For a sports-mad journalist with a wicked sense of fun, it seemed like Brodie Kane was in her element when she landed the job of sports reader on TVNZ’s Breakfast in September 2016.
And she was! The sassy 31-year-old got to hang out with Team New Zealand as they brought home the America’s Cup and take rugby star Sonny Bill Williams through a McDonald’s drive-thru, dishing up a dollop of cheek with his pancakes.
Not to mention riding the pirate ship at Rainbow’s End until her sidekick Matty McLean lost his breakfast on live TV.
So when the talented broadcaster was shoulder-tapped just over a year later to join The Hits morning radio show in Christchurch, Brodie admits the decision involved a sharp intake of breath.
“I adored doing Breakfast,” Brodie tells Woman’s Day.
“But this was such a great opportunity and in the end, I decided you can’t live life wondering, ‘What if?'”
So just a few weeks later, the former army territorial found herself resigning from her dream TV job to go to yet another dream gig, ruling the airwaves with radio legend Dave “Fitzy” Fitzgerald in her hometown.
They say life changes come in threes and for Brodie, moving job and city happened just a few months after another conscious change – a significant weight loss.
“I was getting a bit chunky and my clothes were tight,” laughs Brodie.
“Back in April, I realised I wasn’t very happy with what I saw in the mirror. There was only person who could do something about that – me.”
She was already a keen gym-goer and runner, so her fitness trainer put her in touch with a nutrition advisor, whose first step was to get Brodie to write down everything she ate in a week.
“I thought I ate pretty well,” she says. “But it turned out, while I wasn’t having lots of rubbish, I was having bugger all really good stuff – you know, vegetables and good-quality proteins.
“On top of that, you have a work meeting and eat a bit of cake. Or there are lollies in the office and you gobble a couple of those, and lots of dinners out, lots of lunches…”
To help her stick to her new regime, Brodie found a meal-delivery company that sent out a week’s worth of vegetable and protein-rich meals every Monday. She also quit alcohol for two months.
“I’m not going to pretend it was easy. It’s just the hardest thing to say no to even two little squares of chocolate. But quite quickly, I began feeling way more energised.”
Four months later, the 1.71m-tall journalist tipped the scales at just 77kg after losing a whopping 11kg – and despite the upheavals of the past few weeks, she’s managed to keep it off.
“I will never be a stick,” she smiles. “I love my food, and I love my gin and tonics. But I’m stoked. We celebrate all shapes and sizes, and that’s a good thing. But you’ve got to be happy in your own skin and I just wasn’t happy in mine. I did it for myself and my health and wellbeing.”
Brodie admits she felt “a bit emotionally wobbly” on her last day at Breakfast, but she’s never been one to let the grass grow beneath her feet.
She had 10 days between leaving TV and starting her radio gig, and her priority was to spend it with her mum Jo, 62, who Brodie calls “one of my best friends, one of the girls – part of the squad”!
“She’s so funny. I’ve started introducing her on Instagram but she’s getting too popular. I’m trying to faze her out now. I mean, crikey!”
The pair spent three days exploring Queenstown and Milford Sound.
“Then Mum came back with me to Auckland, we packed up all my stuff and had a huge party. All my colleagues turned up, which was lovely. We drank, danced and sang, and there were speeches – then we drove to Christchurch.”
As Auckland disappeared in the rear-vision mirror, Brodie realised it was almost 10 years to the day that she’d arrived in the City of Sails, eager to start her first job as a journalist for Radio Live.
“I have so many wonderful friends up there, but I believe they have planes that fly the length of the country, so I can still visit!” she deadpans.
One of the big drawcards of moving back to Christchurch is being closer to Jo and her father Murray, 75, who live
30 minutes out of the city at Waikuku Beach.
While she always has her eyes open for a special someone, being single made moving cities a cinch. “I don’t have kids or anyone else to worry about. It means I can really focus on my career.
“I’ve got the Tinder and Bumble apps on my phone, but they probably get as much activity as the calculator.
I don’t have time for any of it at the moment.
“To be honest, my number- one priority right now is being a morning radio powerhouse and making our breakfast show really successful!”