The importance of nutrition and your chance to be educated by professionals!
In this day and age there is so much information floating around about fad diets. It can get pretty confusing! So we have joined forces with The Chief Life for their 6 week online challenge called the Nourish'd Chief Up Challenge.
( find out more here about the challenge).
What is The Chief Life you ask? Well they are all about educating and inspiring people and their nutritional needs in our community as well as across the world. They also give their professional tick of approval to all our Nourish'd meals, so you can rest assured what you are eating is actually good for you as well as delicious. We caught up with Stacey Turner - Co- Founder, CEO, Dietitian/ Nutrition Coach, Trainer/Fitness Coach from The Chief Life.
Nat- First and foremost, why is nutrition so important? Isn't it more important to just work out?
Stace - I love this question. We are definitely told time and time again by media and “health experts” that calories in = calories out, but the simple fact is that this is not true! Not all calories are created equal, meaning if I eat calories from a pasture raised chicken breast versus a deep friend donut, my body will actually process and respond to them each in very different ways. The hormonal response and the cascade that happens after eating the chicken is much more favourable an outcome for my insides and my health than if I were to eat the donut. This also means that we can’t just go and eat whatever we like, whenever we like and hope that smashing ourselves at the gym as punishment afterwards for all the “naughty” food choices we’ve made will make everything better and undo all that negative hormone response and fat storage in the body. Yes, there are heaps of AMAZING benefits to training and moving more but our long term health and quality of life will suffer with the “eat what you want and burn it off later” mentality. If we choose to eat clean, healthful real and wholesome foods we can fuel our bodies effectively, have a positive hormone release and actually improve our performance in training rather than struggling to get through it. The latter sets us up for success, not only day to day with more energy, better skin, better sleep, improved quality of life and a rocking hot bod but it also decreases the risk of us developing nasty diseases and dysfunction later in life.
Nat - With the challenge, why is it important to have personalised meal plans? And not just a general one?
Stace - Every person on this planet is a unique individual, we are all very different in our genetic make up, health status, measurements, goals and food dislikes/intolerances, so it makes sense that every person should have a meal plan that is specific to their needs. We are very passionate about making sure every person we work with completes our questionnaire so we can tailor our templates to your needs. Note that this doesn’t mean they are unique. We use a number of baseline templates and alter them based on the responses we receive in the meal plan questionnaire, so some meals will be the same or similar but across your whole day and week has been calculated and fitted specifically to you as a unique snowflake.
Nat - You talk a lot about accountability. What happens if I fall off the wagon during the challenge?
Stace - This is normal and part of being a human. We have times where we are able to follow something closely and have all the motivation and will power in the world, and other times where we get distracted, lose focus or get peer pressured into doing something that takes us further from our goals. Many people do use this analogy of a “wagon” and it does work quite well for most people most of the time, however, when people feel they have fallen “off” the wagon they tend to beat themselves up, feel like they’ve failed and head into a downward spiral. Imagine you’re standing at the top of a staircase, you decide to have a glass of wine which is not part of your challenge guidelines, this is like walking down 3-4 steps. At this point, if you say to yourself that you have fallen off the wagon, you are more likely to self sabotage and throw yourself down the rest of the staircase!Our suggestion is rather to turn around and walk back up to the top, so have the glass of wine, own the choice, enjoy it and then make your next meal, snack or drink something that does align with your goals and guidelines to help you get closer to where you want to get to.I prefer to say there is no wagon, get rid of the wagon, and it’s just YOU standing on your own two amazing feet… You have a fork in the road in front of you and you get to choose the path that takes you closer to your goals or the path that takes you further away! No wagon, just conscious adult decisions :) choose the wine, and you take a few steps away from your goal, no biggie because you’re not beating yourself up about it, nor are you doing it all day every day, maybe 1 night and 1 glass, then you choose to go back on the other path to get you closer to your goals again. No one will be judging you, we offer ongoing support via the private challenge Facebook page and do recommend you reach out to the group before making one of these choices as sometimes voicing the need to “cheat” can make you realise that you don’t really need to. Why are you wanting to eat less favourable foods? Is it emotionally charged? Lack of preparation? Tiredness? Pin-pointing the driver and sharing with the group is a great way to prevent these old habits from sneaking in and allow us to set new healthier habits with you using this support through the 6 weeks as a starting point to better choices for the rest of your life. And as I said before, even if you do choose something less favourable, we acknowledge it, own it and move on. It won’t take one meal to send us completely away from our goals to disease and poor health, just as one good meal won’t make us Wonder Woman or Super Man… It will require consistently better choices day after day and once you start feeling awesome, you’ll want to keep following the principles and philosophies most of the time anyway .
Nat- is it easy to keep on track after the challenge date ends?
Stace - We believe so, we have a few options for people to either continue working with us or use the tools and education they have received to be able to continue on this nutrition and health lifestyle on their own. We can offer new menu plans with new options and more variety at a discounted price for being an ongoing member of our tribe. We also have nutrition coaching for ongoing weekly accountability with your own Nutrition Coach who checks in with you and helps to guide you deeper into all things food and well-being for a minimum 13 week period. Our newest package is a yearly membership that allows you a new personalised seasonal meal plan every 3 months and access to our core members Facebook page for ongoing support with an amazing group of like-minded people. We are very happy to chat more with people individually about these options to help them figure out which flavour is best for them for where they’re at right now and we will share all of these options again towards the end of the 6 week challenge via the Facebook group.
Nat- If someone wants to know: I’ve got too much going on right now/not ready to commit, when is the next challenge?
Stace - We do run regular 6 week programs throughout the year with gyms and other Company’s that align with our core values, like Nourish’d however our recommendation is to join us now as there is never going to be a clear 6 week period free of social commitments, work trips, holidays and the like. Our approach is to give you the tools and education to allow you to still live you life, no matter what is going on, and learn how to navigate these social and other distracting commitments whilst still being able to overall get closer to your health goals. The ongoing group support and the educational webinar at the start of the challenge will help to set you up for success when making these decisions during the 6 weeks, so we recommend that if you are drawn to this program right not, you jump on board and start making better health choices now. To take part in the challenge or find out more visit - http://thechieflife.com/6weekprogram/