Non-Nutrition Tips That Changed My Health For Life

My health journey has been a long one and its still going. We never know everything; new research emerges all the time.

In my 20’s I was all weight watches meals, 60 minutes of cardio a day and I was super skinny a couple of times, I was also overweight a few times too. When I was 30, I was pregnant, I lived off egg sandwiches and Maltesers, I gained heaps of weight. After that I took up running and back on the low calories. Now I put my efforts into health over aesthetics but I would be lying if I said I didn't care how I look, of course I do and that is ok! It’s been a real journey but I wanted to share with you 5 things that changed my health forever.

1. The mornings

I used to be a night owl. Years of working in hospitality, partying, sleeping in until 2pm because my shift didn’t start until 3pm. Then when I did get a 9-5 I would stay up until 2am binge watching the 24 box set then roll into work with 3 hours sleep under my belt. That all changed when I had Hanna, now 10.

You literally have no choice to become a morning person with a baby. I slowly, over time, started to get into bed earlier as I knew my mornings would be early. Before I realised, I was crawling in bed at 10pm and getting up at 6am. My daughter still loves an early morning but so do I, I have come to love the mornings.

I now get up at 5.30am by choice. I know that I have 1 hour before anyone else is getting up. I get up and do my 15 minutes of yoga. It feels so amazing to do those stretches in the morning. Then I will make a coffee, sit down at my desk and potter on my computer, reading posts, writing posts, catching up, whatever really, nothing to pressured. After my coffee I will go for a run or walk the dog. Then breakfast when I return.

I genuinely look forward to this each day.

Why do I love it? Its mine. I am doing what I want, for me. If I got up that hour later I wouldn’t have had that time.

I am not saying this needs to be your routine. I am saying that you need a routine. One that you enjoy, one that works with your lifestyle.

2. I stopped comparing

One of my favourite quotes is comparison is the thief of joy. Comparing can be dangerous for our mental health.

Let’s talk physical – If I opened my Instagram and there wasn’t a 6-pack looking at me then I would question if it was my feed. I followed all of the influencers. I now follow none of them.

I only follow real people who I can learn from and who can inspire me. I know now that my body is my body, I will never have Beyoncé curves because I am just not genetical built like that. My thighs will always wobble because that seems to be where I store my fat. Once I stopped trying to be someone else I felt more positive about my body.

My current comparing challenge is with people who do what I do but I think they are doing it better, others in the nutrition world. I have started to change the way I think about it though and again I try not to follow to may influencers unless I know that I can learn from them or the inspire me in some way. I am trying to remember that people will want to work with me because of me not because my reels are perfection (lol which they are not) or my grid is colour coordinated.

Stopping comparing is hard and is a work in progress but once you do you will find that you are kinder, more positive and also mentally lighter.

3. Planning

I’ve always been a bit of a planner. I love a list. I have spreadsheets, then lists in my phone, then I love to write down and list and physically tick things off. Such satisfaction.

If you don’t plan then its hard to stay on track, FACT!

I plan my food and meals I plan my workouts and walks I plan my social time I plan my work I plan my future I plan my finances I plan my goals

If I don’t it all goes to shit. That is me though. It doesn’t work for everyone but if I was going to say plan one thing, I would say your meals for the week. Game changer. Plan things you actually like though or it won’t happen. Buy the ingredients.

4. Stop aiming for perfection

I follow a PT called Emma Storey Gordon and she says what I am thinking all the time. She said this last year and it has resonated with me in such a way that it is now part of my programme.

Imperfect action

This means not aiming for total perfection all the time. It means that any action is better than no action.

An example is you aim to do 5 workouts one week but you only do 2 and seeing that as a fail. However, 2 workouts can still have a huge impact on your body composition.

Another example – trying to eat clean. Then you accidentally shove some chips in your mouth and then you think fuck it and it all goes to shit for the week until the next Monday.

I changed this perfection attitude; it was super hard and its still ingrained in me a little. This is what I think. If I make a decision that goes against my goals, I will then make sure the next decision is the right one. Imperfect action.

5. Being a bitch to myself

I hate it when people say love yourself. Oh ok, sure, that’s easy! Said none ever. It would be friggin awesome to love yourself though, right? I certainly don’t love myself but I’m pretty pleased with myself. I am starting to like what I see in the mirror more and more.

Why? Weight lifting.

I’m not saying that’s what anyone else needs but this is what helped me be nicer to myself.

Now when I work out, for example shoulders, my favourite part to train. I’m like shit girl look at those gains. Same with quads when I do the leg extensions. Weight training makes me feel strong AF and in turn it helps with mindset. Helps you feel more positive about what your body can do and is capable of.

When I look in the mirror, I don’t hate what I see anymore and it’s so nice.

My point – saying nicer things to myself has helped my confidence in a big way. It helps.

So that’s it. My top 5 tips that I hope can help you too 😊

Have You Been On a Diet Your Whole Life?

I bet 90% of females are nodding their heads right now.

I know I had up until a few years ago, then I studied Nutrition and really understood how it actually works.

Don’t get me wrong, I will always need to work on my relationship with food and it’s not easy all the time. You see I tend to over indulge; I have definitely had binging issues in the past, I don’t have one of those fast metabolisms and if it was just down to genetics, I would be overweight. I still dip in and out of weight loss phases too. However, the difference is now that I feel in control of it. I’m not on that hamster wheel of massive restriction on the weekends only to fall in the fuck it bucket each weekend. This is a huge achievement for me and it can be for anyone.

How did I get there?

Learning about energy balance was the first step. We all have heard that calories in calories out is how we lose weight. Yes, a negative energy balance is the principle to weight loss. We then have to find a method to create that energy balance. That method with be your diet, this is the more difficult part.

Did you know that the fat we hold on our body is actually excess energy AKA excess calories? When I learnt that it blew my mind. So, it makes sense that if we eat less calories (energy) than we burn that we will lose that energy AKA fat.

Another fact for you – did you know that when we lose fat, we breath it out!! WTF, again blew my mind. Most of it is breathed out as carbon dioxide.

Anyway, I went off subject.

It wasn’t as easy as just learning about energy balance, there is a lot more to it.

However, learning about your energy balance is a bloody good start.

I stress the YOUR part.

Yours is different to Sally in IG who says she eats 3000 calories a day and has shredded abs

Yours is different to Claire from marketing who is a marathon runner

Yours is different to your husbands

Yours is yours.

Why?

So many reasons.

How active you are? How much your currently weigh and how tall are you? Do you work out? Your dieting history Any hormonal or medical issues

The list is long.

Once you establish your number. You need to work out your method AKA diet.

Also – individual to you!

Jo at work may have lost 40kg intermittent fasting but you can’t go more than 3 hours without food so that’s not going to work for you. It will fail and then you will feel crap and the cycle starts again.

You need help and guidance with this.

Something else we need to be aware of that pops up now and again and ruins everything. LIFE! Shit happens!

I mentioned earlier that I dip in and out of fat loss phases. Our lives are not linear; they don’t run swimmingly all the time. Lockdowns, surgery, job changes, house moves, relationship breakdowns, work stress. They can derail our plans for our health goals very easily.

This is the great thing about the knowledge of your energy balance. You can make changes according to what is happening in your life. The goal should always be maintenance but sometimes you go into a surplus and gain a little fat. If you don’t want that fat gain, we can then pop into a fat loss phase.

Health is not easy as it requires effort but if you do the things that you actually like it becomes easier and less effort. You start to genuinely enjoy the process of being a healthier person.

Having a consultation with a Nutritionist will identify what will work for you. What YOUR method is. They will encourage you to do the things you enjoy to the process is not a slog and that includes eating foods you love.

If it is something you have been thinking about, I encourage you to take that plunge, you won’t ever regret investing in your health.

Is Health Just a Numbers Game?

I was never great a maths. In fact, I got an E in my GCSE and had to return to college to retake it and scrapped a pass the 2nd time. It doesn’t come easily to me.

I now find myself in a job where percentages are a daily and my Nutrition job is all about equations and numbers. How did this happen to me!!

It got me thinking about all the numbers that are involved in daily health.

How many calories you eat? How you split your macros into grams per day? How many steps you do a day? How many hours sleep to you get? How many litres of water you drink? How many plants are you eating?

Its all just numbers.

Funnily enough I’ve come to love these little targets we give ourselves and I think they are important markers to work towards to achieve your health goals.

Let’s break some of these down.

Calories – love them or hate them they are important to understand. All or the food and drink we consume are made up of these calories. Your number is individual to you and your goal. That’s why I hate meal plans. Meal plans are set calories and don’t take into consideration the individual needs. Calories are energy. If weight loss is a goal, we need to eat less energy than we burn. If you are aiming to stay the same weight you need to learn your maintenance calories. If we eat too much energy than we burn we then gain weight. It’s as simple as that but not that simple. There is so much nuance.

Steps – Why do we need a step goal? I think a step goal is powerful tool and one that is totally in our control. I love things we can control. Steps equals movement and movement equals a healthier you. Again, your step goal is individual to you. If you are a nurse then your step count is going to be higher than an office desk job worker. That’s why having a goal is great. I could happily sit at my computer all day, look at my watch and see that I only did 1000 steps all day. Seeing that will then encourage me to go for a walk until I hit my goal, encouraging me to move.

Having a step goal is great for weight management/loss but also heart health. Studies show that the sweet step count for health is 8,000 a day.

Sleep – we all know we need 8 hours, right? Well yes but no (as usual its not that simple). The eyeroll of the new parents who hear they need to get 8 hours sleep. The general sweet spot for sleep is 7-9 hours. I personally feel great from 7. My body just naturally starts to wake up then. Sleep is not always in our control but we can control other factors. As humans we actual thrive from routine. Having a sleep routine is important for our body clocks. Going to bed and getting up at the same time each day will create that routine, even if that sleep if broken with night feeds or whatever. No phones in bed. Read if you can’t sleep. Dim the lights, create a nice environment that you actually want to be in.

New mums – I promise it won’t be forever Shift workers – you can only do your best to (to much to say therefore another post)

Lack of sleep leads to an increase in the hunger hormone Ghrelin. That’s why you crave food more when you are tired. If we don’t get enough sleep it is said we can consume up to 500 calories more per day could lead to weigh gain.

Alcohol – the government guidelines say we should be drinking no more than 5 150mls glasses of wine a week. That’s 1 bottle. 1 bottle of wine a week!!!! It’s not a lot is it?

We all know alcohol is bad for us. It’s a carcinogenic and leads to increased risk in many cancers, specifically breast cancers for us women. Yet knowing this we still happily guzzle it down claiming it relaxes us. Its actually doing us no favours, it effects our sleep hence why you feel so tired the day after drinking even though you think you slept well. It leads to other behaviours such as overeating and poor decision making therefore weigh gain.

I am not the alcohol police; I definitely drink more than 1 bottle of wine some weeks but I think its important to know the harsh truths as we only see the shiny advertisements of alcohol. Most of us are not informed enough about the negative effects it on our physical and mental health.

The best bet – avoid binge drinking to much. This is classed as 4 standard drinks in 1 sitting. Try to have 4 days a week without alcohol.

Plants – Eat your plants! Aiming for 5 plus a day is ideal. Aim for different colours. Doing this will help you get the vitamins and minerals you need to help your body to its thing and make you feel better. Include at least 2 fruits, green veg for iron, your beans, pulses and legume for extra fibre.

There we have it.

Achieving optimal health is a numbers game but all of our numbers are not the same. This is the tip of the iceberg, there is so much more but I didn’t want to bore you to death.

Following generic numbers will only get you so far as they are a guide but are they right for you as an individual?

Seeing a Nutritionist to discuss your goals really is the way to go.