Life & Fork

Some food for thought if you ‘don’t have chocolate in the house or you’ll just eat it.’

Which always leads to my next question…

So what happens when you do get near it?

What’s yours?

Your meals aren’t the problem.
Your unconscious snacking over weeks and months is.

So often I’ll have people ask for meal ideals or what meals they ‘should’ be eating.

When in truth evening meals are usually about where they need to be for cals and protein.

We are very good at snacking on things then not registering we have done so.

Studies show that most weight regain after diets comes from snacking.

It’s actually a really simplistic approach to fat loss.

Not snacking in between meals. Or consciously planning snacks ahead can be a great tool to try.

If you’re struggling with this, you’re not alone and I can help .

DM me hun!!!!!

When you have a body image day.

You’re stiff and you ache.

Or you’re slagging off the wrinkles you’ve acquired.

Take a moment to consider the alternative.

For a lot of women this can be signing up to a coaching programme or even walking in a gym.

I’m working on this a lot this year and I urge you to get on board with me ♥️

Tag your mate who’s at Starbucks drive thru by 7am and hasn’t eaten a porridge oat in 15 years!

3. Things as a nutritionist I’m embarrassed to admit.

1. Until I got my hands on creatine in the form of a kids sweet.. I never managed to take it consistently for even a month

And now I’ve realised how much it genuinely helps my training and focus!

2. I assumed because l eat fruit and veg a lot, I was always getting close to my 30g/day fibre goal.

But it turns out I’m nowhere near.

3. I encourage a high protein breakfast.. but most mornings I just want pastry.

So l have to eat a yogurt sachet chaser most days...that I don’t even want. But I know it is contributing to my goals.

We are all human. We can’t pick up every health seeking behaviour we are recommended and run with them all. Pick your battles and allow space for imperfection.

To get good at eating more fibre doesn’t mean you have to do it at every meal.

To start walking during work breaks doesn’t mean you have to walk every break.

To start a new gym class doesn’t mean you have to show up every day.

Just getting better at something means you’re somewhere close to getting good at it.

And that’s all that is required to be the change you want to see.

Have a bash. Stop trying to do things perfectly and see how much easier it is to sustain # # #

Thanks to for opening up this conversation with me 😘

Let’s not going being that dick to ourselves for another year.

I don’t know always know how to word this without sounding like I’m trying to tell everyone to avoid all indulgent foods at Christmas.

I hope you know the way and that this couldn’t be further from the truth.

My point is, loads of times a day stuff is thrust under our nose and sometimes we really really fancy it.

But sometimes, we actually don’t. And the line becomes blurred between ‘I don’t even want this but I’ll eat it anyway’ or ‘I can’t be arsed with the s**t I’ll get for not eating it’

Sausage sandwiches just went on here. I didn’t fancy one. I just wanted a yoghurt. I didn’t have one. I had a yoghurt. And no doubt I’ll be knacker deep into a box of matchsticks later. Because I actually want that.

So it hits different!

So it’s just a reminder.. sometimes the feeling of going without something you don’t fancy anyway, feels better than having it for the sake of it or to please others.

So get your balls out and tell great Aunty Mildred you don’t want her s**te mince pies and your 5 course Christmas dinner!

Happy Christmas y’alll!

It is important to acknowledge that our sleep habits are determined by age and genetics.

Some people are genetically an early morning type, some are genetically an evening type.

Teenagers are wired to go to bed later and wake up later and elderly people tend to wake up very early similarly to in their childhood.

Regardless of all this… our brains like routine, that is how they are able to automate so much stuff for us without us having to thing about it.

A small part of our brain (suprachiasmatic nucleus) is our body’s master clock.

This is able to anticipate when we wake, and release hormones like cortisol and melatonin.

If we mess around with the time we wake up, these hormones get out of sync and we wake up feeling a little groggy. It’s effectively jet legging yourself!

If you are feeling tired and know its because of a lack of sleep, try getting more exposure to natural light during the day (we know this helps greatly with regulating that master clock and contributes to getting tired on an evening when you should be feeling tired), and start your bed time wind down earlier so that you fall asleep earlier.

This will heighten you chance of waking up at the same time as usual, meaning that cortisol, designed to make you feel alert and awake in a morning will hit at the right time and set you up for the day.

Lie ins seen like a good idea when you’re hitting that snooze button, but have you ever got up after one and felt any better for it?

Comment below if you disagree.

(Thanks to the for making all@this stuff so easy to understand)

You can pay
£97 a month for this because
it’s an easy way to get nutrients down you...

Or you could buy one of these a day for half of that.
And its an easy way to get nutrients down you.

Also...

The veg pot contains over 10g of fibre versus 2g in the greens powder.

(Optimal daily intake of fibre is 30g/day)The veg pot will contribute to your satiety (fullness).

The greens powder will probably not.

We know highly palatable food offsets normal appetite regulation.

Greens powders are sometimes purchased to ‘make up for’ a sub optimal diet made up of highly palatable foods.

This means that indirectly our appetite regulation gets more and more out of whack... which looks like you not really knowing if you are hungry or full at any given time.

The vegetables bring our appetite regulation back in the direction we want.

Eating more of these whole, nutrient dense foods.. leads to you ‘fancying’ more of those whole, nutrient dense foods.

Drinking your greens will not have this effect.

So EAT your greens in a convenient way.

And spend the extra £50 a month on something that isn’t already available in a cheaper, more beneficial form.

🍴FORKER REVIRW🍴

I loved working on this one.

Not everyone’s goal is fat loss.

Whatever goal someone comes to me with, I am
hell bent on making sure I get them there.

I hate the thought of someone’s life becoming ruined by the debilitating symptoms of IBS

Knowing I can help take some of the stress out of days out with the family, make holidays more enjoyable and relaxing and widen the variety in someone’s diet is reason enough to love the job I’m in.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

If you’ve been back to the same ‘diet’ more than three times.. it’s safe to say it’s not sustainable.

People done like accepting this.

But it’s true.

Here’s a mantra to try instead.

It’s dull as s**t, and it’s nothing you haven’t heard before.

Which is why no one bothers to try it.

And favours shiny new diets with ‘rules’ that aren’t sustainable.

These are all sustainable.

They’re just not sexy!

But they bloody work.

Ask any of my forkers!

I’ll put my life on it, not doing enough cardio is not what’s stalling your progress.

You’ve got a life to life out there outside of the cardio machines.

Go and live it.

With loads of movement and loads of good, nutrient rich food ❤️

This Forker came to me fed up and completely bewildered with how to get on track with food and with movement in amongst her incredibly busy lifestyle. Working all hours with a family to looks after.

Safe to say, she got her teeth stuck in and absolutely nailed it.

I can’t bear to think of anyone ‘getting back on it on Monday’ every first Monday of the month for the last 20 years.

Save yourself before another 10 years passes and you’re still doing it with no positive outcome.

Free your diet brain forever.

Accepting you have to do the work and not necessarily see the results you want at first.

Leads you to find joy in results you didn’t even know you were looking for.

Woman’s Health Conference ✔️ completed it!

Incredibly proud of for creating such an inclusive, insightful event.

The community was incredible, as was the food!

Thank you for giving me a space to voice something I feel passionate about empowering woman (and men) of all ages about.

I love you. I love what I’m able to call my job.

Your gym session isn’t the thing that’s making you lose weight.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s contributing.

But weight loss generally comes from a sequence of health seeking behaviours.

And in my experience, the gym is one of the catalysts that gets people into this sequence.

So going to the gym might for example mead to you going home and having n the urge to make a nutrient rich meal…

Which might lead to you walking in your lunch break…

And it’s these small collective behaviours that, put together, lead to fat loss.

So if you can’t be arsed to go the gym because it feels like too much effort .

Just showing up and doing 10 minutes will have far more of an impact that’s you think.

If you feel you need a helping hand with stuff like this in order to reach your goals. We should chat.

I’d love you to join our gang of little forkers!

Just because you didn't log it today, doesn't make the day a write off.

Your results are coming from the effort YOU are putting in.

Not the external validation of My Fitness Pal.

By pinning your success on something external.

You are placing your reliance of success on it.

And it becomes yet another thing to fail at.

Making YOU feel like the failure.

*Cue the self sabbotage

People managed to get in good shape and eat well in the 80's.

When there were no apps to log our every burpee and crumb eaten.

And actually, in that process they learnt what a day of food an exercise looks like for them from instinct rather than quantitive measures.

Meaning maintenance comes more naturally.

By all means, use them to gain an understanding of the energy in food and the energy used in exercise.

But treat it as a tool to show you the way until you know it yourself. Like you would a sat nav!

If you feel you need a helping hand with stuff like this in order to reach your goals. We should chat.

I'd love you to join our gang of little forkers!!!

I couldn’t have summarised how I want to help you better myself 🥰

Nourished > Famished

You’ve done this enough times to know it doesn’t work.

But because it feels familiar you will keep falling back on it.

Until you start to challenge your ‘why’ you are doing it.

I’m gonna hedge a bet your constant dieting is in a bid to ‘feel better’.

And here we are after ‘x’ years of yo-yo dieting, not feeling better.

So what have you got to lose by having a go at the less aggressive, less sound bitey approach of simply ‘nourishing’ yourself.

Imagine actually feeling good and content all the time. And weight loss being a side effect?!

Seriously.

No one gives a f**k!

Lifestyle plays a bigger part in weight loss than
a calorie deficit.

Putting yourself in a calorie deficit is novel at first but soon wears thin.

And here's the thing, a deficit is a not a state your body wants to be in - it will try and fight it.

Old behaviours soon start to kick back in.

And the bodies we exist in are a result of our daily default habits and behaviours.

So if you sit up til midnight every night binging netflix.

Have a sedentary job and can't find time for movement each day.

And feel under constant stress but don't practice anything you know counteracts it...

The calorie deficit will be short lived.

Because the mental bandwidth you need to adhere to it is being taken up by tiredness, lack of energy and stress.

Spend a few weeks or months working on these first...

And you'll probably find the whole process a little easier to adhere to.

If it's stuff like this that holds you back from reaching your goals, we should chat.

I'd love you to join our gang of little forkers!!!

Sometimes your breakfast won't fill you when usually it does.

And that’s normal.

To really oversimplify something very complex

Cue the menstrual cycle chat......

From the first day of your period to the midpoint of your cycle.

You are oestrogen dominant

Serotonin is high and appetite tends to decrease.

This is when you are likely to eat you meal and feel full.

From the midpoint of your cycle to just before your next period.

You are progesterone dominant

Hunger and cravings are likely to go up.

This is when you are likely to eat your breakfast and still feel hungry.

Just one of the many reasons, being in tune with your cycle, is so beneficial.

Because if you want a bit more breakfast because your hormones are driving your brain to action that…

And you know why…

Then you'll give yourself a bit more god damn breakfast without being a dick to yourself.

If you feel you need a helping hand with stuff like this in order to reach your goals. We should chat.

I'd love you to join our gang of little forkers!!!

Don't get sucked into the bulls**t.

The appeal of seeing something new and shiny work for someone else,

Whilst you're in the midst of something that is slowly working,

But feels hard,

Is tough to resist.

But if you have found your thing and stuck to it,

You've done the hard bit.

And now is about the time, you've probably been doing it for a month or two,

And that consistency is suddenly going to reward you,

If you just stick to the drill and don't jump ship only to have to start something else,

From the start.. which means you'd have another month or two of consistency to get through before you saw any results.

Stick to your guns.

If it works for you.

It works.

Do you see yourself as someone who always fails?

The harsh truth is, the chances are you will continue to fail.

Interestingly,
the framework for this is a form of self-control.

Because self-sabotage is our brain's way of putting us in control of the outcome.

So allow yourself to be a little vulnerable but with a dash of self-belief.

And keep showing up day after day to do the thing.

# # #

Just going to leave this with you.

This is every bit as much a part of your nutrition as your actual food.

If you’re not ensuring your regulating your stress levels.

When stress is probably one of the biggest things preventing you from sticking to your goals and/or eating sub-optimally.

Then it’s one of the first things you should tackle.

We can’t reduce a lot of the stress in our lives.

But we can alter the physiological response it has on our body by activating our parasympathetic nervous system.

This makes us feel safe and calm.

And gives us space to make better, more rational decisions.

And taking yourself out of your stressful environment and walking in nature, breathing or journalling will help do this.

Bit if that feels weird at first, just taking yourself away to fling a few weights around for 29 minutes,if that seems more familiar..

Will have a massive impact on your habits and behaviours if your consider yourself ‘stressed’ or ‘overwhelmed’.

If you think stress may be contributing to why you can’t get to where you need to be and want help, it’s what I’m here for # #