This Podcast Is... Uncalled For - Mandie Brice (Snowed In 26)

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

In this Snowed In episode, we are joined by health expert, photographer and model Mandie Brice to talk health, wellness and yoga. mandiebrice.com 

Check the mic will go live. Stories told their eyes and dive. Topics fresh with every spin. You won't guess what's coming in. We can lose surprise. Minds away, never lies, conversations bold and free. Tune in now just wait and see. Just press play, we're on our way.

Voice of sharp opinions bright. Everyone, welcome to this podcast on Call For. We're still snowed in and got great guests with me today. So please introduce yourself. My name is Mandy Bryce. I am a model and makeup artist and author. And I'm about to launch a new membership website. So that's, I guess, a little about me. All right. So that's a good place to start. Had you again to, to, um, modeling. What kind of modeling do you do? Sure. When I was in high school, I'm kind of someone who, I mean, even just by that introduction, you could probably tell I've lived a million separate lives in 44 years so far on the planet. And the modeling one specifically, I began when I was in high school, I got a job managing a photography studio. I wasn't managing at first, but I started out as a

photographer and then kind of worked my way up. And I often had coworkers who would want to test lighting or different techniques and would just have me jump in front of the camera to, you know, have someone to try things out with. And it was an aging myself, but I already said my age. So I guess it doesn't matter. But it was when digital photography was kind of at its beginning, especially for people who weren't professional photographers. And so this, they use actually like medium format film, which is like the big negatives like this. But all of the photos that I had that I had taken were on either 35 millimeter or the medium format.

I didn't have many scanned to my computer at the time. And I thought like, well, maybe I'll do a side hustle of photography. and I started looking online, just trying to find different photographers' websites to kind of base what I would like mine to look like on. And I only had digital photos of myself and I stumbled across really early social media because there were sites where you could post a very small portfolio in whatever discipline you're in in that industry and then connect with other people to. make photo shoots. So back in this time, I think there, there's one model place and then there's another one that I don't remember the name of. Now model mayhem is like a similar one that still exists, but basically you can have a free plan where you can up back in the day, you could upload like five pictures. And so I didn't have five scanned pictures of my photography, but I had five

digital photos from people practicing on me of me modeling. And so I was like, it's free. I'll just put it up there. And it was some night I couldn't sleep. And I finally went to bed and I woke up in the morning and had a lot of emails of people who wanted to shoot with me as a model. So I was like, well, this is something like I grew up in the 90s. I was obsessed with the supermodels. You know, Cindy Crawford and Kate Moss and Linda Vangelista and all of them. And so I was like, well, this could be really fun. And so I gave it a shot and ended up being signed with Ford for a while. a lot of my modeling when I was younger was more fashion commercial stuff. I worked with a lingerie designer pretty exclusively for a long time. And then these days I'm doing like bank commercials. And next month I'll have a riding lawnmower commercial and, you know, really glamorous things like that. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool.

So yeah, you're just, you're still younger than I am. 47. I'm only a couple years behind, though. Yeah. But yeah, we've had, I've had a few models on the podcast already. And one of whom I knew first as an actress. And I think we worked a lot of film shoots together and everything. And I do find that certainly locally in Kansas City,

there is a there are there's a lot of crossover between modeling and acting yeah yeah film acting yes exactly yeah i mean especially in the midwest i think if you're in l.A which i lived there for a little while and did some work there or like larger markets you can niche down a little bit more and have more success just because there's more availability of jobs but in the midwest it's kind of like well yeah i can I could do just about anything. Let me figure it out. I could pretend I'm talking on the phone.

I don't know if I could pretend I'm grieving a loved one very effectively, but I could be a wife calling a bank or someone going along. Yeah, yeah. And there's a need for that locally too. Yeah, people need to businesses, need to make their commercials and using local talents and everything. Absolutely. Yeah.

And I think it's really neat that you also do your own photography as well. Yeah, I kind of let that go along the wayside after a while. I still have a nice camera and eventually I would like to pick it back up and learn how to use it because my skills are pretty much tied to like the medium format camera that I use mostly. And so I'd love to learn more about how to use digital photography. but I ended up shifting more from photography to modeling and then makeup is probably what I do the most of any of the three. And that was basically I had been modeling for a lot of years. And none of us are getting younger, but that's even more sometimes tough on a career when you're a model.

And so I'm like, well, I like this industry. It's fun. I'd like to stay involved. So I learned airbrush makeup and ended up being much more successful as a makeup artist than as a model. But love both and still take advantage of opportunities when they come my way for either of those areas. And, of course, modeling, transitioning and acting, that's not exclusive to Kansas City. You mentioned all those super models from back in the day. Another coming to mind for me is Rebecca Romaine.

Oh, sure. Who who transitions to acting. Of course, I think most people probably know her for playing Mystique in the X-Men movies. But as a massive Trekkie, she's playing number one in the Strange New World series. Oh, okay. Yeah. I think of her from a ridiculous movie with, what's his name?

Norm MacDonald in it called Dirty Work. Okay. in a revenge business he starts and she plays a bearded lady in that movie so i think of rebecca romaine i imagine her with a beard which is probably not the uh experience most people have when they think of her right right right uh yeah someone in my age would probably think of her in a sports illustrated swimsuit edition right without a beard she was still gorgeous as the bearded lady but And she does a great job on Star Trek, too, as, you know, the second officer and all that. And, yeah, marriage to Jerry O'Connell now is himself a Trek actor.

In his case, he did voice work for Lardex, so as their second officer. So, so really cool. Yeah. Yeah. So when I put the call out, you said you had an interesting take on health and wellness. Sure. I just think, I guess for me, I used to, I've always been interested in exercise. And so I've, you know, took weightlifting in high school and lifted before, like back

when people still thought lifting made women bulky. And so I don't think most people think that anymore. It's really hard to actually put on a lot of muscle mass. It takes a lot of work both in the gym and even more so in the kitchen. But it's just been a growing focus in my life for me. And I guess it is so much more than just, you know, what you're doing in the gym or what you're eating. But like mental health is such an important aspect of it. So when I was a kid, I would watch this yoga show on PBS and follow along.

I was like 11 doing yoga with this old lady on the carpet. Her name's Lillian Foleon. And I just continued doing that. And for a long time, I wanted to become a yoga instructor. But before things came online, it was expensive. And, I mean, it's still time consuming. mean you do at least 200 hours of training to do it. But I finally did it a couple years ago.

And so like the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. And the more I realize that there's so many different things that you can do for health and wellness that, you know, some of them are big things like, you know, getting a gym membership and lifting and cardio and,

you know, eating right. But then other things are just like, sometimes it really can make a big difference to take five seconds and take some deep breaths. and center yourself between tasks. So it's just been an interesting journey seeing along the way, all the different ways that you can make a difference in your health

and your wellness overall by adding or subtracting something small. Right, right. And it's interesting to mention. Yeah, I've seen how much they charge for yoga instruction. Yeah. And also I just took my first yoga course ever a little over a month ago. Okay. So like a class at the gym, like an hour class?

It was a private setting. It was a nude yoga class. Oh, interesting. I don't think I've done nude yoga, but I've taught some private lessons just with clothes. And that's fine. that's fine it's not for everyone but I do recall

yeah feeling exhausted in a different type of way afterwards and yeah I imagine yeah

but it's my first time ever doing a yoga class and everything in high school I was doing track cross country played a little football as well

and I will attest what you said about lifting weights. Lifting weights alone is not going to bulk you up. Right. Well, it was very brave of you to have your first yoga class be in the nude. I can't imagine. Well, I am a practice in natureist as well.

Okay. Yeah. So it's pretty easy for me. Oh, there you go. Then I guess it's not that adventurous. Just natural. Yeah. Yeah.

So, so yeah, I agree with you on the weightlifting. It's not going to bulk you up as much as just eating. And eating rights, that's the important thing too, because I'm having my own health issues and everything. A lot of it has to do with not eating rights. Yeah. I'm trying to get better and everything. but, you know, it is what it is. Yeah, definitely something where baby steps can help a lot and just, you know,

making small changes that are sustainable instead of trying to do a big total overhaul that might last three days before you completely backpedal because you miss something or you're restraining yourself too much or, you know, just making it hard and getting in your own way by trying to do too much all at once. Yeah. Usually what I recommend to people. Yeah. And yeah, exercise overall is just difficult for me, particularly, especially today.

We're in single digits right now. Yeah. And my jobs outside of doing this podcast require me to do a lot of driving. So see then yoga might be a great choice for you because you can do it just about anywhere. And then there are a lot of poses that help if you're in that seated position with your, you know, hip flexors getting really tight and a lot of pressure on your spine. Yoga can help a lot with that. So maybe go back to that class and let your instructor know your situation.

Or videos, YouTube has a ton of great. Yeah, I've seen that there are a lot of videos out there for yoga and all that. So, yeah. Good, good deal, good deal. So were there anything else you want to add to this discussion on health? Sure. So I just recently wrote a book called Happiness Habits. And it kind of falls in line really well with what we were talking about.

and just how health and wellness can be done and things can, like the small changes you make can really add up. The book that I wrote is also that same idea, but instead of it being, you know, eating just a little better, maybe replacing one bad food you might be eating with something healthier or something like that. It's about small things that you can do in your day-to-day life that don't take a lot of time, cost a lot of money that are pretty accessible to anyone, but using the different, what we know about the different hormones in our body that create feelings of happiness and the different

ones that there are and how, you know, if you're having a day that you do feel down, I'm sure you know, since you have exercise experience, that endorphins from exercise can make a big difference and kind of lift you up. So if you're in a situation where you're in single digits, you can do jumping jacks or jogging place or put on a song and move like no one's watching and dance and have the fun from the dancing and the endorphins to help you. And so my book goes through all of the different hormones that the body creates to make us feel happy and then just gives a bunch of suggestions of different ways that you can, you know, produce those hormones in your body and hopefully feel a little happier on cold days

or days where all of the headlines are terrifying or... A little bit of both having it right now, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, if you can be aware of, okay, I've recognized that right now I'm feeling in a funk. What can I do? Can I do a good deed and help somebody else? Can I even... Our brains can't tell the difference between us doing a good deed and watching a good deed be done.

So not to advocate doom scrolls. but if you go online and specifically look for, you know, the good news girl or the different outlets of people where they're recording random acts of kindness and watch that, that can boost your mood. So just a ton of different suggestions that hopefully people will find helpful and be able to put easily into action to have happier days during dark times and cold times. Sure, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. something from boy scatting is coming to mind do a good turn daily folks yeah yeah do

do something even if it's just helping someone with a door right or again using the example of being snowed in you could go to someone the Instagram page and say like oh you know I really you have a cute dog or just give someone a compliment takes two seconds you don't have to leave your house and maybe you know you're spreading a little happy just by being kind to someone online instead of being a troll. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I agree.

Yeah. All right. I'll probably wrap up the recording here in just a little bit. So any closing thoughts for everyone? I don't think anything specific comes to mind. I think just naturally in our conversation, we've organically given, you know, good tips people can do to improve their lives a little bit. So I feel like one of my goals is generally to leave people better than they were when they first encountered me.

And so hopefully people have listened to this episode and felt that way. Yeah. And hopefully when this comes out, we won't be talking about snow, but you can still listen to a snowy day. Absolutely. Anytime. All right. And where can people find you? So Mandy Bryce.com, M-A-N-D-I-E, and then B, like, basketball, R-I-C-E, and I'm at Mandy-Brice on all platforms.

And then my book is at happinesshabits. L-I-F-E, so dot-life. And then a little better.com, so A-L-L-L-L, like little but shortened. And then better.com is the site that I'm launching. personal development book club each month as well as using journaling, yoga, flows, meditations, discussion and community to kind of help people not just read any book and feel like they're doing some great thing by reading a personal development book, but if they're not putting it into action, it's really just they may as well read an entertainment like a novel.

And so working together as a community to kind of actually put action steps into motion. with what we're reading is what'll happen at A Little Better.com. So if that's intriguing to anyone, you're more than welcome to join us there. All right. Thank you, Mandy, for coming on. And thank you for listening. And we will talk to you next time. Thank you.

This podcast is uncalled for. The Snowed In Edition is. hosted, produce, and edited by myself, Mike Chernavsky. Both our opening music and our closing music for these episodes. We're created at suno.com, SUNO.com. Great AI music resource, so check it out. Please support the podcast and purchase our exclusive uncalled for merchandise, T-shirts, sweatshirts,

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