289. 5 Steps to Create a Comeback for Your Midlife Health with Holly Bertone

Are you a high-achieving woman in midlife feeling stuck in the cycle of yo-yo dieting, low energy, and restless nights—despite doing everything right? 

In our latest episode, we sits down with Holly Bertone, a former FBI Chief of Staff turned Certified Holistic Health Coach, to uncover why traditional approaches to health fail so many women—and what to do instead.

Holly shares how her own health crises, including breast cancer and autoimmune disease, forced her to rewrite the script on wellness. She reveals the hidden reasons your health habits may be sabotaging your success and introduces her powerful Rocky Framework for creating sustainable change. 

If you’ve been chasing quick fixes or relying on willpower alone, this conversation is your wake-up call.

You’ll walk away with a new perspective on emotional eating, how childhood patterns influence adult behaviors, and how to reclaim control of your health by aligning with your future self.

Don’t miss this chance to hear the comeback story that could inspire your own!

Resources From The Guest

>> Holly’s Website

>> Holly’s Instagram

>> Holly’s Podcast: Your Midlife Comeback Story Podcast

>> Holly’s "What’s Your Secret Craving Type?" Quiz

Resources From This Episode

>> Insulin Resistance Diet Blueprint - https://www.zivli.com/blueprint?el=podcast

>> Free Low Insulin Food Guide - https://www.zivli.com/ultimatefoodguide?el=podcast

>> Join the Zivli Program - https://www.zivli.com/join?el=podcast

>> Test Your Insulin at Home - https://www.zivli.com/testing?el=podcast

Have a question? Email us at: support@zivli.com

Transcript

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (00:04)
Hey there and welcome back to the reshape your health podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Morgan Nolte. And today we have Holly Bertone with us. She is a former FBI chief of staff for counterintelligence turned certified holistic health coach. She helps midlife women find the clues to prioritize their health. So their high achievement lifestyle no longer clashes with unwanted weight gain, a lack of energy and restless nights. Holly spent 20 years in project management consulting

and federal government service. After her own experience with breast cancer, healing herself from an autoimmune disease and creating a no conflict divorce, she learned there's more to life than burning the candle at both ends and living according to everyone else's agenda. As a certified holistic health coach, she helps women combine the principles of high performance and mindset to ditch diet culture and create sustainable results that are an effortless part of your lifestyle.

Holly is also a keynote speaker, number one Amazon bestselling author and the host of your midlife comeback story podcast. Holly, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm excited to have you here.

Holly Bertone (01:15)
Thank you so much for having me and I really look forward to connecting with you and your listeners.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (01:21)
Yeah, of course. Well, I know the first thing on everyone's mind. I know it was the first thing on my mind when I got your pitch was, okay, how did Holly go from being a chief of staff for counterintelligence at the FBI to becoming a certified holistic health coach? So let's just start there.

Holly Bertone (01:37)
Yeah, it does sound like a crazy point A to point B, but I promise the two connect and you're actually going to be surprised at how well they connect. And I was actually hired in at the FBI. This was post 9 11. It was about 2004. And if you remember back then, the internet was still relatively new databases were still, you know, kind of in, in their, their beginning stages and the 9 11 commission report came out, the WMD commissioner report came out.

And they basically said that the agencies aren't talking to each other and the agencies aren't talking internally. So I had just gotten my security clearance. One of my old managers called me up and said, Hey, we've got an opening down in Quantico. Do you want to come work for the FBI? ⁓ yes, please. was a childhood dream of mine. I just never thought that it would ever come true. So I jumped at the opportunity and so I was a project manager. wasn't an agent.

So I was a data nerd through and through. And so what I did down in Chronico and then up at headquarters was look at the recommendations from Congress and these programs that had all of these inefficiencies that had all of these disparate data points and, they weren't talking within, they weren't talking internally. So I actually went through four or five different programs.

and looked at the entire program and put the puzzle pieces together. So just take this huge mess and then put the puzzle pieces together. And I just want to pause there for a second, because I think this is important. When I was about 10 years old, one of my favorite things to do was I would, I love doing jigsaw puzzles. And we had this huge dining room table, but I got bored with the thousand piece puzzles. So I would take three different ones.

dump them on the table, mix them up and put them back together. I think, again, just data nerd alert. I think this is just how our brain is wired. So, or how my brain is wired. So this is exactly what I did at the FBI. And then I guess I did a good job because they brought me in as the chief of staff for counterintelligence. So I ran the entire program management office. We did a lot of data analytics. What we did was we looked at the trends. We looked at the past. We looked at the data.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (03:38)
Thank

Holly Bertone (04:00)
and we were able to kind of predict some future threats. So that's exactly what I did there. Fast forward, as a certified holistic health coach, I like to take a different approach because I think there's so many different ways to achieve results in our space and I recognize and I honor all of them. And I think a big piece of it that...

you know, a lot of people in our industry, they only focus on, you know, the, the, the diet culture and, know, what am I supposed to eat or not eat to get the results? But what happens is that we don't go back to that place. We don't look at the root cause of what got us here. And we also don't look at that. Okay. So I have all the steps, but how am going to make this sustainable? So I really like to take those three components of my background with the FBI and incorporate that.

with what I do as a certified holistic health coach. So I really help women specifically in midlife get to that place where we can look at the root cause, where we have those action steps and then we can also look at it from a place of sustainability.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (05:08)
Yeah, okay, that is a really good through line, because I had no idea. But it sounds like you're looking at the pieces of a woman's life, not necessarily pieces of a system within the FBI or an operational unit within the FBI and say, can we optimize this? You're looking at a woman's health and saying, okay, what are all the pieces here? Which ones aren't in the right place? How can we get them there? How can we keep them there? That makes total sense.

Holly Bertone (05:33)
Yeah, absolutely,

absolutely. Our lives are puzzles. That's really what it is.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (05:38)
Yeah. Well, that's cool. I want to ask the next question about a comeback. So not very many people use that word, a comeback. And I thought that was really interesting. And I wanted you to just explain, like, what do you define as a comeback? And how do know if you need a comeback?

Holly Bertone (05:56)
Yeah, that's a great question. I think a lot of us, when we hear the word comeback, I know for me, my mind goes instantly to the movies from the 80s and they always had that training montage. And in three minutes, you go from just your average ordinary person and they go through their montage and they come out and they're ready to face the challenge. And they have this comeback within those three minutes.

And I think so often we think of a comeback as some big event, some big adversity. So, you I've been through cancer, I've been through autoimmune disease, you know, I've been through my own share of adversities, but it doesn't have to be something big or monumental because what happens is that over the years, we have this lifetime of accumulation of all of the little things that add up.

and they add up to our stories, our habits, our patterns, our beliefs. And all of a sudden, we wake up one day and we're like, how did I even get here? Or worse, we don't even wake up to that fact and we just keep doing the same thing over and over again, saying, ⁓ I need to lose this weight, I need to lose 20 to 50 pounds, what diet am I gonna have to go on? And we kind of keep saying these same questions over and over again, but we're in the space where we haven't recognized, like, I need to get out of these patterns.

to be able to achieve that. So I really think a comeback to look at it from that perspective, to look at it from the perspective of where am I and where do I wanna be? And then also from the perspective of, think so often in our 20s and 30s, we chase after the things.

We chase after the, what everyone tells us we're supposed to be happy. The career, the spouse, the kids, the house, and the job, all of the stuff. This is supposed to make us happy. So we spend 10, 15 years chasing after these external factors. And then,

we get the stuff. You by the time we hit our late thirties, forties into our fifties, we have accumulated all of these things that we said would make us happy. But what happens, and I think typically as women, is that we are epic people pleasers. We love to give our power away and we give all of ourselves to all of these things, thinking this is where our happiness comes from. And then over time we get resentful. I mean, because

Isn't it our spouse's fault? Isn't it our kids' fault? Isn't it our jobs' fault that we give so much and we're now totally drained at the end of the day and we've put our health to the side? Isn't it their fault that we put their needs above our own? This is kind of how we think and what we do. So when we can come out of that place and say, okay, I need a comeback. I wanna go back to that place where I'm just

happy with myself and I'm happy with my weight and I'm happy with my life, like truly, authentically, and not just putting on those masks.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (09:11)
Yeah, I think of it as like a daily comeback almost, you know, like I had a really hard day this past at the time of this recording, a really tough day on Sunday. And, ⁓ I had, I was pretty much all the way back by Tuesday, you know? And so I think that I've been reading the book, the gap and the gain. don't know if you've read that one. It's good. And they talk about being anti-fragile. And I really liked that because it's not like resilience where you don't break when something hard happens to you. It's like anti-fragile is like you come back stronger and better.

Holly Bertone (09:14)
Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (09:41)
because you're actually learning and gaining from your past experiences. So to me, that's kind of what a comeback is. It's being anti-fragile. It's becoming better in some way, or form than what you were before because of your hard circumstance, because you're a mom, because you're a working mom, because you're a wife, because you go through the divorce, because you have the death. Like everything becomes a gain in some way, shape or form. I just, that's been top of mind. So think that was pretty well aligned.

Holly Bertone (10:06)
Yeah.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (10:11)
I was kind of curious, you focus a lot on weight loss and improving metabolic health with your clients. And I have some of my own theories, but I'm kind of curious, why do you feel like women tend to have this smarter identity, like put the needs and wants of other people, the expectations of other people above their own true desires, above their own needs, at the expense of their health? And then they turn...

over and over again to a yo-yo diet? Like at the time of this recording, I think we're in October, the new year is coming. We're going to be like bombarded by GLP-1 ads and diet ads. And I think both of us just really roll our eyes at that stuff because like we know it has to be sustainable. But why do you think that over and over again women go back to those yo-yo dieting tendencies?

Holly Bertone (10:48)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I actually, I like to call this the base camp cycle because our future becomes what we feed it. So typically what happens and what I see is that women will start from this place of I have to lose the weight. They'll get some kind of, it's usually some kind of stimulus. It's a milestone birthday or maybe a big event, a graduation, a wedding, they got a sleeveless dress that they wanna wear and cover up their arms.

And so we have some kind of event that's the catalyst. And it goes from a place of not just, it's more than vanity. It's almost from a place of there's some shame involved. There's some blame involved. There's some embarrassment involved. And it's really a combination of this. So it's, don't like my body. And it's more than self-love and self-worth. It's a bigger conversation.

is that I don't like my body, I'm embarrassed, I know I'm not going in the direction that I need to go, but we've also grown up from this perspective of the 80s and 90s diet culture that has not left our society. And so we think that how we're gonna solve the problem is by this external factor, by losing weight. And it's all about the weight and it's all about the pounds.

So we're coming at this from these stories, these patterns, beliefs from the past and our future becomes what we feed it. So we're now feeding this future from a disempowering state. So what happens is we say, okay, I wanna go on the diet. I need to go on a diet. I need to lose this weight. And it's already beginning from this place of heart. so we're at base camp, we're gonna start to climb the mountain. So what does everyone do? They diet, restrict calories, go low fat.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (12:52)
Mm-hmm.

Holly Bertone (13:01)
ignore the protein, and all of a sudden, a week or two weeks later, it becomes really challenging because they're starving, they're hangry, their blood sugar's all over the place, they're reaching for the comfort foods, they're giving themselves cheat days and then eating everything under the sun, so it becomes a little bit more difficult. So then it's like, okay, I'm gonna rely on willpower. Willpower is, I just need more willpower. So willpower's gonna get you about one more week.

And after that, something's going to happen. An obstacle is going to happen. It's a rainy day. ⁓ you know, the dog poops on the floor, you're running late. It could be anything. And all of a sudden you're, you're in this state where, know, the, and I'm sure you've, you've shared this, the, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. So we're already running from this, this stress response. We're already in that sympathetic stress state. And then that, that obstacle happens. We get triggered and we're like,

It's just easier to go back to the old habits. It's easier to say, I'll just start on Monday. And then instead of climbing the mountain, we're right back at base camp. And this is that yo-yo diet that happens over and over again, which is why, and I'll be curious that the research that I've seen, 92 % of diets fail. I don't know if those numbers match with you. But I mean, but really we're looking at an industry with an 8 % success rate.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (14:20)
Yeah, they're, yeah.

Holly Bertone (14:27)
And we're showing up and the industry literally, they're setting us up to fail at a 92 % success rate. mean, two thirds women, age 40 to 60 are clinically overweight. So, you know, so we need to, and again, putting the FBI hat back on, what got like, okay, we now know the pattern, so how can we break it?

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (14:36)
Yeah.

Yeah, something that just came to my mind is what else do we do consistently with an 8 % success rate? Would we watch a movie if the Rotten Tomatoes score said 8 % of people like this? Would we go to a restaurant if it was mostly one star? It's like, no, we would say this is a waste of our time. Why would I do this? But for some reason, these are ingrained beliefs and habits. I wanted to ask you.

Are there things that happened to us in childhood or early adolescence that drive this chronic dieting behavior?

Holly Bertone (15:21)
Yeah, and I was actually just thinking kind of a follow-up to that is it goes back to value. And, you know, I think we grow up and we're told stories, whether, you know, I just had dinner last night, I have a cousin who was kind of a sister cousin. My parents raised her and we're seven years apart. Well, she was always the pretty one and the talented one. And I was always the smart one. You know, we grow up with these

we these these labels almost whether it's know pretty one the smart one the the class clown the the jock the good for nothing one and we have these patterns and these stories and and it gets ingrained in us so now we're chasing okay i'm going to get my validation because this is how i feel so we look at all these external things we give our power away to all of these external things thinking

I'm gonna get my validation by giving my power away because this is how I receive it back. Like I'm giving it to them, but they're not giving it back to me. And what we need to realize is we actually have to give it to ourselves. So I think that is one huge pattern. And then, you you said the same thing, like.

Our mothers were all the low fat and just eat your salad and yeah, Weight Watchers, Counting the Points, the Jenny Craig's, the Dexeter, my goodness, I was a Dexeter girl. And so this is also from a culture perspective, this is what we grow up with. So I think between the patterns and the stories, the culture that we grew up with, and then we just give our power away because we save other people.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (16:40)
watch.

Holly Bertone (17:03)
So we expect them to save us, but no one's coming to save us. And we have to figure out how to do it for ourselves.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (17:09)
No, no, think so.

Yeah, I think everyone's caught up in their own little world. You know, and I remember one time my mom did Weight Watchers off and on growing up and she didn't eat all day long. This was not intermittent fasting.

And this was just saving her points. And she was saving her points for a piece of French silk pie from Perkins. And that's the only thing that she ate all day. I remember SlimFast was big back when I was growing up as well. My grandpa would have the shakes. I would buy SlimFast bars and have them at my school lunches. I have no idea what was in them. And sometimes I wonder, I'm a parent, so I have a six-year-old, a four-year-old, and we're pregnant with our third.

Holly Bertone (17:37)
yeah.

Congratulations.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (17:51)
Thank you. And it's interesting to see what goes on in the school and what they're eating. And man, there's a lot of sugar. And sometimes I wonder, do they not know better? Like, is this a not knowing or not caring?

And because I know so much about the harmful effects of too much sugar, I have to give them the benefit of the doubt and just say they don't know yet. And then I'm like, how do they not know? Childhood obesity is on the rise. think another pattern from childhood I know that I had was food is a reward. Food is a comfort.

Holly Bertone (18:27)
Yes.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (18:29)
Anytime we lost a game, we would go to TCBY and I'd get a parfait and think, it's not bad because it's yogurt and it's low fat. It's loaded with sugar. My dad would get us candy bars every single day after school when he's diabetic. No surprise there because he wanted one on the way home from work, so he'd get one until we fought too much. he's like, you guys don't deserve these candy bars anymore.

But that chronic using of food for a reward. And then I think the other thing that you mentioned too is seeking external validation.

Holly Bertone (18:57)
Yeah.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (19:05)
with standardized tests with like wins and losses in sports. think I'm being very, very intentional with our six year old, especially our four year olds, not quite there yet to say, what were your wins today? Like what were your gains today? Cause he'll get real discouraged if they lose a football game. They're not, they're not very good.

Holly Bertone (19:18)
Hmm.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (19:25)
And so we lose a lot of games and it's discouraging sometimes to him. And I said, you know, you're measuring your progress wrong. Like don't look at the scoreboard. And so I'm starting to have him at the end of each game, tell me three things that he was proud about.

whether they're things he did or an attitude that he had or how he cheered on his teammates and three things that other people on his team did well. And so I think that as parents, we can really do a good job at helping develop self-esteem because you mentioned earlier, it's not so much a self-love or a self-worth issue. I think it really goes back to a self-esteem, a self-confidence.

because they're different entities. I'm sure you know so many people, they're high achievers, right? They may have a great career or they may have great relationships, but the health is like the last domino to fall in their life for some reason. And there's just these blocks, these mental blocks. And I really think that that's one of them is, like you said, seeking external validation and not understanding really the impact of our choices. Because I think that a lot of people,

Holly Bertone (20:05)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (20:32)
actually think they're eating sensibly, actually think that they're eating healthy. It's not that bad. It's not that much. Darn it. A continuous glucose monitor will help bring those choices to light, but it's just really interesting how we've got here. where, as you mentioned, I don't know the stat that you used, but like eight out of 10 adults are overweight or obese.

Holly Bertone (20:35)
Yes.

Yeah.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (20:57)
88 % have some degree of insulin resistance. We're metabolically sick. So if we know yo-yo dieting doesn't work, like what do you feel like is the antidote to that? What is the solution to that?

Holly Bertone (21:02)
We are, we are.

Yeah, I want to get into that, but first I really want to piggyback on something that you said about the reward eating. you know, and, and I think so often in our adult lives and especially women who are juggling the career and juggling the family and all of the things it's, you know, I, I had to stay late at work or, I had a really hard week. So instead of like, I'm tired. I don't want to go home and cook for the family. I'm just going to stop it, know, Chick-fil-A or fast food or order door dash. And.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (21:16)
Mm-hmm.

Holly Bertone (21:41)
And

think like I'm looking for convenience and I'm looking for that reward. Like I worked hard, therefore I deserve. Or that treat day. I was good all week, therefore I deserve. And a big piece of that I also want to share from my own story. I went from in my 20s, I was 40, 45 pounds overweight.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (21:48)
you

Holly Bertone (22:06)
dropped down in my 30s to 110 pounds became a competitive mountain bike racer. But my diet was still ultra processed food, sugar. mean, probably 95 % of my diet was just pure garbage. The ultra processed food, the junk food, the sugar. I drank six cans of Coca Cola day. Lunch, yeah. Some lunches were a family size bag of ⁓ &Ms and

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (22:28)
my goodness.

Holly Bertone (22:35)
Peanut, of course, because we have to get our protein in.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (22:39)
I do like the pink ones.

Holly Bertone (22:40)
Yeah. So, you

know, so, so, you know, so how is it like I lost the 40 pounds, but I didn't address, I still had self-esteem issues. I still had self-worth issues. Like I still ate my emotions, you know, so I lost my weight back in my twenties because of the metabolism. I was just working out all the time, which doesn't work in our forties and fifties and beyond, but, know, but it's like, okay, there's these underlying factors that really need to be addressed. And then we get into these patterns and these habits and we just don't break them.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (22:55)
Mm-hmm.

Holly Bertone (23:10)
So yeah, I wanted to piggyback on that before I jumped into the framework.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (23:10)
Mm.

Yeah, I like to call those like your emotional eating cues and we all have them. The I deserve it eating was huge for me, especially with newborns and putting them to bed. It's like, I deserve this popcorn and these, but this chocolate chips right now. And, when you, when you start to view your thoughts with curiosity instead of like take them as fact and it's like, well, do I deserve this right now? Or I do deserve a rest right now, but do I need the food?

Holly Bertone (23:26)
Yeah. Yeah.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (23:41)
in order to be deserving of that rest? Or do we need to link these? Not so much. So that's one of my favorite things to do just in coaching is to help people sift through what thoughts they're having on a recurring basis that aren't serving them and how we change those thoughts. How do we change your cues? So that could be a whole other topic. But let's get to your framework on how do we break this yo-yo diet cycle?

Holly Bertone (23:44)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I created the Rocky framework and I, it's, should say Rocky inspired framework and I named it after my favorite comeback movie of all time. The original Rocky movie circa, was it 1976? So because Karate Kid I think is second, but Rocky is definitely the first.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (24:11)
Mm-hmm.

Holly Bertone (24:23)
And I think too what's important to know before jumping in is that in that original movie, so many people were like, you remember the Rocky movie? yeah, yeah. Yeah, he beat Apollo Creed. No, he actually didn't. He went 15 rounds with Apollo Creed, but he actually did not beat him. But no one would call Rocky a loser. Like you were talking about with the kids and the lessons, which actually Sarah Blakely said that her dad would ask her at the dinner table those same questions. So that's great that you're doing that with your kids.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (24:51)
And I've heard that he

asked her, she's the founder of Spanx. Is that right? He asked her, how did you fail today? Cause he wanted her to fail because that meant that she was trying and she was pushing herself outside of her comfort zone. But I just hate that word in general. So I'm like, we're either winning or we're learning. But I liked that he challenged her. Yeah.

Holly Bertone (24:55)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yes, yes, it's all the lessons. yeah.

So anyway, so let's jump in. So R stands for rear view mirror. And this is where you release and reclaim the past. This is also where you can redirect and, you know, it's breaking those tethers that tie us to the past. And

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (25:19)
Okay.

Holly Bertone (25:33)
This is, we can't go back and we can't jump in toward DeLorean and we can't go back and change the past, but we can make forgiveness and peace with the other person, with the situation, but most importantly with ourselves. And what I found is that so many women carry around that guilt and that shame around whatever event happens. And this is where everyone likes to point to childhood trauma.

This could be something that happened two weeks ago. know, this is the, when I talk about the accumulation, you know, and I've been through a divorce and this is one of those places where I actually use the same framework. And when I showed up as our marriage was crumbling, it would have been super easy for me to overeat, to have all kinds of anxiety, to overeat, to eat my feelings again. All of these things that I used to do.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (26:06)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Holly Bertone (26:31)
And this was a big traumatic event, but I had that forgiveness. And when I showed up in that place, he had nothing to bounce off of. Like he just didn't train to my energy. So he's like, okay, let's just, I mean, was just a very neutral, it was still a divorce. It was still dark and hard and all the things. It just wasn't as deep in that darkness.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (26:56)
Mm-hmm.

Holly Bertone (26:57)
and that emotional eating didn't happen because I was in that place of forgiveness. So again, we're eliminating the shame, we're eliminating the guilt. This is just coming to that place where we're breaking those tethers from the past, right? Identifying what they are and breaking those tethers. And I use a lot of different meditations and mindset exercises and just a lot of brain entrainment where

you we can, like you said, like it's not the failures, it's the lessons and really start to reframe some of these events that happened. And, you know, and this is again, putting the FBI hat back on. Like this is where we go back and we start to find the clues. You know, what got us here in the first place. So that's our rear view mirror. O is what I like to call own your ship with a P.

and like a boat, and this is personal responsibility. And this is one of those words that's not popular these days, but it needs to happen because, know, again, it's easy to say, ⁓ well, you know, I didn't, I'm not achieving my goals. I'm not losing my weight. I can't eat healthier because my, you know, my spouse, my kids, my job, I'm like, you're really blaming your child for you not taking care of yourself. Really, really.

So yeah, exactly. And that's also not, mean, we're not gonna get into setting good examples, but again, they're going to entrain on us. So if we take care of ourselves, it's gonna be a greater chance of them taking care of themselves as well. So yeah, so ours is personal responsibility. And I think this is important to share. And I wanna go back to that place where this really hit home for me was,

I was diagnosed with breast cancer on my 39th birthday. And because I was young, because I was a competitive mountain bike racer, I thought that I was the epitome of health. I weighed 110 pounds, I had great abs, and I'd stand on a podium. they give you, when you finish the race, they give you medals or trophies, and sometimes you get pint glasses. So they give you some really cool swag when you place. So I thought it was the epitome of health.

Again, I was eating 95 % processed junk, which...

Right, right. So I'm like, how did this even, not from a woe is me why, just how did this happen? How is it, breast cancer is just for older women. How did this happen? I'm 39. I stand on podiums and get medals around my neck, like a little kind of cocky and arrogant. And so my surgeon, the very first appointment, she put her hand on my knee. Dr. Morgan, you wanna know what she told me? She said, lightning.

struck. And that those two words, I needed to hear them at that moment in time. But two of the worst words that a doctor could ever say, because what it did was it took the responsibility away from me and it placed all of the blame on this horrible disease just randomly happening. So right, right, right. Like

Like I just woke up one day and the doorbell rang and I opened up the doorbell and there's breast cancer saying, gee Holly, it's your unlucky day. And honestly, that is what I believed. And that's what our medical system promotes. That's what everyone in support, you go to support group and that's also what they promote. So I believe this for years. I didn't make any changes. I was still living that.

You know, was chief of staff at the FBI. was living this high adrenaline, overachieving lifestyle. And I had a family at the time and doing all of the things. And I didn't stop and I didn't change any of my habits. One year later, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, Hashimoto's thyroiditis. And again, thinking, okay, well, just give me a pill and I'm gonna be better, which didn't work.

So, but my health just kept getting worse and worse over the years until I started going down the path of becoming a health coach, healing myself, learning, ⁓ there's things like nutrition, lifestyle factors, your thoughts, your emotions, environmental toxins, your relationships. I mean, it's everything. I mean, food is huge, but it's all of these other factors too. And these are all factors that help to reduce those risks for

cancer, for autoimmune disease, for diabetes, for heart disease, for all of the big ones. Going back to the basics, we can talk about that in a minute, but these are all the things that you have agency over, these lifestyle factors. And I think so often we get back to what holds people back. I think we get into this mindset of, everything in moderation. But when everything is everything in moderation, it's access of everything.

You know, and all of this gets stored in our visceral fat. And then, you know, we wonder, well, why am I getting sick? So I finally saw the light, finally was like, okay, this is why all of this happens. This is end stage inflammation. It's not just cancer showing up on my doorstep saying it's your unlucky day. But it was until I took that responsibility that things started to shift. And it wasn't an overnight journey and it wasn't

a up and down.



And it wasn't an overnight thing. mean, it was a journey that took me years to really reclaim my health. But what I learned is that, know, it's, it's disease is not the absence or I should say good health is not the absence of disease. know, good health is when you have these lifestyle factors. Good health is when you can incorporate these lifestyle factors. When you have that agency, nothing is guaranteed obviously, but you can really minimize your risk.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (36:26)
Mm-hmm.

Holly Bertone (36:27)
for this kind of disease. So that is O, own your ship with a P like the boat. Yeah. So C is create your future self. And I think this one is important because I know this one is important because when we look at diet culture, when we look at weight loss culture, again, it's what do need to do to lose 10 pounds in two weeks or whatever that looks like. And it's always focused on that number on this scale.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (36:32)
I like that. What is the C?

Holly Bertone (36:56)
And what I think women forget is that, you know, we're looking for that quick fix. And I think what women forget is we need to approach this from a long-term perspective because, you know, in our, in our twenties and thirties, we're pretty much invincible. Once we start hitting forties and fifties, it's like, ⁓ yeah, things aren't working like they should. And that trajectory is going to continue to get worse.

unless you change something. this is really create your future self is what would my 80 year old self want me to do today? What would my 85 year old self want me to do today? And typically, you know, women live older than men. We want to be independent. We want to

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (37:25)
huh.

Holly Bertone (37:45)
retire and be able to travel with the people who we love, with our friends, with our family. We want our kids to give us a call and say, hey, we're going to the amusement park today with the grandkids. Do you want to come along? We want to be able to say, yes, absolutely. And run around all day at the zoo or the amusement park and keep up. We want to be able to do these things. We want to be able to just bring the groceries in.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (38:02)
Mm-hmm.

Holly Bertone (38:09)
from, we don't even be able to drive, bring the groceries in, put the groceries away. And as we're putting the groceries away and the cat or the dogs running around in our feet, not trip and fall. I mean, this is, it's so basic, but this is what we're gonna be dealing with. And as we age, and you know, and I like to say, if you think about it from the perspective of, everyone says, ⁓ I hate squats. Like everyone says that. And if you think about it from this perspective,

Let's say you're 50 years old and let's say you live to be 85 years old. So that's 35 years. We go to the bathroom on average eight times a day. We get older, pelvic floor issues. It's probably gonna be more than that, but let's just say eight times a day. if my math is correct, eight times 35 years is about 100,000 squats that we are gonna do from the age of 50 to the age of 85.

So you can say, hate squats all you want, but guess what? They're important to do basic things like go to the bathroom and not require assistance, not require having to use one of those arm things. So these are the things that we need to think about. And so often it's like, ⁓ Holly, you don't understand. I've got all these fires at work and all these fires at home. Like, I can't even think 15 minutes ahead.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (39:17)
Mm-hmm.

Holly Bertone (39:36)
let alone 15 years out, but we have to. We have to because those years, they go fast. And what we do today and what we do tomorrow is gonna impact the life that we have every single year as we age.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (39:52)
I mean, you're speaking my language, so you're preaching to the choir to me. love it. And I like squats, by the way, just for the record. We're the two people.

Holly Bertone (39:58)
Yeah, I do too. I do

too. And I'll even give your listeners a few, and I know you've got an entire podcast talking about this, but just a few easy ways to get started. mean, just as you're brushing your teeth, just to do a few squats. And I'm not talking like the whole thing. I'm just saying just a few easy things to get started. And you think about pushups, like, I hate pushups. Well, just go on the counter or go on the wall to get started.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (40:12)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Holly Bertone (40:24)
You know, and, and when I was at my sickest, one of the things that I did to start getting more movement in my life and was every time I went to the bathroom, I did something, you know, whether it was a pushup on the wall, did a few squats, you know, kind of did some, jumping jacks or, know, a little running in place or whatever that was, it jump on the rebounder, you know, and I would find something, lift some weights. I would find something to do to get that movement in. And it just, grew over time.

So even if you're not doing anything, it is easy to get started. It really is. And we need to get the strength training in two to three times a week, 20 to 30 minutes. Keep it simple. And then movement all throughout the day. There have been studies that show that if you work out in the morning, but then sit on your butt all day at work and don't do anything else, that's still not good for your health. We need to get that movement in all throughout the day. And then, and I know I'm preaching to the choir with this one, more protein, more fat.

So eat those foods that are gonna fuel your body and really give you that energy to go all day long without the crashes.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (41:31)
Yep, love it. And I'm like, I know it'll be so well aligned. So I think it's always nice for my listeners to hear from someone else. All right.

Holly Bertone (41:39)
Yeah,

and not a peanut &M's, I'm talking real protein. In fact, it was funny, I just had a conversation with someone the other day, because I had mentioned, I eat two pounds of bacon a week, and they're like, my God, what? What? But here's the thing, I don't get bacon at the store. I don't get the bacon that's in the package, it's full of the process and the nitrates and the chemicals and all the things. I get bacon, it's straight from the farm, I go to a Mennonite farmer locally, and it's literally from pig to get in my belly.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (41:43)
Right.

Yum. Yum.

I

love that.

Holly Bertone (42:10)
It's

real bacon. It's not the stuff that you get at the store. I was like, this is how bacon should be. And it is so good. And it is so good for you. But yeah, I'm like, this is why. I always have it on the counter. I eat enough food. I actually do two meals a day, but I do enough at breakfast and lunch that I'm full for the day. And I typically don't have snacks. But if I get hungry, I always have bacon on the counter. It's like, I love my protein and fat.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (42:33)
There you go. Yeah,

we I made some we had a someone sent us like a pork box and it was so good. I made that bacon this morning and I'm like, this is how bacon should taste. Why? Why does not all of the bacon taste like this? And my husband's like, is this more expensive? And I'm like, yeah, but it's worth it.

Holly Bertone (42:42)
⁓

Yeah.

That's good. And I just, actually did a reel on Instagram relatively recently that was like trying to figure out how to source locally. So I got my, my eggs, cause I get my eggs from my, my neighbor who has a chicken coop in their yard. ⁓ I had a friend give me some venison from his recent deer hunting trip, you know, and then I got some raw cheese from a local farm. So, I mean, I, just, made some recipes with as many locally sourced, like literally from animal to get in my belly. There was nothing in the middle. And I was like, it just,

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (43:10)
Nice.

Holly Bertone (43:22)
going back to the source and going back to the earth and going back to what God gave us, it keeps us so much healthier than opening up a bag of processed chemicals.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (43:34)
It's true. It's like, think about how many steps a cheeto had to go through. A cheeto is not real food. A cheeto is food parts that have been reconstructed and well marketed to make you think that it's food. It's not. Like if it doesn't have eyes or if it didn't come out of the ground, like it's not real food. So those are two easy things. Like, well, did it, you know, does it have eyes or did it come out of the ground? If not, it's not real food. So, or off a tree, know, here's the thing.

Holly Bertone (43:59)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (44:02)
Okay,

so we've done the ROC, what's the K?

Holly Bertone (44:06)
Yeah, so K is keep the vision, the view. This is another one where we're gonna use some more FBI ninja tactics. And this one is one of my favorites because this is when we, and I talked a little bit before about the obstacles. Every single day, the obstacles are gonna happen. a rainy day, dog poops on the carpet, late, left your phone in the car. And when we have these daily obstacles and we're running from fire to fire, it helps us to like spin out of control.

And when it's not about removing the stress in your life, it's not about like, ⁓ self care and, you know, your oxygen mask on first, which is important. But what's more than that is like, okay, let's figure out how we can coexist.

because we're not gonna remove the stress, we're not gonna remove our family, we're not gonna remove our job. I mean, maybe sometimes you have to, but what I'm saying is from that bigger picture, like these are all the things that we love in our life. So it's not eliminating, it's learning how to coexist with the daily stress, with the daily demands, with those daily obstacles so that they don't throw you off track, so that they don't hijack your day. And I've got the...

perfect example for this because this was just a total, I totally geek out, I was a psychology major, I totally geek out with human, watching humans just be humans. And the other month I spoke at MIT and it was one of those times where just I had a speech in Boston and then came back home and had another speech, so back to back speaking engagements. And that plane schedule needed to be tight. Normally I try to plan things a little bit better, but it was just something that was out of my control.

So I get to the airport. Well, the flight is three hours delayed. So at first, everyone's kind of annoyed because we didn't know it was going to be three hours at first. So everyone's kind of annoyed, but not doing too much. Well, then fast forward about an hour into it. And I'm just there. I just got out my laptop. I'm just working, working and watching and just kind of observing. And about an hour into it, people started to get really angry. They got agitated. They got triggered.

They're having this visceral response in their body and they're looking for a way to cope. They're looking, their brain is seeking that dopamine hit of I need to go back to homeostasis. I'm not okay in my body right now. So what did they do? They went over to the counter and screamed at the attendants because the flight was delayed. You you don't understand. I have somewhere important to go. Okay, they're not gonna fix the plane. That's not their job. And we all have somewhere important to go.

Okay, they're gonna get us, we paid for a ticket, they're gonna get us there, it just might take a minute. So that was the first thing I observed. The second thing I observed was then everyone, and it was like one and then another and another going to Dunkin' Donuts. Coming back with the bagels, coming back, yeah, coming back with the bagels, coming back with the donuts, just like, I gotta eat my way through this, right? Trying to calm themselves down. And then the third thing that I noticed was the group that went to the bar.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (46:57)
That was what I thought you were going to say first.

Holly Bertone (47:14)
at eight o'clock in the morning and drank. And this is how, I always like to say homeostasis is like our brain, our brain is, homeostasis is the equivalent of our brain on the couch, the house is quiet, favorite cozy blanket, cup of hot chocolate in the favorite mug, your puppy's snuggled beside you and you're watching a Hallmark movie. That's what our brain wants to be in. Our brain just wants to be

Our brain just wants to be normal and comfortable. Right, right. So it gets agitated. It's like, I don't like that. So I'm going to seek the things to help me be comfortable again. Things like food, alcohol, even shopping, gambling. We can go down all of the path, right? Obviously we're talking about food today. So this is why the keep the vision, not the view. And back to the FBI tactics. I like to call them or we call them in the FBI tripwires.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (47:44)
and comfortable and safe.

Holly Bertone (48:13)
And I like to teach my students and my program this because again, it's not about removing these obstacles. It's about not letting the obstacles hijack your day. And almost to a place where, you know, in FBI counterintelligence, we use tripwires almost from a predictive perspective. So we would take past events and use that to predict future events. And we use these tripwires to say, okay, how can I catch the bad guy?

How can I catch the bad guy before he does something bad?

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (48:45)
Like what's

their earliest cue that they're going to be doing something? Yeah.

Holly Bertone (48:49)
Exactly, So yeah, so that's a perfect way to say it. yeah, so that's what this is all about is keep the vision, the view, is really being able to handle those obstacles.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (48:59)
interesting. This is a little bit off topic.

Holly Bertone (49:02)
Mm.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (49:02)
but you

said that kind of the goal is not to like eliminate all this stuff, but to live in harmony with it. I just heard of a podcast this morning where the Surgeon General came out with like a advisory on parenting and like how just being a parent and parenting these days affects our health. And I'm like, yeah, that does. But then specifically the, was talking about parenting now versus parenting like 30 years ago and the different challenges and struggles and societal pressures and social media.

Holly Bertone (49:20)
Yeah

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (49:32)
and high unrealistic expectations that parents have on themselves. I'm like, this is really interesting. So I think that sometimes we have a certain way of doing things. I call it our rhythm of life. And we don't stop to question, is this how I want to be living my life or am I living my life kind of by a default mechanism? And I think it's always important, like you said, to keep the vision. So for us, our family, we want to be relaxed. We want to be safe.

We want to be stable.

So does putting my son in football and soccer at the same time lead to those outcomes? Does that lead to enough family dinners at home or does that overstretch me? It overstretches me. Like we're a one sport at a time kind of family for that reason. And so I think we have to be very mindful with every single choice that we make recognizing that when we say yes to something, we're saying no to something else. And usually that something else is our downtime that we need to recuperate and refresh and show up as the best version of ourself in every intention.

area of life that we choose. So I just wanted to kind of emphasize that a little bit that remember everything you say yes to you're saying no to something else and usually it's yourself and your own goals and your own priorities. So all right we have made it to the why so what is the why of the Rocky?

Holly Bertone (50:46)
Yeah, absolutely. Yes.

Yeah, so quick recap. R is rear view mirror. O is own your ship with a P. C is create your future self. K is keep the vision out the view. And then Y is come back home to you. And this is, I mean, just think back to the movie, The Wizard of Oz. Like you have it inside of you all along. This isn't gate kept. We've known this ever since we watched the movie, which those monkeys still scare me. But we've known this forever.

Like it is inside of us, like you said, we just forget it. We forget, we put all of the stuff everywhere else and we forget that it's inside of us. We forget to listen to our own cues. We forget to enjoy what we're eating, to be mindful, to be in that place where we live in peace, where we live in harmony with ourselves. And again, this isn't just, ⁓ self-love and self-care and I'm gonna go get a massage and like.

an hour later, you're back in the car, you're like all the stress is back in your life. This is your brain's new homeostasis in your body. This is actual peace. This is what the comeback, when I talk about the comeback, this is what it is. And I think even more so than that, and especially as women, we think about legacy. We're raising kids, we're in our careers, we're doing the things. Legacy is important to us. And when we're in this place,

We're no longer in training on others. They're in training on us. This is when we get to be, we get to be the beacon and the light. This is when our kids come up to us. I actually had a client, she said she'd been trying to get her daughter to exercise with her and she just kept begging and begging and begging and the daughter's like teenage daughter. She's like, no. And you know, and finally she came back home to herself. She's in her power. And she was just exercising.

her daughter and her daughter's friend who were in the living room just doing whatever, they're like, hey, can we work out with you too? They entrain to her being in her own power. She came back home to herself. And that's what this is all about. We're taking care of ourselves, but we're also leaving that legacy for others to see that power. This is when people are like, wait, you're how old? You look younger, you feel younger.

You're literally aging backwards at this point. So that's what I feel like the comeback story is all about.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (53:10)
That's awesome. I love that the process or the framework, however you want to refer to, I love that. I hope that our listeners really got a lot out of that. When it comes to the come back home to you, the first thing that came to my mind is self study, like really just paying attention.

to your own behaviors, your own thoughts. We're so inclined to think that the answer is in the next podcast or the next book that we read or the next reel that we watch. And we forget that experience is our best teacher if we let it be. And so let's really take time to, I like what you said on the first one, know, that rear view mirror, reframe the past. Like let's reframe our past experiences to make them gains. Let's learn from our...

Holly Bertone (53:47)
Yeah.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (53:52)
mistakes, you know? And then I think just reflecting on the Come Back Home To You and the example that we set for others, it's so important. And I also just, I think, you one of the core values in our company is just authenticity. And so I think not only can we set that example of strength and

self-love and self-empowerment and self-confidence, but we can also set that example for our kids, our colleagues, our friends of vulnerability and authenticity. And in this culture of social media where we only see like the perfect sides of life, we can have hard days and we can teach our kids it's okay to have a hard day and then they see us bounce back. So I think that it's important to share in my, this is just my opinion, all aspects, because if we...

If we don't want to turn to the hard stuff, we can't learn from the hard stuff. If we're just turning a blind eye to those hard experiences, we're not learning from it.

And so I think your experience in the FBI shows just that. It's like you took a hard experience, you took a messy experience, and you made meaning of it, and you helped the agency get better because of it. And that's what we can do if we choose to with our choices and with our past. So this has been a really awesome conversation. I think you're very interesting person, Holly. Can you let our listeners know where they can learn more about you?

Holly Bertone (55:06)
yeah, absolutely. So I guess the best place to go is after you're done listening to this podcast episode, you're still on the podcast platform, go to your midlife comeback story podcast and I would search episode 136. This is where you're gonna uncover your covert weight loss block using FBI tactics. So this is really where I put the two together. You're gonna love that episode, episode 136, your midlife comeback story podcast.

and then say hello on Instagram at holly.berton. I post on there every day. So come say hello and yeah, let me know what you thought.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (55:45)
So thank you so much, Holly. It was a real pleasure getting to know you and talk with you today.

Holly Bertone (55:50)
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Morgan Nolte, PT, DPT (55:52)
Okay, we'll cut it off. That was cool. Okay, let me stop the recording.

Holly Bertone (55:55)
Yeah, thank you.