{ "version": "1.0.0", "segments": [ { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "0.56", "endTime": "33.71", "body": "Welcome to the Nutritionist UK Coaching Podcast, your exclusive audio space designed to make this process easier, clearer, and more effective for you. Inside, you'll find bite sized guidance, walkthroughs of key resources, and relevant insights that cut through the noise to help you take action without needing to sit down and read through everything. Whether you're walking, cooking, or on the school run, this is here to keep you consistent, informed, and moving forward. Let's get into it." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "34.11", "endTime": "53.675", "body": "Hello, and welcome to another episode. I've got a bit of a confession. Last Friday's call was not recorded. And I am so sorry because it was really good as well. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna do a quick summary about what we're speaking about." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "53.675", "endTime": "125.479996", "body": "I'm gonna ask answer the questions that were asked and hopefully give you a bit of a summary of everything that was said. So we talked about sleep. We talked about the importance of sleep and the impact of low sleep in terms of quality, time, and we talked about what you can do to fix your sleep and what I currently do to address my sleep. So sleep in itself is probably the quickest and easiest solution and hack for better health, no matter what your health is, whether that is you're overweight, you got diabetes, you have high blood pressure, you have low blood pressure, you have some gut problems, you have anxiety, you have whatever ailment you can think of, it is almost certain that getting better, longer, higher quality sleep is probably going to fix it. But then obviously the issues are the fact that people struggle to get to sleep, and I absolutely appreciate that." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "125.88", "endTime": "165.01501", "body": "So what can we do about it? So I'm going to tell you a little bit about kind of my sleep journey, if you like, and then I'm going to tell you what I do to make sure that my sleep quality is always the best that it possibly can be. So, I had really bad ADHD growing up, and as a result of that, my sleep was awful. I just remember up until the age of about 20, really, just constantly dreading bedtime because I'd just be lay staring at the ceiling most nights. If I did sleep, I'd wake up in the middle of the night and then my mind was whirring again." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "166.215", "endTime": "196.88501", "body": "I would just always be tired for various different reasons, one of them being that I had such an overactive mind and poor sleep hygiene. Food wasn't great growing up, like mum wasn't very good at cooking. She couldn't really afford fresh food. She didn't really understand how to cook fresh food on the cheap, so we just had pretty shitty beige food, to be honest with you, and that definitely didn't help in terms of my development, both mentally and physically. So my sleep was shite." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "197.125", "endTime": "238.69002", "body": "And then I remember when I started to really study nutrition in, I'm going to say 2012, I researched to understand the impact of how nutrition can improve our overall biology. And one of the things that just kept coming up was how certain foods can impact your sleep. And this sounds mental saying this out loud now, but having a higher sugar diet will directly impact your sleep and being dehydrated will directly impact your sleep, your sleep quality. All of these things were just like, just blew my mind in terms of information. So I became in this little quest to see if I could fix my sleep." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "238.77", "endTime": "266.58002", "body": "Long story short, the previous twenty twelve, twenty twenty two, previous fourteen years, I've absolutely optimized my sleep, and I've got to the stage where my sleep is always good quality, but equally as well, I am an absolute geek when it comes to sleep. So what can you do? So it starts, as I've said before, first thing in the morning. Do not pick up your don't get an aggressive alarm clock that screams at you. Beep beep beep." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "266.66", "endTime": "293.48", "body": "Because those types of things, that is like somebody waking you up and screaming at you. Your body needs to have a slow morning. Basically, with your cortisol, which is your stress hormone, you want that to rise slowly. You don't want that to be abrupt because if you do that, it's gonna knock you out for the rest of the day. It'll impact your circadian rhythm, and then come in the evening, your body's all fingers and thumbs, you're fucked, you probably fall asleep on the sofa." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "293.64", "endTime": "322.57", "body": "So what you wanna do is you wanna have a calm wake, and there's two things you can do. The first thing you can do is you can get those lights light alarm clocks, which are like, you know, the sun rises slowly. You can use Philips Hue light bulbs, which I have not to wake me up, I tell you what I do in a second. Philips Hue light bulbs, can put a timer and it will slowly increase your lights or set certain colours. Or you can get the sleep cycle up, which will wake you up based on the most appropriate cycle for your body." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "323.13", "endTime": "341.625", "body": "Some points on this. We sleep in ninety minute cycles typically. You will always wake up after ninety minutes, whether you know it or not. At the end of your cycle, your REM, your deep, and your I think it's called your awake cycle, your light cycle. You will always wake up at the end of that." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "341.94498", "endTime": "405.57", "body": "Now, if you can wake up at the end of your cycle as close to your alarm clock as possible, you're gonna feel great, which is why I always say if you were due to get up at 7AM and you woke up naturally at 6AM, you are better off getting up than trying to get another hour of sleep because you will enter into a sleep cycle, then it will be disrupted, and you will be fucked for the rest of the day. So do not do that. But yeah, what I do is make sure I have a slow morning. You're better off giving yourself an extra half hour to an hour first thing in the morning, as opposed to trying to rush and be stressed and you know, like give yourself fifteen minutes and you're like rushing around, you're throwing something in your face, you're smashing a coffee on your head, like all of these things just literally will tank your day in terms of your energy. If you wake up with an aggressive morning, a stressful morning, you can guarantee that that is going ruin your day in terms of your concentration, your hunger levels, your energy, your motivation, your mood." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "405.65", "endTime": "443.57", "body": "So do yourself a favor and just give yourself half an hour. By the way, since doing last Friday's workshop, Ed has messaged me saying that he's been waking up half an hour early, He said it's been amazing. He's woken up, he's had time for himself. He even said he got some bonus wife points by giving, by making his wife's coffee and some breakfast. I can't stress to you how peaceful it is for me every morning to wake up before most people in my whole street are awake, and I just take my time and I love it." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "443.81", "endTime": "465.52002", "body": "It's so important. I wake up, I have a shower, I go downstairs, I pop around the kitchen, do some Tai Ji ing, listen to some music, then I'll make a coffee, sit down, do some reading, do some writing before most people are awake. And it just sets me up. The slower the morning, the better the day you'll have. So that's what you can do first thing in the morning." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "466.16", "endTime": "514.335", "body": "When it comes to evening routines, so obviously, you want to be stabilizing in terms of the food that you're eating throughout the day, So not leaving huge gaps, making sure you're hydrated, not cutting out food groups, which none of you should be doing anyway. If you are, you need to message me ASAP because something's gone wrong. But towards the end of the day, we want to aim to try and have a consistent sleep and wake time. So if you go to bed at 10:00 on a Wednesday, you should be going to bed at 10:00 on a Saturday, Sunday, give or take. If you're being more social, it's not going happen, but you should aim to because your body loves rhythm, and your body loves cycles, and your circadian rhythm literally Sorry, your circadian cycle literally loves rhythm." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "514.655", "endTime": "543.26", "body": "So, we want to try and maximise that as best as we can. So the more consistent wait time, the more consistent sleep time you can have, the better you will sleep. The same with if you usually wake up at 07:00, you probably don't want to stay in bed later than 08:00 at the weekend, just because you don't want to throw your body off when it comes to Monday again. So towards the evening, really important that you dim those lights because you want to assimilate sun setting. So I this is where Philips Hue light bulbs come in." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "543.26", "endTime": "574.72003", "body": "So I always, always, always have very orange red lights in my bedroom, but orange lights in the evening. We spoke about blue light blocking glasses, which I will happily send you a link to. But what these do, and again, Ed bought these and he s tried them and he says they re great. What they do is they will block that blue light from the TV and your phone screens and all of those things which are essentially simulating sunlight. That blue light tells your body that it's daytime, when it isn't daytime." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "575.36005", "endTime": "601.00995", "body": "The closer you get to bedtime, the darker you want it, the dimmer you want it, so that your body knows to kick start and to release melatonin, which will make you fall asleep. If you haven't got enough melatonin in your body, then you won't go you won't feel tired, you won't get to sleep. So blue light blocking glasses help with that by blocking the blue light, the flickering from the TV and screens. You should not be going on social fuck me. Do not go on social media an hour before bed." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "601.00995", "endTime": "611.57", "body": "If you do that, you are this whole last ten minutes is a complete waste of time. Like, you should not be doing that. No benefit. You're not switching your mind off. You're turning it on." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "611.81", "endTime": "619.73505", "body": "You're not helping yourself at all. There's no contribution to your sleep. It's not relaxing you. All it's doing is stimulating you. It's evoking emotions." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "619.815", "endTime": "640.23", "body": "It's giving you too much information when your body needs to be winding down. What you wanna be doing, you ideally don't wanna be watching any dramatic TV as well before bed. You wanna be watching calm things. No drama, no stress, things that aren't gonna elevate your heart rate, things that aren't gonna surprise your emotions, things that aren't gonna stress you out. You need calm as much as possible." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "640.23", "endTime": "671.785", "body": "So whether that means a gentle TV programme, whether that means some gentle YouTube videos, some nice music, playing games with your kids, with your partner, whether that is reading a book, whether that is just being intimate with your other half, whether that's just lying in bed with your other half. You need to have, in that final hour, need to be thinking about winding down. I don't put on the bathroom light. It's attached to my bedroom. I don't put that on when I'm brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed because it's too bright." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "672.185", "endTime": "698.135", "body": "It's too stimulating before bed because I want my mind and my body to know, okay, it's bedtime here. The thing to say here is it doesn't take long. Once you start to do these things, it doesn't take long for your body to adapt because you're teaching your body this new rhythm. And it will not take long for you to find that once you sort this out initially, that it just becomes natural and normal for you. So as I say, the closer I get to bed, all those things happen." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "698.135", "endTime": "716.43005", "body": "Dark lights were really dim. I use a, currently I'm using a infrared light as well, because I've seen a lot of stuff about that. It's good for relaxing your body. It's good for your central nervous system, allegedly good for your skin as well. So I've been trying that and that's quite nice." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "716.43005", "endTime": "733.975", "body": "I found that when I first ever used it, had a really deep sleep. It's a placebo and it works and it works. But I've just been trying that recently. And then I will get into bed. I will turn the Philips Hue off and I have a salt lamp because that's nice dim light on the side of my bed." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "734.695", "endTime": "756.065", "body": "And I will listen to oh, I do one of two things. I will use an acupressure mat because I've had really bad sciatica growing up. If I lie on an acupressure mat, it relieves that tension, but also puts you into really deep relaxation. So I use that. However, Premel said on the call that he also has an acupressure mat, and it stimulates him." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "756.065", "endTime": "782.76", "body": "But most people, it relaxes you. I would listen to an app called Balance, which is a free meditation app, and it's not wanky meditation where they're talking about, I don't know, staring at the stars. It's like really productive meditation that I've done for hours and hours and hours. Think when I last looked it was like two thirty hours I've done of that. Really, really good, really helpful, and it just sends me to sleep." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "783.475", "endTime": "812.97504", "body": "I always use a night mask, like an eye mask, sorry, because, and I've had a client before and I spoke about this last Friday, whereby they were struggling with sleep and I said, Do you have light in your bedroom? They said, No. I said, okay, well what you might not realise is during those light sleep stages, even a headlight from a car might stimulate you and wake you up. So completely block it out. So either get yourself an eye mask, which is the cheapest way to do it, or get really good high quality black blinds and get some earplugs." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "812.97504", "endTime": "843.805", "body": "If you share a room with your partner, or even if you don't, if you live on a road, if a fox screams outside, if you hear a cat, if your partner snores, like all of those things will quite literally keep you awake at night. So get some high quality earplugs, I've got some. I also have an eye mask which has some headphones in, so I can listen to my meditation before bed. I just want to block out all sensory noise. Get yourselves those and I promise you, you will sleep like an absolute baby." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "844.285", "endTime": "863.22003", "body": "I also make sure that my bedroom is as cool as possible. I've got a weighted blanket which I'll put on myself when I'm lying on the acupressure mat, which I'll do before bed. I will usually fall asleep on there and then just crawl into bed. And I think that s it. Some of the questions that were asked." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "863.54004", "endTime": "894.76", "body": "Ed asked, what can you do for children in terms of their sleep cycle and what to eat. I was saying that there are certain foods which can help stimulate tryptophan or foods that contain tryptophan, sorry, which is a precursor to melatonin. So having peanut butter on a bagel would be a really nice thing for kids to have peanut butter, bagel and bananas even better. Turkey and lettuce are well known to be really high in tryptophan. You basically want to have, obviously low sugar, as I said, as a good example." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "895.225", "endTime": "920.1", "body": "You want to basically have, if you are going to eat, you want to possibly have more complex carbohydrates, certainly complex carbohydrates, but maybe a bit of protein as well, but that s not essential. Just make sure that kids aren t going to bed hungry, because that can be a real problem. Someone else asked oh, this is a really good one. So, what happens if you wake up in the middle of the night? How do you stop it when you are in that routine?" }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "920.5", "endTime": "933.955", "body": "So I have been in this situation really recently. Two things. Firstly, if I have a lot on on my mind, my mind is very stimulated. So if I wake up in the middle of the night, the reason why I can't go back to sleep is often because my mind starts working. I start thinking about you guys." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "933.955", "endTime": "947.63", "body": "I start thinking about podcasts today. I start thinking about ideas, how I can make things better. Like, my mind is always working. So what I do is I have two tactics. One, I will write stuff down before bed, so everything." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "947.79", "endTime": "973.87", "body": "Every single thing on my mind gets mind dumped on there, on my Kindle and I write it all down, so therefore I know my mind is empty. If I wake up in the middle of the night, same thing, Write it all down. I want to write it all down because I want to ensure that it isn't in my mind. Once it's on paper, it's done. The problem that you probably won't remember is when you wake up in the middle of the night, your body is thinking, oh, I need to remember that, don't forget that." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "973.87", "endTime": "989.765", "body": "And that's what keeps you awake. Whereas if you write it down, it's out, it's done, and your body can move on. When you overthink, it's your body just filing thoughts, and it's a good thing, and it's a way of your body relieving stress. So it's counterproductive to say it. Not counterproductive, what's the word I'm looking for?" }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "990.08496", "endTime": "1008.07996", "body": "Can't think of the word I'm looking for, but that it's actually a good thing that your mind is overthinking because it's trying to process everything. So, yeah, write it down. The other thing, so if you are waking up at a similar time, which most people are, I always seem to wake up at 03:00. Again, your body loves rhythm. That is what is happening there." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "1008.07996", "endTime": "1027.655", "body": "The other thing that I find is that quite often, if I wake up at like four in the morning, I am awake and I am done. I might not try and force myself to go to sleep. There is no point in that. I might try for a little bit, but sometimes I will just wake up. What you want to do in that scenario, because your body is in a rhythm, let's say I am going to bed at 10:00, usually I asleep by ten." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "1028.27", "endTime": "1043.9249", "body": "Now if I am going to bed at ten and waking up at 5AM, my body thinks I am good. And once I have done that for a couple of days, I am in a world of trouble. So what I then need to do is I need to make sure that I am consciously going to bed a lot later. There's almost like you're teaching your body about jet lag. It's a similar thing." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "1043.9249", "endTime": "1068.6249", "body": "So I will purposely try and go to bed as late as possible, tricking my body that it's still gonna wake up. My body doesn't know what time it is. It just knows that, oh, after seven hours, we're good. So let's wake up. So if you can go to bed later, it means that your body will get used to the fact that it will, after a couple of days, it will get used to the fact that you're waking up later and then you can probably go to bed a little bit earlier." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "1068.865", "endTime": "1085.34", "body": "And I found that that really works for me. I think that's it. Do not think that you're broken if you wake up a few times a night. What is usually happening when you can't get back to sleep is that you're thinking stuff. If you weren't thinking about things, I can promise you you'd go straight back to sleep." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "1085.34", "endTime": "1110.905", "body": "So my advice to you is to ensure that you are writing those things down. Supplements that help for sleep, magnesium, glycinate, depending on your weight there will be a certain amount of magnesium dosage that you want for that. I think that's pretty much it. I hope I've covered everything. Any other questions let me know." }, { "speaker": "@paulthenutritionist", "startTime": "1110.905", "endTime": "1143.34", "body": "Hope this is helpful. If you want any of those resources I have told you about, so the eye mask, the ear plugs I use, Philips Hue, Sleep Cycle, Balance App and the ear plugs I use, acupressure mat, Shakti mat, send me a message, weight blanket, send me a message and I'll ping that across to you. But listen, if you do all of these things or a couple of these things, promise that your sleep will improve significantly. Some of them are really cheap easy fixes, so keep you posted. I hope that makes sense and I will speak to you in the next workshop." } ] }