About Lori Rose Holistic

Hi everyone! I am Lori Valentine Rose, PhD, board certified nutrition professional (CNP), board certified holistic nutrition consultant (BCHN), certified Functional Diagnostic Nutrition® Practitioner (FDN-P), board registered herbalist (RH-AHG), board certified wellness coach (NBC-HWC), teacher, wife, and mom.  I am a passionate studier of nutrition, herbalism, spirituality, and pretty much anything that makes our minds, bodies, souls, and planet a better place to inhabit.  I have taught biology and nutrition at a local community college for around ten years, have been back-yard organic gardening for around five years, and have been pursuing clinical herbalism for several years.   I recently developed, created, and now instruct the Hill College Holistic Wellness Program, the most thorough, affordable, national board certified wellness program in the country.  Thanks to my variety of education in how the body works, scientific literacy, functional diagnostics, environmental impact, and nutrition, I skillfully combine this knowledge to use science-based nutrition and herbalism to address the root cause of your health issues through science-based behavior-change coaching.  I am honored you are here, and hope you will join me on my quest for holistic wellness!

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If you are tired of band-aide solutions to chronic problems that don’t seem to help, tired of trying to use every fad diet and counting calories to lose weight, tired of waking up exhausted and living life on overdrive, or tired of the hopeless feeling that you are just stuck living with your health issues forever, then you have come to the right nutrition consultant!!!  Read my story below, and sign up for a consultation with me to let me help you learn how to use the tools of nutrition, herbalism, and positive thinking to support your body while it heals so that you can feel amazing enough to start following your dreams!

Email me at LoriRoseHolistic@gmail.com to set up your free 15 minute introductory phone call!

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Education and Training:

• PhD in Biology from the University of Alabama
• BS in Bioenvironmental Science from Texas A&M
• Board Certified Nutrition Professional through the National Association of Nutrition Professionals
• Board Certified in Holistic Nutrition through the National Association of Nutrition Professionals
• Holistic Nutritionist training from Energetic Health Institute (EHI)
• Functional Diagnostic Nutrition® Practitioner (FDN-P)
• Functional biochemistry and assessment practitioner training at Metabolic Healing with Michael McEvoy, FDN
• Board Certified in Holistic Wellness Coaching through the International Consortium of Health and Wellness Coaching
• Health Coach training through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition (IIN)
• Registered Herbalist (American Herbalist Guild)
• Herbal mentorships with Rosalee de la Foret (RH-AHG) and Paul Bergner (RH-AHG)
• Clinical Herbalist training with KP Khalsa at International Integrative Educational Institute
• Herbal Training with Rosemary Gladstar at Sage Mountain Herbal Retreat
• Herbal Training with Juliet Blankespoor at Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine
• Herbal Training with Rosalee de la Foret, jim mcdonald, John Gallagher, and Todd Caldecott with Learning Herbs and Herb Mentor
• Herbal Training with Kami McBride at Living Awareness Institute
• Herbal Training with Sam Coffman at The Human Path
• Certified Citizen Gardener trainer
• Permaculture Training with Elizabeth Anna
• Garden-based Education training with Real School Gardens
• Guest blogger for Mommypotamus, Growing Up Herbal, and Kitchen Stewardship

My Story

I know it sounds cliche, but I really do feel like my purpose on this earth is to help people find the authenticity, vulnerability, and courage that it takes to follow their dreams. If you want to see me cry with soulful joy, show me any hurting soul do the work to find healing and wholeness whether it’s on My Little Pony (friendship is magic, of course), Frozen, or a real human.  I think my personal contribution to this magical gift of healing is through my teaching of how to use food and herbs as medicine, and how to reconnect to our authentic selves through cultivating forgiveness, positivity, vulnerability, and gratitude.  Because here’s the thing: you can’t really follow your dreams if your body and/or soul feel like crap!

My journey to holistic nutrition and herbalism as paths to vibrant health is a seemingly unconnected series of events and passion sparks that only the Universe could have orchestrated.  When I was in High School, I saw a surgery performed on TV and knew I wanted to be a healer.  I entered college as a pre-med student, but went on several study abroad trips that made me fall in love with nature and simple living.  Realizing how much time I would have to spend cooped up inside doing residency and medical school, I switched majors to environmental science and eventual got my PhD in aquatic biology while studying abroad on a very low-population Bahamian island.  I abandoned my desire to heal humans and instead called myself a healer of the earth.

My connection to the earth led me to adopt vegetarian and vegan diets, which led to 20 pounds of weight gain although I was following supposedly healthy diet protocols.  During my PhD research in the Bahamas, vegetables were not abundant and I resumed meat eating.  I got married during this time and found myself joining my husband’s then love of sodas and desserts, and decreased my gym time to spend time adoring each other on the couch watching TV.  One day after about 1 year of marriage, I found myself walking across campus completely out of breath, weight in the obese BMI, living an extremely apathetic life devoid of energy or ambition (which I know now are signs of pre-diabetes or even diabetes), and decided it was time to get my diet and lifestyle back on track.

I found a program online using the USDA recommendations for weight loss including calorie counting, portion control, burning every calorie I ate (I ran 6 miles per day!), following a high whole-grain low-fat diet.  I followed it almost perfectly and lost all of my weight quickly.  I was measuring everything I ate, carrying measure cups in my purse and out to eat (when I agreed to go), running every day, avoiding parties so I wouldn’t have to say no to food, and avoiding dinner dates with my husband for the same reason.  If he tried to take food off my carefully measured plate, I would yell at him “THOSE WERE MY NOODLES AND THEY ARE THE ONLY NOODLES I GET ALL DAY”!  But boy was I skinny, and I thought I was healthy.  I was doing what the program told me to, and getting tons of compliments! Looking back, I realize that these were probably all signs of an eating disorder (although again, I was just following the weight-loss rules of our country’s nutrition paradigm), that I was cranky, and avoiding relationships for the sake of a magical weight number.

This probably would have continued much longer than the year it did, but I got pregnant.  I decided to stay on my diet plan but only add the 250 extra calories per day that I needed in order to feed the baby trying to grow inside my probably malnourished body.  A few weeks into my pregnancy, however, I was supposed to give a talk to my colleagues and teachers and almost fainted.  I immediately emailed my advisor’s wife, who I knew was health conscious, to ask how I could still eat what I was calling healthy while being pregnant. This must have been an act of the Universe, because she led me to the toxin-free and pharmaceutical-free lifestyle I still try to employ to this day.  She convinced me to eat more calories and lay off my weight goals for a few months until the baby was born.

Thanks to her I learned all about how daily toxin exposure through household chemicals, body care products, and medications can negatively affect our bodies, and I went through my entire pregnancy with no medication, not even chapstick or numbing during my episiotomy! (I know, I know, TMI)  I realize now I was being a bit overzealous, but I wanted to do everything I could to avoid these toxins and I didn’t know of any alternatives (and I wouldn’t until 8 years later when I discovered herbs!).   I was still following the high-grain, low-fat diet however, and wouldn’t discover how this was still causing malnourishment to me and baby until I discovered Weston A. Price nutrition.

Through my quest to live toxin-free, I discovered a Naturopathic Doctor’s website that not only gave tips on avoiding hazardous chemicals but also taught a completely different nutrition then I had ever seen on all the USDA approved weight loss sites.  This Weston Price nutrition was based on scientific interpretation of both the USDA studies leading to flawed low-fat recommendations as well as centuries of human co-evolution with our food in the environment.  It taught me that counting calories and low-fat diets lead to malnutrition, brain fog, and hormonal issues to name a few, and high-grain diets lead to digestive issues and possible autoimmune disease.  I actually tried his nutrition program to prove him wrong because I was so sold on my previous rapid weight loss success and he had a 100% money back guarantee.  I bought his book with the full intention of getting a refund in 30 days, ask tons of questions so I could follow it perfectly, and I did just that.

On his plan, I was eating low-grain, high organic grass-fed local meat and saturated fat, organic veggies, and I was counting or measuring anything.  Not only did I lose my baby weight, but I also had more energy and a better mood then I had had since I could remember!  I was stuck with that book with no refund, but I had discovered the organic whole-food nutrition way to health!  I was still focusing on food for weight loss, however, and knew nothing about alternatives for all the body care and medicine products I was avoiding.  I simply suffered through dry skin and colds and flus until they passed in order to avoid adding more toxins into my body.

Another thing this doctor recommended was spiritual healing: you know, things like gratitude, forgiveness, and positive self-talk.  At first I balked at this, but upon some self-examination I realized I was walking around mostly in a bad mood and projecting that bad mood onto everyone else!  Sure, I was toxin-free and finally eating right, but I wouldn’t say I was living vibrantly.  I was certainly holding on to a lot of resentments both towards people and events from my past, and towards myself thanks to my own self-inflicted perfectionist standards.  I figured it was time to dig in to a different kind of healing.

I discovered Neale Donald Walsch, Marianne Williamson, Eckhart Tolle, and Dr. Brene Brown (as well as a few other groups and books along the way).  These teachers really helped me dive into the path of forgiving people in past, self-compassion and letting go of perfection, and really living a love-focused life.  I realized that while I was always worried about saving the ailing people out there in the world, I was mostly rude and short tempered and selfish with the people around me that I loved more than anything.  I realized that they should be getting the best of me, and that that would start with changing myself.  This was a long year or two of changing some bad attitude habits and negative self-talk, and I still slip backwards every now and then and get those books back out to refocus.  However, this stage in my healing was crucial, and it taught me that no matter how healthy you are living in the physical world, the spiritual world is crucial to living a vibrant life and pursuing your dreams.

During this time period, my whole-food nutrition lifestyle eventually led me to organic gardening.  I was feeling more energetic and healthy than ever, was cultivating positivity and a light-filled life as best as I could, was at a weight I found acceptable, and was growing my own organic foods.  Through this new adventure, I learned about planting companion plant herbs around my veggies as a way to deter pests in a way that was toxin-free.  However, I had all these herbs that I wasn’t using, and I sure didn’t want to waste precious garden space with unusable plants.  So I signed up for an entry-herbal class to learn how to use my extra harvest.

This serendipitous decision led me to the path I am on now.  I discovered that there were alternatives to medicine that I could use to support my body in both preventing disease and supporting the healing of body when illnesses did occur!  I no longer had to suffer through colds and flus unsupported, and I knew how to use my herbs daily to prevent those colds and flus from occurring as much!  I also learned how to make my own herbal body care products from herbs I was growing in my yard, no longer having to suffer during winter-time dry skin or when cuts and scrapes occurred on my kiddos.  I learned how to make herbal first aid kits, herbal cold and flu care, herbal preventative care, and finally how to use herbs to assist our body while it healed during chronic disease.  I had finally found a way back to my original passion of being a healer, and it beautifully interconnected with my role as the healer of the earth!  I found a holistic nutrition certification school and a registered herbalist path, took all the classes I could find, learned everything I could about holistic nutrition and herbs and chronic disease, and am now running a clinic of my own to help you use whole-food and herbs to help you in the same way they helped me.

But that’s not where the story ends.  Somewhere along the way, my intuition began to whisper something to me about using nutrition as a way to achieve some healthy weight.  I was still eating for that magic number, still exercising for the same reason, and weighing myself every week (sometimes more, let’s be honest).  Although my path was now holistic, my motivations weren’t.  There was a nagging voice telling me there was more to nutrition than weight control, and I began researching the validity of the claim that disease is caused by obesity and that the main reason to exercise is for weight management.  I don’t know where that voice was coming from, but what I found turned my entire philosophy about health completely around.

It turns out that research actually shows that people who practice 5 healthy habits, no matter if they are obese, overweight, or “normal” weight on the BMI scale, have statistically the same risk of death from diet-related disease.  WHAT?!  This is contrary to the entire medical and dietician school of thought!  Furthermore, research shows that the idea that exercise could ever lead to enough calories lost in healthy amount of time to ever maintain weight is virtually impossible, and that if one IS losing weight through exercise they probably have an exercise addiction leading to malnourishment (a’hem, remember that 6 miles per day pre-pregnancy that I thought was so healthy and was feeling guilty for never achieving post-baby!).  BOOM.  E-MIC DROP.

Wherever that voice came from that led me to research this data, I am eternally grateful.  From that moment, my teaching changed, my motives changed, and my peace around food and exercise changed.  I threw out the scale, started choosing exercise that I loved doing (like Zumba and volleyball and biking with the kids), stopped the guilt around some idea of perfect weight/nutrition/exercise, and started being healthy because it MADE MY LIFE BETTER.  It made me feel better.  It made me have energy to hang out with my family.  That’s it.  No magic numbers.  Just LIVING A HAPPY LIFE.  I had finally GOT it.  Food was here to keep me alive, and if I ate the foods that kept me feeling good then I could focus on what life is really all about: HAPPINESS.

And that is where I am now.  All of the nutrition and health myths that are shoved down our throats every day BUSTED.  Using organic, local, whole foods and organic gardening to prevent disease and provide energy, and using herbs as toxin-free self-care and for body support during times of illness.  My seemingly scattered list of passions and experiences all converging into one: to help people with weight loss and chronic diseases that are sick and tired of band-aide medications achieve vibrant health through root-cause holistic nutrition, herbalism, and lifestyle changes so they can feel awesome enough to start pursuing their dreams, just like I did!

Email me at LoriRoseHolistic@gmail.com to set up your free 15 minute introductory phone call!