Elise's Story

One of the hardest things people struggle with when it comes to wellness is being able to define it. But for Dr. Elise Brown, it comes second nature with her background in exercise science, psychology, health promotion and even competing in weightlifting.

“I really just think of it as a general feeling of overall health and happiness and having a higher quality of life,” Brown says. “Some people view it as being a state that you try to achieve, but most researchers view it as a verb like wellness behavior. So it's just a process rather than actually a state.”

For Brown, there was never a career in mind but rather just an area of study she was interested in. That took her through multiple different opportunities like personal training right out of her bachelor’s degree, interning and competing with LSU Shreveport and starting her own YouTube channel The Diabetes Resistance.

“It's been an interesting journey and I'm thankful for all the experiences and the mentorship that I've gotten along the way,” she says.

On this journey, she never lost sight of her own personal wellness and goals. Her motivation is simple; she knows that she has to be functioning at a high capacity and take care of herself in order to achieve all of her goals.

Taking care of her well-being comes in many shapes and sizes, going beyond just the physical, although she is a little biased towards the exercise side of things.

“I think with exercise it does play a role with body image, it plays a role in my confidence, and then I also know what motivates me to keep doing that is also that effective stress reduction,” Brown says.

Working around the wellness wheel, exercise has always been ingrained in her with high energy on her side. She does a balanced variety of exercises, and even crosses over into her intellectual wellness when learning new sports like pickleball and snowboarding.

She also tries to eat a balanced diet, with one vegan, one vegetarian and one meat meal a day. Tying in with nutrition, she is a social person who goes out to eat with friends during the week, and emotionally keeps stress low with exercise and helpful mental check-ups throughout the day.

“Breathing exercises have helped out quite a bit. I have reminders on my phone set throughout the day, just to remind me just to take a few breaths, check in with how I'm feeling,” Brown says. “That's probably the area that I need to do a better job of, like really ingraining it into a routine.”

Even though she is an expert who has studied the area almost her whole life, there are still areas she feels she needs to work on, thus supporting her definition of wellness being a journey and not a state.