Does Healthy Eating Affect The Way We Exercise?

In this week’s show I have Josie aka The Mindful Cook, who teaches others how to take a holistic approach to their health and wellbeing.

Things we cover:

• What sort of people use The Mindful Cook?
• Why it’s important to not simply focus on your diet to be healthier.
• How emotional and physical health should be of equal importance to you.
• Does the word “movement” instead of “exercise” elicit a greater response in people?
• Why preparation is a key ingredient to healthiness in our busy lives.
• Balance & moderation over cutting out “bad stuff”

 

About The Mindful Coach

Josie is a food and eating coach, and through her business (The Mindful Cook) she teaches people how to take a holistic view to their health & wellbeing. It’s not just about food and nutrition but also about developing the right mindset and lifestyle skills to really help focus on people’s physical and emotional health.

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Full Transcription (excuse typos)

So welcome to this week’s the pilates for busy people weekly show. And this week I have mindful cook with me. Welcome Josie to the show. Hi, thank you so much for having me. That’s an absolute pleasure. Just tell us about yourself.

Yes, so I’m a food and eating coach. And through my business, which is the mindful cook, essentially, I teach people how to take a holistic view to their health and well being. And by that I mean, a mind body food approach. So it’s not necessarily just about, you know, food and nutrition, I also help people to develop their mindset, and lifestyle skills that really help them to focus not just on their physical health, but on their emotional health as well, because that’s just so important. Is this equally as important? I think. So the way I do that is I run some food and wellbeing retreats, they’ve been quite popular and a lot of fun. I do some one to one coaching with people. And I’ve just lost myself first online course. The Healthy Mind healthy body program. So it’s really just taking my coaching practice and putting it into an online format, so that it’s a bit more accessible for people.

And we’ll put all the links below at the end of the show. Great. So what sort of people come to you, it. So it’s a bit different across the piece, actually. So the wellbeing retreats tend to attract anyone. And everyone, you know, I get moms and daughters, mostly ladies have said, I get moms and daughters, I get you know, groups of girls together, I tend to get a lot of women on their own, you know, because essentially, it’s a nice, safe space for people to explore food, have a bit of fun, and just chill out, essentially, and focus on their well being for a weekend because it’s not very often we get to that is it? Yes. So so that where the coaching is concerned is more mostly around people who really want to improve their relationship with food and with their bodies to a great extent. So that’s where a lot of the kind of eating psychology practice comes into things. And with the with the course really, I’m trying to bring them both together. So it really brings together nutrition skills and mindset skills that help people kind of, you know, take this holistic view that I was talking about.

And when you sort of talk about the body that’s talking about exercise, and yeah, yeah, so I tend to refer to it as movement. Remember, the reason for that is because often when you say exercise, it conjures up all these ideas in people’s heads that you know, this walking out of the gym, or whatever it is that they think of when you say that word. So I tend to call it movement, and very much like what you’re doing conscious mindful movement, you know, it doesn’t necessarily have to be, you know, go running in the park. And equally, it needs to be on your own terms. You know, the fans very much like what you practice, it doesn’t have to be three times a week for an hour at the gym, you know, it can be 10 minutes, or whatever it is. So yeah, so bringing together those three elements really.

Do you find that people are more receptive to the word “movement” over “exercise”?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, indeed. And I think they’ve got it, we framed it a bit, doesn’t it? Yeah. You kind of think, you know, and particularly with my, a lot of my clients here, some of them have, you know, not been used to doing a lot of movement. So, when you kind of start to say, Well, actually, and brilliantly, you know, your kitchen parties is a brilliant example.

Yeah, a few spots. Once you’re putting on a cup of tea, you know, or one of my, one of the guys who’s just been testing out my online courses come up with a brilliant one. And he said, You know, I’m learning these new healthy eating skills, but I’m also changing my shopping habits. So rather than driving to Sainsbury’s and parking up, I’m shopping mall ethic, and I’m walking to the butchers. I’m walking, you know, gross as long as I brilliant, that’s exactly the kind of thing, it doesn’t really matter what it is. That’s it. As long as you’re kind of moving all, I one of my things that I like to do when I’m in the supermarket is looking for is to see what they were, what they’re eating, and what they’re buying. Because Yeah, that’s me sometimes with all this stuff out there about healthy eating. Do you find a lot of your clients? Don’t know that don’t know about healthy to know, or you’re just too afraid to try it?

Yeah, yeah, I think there’s a lot of kind of myths around it, I think. And really for no bit you were victims of the food manufacturing industry to a massive extent, aren’t we? So it’s, it’s nobody’s fault. But some of the myths I find are, you know, healthy eating is expensive, for example. And I think actually, it’s because we’ve just got this myriad of stuff around us haven’t really paleo Atkins, you name it, it’s all out there. Everything’s got a product and a price. You know, whereas actually, when you break it down, healthy eating doesn’t have to be expensive. You know, food and beverage, and just a few basic cooking skills, is all you need. Really, you know, to just make sure that you’re you’re eating in a way that’s honoring your health and well being so you’re absolutely right, a lot of it is breaking that down for people,  and have people got the cooking skills these days are not 50/50

 

Some people like it, some people don’t. So what I try not to do, the retreats are very much, I guess, about getting people to reconnect with food. You know, because I’m about it kind of works that way. But the coaching, I think there’s so there is a lot of stuff around these days that can help people to be healthy eaters without necessarily having the cooking skills. So that’s a good thing is we, you know, and if you haven’t got cooking skills, you shouldn’t be put off, you know? Yeah, yeah. Food. So it’s a win win.

Yeah, same here. But it is, you know, you’re absolutely right. It is about that challenge of getting people over that hurdle and thinking, Okay, yeah, healthy eating doesn’t necessarily have to be challenging either. Or take a lot of time. That’s the other one, it can be simple. That’s the next thing I wanted to talk to you about.

Because a lot of my clients either work from home, they’ve got young kids, they sit for long periods, and maybe just get up to go and get a snack or lunch. And invariably, I’m assuming here, I’m making assumptions, but those snacks will be just something they can grab hold of, what’s your advice or tips to try and get some healthy snacks, some healthy food? You know, in our life? Yeah. So yeah, I always talk to my clients about the power of prep, you know, it’s absolutely amazing. It just a little bit of time, on the weekend, doing a little bit of prep can pay huge dividends, you know, because we are all busy people. And it’s just one thing decision that you have to make if you get into the week, and you’re in a massive rush. You’ve got all these decisions to make. Make yourself more comfortable.

Having one less decision to make about food is a good thing, isn’t it?

Yeah. I sometimes also but people say oh, yeah, but I haven’t got time to plan my food for the whole week. Absolutely. Right. But you don’t necessarily have to you just need to think what am I going to eat the next day? Yeah. And often Monday is a big one. Because we all have a lovely weekend, don’t worry. And we get to Monday, and we have to go to work and we’re weary and all that stuff. And we think an office if you just can do one thing, just make sure you’ve got your stuff together for Monday. And then that gets you off on a good foot. But yeah, a little bit of prep on the weekend or whenever you can fit it in and again, busy people that we are one that comes up is I’ve heard people say, Yeah, I didn’t you know, do my little bit of prep, I listen to my podcast wasn’t doing it. Or I do my in my strategy is well, I’m doing it.

And it’s that kind of thing, isn’t it? Your task but crap, because it just you know, can make life so much easier during the week.

Now that and that’s that’s really good. And I’d like to say I did it all the time.

I do is I have a fairly well stocked pantry. Yeah. Just get some ingredients out and then and then make something but as I said, I love cooking. So you know that that’s Yeah, yeah.

But I you know, I do do work with a lot of people who who don’t, you know, they don’t like the cooking thing. But again, there’s so many I was in a little the other day.

I love it.

And um, you know, I was just going up to the tail and a lady been asking me, I’m going away for Easter, we’re going to be in the car, what kind of snacks Can I take that are easy? And can I prep them? I thought well, rather than you know, roasting chickpeas all week, when you’re in the run up to going on holiday, I was in it and I was looking at Well, there are so many more, you know, healthy snacks available there. Yeah. Peace, for example, or whatever it is. I just always say just check the label. I check the label and look for the sugars and the salts. And if it’s looking pretty good, then pop it. Yeah, yeah.

And it’s and I suppose it’s winning a stuff which I need to do at the moment, we need some chocolate, especially after Easter with the recording this in the week after Easter. Yeah.

But again, I’m at so I’m a big believer in balance, you know, and moderation. And because I think restriction can lead to all kinds of negative behaviors very often, when we tell ourselves, we can’t have something what happens? You tell us, you know, we end up wanting it more Don’t be so. And also just creating opportunities to make more informed decisions. So now I love my chocolate. But now I go for the 70% you know, for the over 70% cocoa solids, less sugar in that probably no dairy as well. And it’s, you know, couple of bits of that of an evening for you.

It gives you the idea. Yeah, that’s perfect. So, summary. Basically, we need to spend a little time. And I know we haven’t got much time, as you said, but in prepping for this ahead. Yeah, I’d really you know, prioritizing your health and well being by doing that kind of stuff is gonna really make you feel so much better. And it’s time well spent. Yeah. And that’s what I was going to say it’s the so your clients who’ve been through your programs and your coaching. That was that sort of feeling at the end of it. It’s the well being and they feel like yeah, so karma, you know, more peace of mind. And that’s just, that’s through the mindset pass the stuff because ultimately, if you’re feeding yourself better, you’re going to feel better. Yeah.

Now about that. But also, if you’re kind of feeling better up here as well, then holistically, you know, you’re generally going to be better for fine. Yeah, that’s perfect. I hope that everyone’s got a few tips out of that because I know I do it sometimes just get up from the desk I’m find something that chocolate where it is. It is about just a bit of preparation. And I’m going to do that this week. I think I’m going to book a brilliant job well done for me then. Thank you. Brilliant. So as I said before, they’ll be will put your links below.

Great, thank you. But yeah, thank you very much for joining us on the planet is for busy people. We show.

My pleasure. Thank you, Louise.