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Welcome to American Heritage School's Patriot Podcast, hosted by the students of the podcast class at the AHS campus in downtown Salt Lake City. Each episode features students interviewing professionals, experts, and inspiring guests to explore real-world experiences through the lens of The Seven Principles of Personal and Civil Liberty. These conversations are designed to uplift, educate, and spark meaningful dialogue within the family.
Tune in with your family each week to learn together, reflect on the values that matter most, and be inspired to live with greater purpose and principle.
Learn more about The Seven Principles of Personal and Civil Liberty here: https://slc.americanheritageschool.org/the-seven-principles
Greetings. Hello. Aloha. From American Heritage School
Marcia:in Salt Lake City, Utah. This is the Patriot Podcast where we, the students, interview people from all walks of life. Together, we'll talk about future careers, timeless and unique experiences. So, settle in, and let's begin.
Brianna:Hi, I'm Brianna. Welcome to the American Heritage School Patriot Podcast.
Marcia:I'm Marcia, and today, we are privileged to talk with Ms. Tanna Fox. Tanna Born Fox is the owner and founder of Live Right Nutrition, as a graduate from the University of Utah in Health Education, a current international sports certified nutritionist since 2016. Certified gut health nutrition specialist, weight loss management specialist, and a past personal trainer. She has a deep love for fitness and understands the power of food and the natural rhythm of our body's circadian cycle.
Brianna:Ms. Fox is currently finishing her master level nutrition consult education, which encompasses eating disorder coach, hostile health certification, and health and wellness coach. She has worked with hundreds of clients on how to set goals while helping them achieve their full potential in digestion, metabolism, gaining lean muscle, fat loss, and energy balance. Tanna is honored to serve on the nutrition advisory board of Ampilis, an organization focused on mental health and human performance. Ampilis has created a dedicated space for her to lean nutrition workshops, and their team has developed the first of its kind, an all in one whole foods supplement with no synthetics, addressing nutritional needs of deficiencies for men, women, and children.
Marcia:Ms. Fox also serves as a director of wellness at Ballerina Farms where she loves working with a brand centered on family values and real food with the highest quality for clean products that fits real lifestyles needs for individuals and families. Ballerina Farms' perfect touch of charm and authentic living inspires millions.
Brianna:Ms. Fox, will you tell us what your path was like becoming a health and wellness coach? When did you first become interested in helping and educating others about healthy living?
Tanna:Well, you for the introduction. I just wanted to say that I'm happy to be here with all of you. So my path down health and fitness and wellness didn't initially start out that way. I actually remember being in your position in high school and thinking, What am I gonna do? Right?
Tanna:Like you probably all are thinking, you know, How do we know what we wanna be when we grow up? And what do I wanna spend my time doing? And so I kind of started to explore lots of options. I even wanted to be a lawyer for a minute. And then I went into photography and I walked around that building for a while, you know, up in college.
Tanna:And I remember trying to decide what I wanted to be, but I remember asking myself that question more along the lines of, what do I want people to look at me and be? Like, I kinda was more worried about the image. I don't know if anyone's ever felt that way but sometimes I thought, Oh I want to have a really cool degree. I want to have a great job. And the more I kind of dove into really what that looks like, I realized that actually, probably aligning the things that I love doing and have fun doing are way more important than things that I want people to see me doing.
Tanna:And so from then, I kind of just did one of those interviews with your counselor. You probably all have a counselor here at school and just kind of going through and declaring a major and all that kind of stuff. I just realized I love being outside, I love food, and I love being active. And so I kind of put those things together and little by little I feel like things just kind of fell into place. So then I jumped into the College of Health when I was in college and just started looking at all the different options that were available.
Tanna:I didn't know exactly what it was going to be at the time and I just remember being like, Okay, Heavenly Father, help me to know which one will be the best one. I can't say that I had this big beautiful magical moment and it was like, This is it. This is the one. But I just went with what felt exciting and fun and so my bachelor's degree and my career path started with a degree called Health Education and Promotion. And I dived into that class, all the whole classes, and loved it.
Tanna:And as I started learning there's program evaluation and then you go into fitness and supplements and all sorts of things with food. And so I started to evolve this love as I just kind of randomly picked what I felt sounded really, really fun and stopped worrying about what I wanted people to see me as and started to really look into what I loved doing and wanted to do. From there it kind of just started to flourish and I found classes and things like that that I really decided to specialize in. Anyways, that's just the very beginning of it, but it's kind of scary sometimes to pick, you know? You feel like you have to commit to it, but you don't.
Tanna:You can always pivot if you ever need to.
Marcia:That's awesome. As you said, you were like, you went through different stages. You didn't just instantly pick one. Can you tell us more of what were your other options before health maybe?
Tanna:Yes. So I told you, again, I'm just gonna admit my expose my weakness to you, but I was like, I wanted to just have a really cool job. I wanted to do something that seemed really exciting to tell people. And so that's when I thought, okay, I really like people and I really like to solve problems. And so that's when I thought, okay, I'll be an attorney.
Tanna:I'll go down to be a lawyer. And I remember just kind of thinking, I'll own that. I'll go down there and I went into the College of Law down at the University of Utah and I walked around the building. I didn't have any business doing anything there. I didn't have any classes, I didn't know any people, but I just walked in the Law Building and and just started walking around and seeing if I could picture myself in there and it was very clear.
Tanna:That was very clear in that moment to be like, this isn't what's right. And so I was grateful for that kind of an experience because I think that that's how, you know, maybe if you will, God will work in our life. He can only direct moving feet. If you're just standing still, it's pretty hard to direct, you know, something that's not moving. But when something's in motion and something starts to move, then it's easier to direct.
Tanna:So it felt like a really simple solution. The prompting was move on. And so from there I quickly moved on and didn't have to look back and then was able to find the path that I love in health and nutrition. And then from there I just kind of didn't even have a plan to be honest. I just graduated and I applied for a job and then from this job it led to a different experience and I just started to watch it all unravel without a very laid out plan.
Tanna:And I think sometimes that's not very comfortable for a lot of us, right? We kind of want to have a plan, we kind of want to know what we're going to do, but really if we just keep moving and just keep following, I think we're directed more than we ever would actually believe. And it's a beautiful part of just keeping your your head up, right, and your and your mind clear and active and just moving forward, doing good things, you will always be directed. So that's my experience with it.
Brianna:It's kind of relating your body as a temple. Yeah. And through you educating people online, I saw a video of you talking about something called kefir online. Yeah. And you talk about how some bacterias are good for you.
Brianna:How do you know which bacterias are okay to put into your body and how does it affect you?
Tanna:Oh, that's such a good question. That definitely is one of my favorite topics to talk about. So kefir, what you just asked about, is called a probiotic food. And so surprisingly, our entire bodies are made up of bacteria. You would never know.
Tanna:You'd think like, wait, what? That's gonna make me sick. Right? No. But our whole body has bacteria in it.
Tanna:We have this thing called a gut microbiome. Have you heard of that before? No. I know. It's kind of a big word, and it's getting to become more and more of a popular topic.
Tanna:But inside your gut microbiome, there are these little microbes, and they're living, and they're alive, little microbes, and what their job is is to tell your body how to run, right? We have our brain, but our brain is in charge of a lot of really important things, but we have a second brain, and that is this gut microbiome. So do you know what serotonin is? Have you heard of that before? No.
Tanna:Okay. So serotonin is this hormone that you get when you feel good. You know when you're really happy and you have like, you know, you're bouncing around with energy and you're like, I love life. I feel so great. That is the hormone called serotonin.
Tanna:And 90% of your serotonin that comes up into your brain actually comes from your gut. That comes from the good bacteria that's living inside your body, giving messages from your gut through this thing called the vagus nerve up the back of your spine all the way to your brain and tells you to be happy. And there's another thing. So how many of you know what your immune system is? Have you heard of that?
Tanna:Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. Definitely. Right?
Tanna:That's kind of how healthy you are. Like how quickly you get sick. If, you know, if you have a weak immune system, you get sick pretty often. 70% of your immune system comes from your gut and these bacteria that's living inside giving these positive or negative messages to your brain and to your body. And so when you asked about bacteria and how to know if it's good or not, good bacteria makes you feel good.
Tanna:Bad bacteria makes you sick, right? And thank heavens for science and all the beautiful doctors and researchers that have helped us distinguish good and bad bacteria. We now know that probiotics are a bacteria that helps our body become stronger and our minds think clearer. And so kefir is one of those foods, it's a fermented milk if you've never heard of it, that has a lot of good healthy probiotics, good bacteria that feed all those living little microbes in your tummy and put positive messages into your brain. So it sounds a little complicated.
Tanna:Did that make sense? Yeah. Any questions on that one? I always like to make sure, okay, tell me if that makes sense.
Marcia:No, yeah, that makes sense. Thank you. Yeah.
Brianna:I do have a question though.
Tanna:Yeah.
Brianna:So a lot of adults will say, oh, if you leave milk out too long, you know, it expires or if a food has been sat out too long or it is moldy, how do you know with kefir, how do you know if it's okay to drink? Oh,
Tanna:excellent question. So the difference between kefir milk and regular milk is that when you make kefir, you do start out with a jar of regular cow's milk, right? But you put inside it these little tiny grains and they're called kefir grains and they're little they're kind of sticky and chewy. They look like cottage cheese. I'm sure if all of you think of cottage cheese in your mind, right?
Tanna:That little white kind of soft and a little kind of chewy in a way. It looks just like that. And you put that inside the milk and then you leave it on the counter for twenty four hours. And what happens is those little grains are full of good bacteria that start to eat away at the sugar that's inside milk. And they grab all the sugar inside milk and they hold it and then that makes the milk fermented.
Tanna:And so really when you have little kefir grains inside milk and it pulls the sugar out, it makes the milk also lactose free because it's called lactose. It's what the sugar is feeding off of. So from there, without going into all the chemistry and the things that, you know, sometimes are harder to explain, you have a really good probiotic milk. So it's completely different than if you and I were to open up a container of milk and leave it on the kitchen counter and then just walk away. In twenty four hours you would not have kefir, you would have rotten milk, right?
Tanna:But if you put in the kefir grains and put in the little starter or this culture, right, then from there you can kind of change the component of what milk is. You can do it with milk. You can do it with vegetables. You can do it with herbal tea. You can do it with lots of things.
Tanna:And you can make like, I'm sure you've heard of sourdough bread. That's bread that's been fermented. So rather than putting yeast inside of it to make it grow really quick, you put in sourdough start which kinda slowly starts to feed off of the sugars that are inside the bread. It kinda breaks it down a little bit in the process and then sourdough bread is much easier for your tummy to digest and much better for your health. So that's called the process of fermentation.
Tanna:So there's a few foods, kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut, those are the main three that you can eat, then there's things like sourdough bread and a few other fermented foods. So that's just a quick little intro to the difference of milk versus fermented kefir. Great. Yeah. Great question.
Brianna:Okay. You talked about gut health earlier, and I know that different things in your body can go different ways or have different ways of reacting to things. Mhmm. And we talked about, me and Marsha were talking about liver earlier, and I believe Marsha had a Yes.
Marcia:I was looking at your Instagram, and I saw this reel of you talking about lemons helping detox the liver. I just wanted to ask why specifically lemons? Out of everything out there, why specifically lemons help detox the liver?
Tanna:Great question. It kind of seems almost too good to be true, to be like, wait, this simple lemon that grows off of a tree, right, by the sun can actually be a really big benefit to your liver. Well, the cool thing about lemons is that outside the body they're acidic. Right? They're kind of like tangy and tart.
Tanna:They're not really sweet. If anyone ever put a full lemon in their mouth, kinda cringe a little bit. Yeah. But inside the body, they're alkalizing, which means it kind of helps your body balance really well. So when you wake up in the morning, how many of you wake up with like those crusty little eye boogers and the bad breath and the oily hair, You all know the feeling.
Tanna:What's happening is your body is going through this process of elimination. It's part of your circadian cycle that you read about kind of early in that bio. And so every morning your body's waking up and all night long it's been trying to detox and pull out all the things, the toxins, all of the things in the environment that it didn't serve it well that day, it's like I got to get rid of this. Right? All of these toxins and free radicals and all these kinds of things that you got either from air pollution or plastic bottles or whatever it is, your body's like, I got some of this in my body.
Tanna:I don't like it. I've got it out. So all night long, your body's working on eliminating some of that. So that's what you're wiping away. That's why your mouth feels kind of gross and chalky.
Tanna:It's eliminating toxins. Right? So again, oily hair, your body's like, gotta get rid of some of this stuff. So when you wake up first thing in the morning, if you have a glass of lemon water, the lemon can go in and kind of help your body detox a little better. So how it does this is your liver.
Tanna:Your liver is actually where everything in your body is metabolized. So if you were to eat a chicken sandwich, you think, Okay, sits in my stomach. But your liver is actually the one that does all the hard work where it's like, Okay, I'm going to take all the good things and all the bad things that came from that chicken sandwich and help separate it. Right? So your liver is kind of like the final say.
Tanna:All the bad stuff goes down to the waste and you go to the bathroom and get rid of it that way, but all the good things get absorbed into your blood system. So when your liver isn't working very well and gets clogged up maybe by fast food or too many preservatives and food, your body stops being able to detox all of these toxins. Right? You start to get sick faster, you start to experience like maybe mental clarity not as much mental clarity and things like that. So the lemon helps your liver stay really clean every morning.
Tanna:So again, if you wake up in the morning and you drink a glass of lemon water, I try to do just about half of a lemon and maybe two cups of water. Right? Just drink it and then you wait thirty minutes before eating or drinking anything. That lemon juice can kinda go down and sit around your liver and kinda marinate a little bit and it starts to slough off all the gunk that it's been acquiring over years, weeks, days, whatever. And then you can actually go to the bathroom in about thirty minutes, which feels pretty awesome to just get rid of all that stuff.
Tanna:You don't want old food sitting around your tummy very long because it can make you sick. So I love lemon water for that reason. Lemons are I mean, if you ever have a has anyone ever seen a really dirty shower door with, like, kind of the soapy grime and you're, like, spray stuff on it and you're trying to clean it off and it doesn't work? Well, have a trick. If you were to take half of a lemon, maybe pour in some salt or some sugar into that and kinda get a little bit of a of a grit, you would get all of that soap scum off the shower door with the lemon because it had that's how powerful it is.
Tanna:So again, it's just a really deep cleansing. And I think I love it the most because it is something that grows in the earth by the sun, right? And it's something that helps your body stay clean and purified and it involves water. And so it's just a simple little, if you will, life hack to kind of just making sure because it's hard to eat really clean, right? It's hard to not eat fast food.
Tanna:It's hard to not, you know, grab things that are easy and, you know, inconvenient but maybe aren't always healthy for us. So sometimes I tell people don't worry about it, right? Or some people get really worried about what about different ingredients in this and what should I worry about, you know, being ingredient snobs and that's really important as well. But sometimes we can't control everything, but that's where I love to trust in the power of the body. Because when we trust in our body and know that our body has a system that it can kinda help us detox, you can kind of just do your best and put the rest, you know, into the beautiful gift of how amazing and powerful our bodies really can be for us.
Tanna:So that was a long way to answer your question. But I wanted to make sure that it was really clear, so great question.
Brianna:Well, since we're talking about nutrition as high school students
Tanna:Yeah.
Brianna:We don't have a lot of time to prepare nutritious meals and stuff. So how would you lead high schoolers in the right way of being able to detox and being able to have nutritious foods with not a lot of time.
Tanna:Oh, also, you guys have such great questions you're asking because they really are pertinent to so many people, to everybody. So like we talked about, one of the first things in the morning is to get up and drink water. I think that really is one of the best ways. Even if you don't have the lemon, drink the water and help your body get into a rhythm and a pattern. That circadian rhythm is what we talked about, right?
Tanna:And that will help your body start to eliminate things and it will help you to know to kind of wake up and know when to be hungry. It'll help you feel tired and wind you down at night. So the first thing I would say is try to find a pattern in your week. Every day is gonna look different but I bet for the most part each of your weeks look the same. And so if you can find a pattern in your week, start to pay attention to that.
Tanna:And then once you kinda get your patterns, start to realize, okay, how am I going to have I have a weekly pattern. Now I have a daily pattern. What do I want my daily pattern to look like? Making sure that you wake up again with the water. And then probably the next easiest tip that I would say just in general to help high school kids that are busy and on their way and, you know, to go on their way out the door quick would probably be to pay attention to how many fruits and vegetables you eat in a day.
Tanna:I mean, kind of sounds like Nutrition 101 for kindergarteners, right? But it's the same truth for kindergarten, for high school, for post, you know, for moms that have had babies, for grandmas and grandpas. It's eating food that's grown on the earth by the sun. Those foods really truly are some of the most powerful foods you can put in your body. It's not convenient always to just like chop up an apple or something like that, but starting to pay attention to, should I grab a bag of chips or should I grab a couple carrots?
Tanna:Right? Or have I had an apple every single day? Like simple as that is something that you could, you know, always start to start to try. Even if you're like, okay, I'm gonna have tacos at night for dinner. That's easy.
Tanna:That sounds yummy. I don't wanna I don't if I want a salad. Well, maybe you could just put some shredded cabbage and some tomatoes and even some cucumbers and some peppers and some salsa. Next thing you know, you've got like five vegetables inside your tacos. So paying attention to fruits and vegetables in your day will start you on a pattern for the rest of your life.
Tanna:Because hopefully one day you'll all be parents And you'll all have to teach children how to eat healthy. And the reason why I'm so passionate about it is because it really is one of the best ways to magnify your own gifts, your own capabilities. I love in your, you know, I don't know if you're gonna ask this question if I'm jumping ahead, but which of the seven principles of personal and civil liberty do I really, you know, that I feel like has helped me succeed in my field? The one that I picked you guys was, I think it's the last one, The Fullness of Liberty through unity with God and man. And I love this one so much because I think that we underestimate the power of our physical bodies.
Tanna:And that when we care for them with things that, you know, God put on the earth, we actually improve and increase our capacity to hold more light. So think about that. If your body has the ability to hold light, what an amazing opportunity to continue to become and to reach a fullness of liberty. Now people that might have addictions through drugs or food or whatever that is, they actually don't experience that fullness of liberty. Their body, they give up a little bit of their free agency because they're addicted to this substance they have to have every day, right?
Tanna:Even like when you think about some of their time is spent. They're spending time thinking about this addiction. But as we care for our body more, we increase our capacity to hold light and have this fullness of liberty through unity with God and man. And I think you can interpret this a lot of different ways, but I just really love this principle in particular because then when you have a body that holds so much light, light attracts light. So you exude light and it helps other people, but also it improves your relationship with the divine, with heavenly father, with Jesus Christ, and with the Holy Ghost.
Tanna:And to me, that is the fullness that we all should strive for as we're seeking to take care of a body. Sure, it feels great to, you know, be a certain size or to have clear skin or to whatever it is, whatever it is that we all feel the same way, the same thing we want to have. But I do think that taking care of our physical bodies is one of the greatest gifts that we have been given that we can all improve on just a little bit. Like even me, myself, right? Like I've got Oreos in my pantry, right?
Tanna:They're just sometimes you just can't help but live in a world, you know, the world. But we can do our best to make decisions on how much am I actually trying to put good things in my body with busy schedules and with a full load and with a lot of other things in my brain, what can I do? So anyways, great question, again, sorry, long answer. I always just keep rambling, so we love it.
Marcia:Yeah. With a question back, you were saying the lemon water is one way to detox. What are some other ways that we can detox with limited ingredients with little time as well as teenagers?
Tanna:Great question. Well, one of them that's coming right to my mind isn't necessarily centered around food. And one of the greatest things you can do for your body to help reset is a good night's rest. I mean, if I had to ask the question, how many hours would you say you get a sleep of sleep each night?
Marcia:Maybe, like, six.
Tanna:I know. Maybe three. Isn't that sad? Yes. It's hard.
Tanna:I know. It's so hard to get a good night's rest. Right? But sleep is probably the number one most fundamental important part of taking care of your body and your mind. Did you know that all of the most important things happen when we are at rest?
Tanna:So your body, let's say you're trying to gain lean muscle mass, right? You go to the gym, you work out, you do all these things. You go to the gym and you come home and you're like, I look the exact same. I can't even tell I went to the gym. I just spent an hour there.
Tanna:My body looks the exact same, right? Like, okay, well what was that for? Well what happens, you don't actually build muscle in the gym. Yes, you do. That's not really true.
Tanna:You do. You're picking up the weight, you're doing it. But when your body actually learns to create the lean muscle mass is when you are sleeping, when you are at rest. There's this thing called the HGH, this human growth hormone, that comes out big time at night, probably between the hours of ten and midnight and that's when your body's like, Oh, thank you. If I worked out today and I had healthy food today, I can take that and my body will absorb it and I can create lean muscle mass.
Tanna:Same thing with burning fat. We think we burn fat like maybe going for a run or you know for walking and things like that and you will. Your body needs all those things. It's good for your heart and it's good for your lungs. But at nighttime when your body's at rest is when it goes in and starts to really just burn all of that fat.
Tanna:And same thing with getting sick, like if you're sick, same thing with you need to get better, same thing if you feel like you are having a hard time concentrating, right? Sometimes all you need is a good night's rest, not more caffeine, not, you know, some magic food or magic pill, but taking care of your body, it knows what to do. And I think that that is also so cool because God gave us simple ways, you know, to help really magnify our potential. And it doesn't have to be complicated, it doesn't have to be something expensive or a fancy secret, it should feel familiar. Fruits, vegetables, sleep, things like that, those are not a foreign concept, right?
Tanna:Everybody thinks about those, everybody talks about those. And sometimes we just put them to the side because they're almost too easy to think about. But getting a good night's rest is one of the best ways to really improve everything about your physical body. So great question.
Marcia:I'll try to get
Tanna:sleep in. I know, right? And it's hard because those phones, right? How I mean, are we on our phones at night before we go to bed? I'm totally guilty of it.
Tanna:Oops. No. But it's just being mindful and knowing, okay, tonight I'm gonna try better. Right? Maybe I'll set a little alarm.
Tanna:Maybe I'll just, you know, put it away and then from there, little by little, that's how you accomplish great things. Right? It doesn't need to be a complete lifestyle switch. It can just be one little thing that you're gonna run with for a week and see how you do. And then maybe the next week you're gonna try adding an apple a day, right?
Tanna:And see how you go. It should never feel overly complicated or too big of a mountain to climb because it's worth it. And so start small and plan on seeing success.
Marcia:So That was an awesome talk. We ask every person we interview to share a joke. Okay. So before we finish our interview, will you share your favorite joke with us?
Tanna:Oh my gosh, you guys. Of course it's around food and it's kinda dumb. And my kids are like, you are not funny. You why are you even laughing? Okay.
Tanna:Here's my joke. Why do eggs not tell jokes to each other? Why? Because they don't wanna crack what did you have it? They don't wanna crack each other up.
Brianna:Oh my gosh.
Tanna:I have a bonus one. Do want the bonus
Marcia:Yes. Sure.
Tanna:Okay. What do two French fries do when they haven't seen each other for a long time? They catch up.
Brianna:Oh my gosh.
Tanna:Okay. I know. They're so bad. Well, that's okay. I
Marcia:guess the bonus one could have been redemption.
Tanna:It wasn't, I know. Bad when they were both super good. Guys are cute.
Brianna:Thank you, miss Fox. It's been great to have you with us.
Marcia:And thank you for taking the time to talk with us today.
Tanna:Of course, it's been my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
Marcia:We hope you enjoyed listening to this episode. A special thanks to our guests for joining us. And to the Lyceum Orchestra for providing the music.
Brianna:That's
Marcia:it. For the American Heritage School Patriot Podcast.
Brianna:If you learned something new, check out our other episodes. And share with a friend. Bye. See you. Goodbye.