The Nutrition Advice Making You Less Healthy: Four Signs To Watch | Nutritionist Sarah Ann Macklin

0:00Hello, I'm very excited to talk to you guys today on the second solo episode. I've been racking my brains about where to start with this episode, I'm going to be honest with you. Lots of you, thank you by the way, wrote to me after the first episode came out and I've read all of them and a lot of you wanted to hear about nutrition. A lot of you wanted to hear more about my life so maybe we'll come to that in a few episodes time or maybe I'll weave them in but I really wanted to think about where I start. I mean, nutrition is a very overwhelming, big topic. It's a very polarizing topic right now.

0:32And I wanted to start with something that I thought could be really, really useful. Maybe something you haven't thought about when it comes to nutrition. As I just mentioned, it's a very polarizing topic and it is, again, very individual. Health is so specific to one's needs, like what situation they're in, what environment they find themselves in, what resources they have. But I ultimately believe that health shouldn't be this hard. And I'm not sure if any of you have clicked on this episode. Maybe you're just feeling a bit overwhelmed, a bit exhausted, a bit low in energy. Maybe not. But it's February.

1:10Many of us have set ourselves goals, including me. And starting to think like, how often am I keeping to them? What's stopping me? What's causing my friction? And I find these things really interesting. So today, I want to talk about something a little different. We are going to talk about nutrition but ultimately what I really want to talk about is how a lot of messages that we now see online that we are open to more information than ever before. How actually it can kind of take control of our systems and ride with what we're hearing as opposed to listening to ourselves. As opposed to connecting maybe like our inner wisdom, how we're feeling, our physical signs, and let that direct us to the correct health information.

1:54You're like, what is she talking about? Let me just dial this down because ultimately I believe that our body is always speaking to us and it's always giving us signs, but we have very powerful minds and normally they can override our signs. And so what I want to get you today to do at the end of this episode is I want you to understand your own body language, what it's speaking to you, what it's trying to say to you, and how you can then direct that and bring back more control into the choices and the options that you make. This might sound really interesting. It might sound completely over your head of where I start this.

2:32I know this was a very overarching topic to go into, but ultimately I think a lot of us can feel like we lose control when it comes to nutrition. And a lot of us can feel that we lose control when it comes to our health. And are we making the right decision? Are we listening to the right person? Your body is actually telling you. It has a beautiful language. But over the years of evolution, we have dialed down those signs and disconnected from the subtle signals that our body is trying to tell us. And I'm going to try and highlight what they are today in this episode. It's a little bit like the Welsh dying language.

3:07I have Welsh in me, but the language is not often spoken anymore. It's a dying language. And it's really similar to when we think about when our body is trying to speak to us. You know, when we go back to evolution, we would search for sugar because we needed that energy, but it would come in such small spikes. Now we're like overloaded with it. So we've kind of lost to these internal signals and that is something called interception. We have these interceptor signals that are telling us what we need but there's so much noise and our brains are so powerful now that we shut them down. So today I'm going to talk you through four signs that you can recognize when your body is screaming at you but your brain has become disconnected to those signals and I want to talk you through the three ways that you can support that with nutrition.

3:54Before I go into those signs and the solutions that you can have and you can implement. You know, I've been thinking a lot about this in my own life recently. Let me give you an example. So one thing that's become really prominent for me in my own life recently is this beginning of the year, I've set myself a lot of expectations and things that I want to achieve in where I want to go and created stress. We will have stress. What happens when we get really, really busy, when I get really busy? the fundamentals, like the very basics of nutrition for me start to slip. So for instance, I'm going through something for the next two weeks that really demands me to drink a lot more water.

4:34Okay. And like the protocol that I'm going through, I don't want to say it's a protocol. It's something that I'm doing in health that demands me to drink a lot of water. So I am being reminded the whole time to drink a lot of water. What I've also done in this time is I've made space for this thing that I'm allowing in my life for the next two weeks. And I've actually reduced a lot of my pressures. And so I've allowed myself to go to sleep earlier. I've invested in, there's no collaboration here, but a big water bottle, that's a litre. And I'm making sure that I keep it in my eyeline the whole time.

5:07And if I look back to a couple of months ago, when I went to the Lake District, I went walking, I was walking maybe nine hours a day up a hill it was still cold it wasn't warm but I wasn't thinking about my water because I wasn't sweating I wasn't working out and so I kind of just put it in the back burner went out for some dinners had some wine and I would wake up and I would feel fatigued and exhausted and I couldn't get my head around it because I was thinking well I'm in the Lake District I'm taking time off I'm relaxing I'm going into the fresh air I'm walking in nature but the fundamentals of me drinking water hadn't even clicked into my brain.

5:46And so after a long weekend in the Lake District and coming back, I got off the train and I fainted. And I was thinking, well, I know I have low blood pressure. And one of the biggest things when it comes to low blood pressure is that you've got to make sure that you're drinking enough water. That's fundamental. And even though I'd ultimately had this relaxing weekend, I hadn't been drinking enough water. I'd been sleeping a lot. I'd been eating relatively well. I've been getting fresh air. But the fundamental of me not drinking water made me feel exhausted. And it's so simple that sometimes we don't advocate within our life the things that are the most important and the most simple.

6:22So the last two weeks to go back to what I'm doing, you know, I'm not exercising. I'm not on this any intense regime. What I am doing is slowing the heck down, drinking over three litres of water a day and getting massive amounts of rest and reducing my diary, reducing the things and the commitments in my diary that I can do as much as I can to support these next two weeks. And I feel really good. And it's interesting. It made me think about how often that we delay these signals. Now, my thirst signals are probably increasing during that weekend away in the Lake District. But I probably thought, oh, I needed more carbohydrates.

7:01So I ate more carbohydrates. And sometimes even when we have all the knowledge in the world, we aren't listening to what our body is actually trying of tell us. It is a really kind of simple way of saying sometimes our body is screaming and sometimes we can't hear because we have so much noise in the background. And a lot of the noise in the moment, whether it's coming from the biohacking culture or the optimization culture, which by the way, I have absolutely nothing against, but I think it's really important to state that we can always look at these ends of the spectrum. And very rarely do we look back into ourselves and say, what is it that my body is actually trying to tell me?

7:39Is it something as simple as getting some water and putting it in my eyeline because my brain is so lazy that it's not going to let me walk to the shop and buy some water or it's not even going to want me to go into the next room because it's exhausting. That's how lazy your brain is. Simply putting some water in front of me and having it here the whole time is sending signals to me constantly to drink this water. And I was just thinking about when it comes to nutrition and trying to talk about this as opposed to isolating certain like nutrients, like how can I get people to connect back to themselves to give them more control and actually allow you to listen to what you really need and start dolling out some of that noise that you don't need.

8:22So let's get to the signs. What are they? Sign one is that your energy feels stable and not volatile. And I say that with massive love because I don't always feel like that. I can struggle to wake up in the morning sometimes. I love the people that can just bounce out of bed at 5am. I am not that person. And so how stable does your energy feel throughout the day? Are you someone that crashes at 3pm in the afternoon? Are you somebody that doesn't, but you struggle to get up in the morning? These are all subtle signs about your body that you need to be listening to. It's all very well knowing that you need to get morning light first thing when you wake up but it's also really important to knowing like when should you be setting your alarm for?

9:08If you can, should you be skipping a day at the gym to allow yourself to sleep in more or should you not be doing that? Should you be trying to motivate yourself to get up? And this is where I think a lot of us get stuck. So how do you know if your energy isn't stable? Well, do you rely on caffeine? Do you rely on caffeine the first thing when you wake up? Do you rely on caffeine at 3pm in the afternoon? How often are you drinking caffeine? Are you constantly grazing throughout the day? Are you feeling jittery? Are you feeling anxious? Are you feeling fatigued? Are you feeling tired? All of these are really important signs, and a lot of the time, myself included, I can really easily push through these signs.

9:47And that is a really big signal. And sometimes it's not a magic pill of trying to find out what the answer to why you're feeling like that is. Sometimes it's simply more rest. Sometimes it is simply more fluids. And so I think trying to get back to the basics of what your body is telling you is really important. So looking at your energy, looking at when are you peaking and when are you crashing? These are really, really, really big signs about how to understand what your body is telling you. And so the understanding of your energy demands is a really big signal. And this came to me very apparently, not just from my own shortcomings, but also when I spoke to Dr.

10:27Lisa Feldman Barrett. So Lisa Feldman Barrett came on the show and she is a top neuroscientist. And she made me understand the importance of listening to our physical symptoms that so many of us can ignore. She broke it down in a really simple way. She said that all of us have a body budget and the brain's primary job is to work on body budging. So it's not about optimization. The brain's job is not weight management. The brain's job is to not make us happy. The brain's job is actually energy management. And what she meant by that is think of it as a bank account. It deposits things like sleep, nutrition, predictable resources that it knows it has on hand, predictable routines, good nutrition, all of those things.

11:12And it withdraws the same. It withdraws when you reduce sleep. It withdraws when you don't have the best nutrition. And it's working on its energy demand system. And it's really important to know that because although the brain is only 2 % of our body weight, it actually uses 20 % of our energy demand when we're at rest. So metabolically, it is really active and is always trying to make these decisions. It's trying to bank as much as we give it, but it's also withdrawing funds at the same time. And so it's really important to think about the signs that can show up. So maybe one of the signs is that you have a lower mood, maybe you're more irritable, maybe you're more anxious.

11:54This happens a lot during PMS for women, because that kind of luteal phase of our cycle, like the last week before, our energy demands really increase. And if we're not feeding them appropriately, we're not giving it more sleep or more rest, what happens is we may start showing more signs of irritability or anxiousness. And that's really important because I don't think we're ever talked much about how the brain works in this way. And when we can think about it in that way, we can actually start to try and understand like, what is our body telling us? Why do I feel stressed? Is it just that I'm stressed because I have a lot of work on my plate in the moment?

12:32Is it stress because I'm finding my relationship hard? or am I stressed because I'm also having all these extra demands but I'm not supporting in other areas and so thinking about like where our energy lies is really really important and I feel that I've come back to that theory a lot that when I think about these next two weeks where there's a lot more pressure on me in this certain health thing that I'm doing what I have done is I've actually removed a lot of pressures within my life because of that. And actually, I'm feeling way better than I thought I would. And that is something that's really important to think about when we go forward and think about all the things that we're adding in to nutrition and our health and, you know, the do more, be more culture is actually adding more stress and energy management into our system.

13:21And so that's really important because when your energy becomes unstable, your mood can become unstable your decisions can become unstable that also might direct you to more unhealthy food choices should I say maybe that is why you want to reach at 3 p.m for a coffee and also something that is a carbohydrate because it's quick releasing it's glucose it's getting it back into your system very very quickly I attended TED earlier this year and I found myself in conversations with the founders of No Watch you've probably seen me wear something on my wrist and lots of you have messaged me asking me what this is.

13:58It looks like a classic watch but it's actually quietly tracking something much more meaningful, your autonomic nervous system. This is the system that governs everything from how you respond, from excitement to anxiety, calm to overwhelm. Most wearables just give you a score but if you're anything like me that score can sometimes make you feel worse, like you're already behind before your day even begins. No watch works differently, there is no judgment and there is no dopamine chasing dashboard. It simply reflects what your body is already experiencing and also helps you notice what it might be missing.

14:33It gives you minute by minute timeline of your stress responses and your recovery. The recovery is the most important part and is the part that no one talks about and it is often the most revealing marker of our long-term health. In just five days it calibrates your body and it builds your personal health fingerprint. You can try for free now for 30 days and if you use the code LWBW you can also get 15 % off. If you want to understand your body not just through performance but through self-awareness then this is where I'd begin. And so I think when we can try and break nutrition down we try and break down life factors and habits that are going to really help us I think you have to start looking at like, well, where is your energy demands coming from?

15:17And actually what physical size is your body giving you? So for me, for instance, when I started feeling that I was feeling more faint and my blood pressure was lower, there were really key things I had to start taking notice of because I was getting a lot of sleep, but that wasn't fixing my issue. So I had to make sure that I was hydrating, like not just when my thirst mechanism switched on, because when I did that, I was already dehydrated. So keeping it in my eye line. My brain is really lazy so I need to make it as easy as possible so I keep this water here. I have some electrolytes to try and help support my hydration.

15:54That's really really important. We can't always be fully hydrated especially if we're excess sweating with just having water. So trying to make a really active angle on how to support these needs. So that brings me into how it could help for your solution. So I would say try and stabilize your energy before you optimize your energy. And that's really simple things. Don't skip meals. That's really key. Having enough fluids. Hydrate. I know this feels so simple but trust me guys, if you hydrate properly I can guarantee that your fatigue will reduce. Trying to have protein in every meal. This has been a big shift for me.

16:33I was definitely more of a granola milk girl in the morning. Not the best thing for my health. Trying to have protein with that granola, massive difference. Trying to make sure you're having protein at every meal was a really important one. So that 3pm crash that you're going to get, adding protein to it will help reduce that glucose spike. So these are things that you can start helping stabilize your energy throughout the day. They're really simple. they're really simple tools so starting there looking at your energy demands and looking at how volatile that is these are really key things and then including protein in every meal hydrating properly not skipping meals making sure you're getting enough rest these are things that are really important and your signals in your body will start being more receptive and hopefully because i've created more awareness in this first step you might start listening more to your body Okay, sign two is that stress immediately changes how you eat.

17:30Now there is a huge spectrum of people. I personally, when I'm stressed, actually don't want to eat. I have some friends that when they're stressed, all they want to do is eat and it can be either end of the spectrum. Both are not good. Undereating or just not having an appetite is also going to make your energy really volatile. When you're overeating and you're stress eating, that's also going to make your energy very volatile because you're going to have these erratic glucose spikes on both ends of the spectrum. Understanding where your stress levels are when it comes to nutrition is so, so key.

18:02And I say it's key because it also connects to willpower. And this is a very kind of interesting sign. So if you're somebody who is maybe feeling quite stressed right now, who has added all of these lists into their life, and I can resonate with that, and then feeling like they're failing, it's not the willpower that's failing, it's the system that you've set it up in. And that's also going to increase more stress by thinking, well, I failed now, I've got to try and do it again, I've got to try harder and harder and harder. When stress is constant, what happens is that your body is in a more of a pro-inflammatory state.

18:35You are less likely to think rationally, you're more likely to make impulsive decisions. And those impulsive decisions also include food and nutrition. Also, what happens when you're stressed is that all of your cortisol and adrenaline kind of like leaves from your main organs and goes to your extremities because you're like ready to run that evolutionary kind of pattern with how your body works in fight or flight. When you're calm and you feel relaxed, all of that goes back into where your digestive system is and your organs and helps you digest food. So stress is really, really critical. It also puts your body under more demand and so it increases that energy budget that we just spoke about that Lisa Valbenbarra spoke to me about beautifully.

19:19And I think about that, you know, we're more demanding of calories when we're in a stressed state. And so all of these things deplete our body budget at the same time. So giving yourself a bit of flack around all of this is one way to also help decrease that intense stress response, but also connecting. There's a word that I use a lot in this podcast, I'm not sure if I've ever really explained very much, but it's somatic work. The more that you can kind of connect more into your body and associate more with what your body is telling you, which is going back to this whole theme and anchor of this episode is regulation connecting back to how you're feeling.

20:01So when you are stressed, feeling your body saying like, where am I holding my stress? Even trying to close your eyes and feel yourself on the chair or wherever you are, connecting more into what your body is trying to tell you is really important. So often if your body is stressed and you get a headache, we'll pop a pill. We won't think, okay, I'm overwhelmed and I'm making really bad decisions. And what I need to do is take a breath, hydrate with loads of water and try and calm my nervous system down so I can actually make a better rational decision. And that also comes with nutrition. How often do you find yourself in the fridge rummaging around trying to get something because you're stressed because you're trying to give yourself more energy to keep yourself in that high stress state.

20:47So stress is really, really important because it really physically changes how you eat and also how you metabolize that food. So that's a really key point when it comes to nutrition. I just want you to think about when you are stressed, what voice do you have in your head and what mechanisms do you have to help you? Because if you don't have a thorough through plan or if you're not even aware of how stressed you are, that is going to really hinder your health behaviors. That's really, really important. Okay, so slide three, that you are being hijacked by your own brain, and all the information that is out there, is that many of us can eat without any sensory awareness.

21:22And I find this a really important one. So nod if you do this. Do you eat alone? Do you eat with your phone? Do you eat when standing at your desk? Do you eat when you're walking? Yeah, I'm one of those. Oh, also, do you eat fast? If you can't see me on YouTube, I'm also nodding my head at the same time.

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23:20So sensory So sensory awareness is really, really important because it actually connects us to how much we are consuming. And it can take up to 20 minutes for our receptors in our stomach to connect to our brain to say, oh, wow, Sarah's just eaten, she's full. Now I am definitely not the best at doing this. My grandfather was the slowest eater in the world and I would be on dessert before he finished his main. And it was really interesting because I think people that eat very fast, eat when we're stressed, eat when we're standing at our desk, are likely to have kind of worse food patterns of behaviour than people that eat when they're calm and they take time when they eat with others, which is really important.

24:00Why is this important? Why am I talking about this? Well, sensory awareness is also really important for bringing you back into your body and connecting you to the somatic experience that I just spoke about. But we don't really think about eating as that, but it is. And when Dr. Sarah Berry came on the show, so she works at King's College London, she told me a really great line that we've lost our crunch in our lunch. I couldn't agree with that more. One of the really good ways to help more with sensory eating is to not have as many ultra processed foods because ultra processed foods don't actually have much fiber in.

24:34So you don't have to take as long to eat them. So trying to choose more of those whole foods, more fibrous foods, more protein rich foods, all of these take a lot longer for us to chew, which would naturally slow us down. Another good way is trying to eat everything with chopsticks. That also really does help slow you down. Now, they conducted a study at Zoe looking at fast eaters versus slow eaters, and they found some really interesting things. I'm just going to grab them up. They found that fast eating is linked with higher post-meal glucose spikes. So once you eat, your glucose levels increase, which is really interesting.

25:09They also found that people had a weaker satiety feeling, which meant that they didn't feel as full as the people that ate slower. One reason for that, I would imagine, is because that their signal hadn't been sent from their gut to their brain to tell them that they're full. Whereas when you take much longer to eat, your body has more time to catch up with those signals. They also had a higher calorie intake, so they essentially ate more food when they were eating fast rather than slow. The people that ate fast rather than slow had an increased risk of overeating. And also they had a poorer appetite regulation.

25:44So they struggled to control their appetite as much as the ones that ate slower. And these are really kind of incremental things. So simply if you're naturally listening to this and eating and you're walking along the street, don't feel guilty, but just take note. Maybe you're at your lunch break and you're at your desk listening to this and eating some food. again like these are all kind of big risk factors of overeating having bigger glucose spikes and all of these are linked to risks of inflammation and metabolic disorder so these are actually really fundamental key signs so sensory awareness is really important and it's a really key sign like physical sign and when you're eating like the one thing that I always try to do and I'm trying to do this more now I'll give you a bit of a tip because I actually say like a self-compassionate grace before I eat my food.