Chapter 11 – My Nutritionist

I met Christine online in 2021, and at the time she was only doing in person appointments in Brisbane. I wasn’t in Brissy so we had to cancel and the universe brought her back into my life when I needed to make a change.

I’d been intermittent fasting for about 18 months and in the beginning it had been great. I stopped thinking about food and when my next meal was – it was like heaven. I really hadn’t realised how much mental load our food took up. When I started, I ate pretty well, albeit carrying a bit of weight ‘my covid coat’ at the time, so there were a few things I could tidy up.

My issue though was I just wasn’t eating enough, and I knew it.

This had never been an issue for me and I didn’t think I was starving myself – that wasn’t a thing for me, I’d just get caught up in life, forgetting to eat or thinking ‘I’ll eat in 30 mins.’ Which then turned into 2 or 3 hours, or on one particular occasion, whilst I was in Canberra, having eaten nothing all day, I grabbed a few blueberries and headed out for a walk with a friend – it’s no wonder I couldn’t do the whole walk without issues. Lung issues in particular, and energy issues too.

When I had my first appointment with Christine I knew that bringing breakfast back in was the first step. I also had to reduce inflammation, to support my lungs, and look at continuing to increase my energy – it was my focus for the year.

Christine was great, she went through my history, looked at my goals and what I was currently eating. 

Christine agreed, what I was eating was generally great, the issue, which I knew, was consistency ie eating regularly through the day, and bringing back in breakfast, even just to trial how breaky would play out for me. Also I needed to bring in more carbohydrates at lunch time and I could do that by adding in a gluten free grainy loaf, quinoa or rice. And finally, adding in more iron rich foods like another red meat meal a week. Simple stuff.

I left the appointment feeling really energised started making changes that day.

My First Step

I started tracking what I was eating, just to be able to see when I was and wasn’t eating, plus what I was eating. I knew that I was to bring in more red meat meals at dinner time and that at our next appointment we would review what I was eating at dinner – making sure I was getting enough diversity.

Diversity is important for me because I can eat the same thing over and over again. Which isn’t an issue in itself but it doesn’t support guts microbiome diversity. This means that our gut microbiome (the bugs in there) can become sluggish because we’re only feeding it certain types of foods, meaning we’re growing certain bug colonies and not others, which can support the rise of the ‘bad’ bugs.

Think about it this way, doing the same thing over and over again gets boring – for our gut too. Boredom can mean we do less of the things we enjoy and potentially we create habits that don’t support us in where we want to go i.e. the bad bacteria.

You can often hear people in their late 30s and 40s, and onward, saying ‘but I’ve eaten this all my life, why is it causing a problem now?’ Well, there can be multiple reasons, and the simplest one is answered in the statement above – we’ve been eating too consistently. 

Let’s celebrate that we’ve be consistent though, that’s awesome, but it’s time for a change and that doesn’t mean you can’t eat it again, just switch it up.

My next step was to bring in one more red meat meal each week. The simplest way for me to do this was to add in 1 night where we had steak. I could buy it from our local butcher and we’d have it with veggies or salad. Easy.

The 2 Week Experiment

The biggest thing I had to tackle was breakfast because other than a juice from time to time, I wasn’t having anything. I had to prioritise it and this made me nervous.

Nervous because:

• How would it fit into our morning routine?
• What would I eat?
• What would happen if I didn’t like it?
• Would I be stuck eating food I didn’t like for the rest of my life? 
• What if I was too full for the rest of the day?

Ha ha, thank you brain.

I consciously decided to eat porridge. That was easy enough to make. 

When I sat down to eat it, OMG it tasted like the most delicious thing I’d ever eaten. Clearly my body was ready for breakfast!

I forgot to eat breakfast the next day – shit. It was 10am before I realised.

I consciously decided to make porridge the following day, again it was delicious.

And this was my cycle for the next week – shit I forgot again, OMG that was delicious.

I decided not to beat up on myself, rather, I decided to create a goal for myself. I was going to eat breakfast every day for 2 weeks and see how it went.

Christine had given me a recipe guide, so I opened that up and picked out a Chia Pudding recipe which I made. They had bananas, chia seeds, oat mylk, cocao, honey etc. and I could add berries and nuts when I went to eat them.

This gave me quick breakfasts that I could eat on the go, plus I could still make my porridge on days that worked for me. Then on the weekend I could make pancakes. We had a really good pancake recipe and even though I was gluten free at this point, until I found a GF recipe that I liked, the ones we made would be fine.

My 2 week experiment was a success. I’d eaten breakfast each day and I was following my intuition as to what to eat. If I didn’t have the Chia Pudding for breaky then I’d have it for afternoon tea. It was a win win.

Chia seeds were also helping increase my carbohydrate in take – another win.

Christine also suggested, in addition to adding a grain to my salads/lunch, I have Flaxseed oil on my salads. Flaxseed oil can help reduce inflammation in our bodies so I thought I’d try it. I brought some and even though my brain was saying ‘that will make your salads really oily and you won’t like it.’ I added the flaxseed, and I honestly didn’t notice it. Another win.

These shifts seem like a lot but they really weren’t. They were all aligned experiments and again, I’d forget about the Flaxseed oil, so I changed where I stored it, keeping it in the draw with my bamboo bowls. So when I grabbed out a bamboo bowl to put my salad in, I grabbed out the Flaxseed oil – WINNING.

Pairing habits has always been successful for me, like:

• Running or walking and listening to podcasts
• Having hot and cold showers at the end of my hot shower
• Playing my singing bowl before or after my meditation

Doing things separately means I’ll often forget to do one or the other, so pairing habits is WINNING for me.

 

My next step

I thought exercise would be a no brainer for me, but it was like pulling teeth and it took Christine, my Nutritionist, asking me one question and everything changed – everything! This is the power of coaching and it empowered me to make the change that I needed to make and I really haven’t looked back.

Wanna know what the one question was? See you in the next chapter.

You can check out everything about my Project 22 over here and Chapter 12 – Exercise, NO, I don’t want to!!.

 

Share with me

Are you going on your own journey in 2022? Then tag me and use #project22 so we can connect xo

 

Disclaimer

Everything shared in this post and across my website is my story and recollection of conversation and events. They are in no way medical or mental health advice, prescription or diagnosis. Should you be interested in what I’m sharing and what this could mean in your life, then I’d encourage you to engage with the relevant health professionals or if you need support please seek out the health professionals that can support you.

In relation to my podcast, the information shared is mine or my guests. Again it is not medical or mental health advice, prescription or diagnosis. If you need support, please seek out relevant medical professionals.