognize that as my little one, who’s 11 now going into sixth grade. I know we can’t believe it.

She is getting older that I’m only going to have so much time left of this sort of, I call it the baby phase, right? That elementary school sweetness where you still want to hang out with mom and you still want to give me hugs and you aren’t all the way a teen who just wants to do teen things and you still think I’m kind of cool. Like I hope it lasts a really long time but I don’t know how long it’s gonna be and so because of that, you know I’m really eating up each one of these moments and I realized even though I’m so sweet my Misterfella does school drop-off but they were getting up every morning and having like a real quick breakfast, hopping in the car, driving the 10 minutes to school, you know, picking a song, you know, like having that chat time and I was like, why can’t I just join in on that?

What would it look like for me to have that extra 10 minutes every morning with her? You know over the course of a week, that’s an extra hour of time with my baby, just to kick off the day. You know and what would that do for my heart and my spirit? And I never want to look back after a month and say, oh my gosh, that was like a full half day of not seeing my baby that I could have seen my baby, you know, and is laying in bed really worth not having that time, particularly when I don’t have to do the drive and I don’t have to do all these. I can literally just sit there and enjoy her.

And I realized that that was a pretty big why, right? That makes me want to get up. You know, so for you, it may look a little different. Maybe that the reason that you want to get up has something to do with, you know, I want to prepare a better meal for myself and I enjoy cooking and maybe I never have the time to get that done in the day and so this is something I really want to do or I want to try a new hairstyle and you know it makes me feel really good to do this or I enjoy doing my makeup and I can take a little extra time to do that or I want to have time to chat with my mom in the morning and I don’t talk to her enough but I can fit in a morning call particularly on the East Coast/West Coast vibes you know like whatever it is I found that waking up and attaching that to something that is connected to something bigger than just a new workout regimen or a new business or something that’s productivity-based, has really been a much more consistent driver for me than what I was doing before.

So that’s the first part of it. But also on top of that, right, let’s stack our whys. Another thing that worked great for me was the Misterfella, right? So I realized that, you know, because he’s doing the driving and because he’s tagging along I get all this extra time with both of them. And who has ever looked back on their life and said, man, I really wish I’d spent less time with my family. You know, it’s easy for us to say now But truly how many of us have looked back and said I wish I had less quality time with my family.

So we had some incredible conversations during this morning carpool. It’s such a powerful, energetic, positive start to my day being with the people I love and not being with them in a capacity where I am doing for them. That’s part of what feels good about this. This isn’t me having to play, do you have this and have you got this? And what is for dinner? And let me prep this. I literally just get to enjoy my family and start off my day for about 15 to 30 minutes every morning.

And that is enough for me that when I open my eyes because I hear the rustlings and sounds of the morning, which y’all, we hear that anyways, because these kids are loud. They have no consideration whatsoever. Kids have one volume, right? So we hear those sounds anyways, and it’s like being able to wake up and just say, you know what, I’m going to get up and join in, feels really good for me, right? It feels really good. It’s that stacked why. But then and y’all are gonna be like Nicole, this is unreal I can’t believe this happened for you, as someone who didn’t even want to get up early well, my guy goes to the gym religiously. Like when I tell you call it a LA thing, call it like he comes from a family that’s always been very athletic, you know, and so like his parents walk like I think something like 7 miles every morning or something like that to get it’s just like they’re just it’s part of their life, you know, and his dad was like a cross country runner and like good at it. And so it’s like for him going to the gym, he goes every day. You know how the doctor recommends, what is it, 30 minutes 3 times a week? He goes to the gym every single day for like 90 minutes in the morning. I don’t, You know, I can’t even make this. I’m like, why it’s so much? <laughs>

But also, don’t we all secretly wish that we were that person who was like, I love working out so much. It feels good to me. I get endorphins. For me, working out has always been work. Like I’ll do it, but it has always been work. So catch this, y’all. The other thing that this is in part B, we’re still in part 1 of stacking your whys. One of the things that’s been a byproduct of this is once I’m in the car, well, after school drop off, he goes to the gym. So what’s happened is I wake up in the morning and in order for like, gotta get dressed, right? Well, I’ve started putting on workout gear. You know, I have this incredible workout set from Nike that’s like pretty carefree, I guess is the best way, because I don’t have to worry about, will it fit? Is it comfortable? Is it tight? Is it that time of month? Is it, will it hold me in? I just don’t have to think about it, right? I can just put it on and go. It’s like very easy gear. And honestly, frankly, that fits into part 2, which I’ll talk about in a minute, which is set up processes in the night before, you know. My friend Jen Hatmaker always says, you know, let the nighttime you, you know, let the morning you be happy for what the nighttime you did, right? So let nighttime you pull out the gear and the tools that you need so that your morning is easy.

So like for me, like having Nike sets means I don’t have to think about whether or not my leggings are going to be comfortable. I don’t have to think about whether or not my bra is going to have too much bounce. I don’t have to think about whether or not like, frankly, if I’m going to take a shower after the gym, if I’m going to have that like sweat lock in my clothing, like everything’s got that like, you know, instant dry fit, you know, I don’t have to think about. For instance, I just got a new pair of Nike sneakers, I found that the sneakers I was wearing before were too flat, not enough cushioning for, you know, what I do at the gym, which I’ll talk about in part B. And so having my new Nike sneakers with the appropriate padding on them has literally saved my knee like I’m not kidding my hips and my back were starting to hurt because your girl wasn’t going to the gym until she started this process, like regularly, you know, she was just working out sporadically. And now that I’m at the gym, kind of hitting it hard 5 days a week, I was feeling it. And it turns out that it was a sneaker thing. And Nike is for athletes. You know, Nike is for, you know, that’s their foundation. So that means that as an everyday person who wears athleisure and is also putting on clothing, you know, as just a regular mom, so I need to go from the gym to whatever else I’m doing, you know, or from carpool to the gym.

Like it was so important for me to have things that actually helped my body. So like having these sneakers, like literally was a game changer. I switched into them because the cushioning was like a game changer. But all that being said, you know, I slip on this stuff now to go to do this drop off and I just get in the car and go. And It’s great because I’m wearing my athleisure. I’m chill. I don’t even have to think twice. I get in the car, do drop off, and then I go to the gym with him because he’s not swinging by the house to drop me back off. He’s still doing his routine! Y’all, y’all I have been going to the gym now for over a month with my guy. I look, I don’t know if you can hear the shock, like if you in my face, y’all, like I accidentally became a gym rat simply because I found a stacked why different why’s that that led to this behavior.

After literally decades of trying everyone else’s systems, after literally decades of telling people like, you gotta want it more than you want the sleep, you know, that motivational talk, like after all this time of thinking, well, I just need to build out a certain routine. Well, I just need to, like, try meditation, or I just need to try this. All those things can work for different people, but at the end of the day, all of us are inspired to get up if we feel like there is a reason that is good enough to do so. And my reason was never just, oh, to build my business or oh, to, you know, I don’t know, like get into being more productive and get more done in the day. I don’t want to start a hard day early, But what you better believe ended up being my reason to get up was my family and being with them, especially after as you’ve heard, you know in our whole seasons of chats like all the things I’ve been through I just don’t take it lightly.

Like I have my health now and the idea that I could spend more moments with my family’s just means so much to me and by extension I’m improving my health.

So let’s get to piece 2, so this is the other part of it, and y’all will laugh at this I posted this past week like video of me waking up and like again tossing on my workout gear You know like making sure that was ready, and y’all saw I was wiping the sleep out of my eye, just a whole mess. I am a zombie in the morning. When I wake up, I am full on incoherent, like crusties in the eye, drool on the face, zombie. Like do not ask me questions, cannot function, which is crazy, because you know, by noon, I’m like zip, zam, boom, you know, Nicole can go, she can think she’s fast. So like, because I am so out of it, I have got to set up my day.

So it’s why I basically made a like only Workout gear like line up my Nike have all my sneaks there, like everything is ready to go. Because if I have all my stuff stacked and ready to go it actually keeps me from screwing up in the morning, because I cannot think.

So here’s the other piece of it. If you are saying to yourself, I’m going to wake up and do this laundry list of things, like, well, when I wake up, then I’m going to do this, and then I’m going to have this, and then I’m going to prepare my ancient tea ceremony, then I’m going to work on cross-stitching, then I’m going to do 15 affirmations. I don’t know about y’all, but my brain does not turn on that quick. Sometimes creating a list around what you should do to like cultivate relaxation can actually be overwhelming.

Like maybe it’s just more organic around not putting that extra pressure on yourself and just being glad and celebrating who you are and where you are right now. I feel my all when I know I am not putting extra pressure on myself to be more than what’s required in order to be successful for the day. You know, like starting off my day knowing that it’s okay for me to show up with what I got and ease my way in has been everything. So again, I do not want to minimize being an entrepreneur and having the financial flexibility and the privilege to have a day design like this. Not all of us got it.

I know for a fact that some of y’all are hopping up to get on that bus, hopping up to do that commute, hopping up to take care of those kids, single moms, you know, dealing with health concerns. Like, privilege is not lost on me, and you all deserve every single round of applause for doing it and the grace to try to fit in everything you can. You are inspiring. But I also am just sharing what works for me. And what I have found is literally grace, by removing all these boundaries and barriers and lists and tools and tricks and all these extra hacks that I’m getting, which frankly, a lot of them are coming from guys, who don’t have to deal with half the stuff that us mamas do.

Of course it’s easy for you to get up and just run to the gym because you’re not the one worried about getting the kids to school or you’re not the ones worried about making sure we have meat out of the freezer so it’s defrosted for dinner. You’re just up and going. You’re worried about you. And so what I found is when I have this stack of things ready to go, the other thing that I keep ready to go are all my vitamin and supplements that I keep right on the counter. I also have pre-workout. I make my athletic green shake in advance. I mean, I literally have all these things lined up and ready to go from the nighttime and like a lot of them like my supplements and stuff I can get ready top of the week.

So I can literally stumble in there, incoherent, into my bathroom, slip on my workout gear knowing that I’m ready to go take my stuff and then stumble into the car. By the time we get into the car and the kids get the playlist going and my guys got the tunes going because they just wake up in great spirits, you know, we’re having a blast and by the time we park at the gym, I’m actually pretty awake and ready to go.

Now here’s a little bonus tip of that. One of the things that I love about my new gym strategy, Y’all didn’t think I was even gonna give you that because this is going to transform your brain. How many of you are saying to yourself, gosh, like I would like to worry about my health more? I would like to get into the gym. I would like to do whatever is required to just get more movement in my life. And understand the gym, for those of you who haven’t been there, because a gym can be daunting and uncomfortable. The gym isn’t just workout equipment. It’s not just lifting, right? The gym I go to has like yoga classes and like kickboxing and you know, lots of different things that you can do outside of that. But here’s what I do when I go to the gym. You ready for it? Drum roll. Brrrrr. I walk. I literally walk.

The rule that I made, even when people are like, oh, you go to the gym every day. I’m like, nope, I just go to hang out with my guy. You won’t even catch me saying I go to the gym. Our conversation we’re having right now is literally between girlfriends. I would not tell anybody that I actually go to the gym and I work out. I do not. What I do every morning is I spend time with my fella. That’s what I do. I spend time with my fella every morning. And what does that entail? We arrive at the gym. He goes off to the fancy pants, cool guys, lifting heavy things section, right? Which I just want to be clear, I understand the value of weightlifting. I understand the value of routines and all that. I am just personally not there to each their own journey. Okay?

But he goes off to go lift heavy things. And I’m like, all right, I’ll see you when I see you. And I will turn on that treadmill. And also I will not, I will not feel pressured, right? Because it’s my all, not everybody else’s all. I have to feel my all. Next to me, people could be running a sprint, okay? They could be straight up challenging Usain Bolt’s, you know, world record in sprinting, okay, in the 100-meter dash. It don’t matter to me, okay? They could be the hottest girls at the gym. They could be, you know, the tight 20s that you get out in L.A. Don’t matter. I am putting my stuff on the level that makes me feel comfortable. I don’t need to break out of sweat if that’s the energy I got today. I will pop on my little sermon. Recently, I’ve been listening to the Potter House sermons by TD Jakes or I’ll grab some podcasts. My crew here at Dear Media network has lots of great podies that I get to listen to. I will pop those on and that is what I will do.

I’ll answer email. I’ll post on social. I’ll check in with my assistant. I’ll call my sister. Sometimes if I’m having a conversation that’s really good, and I don’t want to sound out of breath. I will walk slower so I can finish my conversation. By accident, I am literally getting in 4 to 5 miles of walking without even realizing it. Because I’m just going slow and I’m listening and I’m taking my time.

I want you to catch the lesson in all of this. Sometimes it’s not how much you’re doing or how fast you’re doing it. It’s a fact that you’re doing it at all. And if you’re able to say to yourself, look, these small steps all count, and I’m gonna give myself grace and not stress myself out about the pressures and the parameters to do things a certain way, you’re one, gonna be open to the tools that are gonna help you actually get it done.

I got myself great sneakers. These sneakers are changing my life because they’re helping me with my knees and my shoulder, my back alignment. I have a great bra, you know, I got a bountiful set of girls. It’s worth having the investment in great gear Nike makes some of the greatest, you know, like upper body, you know, bras and shirts because they’re built around the support that you need. And I don’t know if you were one of those girls, but I grew up needing like two bras just to even feel comfortable playing sports. And I was a sports girl and athlete. So it’s like nice to not have to think about that. And I just don’t think about it. You know, it all looks good. I throw it on. I feel comfortable and I’m able to just go.

And like, you know, it has just been I didn’t talk about this earlier because I wanted to see if I would do it for a while. You know how people will post like their routine and be like, I’m doing this, this and the next as they’re going, but then they fall off. I was like, I’m going to do this if I can for like 45 days. So it’s been a month and some change before I tell my friends about what I know is working for me because I want to make sure it’s real.

So believe it or not, this magical, super fancy, you know, morning routine is literally based off of not being fancy. This is the regular girl routine, okay? This is like the basic girl, normal mama, hot girl summer system, okay? And it all starts with, we’re going to break it down in bullet point.

First, find a reason why to wake up that actually feels good and stack those reasons. Find as many as you can if it’s like you know what every morning when I wake up early, I’ll have the extra 5 minutes to go to my favorite coffee shop. Hey, every morning when I wake up, I’ll have 5 extra minutes to play with my dog. Like every morning when I wake up, I’m gonna treat myself to watching one episode of Vanderpump Rules that I never get to watch. Whatever it is, maybe it’s all of them. Stack those reasons why, because that will make you want to get up and be like, ooh, I get to watch an episode of that show, right?

Second, make sure that morning goes as smoothly as possible. Let the nighttime you be kind to the morning you. So what does that mean? Figure out your gear like I don’t know about you, but clothing is such a hang up for me. If I know that I have to get dressed. Sometimes I don’t even want to go. So it’s like, if you know that you’ve got like a stack, like I found a brand that I know that I won’t have to think about the clothing. It’s why you hear me dropping Nike. I’m not even kidding. I don’t have to think. I know it’s going to fit. I know it’s going to be comfortable. I know it’s going to look good. I know they’re the only leggings I’ve ever seen that have a drawstring in them. So if you are a curvy girl, which means that, you know, a slightly smaller waist with, you know, a bountiful thigh, if you have that type of shape, I need leggings that are not gonna like, like when I do a squat, I’m not doing squats, let me stop lying. When I bend over to probably grab a donut or tie my shoe. Like I’m not getting like peeping because I’m able to tighten the drawstring on my leggings, but they’re not yoga pants. They’re like a yoga pant, like super support legging hybrid that I’m able to do that and feel comfortable.

So it’s like, you know, get your brand, you know, that you know, is going to be the thing that works for you so that you don’t have to think and then buy the stock that you need so you can just literally reach into your drawer, reach into your closet, throw those on. Get a favorite pair of sneaks or comfy clothing that you know works. Even if you’re just going to do this like athleisure just to walk around or if you’re saying to yourself, no, I just need something easy workout gear. It’s called capsule collections. A lot of like high powered entrepreneurs do this for ease of their brain work. You’ll hear that like Mark Zuckerberg is like, yeah, I just wore like a hoodie and a white t-shirt and jeans. Or you’ll hear bike Steve Jobs always wore a black turtleneck make it simpler for yourself I know some of you are stylistas or you’re, you know, you always want to look really good and you’re very into that and there’s room for that but I just want you to know like when it comes to just getting up, ease, ease, ease really helps, you know?

And then the last part is removing the pressures around what you’re supposed to do now that you’re up. Like, waking up to have a list of where you have to be and what you’re supposed to do is bananas. I will tell you that what has happened is I still end up accomplishing more in my day because I’m still starting my day early. But the reason I’m getting up is not specifically to run into my day. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

You know, if I’m getting up and saying to myself, look, when I show up, because I’m already starting early, everything is a plus. Everything is a bonus. Everything is already a win. So the fact that I’m waking up early and I even get to the gym, good on me. There are even times where, like, I’ve had days where I’ll get there and in the very first week I had a day where I was like look we’ve worked out for I didn’t realize that he was at the gym for 2 hours, I was like it feels like he’s here for so long like why so I finished my whole like you know cycle or whatever on the treadmill and it was like, okay, you walked for an hour. I was like, oh, look at me, I’m doing something.

And I was like, he’s not done yet. He was like, yeah, I have another like 20 minutes of my routine. I’m like, this is crazy. I walked my cute little tail right to the Starbucks, y’all. Sure did. I was like, I’ll be waiting for you over a cup of coffee. And it was great. You know what I mean? Why? Because there’s no rules. There’s no rules. If I go to the gym and one time I went to the gym over the past month and I had a client call that I’d started taking on my treadmill, but I needed to pay attention. So I got off the treadmill. I was only on it for maybe 15, 20 minutes. And I just took my call and I waited until he was done at the end of my call, and we went home. It doesn’t matter. I still got to spend time with him on the way there and the way back. I still got into the gym overall. I still did 20 more minutes of exercise than I would have done. I still felt comfortable and did my routine. Like it was a successful day because I did the things I said I would do, which was just spend time with my why.

And so when I tell you, if you do these 3 things, you will be shocked at how much that will transform your day, but also how much grace and ease and positive feelings you will have about you showing up because we’re called to be so much in our world. We’re called to show up in so many spaces. The last thing we need is to put pressure around ourselves about what we look like or how we do it.

So I hope that helps because it sure is helping me. But I also give myself grace and you should give it to yourself, too, that who knows what next month is going to bring. These kids are crazy and life is crazy, but I’m going to keep it up for as long as I can because it sure is working.

So friend, if you decide to incorporate this in your routine, let me know. If you want to know more about my tips, check the show notes and I might even post a few of my favorite Nike faves. All right. I will talk to you later or catch you on the podcast and if I see you at the gym, say hello.

Nicole:

Friends, so you know how I feel when I find something I love and I’m obsessed with and I lose my mind – whether it is popcorn or fudge or the latest, best, most effective health thing. And right now, you’ve heard me talking about my fertility journey. You’ve heard me talking about getting my health right, especially in this new chapter of my life. And a huge part of that has been exploring supplementation. Lord knows I can’t live off of Capri Suns and Cheetos. And I’ve got to figure out how to get my goodness and my body so that I am safe and well taken care of. And I met the most incredible woman. I mean, you know how I am, I’m a god girl, God does things very specifically. Nothing is by accident. Her name is Lana Jackson. If you have not heard of Lana Jackson, look her up, google her, follow her on Insta. She is inspirational, she’s incredible, and she’s also the CEO and founder of Brown Wellness. Now, Brown Wellness is the only that I’ve discovered, brown, BIPOC-specific functional wellness supplement brand. Now, I know that’s a mouthful, but I’m telling you, this is something you need, and there’s no better person who can talk about it than Lana herself.

And I’m so excited because she is here with us to sit, to chat, to help us learn. Y’all, if you are dealing with things in your life and you need a little extra boost, Lana is going to tell us how to get it. Lana, thank you so much for being here.

Lana:

Thank you, Nicole. I’m so excited to be here with you.

Nicole:

Oh, my gosh, I’m so excited that you’re here. You have no idea. I had to keep it together, just doing my intro because I was like, I can’t bring all that energy right out the gate. You got to calm down and say the words, Nicole. So I’m so glad you’re here. Brown Wellness is everything I’ve been looking for in this journey.

I mean, I’ve experimented with using so many different types of supplements. And being honest, a lot of them work great. I’m not disappointed in what I’ve tried, but I really am in a chapter of my life where I do, one, want to support black-owned businesses wherever and whenever possible. But I also want to make sure that I’m able to use products that I think, when my daughter opens up the cabinet, she sees herself centered.

So can you tell me a little bit more about your journey and why you even felt there was a need in a $47 billion supplement industry to carve out a little piece specifically for the BIPOC experience. Tell me what we don’t know.

Lana:

Yeah, well, it’s a long story. I will start by saying that my wellness journey really began really young for me. So at 13 years old, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease.

Nicole:

Wow! That must have been really a struggle at 13. I can’t imagine. My eleven year old can barely get out of the house and tire her shoes. I can’t even imagine.

Lana:

And it was weird because I still remember that moment when I’m in the doctor’s office with my mom and I’m talking to the specialist and he looks me dead in the eye and he’s just like, I want you to understand you have a chronic medical condition. This is something that you’re going to need to manage the rest of your life. Do you understand?

Nicole:

At 13. No, you don’t understand. I barely understand why I have boobs now. I don’t understand anything. No, I don’t know how to manage a diagnosis like this. That must have been terrifying and overwhelming and I can’t even imagine.

Lana:

But actually it kind of wasn’t because in my small brain, I was just like, okay, so are we going to Dairy Queen after this? Yeah, but I couldn’t fully grasp it. But at the same time, I’ve always been like a sensitive child. Like, I’m an intuitive person. And so I was kind of like, I see the gravity of this moment, but my world wasn’t big enough to comprehend what that was going to mean. I know when an adult is talking to me and telling me something serious, and I hear that and I’m wondering about, okay, what’s the next thing? You just can’t comprehend.

Nicole:

Of course. You’re not thinking, oh, I have Crohn’s disease. How’s that going to affect? Will I eat wedding cake at my wedding? Will I go on vacation and eat freely with my friends? Will I be able to be comfortable enough to go to work? A 13 year old is not thinking about those things. Of course, of course. So I think that is probably worth giving. Context is one of the things we really connected on, was being first generation. So for me, that’s always meant that when I would deal with any type of health or sickness or whatever, my parents, they understood the value of conventional medicine, particularly being in the US. But they didn’t necessarily lean on it. They were very quick to say, well, try a tea, or I even think culturally, as black people, we’ve learned, grab some ginger ale, or, I don’t know, take a hot shower, try some Epsom salt.

And there is so much merit to that as we’ve gotten older, because we do tell our kids, have ginger ale and crackers, and it really does work. But how did your parents deal with that diagnosis? I mean, did they think, let’s keep getting you tested. What did you do? What were the next steps?

Lana:

I think that it was really a journey that my mom and I went on. And both of my parents are divorced now. They got divorced when I was in college. But their marriage, both of them are immigrants, and their marriage was always really difficult. And I think that my dad was not really as involved and really hands-on. It was really my mom. Even to this day, the way that I navigate my wellness is because of my mother.

Nicole:

That says so much.

Lana:

Yeah. And so obviously, both of my parents are Caribbean. They’re Ghinese. They’re from Guyana. And so, yeah, there’s this wealth of wisdom about wellness and about medicine that you take with you as an immigrant when you come into another country. And it’s so fascinating to me because I think that my mom had a good grasp and understanding of traditional medicine. But at the same time, when I think about the diaspora and black people, whether it’s Africa or the Caribbean, medicine is actually something that happens every day. In the west, we’re like I don’t feel well, what can I take to do something?

Nicole:

That’s so good.

Lana:

But typically within the African diaspora, I know for myself with my parents, they would always give me this bitter tea. Like, we would have bitter tea to clean out…

Nicole:

Like detox.

Lana:

To detox. Sometimes we would have it before a meal, and of course, I would take it and pour it in the corner of the carpet.

Nicole:

Who wouldn’t? Now that is universal. None of us want to take the stuff from our parents, whether it’s hiding the peas under our mashed potatoes or pouring out the bitter tea, none of us are trying to do it. I get it.

Lana:

And I was the strong-willed child, so I really wasn’t going to do it. Yes, but there’s wisdom in that, right? Because bitters help to break down food for digestion, and also the herbs that are in, that are cleansing your liver, they’re getting into your bloodstream. So there were things like that that my mom would give us, but I don’t think that she made the connection between those things being advantageous for gut health.

Nicole:

Even from a medicinal standpoint. We don’t know why we’re doing it, but we know we’ve always done it so good. And you know what’s interesting about that? So many of my crew here, we are all very much like the old school type, or we kind of come from a traditional background. But a lot of us also, we come from different cultural backgrounds. And these are some of the things that I think really draw us closer together, because we realize that there’s so many similarities in, oh, if you’re sick our parents will try sort of this list of things that are actually very natural, very organic, plant-based before they really grab even the ibuprofen.

In Italy, I just learned it’s common to have an espresso after meals because they found that the coffee aids in digestion. Also, the little bit of caffeine stimulant keeps you from getting that soporific effect where you start getting you want to take itis, you don’t get the itis, which lends itself to moving and walking and things of that sort. And it’s just amazing how we have not integrated or carried so many of these things. Unless it comes from your cultural background.

Lana:

Yeah, because I think especially if your parents are immigrants, you kind of get disassimilated, right? From where you come from, especially if you’re like a third culture kid. It’s like your parents are from somewhere else. Now they’re living someplace else, and you’re living where they’re living, but you don’t identify with that place either. So it’s just kind of like there really wasn’t a lot of dialogue around this for like, years. It’s only now we really fully understand the first generation experience.

Nicole:

Which is amazing considering that this is a $47 billion industry. So that means that and I think all of us, especially my friends listening, all of a sudden it feels like supplements or some version of supplement or everybody has a supplement. I mean, we see companies like Gwyneth Paltrow with Goop, Jessica Alba with Honest Co. All these companies are dipping into the supplemental realm, even companies that didn’t start that way.

You’ll have companies that started with athletic wear that are now offering supplementation, energy drinks, weight management tools, things of that sort. So what I noticed, and I think a lot of my friends on here, even those who are not BIPOC, are noticing is when you walk down these shelves, you don’t really see brown people heavily featured. It’s starting to change a little bit, but it’s not the norm. You’re the expert. Why is that?

Lana:

I mean, I think a big part of that is just appropriation, because a lot of the things that these supplement brands and companies are using come from black and brown communities.

Nicole:

Let’s pause on that one. So that is the truest of the true statements. And it’s funny because I never thought of it as appropriation, which I know can be a sensitive word for some, and it can feel triggering. But there’s a word I’d like to add to it, inadvertent appropriation. I think there is appropriation where it is deliberate, it is intentional, it is absolutely like appropriation tinged with colonization. Right. But then there’s an inadvertent where it’s like, I didn’t even realize my mom took this from her Chinese nanny who always did this for her, and I thought it was our family’s thing. And so here I am calling it my ancient family recipe, when in reality, this harks back to Eastern medicine. That is not derivative of my culture.

Lana:

Right.

Nicole:

So you’re right when you say that a lot of these medicinal things and herbs and treatments are in origin from Eastern and African cultures.

Lana:

Yes, the other side of the world.

Nicole:

Wow.

Lana:

And I want to say, too, because I think that’s a valid point, sometimes it is an invert in it. And I’m not even trying to imply that they’re doing it intentionally.

Nicole:

I think sometimes it is intentional. We’re not taking that away either. Some people are doing it very much on purpose to take that money.

Lana:

They are, but I also want to say that when I think about wellness, it’s a rainbow. And even as I’ve grown in my wellness journey, there are so many things that as a person of faith who loves God, I rejoice in seeing just the diversity of what this culture has understood now about the human body. They’ve grasped something like, I get acupuncture really regularly now.

Nicole:

Right.

Lana:

And working with my acupuncturists and really understanding Chinese medicine, like, wow, Chinese people have really grasped something about the way energy works in our body and praise God for them. And before I came here, I was in Santa Monica at Surya getting some Arabetic wellness treatments because Indian people have grasped something about the way our bodies work and digestion works and hormones work. So I say that to say…

Nicole:

There’s a beautiful medley.

Lana:

Yes medley, and sometimes we’re not intentionally trying to steal things from people but there are other things that other cultures have that we can benefit from. I think my thing was in this journey that I’ve been on with my wellness, I just didn’t see myself. I didn’t see something that reflected my experience. And the wild thing about that was I was diagnosed, like I mentioned, with Crohn’s at 13 years old. I’m 36, so it’s been two decades.

And for me, it’s kind of just like I have been through so much, and I never anticipated in my entire life that I would be without this condition because when that doctor told me that, though I was young, I’m doing my manifestation work, I’m visioning my future, and I’m seeing like, okay, I make time to go get my medicine. I have a nurse.

Nicole:

You’re taking care, you’re taking steps. And that’s got to be the hardest. And I think a lot of people there’s so much unspoken chronic pain that people don’t talk about because they just think it’s theirs to carry. And I think only now we’re starting to hear about people saying, look, I don’t have anything that’s terminal. I just have something that’s chronic. And it’s just what I’ve lived with. And I didn’t even realize I should talk about it to find out if there are solutions. And now we’re learning more. So your Crohn’s, is it still something chronic or how are you using Browne wellness? How does that work?

Lana:

Yeah, so what happened was when we went into the pandemic, so this is like 2019. I was experiencing the disease was somewhat under control. I’d been on a biologic drug for years. It’s a drug that they use for rheumatoid arthritis. It just basically helps to turn off that inflammatory response in the gut. And so I had a nurse named Sarah.

Nicole:

But did you have lifestyle things you also had to change, supplement it with that.

Lana:

At that time? No, I was taking my medicine. I was eating really good. I’ve always had to eat really good. I don’t drink a lot of alcohol.

Nicole:

I mean, but that is lifestyle. This is what I mean when I say you become so used to having to live a certain way, you don’t realize that, no, there are people who go out and on a wedding night, be able to have a couple of drinks and you’re like, no, I have to go in there with the awareness of on the menu. This is what I will choose, and this is how I will restrict, in addition to my medication.

Lana:

Yeah, because when you see the outcome of when you don’t, then you learn. And I grew up in hospitals. Like, doctors were my friends, nurses were my friends. I never really had a lot of friends in school because I wasn’t there half of the time.

Nicole:

Oh, my gosh.

Lana:

And so I learned how to read my labs. I felt like a doctor by the time I was in my 20s.

Nicole:

Sure, but you had to take this ownership over your care. And I think that that also speaks to some of the black female experience and the BIPOC experience, where historically we’ve had to deal with increased maternal mortality rates. We’ve had to deal with not being as seen and heard whenever we are in the conventional and traditional medical realm. And not obviously, like I always say, not everyone is the same, not every single scenario. But there is a systemic issue that does exist within the black experience where we have dealt and as studies and data has supported with a struggle of being heard in relation to our care.

So taking that ownership one, obviously is because a lot of these chronic diagnoses, I think everyone can relate to, It feels like if we’re dealing with something, we have to figure it out ourselves. And part of it is being brown.

Lana:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that was the thing with how I watched my mom navigate my illness. Like, her being in the doctor’s office and the way she would push for questions, the way that she would just the energy she led with.

Nicole:

You’re not gonna play about my baby, that’s me all day.

Lana:

And it wasn’t even like she was even aggressive. It was just this expectation that we expect the best care. It never occurred to her and maybe because she’s an immigrant, but it never occurred to her that the color of her skin meant something different. Right. And so I absorbed all of that. And I go to bat when I go to I mean, I’m not argumentative, but when I come to the doctor, I see that relationship as peer to peer. And some people can’t accept that. And then I fire them and I find another doctor.

Nicole:

Do you all hear that right now? When I go in to see my doctor, I see that relationship as peer to peer. So your doctor is a part of your team.

Lana:

Yes.

Nicole:

Your doctor is not someone who is a hired vendor. They are not someone who is there to facilitate an answer. They are there as part of your team to work towards a solution.

Lana:

This is a collaboration because this is my body. And so anything that you decide, I have to live with. I’ve never understood the gaslighting that I have experienced, that I’ve watched my family experience. My younger sister has autism, we now know. I have gone to bat. I have talked to so many people to get her what she needs. In my opinion, it’s like I expect collaboration and the minute that I sense that that’s not there or you’re offended by my knowledge about my body, I’m out of there.

Nicole:

This is so empowering. I think it doesn’t matter what shade you are, we, especially as women, have got to take ownership over what happens to our body, how our body is treated, and feel comfortable being vocal about what we need. And I love that you are behind Browne Wellness in this capacity because you’re the type of voice that we need.

We need someone who has not only had to experience it, but has also seen success with it. So where did you end up going with your journey, with your health care? Did you have to supplement it? Did you just stick with the meds you were taking? Because I know 2020 was rough for all of us, girl.

Lana:

It was. But it was a big reset in a lot of ways which I’m grateful for. So we went into the pandemic. I started experiencing just a lot of really difficult gut issues and I was like, why am I having all of these issues when I’m taking my medicine? I’m doing what I’ve always done, what’s changing and something’s changing in the microbiome of my gut. And so I leaned out of working with my specialist because they weren’t listening to me.

Nicole:

There we go.

Lana:

I fired two gastroenterologists I was working with and I was like, you know what, I’m going to find a Naturopathic doctor because I think there’s something else happening here and they don’t want to look at the whole picture. And I’m desperate to.

Nicole:

Right. And at least to find out! And so I having friends who gone to Hopkins, and a lot of my friends are conventional medicine doctors. But I will tell you all day, there is nothing wrong with looking into everything and above all else, at least finding out, like, if it’s not this, then why not? I always tell my kids all the time and I think a lot of us relate to this, especially as parents, with my youngest daughter, when she’s sick, I’m not going to just run and give her meds if I don’t have to. Maybe some peppermint tea will work first.

And that’s because there is scientific data that any doctor will support that’ll say, mint helps soothe your belly, so why wouldn’t we try that before jumping to meds? And I think that that is one of the shifts that I’ve seen in Browne Wellness is it really is about daily wellness and how that is actually the ultimate form of preventive medicine. It’s just really focusing on staying well and being well. So in that journey, you landed on more natural methods. Now, you weren’t using these before, you were just taking conventional.

Lana:

That’s right. I was just taking my prescription.

Nicole:

Wow. What happened? Did you try both?

Lana:

Well, I was still taking my regular medicine because I had to do that to keep the disease kind of quiet. But you can have the disease be quiet and still have, like, IBS symptoms, which is what I was experiencing.

Nicole:

And you’re just living with it.

Lana:

You’re just living with it. And it wasn’t until the pandemic that I had the time to be like, okay, what’s happening here?

Nicole:

And you probably felt it more because Lord knows, and I think all the busy mamas that are on here, we’ve got, like, college kids, and some of my friends here are single women just driven for their goals. When you’re busy and buzzing, it’s so easy to just not even feel what your body’s feeling. And one of the things that we’ve shared is that during the pandemic, for me, it was, oh, my goodness, my blood pressure is crazy, and I’m technically resting, right? That’s my resting blood pressure. What’s happening? Like, I haven’t been on a plane in months, and my blood pressure is this high. What’s going on?

And just really getting my numbers and realizing, okay, if this is me and my most stay still state, then what does that mean about my body’s basic equilibrium? And then what does that mean if I tip the scale into stress? What does that mean if I have a baby? And it really begged the question of how can I be as healthy as I can be standing still so that I can definitely function when I’m running? Right, so you discovered oh, my gosh, in staying still for the first time and having the time, my body’s being weird.

Lana:

Yeah, my gut was acting really weird. So I found a naturopathic doctor. I was working with them virtually. I think I went through maybe three, four Naturopathic doctors.

Nicole:

Wow.

Lana:

They were all white. It was just hard to find someone who looked like me. And I eventually landed on somebody who is wonderful, my Naturopathic health coach, Nancy, who is a white woman, but loves me so well and is so patient and is so thorough. And what I realized was that I had a couple of things happening. I mean, there was, like, bacteria in my gut. I had, like, candida, all these different things. And so she and I worked together to put together a protocol to start treating some of these things with supplements. It was supplements and my mindfulness about how I was going to take them, use them, pairing them, just the whole rainbow of wellness. Because a lot of it, too, was me regulating my nervous system to accept some.

Nicole:

Ain’t that it girl.

Lana:

I mean, you can take a bunch of stuff, but if your nervous system is completely out of control and your nerves are shot, your body isn’t really going to respond to all things.

Nicole:

That’s right.

Lana:

So there is a component of it that is somatic and mindful that does go along with taking supplements.

Nicolee:

Right.

Lana:

And functional medicine. Functional wellness, is really about, like what you were saying before. It’s like we’re looking at the whole picture to figure out what is it that is happening? Is it we tested for this. Okay, it’s not that. Let’s look at this. What about this history that your mom had on your maternal grandmother’s side?

Nicole:

Right.

Lana:

It’s really looking at the whole picture and figuring out what do we need to get your body to function better?

Nicole:

I love that concept because it’s kind of like this is and this is, of course, the classic Nicole Walters translation of it. It’s like going to the restaurant and thinking, I’m not going to order the dish on there. I’m going to say, you know what? I feel like a side of broccoli. And I feel like this appetizer. And I also want the fries. It’s all food. We’re all at the menu. You don’t necessarily have to have the meal, that side, and that because that’s what’s prescribed to you. Maybe I can look at the whole menu and take the pieces that I know are going to make me feel full. And that’s actually been part of my lifestyle, like healthy wellness changes, is I’ll go in and I’ll say, well, maybe I just need protein.

Like, we went out to dinner last night and I was like, can I just get like, a side of steak? Because I was like, I feel like I need a little bit more protein and iron, and I love that. How many greens did I have today? Well, what type of greens do I need? I would like to have some Brussels sprouts because I want something kind of cruciferous, but I also want some spinach because I want to add to my protein. Just really looking at and saying, what do I need? And feeding myself accordingly.

Lana:

And I love that because my soul just went off because it’s the mindful part of it. Did I have any water today?

Nicole:

That’s right.

Lana:

Like, maybe instead of getting the diet cook, let me just have a glass of water. Did I eat any greens? Or if you’re on your cycle, I find, like, my body is like, man, we need a burger.

Nicole:

Yes. Very real!

Lana:

It’s the iron and responding to that because food is medicine. Food can be medicine.

Nicole:

And I love that because that’s also cultural. Coming from Ghana, West Africa, and having West African parents, that’s such a huge part of our diet in general. If you’re sending culturally, like if the men are going out into the fields to get palm to make palm oil or a palm wine, you’re not going to feed them the same way that you’re going to feed someone who may be staying home and in town. You’re going to feed them in a way that’s going to make sure that they feel lots of carbohydrates. It’s a different diet than the typical fresh fish and pepper sauces and things of that sort because they need to be sustained for the task.

And I think a lot of times some of our eating is either based on how we feel in the moment emotionally, which not a bad thing, there’s space for that. We’re not judging eating habits. Sometimes a girl needs some ice cream, but also not really thinking about, hey, I’m a mom and I’m busy and I’m going all day. What can I do?

And realistically, I can’t always be great about it. Or realistically, food isn’t always available. There are days where I am actually just grabbing my kids goldfish crackers because it was the quick thing and it’s not nothing. But supplements have truly changed my life in standing in that gap so that I’m not lacking come midday, if I’m feeling sluggish, you actually have a product that I love, love, love. You all hear me love and I’ll link it below. It’ll be like all the details around Browne Wellness, how to get started, how to figure out what to use. My favorite products this is not sponsored y’all, I just love them, will be in the show notes below.

So the product that I love midday, if I have not had my coffee, not done what I needed to do, I know I’ve got meetings, I know that I have got to get through the evening. You have a product that is a game changer. Can you tell us more about it and how that is part of sort of the black women take care of themselves?

Lana:

Absolutely, 100%. So we have a supplement. It’s a gummy, and it’s our mushroom complex. And it has ten different energy-boosting, brain-boosting mushrooms in it. In particular, my three favorite, which are lion’s mane, reishi and chaga. And lion’s mane in particular is one of my favorites because Lion’s Mane is a nootropic, it allows our brain to work better. So this gummy is something that you take when you’re like, I have a big day, I have to retain a lot of information. I need to maintain a certain level of energy so that I can get through and kind of just be in flow state. Just be in flow.

Nicole:

Sure.

Lana:

And not the kind of energy that’s jittery like when you drink a diet Coke or cup of coffee.

Nicole:

That’s right.

Lana:

But a gentle sustaining energy that’s also benefiting your brain. Right.

Nicole:

And tapers off, too. So it’s not like by the end of the night, I’m like, oh, I can’t sleep, or anything like that.

Lana:

Yeah, no, because then you’re like, got to take someone to go to sleep.

Nicole:

Now melatonin time, which is fine. You don’t always want to be in the bounce back and forth situation.

Lana:

That and I think in particular with women and black women, because we’re just doing so much. It’s not just that we need to be energized, we also need our brain to function well. You’re trying to remember if your daughter had her doctor’s appointment today, if you turned in that thing for work. And then also, wait, I got to drop by the storm, pick up all these extra stuff. I mean, it’s just ongoing. And so being in flow and being able to be energized, but also be cognitively like clear.

Nicole:

Absolutely.

Lana:

And that’s where mushrooms come in.

Nicole:

Well, and so I want to actually talk about mushrooms. And for the mamas out here, everyone, I don’t know about you all, I’m in LA right now. There’s been so much talk about mushrooms, and I am an old person. I’ll be the first one to say it. When I heard mushrooms, I was like, I’m not messing with them drugs. You’re going to have me out here seeing colors. That’s not for me. I’m not of this. But then I’m also now hearing that people are like, oh, no, I’m using mushroom to treat, like, depression or PTSD.

And I will be very clear, I have not done tons of research. I recommend anyone listening to do their own research talk to their doctors, because obviously, if you have a mushroom allergy, it may not be for you. But I’m learning, one, that it doesn’t taste like mushrooms. That’s a starter. And then two, there are actual a variety. Like you said, there are ten different types.

Lana:

I mean, there’s lots of different types.

Nicole:

But in this alone, and I never would have even guessed. So tell me a little bit about what you know about and what you’ve studied and this mushroom, because you also have like, a mushroom coffee. So tell us more about all of that.

Lana:

Yeah, I would say so. I don’t do drugs either.

Nicole:

Right, but yet you do mushrooms, you know what I mean?

Lana:

And I’m not knocking anyone who has that lifestyle.

Nicole:

It’s just more of a I don’t know this stuff, you know what I mean? And I personally just don’t engage because, frankly, I am not equipped. Anyone who’s ever met me knows Nicole is not one for the world of substances. She is not capable. I can’t hang yall my own life, and that is about the extent of it. I have a Diet Coke and I will fall out. It’s just me.

But that said, so you’ve got mushrooms in. I think you have a mushroom collagen supplement, a mushroom coffee, and then obviously this amazing, like, midday, early morning focus boost mushroom product. So we can do mushrooms but not be doing mushrooms?

Lana:

Well. It’s kind of like, what is your intention for what you’re doing? Because I think people there are people who use certain substances recreationally, sure. And that’s their lifestyle, but I think a lot of us just want to feel better. And so my journey with mushrooms actually began at the beginning of the new year in December. I decided to do a plant mushroom journey with my healer, and I used Silosibin mushrooms. And basically I did that to just process through some things that I was holding in my body. Right. Because we do hold on to trauma in our bodies.

And having managed a chronic illness for two decades, there was a lot. Right. And my power comes from my gut, like my intuition. You can ask my family, I’m never wrong about whatever it is, nine out of ten times. I know, but it’s also the source of my pain. Right? You hold things also in your gut. And so my intention for the mushroom, my intention for that journey was to process and release some of these wounds, right. That some of these things that I’ve been holding on to so that I can be the best version of me, I can be here to do the work.

Nicole:

That’s a totally different mushroom also, right?

Lana:

Yes. So that’s a psychedelic mushroom.

Nicole:

And you do that in a guided experience with an intentional choice. That’s not something so none of us mamas can accidentally stumble into those types of mushrooms. Because what you’re talking about selling within Browne Wellness and on shelves is different. It’s different from that. And I think that call out is hugely powerful because that’s some of the misinformation that’s out there. When we’re seeing mushrooms show up on shelves, we’re like, oh, well, everyone’s doing these journeys. And that is a very specific sort of prescription for a specific outcome.

Lana:

Exactly. It’s a very, very, very intentional thing. It’s something I’ve prepared, like, weeks to do.

Nicole:

That is totally different. We’re not signing up for that without knowing we’re signing up for that. Tell us about the mushrooms then, that are in Browne Wellness, because it sounds like we can get a lot of the benefits of the world of mushrooms without necessarily taking the journey that we may not be seeking to have.

Lana:

Yes. And I think that people should understand there are two different, like I would say, major two different categories of mushrooms. There are mushrooms that have psychedelic effects and there are mushrooms that have other wellness benefits. And with Browne Wellness, it’s those kinds of mushrooms. Things that help give us energy, things that help our brains to work better, things that allow us to have better performance when we’re working out or post workout.

Nicole:

Without the psychedelic effects. We’re not going to see colors, we’re not going to talk to care bears.

Lana:

And these things come from the ground. Like, these are things that God made.

Nicole:

So they’re in our salads, they’re in our sandwiches or in our cheesesteaks, and we eat these mushrooms. Yeah.

Lana:

And there are a lot of people who are in the mushroom community. They’ve done a lot of Netflix documentaries about, Michael Poland has one about how to change your mind, but that’s about psychedelics.

Nicole: 

Got it. And that’s what we hear the most about. I think one of the things that I love about sort of this conversation we’re having, particularly as brown women, is culturally. I think that something that comes up a lot in the BIPOC community is our use of drugs and how we making sure we’re not abusing them and things like that. And so it’s exciting because I’ve always been someone who’s like, I’m not touching anything, that sort of thing.

And now I’m learning, oh, there’s different categories for different purposes. And some of that languaging isn’t ours and it’s actually been put there to keep us absolutely from engaging in things that can help us.

Lana:

I’m so glad you said that, because I think the policing of black and brown bodies and the way that that has occurred in the United States, and even abroad in some places, has made us want to distance ourselves from things that actually come from within our communities, that help us to heal our bodies and turning us onto Western medicine.

And that has its own financial benefits, right, when we think about the pharmaceutical companies and all of these things. So there’s a lot at play there, like sociopolitically, absolutely. But I think it’s important for us to understand these things come from the ground, right? And we’re all learning more about plant life and things are becoming more plant-based, whether it’s our diet or the supplements.

Nicole:

Oh everywhere! I mean, when KFC came out with plant based nuggets, I was like, okay, so the world is changing, the world has changed, the world has changed and we got to catch up. And what’s interesting is, again, I think a lot of times when these things get that high visibility, they do come from white faces. Frankly, I think just, we share the same heart and we’re just glad people know, you know what I mean?

It’s good that people are learning that there are alternatives or that there are supplements to conventional medicine. I just want people healthy, happy and whole. However, it’s also beneficial to know that you have space within that because you see yourself in it. And there’s something to be said for being able to walk down an aisle, see a brown face that makes me stop and look at the product again and say, oh, there’s a brown face on this. Is this for me? And now I’m thinking, are supplements for me? It’s just a line of thinking that occurs naturally when you see yourself reflected in a product.

So Browne wellness is obviously driven towards the BIPOC community. Granted, there’s supplements, anyone can use supplements, and there’ll be benefits to you, but it is around the BIPOC community. And we actually really could benefit from supplementation because we deal with things like heart disease and we deal with high blood pressure more than any other race. And vitamin D deficiency is more than any other race. I recently got prescribed a vitamin D, prescription level vitamin D. I think it’s D three to take just because it was that deficient. And my doctor told me no supplementation would really have helped you not get here. It’s just very interesting to know that truly supplementation may be something that as brown people and BIPOC people, it’s not optional.

Lana:

No, it’s not optional. And I think in particular for us, but also for everyone in general, because our soil is really depleted. That’s like a whole other conversation.

Nicole:

And our diets, it’s a conversation.

Lana:

So it’s like you really can’t live postmodern life without supplementation because we really aren’t getting as much of it from our food as we used to. And as black and brown people with specific life stressors and our own epigenetics that we are trying to deal with, we really do need to be supplementing. And I think it’s important and in my starting this company is to center us, if not to just encourage us more, to reach in and say, what is it that I need to add to my life, to my wellness landscape, to improve the way my body is functioning?

And I’m now more inclined to do that because I see myself, because one of the most important things I have not yet said is working with a Naturopathic doctor, I healed my body of crohn’s. So today, as of today, I actually don’t have crohn’s.

Nicole:

That’s incredible.

Lana:

And when I had that conversation with my doctor Allan, and he was just like, well, let’s run this test, but I don’t think you need this medicine. I mean, the world stopped.

Nicole:

I’m sure you were like, that is not what I thought you would say out of your mouth.

Lana:

I was like, what is he even saying?

Nicole:

How long were you without serious symptoms on your new regimen before they were, before you were like, let’s see what’s going on here.

Lana:

Well, I didn’t have an active flare, I hadn’t had an active flare up since like 2010. Great, so like 9, 10. And then in terms of working with the Naturopathic doctor, the gut issues resided around 2021. Wow. And so by the time I’m talking to him now, I was talking to him at the beginning of the year and he was like, no, I don’t think you really need this, but let’s do a test to be sure.

Nicole:

Of course, good science, I understand.

Lana:

Let’s confirm. Yeah, but I mean, he didn’t understand it, but he didn’t know the depths of what I had been supplementing with.

Nicole:

Of course, of course.

Lana:

What I had been doing to enhance the way my body is working.

Nicole:

See, and I think that that is the messaging and all of it because again, I am a fan of conventional medicine. I think that there is a place, especially having had a daughter who’s gone through chemotherapy. I never want to be the place that is saying all of this or all of that. What I always seek to do when embracing and sharing new perspectives is letting people know, look into your options. Be empowered to make decisions around your own health. Don’t exclude things that may be unfamiliar because you may find that if anything, if you can come off of two meds and you’re taking four, that is a blessing.

If you can be in a situation where you can take a slower dose of the same med, that is a blessing. If you’re able to find that you can go longer and have more energy during the day or less side effects from your meds, that is a blessing. And a lot of that comes from exploring your own medicine, as you’ve shown us.

Lana:

Absolutely. Because I think I was prepared, like, I was really mentally, emotionally prepared to live with this disease, but it wasn’t enough for me to just not have a flare. I wanted to feel good all the way around.

Nicole:

Which makes sense.

Lana:

I wanted a high functioning body. And so it was like I was willing to take my medicine. Because we’re not saying throw the baby out with the bathroom.

Nicole:

Absolutely.

Lana:

But I was also willing to work and look into other things. And it just so happened that in looking into something else, it meant that I don’t need this anymore.

Nicole:

Amazing. So what does this mean about your quality of life since you’ve started engaging in taking Browne Wellness tools and engaging in learning more about different options? What have you seen? What have you experienced?

Lana:

Like personally…

Nicole:

What you all don’t know is that Lana has a very prominent government position. She also works in media and she also has this incredible company that is growing every single day, literally real time. People are headed over there, they’re following, like, go to Browne Wellness on Instagram. All the details again in the show notes. But I mean, she is doing 500 things. This woman is a mogul. So that said, you’re alive, you’re walking around, and when I tell you, you can feel the peaceful energy in her. Which is why I’m like mushrooms, what? You know what I mean. I’m like coffee what? Tell me, so how has your life shifted? How do you feel?

Lana:

I am the most me I’ve ever been.

Nicole:

If that isn’t a full statement, it’s the truth, though, because people are so quick to say, like, I’m the one who’s always like, I feel peaceful, I feel joy. Isn’t saying that I am me enough?

Lana:

Yeah. It’s changed my whole life. Like, it’s opened up my whole world, like the world of wellness. And just being able to change my mind and to create the life that I know wants me, that I deserve.

Nicole:

That’s so good.

Lana:

And it’s hard to manifest and create things when you don’t feel good in your body.

Nicole:

That is a fact.

Lana:

You can’t. And so it’s like feeling good in my body well has allowed me to now give birth to all of these things.

Nicole:

That’s good and show up completely and see it come to fruition.

Lana:

That’s what embodiment is. We have to put our body into the things that we want to do. But that body we put in has to be a body that feels supported. It has to be a body that’s well, and it’s like wellness is a journey. It’s not like I’m like, oh, everything is amazing.

Nicole:

There’ll be highs and lows. Stress might make something flare up that we got to tone down or whatever. But let’s go into it the best we are the best we can because.

Lana:

Our bodies are always talking to us. And now I’m just really engaged in the conversation. And so my quality of life is better. I mean, I don’t have my days, but my quality of life from when I was in my 20s or even as a child to now, night and day, most me I’ve ever been.

Nicole:

On that note, Lana, you are so incredible, so inspiring. Not only do I enjoy following your journey on Instagram, Lana Jackson is on Instagram. You can follow her there. But also, I am so proud and excited and engaged with Browne Wellness and the opportunity that we all have to live better, happier, more complete lives. So what’s next for Browne Wellness? Where can we find you? Where can we get product? What is available? How do we start our healthy journeys? Where can we learn more?

Lana:

You can learn more by going to Brownewellness.com. You can follow us on Instagram and at BrowneWellness. And I think in terms of what’s coming for us, so many things. We are building a community. The most important thing, I think, is for Brown women to have a place to go to just get advice about it may not be, like, medical information, but you’re like, how do I leverage the supplement? Is it something I open up and put in a smoothie? Is this something that I should take at a certain time of day? Who knows a great doula around here. I think we need a repository. The way that I look to certain other brands that I really admire and respect, like, and it’s a place that you can go and get some reliable advice. And so we’re building that. We’re creating community. We’re planning a wellness retreat that centers us and our…

Nicole:

Oh I love that.

Lana:

Our experiences in wellness where you’ll be able to learn about the newest wellness things that are coming out so that we get access to that stuff first and we get that information from the experts.

Nicole:

So, so good. Y’all follow Browne Wellness. That’s BrowneWellness.com. And stay tuned because Lana Jackson’s here doing big things. I am so grateful that you were here today, that we’re able to have this chat. Thank you so much for being here.

Lana:

Thank you, Nicole. I appreciate you.