#417: Erin Holt (the Funk’tional Nutritionist) talks the truth about lab testing, functional medicine, Gwyneth Paltrow, and more! Erin is an integrative and functional nutritionist with a feisty attitude and over a decade of clinical experience. She blends evidence-based practices, functional lab testing, energy medicine, boundary setting & humor for a unique and customized approach to women’s health.
Erin is the founder of the Funk’tional Nutrition Academy, a 14 month practitioner training and mentorship helping nutrition pros level up with functional medicine methodologies.
You can find Erin via social media, her website, or rabble-rousing on her weekly show, The Funk’tional Nutrition Podcast.
https://www.thefunktionalnutritionist.com/
https://www.instagram.com/the.funktional.nutritionist/
https://www.thefunktionalnutritionist.com/the-funktional-nutrition-podcast
Listen to Balanced Bites Podcast
Balanced Bites Podcast #417 with Erin Holt
Welcome to the new Balanced Bites Podcast! I’m your host, Liz, a nutritional therapy practitioner and best selling author bringing you candid, up-front, myth-busting and thought-provoking conversations about food, fitness, and life. Remember: The information in this podcast should not be considered personal, individual, or medical advice.
I have spent YEARS researching whether a good multivitamin is truly necessary for overall health. But the truth is, there are a LOT of opinions out there, including from people like me, who love to ask lots of obnoxious, overly detailed questions. But the truth is, if I’m paying attention to how I FEEL, my answer was clear: I will be taking my multivitamin. And it will be from the brand Needed. Needed third-party tests EVERY batch for performance and quality, which is incredibly rare in the supplement industry and also incredibly important to me! To get started with Needed, head to thisisneeded.com. Use code balanced for 20% off your one-time order or your first three months’ subscription. While you’re at it, add Stress Support to your cart. I’m loving that one, too.
Now about today’s episode, Erin Holt is my guest. She is an integrative and functional nutritionist with a feisty attitude. And. Over a decade of clinical experience. Erin blends, evidence-based practices, functional lab testing, energy medicine, boundary setting, and humor. She’s so funny. For a really unique and customized approach to women’s health. And before, I mean,
Before I even go anywhere else, you can work with Erin. So there’s, we’ve joked a couple of times, myself and Michelle Shapiro about her. How there’s this Liz to Michelle pipeline. Let’s also create a Liz to Erin pipeline because she is one of those. Functional practitioners who was really, really doing it. Right. So as you’re listening to the show, remember, you can work with her. And we have details for that at the end. And also all of her links in the show notes. So what Erin does is she dives really deep with women to get to the root causes of their health issues.
And get people answers to their mystery symptoms and health problems. And in addition to that, she also runs. Multiple online nutrition and functional medicine programs. She’s the founder of the functional nutrition academy, which is a 14 month practitioner training and mentorship, which helps nutrition, pros level up their practices with functional medicine methodologies.
And you can find Erin also rabble-rousing on her weekly show, which is called the functional nutrition podcast. Erin is just such a wealth of information. And I did not even scratch the surface here with this podcast. I always sort of lean. More heavily on the, getting to know you part the, who is Navan Johnson part. I just want to know people.
Because for me. That’s what makes me comfortable working with someone is knowing not just that they have amazing expertise, they wouldn’t be on this show. If they didn’t. But who that person actually is. And I think that’s the crux of it. If they’re here, you know, that they’re vetted , but what I like to do is to get to know the person behind the talent behind the practice, and that’s what I’m doing here and no different from any other time. I really, really love talking to Erin about everything. We talked about a huge range of topics from.
I scanned of all, which I’m sorry. I’m sorry guys. I love it. I’m in it. All the way to the problems with functional nutrition with lab testing, with cookie cutter approaches to medicine. All of that so i know that you will love this episode and if you don’t already know who Erin holt is and of course you already know who she is because she’s amazing you can find links to all of her social media and her website in the show notes and again visit her podcast the functional nutrition podcast and look for the functional nutritionist on Instagram. Enjoy the episode.
Erin Holt: I caught up on Vanderpump Rules just in case I needed to just in case I needed to be prepared. I’m
Liz Wolfe: fully caught up. my confession for today is I was gonna prepare for this podcast, but I had to watch Vanderpump Rules. So,
Erin Holt: no, sorry.
Erin Holt: It sort of is the preparation for the podcast though. Probably. I would think so. You
Liz Wolfe: uh, I probably sound like a complete reality TV junkie. I only do that stuff when I’m doing [00:03:00] other things like cleaning or doing something that’s kinda like mindless, repetitive, whatever. And I’ll have it on in the background so I don’t sit down when I could be with my children and watch Vanderpump Rules sometimes.
Liz Wolfe: I very much wish I could do that, but I don’t do that. So that, that’s just how preface all of this. I’m gonna sound like a total junkie talking about this stuff and for some reason I have more of an awareness than our mutual friend, Michelle Shapiro. Okay. Who first sort of introduced us. She, at one point sent me a screenshot of her Instagram discovery page because something that we both like were familiar with was on her Instagram discovery page.
Liz Wolfe: And it was like the most pristine, respectable Instagram discovery page I’ve ever seen. When you go to my discovery page, it’s like Lala Kent, like mm-hmm. Pregnant people doing weird things and uh, you know, golden retrievers stuff. Like, it’s just, none of it [00:04:00] makes any sense. It’s very embarrassing. I have a lot of
Erin Holt: dogs.
Erin Holt: Cause my brothers, my brothers and I will just send each other dog memes all day, I guess. Of course. Or like videos of dogs and Tom Cruise, like Tom Cruise makes it an appearance, like current day Tom Cruise. I’m like, what’s, what does that say about me and my psyche? It might, what is that
Liz Wolfe: say that you saw, um, top Gun Maverick five or six times in the theater, or was that just me?
Erin Holt: A handful. It was a really good movie. I had low expectations, so I was really quite surprised. I, I
Liz Wolfe: was, I was so happy and I hate everything. Like I re I hate things before I like them. So I went in just fully ready to just destroy the whole thing. But it got me, even though it was so bad at certain parts, like they were like, they’re scrapping the program.
Liz Wolfe: They say we fell short. And I was just like, what am I looking at right now? Like, this is horrible. But it was like
Erin Holt: at me bad in a very like, good, like top [00:05:00] gun way. Yes. I think they, like, they did it. They did, they did a good
Liz Wolfe: job. They, they cast it beautifully. Like just all of it. Ed Harris, john Ham was terrible as John Ham tends to be, but he’s so pretty. So
Erin Holt: it was all good. He was like a, he had one great role and yes, he keeps trying to make fetch happen and I’m like, John Ham. Um, but like Tom Cruise, did he sign a. A deal with the devil.
Erin Holt: Like, why does he look like that? Can somebody unpack this? Is it biohacking? Is it something more nefarious? Like I need to know why does he look like
Liz Wolfe: that? Both, it’s probably like, there’s probably some, um, you know, blood of like a 18 year old, uh, decathlete or something like that, that he’s injecting. I don’t know.
Liz Wolfe: But, you know, I’m just now starting to read up a little bit on peptides and it’s very interesting. You can do a lot with that stuff. So I imagine he has access to an extraordinary number of treatments, through, you know, whatever that religion is that he’s, you know mm-hmm.
Liz Wolfe: So dedicated to, which [00:06:00] I also have watched documentaries on that. But
Erin Holt: I, I don’t know, man. I don’t know. I mean, look it in the mirror. I’m 39. I’m like, maybe I, my face could use some Scientology treatments. I don’t know. Yeah. I’m not a p I’m not saying no, I’m not saying it’s a hard No,
Liz Wolfe: there’s no, like things change.
Liz Wolfe: We we’re human beings. It’s, you know, we evolve and we change as people and it’s fine.
Erin Holt: Growth and evolution over a lifetime.
Liz Wolfe: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you’re 39. I’m 39 as well. You have
Erin Holt: kids, right? I have one. She’s almost nine.
Liz Wolfe: Okay. My, okay, so I have an eight year old, so that’s fun. , I just did an interview with
Liz Wolfe: Holly Griggs-Spahl, who is the founder of the Teena app, which is basically like a,
Erin Holt: platform
Liz Wolfe: that caters to kids from like eight up to teach them about their bodies and their periods, and. She was talking to me about how their content is geared toward eight and up, and I was like eight and up.
Liz Wolfe: Like, I’m supposed to be having these conversations with her already about how she’s gonna develop and, and her period and [00:07:00] hormones and all of that stuff. And I’m like, well, yeah, actually it’s not that surprising because she is becoming , not hor, I don’t wanna say hormonal, but , it’s just wild.
Liz Wolfe: Like the, the process of growing up, just having an eight year old is very different from having a seven year old.
Erin Holt: I couldn’t agree more. This is like the, this has been the year that I’m starting to see the shift and it’s, she’s very much straddling both worlds where like the sassy like tea, I am seeing like, you know, whispers of the sassy teen come out and she’s kind of like finding the edges of the container.
Erin Holt: Like, where are my boundaries? , let’s see if I can push them a little bit and then also will be crying in my lap, cuddled up like a baby. Yes. And there’s no real prediction and I, , I feel like, you know, sideswiped by it sometimes, so I can only imagine how she feels cuz she’s living it.
Erin Holt: Um, but it’s, it is an interesting year. I feel like eight is like a very pivotal year, um, based on nothing other than my own experience with my own child.
Liz Wolfe: It’s something else. I’m trying to s trying to hold her with compassion. And also I’m [00:08:00] so triggered all, all the time and I was joking with a friend of mine, I was like, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna survive this without mushrooms or something, which I’ve never done mushrooms before in my life, but , I need some, I need psilocybin.
Liz Wolfe: I need to go do ketamine again. I did ketamine just for context, like two, or it was more than two years ago. It was years ago, , after some therapy for postpartum anxiety and it was like life changing, but it also doesn’t last forever. But I was like, I’m gonna need to be on something just to .
Liz Wolfe: Give me that little bit of a runway because even with all the tools, even though I follow Dr. Becky, it is still so hard sometimes.
Erin Holt: It’s so hard. And my, I think the biggest struggle is like, I don’t wanna operate from a place of my own wounding when I’m parenting. Yes. And also there’s nothing that triggers my own wounding than my kid.
Erin Holt: I guess maybe my brothers and my parents would be the exception to that. I, I feel like I’m the least evolved version of myself when I’m surrounded by my immediate family. I like devolve into like a 13 year old immediately, , oh, [00:09:00] what happened to all that inner growth work that I’ve been doing? It goes like flying out the window.
Erin Holt: So it’s, it’s hard to hold space for big stuff in your kid when you are being triggered. So doing a lot trigger work has helped me tremendously. , and I still by the way lose my patience and like fly off the handle and all that good stuff that we do as humans. Hmm.
Liz Wolfe: Okay. Let’s talk about something that’s actually important real quick. Not parenting clearly that, not parenting not our deepest childhood wounds and reliving them repeatedly as we raise the next generation of human beings.
Liz Wolfe: Not that, but I wanna talk to you about, and this is so tired and it’s like an, but I still have to talk to you about it. One of the things that really bonded me to you, was what you said about Gwyneth Paltrow. And I feel like I’d like to connect on that because it’s important to me that people understand that we don’t hate her.
Erin Holt: No, we don’t. I will go on the record. Gladly saying I’m actually a huge fan of Gwyneth Paltrow.
Liz Wolfe: So would you, um, share with me your journey with, , GP and where [00:10:00] it stands today? So
Erin Holt: I didn’t, I never really thought much about Gwyneth Paltrow in, uh, like, I would say pre Goop. She was just in a bunch of, like, she was in Wes Anderson movies, you know,
Liz Wolfe: \ What’s your, what’s your favorite We Anderson movie.
Erin Holt: I think I have to go with Royal Tenenbaums. My husband would weigh in a lot more emphatically here, but I, I think that’s the one that I would go with personally. I love the Life Aquatic. That’s, that’s probably my husband’s favorite. There’s something about like, I’m getting emotional right now.
Erin Holt: At the end when, um, Royal says to Chasy, uh, When, oh, excuse me, when chassis says to Royal, uh, it’s been, it’s been a tough year, dad, and he goes, I know it has chassis. Like, that is the moment for me in like any movie ever, I can’t even think about it without crying. So that, that is like, has locked me in as a lifer.
Erin Holt: I got
Liz Wolfe: you. What locked me into the Life Aquatic was Willem Defo saying, who’s the shit is Kingsley Zsu? Which is not as good as your sweet.
Erin Holt: That one doesn’t make you
Liz Wolfe: cry, but it makes you laugh. No, well, it makes me cry a little bit, [00:11:00] but you know,
Erin Holt: Um, so anyway, back to GP then, you know, like the whole Goop thing happened and I thi I just feel like she became the face of whitewashed wellness and she was like the target for it, which I completely understand and I get that.
Erin Holt: But also I’m like, is she the problem? Like is she the problem? Is she at the helm of this or is she just like kind of sitting in the same culture that we’re all sitting in? Does she struggle with the same stuff? Fears of getting sick, fears of body changing fears of her face changing as she gets older, you know?
Erin Holt: And also, It’s so much easier to point the finger and to point the blame at her rather than to turn the finger inward and say like, Hey, how have I actually colluded in this? Because goop wouldn’t exist as like, what, like a multimillion dollar, probably billion dollar brand at this point. I don’t even know.
Erin Holt: Yeah. If there wasn’t a demand for it, if there wasn’t a need for it. If there wasn, it’s a call and a [00:12:00] response. And I think about like, people are like, she has no business as a celebrity talking about health and wellness, but we’re actually the ones going to the celebrities saying like, Hey, tell me what you’re doing.
Erin Holt: Tell me what to do. Tell me how to live. Tell me how to eat. Tell me how to think, tell me how to breathe. So I think it’s just way easier to blame one person and to make them like the target than to look at our own inner stuff when it comes to our wellness culture. , and I’m just so tired of dragging women.
Erin Holt: I’m just, I’m just tired of it. I’m not a Pollyanna. I’m a, I’m, Crap talker. I don’t know if we can swear on the show. I’m a crap talker. Yes. , so it’s not like I’m just so nice. I don’t, but I just, I’m just tired of seeing women dragged all of the time. It’s old hat to me. When I was, I did like a whole deep dive on this.
Erin Holt: She, her Dr. Will Cole’s book came out inter, , what is it? Intuitive fasting. And so people were really up in arms about Gwyneth Paltrow at that time. She wrote the [00:13:00] Forward and he’s her doctor. So she did like a lot of the press with him. And so I was like, what is this whole thing Gwyneth Paltrow? Like, why do people hate her so much?
Erin Holt: And I found blogs written about her. One of the titles was, why Do People Hate Gwyneth Paltrow? That’s like the title of the blog. And one of the reasons, one of the bullet points listed is she appears incredibly full of herself, incredibly full of herself. And I’m like, that’s a reason to hate somebody. As somebody who has gotten some hate for being confident.
Erin Holt: I can’t with that. The very first negative podcast review I got was, it was this, it was the host ego. Ugh, no, thank you. That was, that was the review. And I like, it’s funny now, but really it’s, it’s kind of disheartening. We’re so collectively more comfortable with a woman hating herself and a woman doing like the public self-flagellation than we are with like a woman actually [00:14:00] owning herself and God forbid, loving herself and showcasing that.
Erin Holt: And so I just don’t think that’s a reason enough to hate somebody is because she appears to be full of herself. There was also one more article written that was, the title was The Unbearable Wrongness of Gwyneth Paltrow. And I’m like, okay, this is where I draw the line. Calling somebody’s existence fundamentally wrong is like, actually fundamentally wrong.
Erin Holt: So I just, I, it was almost like a, a retaliation where I’m like, everybody’s dragging Gwyneth Paltrow. I, I’m gonna defend her, you know?
Liz Wolfe: I think that’s very noble of you. And when Gwyneth Paltrow goes and sleeps with Tom Sandoval, when he’s in a relationship with someone else and lies about it to Ariana’s face, then we can drag Gwyneth Paltrow.
Liz Wolfe: That’s, that might be the point at which, which, by the way, I actually don’t even think that we should be dragging, uh, Raquel or Rachel if, as a reference to that situation, because just, you gotta think about these [00:15:00] people nobody ever know Well, I guess at this point they probably do, but in general, people don’t know what they’re getting into when they’re shooting for fame or they’re shooting for notoriety or they’re shooting for any kind of success.
Liz Wolfe: That entails a lot of people knowing who you are and looking at you. I have a very tiny, tiny amount of recognition in a very small community and it makes me uncomfortable and sometimes I wonder what I got myself into and what I’m doing here. I cannot imagine that multiplied times 50 billion, like what is going on in some of these people’s lives.
Liz Wolfe: And to remember that we are talking about human beings who are fallible, imperfect, interesting, and deserving of some kind of empathy is like, it’s just something I think that most people forget cuz it’s just too, it’s just too easy. It’s too easy to just think that they don’t hear you or
Erin Holt: have any feelings.
Erin Holt: And if not, empathy, [00:16:00] compassion. Cuz I can’t pretend to know what it’s like to be living that out. And I, I don’t, but I also understand that they’re, we’re all human and we all suffer and we’ve just sort of lost the ability to like, see the humanness in people, I think collectively. Yeah. Yeah.
Liz Wolfe: I didn’t really understand the clips that I saw of that, you know, that viral controversial interview that they were talking about with Will Cole, where she talked about like, she eats soup and lemon juice or something like that. I didn’t contextualize that cuz I didn’t think it was worthwhile.
Erin Holt: They, so I did tell, I did, I have to contextualize everything because it’s like we’re, we’re just like fed these headlines and people are like, I’m mad, I’m fuming.
Erin Holt: I read a headline and now I’m big mad. I’m gonna talk about it. I’m gonna talk about my one is wrong on the internet. Yeah. So it was just, A lot of, a bit longer conversation taken out and like into bite size forms and then smashed together. It looks like she was eating bone broth and like a, you know, like lemon [00:17:00] drop for, for food every day.
Erin Holt: And she’s like, it’s great. I love it. Um, when in reality there was like a much more robust conversation, but nobody, but nobody takes the time to actually go into that. And it was the same thing. Do you remember the headline That like, it, I still see it circulating around sometimes. It was like, um, during the pandemic, the Gwyneth Paltrow said the worst thing to happen to her was she had to eat bread.
Erin Holt: It was like something like that. Did you see? Oh, I
Liz Wolfe: didn’t see that. Oh my god.
Erin Holt: Goode Felter really suffered in the, the pandemic. Her low point was eating bread. And I was like, come on. She did not say that. No. So I started rooting around and I was digging. And then I, she was on a podcast where she said something about bread and so I went and I listened to the podcast and she didn’t say that, but like, we just, we just take things completely out of context and we throw it out on, you know, as a headline and then people gobble it up.
Erin Holt: It’s like people are genuinely looking for a reason to like get big mad, you know? And it’s like you just get, [00:18:00] give ’em a little, a little, a little taste and they just take it and they run with it. It’s bonkers.
Liz Wolfe: It’s, what is that? Is it a, is it dopamine? Is it some kind of chemical in the brain? Is it just feeling right and nobody feels, everybody feels like put upon now or everyone feels kind of victimized or, or I dunno, what is
Erin Holt: that?
Erin Holt: Um, I think. You know, I think as it relates to women, I’ve done a lot of thinking, a lot of head scratching on this, I think as it relates to women. Cause I, I became kind of fascinated with like the tall poppy syndrome. Um, I felt like once I got a little bit of notoriety, I had so much support, so much support, so much support.
Erin Holt: And people are like, you say what you mean, you say what you’re thinking, you set boundaries, way to go. We love you. And it was almost like there was like this invisible line that I didn’t even know existed. There was like this threshold and one day I crossed it by just being a little bit too much of myself by sharing, you know what I mean?
Erin Holt: Just like a little bit too much Erin. And. I started to see that people kind of are looking for the [00:19:00] chinks in the armor. You know, they’re like, look in to poke holes. Like, she can’t really be that good. You know? We, I think we, we tell ourselves a story. I think women are pitted against each other. Hmm. And I think that if we, if we see a woman thriving or having success in any capacity or seemingly doing well, we tell ourselves a story.
Erin Holt: We’ve been fed a lie, we buy into it that her success takes something away from me because there’s only, uh, a limited, you know, there’s only a limited piece of the pie for us. And so, by her doing well, it somehow takes away from me. So her success is a direct threat to me. So if that’s true, if I’ve decided that that’s true, then when I see her thriving, or being successful, or, you know, Uh, feeling seemingly too confident.
Erin Holt: I have to kind of look for the chinks in the armor I have to look for where she’s not all that great. And so I think that we, uh, a headline that says, Gwyneth Paltrow said the [00:20:00] worst part about pandemic. She have to eat bread. It’s like, aha, we found it, we found the broken thing. Now let’s go all in. Because if I tear her down to size, if I like tall poppy, her ass, if she got a little bit too big for her britches a little too tall, I have to cut her down to size.
Erin Holt: And that makes me somehow feel better about myself. I think that that’s kind of what it is. And that’s gotta be
Liz Wolfe: a little bit subconscious, right? Because I’m sure, I know I have done stuff like that before. Totally. I can give you examples, but by no means am I going, she’s a little not, she’s not humble enough for my liking.
Liz Wolfe: Like, let’s, let’s, let’s pick at that and let’s bring her down a little bit. I don’t think that way, but I am certainly engaging in that behavior.
Erin Holt: Yeah, I mean, I think, I think we all are, one thing that I try, I’m trying to notice myself is like, when I do feel a little triggered, uh, cause essentially a trigger is like an external stimulus.
Erin Holt: Like something ha is happening outside of you. And to kind of reorganize myself back inside, like, Hey, what am I [00:21:00] actually feeling right now? And, um, what does that mean? And does that, does that have, I felt this before? When did I feel this before? Is this sitting on like maybe like a childhood wound? Is this sitting on.
Erin Holt: Something from the past, you know, usually triggers. It’s like when we have a disproportionate reaction to something. Um, so going inside kind of reorganizing ourselves back into like, how am I feeling? Can I name the emotion? Sometimes with the trigger there’s like an AMI amygdala hijack, so we can’t really like, think logically we can’t logic and reason our way through it.
Erin Holt: We are taken over by whatever’s happening beneath the surface and the subconscious. And so being able to name the emotion actually overrides that amygdala hijack, which I think is kind of cool. So, uh, in context when if like, let’s say I am like scrolling on Instagram and I’m like, her face bothers me.
Erin Holt: The way she says, that word really pisses me off. Instead of making it about her, I just say it like, let’s take a beat. Whoa. That’s a weird reaction to have about somebody’s face. She’s not doing anything [00:22:00] wrong. She’s just there. She’s just existing. She’s living her life. Why am I triggered and using it as an opportunity to understand a little bit more about myself, a little bit more about my own patterns, A little bit more about like where the healing needs to happen for me and making it less about the external stimulus, but I also don’t wanna project that stuff onto somebody else.
Erin Holt: So if I feel triggered or stimulated and not a good way by somebody, I just will mute them and unfollow them. Cause I don’t wanna project my yucky energy onto them. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
Liz Wolfe: , you said something earlier that really piqued my interest and I’m trying to remember what it was.
Liz Wolfe: Oh, when you were being too Erin,
Liz Wolfe: at what point were you getting to Erin and what does that, what does that mean? I’m curious what you meant by that.
Erin Holt: I think I was, , editing myself. Like I, so I swear. Yeah. I love hip hop. I’m a little bit quirky. There’s , just like idiosyncrasies about me that , you know, I talk with my hands.
Erin Holt: I do weird movements when I talk. [00:23:00] I don’t know, one day I was like, I’m so tired of feeling like I need to edit myself. I’m just gonna , let her rip. And it wasn’t like I was saying anything offensive or, or being, you know, overly antagonistic. I think it was just, Some people feel uncomfortable with a woman fully expressed in her power.
Erin Holt: , I think that I have a, an ability to activate people into their power as one of my, specialties. , but I also have an ability to activate people into their wounding as well. , not intentionally, but there is something about witnessing a woman speaking her mind, setting boundaries, unapologetically, claiming her worth not doing the self guilt, self-flagellation thing anymore.
Erin Holt: , there’s something about that that I, I think can really, , feel. Feel, trigger some for other people. But I, I was, I was done doing that. , I lived most [00:24:00] of my life hating myself, so I, I’ve lived that before. It’s not fun. It’s, it’s really a shitty way to live. And so, and I’ve seen that no matter what, somebody’s gonna have an issue, somebody’s gonna take issue with me being me.
Erin Holt: And there just came a time where I didn’t wanna feel like I had to shapeshift myself to keep everybody else comfortable. I didn’t wanna play into the version of me that everybody else had created in their own minds. It’s like a, it is an impossible thing to do. So I’m like, what if, what if I just. Just showed up as me.
Erin Holt: What if I just said what was on my heart? What if I just, you know, like if somebody comes at me and I clap back, what if I just did what I wanted to do and said what I wanted to say? And it was super liberating on my end. Um, but I definitely, I definitely saw some interesting things in response to that.
Liz Wolfe: Do you know your Enneagram eight? Of course. [00:25:00] Damn it. Of course, I know. As a six. I’m like, but it’s so much easier to live in the version of yourself that other people have constructed for you. It makes them so happy. It’s, this is what
Erin Holt: it makes me feel like a rat and a cage.
Erin Holt: Oh. And I’m very much so, like, who are you to have jurisdiction over the, the choices that I make and the way that I behave in the things that I say in my, my company, in my business, in my practice, on my podcast, but like also in my life, you know, I’m like, I, I. One of the things that drives me mental is unsolicited advice.
Erin Holt: And cuz I’m just like, why don’t, why don’t you trust me to make my own decisions? I trust me to make my own decisions, but people just come out of the woodwork and they like, they think they’re being helpful. It all, it always comes from a good place, but people really wanna like, give advice. Like I just shared, somebody was like, what’s your favorite deodorants?
Erin Holt: I shared my three favorite deo deodorants. My dms were full of like, what about this deodorant? I, I I think you [00:26:00] would really like this one. You should try this one. What about, I’m just like, I, I wasn’t looking for advice on deodorants. I just told you I found three ones that I love. I have three options. I don’t need 12 more.
Erin Holt: Like what is that? Um, that I think that’s the, any Enneagram eight in me by the way. Yeah. But there’s just something about like, me being like, I trust me and I’m confident in me and I trust my own decisions that other people are like, wait, what? And some people love it and it gives them permission to do the same in their own lives.
Erin Holt: And for other people it’s like just such a trigger. ,
Liz Wolfe: it’s just so interesting cause I literally don’t know what it would be like to not conduct myself. As a reflection of what other people see in me, it’s, it’s hard to explain. When I know what people need and want from me and how I can be useful to them, that’s like, that’s my space.
Liz Wolfe: That’s like where I can shine, where I can really make people feel like you, like I got you. Like I wanna do that for you. But at the same time, especially as things have grown for me, it’s also [00:27:00] impossible for me to be that for everyone that comes into my orbit. So it has gotten increasingly difficult and also like just, it makes me kind of wanna hide myself because I feel like I have failed everybody.
Liz Wolfe: I have been unable to create the solutions that people think maybe I have access to or create or pass along the solutions that people think that I have access to. So it’s just very, like the deodorant thing that you said, , this was like literally something that happened to me at, in maybe five years ago where.
Liz Wolfe: I used to talk a lot about natural safe skincare, and I had this whole guide around it. I had this whole business built around it, and then the natural products industry exploded. So it was like where I used to be able to tell people exactly why these three deodorants are excellent choices. It became this thing where people are like, what about this one?
Liz Wolfe: What about this one? What about this one? And I, no joke would spend the entire night, I would not sleep at all researching the deodorants that [00:28:00] other people wanted to know if they were okay or not. And it just got to be like way, way too much. So I’m trying to put on the costume of an eight recently, and try and become more, you know, just those natural boundaries.
Liz Wolfe: They’re not, they’re not, , Native to my Enneagram type. I don’t think maybe they are and I’m just not a healthy six. I don’t know.
Erin Holt: Well, I don’t think, I don’t think boundary setting is native to many of us. Like, I think that that’s, that probably transcends Enneagram type. Um, because so many of us were conditioned and socialized to be people pleasers, you know, to keep the peace, to make sure everybody else is as comfortable around us.
Erin Holt: , many of us are pitched into like over-functioning and like codependency and it’s like if your identity, if your sense of self, if the way that you’ve received love and belonging is predicated on you not really having boundaries, then hey, guess what? Setting a boundary’s gonna be super duper hard.
Erin Holt: So I, I just wanna e acknowledge [00:29:00] that, that, um, boundary setting. I would say kind of came out of necessity cuz what you’re describing sounds so exhausting. And I would imagine that the burnout rate is so high where it’s like you wanna go hard, then maybe you even have to like pull yourself back because you’re like, I can’t keep this up.
Erin Holt: That sounds, that sounds like a lot. Um, I noticed that. Truly when I, when, when my business started to grow and podcast social media presence started to grow, I started to interface with so many more people, like, you know, hundreds if not thousands on a weekly basis. And the asks and the demands just kept going up and up and up and up.
Erin Holt: It’s like this, uh, I’ve refer to it as consume her culture. I’m sure you’ve heard that term before, but it’s like the expectation that because I am a woman in business, it is my role and my duty to show up and serve. And if I’m not showing up and serving, if I’m not saying yes to every ask and sometimes demand, then I don’t care enough, especially for those of us that are in the health industry, in the wellness world.
Erin Holt: Um, and [00:30:00] I just realized pretty fast, like if I keep this up, I’m gonna, I’m gonna burn out. Practitioner burnout rate is extraordinarily high and I don’t wanna burn out because if I burn out, then nobody gets access to the work that I’m gonna do. And so I had to figure something out. And for me, setting those boundaries became a little bit like self.
Erin Holt: Like self survival. But it was even for an Enneagram eight, it was, it’s, it’s been a challenge to set those and uphold those. I will say that.
Liz Wolfe: Well, I do wanna talk about the, eventually I wanna get around to the work that you do, that, that part is important to this podcast as well.
Liz Wolfe: I’d like to know though, you talked a few minutes about, a few minutes ago, about you grew up hating yourself. Can you talk a little bit about those years where you did feel that way about yourself and if they played any part in bringing you to, to where you are now?
Erin Holt: they sure did. I, Was like kind of a chunky kid. You know, I grew up as a little [00:31:00] chunky and around adolescence I started to grow tall. We have a lot of height in my family, so I try, started to grow tall and just kind of naturally leaned out and got so much positive feedback by, uh, from that I am, uh, the oldest daughter.
Erin Holt: So I really like doing well. So, you know, give me positive feedback, I’m gonna take it and I’m gonna run with it. I did that literally, I started running and I kind of dramatically reduced what I was eating. So I lost a ton of weight, continued to get more positive feedback, and that started I think a 13 year battle with disordered eating.
Erin Holt: So it was anorexia. Once I got to college, it kind of blossomed into bulimia and it was there, there was just a tremendous amount of, um, self, self-hate, shame. That was a big one for me. Um, And kind of inner criticism. So how it brought me to where I am today, I decided in my twenties I was gonna go back to [00:32:00] school.
Erin Holt: Cause I went to college. Like a lot, like a lot of colleges. People were like, where did you go? I’m like, pretty much all of them. They covered all of them. Love school so much. Um, but I went back to college to study nutrition and dietetics because, \ , I wanted to fix myself. I was still actively bulimic. I couldn’t figure it out.
Erin Holt: Um, the conventional, you know, traditional, , eating disorder model was not really serving me. So I’m like, all right, let me figure this out. If I go to school to learn about nutrition, Then I can figure out how to be skinny once and for all. Once I figure out how to be skinny, then I can stop the eating disorder.
Erin Holt: That was like the mindset. I was still very much viewing myself as a problem that needed to be fixed. So I went to school for nutrition and dietetics. I got a good education. It didn’t fix me. , and I didn’t necessarily love the curricula. I loved the, the science, like the deep science. I’m forever grateful for that.
Erin Holt: I didn’t love the culture of not really being able to ask [00:33:00] questions. It was very much so my program was very much so, this is the way we do things because this is the way we do things. There wasn’t a lot, and as a questioner I was like, but, but, but, but, but I have so many questions. And that wasn’t, there wasn’t a place.
Erin Holt: For that. , so I didn’t, I, after I graduated, I didn’t go on to do a dietetic internship to become a licensed rd. I just did not feel it was the path for me. Instead I started to explore more alternative healing. When I was in school, I was studying clairvoyance and energy medicine. I became a health coach.
Erin Holt: I went to yoga teacher training. I was kind of just like cobbling this, all this stuff together because I needed to heal. I needed to heal me through those modalities. I did put the eating disorder in remission, so I was like, kind of like living my best life. Like I, I was su feeling really good. I had this nutrition practice on the side.
Erin Holt: I was teaching yoga. I met my husband, we got married, you know, got a dog, had a baby, bought a house. Like, you know, check, check, check. Living the dream, doing it all. [00:34:00] And then after I gave birth to my daughter, I started feeling really, really bad and I kept going to my doctors and I feel like the story I’m about to tell, Thousands of women can just echo the same exact story.
Erin Holt: Pretty much. They just kept telling me like, your labs look normal, everything’s fine. Um, you might just wanna let the baby cry it out. Maybe you should stop breastfeeding. You know, I think culturally we’re really okay with moms feeling like trash. We’re like, yep, that’s the norm. Keep it pushing, you know, keep it moving.
Erin Holt: Lady. Um, I was offered antidepressants. I was offered anti-anxiety. I wasn’t offered any solutions to my problems. , like physical problems. I started to kind of believe that this is all in my head. That was really reinforced to me, , if, if you’re telling me everything’s fine, I don’t feel fine. Like, what’s the problem here?
Erin Holt: So that went on for about a year until finally I went back and I kind of like, Drop the hammer. I was like, look, I’m not leaving this office. My thumbs swelled up to twice its size. I’m like, something is wrong here. Look at [00:35:00] me. And they were like, maybe it’s texter’s thumb. And I was like, no, we’re not doing this.
Erin Holt: We are not doing the gas lighting today. Not on my watch. Like, figure it out. I’m, I literally said, I’m not leaving this office until you figure it out. So they were like, okay. And they started doing lab work. It came back, they were like, something’s unusual here. Um, maybe rheumatic fever. And I was like, what?
Erin Holt: Like a Jane Austen novel. Like, is it
Liz Wolfe: 1855? Like
Erin Holt: this is sounds very old timey. Maybe Jane Austin is pre that era, but you know, little women or something. I’m like, I don’t, I don’t, is that the problem here?
Liz Wolfe: Little house on the pr? I don’t know. Yeah, that’s Wow. They were like,
Erin Holt: yeah, it’s weird. We’ve never seen it before.
Erin Holt: I was like, good. Great. Something you want to hear. So they went back to the drawing board, did more lab work. I ended up getting diagnosed with an autoimmune disease known as, Scleroderma systemic sclerosis, which is like not a great one to get, like if you’re gonna get them. No, that’s like, that’s not the best.
Erin Holt: Yeah, that’s not the best. And so I [00:36:00] was, uh, I loved my rheumatologist, but it was very much so the message of like, here’s medication, you’ll be on it for life. Nothing really else to do. Keep it moving. Like that’s kind of like the conventional answer to autoimmunity. It’s like weird. Your body’s attacking itself.
Erin Holt: We’re not sure why. Um, and you know, this is not a dig at medication. Bless up like so grateful that we have it when we need it. But I’m like, this can’t be like the starting point. I have to, there’s gotta be something else. There’s gotta be a reason that my body just decided to turn on itself. So it was, that’s actually what led me to functional medicine.
Erin Holt: I just, I needed answers. I wasn’t finding them anywhere. And so I just did a lot of my own research, you know, the drill and found functional medicine and it was, Through those methodologies that I started to put a lot of my symptoms into remission. I started to feel better. I started to understand and uncover root causes and that’s how, how I started to run my practice.
Erin Holt: So that really is what brought me into the world of [00:37:00] functional medicine.
Liz Wolfe: Well, I think as with a lot of things, you find something like functional medicine and it’s amazing. It’s healing. It has all of these benefits, but oftentimes I think there is a, not a dark side, but there is a point where we start to lose the plot a little bit.
Liz Wolfe: Yeah. So we talked about this a little bit before we started recording, but what’s going on in functional medicine now and with some functional medicine practitioners and how they are treating people and their symptoms in a way that might not really be like the ideal manifestation of functional medicine.
Liz Wolfe: Can you talk about that?
Erin Holt: So at its core, functional medicine is a root cause approach. So we want to understand, you know, it, it is my belief that the body has, knows how to heal itself. And so if the immune system is attacking itself, like there’s gotta be a reason why, where’s the marching orders coming from?
Erin Holt: What tripped, tripped up the immune system? So [00:38:00] understanding the root cause is kind of at its core functional medicine. And I think when we think about it that way, it really feels like the panacea, like this is it, this is, this, is it. Like, you know, like we, we’ve cracked the code, we’re gonna figure this out.
Erin Holt: Um, but like anything that gains in popularity, there’s, there’s ways to lose the plot, you know, I think that’s a great way to put it. And we have really moved from that true root cause approach where we are looking at the human being sitting in front of us. And listening to their story, listening to their health history, listening to their current symptoms, listening to maybe even the words that they’re not saying, right?
Erin Holt: That that, that art of listening, I think is a, is an art form or it’s a skillset. And I think we’ve lost it, um, in medicine that extends to functional medicine too. And being able to, uh, kind of figure out where do we, where do we [00:39:00] go? That that is, that is what we’re moving away from. And it we’re moving into you have this symptom or you have this diagnosis, or you have this lab marker elevated on this $400 functional lab test that therefore we do this.
Erin Holt: It’s like an if this, then that. That’s, that is the template driven cookie cutter approach that a lot of functional providers are practicing and. That might work if you like, kind of envision a bell curve that might work for like the percentage of people in the middle like that, that, you know, giving people oregano oil and slapping a leaky gut protocol on everybody like that actually might move the needle for some people.
Erin Holt: But what about the outliers? So then we run into a situation where somebody is like, conventional medicine failed me. And then I went to functional medicine. Everybody was promising that was gonna be my saving grace, [00:40:00] and that also failed me. So we’re left just being like, I’m fundamentally broken. I am a lost cause.
Erin Holt: Nobody can help me. Where, where does that leave people? And unfortunately I’m just seeing that more and more. I started mentoring practitioners years ago and I found that the practitioners were just looking for like the one right way. You know, we, we see this so much with, um, like I. Average people, like what’s the one Right diet?
Erin Holt: What’s the one way to the one right way to exercise? What’s the one right way? And practitioners were, were looking like, what is the one? Like what do I do here? And I’m like, well, we have to actually take a massive step back and look at the full picture. We have to look at the human being sitting behind the lab.
Erin Holt: You know, we don’t, there’s a huge practice, especially in some of the more prominent functional medicine clinics where you can’t even walk in the door without dropping like 6, 7, 8 Gs on labs. They don’t even look at you. They don’t even talk to you. They’re just like, we’re gonna run all of these labs. And some of them are completely unnecessary.
Liz Wolfe: Some of them are like, how unnecessary.
Erin Holt: [00:41:00] I’ve had people come to me spending, I don’t, you know, maybe having eight functional labs and functional lab testing, if you’re paying out of pocket, they can be anywhere from two to 500 bucks a pop or more, right? Yeah. So that’s a lot of money. And then just being like, nobody ever went over these with me.
Erin Holt: They’re just the standard labs. That, that, that they’re, they order for every patient and that is crazy to, to not sit with somebody and to listen to their lived experience and based on that information, say, I, I’m gonna use my critical thinking. I’m gonna use the root cause approach and my critical thinking and my ability to listen and my understanding of mechanisms in the human body to try to figure out what’s going on here.
Erin Holt: And based off of that, I’m gonna re recommend these labs cuz I have a suspicion that maybe X, Y, or Z could be going on. Rather, it’s just like, we’re gonna run all the labs and then we’re gonna figure it out. I’m not even gonna look at you, I’m not even gonna talk to you. I’m just gonna look at your lab data and then develop some type of protocol that I do for like 75% of everybody [00:42:00] else and just slap that on you.
Erin Holt: I’m like, if you’re gonna do the same protocol, you know, seven times outta 10, what is even the point of running the labs it’s become an absolute S storm. Lately, and people are spending gobs of money and they’re walking away with more questions and more confusion than they started.
Erin Holt: And they’re, they’re feeling really, really let down by the world of medicine, conventional and alternative. I
Liz Wolfe: think sometimes all these labs, te lab tests, it feels like you’re going to see somebody that knows something, knows how to put those pieces together that maybe somebody else didn’t know. So in a way, it’s kind of , it’s very flashy to be like, we run this test very, that nobody else runs and it’s from, you know, this lab and we’re gonna do your stool and we’re gonna do your blood and we’re gonna do your spit and we’re gonna do your all thing after thing after thing.
Liz Wolfe: And it feels dazzling. It feels like if you’re gonna do that much investigative work, you’re gonna find something and it’s gonna be the [00:43:00] thing. But, sitting and talking to somebody and finding out. Even if we could learn something from that blood work without placing it up against that person’s actual experience, how do we know what part of that is actually causing the problem or having the, the most outsized effect?
Erin Holt: I wanna be clear too, you’re, you’re exactly bang on, uh, we, we run labs and my practice, so they’re a phenomenal tool, but they just need to be used with discernment and with precision and that’s, that’s part of the issue.
Erin Holt: And then there’s also an approach to, cuz analyzing and interpreting labs is kind of a, is an art form, you know, it’s kind of what you’re saying. Um, and we are, we’re, we don’t wanna be so literal in our translation of labs, like, when this marker is high, we do this. When this marker is low, we do this. It’s, it’s an overly simplistic approach to a very complex situation.
Erin Holt: Um, but there [00:44:00] is a lot of razzle dazzle with those lab tests. And there is like a little bit of an inherent promise baked in. Like, well, if I do this test, I’m gonna find the thing you said the thing. And that is what we’re all looking for is like the. One thing, and I just see this more and more and more.
Erin Holt: It’s like, it’s the mold, it’s the parasites, it’s the leaky gut. Um, once we find it, we’re gonna fix it, and then everything’s gonna get better. Um, I’m even, I, I love subconscious work, love, brain-based health stuff. I do a lot of it in my work, but now we’re also seeing like everything, it’s all the trauma.
Erin Holt: It’s the traumatics. Mm-hmm. It is the subconscious, it’s the brain rewiring. It’s this one thing. And I’m just sitting here being like, it’s not, you know, it’s not. It’s all of it. And there are so many, this is like, if I could say one thing to somebody about their health, there are [00:45:00] so many entry points to healing.
Erin Holt: There are so many. So maybe for you it is intermittent fasting. Maybe that’s your entry point. Maybe for somebody else it is. Brain rewiring and plunging into subconscious beliefs and doing some E M D R. Maybe somebody else just needs to remove those Glade plugins. And you know, like there’s just so many ways and you we’re inundated with this idea that there’s just this, the one right way, there’s the one right diet, there’s the one right approach and it’s kind of hogwash.
Liz Wolfe: The question I wanna ask now, this is something that I talk to Michelle Shapiro about, and now I’m talking to you about it, how important it is for so many people who are sort of in this cookie cutter assembly line, protocol supplementation, um, lab work pipeline that they, that they get into.
Liz Wolfe: What Michelle and I talked about was, it is so important to sit down with a practitioner who [00:46:00] understands this. Somebody like you or somebody like Michelle, but at the same time you’re only one person. Michelle’s only one person. And while I have complained a lot in the past about the other side of the coin of what you just talked about, which is these.
Liz Wolfe: 30 day protocols. The, the whole thirties, the autoimmune protocols, and I, I’m not calling those out by name to call them out by any means. I’m talking about the way they are used by people who are desperate for a solution but cannot afford one-on-one help. So they go to these, these 30 day protocols that are designed to be less expensive or even like no cost to actually mm-hmm.
Liz Wolfe: To actually obtain them. Obviously it costs money for food and supplements and whatnot. To actually just engage with them is free. Where they get stuck over here where they have nobody that’s helping them. They can’t necessarily afford a one-on-one type of thing with you or with Michelle. They certainly can’t afford [00:47:00] thousands of dollars worth of lab tests.
Liz Wolfe: So where does that leave people? Like how do people who are not being served by either one of these paradigms, how do they go about finding healing?
Erin Holt: first of all, I, I am, I am in lockstep with what you’re saying about , you know, the AIP and the whole thirties and these other frameworks. I don’t, I, I’ve seen, I wanna say that I think that they are tools.
Erin Holt: I don’t think that they’re good or bad. I think it really depends on who is wielding the tool. It’s like a knife. It can, you can use it to slice a, I don’t know, grapefruit or you could, you know, use it to do something else. This is why some people can do a i p and actually put an autoimmune condition in remission.
Erin Holt: And somebody else can do I A I P and develop an eating disorder. Mm-hmm. Right. So I don’t know if it’s necessarily fair to, and I don’t think you’re doing this, but I hear this a lot. I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to blame [00:48:00] the framework because it does give somebody an entry point. And that kind of plays on my last thing.
Erin Holt: Like there’s, so maybe that is somebody’s entry point. Maybe they start with a i p and they bring down their inflammation to such an extent that they start to feel a little bit better and they’re like, oh, there’s something to this healing stuff, this healing world. And they might start to like, explore another avenue.
Erin Holt: Um, that’s pretty much what I did. You know, like I started here and that I did this, I did it all in DRS and drabs, and it took a while, but like I have a autoimmune illness that I was told could kill me completely in remission and I live a perfectly healthy life. And it, it’s like, who’s. Like, it, it, it’s not really up for somebody else to tell me what my healing should look like, um, or what my starting point should be.
Erin Holt: And sometimes we have to find that ourselves. And not everybody has access to functional medicine. Not everybody can afford functional medicine, so sometimes these, these templates [00:49:00] that you can access for free or low cost can be wildly helpful. I just, because 90 to 95% of the women that I have worked with over the years have some type of disordered behavior or.
Erin Holt: Thought patterns with their food. I do get a little bit concerned that if we’re, if we’re layering a restrictive approach onto a restrictive mindset, there is potential for, um, these approaches to go a little pear shaped. And I just without the appropriate guidance to let somebody know like, Hey, this is probably a temporary thing.
Erin Holt: We’re gonna try just to see if, if, if it moves the needle at all for you. Um, that’s where, that’s why I get a little bit nervous or, or when we, I guess my, my answer to the question is like, if you’re going to attempt something like this, just make sure you are. Seeing it for what it is, which is a practical tool versus [00:50:00] dogma or religiosity or, you know, culture or like a cult-like following.
Erin Holt: I think once we start to get into the, this is the way I eat because I have been told and I now believe that, that this is the only way to heal, that’s when it becomes more problematic. Yeah. When, when a diet switches from, you know, that practical approach to more of a, I must do this or mm-hmm I can’t heal my body
Liz Wolfe: or I must do it again and again and again, which is I think a big one.
Liz Wolfe: And how we are extrapolating these things over time. I talk about this all the time. Something, a tool might work for you in a certain context at a certain moment in time, but if you lose that, or not necessarily even lose it, if you evolve, uh, Somewhere else. And then kind of back to maybe where you felt like you were previously, it might not be time to reincorporate that same tool.
Liz Wolfe: It might be time to look for a different tool and to be open
Erin Holt: to that, right? [00:51:00] Yeah. And it’s like, there’s like these underpinnings of like if, uh, of diet culture essentially, right? It’s, it’s very adjacent to diet culture of like, you are not trying hard enough. Mm, you must not really want this. It’s not the diet, it’s, it’s you.
Erin Holt: Right? And so if, if there’s already, if there’s already like a propensity to think that way, that can kind of just reinforce some of those, um, harmful thought patterns as well.
Liz Wolfe: Yeah, and we, when I was working one-on-one with people, I feel like I saw that a lot. And I think it’s a natural, not natural, as in good.
Liz Wolfe: I’m not placing a value judgment on this, but it’s a natural inclination to blame oneself because this is what we have control over. This is what we know. Outside circumstances are what they are, but what we know is, is ourselves. And so oftentimes, you know, we feel like we’re the only people we have to blame unless you’re blaming Gwyneth Paltrow for something,
Liz Wolfe: but it’s interesting to also think about the fact that many of us sort of go to that [00:52:00] same baseline. Like we think we’re regressing back to something and that that something has a very particular treatment that we need to apply to move past it. And you know, people will go back to the same thing again and again and again.
Liz Wolfe: But I like to think of ourselves over time is that many of us have this sort of s. This place where we go in times of stress and that stress might be from food, it might be from family, it might be from the aging process,
Liz Wolfe: so while the symptomology or the picture might look the same repeatedly, depending on how you got there, you might need a different tool to get you back out. So it’s like, it’s not always that you need a gluten-free or FODMAP free diet plan. It might be that you need therapy this time, or it might be that you need to change up your health and wellness routine to account for the aging process, that type of thing.
Erin Holt: You’re making so much sense, and this resonates a lot. I, you know, I, I would go, [00:53:00] that was like, I’d go back to the, well, anytime my symptoms would flare, I would be like, I gotta get real strict with the diet.
Erin Holt: I gotta get real strict with the diet I gotta get. That was just like an easy go-to. It was like a, a safety mechanism that I’d built in for myself. And I realized that, I’m like, I, if I get any stricter with the diet, it’s gonna be not so fun for old Er Bear. You know, like, I’m not eating much, so I’m like, this, this can’t be it, you know?
Erin Holt: Like, this can’t be it for me. And this is when I started to kind of plunge into like more of the belief work. You know, if it is true that our beliefs inform our biology, which it absolutely is true. I, I mean, I had to start like, why am I repeating these same patterns? Like how did I, how did I have 13 years disordered eating, get better and then develop an autoimmune illness?
Erin Holt: Like, what’s going on here? Why, why are the patterns repeating? Where are the marching orders come from? If, if my belief I or my mind is basically influencing what’s playing out in the physical landscape of my body, what’s going on with my mind? And that’s when I really do dove kind of headfirst into looking at my [00:54:00] beliefs, exploring my subconscious, uh, patterns, like really thinking, like paying attention to my thoughts, paying attention to my triggers.
Erin Holt: And that is a thing that really changed the game for me. But it was like an altogether new approach. So I had healed myself, you know, through diet, through lifestyle, through doing the sauna, you know, doing the nature bathing and eating the broccoli, whatever. And it’s like I needed another approach to take me another level, another layer deeper into my healing.
Erin Holt: And again, it’s like maybe I could have found the belief work first and then how to, you know, do the more of the food piece later. Who’s to say, this was my journey, I’m not questioning it. I’m, you know, I’m, I’m here. Uh, but I think that’s such a good point is like if you’re going back to the same thing that worked four years ago, you might be a completely different person than you were for four years ago.
Erin Holt: So you might need an altogether new [00:55:00] approach. And that’s why I just, I want, when, whenever I talk, I just wanna, I. Say like, I, my goal in my work is to just continue to put more tools on the table, more paths to healing, more avenues to approach healing. Not less. Not saying that way is wrong. Oh, don’t do that.
Erin Holt: That the that way is wrong. Definitely don’t do a i p. It’s way too restrictive. Definitely don’t, you know, do a leaky gut protocol. Those are silly. They don’t work. It’s more just to say like, it all works. You know, it’s all fair game. It’s just what’s appropriate for you. And when,
Liz Wolfe: so I’m gonna take the quote from this episode, don’t do the AIP p it doesn’t work.
Liz Wolfe: And I’m just gonna splash that everywhere. And everyone can say, I’m not
Erin Holt: afraid of the AIP P crew. They can come for me. They can come on. Bring it on. Come, come for me. Bring it on. That’s not what I said. Uh,
Liz Wolfe: so when we were prepping for this, one of the things that you said was like, the issues with health tunnel vision, Is that we need to be adding more [00:56:00] tools to people’s tool bags.
Liz Wolfe: And at first I thought you were talking about more lab tests, more stool testing mm-hmm. That type of thing, which of course they are tools, but I’m, this is so enlightening for me and so interesting for me to hear you say that these tools are not necessarily getting more granular about your blood work.
Liz Wolfe: It’s like a whole, like whole other categories of things that contribute to wellness that are actually sometimes even more powerful depending on where you’re coming from.
Erin Holt: Yeah. I’m a big, um, fan of talking about the four body. So we have the physical body, which is like where really where we like love to sink our teeth into, you know, in the nutrition world, duh.
Erin Holt: It’s like the physical body, but we also have the mental body, we have the emotional body, we have the energetic body. Those are all entry points. Those have their own tools of ac, you know, to, to enter. And I think that rather than, Just perpetuate, like there’s the one right way to heal, right? Like it’s the, it’s all mold, it’s all [00:57:00] minerals, or it’s all trauma.
Erin Holt: It’s all this. It’s like, what if it was all of these things? What if we could. Unpack or look at or examine or enter at any of these points. And it could still take us to healing. What if that were true? Right? What if it wasn’t wrong? Right? There’s like a clash between the diet world and the anti-D diet world, which I’m sure you’ve talked about a million times.
Erin Holt: And it’s like ul ultimately everybody’s warm running around being like, no matter what I choose, I’m wrong. I’m being told I’m wrong everywhere. What if, like, what if it all worked? What if it all was fair game? Because I’ve worked with thousands of people over the past 12 years and I’m gonna tell you what, everybody’s healing journey looks different.
Erin Holt: Some people are like, I drink celery juice and I love it, and that’s the thing that got me. And I’m like, great. Does that mean I haven’t like gonna cosign on everything that the medical medium said? No, but if, like, I also, I also believe people when they tell me their lived experience, I, I think that that’s valid.
Erin Holt: I think that that’s fair. So you, it, it’s, That’s what I mean [00:58:00] by stop taking tools away. Stop telling everybody that the approach that they’re doing is wrong. Stop making them second guess themselves. Right. And then on the flip side of that is like we have to get really good at trusting ourselves. I think the best thing I ever did for my health was to stop listening to everybody else’s opinions about what I should do for my health, what I should eat, you know, how I should think about myself, how I should feel.
Erin Holt: And I brought the, I brought the locus of control back inside, and I started listening to me and I started creating space to self source my own answers and listen to what my body was communicating to me rather than like whoever was the loudest voice in the room at the time.
Liz Wolfe: That locus of control and that feeling of agency is also honoring yourself and being confident enough to feel like you can find something and implement it without permission from somebody else.
Liz Wolfe: Now, obviously that can be a little bit [00:59:00] difficult and a little bit dicey depending on who you are and what you’re doing, but I just don’t think a whole lot of bad things come from that type of self-efficacy.
Erin Holt: One of my favorite quotes that has like guided so much of what I do is, it’s a Mos Def quote, and it’s when y’all was asking permission, I just stepped up and took it.
Erin Holt: I’m not going to wait around for somebody to give me permission on what to do with myself or my body or my decisions. I’m just gonna start making moves.
Erin Holt: … there is so much permission seeking that goes on. I remember I was in a Facebook group years ago and I, I don’t know what it was for something for food, and there was a grown woman, she was probably mid fifties and she was asking, Permission to put a teaspoon of cream in her coffee.
Erin Holt: And I’m like, how have we gotten here? We’re a grown ass woman, woman who has like birthed babies [01:00:00] who was moved mountains in her life, no doubt is asking a bunch of internet strangers. Please, may I please, may I put a teaspoon of cream in my coffee? Like, talk about losing the plot, man. Oh my gosh.
Erin Holt: I,
Liz Wolfe: We have a responsibility I think as health. Influencers, I guess. I don’t know. I’m not working, you know, I don’t have my practice open anymore. I’m not working as a nutritional therapy practitioner anymore.
Liz Wolfe: But I think if we can make it clear that you don’t have to ask permission to have a teaspoon a cream in your coffee, impress upon people that they have the agency and the capability to make decisions for themselves and sort of figure out their own shit like that is probably the, the height of our responsibility to people in, in many ways.
Erin Holt: I always think of Janine Roth. Um, one of her quotes from, I think it’s from women food in God. She’s written a bazillion books. Um, but it’s, and I’m paraphrasing, but it’s like something like asking women to trust themselves. And she’s talking about [01:01:00] food in particular. Asking women to trust themselves is like throwing themselves to the wolves.
Erin Holt: Cuz essentially we’ve been taught they’re, every single message we receive about ourselves, about our bodies, it’s like, you are not to be trusted. You filthy little thing, right? And so now all of a sudden what you’re, what people might be hearing from you and I is like, trust myself. Like how do I trust myself around food?
Erin Holt: So I’m not trying to make it sound easier than it actually is. Um, And also it can be really easy. Maybe you just practice for a week. Like, I’m just gonna listen to myself. I’m gonna, every instinct I have to ask permission. I’m just going to do it. If I feel like I want to, I’m going to do it. And just see what happens for a week.
Erin Holt: Like chances are your whole world is not gonna come crumbling down to the ground. And so maybe that’s how you build a little bit of, um, resiliency or, um, motivation to keep trying it again. [01:02:00] It’s
Liz Wolfe: just so, it’s so hard. And I always like to think like where there is a marketing budget, there is a very powerful person or group of people whose entire job rests on you.
Liz Wolfe: Not recognizing that you are capable of making choices for yourself. That’s fashion, that’s food, that’s medicine, that’s everything. So it’s, it’s hard. It is not a simple thing. It’s a hard thing to do, but. The more aware you are of it and probably the more pissed off you are, maybe the better you know.
Erin Holt: And if you don’t believe this, go watch an eighties movie where every single actress had yellow teeth, like Groundhog Day, go watch Groundhog Day and look at Andy McDowell’s mouth like teeth whitening wasn’t a thing.
Erin Holt: And then all of a sudden we got self-conscious about our teeth. You know, it’s like these things were just vented and it’s like another reason for you to be like, or for you to feel like, Ugh, I’m this like gross, yucky, dirty thing. I was running around thinking my teeth were fine, but then I just watched this commercial and [01:03:00] now I, now I am like totally off, off the beaten path.
Erin Holt: Like how did I get here? Right. And I guess I really can’t trust myself. It, it’s just, it’s such bs, all of it. It really is.
Liz Wolfe: . All right. How can people find you? How can people
Erin Holt: work with you? Um, you can find me on Instagram, the functional nutritionist, and it’s spelled with a K. My podcast is the Functional Nutrition Podcast, also spelled with a k.
Erin Holt: We are consistent with our branding. Um, those are the two places I, I spend the most time for, for better or for worse. Um, and, uh, our practice, we do take one-on-one clients. Um, so you can head to the website, the functional nutrition website.com. I don’t know, put it, it’ll, it’ll be in the show notes. The links in the show notes, yeah.
Erin Holt: Yeah, yeah. Always. That’s a mouthful.
Liz Wolfe: Well, thank you so much for hanging out with me for an hour and for not losing the plot. This was an awesome talking and thank you. Thank you so much for coming on.
Erin Holt: Highlight of my Friday, obviously.
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