Lisa Bryan (Downshiftology)

Lisa Bryan is a popular YouTuber.

She has more than 2.4 million subscribers on her YouTube channel, ‘Downshiftology’.

Lisa is also an author and a blogger.

Introduction-

Lisa Bryan was born on 31 August 1977 in Auckland, New Zealand.

At 18 months old, she along with her family moved to Southern California.

Lisa has an elder brother.

Education-

Lisa studied for a BS in International Business from Pepperdine University.

Then, she studied MBA in Business and Marketing from USC Marshall School of Business in Los Angeles, California.

As a part of the study abroad program, Lisa lived in Heidelberg, Germany.

Career-

From May 2005 to April 2006, Lisa worked as a Marketing & Communications Advisor for United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Then, from September 2006 to April 2009, she worked as a Director at Saint John’s Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, California.

Then, Lisa worked as a Director of Marketing, and Vice President, Marketing until December 2012 at Insight Imaging (InSight Health Corp).

From January 2013 to February 2014, she worked as a Senior Director, Marketing at Response Genetics in Greater Los Angeles.

Autoimmune disease-

Since a young age, Lisa has been athletic and assumed herself to be healthy.

But as a child, she used to frequently suffer with bouts of strep and bronchitis, and occasional episodes of short-lived fainting and seizures.

Even after visiting many doctors, the cause for these could not be identified and Lisa was always declared healthy.

In her twenties, she had a few more episodes of fainting, usually in restaurants.

At that time, Lisa also had other symptoms of anxiety and chronic constipation.

Aggravation due to stress-

In her thirties, Lisa climbed the corporate ladder but this was accompanied by high stress, long working hours, and reduced sleep.

She became a corporate workaholic and started preferring coffee and sugary snacks.

At the time, Lisa developed a slew of health issues, seasonal allergies, eczema, worsening constipation, hormonal imbalances, massive fatigue and more episodes of fainting and dizziness, and hormonal imbalances.

She assumed overworking was the reason for her fatigue.

Even after consulting numerous doctors, Lisa was told that she had good health except for low blood pressure and was prescribed inhalers for asthma and seasonal allergies, and corticosteroids for skin issues.

Doctors blamed the low blood pressure for her constant lightheadedness and dizziness.

Dr. Google proves helpful-

After several years, Lisa started feeling that the root of her problem was not being addressed and so, she started Googling in order to connect the dots and find some commonality between all her symptoms, instead of looking and treating her symptoms individually.

Thanks to her online research, celiac disease, an autoimmune disease, kept popping up on several blogs and Lisa stumbled upon a blog post in which a girl was suffering from celiac disease and her symptoms were similar to hers.

So, at 35, she prodded her allergist to test for celiac disease and according to the lab results, she was 8 times the positive level for celiac disease and she was off the charts.

Connecting the dots-

Celiac disease is a disease in which the small intestine is hypersensitive to gluten.

After Lisa was diagnosed with this disease, she connected the dots and understood that she used to faint as a child after eating cereals and used to faint in restaurants after eating bread, as both cereal and breads contain gluten to which she has been hypersensitive.

As she continued her online research, she became well versed in autoimmune conditions and within a couple of years, she was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease, psoriasis, and endometriosis.

Pitfalls of going gluten-free-

After Lisa was diagnosed with celiac disease, she learnt that she was hypersensitive to gluten and so, decided to incorporate a gluten-free diet.

Her doctor was positive that she would feel better with a gluten-free diet.

But the expensive gluten-free food at Whole Foods Market worsened her health and triggered candida and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO).

After Googling, Lisa suspected that all of these were due to the sugars and starches present in those packaged gluten-free foods.

Then, she started working with a functional medicine doctor and learnt a great deal about auto-immune disease, gut health, nutrition, mind-body connection, and started evaluating her food habits and lifestyle.

Recovery, at last-

After evaluating her food habits and lifestyle, Lisa ditched processed foods for whole nutrient dense gluten-free foods and also worked on reducing stress, improving sleep, and prioritizing self-care.

At that time, she bought a Vitamix blender which greatly helped her in incorporating vegetables and fruits into her diet.

Thankfully, within a few weeks to months, almost all of Lisa’s symptoms which she suffered for decades, allergies, fatigue, eczema, constipation, chronic colds, etc. disappeared.

Thanks to the whole, gluten-free food, she did not have even a single episode of fainting over the years.

Starting ‘Downshiftology’-

After getting diagnosed with diseases, Lisa worked in her corporate job for a couple of years and got completely burned out.

Then, in addition to her food, she started focusing on her wellness, sleep, stress management and self-care.

At that time, Lisa quit her job and took a year off to unwind.

In this period, she travelled to and spent a couple of months each at Sydney, Chiang Mai (Thailand), and Bali (Indonesia).

In this year, Lisa bettered her health through bettering her diet through consuming whole foods and back to basics approach and lifestyle and learnt to manage her symptoms.

In 2014, as she was inspired by personal blogs, she started her website, ‘Downshiftology’ to inspire others towards wellness.

Then, Lisa became a certified health coach through Institute for Integrative Nutrition and took on clients for a year but as her blog website started growing, she stopped providing personal consultations.

On 23 July 2016, she started her YouTube channel, ‘Downshiftology’.

Lisa chose the name ‘Downshiftology’ as she improved her health by downshifting, that is, getting back to basics by reducing stress, eating simple and fresh food, prioritizing sleep, going gluten free, etc. and ‘ology’ means a subject of study.

After quitting her corporate job, she became a certified health coach through Institute for Integrative Nutrition and took on clients for a year but as her ‘Downshiftology’ brand started growing, she stopped providing personal consultations.

A successful YouTuber & her books-

As of April 2023, Lisa has 2.48M subscribers on her YouTube channel.

And has 304K followers on Instagram, 215K followers on ‘Downshiftology’ Facebook page and 142.9k followers on Pinterest.

Lisa earns from a variety of sources, advertisements and ‘Super Thanks’ on her YouTube channel, affiliate marketing, and sponsorships.

She also earns from advertisements, sponsorships, and affiliate marketing on her website.

On 6 December 2022, Lisa published her gluten-free cookbook, ‘Downshiftology Healthy Meal Prep’.

She also published a book for healthy travelling, ‘Roaming Free’.

Personal life & some interesting facts about her-

• Lisa is single and lives in Irvine, California, United States.
• Even though she moved to the United States at a young age, she, for 37 years, was a New Zealand citizen and only received her American citizenship in 2014. She has dual citizenship.
• Lisa has also been a speaker and panelist at food industry conferences.
• She does not have a background in culinary and only started frequently cooking after starting ‘Downshiftology’, an exception to this is she was baking intricate cakes at a young age so much that she was being suggested to open a bakery.
• Lisa is a polyglot as she knows English and German.
• She is a wanderluster and lived in four countries and has travelled to all seven continents.
• Lisa rode a motorcycle through Thailand and Bali and loves hiking and biking.
• Her favourite dessert is paleo chocolate cake.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Lisa Bryan?

Share with me in the comment section below.