E7: Nutrition, Health and Fat loss with nutritionist Sky Asquith

Nutrition, food, diets and fat loss is an absolute mind-f@&k!

I welcome my first guest, nutritionist, PT and Mental health and exercise coach - Sky Asquith.

We chat about what we believe are the key principles for sustainable health and fat loss with your nutrition.

STICK AROUND FOR SKY'S 3 TOP TIPS FOR  SUSTAINING FAT LOSS!

Social Media/Other Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifestylelegacygym
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/healthrevivalcoachben
Website: https://linktr.ee/lifestyle.legacy_ben

Sky's Social Media links:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/skyelizabethnutrition/

Transcript

Ben: Hi, everyone.

Ben: I'm Ben Johnson, mental health and exercise coach, private gym owner from Newcastle Online, coach of the Revival program and outnumbered dad of two strong independent daughters just like my wife. And I can't get a word in with them at home. Here's my chance. Welcome to my podcast. This show is a combination of my own personal growth, life experiences and experience of coaching people for over a decade to help improve their health, happiness and life fulfillment. There's a lot of people struggling to find sustainable physical and mental health solutions, so I want to provide you with some key insights and key tools to help them. If you find this information useful or even just enjoyable, it would be absolutely amazing if you could hit the Share button or leave a comment. You can also follow me on any of my social media platforms that can be found in the description text of this show.

Ben: Right. Absolutely buzzing to have fellow mental health and exercise coach and fellow mental health and exercise coach tutorial with me, sky, today. Sky is also an amazing nutritionist good friend. She's delivered some great specialist webinars for a lot of our private coaching members as well. In the past, little side Nor chicken stealth kill you with our BJJ skills. But today we're going to chat **** all about nutrition. How are you, sky?

Sky: I'm good. Thank you so much for asking me on. It's nice to be back talking to you. I only receive MHC stuff coaching spread.

Ben: About quite a bit, but do you mind, sky, just giving us a bit of background about your past relationship with nutrition and how it's led you to where you are now and what you do?

Sky: Yeah, for sure. It's always a funny one when I talk about this. I think people I don't know if you get this, but people often think about coaches and think, oh, they've always been into sport, or they've always had this great philosophy around training exercise where that really wasn't the case for me at all. I was quite the opposite. So I actually got into the kind of health industry because of my health. It wasn't anything to do with body composition or fat loss or anything. I had quite a big health scare when I was 21. I broke my hip. I'd given myself, like, early onset osteoporia, basically, just through such poor lifestyle. 21 years old. I liked to party a little bit when I was 21. Yeah, but that was a bit of a wake up call where I might laid in a ward in hospital with all the other old ladies that had broken their hips and I'd broken my hip. I was like, what is going on? I need to sort this out. So that's where my kind of journey into, I guess, health came in. That's when I started studying to become a PT after that as well, because I thought, you know what, this whole journey that I've been on has completely changed my lifestyle, my mental health, my view on exercise. And if I can do it, I want to help other people to do it because anyone can do it. So that started me into the kind of health industry and then I kind of got swallowed up in all the other stuff that goes on within the health and fitness industry, like bodybuilding and physique shows and trying to be as lean and small and muscular as possible and completely disregarding all the things I've been working on. So I did step into the body building world, did a couple of shows, and yeah, it totally ruined that as the only word I could say. Ruined my relationship with food and my body image. So that set me on a kind of a whole of the path as well because I had all of that to deal with. And luckily for me, it didn't escalate far enough that I had to have serious help. Like for some people it can develop into an eating disorder or body dysmorphic disorder. I kind of had like what I can only describe as mild disorder and mild body dysmorphia. I mean, mild it was still really tough, but I didn't need to have a psychologist or anything like that. But yeah, it was a scary time. And that again, completely changed what tact I took and the route that I took with my own journey and then how I coached other people. So I kind of come full circle back to health again.

Ben: I think probably for a lot of people listen as well when you talk about bodybuilding stuff. They just assume that that's healthy. Probably don't really understand the impact that it can have and it has for a hell of a lot of people around, like eating disorders and stuff, which we'll get into a little bit later as well.

Sky: Yeah, for sure. I think people think it's kind of a given. It's like, oh yeah, you're a coach, you do bodybuilding. That's what most coaches do. And for one, if there's any coaches, you absolutely don't need to do a photo shoot or a bodybuilding show to be taken seriously as a coach, people shouldn't take too seriously just based on the way that you look. I always say this, we shouldn't be using our body as a business card. That's not what it's about.

Ben: 100%. That's something that I've battled with in the past as well. Probably all of my early 20s, late teens. Bad body image, started treatment to be a PT, was obviously quite thin and slim and just thought that I needed a bulk up. So mine was a little bit different. But it was always being as ripped and as lean as possible and thought that I wouldn't get any clients if I wasn't perceiving as portraying this image that everybody sees or thinks that it should be in the health and fitness industry.

Sky: Absolutely. And I think that's what kept me stuck for quite a while was if I lose this image that I've got now, this six pack being really lean, really low body fat sense, people won't take me seriously. And I guess that's what we can't be against clients now is that people self esteem is through the floor and they think that by changing their body, they're going to build it. And that's absolutely not the case. We know that because we help people do this all the time now. But from my own journey, I went the other way and I gained confidence from getting my health back and taking care of myself and gaining weight and improving my relationship with food and connecting with people again rather than constantly worrying about what I'm eating or restricting food. So, yeah, I think people do look at bodybuilding, and I hate to slate it because I think if that's your career, then fair enough, but as a hobby, it's probably one of the worst hobbies you could possibly have. And this is why we talk about so much. Look at the research. Exercising solely to change the way that you look does not have good outcomes.

Ben: Yeah, exactly. Do you think a lot of people, when they see these bodybuilders, or they see people who are absolutely ripped influencers and stuff like that, they just assume that that's what health and fitness is all about. And I think that's where the misconception and where the confusion comes around. So they'll just follow these people, follow whatever they're spouting around diet and nutrition and then assuming that that's what you have to do when their life is they might be professional bodybuilders or they might be professional athletes. And these general population people who've got three kids in a full time job are trying to do exactly what they're doing. And then that's where a lot of the poor relationships with nutrition come from. I know it was the same for me, especially in my early twenties. I was doing fad diets all over the shop.

Sky: And this is it. Part of my journey of coming away from this was being really open about what I had been portraying on social media and what actually was going on behind closed doors. So all the things that I was posting, the things that I was saying, the pictures where people were giving me loads of great feedback about my physique behind closed doors, I was starving, I was told all the time. I was binging and restricted. My relationship with my partner at the time was really, really strange because we couldn't go out and do anything normal because I wasn't drinking, I wasn't eating out. And if I was, and I was panicking and obsessing about it and people thought that I was really confident, actually, it was kind of the lowest my confidence has been. And what can sometimes come across as arrogance is really insecurity. I would be confidently looking in mirrors. And it wasn't because I loved what I saw, it's because I was constantly like, well, do I still look lean just to have a six pack? I have to put on weight. So again, me speaking about that, people like, wow, you would never know that. So that just encouraged me more because I'm like, yeah, exactly. So when you're looking at all these influences on social media and all these people, absolutely zero context of what's going on behind closed doors and even if they are living the life that they say, you also have no context on what they do. They might get up first thing in the morning, do 3 hours of cardio and then eat egg whites and green beans. If you're not willing to do that, then why would you want to try and achieve what they've got? Do you know what I mean? Sometimes you have to take the context of people's situations. You're not going to have that life. And we do live in a bit of a vacuum on social media where you just exposed to the same stuff all the time.

Ben: Yeah, 100%. So that's obviously led you full circle back into health nutritionists. Now, can you explain a little bit about what you do and the services that you provide?

Sky: Yeah, for sure. I'm not against body composition goals at all. I'm not against people wanting to improve their health. And if a part of that is maybe losing some body fat, building some lean muscle, then I'm all for that. But a lot of what I have found, because I only work with women, I have a couple of male clients but generally work with women. And I've found that people don't struggle to achieve their goals because of a lack of knowledge. We've got so much knowledge. We've got knowledge at our fingertips. There's information everywhere we struggle to implement it because of the emotional side of things and the attachment that we've got with our body image and with our food and maybe potentially poor mental health. And I'm sure you do a very similar thing to this band in terms of your training and style in the gym. But what I'm trying to do is to improve all of those things through nutrition and exercise. And that sometimes means going completely against what everyone's drilled into them. So my clients don't weigh themselves, they don't use that as a marker of success. We don't take progress photos. We're not going and training in the gym to try and grow different body parts. It's not like, okay, this is a session to grow your bomb. It's like, no, this is a session to build strong legs, functional things that help you in life, learning new skills, getting fit for different challenges. But a byproduct of that, yes, might be that their bodies change. But, yeah, a lot of what I do is really helping people to, I guess, in a nutshell, find food and exercise freedom. Because a lot of them have been led down a path which has confused them and left them feeling a little bit at the mercy of other things and constantly spinning their wheels to different diets and different forms of training. So, yeah, that's a lot of what I do.

Ben: Yeah. Amazing. And it's safe to say both of us, from what we've just spoke about there have probably been in a position where some people listening might be now, where we were confused and we didn't really know what health and fitness was really for, in my opinion, what it's for long term and what nutrition can do for your body and your mind. So anybody out there, listen. It's just up to you to try and do something differently and not just continuously think that it's about a diet plan, a nutrition plan that's going to be short lived. It's about like Sky's just touched on there, building a better relationship with nutrition, with yourself, better body image, motivations around exercise. That's all the stuff, the deep work that you need to do in order to make long term changes. So you've got to be willing to do that work as well, for sure.

Sky: A big part of what we do is we focus a lot on people's values. And when I started to do this, people were a bit like, why the hell is she talking about this area fairy? But what I was finding was people didn't really know their values. They didn't really know how they wanted to live or what was important to them. They were essentially living their lives based on other people's opinions, on what they should be doing 100%. As soon as we started getting people to identify what do you value in life and then how do you live those values out day to day, things started to click into place and they realized, actually, it's not being a size eight or a size ten that I value. It's taking care of my body, it's moving it in a way that I enjoy. It's eating foods that help my energy levels and help me get through the day, but also eating foods that I enjoy with my family on a date night. Once you start to pick out the things that are actually important and then it's going to look different for everybody. But how you live out those values day to day, that's where you start to build self trust, self confidence, self esteem, because you're living in a way that's authentic to you. When you're not doing that, when you feel frustrated at yourself and you feel guilty about things, that can be a bit of a telltale sign that you're not actually living a life that you want to live. You're living a life that someone else thinks you should live.

Ben: And that's when most people are filling a void sometimes, or quite often with food or the lack of living a valuable life. It's something that we've done and a great one, a great ****. If anybody wants an extra read, dr. Julie Smith has got a great thing. We use it in our coach, and it's called the Value Star to just only take ten minutes just to actually sit back and think, am I being an active participant in my life or am I being a passive participant in my life and just floating by and sort of playing in line with other people's values. So, yeah, totally agree with that. I always say if you're losing fat and feel ****, you're not going to keep it off.

Sky: Exactly.

Ben: So you've got to be happy and enjoyable at the same time.

Sky: Exactly. And especially when it comes to I have a lot of clients that experience a lot of guilt around food and exercise, maybe sorry, mostly with what they've eaten, having guilt about what they've eaten and then having guilt about the exercise that they aren't doing that they think they should. When you've got your values, you can have that conversation with yourself and you can justify the choices that you're making because you're making them out of value. So you get to kind of put emotion at a back seat. I'm not going to feel guilty about enjoying this pizza with my boyfriend because I value connection and this is us having a night together where we connect and we connect over food and we lost pizza, so I'm not going to let myself feel guilty.

Ben: That's a valuable point. Like, definitely, yeah.

Sky: And if you don't kind of have those little shining beacons that are your values, you're going to be in turmoil where you're like, oh, I shouldn't be in that pizza. Feel so guilty and you completely ruin the actual moment that you should be enjoying. And the same goes for if I value health. What I really want to do is I want to snooze my alarm in the morning. But I'm not going to because this is the only time that I'm going to be able to get up and go for a walk or get up and go to the gym before the kids wake up. So it's not that you just let yourself off the hook all the time. It's it also gives you a kick up the *** as well because you're like, no, this is my value and this is how I want to live. So people always think not giving up, but not focusing on just fat loss and focusing on positive behaviors around food and positive behaviors around exercise is like letting yourself off the hook. That's not it at all. It's saying yes and no to things based on what is important and what feels good for you.

Ben: Yeah. It's not joining the 05:00 a.m club. It's actually living in line with your values. And that's going to bring benefit to.

Sky: Your life 100% total.

Ben: Right. The health and fitness industry and nutrition. Where the **** do a start as a nutritionist, how often are you banging your head against the wall from what you see on social media, from influenzas magazines and stuff like that? And have you got any examples of what makes you bang your head?

Sky: I don't even know where to start, to be honest. And you know what? TikTok made it even worse.

Ben: I still haven't ventured into TikTok on no, I don't.

Sky: I have the app on my phone because when Real first came on Instagram, it was easier to make stuff on TikTok. So I don't post anything. I would just make videos on there and then download them and post them on Instagram. But my partner is a big fan of TikTok, so I sometimes see things over his shoulder. I think, oh, what the hell? My mom has just joined Instagram, and she sends me random reels all the time. And it's like these random doctors that are talking about lemon water and all this stuff. For metabolism, it must be really difficult from an uninformed place or for someone that feels informed. I even get coaches with an MP that say, I was feeling really confident about this, and then I saw this, and it made me question everything. And it can be really difficult. And I teach this within my client community of, like, how to try and spot fads. And usually the easiest way is, are they trying to sell you something? Because they'll have a big spiel about and it will sound really sciencey, and it will sound really technical, and then they throw in a few words that you're like, oh, that sounds legit. And then the solution to that would be their book or their diet plan or their supplement. That's when you can usually be like, not quite sure about this.

Ben: And given and often those will give definite warrant. Like, this is the way. This is the only way. This is the best way.

Sky: Yeah. So talking absolute. You'll never really hear me talking an absolute. There'll always be caveats. There'll always be for some people. Or it depends, because everything depends. For most questions in science, if you say, does this do this? Well, it depends on the person. It depends on the situation. So if they're talking in absolute, also, who is this person? What is their credibility? I've seen people with doctorates, but it's like a doctorate or a PhD in psychology, but they're talking about nutrition. Being an expert in one area doesn't make you an expert in all areas. It's the same way that I wouldn't really confidently talk about brain science.

Ben: Yeah, exactly.

Sky: Neuroscience.

Ben: I think as soon as people see doctor in front of a NEM, they're like, well, believable, that's it. He's 100% legit.

Sky: Exactly. And people that are really polarizing, people that they appeal to, like ancient wisdom, it's all natural. And our ancestors well, our ancestors aren't here anymore. They don't live in the same world as off.

Ben: Exactly.

Sky: And I love the whole natural thing, like all natural ingredients. Well, cyanide is natural as well, but we're not going to have that in our product. Yeah, that's a really great one. This is toxic. This is toxic. Well, everything can be toxic in the right dose. I think if you just sat back and thought about things logically, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Ben: Yeah, exactly.

Sky: If it sounds really fancy and how many times can something new come out, that is the next best thing. The fact that we've got diets that can be on the completely different end of the spectrum, like a ketogenic diet, which is basically high fat, low carb. But then on the other hand, we've got a plant based diet which is basically low fat, high carb. Both of them claiming to be the best diets in the world. How can they be the best diets if they're both on a completely different end of the spectrum?

Ben: No wonder people are just like, what the **** are supposed to do?

Sky: Exactly.

Ben: I feel like, to be honest, even though we touched, we haven't even really spoke about fat loss. We will a little bit later. But I feel like the basic understanding around nutrition has been lost. Like the basics, the fundamentals, and I think because that education isn't out there, people are just confused. It's pushed confusion through the roof and this is just piled in a fad after fad after fad. And then how is that impacting people's relationship with food? As soon as they try this claim that is the best thing they do, it they realize that it's unsustainable or that it's boring or it's not fueling their values like we touched on, then they give up every time that happens. That's lowered confidence, lower self worth, lower self belief, and that they're ever going to be able to create sustainable, healthy changes to their nutrition methods.

Sky: Yeah, and I think you've hit the nail on the head there. The problem is, is that people have this desperation to change. And like you said, it's not a desperation necessarily to change your body, it's to get out of this person that you've become to get out of this life that you don't want to live. That's where the desperation really lies. But the industry has pointed that and projected that at your body. That is the answer to your problems if you change your body. And I can categorically say that nothing in my life got better when I changed my body. I got a lot out of the process, but I got a lot of problems out of the process as well.

Ben: More negatives than positives, let's say.

Sky: Yes, because it wasn't really valuable to me. It wasn't really important. I never had any issues in my body before I started down the body building path. So, yeah, I think it comes from a place of desperation and that is a difficult part for me with my clients is getting them to slow down, to take a back seat. But you're not going to change everything overnight. It's just not going to happen. And the more you give yourself a bit of grace and more time to actually address the things that are going on, the more those changes are going to stick. So, again, if something is promising that changes even a coach, do you want to drop £21 of fat in six weeks? That's what I do. How the **** can you say so specifically? That's what you do when we are human beings that are so complex. What me and you do, Ben, we could do exactly the same thing and get completely different results.

Ben: Exactly.

Sky: That's the way that it works.

Ben: And I think this is even more needed right now for people to hear this, especially New Year. There's going to be **** loads of social media posts about people who have started something in January, divorce, whatever, 1020 pounds or whatever. Because of that, I need to do this now because they're feeling pretty **** after Christmas, there might be a bit of January blues, whatever. So this is even more important for people to just take a step back and think, right, is this something that I'm doing year on year on year, and then by March, April, I'm still back to square one or in a worse position, or can I start doing something more gradually? Small behavior, small habit changes that are going to compound. This is what I would say. Small things are going to compound, so that by April, by June, by next December, next January, you're going to be in a much better position than you are or have been for the last five to ten years, trying to do something drastically and quickly.

Sky: Absolutely. And it's not very sexy to say that, is it?

Ben: Like, no. Sometimes feel like we're ******* in the wind a little bit with it.

Sky: Yeah. But it absolutely does. It's really important. And this is it. We're at a time of year when it is kind of shoved down our throats, but, yeah, I think having a bit of patience with yourself and it is about building that trust with yourself as well. We are actually really intuitive beings, and I think that's another thing that's been lost with the use of apps and tracking this and tracking that, tracking your sleep, tracking your macros, tracking your calories. Actually, if we sat back and yes, some people do generally need a bit of education on what is protein, what does it do within the body, where do we get these sorts of what is fiber, what's the importance? But if you actually listen to your body a little bit more and drowned out some of the external noise, you would find what actual eating to society feels like and eating in line with hunger feels like and what foods keep you going throughout the day. And what foods actually leave you feeling quite hungry after.

Ben: Technology has got some amazing benefits. But in that respect, to be honest, it's sort of lost mindfulness, hasn't it?

Sky: Yes.

Ben: For a lot of people, it's just become too easy just to rely on something else. And again, I'm the same as you sometimes. Some people that I coach, I do believe that certain tools, tracking tools and metrics do help them just build their awareness and their education. But I'll always say that this is not a long term method that you're going to use for the rest of your life. You're using these methods. You need to be building your education, but also your mindfulness around what your body needs.

Sky: Yes. And that becomes a croc that people need, which it shouldn't be. It should be a guide. You should be the one that's making the intentional decision. And whatever you're using, whether it's a food diary or you're manually trying to count up what you're having, or you're manually putting into an app to see where your calories and proteins sit, that shouldn't be dictating to you, it should just be guiding what you're already doing.

Ben: Yeah, that's a great way to put that agreement. Way to put that. Because there's going to be loads of people here listening who have tried the likes of things like my fitness pal and other food trackers and stuff, and maybe having the best of times with it or felt obsessive over it, or that it's being controlling. That is an important point that sky has just made there on that. Do you think movements like calorie ******* deficit and cycle, calories in versus calories out? Yes, they're all scientifically true for fat loss and all that, but do you feel like movements like this have a lot to answer for in terms of health being lost from nutrition?

Sky: 100%? It is great. I've given people an awareness of what they need because I think on the flip side of that, people will come and say, I don't eat junk food, I don't drink alcohol, I have a really good diet, but I'm gaining weight. You can eat really great food, nutritious food, and eat too much for what your body needs, and that can happen. So I think in terms of that, it's giving people an idea. And obviously it is way more complex than just move more, eat less. We know that. Especially when in terms of things like obesity and socioeconomics that play into that. But then we've gone the other way of, well, as long as I'm in a calorie deficit or I'm in my maintenance calories, I can just eat **** all day because I'm not going to.

Ben: Gain weight, eat what I want.

Sky: Yeah, food quality still matters. Food quality is probably the thing that you should focus on first. I always get my clients to focus on the quality of their diet, the quality of their routine with what they eat and. Then we can start to look at, okay, are we eating too much? Are we not eating enough? Because in some cases people are chronically under fueling. They're going through the day without eating and then at night they eat too much. So we're in these kind of cycles. So it's looking at the quality of the way that you eat and what you eat and your thoughts towards what you eat. Before we go straight into let's see how many calories you're eating. The podcast recently, I don't know if you saw it kind of blew up, which they do because they're supposed to, but Steven did one with Tim Specter. Yes. He took a sound bite from it and obviously made it so that it got people to go and listen. And the sound bite said counting calories doesn't work. He's not wrong. He's not saying that a calorie deficit is scientifically wrong. He's saying that is the principle. The principle is if you go into a calorie deficit, you'll lose fat. The method by which you implement that calorie deficit doesn't work when you're tracking calories. Yeah, that's what we're saying. So people always think about people are so focused on the principle, they're not really paying attention to the method.

Ben: Exactly. Yeah. And I felt guilty to this four, five years ago. Probably just spouting. Right. It's calorie deficit. I was just like, get these results. Because again, I was just following what the industry I thought expected. It's all about fat loss, about health. This is all you need for sustainable fat loss. Through coaching experience, through wanting to provide a better service and better my knowledge. Now realizing that without health, it's not sustainable. Like I said earlier, if you feel ****, lose fat, it's not going to be sustainable. You're going to gain that fat. You're going to constantly go on this you or your cycle.

Sky: Exactly. And I say to people, whatever you do to change your body, whether that be gaining weight, gaining muscle, gaining strength, or losing body fat, gaining fitness, the behaviors that take you to the place where you're like, yes, I'm here now you're going to have to maintain to stay there. So if you use behaviors that you don't see you're going to maintain long term, what do you expect that would happen?

Ben: Yeah. What you do now, do you see yourself sustaining that within six months? No. Right. Well, probably make change then.

Sky: Exactly. The behavior and this is why it is so important we do say the little behaviors that compound over time that you build up when it's going for a 20 minutes walk two times a week, then that's three times a week, then that's four times a week, and then it's a 30 minutes walk. All of that is so that it becomes part of your routine. Because if you don't see it being part of your routine, you're not going to be consistent with it.

Ben: Yeah. And a lot of that building that is slipping the mindset from short term fix to long term change.

Sky: Again, yeah, playing the long game, which again, is not very sexy. But I've got clients that I've got a client, she's been with me for a year now, and we haven't not once focused on fat loss. We focus on her body image, her relationship with food. She's now trained in the gym, which she never would have managed. She's just signed up to a tough mother. She's got some of my other clients doing a tough mudder and she randomly weighed herself. I don't know if it was because she was going to the doctors or something and she's lost over a stone.

Ben: That's class.

Sky: And she was like, it's nice for her. That was one of her goals at one time. But that isn't the that's a byproduct of her proven, her overall health. That wasn't her only goal. Whereas if she had come to me spinning the wheels like she was and be like, I really want to lose over a stone, I don't think she would have still been working with me right now. And I don't think she would be doing the things that she's doing now.

Ben: Yeah, definitely. And I think that's what it's going to be seen as, a byproduct. It could be for your health, a positive byproduct. I say it could be because it might not be for everyone, but that weight loss, that fat loss could be a nice byproduct. Leaning on from that, then talking about calorie intake and stuff, can you help explain to the people listening the differences between calorie intake and nutrient intake and how important this separation is to try and get away from the fact that it's not all just about calories?

Sky: Yeah, so calories is the unit that we use to describe the energy in food. Calories is actually this is such a nerdy thing to say. What we basically do is we use a bomb calerometer and we put food in there and we burn it, and then the temperature is in water. So the temperature that energy raises the water by is then what we measure calories by. So this is why calories isn't that accurate. We're not saying this almond has exactly this amount of calories. We don't really know. It's kind of accurate, but it's not that accurate. And nutrition labels can be out by up to 30%. They're allowed to be the government allows them to be wrong by up to 30%. So, again, tracking everything to the exact calorie is just so silly. Like, we need to be a bit more flexible with it. I'm not saying don't count your calories, but be a bit more flexible. So basically, that's the overall energy that we should expect to get from the food that we're eating. Whereas nutrients and we tend to talk about macronutrients and micronutrients, which we kind of need in different amounts. That refers to your macronutrients is your protein, your fats and your carbohydrates all have different uses and needs within the body. Protein being in there, the building blocks of cells, muscle, hair, skin, helps our immune system. And then fats and carbs being energy sources that are used at different times. So think about fats being the kind of slow energy source for the low intensity stuff. Carbohydrates being a bigger energy source for more intense stuff, maybe even exercise if you do that. So if you are a very active person, you do a lot of intense exercise. Your carbohydrate needs probably going to be more to fuel that fats. Also help with vitamin absorption and sex. Hormone functions are really important. Again, like I get women come to me that are super low fat diets, really scared of fats and maybe even have impacted their kind of mental cycle because of that, because they're not getting enough fats, they're not supporting their hormones. So they're all really important and there are kind of some guidelines that we would want within those. But again, it's not an exact science and it will differ person to person. I tend to get my clients to focus on protein at most meals throughout the day. Like having regular protein is going to help support the body to use that protein. And then your carbs and your fats can kind of sit at your preference. I think it's one that you should play around with. Some people like a higher fat diet, some people like a higher carb diet. And then your micronutrients is all your vitamins and minerals. So again, we don't really need to have like a massive focus on that. It's just getting some variety and getting some color on your plates. Trying to have at least two to three fruit or veg, even one to two fruit or veg with most of your meals or in your snack, you're probably going to cover your basic micronutrient needs. But when we only focus on calories, we kind of missing the forest for the trees there because a lot of people, like we've said, will either focus on the lowest calorie version of everything, the lowest fat version of everything, high protein, this. So yeah, maybe create your diet high in protein, but maybe you're missing some vital micronutrients or you're not getting the fiber or you're not getting the fat.

Ben: Really common example that probably many people have seen or maybe even done is seeing they've got calorie goal, 500 calories a day or whatever. They'll prep five boxes of chicken and rice or salmon and pasta and or whatever, and they'll have like porridge five days a week and it'll just be the set menu every single week for potentially months. If they've got a certain fat loss goal, that for me is completely because there's no variance there. It's completely disregarding micronutrient intake. It's just focused on calories and probably a little bit the protein as well to help preserve and build muscle to help the fat loss process. But yeah, I think there needs to be much more of a focus on variants like you touched on there. It doesn't have to be wildly variant every single week, but even just a couple of new meals every week or every couple of weeks or something like that, just to freshen things up and make sure you are getting that range of macros and micros.

Sky: Exactly. This is why I have my issue with prescriptive meal plans, because they usually are really boring like that. It's the same thing week in, week out, but there's no harm in you making your own meal plan where you maybe cycle through two or three different breakfast, two or three different lunches, different dinners. For me, I will have the same breakfast every day. So I do have porridge with protein powder, but I will cycle different fruits with it to different ferries.

Ben: Guilty of exactly. If I'm lucky on a Sunday, my wife might make some pancakes, other than that, porridge every day.

Sky: If I go out for breakfast, which is my favorite thing to go out for, lunch tends to be the same thing. But I'll just again have different veggies. So it will be some form of eggs, whether it's poach, fried, scrambled, some form of carbohydrates, probably bread, bagel, whatever, and then spinach, tomatoes or mushrooms or whatever, and that's where I get the variety from. And then dinner will be something different.

Ben: I think that's where the education comes from about just the basic understanding of macronutrients, micronutrients. Once you've got this in your locker, in your head, you can create a plan or plan that suit your lifestyle. Like somebody who's, I don't know, single, no kids, part time job, whatever, is probably going to have a completely different plan that's going to work for them to somebody who is full time worker, got three kids, it needs to be but the knowledge is still the same, the actual principles of nutrition is still the same. But the plan that you've got to do has got to be personal 100%.

Sky: And you get to know when you're hungry and when you're not as hungry and where you have that dip in energy where you probably maybe put a smack in. So it's all about and people always say to me, oh, I'm such a creature of habit. Yeah, that's not a bad thing. We're humans, we have routine. I'm yet to meet a human that goes, oh, I love being out of routine, I love cheese, yeah, I love flying by the seat of my pants. No, nobody does. Everyone likes to have routine. It feels good, it feels nice. And it also reduces that decision fatigue. If, you know, you have a similar breakfast and lunch every day and all you got to think about is dinner, it's one less thing to think about.

Ben: Yeah, definitely. And I think I'm a bit of a fan of some systems to help people as long as it's a loosely based system. Because there's got to be things like the 80 20 rule that can help people with a nutrient intake that's anybody who doesn't know that it's sort of trying to look at it across your week, trying to incorporate 8% highly nutritious or highly nutrient dense foods. And then 20% less nutrient dense foods. Getting away from using things like good and bad to help build a better relationship with food. But that, again, I get across that, look, it's not always going to be 80 20 October. It was more like 50 50. There's going to be weeks where that happens. So it's just a loose idea. And what you're doing occasionally isn't going to determine your progress with your health. And if you've got a fat loss goal, it's what you do regularly that's going to do that.

Sky: Yes. And this is another problem I find with the whole calorie counting thing, is that people fixate on hitting an exact number every day. We don't need the exact same number of calories every day. I might have a day where I'm out walking a lot. I'm walking to school and back. I maybe have trained that day, and then the next day I might not get out of the house, or I might be sat at a desk all day. I would have totally different needs. So why would I fixate on having exactly the same food or punish myself if I've had more one day and less the other day? Whereas actually, if you think about your week, well, think about it in terms of your week. So for my clients that do sometimes track their protein and their calories and stuff, they think of it on like a kind of weekly scale, and it gives them that flexibility that one day they might be going out for food, and that's going to be typically higher calorie day and then another day they're not. They're at home, they've got everything prepped ahead, and they can maybe afford to cut out a few snacks or maybe have a black coffee instead of a big frappuccino thing. It's making those little adjustments so that over the week, you're still kind of getting what you need, because fat loss and fat gain doesn't happen overnight. And that's another thing people don't seem to understand. They think if they go over their calories or their calorie allowance on one day, they're going to gain £10 next day. It just doesn't work like that.

Ben: Bit of a big weekend, this. A little bit, actually. I didn't want it much, but you had a bit of a big weekend. You step on the scales on Monday, you see the skills go up by a couple of pounds. A lot of people think that that's fat automatic. That isn't, not anybody listening to that. A lot of that is probably going to be water retention or food held in transit. So that's another big misconception and again, it's sort of linking to that. Right? Well, if I'm going to have my calorie goal, then it's automatically gone to tummy fat or it's gone bingo wings or whatever, and it's not the case. It's something that takes a lot of time to create changes to your fat stores.

Sky: Yeah. That's the reason why my clients don't weigh themselves when they did used to weigh themselves, I would always say, don't do it on a Monday when you know you've eaten different weekend. Most human beings eat different than a weekend. And if you're eating higher carb, higher salt foods, which typically are, with that comes water retention. So not only are you storing some of that carbohydrate in your muscles and in your body, you're also pulling in lots of water with that. And then, like you said, food in transit. Of course scale is going to go up. So why would you psychologically do that to yourself? Start your week off that way. So I would say wait until Tuesday or Wednesday. Weigh yourself Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Take an average of those three days, and that will give you a better idea week on week where you're heading. But my clients just don't do that anymore because of this. There's so much fluctuation in scale ways, and it's almost like a selffulfilling prophecy. If you feel like I ate a little bit more that weekend and then you might wake up feeling great, get on scale. Scales don't say what they want. Then your whole perception of your body has changed. You look in the mirror and you're like, I'm huge. I'm absolutely huge. I've gained a stone.

Ben: It's just a doubt.

Sky: Yeah. If we didn't step on the scale, that wouldn't have happened. And that's a lot of what we do, is getting people to recognize those cycles of behavior. What happened that day to put you in this negative mood that then made you almost self sabotage. I get that a lot with some women that come to me at first is that they are trying the hardest to improve their nutrition and they end up stepping on scales, don't like the number. Then they think, well, what's the ******* point? And then they end up throwing everything out the window and it becomes a bit of an emotional cycle. And I say to them, where do you think that cycle starts? When I weigh myself, okay, well, let's break the chain there then. Let's take out the weigh in.

Ben: Exactly.

Sky: See how that impacts your behaviors.

Ben: Exactly. And for me, anybody so people do get a choice that I coached. If that's not a bit of a way to go, that's fine. But I'll always say, right, it's got to be the same once a month maximum for us. And if it's females, they've got to take more things into consideration. But anybody who's wearing themselves the day before, they need to do a little bit of reflection and note and about right, what was your hydration levels the day before you weighed yourself? Had you consumed any alcohol? Had you been out? What was your social occasions like? Had you consumed more food for the females? Whereabouts in your cycle is at the time of your month? All of these factors that can impact scale weight, but if you've got that written down, you can sort of create patterns. And actually, if the scales aren't saying what you thought they might have, then you can be a little bit more logistical and logical about it and think, right, well, this is why, and you can build a bit of a pattern with it and then that should hopefully help build a bit of a better relationship with scales as well. Right. There's a lot of research and evidence now linking nutrition and mental health as mental health and exercise coaches. I think we've got to talk about this a bit. For me, with nutrition, I've always focused the mental health side on energy management. You've delivered some stuff for my clients around hunger management and the impact this has on mood and emotional responses. I eat a mental health for me as well. With nutrition and mental health, I've focused on building a better relationship, like some of the things that we've touched on with food, with scales, with the methods to help reduce types of poor mental health associated with restrictive diets, things like guilt, worry, stress, anxiety. But I think now, those things aside, there's a lot more research being done and things being done around on a hormonal and nervous system level where nutrition can impact mental health. Is that right?

Sky: Yeah, there's a lot going on in the kind of gut health space, which is super interesting in terms of they've started to see that people that focus on improving their kind of gut microbiota and what we mean by that is basically increasing the diversity of bacteria that you have in the gut. Bacteria obviously has quite a negative connotation, but that's not the case within the gut. Bacteria is really important. So not only making sure that your bacteria is diverse, but that you're feeding at the stuff that it likes in terms of fibrous food. So improving the fiber within your diet and the different types of fiber. And they found that when they looked at people suffering without anxiety and depression, their anxiety and depression, their symptoms improved by improving their gut health and then vice versa. They've seen it the other way, that when people have been treated for anxiety and depression in terms of lifestyle change and therapy, psychotherapy, then they've looked at their gut microbiome and they've improved their bacteria and how their gut functions by improving their mental health. And it's all part of the gut brain axis. So it's really, really interesting, and it sounds really complex, but there are some really simple things that people can be doing, and it just comes down to drinking enough water, moving your body regularly, managing your stress as much as you can because stress can be a real trigger for the gut because of this gut brain axis. Getting enough fiber in your diet? So the recommended daily amount is 30 grams, which sounds like quite a lot, but if you think of it in terms of like the Super Six so lagoons, beans, fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds, if you can get something from one of those every day, you're absolutely winning. But drinking more water is really important because fiber needs water to kind of do its job. Really interesting. And it just feels better to take care of your gut anyway. So, yeah, I think stuff like that is super interesting, all the emerging research. But in terms of the psychology around food, which is super complex, I think people sometimes put more importance on what they're eating when actually the mindset that they take to that plate is also of importance, sometimes even more important. And I think I've seen lots of videos which I think are really cool, where it's like, what's more unhealthy than eating a full pack of cookies? It's making yourself feel like **** afterwards. That's really bad for your health as well. So I think when people think about mental health and food, really take into account your inner dialogue about food, your beliefs about food, the way that you use food and speak to yourself about food, that's just as important as the actual food that you eat.

Ben: And where does that come from? Where does it stem from? What stock thought processes and stuff here?

Sky: Yeah, definitely.

Ben: I think that a lot of people listening are probably going to be thinking about fat loss and diets. We've touched on a little bit weight loss, body image, et cetera. Probably many people with a bit of a stop start or your cycle pattern that really need some help with sustainable nutrition methods. If you could, there's probably lords, but could you sum up your three top tips to help people create sustainable fat loss methods with nutrition?

Sky: Definitely. Don't give yourself a super short time scale kind of overestimate the amount of time that you want it to take. Especially, and this sounds like such a cliche fitness thing to say, but just really have a thing about where you're at now and how long you've been there and how long it took you to get there. I think people come expecting to undo years and years of different habits and different behaviors in the space of two months and it's just not going to happen. So almost underestimate what you're going to achieve and overestimate how long it's going to take would be the first thing.

Ben: Yeah, that's cool.

Sky: And then a really important thing is like routine. If you don't have routine, how can you change what you're doing? So one of the first things I do with my clients is get them to build out a routine and that looks like what we can have spoken about is having regular meal times, having regular snack times that are set up around their day, having meals, planning some things that they can rotate through. So if you know that most days you're eating porridge and fruit and then lunch is eggs on toast and then dinner is something else and your snacks are fruit or baby wells or whatever, if you're not losing weight in that kind of pattern, you can then go, well, I just need to reduce from here. So maybe I will make some little swaps. Like I will have less snacks or I will drink less of my calories through coffee. If you don't have any routine, how do you ever expect to get consistency? For my clients, they want fat loss but don't want to track the calories. That's what we do. We find routine. And then once we get a good kind of consistent look at what they're doing, then we can look at, okay, where can we maybe reduce your intake in places? Whether it's reducing certain portion sizes, reducing some of their snacks, or the other flip side, how can we increase your activity if we know that over the week you get, on average this many minutes activity? It doesn't have to be steps. It can be this many minutes of outdoor walking. It could be steps if you want to use that as a metric. But again, not fixating on getting a certain number every day, or I need to get ten K every day. It's not realistic. Let's look at your weekly average. How can we improve that? So having routine is definitely another one. Cool the fat loss. And don't underestimate the power of sleep.

Ben: Yes. Sleep is the key to health, man. I know that.

Sky: Yeah, exactly. I almost think of being a bit sleep deprived as being a little bit drunk. You're not going to make the best decision, so you kind of working against yourself if you're for going sleep. And a lot of people, it's not their choice, they've got children, but a lot of people, they 100% procrastinate going to sleep. They're on their phone, they don't have any boundaries. They wake up in the morning, they're on their phone feeling like and I know it's hard if you work long days that you feel like, well, I don't want to go straight to bed, I want to watch TV, I want to relax. But prioritizing sleep is going to help regulate your appetite, regulate your hunger hormones, help you recover from your training. Otherwise you're kind of always on the back foot. You're going to be hungrier than usual, you're going to feel a bit beat up more than usual because you're just not getting that quality sleep.

Ben: I think a lot of people with that fall for the short term gratification trouble, rather than just thinking, right, I'm going to watch another couple of episodes of Netflix. I'm feeling tired, I want to feel a bit better. But then that's eating that sleep where long term watch movies, one or two episodes, then go to sleep at a decent time, feel much better the next day. Long term benefit.

Sky: Yes, exactly. And it's hard at first because you need to do it a few times to feel the benefit when you're in the habit of staying up late and being constantly sleep deprived. But again, it comes back to your values. Like do you want to be the person that feels energized, that wakes up ready for their day? If you've ever got out of a routine and then you go back to work, like say for instance you go on holiday, you go back. Those first few mornings when you're trying to get up early are absolute hell. They're hell. But then after a few weeks, or maybe a month, you kind of waking up around the time that your alarm goes off. Right? If you've got a normal routine, the body is so, so clever. If you have a very similar sleep time and wake time, you generally will wake up at the same time as your alarm or just before. And you'll get tired around the same time each night because your body gets into that rhythm. If you've got no routine with your sleep, it's throwing you out of whack. So people always think, how the hell is sleep connected to fat loss? Because it gives you a great foundation to make better choices, to feel better, to not have erratic hunger all the time. So yeah, those would be my main tips. Have routine, focus on your sleep and underestimate yourself. Give yourself more time to build these little habits in.

Ben: Yeah, love those. Love them. And I think people do massively, massively underestimate sleep. And I think if anybody does sort of read, like, sleep and fat loss, it'll probably go into, like it's the time where you're burning calories and stuff, where actually no, it's all these massive impact that it's going to have on your day to day decisions that you just touched on. There also on .2 about the routines and stuff that's so important and what you can sort of cut back if you need. But sometimes for people it's what can you add as well, isn't it? To the nutrition if people are going long periods. If you build this pattern and you build this understanding of what you're going through each day, you might be able to see then that, ****** hell, I went 6 hours there without any consumption. No wonder I binged at the end of that and felt terrible and then felt terrible afterwards. So then it could be like, well, what can I add in here that's then going to make my best class members main meals of breakfast, lunch and dinner. I might be more controlled during those times.

Sky: Yeah, that's a great point for me actually. And I say this a. Lot people when they go into fat losses, think about what do I need to restrict? What do I need to take out? When I would say focus on what you need to put in. Do you need to add more volume foods, more fibrous foods, more fruit and veg, more protein? We know that higher protein diets and adding more fiber to food helps to reduce overall feelings of hunger. If you look at someone that typically has a low protein, low nutrient dense diet. So I'm talking like you get up, you have a quon. I love quon. Qua fons are great. Not giving you much in the way of protein or fiber. And you're probably hungry again about an hour later. Whereas you wake up and you have some porridge with some berries and some peanut butter or whatever it is, it's probably going to see you through for a good few hours. You might need a mid morning snack, but it's going to get you through much longer. Same if at lunch. You're just having a bacon buttie. Again, nothing wrong with a bacon butty.

Ben: Love a bacon buttie. Big question, though. Red or brown sauce? Red always.

Sky: My partner puts brown sauce on all his breakfast stuff and he gets ****** off with me putting red sauce on and I get ****** off with him.

Ben: It's weird. Brown sauce is weird. Like, I'm sorry.

Sky: Like a bacon buttie versus football or whole pieces of bread, bacon, eggs, mushroom, spinach. That's a much more fulfilling thing. I'm not saying take the bacon body out. I'm saying what can you add to it? Same with the question. I'm not saying don't have your favorite quo on, but maybe have a protein yogurt or a protein shake and a banana with it, adding to it because.

Ben: It'S adding those micronutrients and macronutrients that was spotted earlier that is going to make your body feel fulfilled. It's going to function better. Those micronutrients and macronutrients are going to impact all of your bodily systems on a hormonal level as well. It's going to impact your mood, your mental health, your physical health. If your body moves it's not getting that, then that's when the problems are going to occur in terms of how it's impacting your emotions and your binges and stuff. 100% right. Sky class, thank you very much for your time. It's been a pleasure. Love speaking to you about all this. Could do it all day.

Sky: No, thank you so much for having me.

Ben: No, thanks a lot coming in. And if anybody wants any for more information or wants to follow sky or myself on social media, I'll pop our handles and our links in the description alongside this podcast. Thank you very much for listening.