Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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 and 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.
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.
@paulthenutritionist:Oh, and welcome to another episode. And today, we're freestyling. And we're gonna freestyle something that I've had a conversation about with quite a few of you recently. And it's about your own standards. And I don't want that to come across as a negative slight on you of saying, where's your standards?
@paulthenutritionist:But it's more about just considering your own standards. And when things get on top, when you're feeling like you are losing control, then I want you to recall what are your standards. And today I'm going to talk you through what they are, how to set them and why it's so important to maintain them. So I want to give an example of what I mean from an own personal perspective, and something that I've learned to apply to myself in situations. It's been no secret to any of you when I've spoken about my triathlon training.
@paulthenutritionist:I despise of it. Don't enjoy cycling. Don't enjoy running. I'm finding running easier than cycling at the minute, but it flips and flops. And when I'm running or cycling, doing the stuff I'm not enjoying, and I know I've just, I've committed to, I don't know, so a run that I do a lot is a four mile loop and I do it three or four times just to kind of get the distance out.
@paulthenutritionist:And some people find that really boring, whereas for me, I kind of like the knowing what's happening next. So, I will often say to myself, when I'm on that run and if anyone's ever done running or any kind of sport, you will know that your mind is an absolute hypochondriac, and that gives up, think of every reason why you're injured and all these excuses, and my legs hurt and my ankles hurt in, or maybe I shouldn't do this because, or maybe I don't need to do this because all of those things, it's just your, your hypochondriac mind looking for ways out because our body does not, sorry, our mind does not like discomfort. And it is, it's like an overprotective mother and it feels that if your heart rate goes too high, you're going to die or you're going get injured and that's kind of what's happening there. So you have to push through that to build that resilience and that word resilience is going to come up a lot today. So when I'm running on this four mile loop, I will often make deals with myself, not deals, but I will I will make, I'll say something really important.
@paulthenutritionist:So for example, I am not going to stop. So sometimes, like, you know, I'll stop to have a wee or to have a drink or whatever. I'm not going to stop until I get to insert place I've decided, which is a mile or two miles away. And if before that point, every part of me wants to quit and wants to stop, I say to myself, STANDARDS. And the reason why I say to myself, STANDARDS, is to keep me grounded.
@paulthenutritionist:You've set your fucking standards, so stick with your standards. Because the moment you quit or the moment you mug off your own standards, the moment that you set your standards and then don't hit your standards is the moment that you're teaching your body it's okay to cut corners. Now I'm not saying that your standards needs to be through the roof, know, I'm not saying that my standards are I'm going to do this four k loop in world record time because I'm not going to hit that, and then I'll beat myself up. But a realistic standard for me to say I'm not going to stop, then my next drink break or my next wee break is going to be in two miles time. There is no reason why I can't get to that point.
@paulthenutritionist:That is a very acceptable standard. And if I'm hurting a little bit, if I'm fine to get a little bit hard, tough shit, standards. And by doing that, I'm teaching my body that resilience. I'm teaching my body you wanted to quit, but you didn't because you set your standards and you kept those standards high. And this applies to all areas of your life.
@paulthenutritionist:So if I think to many of you following the talk the other week where we talked about weekends, and going out at the weekend for some kind of family barbecue, if you decide that you're going to go to a barbecue this weekend, and you're going to, I don't know, not drink, for example, or you're going to have one drink, and then the barbecue comes and suddenly you're faced with a bit of peer pressure from family, Go on, you boring bastard, have a drink, have a wine, it's one wine. What's wrong with you? Stop being boring. Why are you so obsessed with not drinking? You've gone boring.
@paulthenutritionist:Oh, what's wrong with you? It's summer. Enjoy it. The sun's all of that shit. Standards.
@paulthenutritionist:If you fucking said that you're not going to drink this weekend, then you don't drink because you've got standards and you've set your standards. And the moment that you slip, you're telling yourself it's okay to lie to yourself. You're telling yourself it's okay to go back on your word. You're telling yourself that it's okay to cut corners. And the important thing here, as I say, is to ensure that those standards that you've set are realistic.
@paulthenutritionist:This weekend, you're going to a family barbecue. You know there's gonna be wine flying about, and there's probably gonna be some PIMs, you love a PIM. So and actually you're not driving, so you're to ask your partner to drive because you're going to have two PIMs. That's your standards. So it's super important that you understand what are your standards and you set those standards out so that you make sure you hit those standards.
@paulthenutritionist:And this is a consistent theme with everything we speak about because where anyone goes wrong when it comes to anything nutrition, health, sport, activity, work, getting jobs done is when you do not prepare. And when you allow your flippant, you allow unstructuredness, you allow lucidness, and you allow a lack of preparation to decide what's happening. It does not take much. Now obviously in the ideal world, we'd be preparing every part of our life within an inch, but that's not realistic. But having a vague plan so that you roughly know what you're going to do will always come out on top.
@paulthenutritionist:It will always succeed you. And that starts by setting your own standards and considering what are your standards. And over time, the thing that you'll learn is that actually you are in full control. And actually you build that resilience so that next time you're feeling vulnerable and next time you're feeling weak, actually, you know that you've got the strength. And it's like I was saying on the live call with Ed, where we were talking about when we went heel sprints, and I said to him, on these heel sprints, this horrible hill, 14% incline rank, horrendous, never wanna do it again.
@paulthenutritionist:But when you do that, every part of your body wants to quit. And when you push through that, it's money in the bank. And I said to him, when you're doing your half marathon next week, you will have moments where you want to quit, and you will remember this. And he absolutely did. He said to me, there was a hill, and he thought to himself, I'm finding this really hard.
@paulthenutritionist:And then he remembered that chill. And he remembered that he pushed through because he set his standards. And he pushed through that pain and came out the other side because guess what? Pain disappears. And that's the thing that we have to remember that, you know, these moments come and they feel challenging.
@paulthenutritionist:Doesn't matter what you're doing. It feels challenging, and you think, fucking hell, I need to stop doing this. I need to fight or flight. I'm gonna flight out of here. And then inevitably, if you didn't do that and you did fight through, what happens is the other side, ten minutes later, it's not a problem.
@paulthenutritionist:And it all starts by you setting your standards, whatever they may be. So I want you to kind of your take home point, I guess, from this is to set your standards out before doing anything that you think is going to be a challenge. Set your standards out to anything that you're feeling vulnerable about. Set your standards out for anything you think could pose as a bit of an amber warning to you. Decide on your standards, set them, commit to them, write them down, message them to yourself, message them to me, set your standards and commit to them.
@paulthenutritionist:Don't make them too out of reach because you set yourself up for fail, but set your standards and stick to your standard. If you set standards, you have to stay with your standards. And if you do that, you honestly cannot fail. Hope you found this useful. Enjoy your week, and I'll speak to you soon.
@paulthenutritionist:Ciao.