Permission to Invest in Yourself 💕

Coffee & Questions ☕️

I went on a little tangent today for coffee & questions…which is not usual for me.

But I wanted to give you permission to invest in yourself.

Too often I see clients last, after they’ve tried every diet and yo-yo’d for years, or broken themselves with chronic fatigue or injury.

Nutrition becomes a fix rather than prevention.

I’d encourage you to prioritise your health and control the controllables. After all, your body is your temple and you only have one! Treat it with the respect it deserves. Particularly in such crazy times! What you put in your mouth is something only you have control over!

Because at the end of the day, I want you to feel great! Energised and well. Something you might not have felt for a while if you haven’t got your nutrition dialled in.

Let me know if any of this resonates with you or if this was the butt kick you needed to get your nutrition sorted. For life! 💬🤍

The Triathlon Nutrition Academy Podcast is LIVE tomorrow!

Listen in wherever you listen to your podcasts 🎧

If you are looking for a Sports Dietitian to help you with training and racing nutrition, learn how you can work with me HERE

TRANSCRIPT

Today on coffee questions, I'm going to answer any question you have on sports nutrition. Ask me anything. If you're jumping online, let me know where you're listening in from. If you're online, let me know. Drop me in the chatbox where you're from.

Alright. So before we get started, a couple of things that I wanted to talk about. But as I'm talking, please feel free to drop your questions in the chat box. Facebook is a little bit delayed. So often I find that the question that gets asked in Facebook comes up quite a bit later. So if you're on Facebook, and you've got a question pop it in early because otherwise after I log off, and then there's all these questions that come through afterwards.

So yeah, before we get started, we've got Keasler here locked down from Penrith. I hope you’re okay, Kaz. I's brutal. I'm not going to talk about like, any of the negativity that's going on in the world at the moment. I'm going to try and stay positive. But yeah, definitely feel for you, Keasler and anyone that's currently locked down or anywhere in the world and it's just not a happy place at the moment. But I don't want to dwell on that. I don't want to be another negative voice in the sea of negativity. So I prefer to be a bit of a distraction and you know, keep the mood upbeat this morning.

Good morning, Bec Berglund. We've got Oreo Borgia from Australia. So cool! So many people online. So if you've been following along my stories for a while, you will have seen that I've been using my whereas this little guy over here, this beautiful. This guy! My new best friend, my mic, my Rode mic. And the podcast is coming on Friday, which is tomorrow. So by tomorrow, I'll put something on social media when it's good to go. But by tomorrow, there will be a Dietitian Approved podcast. I'm kind of excited but also nervous. And I don't know it's hard to listen to your own voice back that's for sure. And I'm pretty sort of casual. I don't really like stress about too much. But you know, it's still putting yourself out there and it's a risk when there's a whole lot of dietitians that tune in and listen and will probably judge me but I don't really care.

Alright, who else we got here? We've got Ara-Jane! “My fuel your adventure book arrived. Thank you! Vegemite stack. Wooh!”
You’re welcome! Can’ remember where I sent that to. New South Wales maybe? Or Victoria? I can't remember. But I'm glad that it arrived, and it didn't take forever with Australia Post. She's talking about my Fuel Your Adventure book. I was just looking for a copy on my desk, but I don't have one, which is my homemade sports nutrition product recipes. There's some savoury options in there, which is great to break apart all the sweet stuff that's available. Hunter Valley in New South Wales. There you go. Thank you. Thanks for jogging my memory. It's one of those things it's like in one ear and out the other.

So, yeah, Friday, tomorrow, the Triathlon Nutrition Academy podcast will be live, which is yet super exciting! So I'll pop something up on social media when that's there, and you can go and listen, I'm going to drop say for about 4 or 5 episodes straight off the bat. So you can binge it all at once. And just get a bit of travel and nutrition help if you're a triathlete. And there will also be more because it's endurance sports nutrition, as well, but definitely triathlon focused. And I've got a really cool a few guests kind of lined up for that as well. So it's definitely been a steep learning curve heading into the podcast arena. Thank God I have like a media company that are helping me. I've got no freaking  idea what I'm doing. But it's been really fun and I'm really excited to bring it to you. So that'll be around the podcast will be live tomorrow. So I'll send I'll put something out on social media for the link for you to go and listen wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Alright! Now pop your questions in if you've got any questions for me, there's a few people on Facebook. If you're on Facebook, let me know you're here and where you're listening from. And we've got more and more people coming on Insta as well. So pop your questions in, and I'll answer them for you live. Before we do that, while I'm waiting for some questions to come through what I kind of wanted to go on a bit of a tangent. What I wanted to say to you this morning is really to I don't know how to say it like gently. But I just want to encourage you to invest in your health. Because I've seen a lot of clients lately, and I have over the years as well, where they don't come and see me like as a dietitian. Like until last, like they've done all these diets. And they've yo-yoed up and down. They've been following well-meaning but maybe misaligned advice from their training buddies. And they've been like following stuff on the internet and really struggling.

So some of the really common struggles I see people face is like in terms of training and nutrition. So one is that they have no idea what they should be eating day to day. So as an example, one of the longer course athletes that I'm seeing at the moment, he's come to see me because he was kind of always trying to lose weight and just falling into a hole. And he was diagnosed with like chronic fatigue and adrenal fatigue and those sorts of things. Maybe last year, because he wasn't eating properly to support training. Now, that's, you know, one of the worst-case scenarios, and he's come to see me now after all of that, like most people need something pretty hectic to happen before they realise that they need to wake up and sort their nutrition out unfortunately. But this is kind of what I want to talk to you about today. Like with our body, our health is one of the most important things in life, you know, you think about food and shelter and water, and your family and your overall health and your body being functional, should be relatively high on that priority list. But some people don't really prioritise their nutrition or their health. And it often falls below things like work or family or whatever.

So I kind of wanted to encourage you to really prioritise you and your health, particularly in these times when that's something that you can control. Like, there are so many things that are out of our control at the moment. But what you put in your body, your body's your temple. That's something that you can control. So a bit a bit of a tangent for me this morning. But I wanted to kind of just say that because if you're sort of sitting on the fence around wanting to see a dietitian or you've been thinking about it for a while, then I want this to kind of be your butt kick to just commit and do it, invest in yourself and invest in your health. I find women are worse at doing this than men.

Men are like, “Oh yeah sure whatever. Let’s do it.” Whereas women, “I don't know, we might get mum guilt, or we don't really want to pay the money or invest in ourselves. We'd much rather look after everyone else. That's kind of just how we're built.” So I find that women in particular and other  ages do all these other things first before they end up having like a massive wakeup call and then they finally start to think about you know, actually putting some work into themselves.

So that's one of the main things I see people struggle with is that they just have no idea what to eat. They haven't got their nutrition dialled in and it's not till something major happens like they go through a major like chronic fatigue type thing or they get injured is the other big wake up call for people that their nutrition is wrong. Bec Berglund said, “Good tangent, butt kick needed” There you go. As a mum Bec, you probably, I call mums the bus driver, you know you're the one driving the bus and steering the bus in that direction. But if the bus driver goes down, then the bus no longer propels forwards, so you really need to look after yourself as the bus driver so that everyone else can stay okay. Because if you go down the whole thing goes down the whole ship the whole bus goes down.

So yeah, be a big wakeup call is usually what happens for people to go, “Okay, I'm actually going to invest in my health now and go and see a dietitian.” So I don't know, one of my passions is to try and change that I guess people use like proper evidence-based nutrition support last, they do all the weird shit on the internet first or follow you know, I can't even like say the word but they follow more unevidenced-based like therapies or whatever because it's not active, it's passive. It might be a pill or a potion that you take, or you go and get an alignment or pray to some crystals or whatever it is a lot of that sort of – got to be careful what I say here, but you know, a lot of that is passive, you're not actually having to do the work and which is probably why people don't come and see a dietitian first because it requires you to do some work for you to make a change.

It's not just you go and do that for me like you know, physio or massage like that sort of thing. They will often give you exercises to do but hands up, or let me know in the chat box if you actually do them. Most people don't, but you go and get a massage to get fixed. And then you're not doing the stuff underlying, that's actually going to help you get better and not need that massage every week, or every fortnight or whatever it is. Nutrition is kind of the same. I will always give people you know the framework and teach you how to do things. But I like to equip people with the knowledge and the skills to take that and run with it forever. Like I don't really enjoy working with clients that every time they make a change to their training program, they come in for a whole new meal plan because they don't know how to adjust it. So I don't enjoy that. I don't like people being that reliant on me. We don't kind of gel that well if you're not independent and happy to like do some work yourself.

I like to set people up forever. So I kind of call it like the last diet you ever need. I don't believe in diets. But it's the last kind of time, like if you get the guidelines and the frameworks and the structure for what you need to support your training , your exercise, whatever it is you're doing, then that's it forever. So it's an investment of time and effort and money in the beginning. And then if I can teach you the skills, then you can roll with that and adapt your plan and change it over time based on what's going on. So you do the hard work once and then it's done. That's it, like if things change drastically, I don't know, like you want to step up from Olympic distance to Ironman, then you might need some extra help. If you have a baby, you might need some help. If you find the iron levels low or something like that you might need a little bit of help. But I like to get people independent, equipped with the knowledge and the skills to then be able to be a good advocate for good nutrition for life. Bec said, “We think we know what to do – eat better. But I really struggle in execution.” Yeah, a lot of people are like that Bec. And I guess, accountability can be really useful for that. A lot of us like particularly people that have got some knowledge and some skills need to be kept on task or kept on track.

So there's some clients that I have seen for what area in 2021. 6-years for accountability. And it's they're not coming in every week or anything it might be every few months now because they have the knowledge and the skills. But just to stay on track and on tasks can be useful. I find skinfolds are quite good for that. During skinfolds right regularly is really good feedback that if your nutrition is you know working for you or working against you, or if you need to make some tiny tweaks and changes as you go. If your accountability buddy is not your dietitian, then find someone else to be your accountability buddy. It could be your partner, it could be a friend, it could be someone that you see regularly to help you stay on track. Or if you're not sort of self-motivated to be constantly doing that yourself. Or go and see a dietitian for an appointment to realign you and steer you in the right direction again, to give you a bit of motivation to keep going. I hope that makes sense Bec.

If you invest in yourself and in you invest in your health, and you do that with somebody that is an evidence-based practitioner, then you only have to do the work once and then it's done. And you'll feel the benefit from good nutrition. It's not until you are eating better and training well that you feel how good it feels to feel well. I know that sounds weird, but sometimes you just get in this big cycle of work and kids and washing and cooking and all that sort of shit. Life admin and it's until you take a step back and really reflect on what's going on or take a break. Take a weekend off that you start to go, “Oh, actually, I'm actually really tired.” or “I don't feel 100%.” And you don't kind of realise that you've been feeling like that until you stop and think about it, or you make a change to your diet, and you're like, “Wow! I have so much more energy, I'm sleeping better. I'm recovering faster from exercise.” And all it takes sometimes is just a few tweaks to your nutrition. Because my goal for you is to feel good, like you shouldn't be like, it's hard at the moment, everyone's kind of tired and stressed. But I think nutrition is something that you can control in the current – I hate saying this all the time but the current climate nutrition is something that you can control.

So if all shit breaks loose, all hell breaks loose, and gym clothes, and you can't exercise, then you can control what you put in your mouth. Instead of giving up altogether, and just eating whatever the hell you feel like or eating for emotional reasons. You could actually control what goes in your mouth and what goes in your family's mouth in a time when we're locked down, or you can't exercise like he normally would. So I think that's a total tangent for me. But I felt that was important to say, because I've kind of noticed this pattern over the last probably over a year now. But people aren't prioritising themselves and prioritising their health. And that's something that is going to shape your whole life really.

I guess, a bit of a bit of a tangent, total bit of a tangent. But all I want for you is to feel good. I don't want you to be struggling like mentally, physically. If you can control the controllables and focus on eating well, eating properly and making a bit of a change, then overall your whole life might feel a touch better. So let me know in the chat box if any of that resonate with you or if you've got any thoughts or comments. There's few people on Facebook here, but I can't see who you are. Facebook does not work the greatest for this, but that's cool. Instagram, Instagram for life. Yeah, so let me know, let me know for that tangent was worth listening to or not definitely a bit left for me left field for me to be a bit more like Woohoo.

I think it needed to be said. I'm usually really practical, unstructured and give you things that you can like tangibly go and walk away with. But I wanted today to just jump in and say that when the world is going nuts and it can be really easy to get negative and give up. But I wanted to give you a boot in the butt to try and focus on things that you can control that actually going to push the needle in making you feel well and feel healthy. And we know that our gut is linked to our brain. So it's going to probably boost your mood and make you feel a bit happier if you can put some nutritional principles in place.

Alright, that's deep. Alright, so there hasn't been any questions come through. So if you've got anything, anything you want to know about, pop them in the chat box now. Otherwise, I might log off. I've got a bunch of things to do to get this podcast happening tomorrow. It's been a lot of work. A lot of work but it should be relatively smooth sailing now that I know how-to do-good times. But yeah, pretty excited to bring the podcast tomorrow I will send something out on social media when it is there and live and ready for you to listen to and then you can binge it over the weekend when you're going for a long run. Or you're sitting on the wind trainer or running on the treadmill or whatever you're doing. Hopefully, it's an easy good practical listening for you. So if you do listen to it, it's send me a screenshot of you listening to it. Tag me on social media and let me know what you thought what you felt if there was any good take homes that you had from it as well.

Alright guys, I might tap out and I will post something up tomorrow and I will see you next week. Bye!