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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:Hello, and welcome to another episode. And today, we have the recording of all recordings from Friday's group check-in and I really really liked it and the messages I got from you all suggest that you also liked it. So I'm trying to work out when best to do this because I think it probably offered more value than us doing individual check ins every week. I feel like it created a lot of conversation. I feel like it really helped in terms of you guys understanding where you're currently at.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:I got so many messages from you saying, fuck, I'm not the only one. People wrote that on the group as well because a lot of the stuffs I said is, you know, I have very similar conversations with many of you. So I really enjoyed it. So I'm trying to work out how we navigate this one because it'll be great to do that more often. But we'll see.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:If you've got any ideas to I've had, one person said to me they'd like me to do it monthly. Would you like it more often? Perhaps you hated it. If you haven't listened to it, sorry, if you weren't there, then you're gonna really like this. If for whatever reason you'd like to watch back the video because there was a little slide deck, let me know and I'll send that across to you.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Yeah, it's a really, really good one and I'm I'm super happy with it. So we will do another one at some point, but I'd be curious to know when you would like the the how often you'd like it. So don't worry. But enjoy this and I shall I'll speak to you on the next one or the oh, by the way, this Friday there is another rewind. I've tried to schedule a few rewinds for you, so enjoy this Friday, and I'll speak to you next time.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Joe? This is how it's gonna work. So as I said, everything is really anonymous. I haven't edited anything, but I've, like, tried to, like, I don't know, I've I've some of your questions, some of you have had questions where you've you've added like a few questions, I've tried to like break them up. As I said put in the chat anytime or if there's anything kind of that you really want to come in the moment, you're very welcome to come off mic, And someone else coming in.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Oh, Jeremy's in. So, yeah, you're you're very welcome to come off mic if there's anything there. And then, obviously, I'll I'll put it on the feed afterwards. And so you know, check ins resume next Friday, Monday. But turning on the feedback of this, and if we actually enjoy it, I've really enjoyed it, and your detail and your checking form has been this check-in form has been really, detailed.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:We might do it, like, once a month as part of our live calls or something like that. Haven't decided yet. So that's how this is gonna work. So I wanna start. So this is really important.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:So I was going through the checking form. I was putting it into a deck. Right? And I was like, fucking hell, man. This is really, depressing because, obviously, we're, like, going through, like, problems, aren't we?
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And I was like, shit. Like, I'm going through them. I'm like, god. Problem after problem after problem. So I was like, right.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:We've gotta we've gotta spin this because when you when I look at the screen, I'm like, there's a lot of kind of, like, issues here. So I wanted to start with some highlights that we saw. So some highlights that I saw, and obviously, we put I put like a bit of a win thing. So few wins that have come out. So somebody is nearly eight kilograms down, three extra holes in their belt, afternoon crash has gone completely, which is really, really good.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Someone else is on week eight of Couch to five k. I'm running twenty eight minutes now. This person started Couch to five k with absolutely no running experience, if I remember rightly. Wait flat for a fortnight, and this is a really interesting topic we will get into, my friends, because there was a couple of themes here. But wait flat for a fortnight.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Didn't pan. It didn't cut color, and it's moving again. Now there is, I think, a couple of you here, and I want you to pay attention to that final bit. Didn't cut colors, and it's moving again. Really important.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Five days away, a properly came back on the target. Fantastic. Three gym sessions a week and dragged the parents along to it. Really loved that one. Running again and feeling good about how I look really positive.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Still committed to habits even on the weeks that didn't go to pub. So some really good wins there, and there are some other wins, so I just want to pick those ones up. So then, here we go. The oh yeah, this is what I just said a second ago. So there's six or such 15 topics because one them has a couple.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:So there's 15 topics coming up. I've tried to box them in. There are gonna be some where you're gonna be like, did I write that? But no, you didn't. It's just that a lot of the time, the things that you're feeling very common, and it's something that I see.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:You're all you're kind of seeing like a sneak behind the magician's hat here because when I'm going through check ins, often, as I say, there's, like, fiends, so it's really nice to be able to show you and, I guess, expose you all to what your peers are feeling, and hopefully this will make you feel a little bit better. This here is something I see a lot, and there is a caveat to this one because there is someone who I so I obviously know who wrote everything and I'm not going to expose that, but there is somebody who wrote this and I'm going get into a bit of context about it, but let me just read, move my notes out of way. So first issue, the number on the scales isn't corresponding to the effort I'm putting in. I know I just have to trust the process. It's just frustrating.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:I want you to click the hands up icon if you have experienced that ever since working. Now I am gonna be amazed if there is not every single one of you who has experienced that, or and I'm letting the scale weight get to me because it's not moving. I feel like I'm doing something wrong. So these things here, it's gonna happen. Now the first thing that I wanna say is, say the person who wrote the top one is doing absolutely fantastic.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:This individual is so hard on themselves. In context of this person on their journey, this person has lost 19 and a half kilograms. And they are so hard on themselves that when we have called, and we've had probably more calls than, like, every now and then we'll jump on a call just to kind of unpick things. And this person works really hard, has a really busy family life, etcetera, etcetera. But when things get on top, they're they're so hard on themselves that they often don't see the wood through the trees.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:We have to, like, kind of realign. And it's and I have this conversation with a lot of you. Now this person, as I said, has lost a significant amount of weight. And in the last eight weeks, there's been a holiday, there's been an illness, there's been work stresses, and they've gone from losing quite a significant amount of weight because as we all know, when you're heavier, you're going to lose weight quicker. And then it's dropped on average in the past eight weeks.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Still lost four and a half kilograms, but it's dropped to about half kilogram a week, which actually is right, I guess, at the lower end of the target range and exactly what I'd expect. But the key thing to remember here, and I've had this conversation with many of you, is that when it comes, so a couple of things, when it comes weight perhaps not moving in the direction that it was moving, or when it comes to perhaps you're having plateaus, and you're going to have plateaus, right? As I say to you, I pretty much I don't think there's anyone here who are having another conversation about weight if weight loss is your goal, and even if it isn't. In that there is going to be times where everything's going swimmingly, and you're like, this is easy. And then there's going be a time where it peaks, it stabilizes, and it might take a while to come down.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And that's just the way it is. But for me, what I'm looking at is, as your nutritionist, I'm looking at, okay, well, can we explain a reason? So with this person I'm alluding to, we had so many different variables as to why, and to be honest, the weight was still coming down, but it just wasn't coming down as fast as they would like it to. We were and by the way, this wasn't a conversation of they're not trusting the process, they're just so hard on themselves that they were beating themselves up a little bit. And when it comes to their weight, what I'm always exploring and anything that's going on really is, is there a variable that I can look at and go, well, it's probably gonna be that's probably gonna impact where the numbers are going.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And if I can, then for me, I'm good. It's when I can't find them together as a team, we're talking, and we together can't explain a bit of a change, right? If it's kind of unexplainable, that's when we might change things. But the other thing that we have to remember, especially if you're female, is that that weight on the scale, right, is it's gonna be very variable. I think I said to if I might have said this on a call, I've had one female who, for the first six months, their weight just came down every week beautifully, and I did say to him, I was like, enjoy this because it's not going to sustain.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And it's the same with men as well, and it's hormonally and that's all sorts of things, and that weight is that kind of like, it's the noisiest signal isn't it? Especially I need the data, I want us to weigh ourselves on a daily basis, and then we work at our average. But we've got to consider, as we spoke about a million times, how water, how glycogen, how stress, how bowel contents, how your hormones will swing it one, sometimes up to five kilograms, in either direction by the way, with zero change to body fat. And that is why that kind of week average is so important. The thing that we have to remember, and I don't think Geoff will mind me having this conversation because we've had some really fantastic conversations, but the thing that we have to remember is that when it comes to our weight there's so many different swings, you know, in what's happening, and through stress, through our lifestyle, through, holidays, through poor sleep, through so many different kind of variables will impact what's happening with the weight on the scales.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:But so long as the trend, when we look at point a and we look at where we are now and we're looking forwards, so long as that kind of number is pretty much coming down, you know, gradually and as we want it to, then we're all in a good space. What we need to be mindful of and be, we need to be kind to ourselves, is that when and especially August, right? I think most of you have been on holiday or had some social things and we're going to get into that in a second. When that happens, we have to consider the fact that that's going to impact what's happening with our weight. Now, the other thing as well, and this is my point of Geoff, is that when you do lose weight, and this individual on screen is again, when this person did lose weight and they have lost a significant amount of weight, obviously the weight of the rate is going be like that, and then things are going to start to plateau, and the kind of the number is gonna change a little bit.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And it's gonna change on the scale in that you're probably not gonna be losing a kilogram a week. You might lose, you know, what would be comfortable is maybe point two five, maybe point five depending on where you weigh, and that's fine. But the thing that we have to step back at is to look at how is our waist feeling? How is the notches on the belt like that win at the start? How's your clothes feeling?
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:How is your energy? How is your sleep? And, actually, sometimes, and there's actually somebody who's on this call where, actually, if we just completely remove the weight away from them, away from the scales, all the other metrics actually spot on. So then we actually have to question how much does the weight actually impact us? And sometimes we can get quite tied up in the weight.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And like this individual here, I'm letting the scale of weight get to me because it's not moving, and I feel like I'm doing something wrong. You're not doing something wrong. What's usually happening is there's a bit of a plateau, there's some environmental issues, and actually, as I'm saying a lot, and it's a bit of a catchphrase, we just gotta fucking bore on. We just gotta do what we always do. Because I can guarantee you, if we look right back at the start and where you are now, you've made progress in terms of your weight.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And if we remove the weight and we said that weight is no longer allowed to be looked at as a metric, we could probably point to 10 different other progresses in terms of your overall health, whether that's knowledge, whether that is your energy levels, your sleep, your performance in the gym, your movement, your hormones, your mood, your attitude, your relationships, your sex drive, like, then suddenly we start to look at me, actually, we're making loads of progress here. But the other thing that I keep forgetting what I gonna say there. The other thing with regards that's what I was gonna say about Jeff early on. So I've had a conversation with Jeff a while ago, he really likes numbers, as a lot of you do. And we were having a chat, and we were doing a bit of maths.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And I said to Jeff, for you to put on a kilogram of weight, and we worked out all the numbers, he would have to eat a surplus. I think it was, like, 6,500 calories a week. Surplus on top of your maintenance. And if you're in a deficit so you've got your deficit here. We'd bring you up to maintenance.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And remember, your maintenance is to just stay the way you are. You'd have to eat 6,500 calories on top of that to put on a kilogram of fat, and none of you are gonna do that. It's very rare for you to. In fact, it's quite hard for you to do that. So that's that.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:That's the first one. So the number isn't matched to effort. You're all gonna feel it, but for us, remember, it's about us just trying to look at is there any variables here? Can we match the variables? And if there's nothing, if there's no reason and I can't kind of identify it, then we might change things around a little bit.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:But this is a really, really incredible one, and I love it because this follows on. Rather than just being pleased about shedding fat, how I'm becoming increasingly frustrated at how I look. Kind of ironic. I want to lose fat. I successfully lose fat, but then all I can see is where the residual fat sits.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Now, my friends, this is something that I'm gonna call the success paradox. And reason why we're gonna call it the success paradox is because this individual, like the first individual, has lost a lot of weight. And the thing is, and I've had this conversation with many, many, many of you, I think a lot of you find that when you're working with me or a nutritionist or whatever, is it isn't hard enough because you're not put on this really restrictive diet where you're hungry all the time, you're starving, and, you know, like, it's really painful, but you're still losing weight. And what happens is you'll lose weight quite significantly, and it doesn't feel like hard work. And it almost happens a little bit too quickly in that you're looking back and, like, I can't believe that I was 10 heavier three months ago, or wherever it might be.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And what happens then is when you were once looking in the mirror and you were looking at perhaps your hips or you were looking at, you know, your your belly, and you're looking and you're going, I feel like I'm I I know I'm overweight. The scales tell me I'm overweight, and I'm looking at my belly, and that's not how I want it to look. Suddenly, disappears. And then the success paradox means that you stop looking at your belly. You start looking at your chest, or you start looking at your arms.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And you're going, actually, I'm holding a bit of fat here. And I think it was was it Ed? It might have been Ed who obviously lost loads weight for those of you who were with a six month old. Ed lost loads weight, and, you know, he's he's now a machine. But for him, he lost all the body fat he wanted to, and in fact, he wanted to start putting on muscle.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:But then he was saying, I hate how my chest looks. When I first spoke to him, the chest was the least of his worries. But because of the success paradox, what happens is the goalpost moves. And at the start, you wanted to perhaps feel better. You wanted to your belly fat to lose.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:You wanted to your waist to shrink a little bit. But now you've moved the goalpost, and you've started noticing detail that perhaps was covered up by more fat or you never used to look at. So what we want to do in these scenarios is this is where, and I've said to you a lot of people recently, I want you to be taking photos yourself. I never need you to send them to They're for you. You don't need to share them with anyone else.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:But just taking photos of yourself once a month, just so you can see how far you've come. Once a month in a mirror, you can do just one or you could do three, one from the front, one from the side, one from the back, and do measurements as well. So, you know, measuring your waist or measuring your arms if that's something, measuring your chest because problem when obviously we're weighing ourselves and that's great, but that's gonna plateau, but as your body starts to change, as your body fat drops off continually, what you'll find is you're looking in the mirror and you start to unpick things, whereas when you look at a photo, and for those of you who have taken photos of and often I'll get sent photos of you, I don't know, sat at a barbecue a year ago, and you're like, oh my goodness. There's somebody in this group who sent me a photo very recently, and I actually thought it was AI, and it was them a year ago, and compared to now, you know, it's night and day. And we forget that.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And sometimes it's important that we have that visual because if you're looking in the mirror every day, you're not gonna see the change. And so what we want to do is we want to have some kind of measure that isn't just the weight on the scales. So we take some measurements to our waist, perhaps take photos of yourself, because then you can compare month to month, and then that's not the picture in your head. And you'll notice that this frustration only exists because actually it's working. And you're no longer worried about, I don't know, the things that are on your consultation form when you we first started working together, and sometimes it's really interesting to go through that with you because you'll see, oh, fucking hell, the amount of times we've had conversations with you when we review, and you go, can't believe that that was a problem.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Sometimes there's some sadness there as well, and you're going, yeah, actually, I I can't believe that that was, you know, the thing that I was really worried about because, actually, that's not a concern anymore, and that's a success paradox. But it's something that, as I put at the bottom there, like, nobody warns you about that because it it kind of like your goalpost is always gonna move, and sometimes we have to step back and reflect how far we've come with our own knowledge and our own progress. And it's something that many of you, if you haven't felt this, you will feel it at some stage. Okay. This is one that and it was raised by a couple of you, I've heard this before.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Work has me all over the place for three months, and I haven't been able to link more than one or two Goodweets together. I've also had a toddler and a pregnant wife who aren't at all focused on nutrition, and we don't have time to make healthy meals all the time. So then, this individual. What this person, and again, person beats themselves up a little bit, they've had, loads of kind of life things happen at the moment. What we need to do is we need to stop putting pressure on ourselves in this scenario to have perfect weeks and to have really good weeks and reviewing our whole weeks and going, wow, this week's it.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:I haven't been able to consistently put the one solid perfect week for x amount of time because that there is just setting yourself up to failure, especially with this person who has had a lot of stuff going on. Now how we navigate this, and it goes for everybody, and it goes back to the podcast that we did on standards. And that isn't to say this person doesn't have standards. In fact, they have really high standards. The thing that we have to do here is we have to decide what are our three non negotiables that no matter what are gonna survive any week, no matter how far it how, like, crazy it gets.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:So that might be protein at breakfast, one lunch that you can repeat no matter what. The thing that I joke about with many of you is just get a fucking wrap. Just get some wraps. Get some bloody fridge chicken. Get some salad in the fridge all the time.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Because push comes to shove, you can throw that in a wrap, then you are good to go. So you've got one lunge you can repeat anywhere. This person's on the road a lot. They can literally, if they wake up and they they forgot to prep the dinner the night lunch the night before when they had intentions to, they could Literally, I have done an Instagram video that it takes thirty seconds to make a wrap. There is no excuse not to make a wrap, and wraps are pretty fucking boring, but still, it will do the job, but something like that, and then water.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:So, probably in a breakfast in this scenario, one lunch that you can repeat anywhere and water. Just work out what are the areas where you really struggle perhaps or things that are your amber warning. So in this example, let's say it is lunch, lunch is where, and actually this person, it was lunch and they fixed it, but let's say that lunch was your problem, so then we have to go, right, what is the easiest way for me to navigate this? And we can work through this together, but reflect for yourself. And as I said, wrap would be a good example here, so therefore, we know we've always got lunch covered.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And then we also wanna do the maths out loud. Two steps forwards and one step back over a three month period is still net forwards, isn't it? Like, it's it's not a failure because what's happening there, you've got a really busy life. You've had quite a significant thing happen to you in your life recently, and you've managed it really well. You've got a toddler, and you've got a baby on the way.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And so we have to kind of net look at the positive here, and that is that we've actually made quite a significant amount of progress even if we're going, as I say, two steps forwards and one step back. Net, we're we're moving forwards, and that's fantastic because all we're aiming for is eighty percent of kind of positivity and success most of the time. On the family being on board, not on board, sorry, you don't need separate meals because what you can do is you can cook one base and adapt your own portion and proteins. So let me think of an example for myself. So I don't know if I go to my mom's house, my mom's not very food literate.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Let's say she has made an absolute beige buffet, which if we went to my mom's house, that's what she'd probably do. Now, for me, that's not ideal. She might have a very small bowl of so what I would probably do is try and I'd focus on the protein. I'd try and build it like it was a buffet at a conference, and I'm just trying to build the best of a good scenario. But if you've got a fa your family's not be not on board, you don't wanna be eating separately and squirrelling away in the corner.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:You you and your toddler, it's unlikely that you and your partner and your toddler are all gonna be eating the same things anyway. So it may be a case of trying to find those happy mediums of what your partner is eating and what you're eating. So I don't know. Let's say you made a chili and your partner doesn't like spices whereas you do like spices, you can still make the base of the meal right and then therefore you can just adapt the extra bits and it's just about us being really smart with that and just trying to make it as easy as possible to please kind of yourself without going to so much effort that you're splitting all your meals because the base of a good meal is the same for anybody, you know, even for kids, you want to have a good source of protein, good source of carbohydrate, the rest is veg and it's about as I say just cook one base and adapt your own portion and protein and that's the best way to navigate that This one is a really good one so it's difficult to have the same free rein to cook for myself at the moment.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Convenience meals don't feel as good as when they're regular, and I miss cooking. So this person's moved house recently. I think they're not quite in their new house, so things are all over the place. But the answer to this and the reason why I think this is quite important is because life's gonna happen to many of us, there may be times where you just don't have time to cook. So what you have to is you have to work with what you have got rather than kind of mourning the fact that you used to cook great meals.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Convenience me food is not ideal, is it? But it can absolutely hit your numbers. So I was at I went to Manchester last night to watch Ipswich get absolutely battered by Man United. And on the way back, there was a massive traffic jam. I actually thought I was gonna be home by, like, 08:30.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:I got back at 11:30, and I was coming back. There was Leeds Festival as well, and obviously, live in Warwickshire, so it it everything was chaos. There was a crash on the motorway. The service stations were all full. It was absolute carnage, so I wasn't going to get home in time to have something decent for dinner, so I had to kind of adapt, so went to Mark Spencer and just grabbed some decent, buffoon things.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Now it wasn't ideal, and I wouldn't want to have that for dinner every night, I think I had like a katsu poke bowl, got some overnight oats, a drink, and then some fruit, and that was that was fine. But usually what happens with convenience food is that, as I say, it's not ideal, but you can still make it hit your numbers. Protein's always the bit that suffers when it comes to not being able to cook. So that's where we want to focus. And you guys are programming you all to kind of prioritize protein anyway.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And what we want to do is we want to look at, okay, well, are we dealing with here? So we want to look at, I don't know, in this example, ready cooked chicken if you haven't got time to cook something, tinned fish, microwavable rubbed veg, microwavable rice, even like protein yoghurts, frozen veg, like cottage cheeses, making yourself some overnight oat bowls. Even going to going to restaurants, know, like going to a Nando's and creating like a decent Nando's wrap. Going to Greg's, Greg's isn't horrendous, there's some things that you could pick up in Greg's. If you haven't got time to cook properly and you don't want to have, you know, microwavable, healthy microwavable meals every night and you're sick of them, then mix it up a bit and go out and maybe grab something from, you know, different shops like, some frozen meals from what's that, what's that shop like, cook, you know, there's so many different things you can do whereby you're just changing it up a bit a little bit, but the thing that's really important here is that this is a temporary scenario, and what we don't want to do is try and put pressure on ourselves to fix something that is really disruptive for you because holding steady through this kind of disruptive period is our goal here.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And, actually, this individual, you've done so well. Amongst everything that's gone on, you've done so well. And what we can do, we've just got to kind of ride through this little wave. But what we'll do is once we've got a kitchen back again, we'll kick on. But for now, we've just got to kind of navigate through this this kind of choppy period.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And you know convenience foods they are a bit annoying but they're not horrendous they're a lot better than they could be and it's just about kind of trying to add that variety as best as we can so we're not eating the same things every single day. Routine and socialising over summer, so this is a good one as well. Resisting treats in social settings and working around them. I've planned ahead and taken my own snacks and meals, but it still slips. The phrase that I have used in the past couple of months consistently is proactive, not reactive.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And it's also a really good social scenario coming up in a second, which I think many of us can relate to. But remember, with these scenarios, you've just gotta decide what you're gonna do. And even if that decision is I am going to have my mom's beige buffet today and just deal with the consequences because it's one day. And I could take you all off mic now and I could say to you what is the problem when it comes to buffets. The problem is always the next day.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Sorry, not buffets, social events. The problem is always what happens next and the next day. It's never or very rarely what's happening in the moment. It's about the next meal where we just need to get back to normal. So we don't wanna save calories for it because we know that arriving starving is gonna be probably the single biggest predictor of everything going to ship.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:So we wanna eat normally, protein heavy beforehand, then we go to our event, and we just kinda deal with it. But also remember, we're working on weekly averages, like that daily, that one big meal inside a week where 80% of your eating is absolutely fantastic is barely gonna move anything. So it's it's what happens afterwards, and it's that kind of like, oh, well, fuck it. I've ruined Friday, so I'll wait till Monday. That's what does the damage, not that one social meal.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:So if you are out a lot over summer, what we want to do is we just want to plan for it instead of just avoiding that it's happening. The way we do that is we To be fair, a lot of you are quite good at this, which is why it's on your checking form, it's what's happening in the next seven days, because we can talk about it, we can make a little plan. What I love is when you say to me, I've got this going on, how do we navigate it? We'll navigate it together, so it's about just ensuring that we are proactive and not reactive, so we're making a plan, we're going in with a plan as opposed to sitting there starving and then ended up gobbling up all the Morrison's own sausage rolls or whatever it so this is that follow on which I really fucking like having a drink has always been a thing in my family same as mine as we're going through a tough time I find it difficult to say no Having a drink and relaxing feels like therapy to some of them, and not joining in feels like you're brushing them off.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:I love this question, and there's someone else who's on this call who has also been in a similar scenario recently. The first question, well, answer to this question goes back to what I just said on the previous slide, and that is, let's decide what we're doing. Even if this person here is going to decide that we are actually going to have a few drinks, cool. If that's what we're gonna do, that's fine. But the most important thing is that if you're having a few drinks and even if you get drunk, what isn't allowed to happen, and this is the price you pay, you know that sleep's gonna be shit, you know that your recovery is gonna be shit, you know the next day you're gonna be craving stuff, and you're gonna probably wanna lie on a sofa all day and, I don't know, eat shit.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:That's not acceptable. If you're choosing to go out, which is absolutely fine, you choose to go out, you're gonna have a few beers, maybe a bottle of wine, whatever you're gonna do, the condition that you make with yourself is that the next day we get back to normal. It is never acceptable to have a night out and because, you know, you've you've gone out and let loose, the next day you're feeling sorry for yourself, it's not acceptable for you to just lounge around and do fuck all. And that's the that's the kind of the trade off that you you give yourself. However, the other side to that is that perhaps you don't want to drink, you know, and you don't want to be sucked into that.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And in fact, this person I feel like there was another bit to this question where this person said that they have avoided drinking for a period of time, maybe like six months or something. So there's a different side to this. But during a really kind of genuinely tough family time, often the drink is doing a job right, and you know it can be a celebration, can be a collective, like there's so many different reasons and alcohol kind of especially in this country brings us all together for whatever reason and if you're going to fight against that suddenly you you put up these barriers and everyone you know you're drawing attention to yourself, So if you decided that you're only gonna have one drink or two, what we can do is we don't wanna say no if you actually, you know, don't mind having a couple of drinks because there is no harm in having a couple of drinks. But if you don't wanna go out and get absolutely smashed and you just wanna have a couple of drinks, just pace it. Like, have a drink.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Pace it. You know? Maybe have some soft drinks in between. It's easier if you're female to find you don't drink beer because you can have some wine, and then you can, like, top it up with lemonade or whatever. But but pace it.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Have a drink. Don't smash it. Zip it. Move on. Have some food in between.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And just say to yourself, you're only having two drinks or maybe drive or whatever it is, but alternate it with something. If you don't want a drink, you don't need to make this big song and dance and say, no. I must not drink because I'm working with a nutritionist and I'm trying to be the best version of myself and become the T total. If that's not actually what you want to do and if you think it's going to draw a lot of attention to yourself, especially if you're female, people question whether you're pregnant. You know, it's fine for you to nurse to drink or do whatever you need to, but if you genuinely, genuinely don't want to drink, then it's also okay to be like, I don't want to drink.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And that's cool as well. But what we don't want to do is brush them off if actually you do want to engage socially. And actually just on the sidebar, if there is, and this goes for everybody, not just this person, but if there is something, you know, you go and many of you, I've made reference, a lot of you have gone through some really tough times because life happens and I've worked with you for, you know, long periods of time and so inevitably life's gonna happen. And if things are really stressful, then sometimes it helps for us to just add a few calories and I've certainly done that, don't think there's somebody in this group, but I've certainly done that with an individual who will be listening to this, where, through stressful periods, what we've done is we've added some calories just to make sure that we've got a little bit of leverage there, so we can reduce the target for a few weeks if that needs to happen. But the most important thing is that we protect our relationships here, right?
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And we want to ensure that we're able to be social. I don't want you locking yourself up in a room and, you know, flamboyantly being like, no. I refuse to socialise because that isn't what life is, so there are three different guises there, so I hope I've kind of explained each of the different options that you could navigate, but I've certainly been in all of those scenarios. Okay, this is fantastic, this one. I can't switch off the voice that's telling me I can't do this.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:It's stopping me from even trying because I'm choosing to believe I can't. And even though I'm self aware and I understand it, I don't feel brave or strong enough to break away from it. So this person, they actually wrote on their form that they felt like this is a bad example and I didn't have to cover it. So I really want to be clear that this is someone who thought that they were the only one who feels this on the screen. And I am sure, in fact, show of hands if you can relate by any mortal to this individual here.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Is there any part of you that sometimes feel this? So I can hear in my in my headphones that there's been a few hums coming up there. And this individual has said, don't you don't have to share this because it's a bad example. You can hear and you can see on the screen now that people can resonate with you. And I think that they're knowing this person, again, really hard on themselves.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And this person has, like many of you, by the way, and we're gonna touch this, the very last slide covers this off, but this person has all the evidence that they know what to do. Right? And belief follows evidence. And then the evidence comes from action of doing what you're doing. And it's really important that we we kind of explore that because with this person, they've got the knowledge, they know how to apply, and I've I've had conversations with many of you where I've said the answer to this question is for you to step back and for me to find you a doppelganger and go coach you this person because you do have the answers.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:But oftentimes, it's this this kind of expectation that we need to be absolutely perfect in everything that we're doing. And they've said here, I'm self aware and I understand it. I just don't feel strong enough to break away from it. But what's super important here is that where the problem lies is that we're focusing too much on thinking that we have to get everything right. And, you know, goes back to what somebody said a couple of questions ago where it's like, right.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:I have to have a perfect week here. And if one thing goes off, then I fucked it, and everything else has gone to shit. When actually what we need to pull back on is to think about the evidence of what already exists. So when we decide that we're gonna do one thing, so for this individual and for many of us, this person absolutely thrives, and I mean thrives, when they're organized. So when they're organized and they write lists of the stuff that they have to do, they thrive.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Even to the extent where we did a little experiment recently on the call where I said, just write this small list of fucking things. And because this person beats themselves up like many of you do, what we find is that if the list is too big, so I don't know, what's a bad example? Let's say, I can't think of an example, but if you make the goal to be, let's say you're like gonna run a marathon, that's a fucking shit list to have, so what we want to do is, but I'm gonna go for a run for ten minutes, because the most important thing here is that you're feeling like you're achieving because oftentimes what happens, especially when you're just in the groove of things, you don't see the wood through the treats. And what I mean by that is that when you're just showing up every day and you're tracking your food, you're making progress kind of consistently, it isn't feeling really hard, but then you start to step back and you're like, I just feel like I should be doing more, or I feel like I should be better than this, or I feel like I should be, you know, I've lost a bit of weight and I understand nutrition but maybe I should be running a marathon, maybe I should sign up to high rocks, maybe I should, I don't know, do x y z, whatever it may be.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:The problem that we're doing is we're forgetting what we can achieve and what we successfully have achieved over a period of time. And what we have to do is to just recognize that when we plan these tiny little things and we tick those things off, that's success in itself. The easiest thing I do, so every week I've told you about my everything list before, but the first thing on that list is write list and you might laugh at that but the reason why I do that is because I want to start with feeling like I've achieved something because once we get in this person, I know for a fact that this person feels this. When they begin to do a couple of things, when they're on a roll, they're on a roll. But what holds them back is that this feeling that they should be better and they should be doing more.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And when they say I can't switch off this voice that is telling me I can't do this, they can do this but that this is too big and that this is too big because this to them it looks so far away when actually if we were wound to I don't know, a year, in fact, for this individual, if we were round to five years ago and we said, think of you, what you are doing right now, everything you have achieved, not just with the things that I talk to you about or perhaps the things we're talking about here because we talk about other things, but not just with what we're talking about in terms of our nutrition, but just think of what you've achieved as an individual and how different if you were able to speak to that past version of you, and this applies to every single one of you, if you were to be able to rewind back to the first time we ever spoke, and I said, just so you know, on 08/31/2026, this is who you're gonna be. This is what you're gonna be doing. This is the things that you would have achieved in terms of your family, in terms of your work, in terms of your health, in terms of, by the way, your understanding of nutrition and how your body responds.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:If I said to you this who you're gonna be, you would laugh for maybe an hour. And this is the thing with many of you. It's this feeling that you feel that you should be doing loads more when actually, as I've said, lot of times, you've just got fucking boron, and you've just gotta just churn on boron, boron, boron. We just do the same little things every day. Because by us just compounding and doing those same little things every day, it's impossible for you to not make progress.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:But the thing with this individual is there's obviously loads of things going on. This is kind of like wanting to be able to do x y z and this it's this fear of feeling like they are not good enough it's impostor syndrome and feeling like they are not good enough when actually it's not a lack of knowledge because this person could educate all of us it's not a lack of knowledge It's not a lack of desire. It's not a lack of passion. What it is is it's this fear of being shit and feeling like, do you know what? I'm too shit and what other people are thinking about us.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:When actually, if we just do the smallest of things and we just keep doing the smallest of things, you are proven in so many areas of your life that you will make progress because it's impossible not to. So this here applies to every single one of you. When you are feeling like you can't do whatever this is, it's because you've made such significant progress, but you've just kind of fucked all of that off, and, you know, like, you've forgotten how far you've come, and it goes back to something that was said a second ago, and that is the the harsh reality is well, not even the harsh reality. The real reality is that you have made such progress, but now you've kind of like, you're thinking that you can't make that next step, but all you've got to do is just take these tiny little steps, and it's those compounding tiny little steps as opposed to doing these huge things, which is how you make progress, And it's hard to kind of decipher with this person because we've had some very similar conversations, so I'm trying to make it apply to all of you. But the the key thing here is I don't feel brave or strong enough to break away from it, and I get that, and that's because it's scary.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And the only reason you've got to where you've gotta go to where you are now in terms of your knowledge, your experience of life that goes for everybody is just by doing the fucking small things, like writing a list and ticking the list off. Even if that fucking list is washing up today, that's still achievement. There's that thing, isn't there, about the best way to start your day is to make your bed because at least you started to do something. And it's just doing that shit every single day so that it compounds, and that's all we need to do. I could go on about that forever.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Maybe we'll do a separate podcast. Following on from that, my emotions and my motivation and struggling to push through anyway. Normally, I push through because I know I feel better for it. This weekend just didn't go to plan. Okay.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:So this person, I would say, is super, super, super consistent. And, again, shock. There's a theme here, isn't there? This person beats themselves up. And in fact, we had a call last week, and in fact, the last five calls we've had, and I don't know if they're on this call, but they'll laugh when they hear this.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:I always say, are you proud of yourself? And they kind of, like, put a bit of a cringey face and go, are you proud of yourself? And then they go, yes. And that is the kind of foundation of this bit here because one weekend is not a pattern of shitness. And it goes back again, this theme.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:It is one weekend. And, actually, if we want to get into the science of it, how hard you are after that slip is gonna predict how long that slip lasts. Pal. If you are on this call, which I hope you are, I'm well aware we're meant to have a call now. We'll have a call straight after this.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:But it's the bit where you're beating yourself up afterwards is gonna make the next day worse. So if you were to have a weekend that didn't go to plan because life happens, it's all good. What happens is that we need to ensure that we pick back up where we left off. Because also, as well, motivation isn't a prerequisite. So what we want to ensure happens is that when those moments do slip, not as we planned, and perhaps they were reactive because we weren't able to be proactive for whatever reason, it's so important that we don't beat ourselves up because we're not feeling good in this moment.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:All we've gotta do, going back to the last question, is we've just gotta fucking start to do the basics again. We just start again. Write a list what we gotta achieve, and it can be the smallest of things, and we just get straight back to it. And when we you do that enough times, and this is why I say to many of you, if you're going on holiday, you've weddings, if you've birthdays, if you've got social events you don't know how to navigate, we wanna work out how we navigate through that because when faced enough times and you learn how to get through that, then you will find that next time you're faced with that problem, you're gonna be in a good spot because we've dealt with it. We've moved on.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:It wasn't the most horrendous thing. Somebody recently went on a big holiday, really concerned about the holiday. We had a bit of a laugh because I said to this individual, I promise you, you're gonna come back from this holiday, and you're gonna be really impressed with how you handled it. Came back from the holiday, had a little giggle, and we said, told you so. And that is what we need to happen.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:We need you to have these moments where things don't go to plan because the worst thing that could happen is that you have, I don't know, six months of absolute perfection and nothing happening, and you're all good, and then, you know, suddenly we stop working together and life hits you like a ton of bricks, and you haven't had any issues to work through. And then suddenly, you you've you're in the shit. What we wanna happen is every problem that you face, we're able to navigate it together so that when it happens in future, we're still in a good spot. Boredom. Boredom is probably connected to the fact that I'm not exercising as much because of an injury.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:So I imagine this is, yeah, boredom eating. So unfortunately, this is a bit of a structural issue. So the first thing that we need to do when it comes to boredom eating is to check. Is it boredom? Remember I've said to you before when we've done cravings episodes?
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:When it comes to cravings, there's two types of cravings. There's the craving which is I am actually hungry, therefore something's missing and nutritionally. And then there's the craving, which I don't know if Matt's on this call, but he was, like, the expert of this. There was a craving where we're at home. We're working from home.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:We've a really stressful job, and we're working from home. So we do that thing that a lot of people do. You just get up and you just stand in the kitchen with your hands on your hip. Now what we need to do is we need to check the basics. So the first question, is it boredom eating?
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:If did we eat enough protein? Did we eat enough fiber? Are we hydrated? Were our meals solid? You will feel it as boredom when it's actually hunger.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:So we need to fix up first, and we might wanna look back. Okay. I didn't have a big enough breakfast. Perhaps I forgot to eat. Perhaps I was late to eat, and whatever it might be, so we wanna fix up first, and then we need to look at the environment.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:So are we finding that we're just bored and, actually, we're not that hungry. It's just something to do. And if that's the case, we've got the five minute rule we could try. I don't know if you craved a a jammy dodger, and I love jammy dodgers, underrated biscuit. If you craved a jammy dodger and you didn't actually want a jammy dodger, you were a bit annoyed that you fancy a jammy dodger, nothing wrong with a jammy dodger, put that jammy dodger on your desk and just leave it there for five minutes, set yourself a timer, and if you still want the jammy dodger, great.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Add the jammy dodger, nothing wrong with the jammy dodger. But environmentally, with this individual, the injury has taken activity out of the day and then what happens is it kind of leaves holes in it, right? So if we do an activity, it improves our mood, it gives us stimulation, might give us something to look forward to, it's going release dopamine, serotonin, so we want to fill them with things perhaps that are going to do something equal, so I don't know, you want to go for a walk, perhaps you want to, if it is something that, you know, you want to occupy your hands or if you if it if you don't want to eat, you know, if you've if you've recognized that actually it's just boredom eating, you wanna feel something in your hands, get a cup of tea, have some fizzy water, go for a walk, do a task, whatever it might be, it's about just kind of manipulating our environment. A lot of the times when it comes to board meeting, and Matt again was a really good example of this, he just had this pure habit of self confessing, he would not mind me if he's on the school talking about this, where he just gets to the afternoon and he just eats a pack of biscuits when he first when he first started working with it.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Like, it was insane. And he was just, I just can't I I actually don't know how to stop it because I'm not hungry. And it was just his habit. And so you have to kind of, like, break that habit. It's like that whole James Clear thing where your habit stack it's a reverse habit stack.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:But again, let's say, give yourself the five minute rule, maybe the ten minute rule rule because most boredom will not survive five minutes, whereas hunger will. So if you can say to yourself, right, I am feeling like I wanna eat a pack of jammy dodges. I'm gonna stand back, give it five. Am I still really hungry? No.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:I'm not. Okay. Cool. Move on. But, also, remember, if you're doing less activity, then that's gonna mean less calories as well.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Okay. Struggling to get my protein target consistently across all meals. Lately, I've had major chocolate and sweet cravings again. Even on days where I've hit my targets, I think it's a mental game, and it could be the long hours. So I I know this person, and this person, I asked you to share your food diary with me today because I know exactly what's going on.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:So this person here, fantastic, made some incredible progress. Sweet cravings in the evening are obviously usually a debt built up in the day. So if we're not having enough this is general. So if you're not eating enough protein at breakfast or lunch or if your portion size is too small, then inevitably as a day as the time goes on, you're probably gonna end up hungry later on. So we wanna make sure we're getting enough protein, enough fiber, non negotiable, certainly first thing in the morning, wanna front load it, then you'll find, hopefully, those cravings kinda shift in the afternoon.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:However, the other side is fatigue. So this person, I know they've been working super, super long in the evening, and this is the third time with this person that this has happened. And it's always, excuse me, tied to a stressful, disruptive patch, and every single one of them, they have ridden it out through various different guises. So they've identified when they came to me, they had loads of sweet cravings, and they're on top of it. But what happens is when they're really stressed and when they've got loads of work and they're working late and they have a very physical job, but when they're doing physical job and then they've got admin in the evening and there's a lot of stuff going on, they always find that they start to crave sweet things, and that isn't anything but your your kind of body reacting to things.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:But they've ridden it out every single time, and they've used fizzy drinks. They've used pancakes instead of a a box of sweets, and that there is someone who's learned to have those urges without succumbing to it. And that's really important, and that is worth more than anything else because you've navigated it before. And remember, it's about just trying to find the the reasons why as to what's happening. We know the reasons why, so it's about just reacting to it.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And maybe on days like that, we might need to have maybe a little bit of a bigger dinner, maybe some dessert after dinner, and that's all good. If it's going to happen consistently, like I said to many of you, we may have to just kind of adapt to what our colours and our macronutrients are saying. But with long hours of physical work, that's going to obviously empower decision making as well which is going to you know that's going to impact perhaps your sleep quality and then that's going to impact it just kind of like rolls on and on and on so it's about getting on top of that I'm going try and speed up here Okay. Carbs and raising your head of protein. This is a good one.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:My carbs shoot up very quickly and leave my protein behind, even when I'm prioritizing and care everything around protein. I can feel the difference carbs make energy wise, but I feel like I have more than I should. If I'm active, how much does this actually matter? The answer to this question, my friend, is that carbs should be higher than protein. In fact, there isn't one person here where carbs isn't higher than protein, so that's important.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Especially if you're active, your carbohydrate load is gonna be a little bit higher. Protein is like it's like the floor that we wanna hit. It's like our baseline. It's not like it's not a ceiling that we wanna kinda be under. Whereas carbs are our fuel, right?
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And we need to be eating more of them, probably by weight than protein, and trying to keep carbs below our protein is gonna leave us under fuel and fat. The most important thing in this question here is you saying that you feel the difference carbs make to your energy. That is all we need to know. Everything else is bollocks. And for you, I know who you are.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:For you, your protein is there or thereabouts, and that's all good. Most important thing is to make sure that we're we're covering our carbs as much as possible. We want you to be fuelled in. Your body's telling you that it's working. So we just hit the protein floor as best we can and just let carbs do our job.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:We don't wanna get too tied up on that. Now this person has been really helpful to us because they have wrote questions that they're hoping helps other people. Maybe for a day, maybe for a week, not because I give up, more like I want a break. Is that okay? What can you do to help me?
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Sometimes I just wanna hit the bucket button. So it's completely okay, and we're all gonna feel it. And I would rather that we kind of like planned it in, if you like, than hit the the fucking button. But there is a difference between what's happening. If there's something happening, as I said, kind of emotionally, or we've got things going on, or if we're feeling like we're we're absolutely flagging and your energy's on the floor, which it shouldn't be, but if it is and you've told me, or if you're just having a stressful period, that is where those refeeds come in, right?
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And it's deliberate. So what we'll do for many of you is after a certain time period, depending on if I'm starting to see a bit of a plateau or if I'm starting to feel that your energy is flagging or if you start to have a few more craves or if you're really stressed, then we'll probably incorporate refeeds. Some of you have got structured refeeds just every single week. And what happens is we just bring your calories up to maintenance, maybe above maintenance for a bit. You eat a little bit more, so you get that kind of mental rest, and then we go again.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And what you're doing there is you're just kind of allowing your body to just feel that we're replenishing any lost glycogen, but it's also like, it's about us just trying to plan in having those foods that perhaps you didn't, you know, plan to have, and it's about you perhaps going out for a family dinner, which I want you to it anyway, but, you know, saying, well, I'm gonna go this weekend, I'm not gonna trap my food, I'm going out on holiday for the weekend or going to a meal, I'm just gonna enjoy it, gonna eat whatever I want, it's all gonna be good. Because it's very unlikely that that's gonna cause you to put on 10 kilograms of weight and then everything goes to shit. So what we want to do is we want to kind of plan to to bring those calories up as best we can, see where we're at, enjoy our food, and then usually I'd say nine out of 10 times within two days your weight actually drops under because your body's gone, thank you very much, and it calms again. So it's about it's just kind of mentally and physically being able to react and give ourselves a bit of a break there, and that's a refood.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Okay. Good question here. Rest and why athletes don't take days off. Oh, this person, we've had this conversation many times, and I love Talk to me about the importance of rest and recovery is to progress and why pro athletes won't have days off but will build rest into their schedules in other ways and still train six or seven days a week. So the answer is that firstly you are not a parafleet, and you have stresses like going to work, you have a very stressful job, my tired, you have stresses like family life, you're trying to get in training on top of, you know, a family life, on times of a, you know, a social schedule, on top of a a stressful rest.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:You have all of these added stresses on top of the physical stress against the gym. But elite athletes will rest a lot more than any of us, but they just do it deliberately. And what they do is they periodise, so they'll have really hard days, then they'll have easy days, they have full deload weeks, which is just built into the plan, so with training for an Ironman, I mean, training for a full Ironman, you'll have like a three week deload, which is absolutely crazy, but you're having, you have kind of built in de loads, a recovery session, it's still a session but it's just a lot kind of low intensity on purpose because what happens is that when we're training, you don't get that adaption during the training, it's what happens afterwards. So when we're sleeping and when we're eating, because when we're training, if you imagine lifting weights in the gym or even running a marathon, whatever it might be, that's the stimulus. But actually, the recovery is where you actually get fair, stronger, healthier, it's outside the gym and if you're lifting weights in the gym, you're tearing those muscle fibres, you can keep going to the gym every day but if you're not giving your body opportunity to repair those muscle fibres, nothing's going to change, which is why fueling and sleep are absolutely essential in when we come to elite athletes.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:If we're undereating or eating the wrong nutrients or we're under sleep, we're not eating enough carbohydrates, we're not eating enough food, then what happens is you end up just training really, really hard, but actually nothing changes, and you end up just kind of stuck where you are and you don't make progress. So it's about it's just ensuring that we're periodizing that rest and recovery, and we're fueling ourselves as much as possible so that we're getting the most out of our training. And that's the answer to that question. And that again will be a really good podcast topic. In fact, there's 15 good podcast topics here for the ultimate.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:So, the morning routine that never sicked. I was really the person who wrote this, thank you for starters, but I I can't believe we've never spoken about this. So this person said, sticking to steps to improve sleep hygiene, particularly in the morning routine, and I'm really inconsistent. Honestly, the key issue is overuse of my phone. If I went and sat outside facing the sunrise, I'd probably have my phone in my hand.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:This is obviously something I am very passionate about. This is what you need to do, my friend. First things first. I was reading a lot of research recently because my sleep has been a little bit weird. I've been waking up at, like, four in the morning and not being able to get to sleep, back to sleep.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And the research that I found I've obviously got all the data on my Garmin. The research that I found was that the reason why that was happening, firstly, that I've said before is that bodies love rhythm. So if you wake up at four in the morning once, body's like buzzing. Let's do that every day because it just loves a bit of rhythm. But secondly, what I found was that I was waking up at four and then my mind's on overdrive and I'm like, I'm kind of lying laying in bed trying to get back to sleep.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:I put some meditation on my on my headphones, and, you know, I come, like, trying to get to sleep, and what I'm basically doing there is teaching my body that, you know, the bed is the place where we do meditation awake, and it's like, I'm basically just fucking myself over. So then I learn just get up out of bed and move as opposed to reading in bed or whatever to try and get back to sleep. So that's the first thing. I know it's not kind of directly answering this question, but with regards to your question, your morning routine is so important. Regardless of whether you shower in the evening, the first thing that you should all do in the morning is jump in the shower and brush your teeth.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:The reason why we do that is because firstly, it's a life hack. So you brush your teeth in the shower because it enables you to firstly, get tooth braces all over yourself and it just feels liberating. But secondly, it gives you like an instant thing to do. It's gonna wake you up. It means that you're clean straight away, so you're ready to start the day.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:But it also you can't be on your phone in the shower. The worst thing that you can do is pick up your phone and wake him. I'm lucky enough that I've managed to well, ironically, based on what you said, I don't have an alarm clock. I just wake up, and I usually wake up around well, normally, I wake up around eight times between six and seven, and then I get up. Now this week, ironically, separate conversation, but I'm trialing going to the gym early in the morning.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:I'm gonna tell you how that goes because I'm an evening gym person. But the first thing I would do is I'll have a shower, then I'll come downstairs, and I'm gonna read, I'm gonna write this, and I'm gonna stand outside. I So come downstairs, coffee isn't happening, my phone has not been touched at this point, I will bring my phone, I probably don't need it by my bedside table, but it's on charge from my bedside table, I'll bring it downstairs, I'll leave it in the kitchen, and then I will come in here and read, or I'll just stand in the garden for, like, ten minutes. I'm not looking at my phone for the first I mean, handy, you know, because what you have to think about is how you are just fucking tonight's sleep by doing that. And you know this by what you've wrote on that on this this question here.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:The answer to the question is to fucking leave your phone alone. Like, you don't need the phone. There is nothing on your phone which is gonna help. It's like if you go on your phone before bed. All you're doing is you're giving yourself things to do in stimulus.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:If you're trying to wind down and you're on WhatsApp, on emails, even if you say I won't respond to that until the morning, you're still giving yourself a stimulus in your mind because you're thinking about it, you're thinking oh well I'll respond in the morning and I'll say this to John. If you're not gonna respond in the morning or take action until the morning, don't stress yourself out. Do not give yourself that stimulus in the evening. It's the same with now. If you're not due to start work until, I don't know, eight, 09:00, and you're up at six, 07:00, then leave your phone alone.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:I also know that this person has dogs, so what I would do is I would get up and, I would go through my normal routine, so have a shower, and then what I would do is I would take my dog out, go for a walk, come home, then I'd have coffee, and then maybe look at your phone. And so you're giving yourself, like, a protected forty five minutes at the very least to not be without your phone. What you're gonna do there is you are literally investing in your evening to be able to have the most deepest night's sleep. The worst thing that anyone can do is look at their phone first thing in the morning, last thing at night. That will impact your sleep quality.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:The other thing you can do if you've if you've got, like, got a fitness watch or anything else, just leave your phone downstairs. You don't need your phone in your bedroom. There's a lot of research about wifi and bluetooth impacting our sleep through our gamma waves and all that shit as well, so there's that side of things, but have some more standards, this individual, and I know that your standards are very, very high, so I would implore you to be higher standards when it comes to your phone because you are much better than that. In fact, I've just read here. No.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Okay. So, yeah, let's do that. But maybe get one of those. Someone's got a sunrise alarm clock. I can't remember who it is, but they're really good as well.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:So just stop you needing the phone. Final one. So this is a bit of an odd one, but I love it. So salt and sodium are the same thing, and we're gonna get into that in a second. But the question was the salt sodium and salt in fruit.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:I had no idea fruit had salt in it until I put it into NutriChuck. Is there a difference between that and table salt? Some of the items, show salt content, and some of them show sodium is salt bath. So sodium multiplied by about 2.5 is what gives us salt. But the problem is front of our labelling, which I was part of a conversation in 2016, still nothing's been done.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:But the labels on foods, they use one or the other, and that's where it gets really confusing. In The UK, we probably want around six, sometimes nine grams of salt for an adult, depending on your activity. The naturally occurring sodium in fruit and veg is completely irrelevant. So it's the same as like when we talk about free sugars. The difference between sugars in fruit and sugars in having a biscuit are very different, so we need to kind of read them differently, although Nutracheck obviously bungs them all in together, it's important that we might have discrepancy.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:What I would say to you is nobody has ever had a blood pressure problem by having too many bananas. The overwhelming majority of salt is going to come from processed foods, it's going to come from packaged foods, it's going to come from bread, it's going to come from eating out, so we don't need to worry about it, but it's also not like fats, so fats as we spoke about recently have different types, whereas salt is just salt wherever it comes from. What differs is the amount and kind of how it arrives, so good question, interesting question, because it's not something really that we've explored before, it's kind of one of those things where we haven't got to worry about, and if anything, most of your drinking enough water as well, so you haven't really got to worry too much about it. Okay. This is important.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:This is our kind of good news slide. I want you to just kind of reflect here. I'm so conscious that I've taken up more time than we wanted to, and I'm sure people have left. What I want to pick up on is nobody asks questions like, should I just cut out carbs? I'll just start again on Monday because I fucked it.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:I've tried everything, and nothing works. All of these questions have been absolutely unreal. One of you asked whether sodium comes from free. Another asked how elite athletes build resting without taking days off. These are questions from individuals who are very knowledgeable and you understand the basics.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:These are questions from you guys who you already know the foundations and we know that, you know, you've got that knowledge and a lot of the times it goes to that what that individual said, it's about that belief in yourself and actually knowing that you probably do have the answer. If I ask you to coach somebody who is coming into this process, then you'd probably be able to have that conversation with them and give them the right answers. Sometimes we just gotta have faith in ourselves and reflect far we've come because you are far more advanced and doing far better than you ever give yourselves credit for, and that is the most important thing. So that is it. And I'm sorry that that has taken so long, and I realized about two sides in that this has taken a lot longer than I thought, but I just want to really give respect to those questions.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:As I said, Friday check ins gonna continue as usual. If there is anything that I haven't raised here, some questions, there was a couple of questions that were on there that I didn't think were appropriate to share to everybody. If there were some of those, if you were querying where your question is, message me again. But, or if there's anything that's come up feel free to let me know I'm going check the chat now see if there's anything on there normal check ins will continue again on Friday we have had a few little chat things oh look at this go on if you need to go, you need to go. How many were we last?
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Oh, we're still all here. It's that pal. I promise you. We're we're we're gonna jump on after this.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Ryan says, very important because this person is not on the call. Eight kilograms down, whoever that is, is my hero. Fair play. Rosie said quite a few nuances with me and the scale weight given my history, having to learn that the weight is actually not the most important thing. The weight is never the most important thing because what's really, really important is the most important thing is how we're feeling.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Right? And when I reflect on everyone's journey, you know, often will look at how are you feeling? How's your knowledge base? How's your hormones? And actually sometimes because especially if you're female and you're looking for these fat and it doesn't move how we want it to, sometimes we get so tied up on that, and again, we don't see the wood through the trees, but it can be hard because you might be getting stronger as a woman, and Raisa, you're obviously a good example, Ellen's a good example as well, like you you know, you're getting fitter, you're getting stronger, but then perhaps the weight on the scale isn't moving, and that can get quite stressful and overwhelming when you're so tied up on the weight.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And it is hard, and it is super hard, and it's about just kind of changing those barriers. Ryan says, unless you're a slave to the number, the number on the scale actually owns me. I belong to them. That's a good point. And in fact, with Rayam is he still here?
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:No. He's gone. So with Rayam, we actually moved. He no longer weighs himself on a Monday. I've done that with a couple of people.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:The reason for that was that because he hit it so hard at the weekend with his training, his number on the scale on Monday would be up by four kilograms, and it was, like, completely fucking with the numbers and his head. So we just took it out, and then suddenly because it's kind of noise, and then suddenly what we found is that the progress is a little bit more different. I feel this commitment in my soul. Oh my god, thank you, Lucy. Is Lucy gone as well?
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Yeah. Keep Rosie says, I keep putting on muscle. It's an interesting problem to have, especially as a female. Scale is just pretty much the same. That is true, Rosie.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And I think with Rosie, because you lift so much as well, what I will say, having worked with a GB athlete who is female, is that, like, she was Olympic lifting, is it kinda tops out in that it's very unlikely, and it's actually quite hard, that you're gonna get to the stage where you're too big and bulky, which is obviously the fear, especially for females in general and when we're looking to when we're lifting weights more. So it's hard isn't it because again when you're lifting weights as heavy as you are raising you are very very strong you know that the weight on the scales is going to be impacted not only from a training stimulus but as well because the weight on the scales and then that stimulus is going to impact things so Ellen air fryer and slow cooker are the absolute goat for helping making it easier, 100 agree with you there, air fryer is so easy you can put banana cake in there as well which is easy it's less messy, M and S nutritional balanced foods to go is good from the road absolutely well went yesterday. Lidl protein ready meals are also the best Rosie correct.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:I really like Lidls, really like Aldi. I think they're better than gym kitchen ones and M and S is also really good. I'm so Lucy says I'm so bad for having the naughty food and enjoying it and then craving more the next day. Yeah, I mean that can happen just because again it's like a habitual thing, often it's a habitual thing which could impact things. And again, it's like a with females as well, can be and I'm I'm sorry if kinda keep talking about female hormones, again, it's like I mean, Ellen's kind of an expert at this when it comes to kind of how our hormones impact in terms of our menstrual cycle.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Ellen, could are you in a position to come up, Mike? Okay, right. I'm gonna ask you a question. I'm gonna put you on the spot. You know you're on holiday.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Where are you? In my bedroom. Oh, you're Right. Okay. So Ellen is far more an expert at this than I am.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Ellen, could you try, if you can, and if you can't, don't worry about it, but if you could you try and explain why during certain times of the month, feel more attracted to foods which are perhaps as Lucy says naughty. Yeah, to do with the change in our hormones at different times in our cycles and because of the way your body's processing what it's doing through through ovulation and menstrual, the menstrual phase and stuff like that, we do burn a few more calories just before our menstrual phase usually, and so that is naturally going to make you a bit hungrier. You tend to be fatigued usually more so in the week before your period basically. Periods your menstrual phase, the luteal phase is the week just before. Some people feel terrible on their menstrual phase, I feel terrible the week before, usually somewhere in those two weeks.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Some people are unlucky enough to feel terrible for two whole weeks, which is great for us women. So, yeah, there's a bunch of stuff that you've the cycle your body goes through that makes you more tired, crave more carbohydrates, which often we interpret as I need sugar, not, like, more or whatever. Yeah. I think that does that sound like An absolute spine. Yeah.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And that's yeah. That's and, again, Lucy, who is only everyone in this school, but it it it may be that. And, yeah, it's it's hard being female because it's I mean, Ellen's literally outlined there. There's probably one week where you're not impacted all, only. And as well, if you throw in this trading stimulus as well and with the stresses of life, like, it could impact us.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:But for men here who have women in your lives, very important that you respect that there for three of those weeks, it's it's gonna be kind of chaos. And then Ellen actually says following on from that that's me too, I allow myself to eat hyper palatable foods and I just can't stop thinking about them, absolutely. Rosie says sorry Ellen, go on. I was just say I think that's another thing though, like it's okay to like give in to a bit of additional kind of carbs that you're craving because of your hormones, but being really aware that, you know, sugar, like, I'm not vilifying, villainifying whatever the word is, sugar, but you will it is a drug that's designed to make you crave more of it. So we just have to be aware that if we are eating more of it, you're gonna want more of it, then you can feel a bit deprived.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:That's my opinion. And just biologically on that. So when you eat a carbohydrate, your body's going to convert it into glucose. So the reason why if you have absolutely no energy, what Ellen refers to as hyper palatable foods are foods which a) are easy to eat, but b) are usually super high in sugar most of the time, so that or the easiest for your body to convert into sugar. So if you're finding yourself, if your energy is fucked anyway, it's very likely that you're going to be looking at biscuits and you're going to be looking at these calorie dense foods and these usually high carbohydrate food because your body's like well that's going be easy for me to convert that into glucose and that's usually why you end up craving those types of foods.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:I saw something really good from Rosie, okay so Rosie's referring to the question that is about the social event. Rosie, teetotaled, and initially, it was really difficult. But I went to a staff party completely sober, and it was absolutely hilarious. I fig figured I could survive that. I could survive everything.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:I'm feeling smug the next day when everyone else was hungover was totally worth it. I absolutely agree. And actually, a lot of people in this, on this call now have been in that scenario. There's something really empowering about that. What I found when I've had, like, moments of not drinking for whatever reason, the first bit where you're just like, you know, you're having a couple of pints is easier these days.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:You can have like Guinness Zero or whatever if you're a Guinness drinker or like you can have zero drinks. If you were to if it was gonna be a big night like a party or something, the awkward bit is like the bit in between like the pub and the, you know, the dancing on the dance tour if it was a wedding. It's that bit that's awkward. When everyone's absolutely annihilated on the dance tour, it's brilliant because you're, like, equally having a good time. You're looking around, and you're, fucking how they're gonna feel bad tomorrow.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:I think it was Caroline who's now on holiday. She did this, and she went out with some friends. And the next day, she went she was in the gym at, like, 10:00 in the morning, and all of her friends, like you know, she said one of her friends didn't get up till, like, 1PM, and she was, I just feel so smug. And there is this, like, empowering kind of feeling about it, so it absolutely is worth it for that reason if you can, you know, manage that. Lucy says, fuck it.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:It's a weekend. It's such a problem with me even though it's the worst thing to do. It's something that Lucy and I have touched on a couple of time. Ryan says, fuck peep he's very aggressive, say Ryan. Fuck people.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Boundaries are boundaries. You don't have to explain yourself. Thank you, Ryan. We don't all have that mindset, Ryan, but thank you very much for that. Razi says, I just say I don't drink and don't explain myself.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Just before I read the rest of that is really good. I read somewhere, somebody, like, chose not to drink, and he said, it was a podcast, and he said, if I'm not drinking and people go, oh, why are you not drinking? You just or they offer you a drink, you just say, I don't drink anymore. And it just leaves a slight mysterious, like, what happened? And they just don't wanna press it.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:You know, these days, I think it's more acceptable, it certainly was ten years ago. It's such a Ellen says it's such a mental, emotional game with me too. I could be perfectly fueled, but depending on life, I want emotionally to eat sugar, and Ellen's explained absolutely why. Geoff says I used to suffer from major sweet and chocolate cravings, I now build in little chocolate protein put into my daily plan, pretty much sorted the cravings and I think that is a really good example but also as well just on that I think Jeff and I had a little fun conversation about KitKatz or something the other day. Ed and I had that about six months ago.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:I don't know why KitKatz are always a thing, but we were talking about that, and Jeff, we had this conversation about, you know, incorporating that in his up sequel, like it's fine. And it's, you know, it's the most important thing we can do always is being proactive and not reactive and actually just, like, being, like, okay. We're gonna have that today and more. Like, it's not gonna have any impact. And, Jeff, I know that's a lesson that you're learning about yourself and you'll teach yourself.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And when you went on holiday, that was really important there. And that's how I want everyone to live that, you know, it was my birthday last Friday, and I had a birthday cake, and I love birthday cake. I don't even think about eating the birthday cake because I like birthday cake, and it's about what I didn't do is eat whole birthday cake. But if I ate whole birthday cake in one sitting, then the next day, I just have to get back to normal at night is what it is. So but I know it's hard, especially when you've been on such a journey where perhaps previously you've you've been really overweight and you just used to have really unhealthy relation with food.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And the thing that I think the theme of this call is I really want you guys to and it's hard, but I want you to recognize that you would have to majorly fuck up. And I'm looking at many of you here. You would have to fuck up so badly to go back to who you were two years ago. Like, you would have to things would have to go so fucking badly wrong, but I know that's hard in your mind to remember that because although you've made such progress in so many different guises, there's still this tiny part of you that sits on your shoulder that says, like, two bad weeks, and I'm back there. It would be so hard for that to happen, and I won't let that happen and you know long after we've worked together if things start to fall off you contact me we'll have a phone conversation everything will be okay okay lucy she apologized that she had to go I appreciate that because we've gone well over where I said we're going to You Lucy said really important point.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:I'm gonna close on this unless anyone's got anything else to say. So useful to know I'm not the only one in so many of these points. Thanks, Paul. I just wanna say, guys, thank you so much. Like, because reading those, like, I was actually giving me goosebumps, like, this morning and putting this deck together, and it's so nice to be able to share with you all that you're all hopefully, some of you have gone, fucking hell.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Yeah. That was me. Shit. That was me. And that person who didn't want to put what they put on the screen and, you know, we I put it on the screen.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:And I'm really, really pleased that they hopefully now know that they're not the only one. The amount of conversation I've had with all of you, you know, is very similar, but that doesn't underestimate that there are challenges for you all. You know, the challenges you're gonna face, challenges you have faced, you know, it's gonna continue. It's just about it's just kind of working through them. So I really hope you found this if you have found this useful and you would like more of these, we can do that.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:I really enjoy it. I just don't want to feel that I'm not able to give individual time where you know? So I wouldn't wanna do these all the time because I wanna ensure that everyone gets their individual attention, but I've really enjoyed this. I hope you guys have enjoyed it. As I say, any questions that come up off the back of this, let me know.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:If you're listening to this, questions that haven't been answered, let me know. Ask me questions. But I really appreciate as well. I've gotten well over, like, an hour and twenty minutes the longest, and I think it speaks volumes as to why it's gone over because there were some really fucking good questions. There's some really, you know, you've been really vulnerable.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Really appreciate it. And some of those questions, by the way, that were quite vulnerable, the people said, I'm really happy for you to share that, and I think that speaks volumes of the group and the trust that has been built with you strangers, you know? So I really appreciate that as well. And thank you all for sharing. And I hope you have a good rest of your bank holiday.
@PAULTHENUTRITIONIST:Enjoy it. And I'll then I'll speak to you check-in Fridays and Mondays. Thank you so much, and lots and lots of love. I'll see you soon.