Description:
Welcome to The Live Well with Josie Podcast!
I am so excited to start this journey with you.
Here, we learn together, and we grow together.
Josie, a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, Restorative Wellness Practitioner, and HTMA Professional wanted to create a space for women to feel welcomed, safe, and educated. Today’s episode is all about Josie’s journey to becoming a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, what health issues and life events have guided her on this journey, and how she decided to start this podcast.
In this episode Josie talks about her journey with being diagnosed with PCOS and an Autoimmune Disease, Lupus, in high school, her challenges in college with Anxiety and ADHD, her experience with teaching for 5 years in public school and how she used all of these to intentionally create a path for herself to help others with similar experiences. Josie also discusses the How She Grew business course and how it led her to continuing her dreams of starting this podcast. She, along with many amazing women who are trailblazers in their field, are speakers in this course that provide a multitude of valuable tips, tricks, and resources for women seeking to grow, scale, and monetize their business.
Below, You will find the discounted link.
Landing Page:
https://howshegrew.mykajabi.com/a/2147519897/FLMBen3x
Full Access Checkout Page:
https://howshegrew.mykajabi.com/a/2147519899/FLMBen3x
Below you will also find her referral link to the NTA Program if this is something you are interested in pursuing yourself!
NTA Referral Link
https://xb401.isrefer.com/go/ntpcourse/Jkest/
This podcast is not to be used to diagnose, prescribe, cure, or treat any illnesses or disease- but is to be used as an educational tool.
Get to Know Me
Hi, friend. Thank you so much for joining me on the first episode of The Live Well With Josie Podcast. I truly can’t believe that this is my first episode and that I’m doing this right now because it has been a passion project of mine for truly so long, and I am beyond grateful that you’re even here listening. I am extremely excited for you to be here today and for us to start. Intro podcast episode. So it’s going to be a little shorter than what most will be. And I’m just going to kind of take you through why I decided to do what I’m doing now and what led me to doing this podcast and just have a conversation with you guys. And that’s truly the whole premise of this, though.
The whole concept is the fact that I want you guys to be able to leave here every single episode and feel like you have gained something, I’ve always loved having deep conversations and I struggle with small talk. I can have small talk, but I struggle and I feel awkward, and I get weird I just always want to get like so deep with people. and I know that this is what I’m meant to do because of the depth that I can go while having conversations with people. Sometimes I push those boundaries, and I don’t mean to, but I just love getting to know people’s souls and really the core of that person. I’m really excited for the conversations that are to come, and I truly just hope that you are able to leave each conversation being provided with juicy nuggets to take with you to help you live life with intention. I always say that when an idea is on your mind and heart, it’s there for a reason. If it comes back and it comes back, even if you dismiss it.
It was put on your heart because it is meant for you. I can’t even say again how grateful I am that you are here listening to this episode. I’m so excited for this journey, you and I together, and all of the information that is going to be provided by such amazing individuals. Now, let’s go ahead and use this episode to talk about how I got here. My story a little bit so that you can get to know me and let’s see if we relate on any level.
Let’s Rewind…
So we’re gonna go back to the beginning now. Oh, it gets juicy, huh? When I was a sophomore in high school, I was about 15 years old. I was diagnosed with P C O S. I had really painful periods. My time in the month was pretty awful. Oftentimes I would miss school. I was that girl who was just always nervous at school, full of anxiety because I didn’t know what that time of the month was going to look like for me.
And you know, sometimes when things just stick in your brain, moments in time because somebody was so caring or so gracious, and of course you have other times. It’s the adverse of that. One time I was home and it was just my brother and I. My brother was in the basement and I was upstairs moaning and groaning so loud from the amount of pain I was. My brother ran up the stairs and asked me, Josie, is there anything you need? Can I get you Tylenol, Ibuprofen? Like, what can I do to help? He was so concerned and he was so willing to help me at that time, but as Carrie and thoughtful as he was looking back, Holy cow, I can’t believe I was in that much pain. Now this pain went on for a little while and we finally, my mom and I went to the doctor, got all the blood work and ultrasounds done, and I was finally diagnosed my sophomore year of high school with P C O S. A couple of years later my. Senior year of high school, I was diagnosed with lupus. It all started when I had a flare on my ear, Looked like a sunburn, felt like a sunburn, so we weren’t too concerned at first. This was in June, and it lasted until November when we finally decided, okay, this is not just a sunburn. We decided to go to the dermatologist, which started doing testing on me and then sent me to a rheumatologist. Where I was finally diagnosed with lupus.
So within those four years of high school, I was diagnosed with PCOS and diagnosed with lupus. It’s kind of a lot of trauma for one teenage girl to go through, right? At that time, I was embarrassed. I shouldn’t have been embarrassed, but I was like, I was broken. There was a lot of things wrong with me. It was so frustrating and I struggled a lot mentally with all of it, but I didn’t wanna play the victim. I didn’t even tell many people. I told a couple of my closest friends, and that was it, because again, I was embarrassed and I felt broken. This was all before I was even 18 years old. I had my whole life ahead of me. I was going to college soon. and I just didn’t know what to think or what to do. So instead of taking control of my health, I decided I’m not gonna let this define me and I’m gonna live my life like a normal 18 year old is going to live her life. I had a lot of fun, but I didn’t take care of my body in the way that it needed to be taken care.
When I got to college, I had a couple traumatic experiences. I’m not gonna go into detail because boy, that is another story in and of itself, but, Because of this, my anxiety was through the roof. I would have heart palpitations, like extremely bad, and my dad was my lifeline. Some nights and some days I’d be in my dorm room feeling like I was having a heart attack with these heart palpitations, chest pains, dizziness. I felt like I was dying and I had to call my dad and he had to talk me down, pray with me, calm me down, and let me know that it was. Now, he had been through this on his own, these anxiety attacks, the heart palpitations, so he was able to do this and know what it was. Otherwise, I probably would’ve been in the hospital. But I feel like growing up I had maybe a little bit of anxiety. I did have stomach issues because of it. I got nervous and worried a lot, but nothing like I did in college. I had got to the point where I was just like, Well, this is my first couple years of college, and you know what, I’m, I’m gonna take control of myself now.
Once my junior year hit, I surrounded myself with different people. I got out of bad situations that I was involved in, and wouldn’t, you know, my heart palpitations completely disappeared. I didn’t have an anxiety attack for a couple years after that. I felt like a new person, but within that time, I had gone to the doctor. I tried to figure out what was going on with me. Was it just anxiety? Was it something else? Was it due to my lupus? Who knew? Well, I was diagnosed with ADHD and anxiety and they tried to put me on medications. I have nothing against anybody who takes medications for things that they feel like they need to take medications for or that are told that they need to take them to each their own. And I support you in whatever decision you make.
Essential Oils? And so it begins…
At this time though, I had been introduced by my best friend to essential oils and I was like, What is this witchery? What is this craziness? And who, what are you introducing me to? absolutely. I will not be using these, I will not be touching them. Just keep them away from me. She was very into holistic health and getting to the root cause of your issues. And at this point though, I was in a lot of pain mentally, physically, but definitely physically with lupus comes a lot of pain and I was not taking care of my body sometimes unbearable pain, and I was already on medications for. and I was trying to do things a more natural route as well. She had told me some miraculous stories about how these essential oils have helped people with pain management and other things as well. So I started to use them and wow. I will tell you, there was like a couple specific things that it helped me with, especially my neck pain, my shoulder pain, my. Wrist pain. I couldn’t believe it. I was in awe. I was thinking, Okay, I’m hooked. If it can help me feel this way by just putting these crazy oils on me topically, then sure I’ll do it. But because of that, I started to research a little bit more about the holistic health.
This was also around the time my sister was also diagnosed with some sort of autoimmune type issue. And so at that point my parents were starting to also deep dive into more holistic health. Their functional medicine doctors that they were seeing for my sister talked about the paleo diet, talked about different lifestyle practices, and they started going that route. So I decided to. My mom was telling me about different holistic doctors online that I could follow and do research on. And so that’s what I did. It was more like integrative medicine, like functional medicine, doctors, chiropractors, different things like that. So I really started to look into all of it, and I really wanted to try to implement some of the things that this natural route was showing. Obviously I was taking some medicine and my body needed it at the time and I was trying to figure some things out, but I went down a rabbit hole, y’all, and it really, really took me for a ride. And I’m still on that ride now, So I was diagnosed in high school. I went through college, lived the normal college life, didn’t take care of my body. I overworked out. I ate whenever I wanted to. Typical college life, right? Then I moved to South Carolina and I started teaching.
This Completed Changed my Life…
And at the, about the end of my first year of teaching, I found this girl online who actually a friend from college from my teaching program was an ambassador for, She was helping out in these Facebook groups that this girl was running online, and she was actually somebody I had recognized from an MTV show and she called herself a nutritional therapy practitioner. She had these 21 day programs, and let me tell you, I decided to do one of those programs, and within 21 days, just by changing the foods that I was eating and switching up my lifestyle practices, I felt like a new human. My brain fog was gone, my bloat was gone. I was sleeping better, and I had so much more energy. Literally couldn’t believe it. Literally could not believe it. especially with being a teacher at the time, I was just exhausted. There was a lot going on. I was still enjoying my time with my friends on the weekends.
And after 21 days of switching up my routine and the foods that I was eating, new human guys, it was crazy. I had already been researching so much in this field. In the holistic space, looking at different nutritional schools that I could go to just to kind of help me learn more about my body. And after going through this program and learning what a nutritional therapy practitioner was, I was hooked. I knew that I wanted to help people in the same way that she helped me, so, After doing a ton of research, really just engrossing myself in the holistic field.
I was really getting interested in anatomy, physiology, and the root cause of sicknesses and illnesses. It was funny, at one point my friends would call me up and be like, Hey, this is the symptoms I’m having, what’s going on with me, Doc Um, at that time I was nothing. But even now as an actual ntp, I do not diagnose, cure, prescribe, or treat anything. I am not a medical professional. But it was funny because at this time I could be like, Well, it sounds like this. They’d go to the doctor and sure enough, it would probably be what I said.
Deciding to Leave Teaching…
It was but at that time I was a teacher. I was so exhausted. I was loving teaching, I was loving the students, but I just didn’t love everything else that it entailed. It took so much of my energy and I was only in year. Year two and I was feeling drained My coworkers who had been teaching for over 10 years were telling me, Girl, this is not what it was 10 years ago. If you’re gonna get out, get out now. At first it was a joke, but then a lot of things started aligning in my life where. I just felt like God was telling me that I needed to change my career path. There were so many things being thrown in my way that had to do with nutrition or holistic health, and I finally felt like, You know what? I think this might be something that I need to do. My whole life, I’ve been a creature of habit. I don’t like change, but I realized once I moved to South Carolina that I changed a lot, that I created this new route for me and my life. And even though I like to be comfortable and I like to have that feeling and sense of security, sometimes you have to take that leap of faith. And that was exactly what I was prepared to do.
How a Diagnosis Changed the Trajectory of my Career…
Around this time my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. That is one of the hardest things that has ever happened to our family. And if you or any of your family members have gone through this terrible illness or any diagnosis and illness of any kind, I feel you and I’m holding space for you. It is tough. I was 12 hours away at this point and I was trying to figure out should I move back home? Should I stay here At the time, I had just recently met my now husband and I just knew in my heart that I was gonna marry this man, and that was the hardest. And I’m so grateful that my mom had such an amazing support system where she was, and that I had such an amazing support system where I was at the time. And it’s just, it’s a lot. Once this happened, it completely changed the trajectory of my entire future. I knew that I was going to change my career path.
I almost started looking into medical schools. I looked at how to get to medical school, how to do all the things because I, I feel like a lot of people have the same experience. When somebody is going through a hard time, you try to figure out every single way that you can help them. Right. And after all the diagnosis that had happened in my family before then, and at this point, I was to the point. I knew something needed to change, and that’s when I researched the Nutritional Therapy Association and decided that is where I was going to go. I didn’t know how I was gonna do it. I didn’t know if I was going to teach full time and do it. At this point, I couldn’t even afford it, so what am I going to do? I ended up deciding that I really wanted to do something of the sort and an essential oil coaching certification fell in my lap. I loved essential oils. I wanted to be able to help people in different ways with their health, so I became an essential oils coach. I didn’t realize at the time that there is not a demand for essential oil coaches but it was a great add-on to have.
Now I really enjoy having all that knowledge about the compounds, the chemistry. The way they react and the way that they can be utilized. I don’t use ’em as much now, but I do use ’em sparingly and periodically. Essential oil coaching was not what I was meant to do full time, but. It was not as expensive as going to the Nutritional Therapy Association at the time. So I ended up taking a business course through somebody that I love and admire, and she had us do this exercise. And in this exercise we wrote down a few different things. We had this Venn diagram of sorts, where we wrote down our hobbies, what we were passionate about, and what we wanted to do with our life. And then we figured out how they were all connected. This was such a powerful exercise and everything came back down to helping people. I wanted to help people with their health. I wanted to help people with their lifestyle. I wanted to help people feel good and just live a quality life. And there’s this term, healed people, heal people. I am far from being healed, but I do have a very strong faith and a strong sense ofhope.
And I want other people to feel that as well. Just like anybody, I’ve done things in my past. I’ve hurt people in my past. I’ve taken different routes in my life that maybe I wish I wouldn’t have taken, but I acknowledge that and has taken a lot of growth for me and work for myself and on myself to see what my own faults are and to use that to help me grow because of my own experiences with health, mental health, physical health, and my personal experiences, I knew that I could help and support people in ways that they needed. I just didn’t exactly know how or which avenue to take in order to even do so.
Why I chose the Nutritional Therapy Association to become a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner….
That’s where I just decided, you know what? The NTA has been on my heart. It’s come back time and time. And what I told you guys earlier is that when an idea comes back to you and it doesn’t go away, it is meant for you. It is meant for you. If something has been on your heart, it’s on your heart for a reason. And I knew that going to the NTA was meant for me. So I finally had a talk with my husband. This is what I want to do, this is what I need to do. And he said, You know what we can do. I knew he believed in me and he knew that this is where I really needed and wanted to go in life. I had talked about it so many times. We had had so many conversations, and I think it’s important to talk about this because there are so many people that I’ve talked to where they have this passion to go to the NTA or do something that they’re passionate about and they don’t feel like they have that support system.
And I don’t necessarily think it’s that they don’t have a supportive partner. Sometimes it might be, but I think more than likely it’s the fact that sometimes our partners may think more logically than we do. I’m a dreamer, I dream for sure. I have logic in some ways, in a lot of ways, but my. Is different than my husband’s logic. I’m a chase your dreams type of gal. Do your passion projects, Do what your heart desires, but also we have to make money and pay the bills, right? So if you don’t have or if you don’t feel like you have a supportive partner, it might not be that they’re not supportive of your dreams and your passions, but it might just be their logic is different from yours. we’ve gotta make some money.
We’ve gotta pay the bills. And is your passion, is your dream going to do just that? That might be what they’re thinking. So having that conversation with them is so important. Trust me, we had many conversations. It wasn’t just like, Yeah, babe, you do what you wanna do, go for it. And some people have partners like that. But my husband, he’s in the Navy, he is very regimented. He knows exactly what he’s gonna do. Every single second of the day, he wakes up, tells me his plan for the. Even on Saturdays he has his whole future planned out as much as he can. You know, you never know what’s gonna happen. You make a plan and you hear God laughing, especially in the military, But if he could map out every single second of every single day, he would, and he tries.
But we had a lot of conversations. So if you feel like your partner isn’t support, that might not be the case. It’s probably just the fact that they’re trying to think more logically, that they’re trying to think about the bills. They’re trying to think about what this is going to entail for your future. So have that conversation and tell them your thoughts. Tell them your feelings, because more than likely you’ll be able to come to a middle ground. But I went through the nta, became a nutritional therapy practitioner.
Continuing my Education…
I went through the Restorative Wellness solutions program, became a restorative wellness practitioner, and then I decided to become an htma professional. So as a, a. Restorative wellness practitioner. I can run GI Map testing on clients and mrt food sensitivity testing on clients, which has been extremely helpful in the the success of protocols for my clients, as well as the HTMA test that I use with every single client that sees me. I’ve almost been doing this for a year now, and I’ve been working on my online community for over a year now. But I kind of got to this burnout stage This is what I wanna do.. God. Like what more is there? I feel like there’s something missing. What am I missing? Don’t get me wrong. I love working one on one with clients, and I have the most fantastic clients. At one point a few weeks ago, I had to sit down with myself and realize, Wow, Josie, this is amazing. This is exactly where you wanted to be a year ago. This is exactly where you dreamt of being a few years ago. Be proud, be grateful, be excited. Be gracious for all the blessings that you have in your life currently. And all those unanswered prayers were meant for my protection.
I started to realize that I was chasing the destination and not enjoying the journey. So if you’re in a journey right now where you’re feeling like, oh my gosh, I’m not where I want to be. Are you ever really going to be where you want to Because when we get to one destination, we’re going to be looking at our next destination. Right We need to enjoy every single moment of creating our journeys.
Life is a journey. Not a destination.
And so that day I had to sit with myself and be like, wow, this is amazing. You are where you want it to be for the last four years. Enjoy it and be grateful.
Choosing my Path…
So I was on a walk the next day, and I received an email on my phone. And the email was from a woman who I had looked up to who is a trailblazer in my field. I’ve read her book. I’ve listened to her podcast. Why is she emailing me?
I read the email and realized that she was asking me to be a part of her new, online business course. Filled with many amazing women speakers who are also trailblazers in their I could not believe it. Why me? I was extremely grateful. I was elated. I was excited. I knew that my prayers were being answered. But also at the same time I had extreme imposter syndrome. I had this feeling of, oh my gosh. There are so many amazing women in my field. Why me over them? Um, And it’s not me over It’s just me. They chose me. And I’m having these feelings that I have to battle in my head. But I have to realize.
It’s not a competition. It’s not you over somebody else. It’s just, you. My prayers were answered. Here’s my route. This is what I need to do. And I’m so grateful. Being a speaker in this course kind of showed me that I was holding back on some of my dreams. Because I felt like a small fish in a big pond. And even though there are many of us in this field. We can all make room for each other. We can all be supporting each other. And I have found. That the people I have surrounded with are some of the most supportive friends. I have made. In my entire life and I am so grateful for that.
So I decided to run with it. In my notes for the last three years, I have so many notes in my phone. Of podcast, episode ideas, podcast, ideas, et cetera, et cetera. So I decided it is time. And here we are. This podcast is all about living well with intention. There will be episodes of me solo like today. Hello, welcome. And other episodes of me with amazing humans discussing health. Discussing wellness, discussing lifestyle. Discussing their life, maybe traumas that they’ve been through or hardships that they’ve been through that they’ve had to overcome.
Living well is not hyper fixating on every single thing that we do And whether it fits our standard of health.
Because, let me tell you health is also about being happy. Doing things you love doing. Doing things you’re passionate about going on a walk for getting everything else, except for you in And hopefully you’re taking your dog on a walk as well. And if you’re not, if you don’t have a dog, you need to go get a dog because they’re the best thing in their entire world. And they will make you happy. But it’s. Also about enjoying life and events and family and friends and people, and being in community and filling our minds with goodness, creating boundaries for yourself, pursuing dreams.
All the things, not just eating the right ingredients. Before we go. If you are at all interested in the business course, I will be putting the link to purchase. In my show notes, I myself have gained so much insight, tips and tricks for my own business. By listening to all of the amazing interviews. With the women who are trailblazers in their fields.
I cannot wait to start this journey with you friend. Before you leave download this episode download the podcast so that you do not miss future episodes and don’t forget you are always welcome here.
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