Good Neighbor Podcast: Fort Collins

Healing Through Nutrition: Britt Kaylor's Journey From Illness to Expert

• Nick George • Season 1 • Episode 107

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Ever wondered if those persistent health issues might be connected to what's on your plate? Britt Kaylor's story will make you rethink everything you know about food and wellness.

Kaylor, founder of Vivante Nutrition and Lifestyle Consulting, shares her remarkable journey from suffering twelve sinus infections yearly to discovering the food allergies that were silently sabotaging her health. Her personal transformation—eliminating seven trigger foods that resolved her joint pain, fatigue, and digestive issues—sparked a passion that evolved into her current nutrition practice.

With a master's in human nutrition and functional medicine, Kaylor brings scientific rigor to a field often mischaracterized as lacking evidence. "Functional medicine is very based off of biochemistry and peer-reviewed journal studies," she explains, debunking the myth that nutritional approaches are merely "woo-woo" or pseudoscientific. Her practice offers personalized strategies ranging from dietary modifications to stress reduction techniques, all tailored to each client's unique biochemistry.

What's particularly empowering about Kaylor's approach is her emphasis that genetics account for only 20-30% of our health outcomes. The remaining 70-80%? Those are factors we can actually control. Whether you're struggling with chronic inflammation, digestive issues, or simply want to optimize your wellbeing, Kaylor's expertise demonstrates how targeted nutritional interventions can create profound changes in how you feel every day.

Ready to take your health into your own hands? Visit vivantenutrition.com to learn how Britt Kaylor's science-based approach might help you discover your path to wellness. The solution to feeling better might be closer than you think.

Speaker 1:

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Nick George.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. Are you in need of nutrition and lifestyle consulting? Well, one professional might be closer than you think. Today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, Britt Kahler, with Vivante Nutrition and Lifestyle Consulting. Britt, how's it going?

Speaker 3:

Great. Thank you, Nick. It's a pleasure to be here. How are you doing?

Speaker 2:

I'm doing great. We're excited to learn all about you and your practice. Please tell us about it.

Speaker 3:

So Vivante Nutrition and Lifestyle Consulting is my nutrition practice, where I provide one-on-one coaching and strategies to help clients address certain health struggles or goals from an integrative perspective. I have a master's in human nutrition and functional medicine, and that education has given me the background to use various options such as dietary strategies, supplementation, stress reduction and environmental changes to help clients improve their health and well-being. I see clients who may want to improve sport performance or are struggling with certain issues like hypertension, poor kidney function, inflammation. My greatest area of expertise is in digestive issues and regaining tolerance to foods, and I've seen over and over the power of using food as medicine, and so we discuss foods, nutrients that are specifically beneficial to each individual. We might go over breathing techniques or other stress reduction techniques or ways to limit environmental exposure to pollutants that could be contributing to a health condition, so I employ a wide variety of strategies to help clients feel better in their own bodies.

Speaker 2:

How did you get into this business?

Speaker 3:

Well, my practice was born out of my own personal experience. I was a pretty sick kid. I grew up with monthly sinus infections. I was a pretty sick kid. I grew up with monthly sinus infections, digestive issues, brain fog, fatigue, joint pain. It was a pretty rough childhood in some ways. So, despite the fact that I was active as a gymnast and we ate a fairly balanced diet, I just didn't feel good.

Speaker 3:

Right before I left for college, I had a doctor recommend that when I had a sinus infection, that I shouldn't eat dairy because it thickens the mucus, and I thought well, maybe if I don't eat dairy, I won't need antibiotics and I won't have to get a doctor while I'm away. I didn't want to have to go through that hassle. Maybe I'll just get over it on my own. But lo and behold, when I cut out dairy, I ended up going from 12 sinus infections a year to one, and so I inadvertently discovered that I had a dairy allergy. Not too long after that, I had a friend recommend that I go see a naturopath, who helped me identify seven different foods that I was reacting to, and once I cut those out of my diet the joint pain, the fatigue, the digestive issues they all went away and I felt like a brand new person, and so that catapulted me on this lifelong quest to learn as much as I could about the human body and different ways to impact it.

Speaker 3:

About 10 years later, I had a friend recommend that I look into getting a master's in nutrition, and initially I thought, oh no, no, I do not want to be counting calories and carbs, that sounds terrible. But it did end up piquing my interest and I found a program that really aligned with what I had already learned you know, learning how to eat foods that we, that our ancestors, ate, and you know, coming from a more holistic perspective, and that program was just absolutely amazing. It gave me a real great foundation to be able to help other people, from a scientific basis, make real specific changes in their lifestyle that could impact their health.

Speaker 2:

You might have already answered this next question, but what are some myths and misconceptions in your industry?

Speaker 3:

Oh, you know, I think one of the biggest misconception is that the lifestyle space and nutrition space is woo, woo or pseudoscientific. In my own program, we were not allowed to post a single assignment or even just make a post on our weekly posts in the classes that were not backed by multiple high quality studies that were published in peer-reviewed journals. And so functional medicine specifically is very based off of biochemistry and peer-reviewed journal studies, and so you can be assured that if you're going to see somebody who is practicing from a functional medicine perspective, that what they're recommending is science-based. To be sure, there's a lot of unsubstantiated things out there on the internet that you got to be careful about, but if you go to somebody who has a good background, they're going to be recommending scientifically-based studies and interventions.

Speaker 2:

Those foods that you found out that you were, or the things that you found out you were incompatible with those seven things? Did they use muscle testing to get to arrive at that?

Speaker 3:

They used a form of muscle testing. It was actually computer based and at first, when they were doing this for me, I thought this is crazy. There's no way that this works, except for they identified something that I knew, that I reacted to, that no one else knew, and it was apples. And that's really random. Not very many people react to apples, and they identified that as one of my problem areas and so I don't know. To be fair, I don't use that methodology. But their methodology worked. It was amazing. I did.

Speaker 2:

And I had the exact same success story you did and I still can't explain how they were able to figure those things out. But once I started running the other direction from anything that might have pesticides in it or gluten even though I don't have celiac disease, I'm just an old Irish guy but apparently gluten really bothers us and most of us are never diagnosed with that as being an issue, but it was life changing when I changed my food. So I hear you.

Speaker 3:

It makes a huge difference.

Speaker 2:

We know that marketing is the heart of every business. So who are your target customers and how are you attracting them now?

Speaker 3:

So currently most of my clients come from word of mouth or my website, so they'll hop onto my website and they'll see. You know that I help a lot of people with digestive issues and food intolerances and or just that I'm a nutritionist in the area and so I do a lot of general nutrition and a lot of um digestive and uh gaining tolerance to foods, and it's all been word of mouth and my website.

Speaker 2:

Have you ever thought about doing a podcast?

Speaker 3:

Well, I have been on one other podcast before and now this one, and I'm I'm thrilled about it, so I may do some more in the future.

Speaker 2:

Go ahead and plug the other one. What was that one?

Speaker 3:

So that was a Love Covered Life podcast and that's a fantastic podcast, but it's a little bit more on the spiritual side and so-.

Speaker 2:

But did they focus on you or were you just kind of like a guest that they talked to briefly or-.

Speaker 3:

I was a guest.

Speaker 2:

Okay, cool, yeah, yeah. Well, it didn't seem like it was your first rodeo Outside of work. What do you do for fun?

Speaker 3:

Oh gosh, outside of work, probably the biggest thing that I'm doing right now is transforming my backyard into an edible landscape, and so I've got so many trees, bushes, plants, flowers back there. My daughter and I are pulling something out of the garden almost every single month of the year, and it's been really fun to see her learn which flowers are edible, and she knows where all the plants are. She's really excited about the golden raspberries right now. Um, so that's my biggest project that we've had fun doing. And then we're just now getting back into rock climbing. I took a hiatus after my daughter was born, but we've just started back up, and I absolutely love rock climbing for the ability to get a stretching workout, cardio, strength and balance, and if you've got a good partner on the other end of your rope which you should have a good partner you get talk therapy all in one evening.

Speaker 2:

So those are my two things. I'm jealous of your backyard. That's the project that me and my kids and wife have talked about a lot. You know, permagardening kind of sounds the same.

Speaker 3:

Yes, yeah, I've employed a lot of permagardening techniques back there.

Speaker 2:

So, Britt, tell our listeners one thing they should absolutely remember about Vivante Nutrition, Lifestyle Consulting. Nutrition and Lifestyle Consulting Sorry.

Speaker 3:

Well, you know, I think this applies to the nutrition space in general but, you know, a while back, people thought that genetics was the end all be all. You know, if you family had, if you had a history of heart disease, you're going to get heart disease. And now that the human genome has been sequenced, they've really discovered that your genetics is really only 20, maybe 30% of your overall health picture, and the rest is usually something that you can control, like your nutrition, like your lifestyle, exercise, and so what I want people to know is that they can be empowered to take their health into their own hands, and if they get stuck in this specific area, that's where the Bivanti Nutrition comes in, or other functional medicine practitioners or integrative practitioners can come in and help you really pinpoint very specific strategies that can help make a huge difference.

Speaker 2:

And how can our listeners learn more about Vivante Nutrition and Lifestyle? Counseling online or consulting online and by phone number?

Speaker 3:

So my website is wwwvivantenutritioncom. My phone number is 970-481-8156. And most of my information is on my website. My email address is there too, if they prefer to reach out that way, and that is Britt at vivantenutritioncom.

Speaker 2:

Well, Britt, I really appreciate you being on the show and we definitely wish you and Vivante the very best moving forward. Well, thank, I really appreciate you being on the show and we definitely wish you and Vivante the very best moving forward.

Speaker 3:

Well, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure to meet with you, Nick.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPFortCollinscom. That's GNPFortCollinscom, or call 970-438-0825.