Differently
Simple, yet powerful ideas for building a life, differently. Hosted by Carla Reeves, creator of The Differently Coaching Experience, this podcast offers thought-provoking conversations and practical insights for anyone looking to get out of survival mode and build a life that is truly your own. From the highs and lows of love and relationships, to the challenges and opportunities of work and career, Differently will challenge you to to rethink what’s possible.
Differently
Nutrition Strategies and Mindfulness with Nicole Hagen
Do you struggle with information overload when it comes to nutrition and eating healthy? No-nonsense nutrition coach Nicole Hagen is here to help!
This conversation will educate you, help your mindset, and inspire you to shift your approach to eating and nutrition to fuel the important things in your life and biz.
Highlights
2:39 Nicole’s harrowing struggle with anorexia
3:28 How Nicole’s experiences led her to becoming the nutrition coach that wasn’t available when she needed one
4:47 Being powerfully fed, not just pursuing aesthetic change
5:09 Juggling real life and healthy eating habits for body composition change
7:40 The messy middle space between tracking and intuitive eating, balancing macronutrients and biofeedback
11:13 Being calorie and macronutrient aware vs tracking and measuring
13:12 Logging what you eat as a short-term intervention
13:53 Navigating food marketing and becoming label literate
14:45 Dealing with the “food morality” of some diets
16:25 The story we tell ourselves about what we're eating and the behaviors that result
20:40 Food as fuel is a limiting concept
23:44 Dealing with information overload
25:47 Macro basics
28:04 Self-care in its truest form
29:26 Journaling prompts
33:37 Making this “stupidly simple”
Where to Find Nicole:
Website
Instagram
Health, Wellth & Wisdom Podcast
Meal Planning Made Easy Freebie
Enjoy!
Learn more about Carla:
Website: https:/www.carlareeves.com/
Connect on LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reevescarla/
Connect on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@differentlythepodcast
Go to https://www.carlareeves.com/getunstuck.com to download Carla's on demand journaling workshop + exercise to help you stop spinning and start moving forward.
Explore Coaching with Carla: https://bookme.name/carlareeves/lite/explore-coaching
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Thank you for listening!
I'm Carla Reeves, and this is Differently. Whether you feel stuck in survival, navigating a change, or seeking more for your life, may this podcast be your weekly nudge to take a risk, to build a life that is uniquely bold, authentic and in alignment with your deepest values. What if you worried less about the bumps in the road and instead got equipped for the journey? Get ready to rethink what's possible. Do you struggle with information overload when it comes to nutrition and eating healthy? Me too. My clients often journal about health and well-being and frustration with their weight and so on.
Speaker 1:Meet Nicole Hagen. She was really fun to talk, with so much energy and passion for what she does, and all tied to a story that will grab your heart. She's shared so much good info, is really knowledgeable about her approach and her approach aligns with the way we talk about things here on the podcast. There's not a one-size size fits all when it comes to nutrition either, and we need to tune into our own bodies and minds to find what works best for us. Get ready Education, mindset, great journaling prompts and a whole lot of inspiration and freedom to shift your approach to eating and nutrition, to fuel all the important things you are up to in your life and biz. Enjoy. Welcome back to Differently. Today I'm having a conversation with Nicole Hagen. She's a nutrition coach and host of the Health, wealth and Wisdom podcast. Welcome, nicole, I'm so excited to have you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. It's my pleasure. I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so make sure you check out her podcast. We're going to talk about it later and we'll include all the links, but I was just telling her that I've become a new listener of her podcast and I'm really, really enjoying it, and we just recorded together an episode on her podcast which is I think you're second you probably know the number 289. I just looked it up, carla. Okay, awesome, 289. And it's how to shed survival mode and break free, which I think kind of leads into our. My first question to you, nicole, is I'd really we love to talk about doing things differently here, and that was one of the things that attracted me to you and your work, and I'd love for you to just give us an idea of your approach and your philosophy and how it is different.
Speaker 2:I would be more than happy to give give you the nutshell version. I really struggled with anorexia in my mid-20s. At the time I didn't know that it was anorexia, I'd never been officially diagnosed. But I have since come to learn that that stemmed from feeling out of control in my life. I grew up in a pretty idyllic family. I mean I had a younger brother. I had beautiful parents, wonderful, loving upbringing, and then in my mid-20s I really started feeling lost and out of control. My brother started struggling with substance use. I had no tools to navigate that and as a result I just felt completely out of control in other areas of my life.
Speaker 2:So I was seeking to gain control and the easiest thing for me to choose at the time was obsessing over food and exercise. So I started aggressively calorie counting. I mean in an unhealthy way I would calorie count everything, cutting out entire food groups. That felt scary to me, overtraining, and I just really had no understanding at the time of why I was doing these things. But it was so easy for me to fall into that pattern because our society also idolizes thinness and idolizes weight loss. So at the time I felt like I was just following all the rules and doing everything right according to the nutrition space. Unfortunately, I went on to lose my period for several years and fracture my hip and my spine in my twenties because I was pulling from my bone density and, as a result of punishing my body with too little food and too much exercise, I completely broke that body and I didn't have the tools or the skills that I needed to navigate everything that I was dealing with mentally and also nourish my body appropriately. So essentially, I became the nutrition coach that I needed at the time and I didn't feel like was available.
Speaker 2:There's a ton of diet culture messaging that I, of course, subscribed to at the time, but I didn't have anyone in my life who was talking about how we can pursue fat loss but it needs to be in a health promoting way or how important nourishing ourselves is and making sure that we are powerfully fed in, not just pursuing aesthetic change right.
Speaker 2:Making sure that mentally we're feeling great and physically we're feeling great, making sure that we're just taking care of this one body that we're given. And that's not to say that all body composition change is evil and we should never chase fat loss or weight loss. I just didn't have any voice in my life telling me how to do that in a health promoting way. It was all really detrimental and damaging and unfortunately, you know, there's that old adage of like I had to learn the hard way and in my case, I had to learn the really really hard way. So I've taken that unfortunate experience and tried to spin it on its head so that I can help women understand that they don't have to deprive, they don't have to starve themselves in order to create fat loss if that's what they're looking for, but also to help them juggle real life and healthy eating habits with the body composition change that they're looking for.
Speaker 1:Wow, I didn't know that that was your story. Like I, I I believe so much that, like you know, our greatest gift comes from our greatest pain. And like, wow, what an example of that that you share. And like you know, a young teenager and my mom would always, she would always say like, like, kind of like, watch out, like when we were eating, like, watch out, like that's going to catch up with you. And I didn't realize until I was like in my 20s that I like feared this like imaginary monster, like running behind me, this like fat monster that was like just going to glom onto me one day. And I had so much fear around, you know, eating, and thankfully it didn't turn into anything major.
Speaker 1:But I just can only imagine all the women that, um, you know, and men, probably, that struggle with some variation of what you're talking about. And I just had a conversation this week with a young, a young lady who is, you know, kind of afraid to. At one time she got into tracking and tracking her running and like being so intense about that that she's afraid to. She wants to make positive changes with her body and her nutrition, but she's afraid to go back into those old cycles or nutrition, but she's afraid to go back into those old cycles, and so I imagine that we have to learn to like trust ourselves right and trust our body and trust our wisdom. So how do you? Is that a core component to the work you do with people?
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I find myself in this messy middle space because in the nutrition world, I find there are very two opposing ends of the spectrum. You have this population of coaches and health professionals who believe that tracking is the right way, the only way where we can be really accountable to what we're eating. And then we have this other population of coaches and health professionals that tout intuitive eating coaches and health professionals that you know tout intuitive eating and I find benefit in both and I take issue with both, simply because I don't think telling someone to eat intuitively is very helpful if they've never learned how to eat healthfully. I mean, what is intuitive to us is going to be what we've learned or what model was set for us growing up. And the tracking and the measuring, while it is a completely neutral tool, depends on the motivation we're bringing to that behavior. It depends on how we've used that in the past. And so I find myself finding this middle ground, and that's why I love the podcast so much, carla, because you can't fit all of the nuance that you need to in an Instagram caption or in a tweet or whatever we're doing now, and I find that the podcast is just such a great way to break it down a little bit more. So it is this middle space of let's understand nutrition science, let's learn why it's so important for us to eat the right balance of protein and carbohydrates and fats, and what those macronutrients do for our bodies.
Speaker 2:I love science, but then there's also an equally important side. That is well, what is your body telling you, what's your biofeedback telling you? Because what works for one person is not going to work for everyone. There has to be individuality that we take and introduce into the equation. So my clients and I work heavily on an individualized basis and we take into account their history. So if they're coming to me with this fear of tracking and calorie counting, maybe they've weighed everything down to the gram. We're not going to start there, or maybe we'll teach them how to do that, but in a more flexible way. Because what's most important to me and I make this abundantly clear to all the women who desire to work with myself and my co-coach is sustainability.
Speaker 2:I don't want to help you, we don't want to help you create results that are going to make you feel better for a temporary period of time, but then get you stuck back in your old cycles and your old habits. I don't think that that benefits anybody. Certainly it's not helpful for your physical health, nor is it helpful for your mental health. It actually feels really terrible. So what we want to do is help you create change that you feel comfortable and confident sustaining for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 2:So if you have a curve ball or life throws you an obstacle, you can still feed yourself, you can still nourish yourself, you can still maintain this healthy body composition that you've created, and so usually that involves a balance of some type of data collection. You don't have to use a tracking app to do that, but certainly let's figure out what a balanced meal looks like and how consistently you feel like you're eating balanced meals, versus grabbing some dry cereal off your kid's plate or, you know, stopping at Starbucks and grabbing a croissant and a latte you know like. Are you nourishing yourself appropriately? We need some way to measure that consistency, and for some people, tracking is very, very helpful when used in a short-term timeline. So let's figure out what you are eating enough of and what you aren't eating enough of, and let's just use this as objective data. We're not bringing shame or guilt or fear into the equation. It's sort of just like a blood panel.
Speaker 2:What information can we gather from this? Because your body's keeping record whether or not you are. What information can we gather from this? How can we get curious about those outcomes that we're seeing or the data that we're collecting and then apply the change that we want to make moving forward? Some women don't want to track at all because of their history, and I completely understand that, and the beautiful thing is we can figure out how to eat in a healthy, life-promoting way without tracking, so you don't have to. So it's one of those, again, messy middle spaces that's very hard to explain to someone when they're like but are you going to make me measure macros and are you going to make me track? I always tell prospective clients we want you to be calorie and macronutrient aware. I want you to know, like, what a calorie is, that it's just a unit of energy and it's not a scary thing. And I want you to know the benefit and the importance of all macronutrients, but I never want you to be obsessed with them or feel like they control you.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. That's music to my ears I like even in the work that I do. It's so important to me. The sustainable change is so important to me. I don't want you to just get a few ahas, you know. I want you to really be able to build a lifestyle that feels good living and operating in every day.
Speaker 1:And to the tracking I don't know how you feel about Noom, but I used it for a short period of time, like you're talking about, and what it did help me with was just paying attention more to I'd never tracked what I ate or anything like that and I was noticing that my body was just carrying more weight than normal and I felt like I was eating healthy and I couldn't figure out what was. I thought something else was going on with my body and what I realized in doing that for a short period of time is that I was maybe eating a little bit too much in quantity and not enough exercise, and that some of the things I thought were healthy weren't necessarily good things for me to be eating, and just making some minor adjustments made a big difference.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's something that often comes from tracking. So usually my clients and I use it in a short-term intervention and I'll say, hey, let's just log what you're eating. And some people prefer to not do that in an app and that's okay, and let's just see what a snapshot like a week in your life looks like, and they'll log and then we'll review it together. And again, no shame, no judgment. We're just looking at it to see what we can glean. And sometimes there will be something that they've logged and they're like I didn't realize that that contained that many calories. Or you know what it said whole grain or fiber on the front. I thought it was really vegetable forward and it turns out there's like two grams of fiber or something.
Speaker 2:Marketing, food marketing is very, very sneaky now. So you'll see a lot of things that say you know, packed with protein on the front, but it may not be a protein dominant food and unless you know how to study a nutrition label or you're using an app that kind of breaks it down for you or you have a health professional like myself in your corner who can kind of guide you through what that looks like, it can be very, very difficult. I break a lot of hearts when I tell people that peanut butter is not in fact a protein and it's a fat that contains a little bit of protein, you know, and that's just a silly example.
Speaker 2:But we don't know what we don't know.
Speaker 1:Well, I just learned listening to your podcast that like a sweet potato isn't necessarily better than a white potato and like that was really enlightening because, for whatever reason in my brain somewhere along the way I thought that was much, a much better choice and that was really enlightening to hear and kind of free.
Speaker 2:It is one of my favorite things that I get to do when I tell people that, like the fear mongering that diet culture has kind of impressed upon us is completely unnecessary and a lot of it stems from, you know, conventional diets like the paleo diet. They subscribe to sweet potatoes as being like the only carbohydrate that you can eat, but, for whatever reason, all other carbohydrates, even though they're all giving your body energy and many of them, those what we call smart carbs or complex carbohydrates, give you the same nutrients and the same energy for whatever reason, have been deemed bad. I'm using air quotes because we don't really like to use food morality around here, but it's wild. I work with grown women who are petrified of eating bread products or of adding creamer to their coffee or to eat a white potato, and for no reason. Nutritionally. It's giving you something, and even if it's not giving you something nutritionally, it's okay to eat things just because they give you something emotionally or because they add pleasure to your cup of coffee in the morning.
Speaker 1:That's so amazing. I love that approach. So you talked about kind of taking the landscape by doing some tracking initially and I think we talked about this on my episode with you. But I do that with clients just to we sort of log their thinking for a week to get the landscape of our mind. And so I'm curious what are some of the mental mindset things that you see over and over again that we need to look at or address when it comes to really shifting our approach in a healthy way in the area that you work in?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Hmm, okay. So the first one is very easy. It comes to mind really quickly when you ask that question, and that is how we look at food and nutrition with regards to all or nothing thinking. So I would argue that this is probably the thing that I see women struggle with the most because somewhere along the line, probably diet culture introduced to us this concept of eating perfectly, which is a complete fairy tale. Right, it doesn't exist. No one can eat perfectly. It's just not a thing. There is no perfect diet or one right way to eat.
Speaker 2:But so often I think we struggle with nutrition because we feel as though we've messed up by enjoying a cookie or having a sandwich that uses two pieces of bread instead of just one piece of bread. Can you imagine and so we have these stories in our head that when we do X, we have fallen off the wagon, so to speak? And then we go down what I call I don't know if you encourage explicit language, but the fuck it spiral, or the shame spiral, and we're like, oh my gosh, I've ruined everything. What's the point? I might as well now just go full speed ahead, eat all the things that I quote can't eat, and then I'll start again on Monday or I'll start again tomorrow. An age old story. This is so, so popular and I think what we want to remember is there is no wagon, there is no starting or stopping. Like you are going to have to eat from the day that you're born until the day that you die, like you. Nutrition is something that we have to have developed flexibility for.
Speaker 2:You're never going to just eat perfectly, because that's a made up concept, so I think that's the first like self-talk cycle that we get stuck in, that we have to become aware of, and it happens all the time. Maybe I, you know, had an unexpected errand to run, or I had to go pick up my sick kid from school, and so my best laid plans kind of got, you know, destroyed, and so I ended up just having to grab something quick on the way. Or I just ended up grabbing a granola bar and then I was super hungry. So then later I overate my dinner, or I ended up eating the leftover chicken nuggets off my kid's plate, and that didn't feel great. So now I've really ruined it, right, I've ruined all my progress, when, in reality, every choice that you made up until that point still counts, right, like you can still get all of the benefit from eating, you know beautifully, and it's okay if we're not perfect and there's some flexibility and there's some pleasure and there's some convenience-based choices moved in there.
Speaker 2:I find that most of the time, it's not actually what we're eating that unravels our progress. It's the story we tell ourselves about what we're eating and then the behaviors that result from that. So if I feel like I've ruined everything, then the next three days are going to be off the rails, whereas if I was like, oh okay, that happened, that didn't feel really good for me. I know it also wasn't super goal supportive. Let me pick myself back up, wipe the slate clean and then make a better choice the next time I eat. That's like first and foremost what comes to mind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it. It parallels with what I teach clients too, like when your thinking goes off the rails, right, and it's like they get so focused on the fall right, kind of falling away from this good channel of thought management that they were on, and what's most important is not that you fell, but they just that you get back up right and and just keep going again with those small little choices, because those over time do ripple to those larger changes and it's it's so vital. So it sounds to like there's a shift in relationship that happens with the way that we think about food in our lives and being like, almost being like a partnership, and it's terrible because we enjoy eating. It's such a social, beautiful, connecting activity in our lives, right, and so I love that you bring this approach of like bringing more joy, releasing pressure around this and bringing more enjoyment back to it. So anything there that comes to mind around like mindset in shifting that relationship.
Speaker 2:I think it's the role that we give food and I mentioned earlier. Sometimes we start to view calories as a bad thing because we've been taught that being in the lightest, leanest body possible is like what our job is as a woman. Right, we're meant to be socially desirable and that means, you know, whatever the standard is of beauty. Now we're reverting back to heroin chic, which was a big thing when I was growing up in the 90s. It's unfortunate, because it does not value health. Right, we're just valuing thinness and we're valuing that number on the scale, which weight and health are not the same thing. Sometimes they're correlated, but not always, and I think it comes down to understanding the impact that we're giving food. Food is not just fuel. Yes, a calorie is a unit of energy and food does give us energy. Actually, just this morning I was getting ready for my coaching calls and I heard my husband chasing my toddler around, because he's in the stage right now where he refuses to sit down for a meal and he's got too many things to do, too many adventures to go on, so my husband's chasing him around with his breakfast. We need energy to do those somersaults, we need energy to play with those trucks, and it was just interesting to me because that's just off the cuff language for him, like, yes, food is energy. I want my son to know that if he wants to feel his absolute best and he wants to have energy to do whatever adventure he's going on, he does need food, he needs some energy. But it's not just energy, it's not just fuel, and I think the gas in the tank is an oversimplified analogy.
Speaker 2:Food is also, like you mentioned, community. It's culture, it's fun, it's pleasure, it is a coping strategy when we're dealing with hard or happy emotions. Is it a coping strategy that's awesome when we use it for every single emotion we have, be it positive or negative? No, that becomes a slippery slope. But is it okay to celebrate feeling happy at a birthday party with some cake and ice cream, even in the absence of hunger? Absolutely yes.
Speaker 2:Is it okay to maybe navigate some stress or overwhelm with a delicious sugary snack? Sure, yeah, as long as you have other coping strategies in your toolbox. If you are intentionally and mindfully making that choice, knowing how it's gonna leave you feeling, that's just human, that's human behavior. And so I think we need to learn to embrace that food is more than just fuel and that kind of changes the expectations surrounding why we eat and when we eat and how much just fuel and that kind of changes the expectations surrounding why we eat and when we eat and how much we eat. Did that answer your question? I feel like I kind of got off on a rabbit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I know, I think it did. I think it did. I am, you know, as you're. You've been talking I. I know for myself that sometimes there's so much information out there that I just literally will like shut down because it's just too much, and then I just I get overwhelmed. And so do you have a simple strategy for someone like me?
Speaker 2:Actually, this is too funny, carla, because I just created a post Was it earlier this week? Because of a coaching conversation that I have and she was saying the same exact thing. She was struggling with information overload and she just said there's so many things, and when it comes to the internet, there's so many conflicting things where it's like you should eat meat and then meat is the worst thing ever. Or like dairy is inflammatory. No, dairy is really great for you. Or vegetables are wonderful. And then you have the keto and the carnivore people that are like, no, don't eat vegetables, it's terrible. So it's one of those things where, like, you can go insane if you subscribe to every piece of nutrition advice that you read on the internet.
Speaker 2:There are a couple like fun, little quirky things that I like to remind people, like if it sounds too good, be true, it probably is. If it's coming from someone that has like zero credentials or zero credibility and they're just telling you it works for you because it worked for them, that's probably a red flag. The most accurate advice is usually the most boring advice. So if someone is saying like, oh, I've got this magic elixir that's going to heal your hormones, or like this is really the secret to reducing insulin spikes. Like those things sell because they're sexy, they feel appealing and attractive, but oftentimes the most evidence-based advice is what feels not big enough or not sexy enough or not shiny enough Like those big rock.
Speaker 2:Basics is what my team and I call them. You have to make sure that one you're eating enough. Quantity is king when it comes to feeling, looking and performing your best. So it's finding this middle ground of eating enough but not too much, and we can narrow that down by learning how to hone into our hunger and fullness cues. A little hunger is totally fine. It's a normal physiological response. It's not something to be afraid of. But that doesn't mean allowing ourselves to get ravenously hungry and denying our body's food for hours and hours and hours. Quantity is king, then we have. Are you eating enough of the right things?
Speaker 2:So I mentioned those three macronutrients, the big nutrients that all of our foods break up into protein, carbohydrates and fats. Are you eating a balance of those? Research shows us that our bodies want all three of them. There's no reason to cut out a food group unless it does not agree with your body or you have an allergy to it. So if you are eating primarily carbohydrates, you're going to struggle, because our bodies want protein and they need healthy fat. If you are cutting out all carbohydrates, you're probably not going to look, feel and perform your best, because carbohydrates are our body's primary source of fuel.
Speaker 2:So we want to make sure you're eating enough period from a caloric energy intake standpoint. Then we want to make sure you're eating enough of the right things protein, carbohydrates, fats being those macronutrients but also micronutrients. Are you eating fruits and veggies Like? Are you getting your vitamins and your minerals from the food that you eat? Are you eating mostly whole foods, which is where we get those micronutrients, comparatively to the convenience-based processed packaged foods? And I'm not against convenience-based processed packaged foods, but if 90% of your diet is that, excuse me, it's going to be hard to get enough micronutrients. So those are kind of the two areas where I always suggest starting, because nutrition by addition feels better than saying oh, you should cut out the cookies and the ice cream, you should cut out your alcohol. By making sure that you're eating enough of those things, you're more likely to reduce the other things that you don't need as much but give you a lot of joy and pleasure.
Speaker 1:I resonate so much with your approach and I um thinking back to what you said, um that the boring choices and the not so sexy information is probably more right on, and it reminded me I saw a post that said self-care is discipline, and I loved that because the whole self-care like I don't that conversation kind of makes me squirm a little bit, because I do believe that, like, real self-care is discipline and making those choices that like really align with your larger commitments, and self-care is sometimes the boring things that make the biggest difference.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I find, too, self-care. Oftentimes we think of it in terms of, like the bubble bath and the manicure and those things are wonderful. Right, I'm not saying that I will turn down a massage if someone is offering me one, but I also think self-care, like in its truest form, is taking care of ourselves, which sometimes means doing the thing that we don't feel like we want to do. That allows us to care for our physical or our mental health. Right, I don't always love going to therapy, but I do know that it's great self-care and in the long run I'm going to be better for it.
Speaker 2:I don't always feel like going to the gym and doing a workout or having a healthy, balanced meal. Sometimes I would really just love to sit down with a bag of chips. But how is that going to leave me feeling, you know? And I think, if I'm mindful and can be, how is that going to leave me feeling? And I think, if I'm mindful and can be proactive in thinking about how I'm going to feel, not just five minutes from now, but 15 minutes from now or three hours from now, oftentimes the self-care, the best self-care choice, is maybe the harder, less pretty self-care choice. I know that's not going to get me popularity votes, but that's okay.
Speaker 1:Um so, speaking of sort of rhythms and rituals of of that nature, do you use we we like to talk about journaling around here, as you know, do you use any sort of journaling inside of the work that you do with clients?
Speaker 2:Yes. So I think it depends on the client first and foremost, so we don't have like a 12 step program where it's like, okay, everybody has to do these 12 things in this order. I don't really think that that works for a lot of people, because everybody's starting at a different place, everybody's coming from a different place with different backgrounds. So I find that there are Two journaling strategies that I use in my work that have been wildly successful. One is for the woman who has a really hard time connecting with herself and maybe lives neck up. So she lives in her headspace, she knows what she should do, she is very educated, has a ton of knowledge, but really doesn't know how her body feels. I can resonate with this woman. I spent a lot of my life here trying to do like the right thing yes, yeah, I'm going to follow the rules and I'm going to do what everyone's expecting me to do, without really pausing to ask how it feels for my internal world and how it feels for my body. So in that regard, I think journaling can be super, super helpful for that woman to become a little bit more introspective and to really connect the neck, so she's figuring out how to make choices from her body, as opposed to just what she knows. And sometimes that might look like a dear diary type entry and sometimes it might just be hey, can you like maybe just write down your self-talk for the day, like how are you talking to yourself about food or about your body? When you first look in the mirror you get dressed Like what are the words and the phrases that you use or that go around inside your head, so she gets to know more about herself and how she feels, or how did you feel after you ate that thing? Or if you make a choice that you feel like was bad, can you write down how it left you feeling afterwards and maybe what you do differently next time? I find that that can be wildly beneficial.
Speaker 2:Then I find that there's another group of women who maybe need a little bit more structure because they're stuck in the overwhelm. So they've got a lot going on. There's a ton of conflicting nutrition advice, like we mentioned earlier, and they need to really like narrow their focus so that they can stop kind of spinning their wheels and actually make forward progress. And for this I like a like three priority checklist for the day type journal suggestion which is like, okay, you probably feel like you have 17 things to do in the next hour, and you probably do. But what are your top three priorities for the day? And you probably do.
Speaker 2:But what are your top three priorities for the day?
Speaker 2:And one of them must be some like nutrition centric or self-care centric priority.
Speaker 2:So the other ones might be like I have to take my kid to this field trip or I have to get this done from a work perspective, but what do you have to do today in order to make sure your cup is filled and you're able to fully show up?
Speaker 2:That has to do with you and your fueling and your self-care. And I think that that's so helpful because after you check off your list, you can go do the other 17 things or the other 14 things, but until those things are done, no, nothing else matters. So it's teaching that woman to value herself and prioritize herself, where so often she puts herself on the bottom of the list, so she never actually makes the priority list because the other 16 things have to happen first, according to her. So in this regard, it's teaching her that she's just as important, if not more important, than those other things on her priority list and her health and how she feels in her body matters. So those are the two things that I find myself kind of giving clients as like a little homework assignment more often than not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, those are great. Those are great. You've shared so many gems here. Lastly, is there a lot of people that listen to this podcast and that I work with struggle with time, you know, there's just kind of like what you're talking about there's so much right and so it's like how, especially if you're juggling motherhood and a business and all the things, what is your recommendation for starting to carve a little bit of space when you're feeling like that, like there just isn't time for adding anything or even changing anything? I think sometimes they feel overwhelmed by that. There just isn't time for adding anything or even changing anything. I think sometimes they feel overwhelmed by that.
Speaker 2:This is a tricky one because it's again it's like so individually based. I want to ask five more questions right Of like this hypothetical person, but I think, first and foremost, what comes to mind is, like keep it stupidly simple. So you're going to eat something anyway, I imagine. Right, Many of us are going to make time to have something to eat. So, instead of having whatever you would typically have, can you stock up when you're at the grocery store on things that are just as convenient and just as easy to grab? But maybe we'll give you a little bit more of a robust plate. So oftentimes we think we have to like become the next uh, whoever's cooking all the stuff in their you know, kitchen homemade. Nora Smith is like very popular right now on TikTok and Instagram.
Speaker 2:I I don't want to spend more time in the kitchen than I absolutely have to. I mean, I have other. I have a toddler to run around after. Keep it so simple, like get a rotisserie chicken, or get some like frozen shrimp, or have some hard boiled eggs that you like made up while you were doing something else in the kitchen, or grab like a ready to drink protein shake. Right Like, there are so many options that are so quick and convenient, that will not take you any more time, but you're not choosing them because in your brain they're not good enough. Like it's not the homemade lunch that you think you should be making. Instead of that, like quick sandwich and chips, like grab something that's just as simple and let good enough be good enough. I think that would be my very first suggestion.
Speaker 2:Secondly, what comes to mind is like use the the time that you do have. Oftentimes, again, the problem is oh, I'm not going for that 10 minute walk because I feel like it should be a 30 minute walk or a 45 minute workout, and I don't have time to go to the gym. Okay, Don't go to the gym. You don't have to do that. Walk around your block with your dog once or twice throughout the day, or I'm not going to. You know food prep, because I don't have multiple hours to prepare everything in advance of the week.
Speaker 2:Cool Me either, but can you make a dozen hard boiled eggs or can you make a pan of, like ground up turkey or, you know, ground beef that you can then use in tacos or on salads or in like something else throughout the week. It can be so simple. You just have to once again use the time that you have. I always like to say make the best choice you can given your circumstances. I don't want you to be anyone that you're not. I'm not asking for your life to completely change, but can you use the time that you have and make just a slightly healthier choice? That's going to leave you feeling a little bit better.
Speaker 1:Those would be my suggestions. That's amazing, and I hear so much just willingness to be flexible and creative and adapt and it doesn't have to look the same every day, and but there's like a desire and a commitment to fold it in somewhere, however we can, and I love that. I love that, nicole. This has been amazing. Is there anything that you didn't get to say that you wanted to say before we close?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I could talk about this all day long. I'm a bit of a nutrition nerd, so there's lots that I could say additionally, but I would say, if this is a conversation that's interesting to your listeners, let's continue it. I mean, hop on over to Instagram. You can find me at nutrition with Nicole and I am constantly talking about all things nutrition and mindset and just sustainability. And, of course, the podcast is where I love to hang out and release a weekly episode the health, wealth, w, e, l L, t, h and wisdom podcast and I'm happy to, you know, field any questions. I am not popular enough to have someone else in my DMS answering questions, so it's always me that you're talking, to Send me a question. Let me know what you're navigating and I will gladly respond.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that and your podcast is such a great place where you dive deeper into all these little things. So if you heard something that you want to go deeper, she probably has an episode related to that on the podcast.
Speaker 2:So thank you so much, nicole for sharing all your wisdom and just energy and passion for what you do. Thank you for having me and for anyone who doesn't know where to start in the almost 300 episodes we have on the podcast, start with episode 289 featuring Carla and I conversation.
Speaker 1:It's not what I thought you were going to say, but that's awesome, Thank you. Have a great day everybody. Thank you, Nicole. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of differently. It's been an honor to share this conversation with you. You know, one of the keys to living fully is to take action when you're inspired to do so. I hope you found that spark of inspiration today and would you help us spread the word. Did someone you know come to mind while you were listening? If this episode could impact someone you know, please share it and pass it along. New episodes drop weekly, so tap that subscribe button and join us next time as we continue to challenge the status quo and get equipped to live life differently.