A Slice of Humble Pie with P2
🥧 A podcast where we curiously explore nutrition, fitness, mindset, sports, wellness, & beyond. ☕️Host @parastoobadie
A Slice of Humble Pie with P2
Passion to Purpose: Nutrition, Growth & Lessons from Disordered Eating
This episode dives into Alex Sakalauskas' journey from bodybuilding to running to muay thai, discovering performance nutrition and the importance of mental health in dietary choices. Through candid conversations, Alex shares experiences with disordered eating and the evolution toward sustainable habits in nutrition.
• Exploring the early passion for fitness and nutrition
• The shift from a gym-focused mindset to performance nutrition
• Impact of dieting extremes and recognition of disordered eating
• Importance of sustainability and balance in nutrition
• Insights into creating a nutrition guide for fighters
• Emphasizing personal growth through food choices and mental well-being
• Highlighting the significance of patience in achieving long-term goals
To connect with Alex, follow him on Instagram, and stay tuned for his upcoming guide!
Join #LevelUP - Mindset & Nutrition support for athletes. Learn more about Nutrition Fundamentals in the #Human1Athlete2 portal
Mental health resources:
Disordered eating & dieting
https://www.eatingdisorderfoundation.org/learn-more/more-resources/
CAMH resources
Website: https://parastoobadie.com/podcast/
Email: asliceofhumblepiewithp2@gmail.com
Instagram: @asliceofhumblepiewithp2
Welcome back to A Slice of Humble Pie. I'm your host, pitu. I'm a nutrition and fitness professional, a lover of pie and a curious human on planet Earth. Today's episode is another one about nutrition and some nutrition experiences. Our guest is Alex Sakalaskis. Alex has a Bachelor of Law and has experience as a sales development manager and cloud security consultant, but he chose to take a leap, quit his nine to five and pursue his other passions. At the time of this recording, he's in the UK currently getting his nutrition certification and building the next steps of his career.
Speaker 1:This is the same same but different path to my story. Alex is an Akmoy and we met through the KnifeLim network here in Thailand. He is very passionate about nutrition, particularly sharing his evolutions and lessons, from being a gym bro to the keto dude, to training as an athlete, to learning a more sustainable approach to nutrition. Alex is humble, funny and absolutely a ball of light. Fair warning that we get raw in this conversation as we touch on mental health, eating disorders and disordered eating. This is going to be an enlightening conversation, alex. Welcome to A Slice of Humble Pie. Let's get right into it. When did your passion for nutrition develop?
Speaker 2:I think, like a lot of younger kids, I wanted to get big in the gym. I wanted to look good 's. You know, you're growing up, you're watching cartoons, you're seeing all your favorite superheroes, all have big muscles and all that stuff. So I think I got to an age, at around um 14, where I was like, right, I want to start going to the gym, I want to start getting in shape and naturally, with that, uh, at the very beginning it was just the case of going in lifting weights and eating whatever was cooked at home. I didn't ask too many questions, I just knew that you ate food and you needed it to have energy. As the years progressed and I started watching more youtube and open that can of worms, I started learning about bulking, cutting, all that side of stuff, and I guess when you've I sort of was growing up when the internet was really getting big. So I was quite fortunate to just have this massive pile of information to access regarding putting on muscle, losing weight, all that kind of stuff. And, yeah, I started looking more and more into how to put on weight, what you needed to be eating, what the different macros were, and just really experimenting with that. And, yeah, from there onwards, I think I wasn't yet hooked on like. Nutrition for me isn't just about becoming a bodybuilder, learning how to put on weight, how to lose weight. Me isn't just about becoming a bodybuilder, learning how to put on weight, how to lose weight. It's also about how food makes you feel outside of just the the weight stuff, uh, so that there's a lot more to it. So I think my passion for nutrition really came when I started towards the end of my um, my, let's say, bodybuilding phase, where I started caring more about running. I could tell when I was bulking and I was eating about 4,500 calories a day. It became very difficult to run. My cardiovascular system was non-existent. I didn't like that side of stuff and from there onwards I went okay, I don't want to be this big, big, huge person, but I do really like understanding why. Why food has helped me get to x, how I fluctuated with 15 kilos of weight over the past two years, why I feel better when I eat certain foods, why I don't feel good, even mentally, when I eat certain foods. And, yeah, I'd say from from from going to the gym that that really started everything for me. And then, having gone into the Muay Thai route now and caring a lot more about the performance side of things. I'm still learning. But yeah, my uh, my interest sort of really really propelled from there and I realized that I just subconsciously I was like I love learning about this stuff and like it never feels like work, so I never viewed it like that.
Speaker 1:Non-serious question who was your favorite superhero that you were trying to be like?
Speaker 2:My favorite superhero. Have you watched the first Spider-man movies?
Speaker 2:of course the original ones, right before the new andrew garfield and um tom holland, the old ones. So I think it will be spider-man not the old ones. But, like I'm saying, now there's two, there's two new franchises of spider-man that have come out. So, like you're looking back, I think spider-man will definitely be my favorite because I remember maybe by chance, that was the first proper superhero movie that I watched. I don't remember I used to. Those were the free dvds that I because there's three parts to it. Those are the free dvds that I got when I was a kid, because still obviously there's no Netflix or that kind of stuff and yeah, that's just like a really distinct memory. I remember watching those movies and I thought, wow, like so strong, he does all this stuff, he gets the pretty girl and all this. I was like I idolized him for a little bit. Um, but yeah, I think I definitely go for, definitely go for Spider-Man. That, like that, he holds a place in my, in my heart from my childhood that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Thank you for painting a picture of how you were as a child, including your passion for superheroes and how you got into nutrition. You use yourself. I guess the language is test subject, but you you kind of fell into it and then you could see that your passion and your curiosity was growing as you were learning more and more about yourself, which is really important when you're working with people. And you have all of these phases of you right. You mentioned your bodybuilding phase and the running, recognizing performance, and now in Muay Thai. That's awesome, because you have seen yourself through different phases. You already talked about it a little bit that we know that you started at the gym. Now that we are older, how has nutrition shifted for you from, like, your first introduction in the gym to now that it is a little bit more performance focused around Muay Thai? Like what is that shift?
Speaker 2:Yes, so when you go to the gym, when I was going to the gym, the primary concern was eating as much food as I could fathom without feeling sick and watching that scale weight go up, go up, watching my lifts go up. And yeah, back in the day it was just the case of going through these phases that tend to the bulk. Tended to overlap with wintertime, so as soon as the summer was over, I knew okay, I didn't think too much, but I said I need to start ramping up my food, so adding in a whole load of carbs. I've had my fair share of time with the uh, quote-unquote dirty bulk as well, where I just eat everything in sight, did you?
Speaker 1:you do the two gallons of milk.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, no, no. That was that's. That's over the top. That's over the top. I was.
Speaker 2:I was having like I would end my, I'd end my day with like a massive bowl of French fries, like in the UK we'd have these. They're not French fries, but like chunky chips. It's the same as a French fry, just a little bit thicker. And they used to sell these massive frozen bags in the supermarkets and it was just a really easy hack to get an extra 100 grams of carbs in at the end of the day, because it would be something I enjoy. I'd put them in the oven, have some ketchup and looking back at it now it makes me feel a bit sick, because I was like I can't believe I used to to go to bed and just eat about 200 grams of chips just after I had my dinner as well. But anyway, we all do crazy things when we want to, when we want to look big, um, but yeah, veering away for a slight tangent. So I used to just be really concerned about my caloric intake. I wanted my day to end in a surplus when it needed to, and then in a deficit also when summertime came around and I wanted to strip, strip off the body fat that I put on.
Speaker 2:Um, as the years went on and I started getting a little bit more into running and I started realizing that, as with most things and a lot of people, I felt like there was a bit of a ceiling for me with bodybuilding. Um, I was like, right, I'm either gonna go all in, start competing, and it gets to a stage where I'm so meticulous that my life becomes about eating like to put on weight eating. For me, eating 4 500 calories a day is just so impractical. Because I found myself like when I was out with my friends, I was like, oh no, I'm stressing that I need to get another meal in. Um, I'm spending money at random restaurants because I need to get food in and I just didn't see it very conducive in my lifestyle. Um, so, and obviously with current modern day bodybuilding, it gets to a stage where, let's say, you hit your natural threshold midway through your 20s. You start going into the conversation of peds and I I kind of said there I was like, right, I really enjoyed what this has done for me. But I think I, after the last cut I did, I was, I really enjoyed, just like you know, feeling like my, my joints can move properly, not waking up stiff, not getting out of bed, rolling out, having to eat 1500 calories straight off the bat.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I started getting into running and kickboxing as well, back when I first first started out like a 90 kilo man walking into the kickboxing as well. Back when I first started out like a 90 kilo man walking into the kickboxing gym couldn't even lift my leg up above my hip and, yeah, from there onwards my nutrition focuses started shifting slightly. So I obviously I came into kickboxing very big, very immobile, and from there onwards I was was like right, I don't want to starve myself and just like lose all this weight. But I knew this wasn't going to be my natural weight. So then I started learning about, okay, what is it just like healthy eating, just having enough food in a day that I feel good, and slowly, over time, my body's undergoing this recomposition phase where, just because I'm exercising and eating clean, I'm losing. I'm losing a bit of body fat, I'm getting into a more natural weight where I feel good but I can still run, I can still do all my daily tasks without feeling lethargic and stuff like that. And yeah, we then transitioned into the big trial and error phase of my, let's say, performance nutrition education.
Speaker 2:As I started running a lot more and I didn't compete in kickboxing but just training, I started noticing what made me feel good and a lot of the time, if I wanted to lose weight, I would apply the same gym mentality I had to my routine now and I found out that really doesn't work. Just because now I was doing obviously a lot more of the anaerobic work in terms of kickboxing, a lot more running, and I would turn up to my sessions and I'd be like, wow, like when I was cutting weight just purely for bodybuilding, for aesthetic, aesthetic purposes, being on low food, it's not that bad. Like, yeah, you feel a bit tired, you feel a bit sluggish, but you get your everyday tasks done. But now my exercises throughout my day I was turning up to train and I was hating every second of it because I was in such a deficit that I didn't even have the energy to perform and do well, and it became the cycle of all this, which really isn't enjoyable for me anymore. I'm losing weight, but it's getting to the, to the, to the extent that I was looking at that hour and a half block of kickboxing is just grueling, grueling cardio, whereas it should be. Okay. This is cardio, but also I'm learning something new like this. This is something I want to get better at, but I actually didn't have the mental capacity to even pay attention to what people were saying. I just need to survive this session and go get my plate of food at the end of this.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, from there onwards, I started learning a lot more about just balance, balance and all the all of this and how to.
Speaker 2:It wasn't just the gym anymore, it was me doing actual, actual activities which expanded a lot of energy, more so than a weight session would, and then learning how to, how to adequately fuel for that. So now my perspective is a lot more how can I maintain a good weight outside of outside of fight camp? How can I recover big one? How can I recover from my sessions in adjacent to that um, and how can I fuel those sessions as well? And getting that all into a little ball of, let's say, sustainability. Because what I found personally for me and I'm sure we'll get onto this later is when I restrict too much, I get into bad patterns of disordered eating. So yeah, it's all about managing all those different uh, all those different sides of that. And, yeah, less so a calories in versus calories in approach and more so what am I doing today and what am I going to need to eat so that I could do this properly without bursting out with inflammation, gut issues, all that kind of stuff?
Speaker 1:so yeah, that feels honestly. I was coming on that journey with you, very relatable to my story too. As you know, I did bodybuilding rugby, muay Thai, and yeah it's. It's, um, an important part where we make that distinction that you might visually look clean as well if you're running or in Muay Thai, but it's a performance sport and not that you know, bodybuilding isn't, but it technically isn't like there's a lot of work. It's actually surprisingly tedious to hold the poses.
Speaker 1:But everything you shared was really about seeing the next level right, the performance nutrition, and that's not just you know lingo that we use. It's true, you have to be able to think, you have to have capacity, especially in a combat sport environment. It's not just get through the session, it's like no, I'm learning something new. Also in kickboxing and Muay Thai, someone is possibly especially inspiring. You're like I'm literally being kicked or hit in the face and I need to have reaction time to hopefully just move. You know defend. So thank you for sharing all of that. So I I'm curious now to see the next. There's a chapter of your evolution. I wonder when it came about. Now I'm assuming it's coming after this. You mentioned to me that once upon a time you were the keto low carb guy you just talked about in your bodybuilding phase, where you would eat like a thousand calories of chips. How did you shift to go and become the low carb guy?
Speaker 2:you shift to go and become the low carb guy like when did this happen?
Speaker 1:oh, this is. This might be a long one, but let's go for it. Hold on, I'm ready, I'm a coffee.
Speaker 2:Let's go right. So how I ended up being the keto, low carb guy? As with everything in nutrition, you can find an answer. You can find five different answers for the same problem online and with so much information out there. Personally, for me it became a trial and error process, and keto and low carbs was one thing that I never trialed.
Speaker 2:But the reason why I considered doing it in the first place was I was getting to a stage where summer was coming around and I was undergoing the yearly cutting phase brackets, not knowing what I'm doing at all. I just knew that you had to reduce your calories. But I would go down the down, the very other end of not a slight deficit, just, uh, just cutting off 2000 calories at once and going right, the weight's gonna fly off, it's gonna be great, yeah, so I, I went, I went. I went from eating around 4500 calories a day to about 1700 just just horrible advice. So if you're listening to this, do not do that. And I got to a stage where I dropped. I dropped three or four kilos and I accepted now that this was all water, weight and glycogen. Dropped off three, four kilos in quite a short space of time and I was like, oh great, this cut's going amazing and slowly, as the weeks progressed, my sessions obviously got worse. I was doing so much cardio like two cardio sessions a day on top of my weight session whilst eating that amount of calories. My weight just got stuck. My weight just got stuck and I was like, wow, like what's going on? Like I'm working so hard, I'm putting in so many hours of cardio and I'm just not getting lean. I'm waking up, I feel I feel shit all the time.
Speaker 2:Um, then, obviously, as a kid, I went recovery stuff coming up and all this other stuff, and I I was just, I guess I was in in denial, I was like I didn't want it to be true and I, I had the simple, the simple young, adolescent reaction of I don't know enough about it. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna absolutely reject that idea and keep going with what I'm thinking. So I, I somehow built, I constructed this idea in my head that for some reason, carbs really affected me and they really made weight stay on my body. And with all the stuff on social media as well, it was so easy to believe that, because people go, carbs are ruining your life and they're making you fat and all that kind of stuff. And I went, yeah, do you know what they are? They're ruining my life. I don't need carbs. I see all these shredded fitness gurus online that eat avocados and eggs and steak all day long and they just look so good and they say they feel amazing. Let me try this.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, from there onwards I told all my friends at university. I was like, oh, I'm not having carbs anymore. And bear in mind, like I'm an idiot, I was still drinking throughout the week because I couldn't avoid it. But in my head I was like, if I go out twice a week, but the rest of the time I'm good, and if I just go for drinks that are very low in carb I got traces and stuff like that and go for diet drinks, it will be okay, it will be okay.
Speaker 2:Anyway, trying to balance fitness with a university lifestyle was a whole different ball game. But, yeah, I started trying this keto diet. So I was buying eggs, I was eating a whole load of peanut butter, was eating, obviously, just meat and having to find ways around the other stuff. And, yeah, I don't think I stuck out long enough to actually because, by the way, I think the keto diet is something that works for a lot of people, and I think it holds a whole other side of benefits outside of just um, losing weight. But it wasn't the thing that I needed in my situation and it was like a hail mary. It was more about demonizing carbs than actually realizing the benefits the keto might hold, and I quickly learned that living a keto diet was very unsustainable in a lot of things. It's very expensive for one because, uh, you're having to make up for the nutrient deficiencies that you don't get from the carbohydrate intake and other sides of your diet.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, that was an interesting point in my life because I didn't really reap any of the rewards, but also my groceries were becoming way more expensive. I didn't really know what I was doing. I just saw I had new shiny thing syndrome. That's the one, that's the one I'm looking for. I had new shiny thing syndrome.
Speaker 2:I came across. I came across this new term that I hadn't learned about and I saw loads of other people having success with it, not really realizing the context. And then, yeah, I tried to go for it and, yeah, I didn't have great success with it, but really realizing the context. And then, yeah, I tried to go for it and, yeah, I didn't have great success with it. But I'm not demonizing either. I think there's certain situations where it can be very beneficial. But for me, in my context, it was a case of new shiny thing syndrome and something, something new that I wanted to try and thought that it might be the answer to all my problems, but I realized that I was just palming off the recovery, the recovery side of things. So yeah, that was my journey with the low carbs.
Speaker 1:You know that story brought us along with you. I love that. You're like a university student. That's a really hard time to navigate so many things, but, like a high grocery bill when you're a student, life is just another thing, but yeah, for the listeners.
Speaker 1:We're not demonizing keto at all. Actually, the previous episode to this one, I was talking to a clinical sports nutritionist, chuang Kwan, and he was talking about how one of his mentors is actually in the research field for keto and this has come up several times on this podcast where we've talked about concussions and brain health and various other reasons, and essentially actually Alex said it himself like the word contacts, you know, nothing's good or bad, it's very context dependent on what you're doing and, as he pointed out himself, he wasn't sure why he was doing it. It just shiny object syndrome. This sounds like a great idea it's like does it though.
Speaker 1:You just made it harder for no reason yeah, 100, 100.
Speaker 2:It's all a learning curve lessons learned.
Speaker 1:We, I've done that too. I had my little whatever phase, but you know it's good. It gives us some content everyone needs to some content.
Speaker 2:Everyone needs to go through it. Everyone needs to go through keto to really understand whether it's for them.
Speaker 1:The thing. I'm having a delay reaction to something. Well, I reacted, but it just came into my brain 10 minutes later that you were eating 4,500 calories and then you cut to 1,700 calories. You've gone through extreme deficits. You've gone through demonizing full food groups and you know cutting out all sorts of carbs, and you really did, you know, experience a lot of stuff. Before we get deeper into the disordered eating, I'm wondering about the people around you. You mentioned some of your peers and friends, but did anyone notice these, especially like your classmates in university did? Like what? How are people responding to your major changes? Did anyone notice your big cuts or when you were the keto dude like? Did anyone approach you? Were they concerned? Were they encouraging? How was that social support for you?
Speaker 2:I was. How would I describe this? I think I was the ideal one in my friendship group that really cared about nutrition. I didn't understand nutrition yet, but I cared about it a lot more than my friends did. They they all liked going to the gym, they liked doing sports and that kind of stuff, but no one really. I don't want to make it sound like I was saying I was better than them. It was more so.
Speaker 2:Bodybuilding to me at the time was something that I viewed out very seriously. I was. I was one of the stronger, let's say stronger ones in my group, in better shape. Therefore, I cared about it a lot more. It was like it did a lot more for me than just the physical side of things. It was like I was building my day around the gym because it was just, it was part of my identity. Let's say so. Naturally, with that, I cared a lot more about nutrition than they did.
Speaker 2:So I was undergoing all of these drastic changes and at the time don't get me wrong my friends my friends found it abnormal either end. So when I was bulking, they kind of look at me and my friends call me sacks, as you know like that's where my uh, my instagram handle comes from sacks and they're like why, why are you eating so much food? Like they're all poking some jokes at me, like when I was bulking and oh, you're getting fat, you're getting fat, you're getting fat. Like, and, as you do in university, you take the piss out of your friends. And I didn't care about it because I was like I know what I'm doing and like I don't, it doesn't, it doesn't affect me, kind of thing. And then I'd go to the other end, where they're like was ask for my help in losing weight or putting on weight, and in those situations although I must admit I was I could help them, but I wasn't really qualified to be helping them.
Speaker 2:I just understood that, looking at their diet, I was like you want to put on weight, you're not eating enough, you want to lose weight, you're not starving yourself enough, which is obviously not not the right approach to go down. Yeah, they that anything that I sort of suggested to them, they would find very, uh, very abnormal, very foreign. They. They would tell me they want to put on weight. I was like okay, well, you need to eat this, this and that, and putting away is a lot easier. You just you're adding yeah, if you want to add some clean carbs, you add in some clean carbs to your meal. You up up your caloric intake. Start monitoring the scales, right. It's all a lot more straightforward than cutting. And yeah, I'll tell them. I was like you need to, you need to eat more, you need to eat more, and they go what? But like I'm eating so much already and they didn't really, they didn't really pay too much attention to it.
Speaker 2:But they definitely noticed, in those extremes either side that I was, obviously I wasn't affected. It was more so affecting my lifestyle. So I was restricting myself. Obviously, when I was towards the end of my like cutting period, I was restricting myself from like going out or if I would go out, I wouldn't drink. And the main thing they noticed is my behaviors and I think back in that time I did have like an unhealthy relationship with food and I think they couldn't really understand what it meant to have an unhealthy relationship with food. But I think that was really evident in the fact that they would notice me making conscious lifestyle decisions that they didn't necessarily not agree with. But they would point out and in the moment I wouldn't realize myself, they'd be like, like we're all going out to celebrate xyz's birthday and you've had, you've had a great week of training, like you're at university, it's your final year. Like go out, have a couple beers, like enjoy yourself. And I wasn't prepping for a show. So at the time I don't know why, I viewed it so, so gravely to go out and have a drink, have a couple drinks, because I didn't need to be single digit body fat for any bodybuilding show, I was just looking to lose weight. But I think it became that cycle of wow, I'm in such a low deficit. I did this keto thing. It's still not working. It must be the alcohol I was. I was kept on, kept on finding different things to blame. So I was like I'm not gonna go out and I think that's looking back, that's the evidence.
Speaker 2:It's like when your friends they don't really know, they don't really understand what it is to have a bad relationship with food, but they can understand from your behavior that you're you're removing yourself from certain situations which you might normally not normally remove yourself from, and then you kind of ask yourself you're like, wow, okay, so subconsciously I was deciding not to do all these things that might be even slightly related to my caloric intake and yeah, like just really started, um, really started affecting me and, uh, they, they couldn't help me by giving me an answer and I was constantly looking for answers on the internet. And then, yeah, it was just that you can imagine. It was just this huge cycle of wow, what do I find? What's the solution? My friends don't understand me and I don't expect them to understand, so I shouldn't listen to their opinion.
Speaker 2:And yeah, from there onwards it was a big learning process. I'm thankful I went through it. It never got to a stage where it was bad and it was really affecting my mental health, but it was. Don't want to say cool or glamorize it, but I'm really thankful to have gone through that process because now in my future it's such a common thing that I'm sure so many others go through and now I can almost like relate and be like look, I've been in that situation, I understand it's shit and you need to just accept the facts here, stop looking for the new shiny object syndrome and stop blaming everything that is actually really normal in your life thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 1:That's very vulnerable and in your life. Thank you for sharing that. That's very vulnerable, and there's a couple of things you brought up I think it's worth expanding on In this context. Of course, it sounds like it was disordered, right. Especially when you don't have a timeframe, like if we are, let's say, there was a bodybuilding show there is a goal and an intention, so there's some strategy involved. You're not just doing it for no reason. Or if now we have a fight coming up and you're in a fight camp, like there is an intention, there's some strategy, there's some context.
Speaker 1:If you are making certain shifts in priority let's call it that then it's understandable that you're like, hey, I'm working towards something. Maybe going out to the bar and drinking is not supportive of these goals, so I'm consciously choosing not to do this because it's not the best use of my time or macros. But in this context, it's like it sounds like your friends were supportive but you didn't really have a purpose with why you were doing something, so it just sort of took over all of your behavior and then it's like you didn't look back and see if this hey, is this sustainable? We're going to talk about that in a second Right. I know you brought that up earlier because it wasn't working towards anything. It wasn't sustainable. And do you feel like in retrospect, did you want to be there? Or were these choices more out of fear that you were gonna eat something you weren't supposed to eat? Like did you want?
Speaker 1:to go hang out with your friends, but you mostly made those choices specifically, just so you wouldn't have specific calories or alcohol do you know what?
Speaker 2:I've only just realized this as you were speaking and I didn't want to cut you off, but I'm glad that you asked this. It was less about going out and breaking my diet. It was more so that I was this guy that was obsessed with the gym. I was the guy that my friends would go to if they wanted to put on weight. I was the guy that they I was just known for, the person that spent so much of their time at the gym learning about what to eat. I was. That was that gym bro. I was the gym bro at the in my friendship group and I thought to myself I was like people. People won't take me serious if like I'm.
Speaker 2:If it gets to summer and I haven't lost this weight and I don't, they're just gonna look oh, he spends all these hours in the gym but he doesn't even look that good. And all these, you know, all these insecurities start pouring in and at the time, as I mentioned, my weight wasn't moving off for other reasons, not my to do with my diet, but obviously you know, you get to the stage where your metabolism crashes. I didn't understand any of that stuff. I just knew that I was eating very little and things weren't working for me and I wasn't dropping weight. So when I was presented with these opportunities, I wanted to be there. I wanted to be there and enjoy myself. But then I was like, right, every single drink, every single night out, every single thing that I shouldn't eat is potentially jeopardizing my end goal, my end outcome of being this wow, like everything that he was really working towards behind the scenes, like it was all worth it.
Speaker 2:Obviously, at the time I didn't know that I was actually burying myself into oblivion, but my subconscious decisions were all down to a sense of my own pride and this image that I built for myself that I was the person that I wasn't. No one thought I was a qualified nutritionist, but everyone saw me spend all my time speaking about nutrition, spend all my time training. So I was like, right, am I going to embarrass myself by not having this amazing look that I clearly put so much time towards? And yeah, I didn't have the answers to my problems and therefore I was like I'm going to mitigate anything that could potentially even ruin things slightly for me and that ended up being me cutting off this whole high of my life of socializing for a period at university, which is like the worst time that you would cut out socializing. So, yeah, that was, uh, that was a really interesting thought process in my brain that I just underwent thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 1:It was great to see you have it live. I can see your eyes being like have an aha moment.
Speaker 1:I must share yeah that is a lot of pressure, alex, that's a lot, and I hope that you know now that we're people and you're allowed to have all parts of you. That image that you cultivated of yourself and those insecurities just kind of push you further and further in a place that you can't sustain. It was like an inevitable set yourself up for failure because it's just not possible to sustain it forever. But I'm glad that you had those realizations and shifted a little bit, and so I'm curious now is there a particular memory that you have that? Or was it an accumulation of these to, sort of you learn, you realize that, hey, this is disordered. Was there, was there a moment that shifted? Or how did you recognize that you had been struggling a little bit?
Speaker 2:so I didn't. At that time I didn't actually realize that I had disordered eating. I'll tell you what I only really accepted that I had disordered eating, and possibly the past year not in a denial kind of way, but I I became familiar with the term disordered eating and I knew about eating disorders, but I didn't know that there was a thing called disordered eating. And when I thought about eating disorders I instantly jumped to either end of the spectrum like that. Anorexia is the really intense, really serious medical problems that people go under. I'm not saying disordered eating isn't a serious medical problem, but there can be disordered eating like here and there, or really bad disordered eating.
Speaker 1:Luckily, I was on. There's a big distinction, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, and I think I got introduced to the term disordered eating by one of my really good friends, parents. Uh, I've been living with him and his family for a period of time and they all eat very well, eat very healthy, uh, and they enjoy their food and obviously, having having lived with that, they could sort of see my particularly the the parent I'm referencing could see my eating pattern, could see how I eat. It's I'm sure you know as well. It's always a bit unnatural eating around others when you're eating for a goal, because a lot of the time I would, I wouldn't have dinner with them because I'd be like, right, I need to, I want to be at this weight by next month, kind of thing. So I'm gonna set out of having this nice treat, but voluntarily, in like a normal way, in like a this period, right now, this four weeks, I just need to lock in for a little bit. So it's a lot better.
Speaker 2:But then when I would, when I would enjoy my food, I was restricting myself so much that when I started enjoying my food I'd almost take it over the top and I'm quite a big emotional eater and, yeah, I'd find myself spiraling a little bit. And then, when I spiraled the next day, I would automatically go right, I'm in excess of X, y, z, let me just skip breakfast and lunch today and then just have a meal at the end. And to me I was like right, what matters is I've had these seven days, I've had this caloric goal. I've sort of ruined my buffer that I've set myself up for in the first four days. So now I'm going to and I got introduced to this term called purging, which was really interesting. And from there onwards, my, my, my, my friend's parents said to me it's just like I think, I think you've got disordered eating and me being me, um, arrogant and full of pride, I was like. I was like no, I can't be. I was like this is just normal, this is, this is okay. And I was almost in like self-denial when I was like saying no, like it's okay, like honestly, I'm fine, because she expressed genuine concern as a parent and I was like I appreciate your concern, but like I know what I'm doing, uh, and it's very easy to convince yourself that you're doing the right things in pursuit of the pardon me in pursuit of this goal that you're really chasing.
Speaker 2:Now, as time went on and there's a lot more like Thailand. For example, when I moved to Thailand and started training Muay Thai seriously, I underwent a lot of aha moments with that as well, and that whole experience of speaking to my friend's parent and actually learning about disordered eating and then sort of seeing the past year of my life happen, all work together to the stage I'm at now where I can very much so accept, because I've noticed it, because I've been, because I've made been made aware of the term, you sort of subconsciously start applying it to your life. And across this whole year I've I've just had moments where I've I've gone, let's say, deviated slightly more away from the path than I should have, and the next day I've gone right, what am I gonna miss out eating? What do I need to change about today? Because I fucked up a little bit yesterday and then I went right, this isn't healthy, because I shouldn't need, my yesterday's eating shouldn't affect today's eating and it should just be like more of a lifestyle than me counting every single little thing that I put in my diet. And, yeah, from there onwards I I kind of accepted, like okay, and there's a term for this that I'm currently learning about you might know it in the precision nutrition qualification and it's this obsession with, like, healthy eating which I have.
Speaker 2:I I constantly look at the food I eat every day, how much I'm eating, and I think now it's got into a much more healthier way, because there are days where I just don't count my food. There's days where I have two sessions a day. I'm running in the morning, I'm training in the evening and I just know I need to get good food in. Just that is, if I'm hungry, I'm going to eat and I'm just going to make it good and healthy. So it's a lot healthier now.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I did notice that I've got this problem where I struggle to let myself enjoy food a little bit and it sometimes affects my next day where I'm finding myself removing food, removing calories, and I was like right, I think my parents' friend was onto something because I am undergoing this process of I binge because I restrict too much and then I purge because I over binge, because I've been restricting too much. And it's great now because I've become so clairvoyant and self-aware of it. So now if I've gone a little bit off the rails and I've had too much food, I wake up in the morning and I don't say to myself right, normally I would be cutting out loads of food, cutting out carbs for the day, just eating my protein. But now I'm like, okay, one day, one day you're holding a little bit more water weight. That's playing a bit of a toll on your mental. You look a bit puffier but you haven't put on but three kilos of fat.
Speaker 2:Your body's just undergone a slight change, which is natural from the foods that you're eating, which, for most people, binging involves carbohydrates, a lot of sweet stuff. And, yeah, I just went right. I'm just going to go back to my normal diet, go back to exercising, make today good and that's it. Like that is one little blimp in the whole week. That doesn't need to have this knock-on effect with the rest of my eating. That will just contribute to the cycle.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I'm really thankful that my, my friend's parent pointed that out to me, because I think I would still not understand the term disordered eating and when, looking at eating disorders, I'd be like, right, I'm not anorexic, so I'm okay, but that's not how an eating disorder works.
Speaker 2:It's about being able to look at a plate of nice food and not go, wow, so how many calories is this going to set me back, and that's the thought process I grew up having, and I'm sure you can understand as well from a bodybuilding perspective. When you're cutting, you're wanting to be so meticulous with what you have and like even the idea that, like, you've measured out all your food and then someone comes up and says I can have a bite, and you're like, oh my, my God, this is going to throw off my back for the day and you can't explain it to someone because you can't teach someone to care about the things that you care about. But I think that was such an important thing that I learned in my life is like drawing that line between I'm working toward the goal and this is becoming a really unhealthy habit that's causing me more mental anxiety than what it's worth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is a lot and I'm really proud of you for you know you said clairvoyance and that clarity. It's wonderful to see you on the other side with this awareness and, you know, making the choices that are better for you. But before we expand on a couple of things you said, shout out to your friend's mom, that is not an easy conversation.
Speaker 2:My name is Jane. I'll give her a shout out.
Speaker 1:That is not an easy conversation to have and it is from a place of love and care and it's important.
Speaker 1:It's important especially when you're younger, but in general it can impact everybody, everybody. So if we're talking about a mental diagnosis, mental illness, which is an eating disorder, it can impact everybody and we're not qualified, neither you are qualified, to talk about it, but it's good to at least recognize the signs to send someone to a mental health professional. But even when it comes to disordered eating, like Jane noticed, it's good to point it out because, like you were saying, we get, especially if you have that identity association. You know you're going through your own metamorphosis and you're growing and it's just good to have a different perspective so you can recognize it, because we're in a little mind loop of our own and I'm glad that you have come out the other side and it seems like it's pretty recent as well, right, like you just shared that it was even while you were in Thailand, which was I saw you a month ago, so it's been somewhat recent. So, yeah, it's, the term that you were talking about is called orthorexia, it is.
Speaker 2:That's the one, yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's part of this industry, that it's my personal because, having gone through some of my versions of what you described, I've had similar stories and really vocal about it. It's the argument that I have about. You know, when we say healthy eating or we fixate on the fit visual that we see, and I feel that as a collective in this industry, we have perpetuated some of that, where certain things that are helpful tools like it's actually helpful to understand measurements, it's helpful to know how much five ounces of chicken is like right, certain things are just tools, but when you compound them and it becomes so obsessive, some of them, you know, you move away from what is supposed to be encouraging fitness, encouraging wellness, encouraging healthy eating, to now an opposite side of the spectrum, where you're still consumed with thoughts about food. So, whereas you know you mentioned anorexia, we have bulimia, which are, if you don't know, for everyone listening eating disorders are actually have the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses very serious.
Speaker 1:On the flip side we have, you know, orthorexia, where you're like well, this person's just eating, well, like they're eating healthy, they're doing the, the clean eating. If it also crosses over to the fact that you're constantly thinking about food and obsess about food and you can't sometimes eat the damn cookie and sometimes you can't join your friends for dinner and you're constantly obsessed about it, like and I'm not saying to say no when there is a specific goal, like again, it's like the grand scheme of things that also becomes a problem. So you might see some especially you know we're both in the social world you might see a visual of someone that's telling you certain things to do and you're like, well, they have absinthe, so what they're talking about, you don't know if they have disordered eating or an eating disorder or their own insecurities or a bunch of other things underneath those layers that they're projecting and they're portraying and you're taking it as gospel and it might push on your own insecurities, potentially on purpose, potentially not on purpose. And so all of that to say thank you for sharing that. Shout out to Jane again, I'm so glad that you have these awareness pieces.
Speaker 1:And full circle back to half an hour ago. You mentioned sustainability, so let's talk about that, shall we? Let's? Let's switch topics a little bit. Um, to me, you basically described it. I think we're on the same wavelength, so I would love for you to share what does sustainability mean to you and how does it look now?
Speaker 2:Right. So what sustainability means to me and this is still a learning curve for me, because I'd be lying if I said that I found what real sustainability is for me but I'm getting there. As I said, this year in Thailand has taught me a lot about my own eating habits, and my eating is the best that it's ever been, and it's also filled with the most knowledge behind it, but I still haven't found my perfect fit. But the thing is with building a sustainable plan is you're not going to have the right answer right off the bat. It is a trial and error process adding in certain things, taking out and for me, at the moment, I'm undergoing that process, but it's got to a stage where it's a lot better. And the main areas that I focus on when looking at sustainability is what will I be able to follow for the longest amount of time? Because that's all that it boils down to when I think, looking at my goals right now, it's maintaining a weight most of the year around, my fight weight, or even now I'm actually trying to move down a weight class, getting to that stage where I'm nearer the fight weight that I want to be without impeding my social life, so I can still go to a restaurant with my friends and I can have a starter, main and a dessert if I want to, and that's not gonna unless obviously I've got I've got fight weight to make outside of camp. That's not gonna throw me off too badly. So being able to first mentally accept that little break me, go to a restaurant and not feel anxious about it or guilty about it which some people listening like this might sound so foreign to you, being like you were just going to a restaurant, like why do you feel anxious? It's like you don't understand that there was a period in life where, like, the calories matter so much that you feel like you've undone all your hard work by enjoying a cake or enjoying chocolate or enjoying something which is not deemed as nutritious or healthy. So yeah, sustainability for me is accepting that I can have these, these nice foods and still still look really good, look lean, be on weight and perform well.
Speaker 2:And then what? What other things would I throw into sustainability? I guess having a having a diet which doesn't feel like a diet, if that makes sense. So not even from a restrictive, perfect, uh, restrictive perspective, but more so from actually eating nice food, and I guess this all literally ties into the longevity of it, being able to stick to it. So being able to stick to it, basically for it being sustainable is just all about making it as appealing as possible for me, accepting what normal life looks like and stopping being so calorie orientated. That's what I've. That's what I've really tried cutting out, personally is stop looking at the end number and start looking more at the habits around it and the contents of the food. So, yeah, there's a lot more things to discuss regarding sustainability, but in my eyes, that's the focus for me right now, and obviously it changes person to person, because different people struggle with different things.
Speaker 1:Thank you for sharing.
Speaker 2:Must have been a good explanation.
Speaker 1:I was listening and smiling.
Speaker 2:That could be a bit of the outtakes.
Speaker 1:I was talking, that's hilarious Must have been a good, good explanation it honestly was, and I was smiling as you were talking, as you saw, because it sounds like you found you know approach that fits you and you're moving towards it, which is great. And one word you said stood out for me. I want to highlight that longevity, absolutely right, right. So sustainability, all the points you said agree. And then the things I would add are some of the things that we are doing. So, if we're talking about Muay Thai and combat athletes making weight, obviously that particular practice is not sustainable. It's meant to be for a short term.
Speaker 1:But, like, if you zoom out to a macro level, you look at the big picture. What you're trying to do is have longevity in sport, in life, and like, what are those habits, like you mentioned, what are all of those different things that support you as an individual in the context that you're in? So you know you're in the UK right now, we were in Thailand, whether in Canada, like certain things will change because of our environment and our geography, but overall, how how much can you again sustain? I object, how can you sustain this? How much longevity can you have?
Speaker 1:And then, with intention, for specific timeframes, you have strategies like oh, I have a fight coming up now I'm going to do a little weight cut. But you can approach it differently. Instead of that extremes right, that roller coaster, that was that up and down cycle, like you could be. Hey, my starting weight is closer to my fight weight. I only have to do a couple tweaks and then I'm kind of going to have a smooth weight cut. I know what to do for my fight, I know how to come out. You know that's all part of it. So that's sustainability for athletes. It's like, of course you may not be able to do the exact same thing for the next 10 years, but it's the longevity so wanted to point that out.
Speaker 2:I think an important thing to consider in all of that as well is longevity and sustainability. Looks really different for a lot of people, and one thing I'm going to mention as I'm sure you've probably heard and a lot of people that are watching this have heard is like taking your picture as a whole. So you said you've got these little. You've got these little short-term strategies for making weight. Let's say, for example, you're going into your fight camp. Now you have to ask yourself a broader question of year round, what weight can I stay at to make that small strategy a lot easier and I don't need to die as hard? But okay, what steps do I need to take year round out of my habits that are going to allow me to stay closer to that weight? But then for others, like and this is what I was going to mention like paddy paddy pimlet, the ufc fighter. He's he's very notorious online by a lot of uh dieticians for how, how he eats and he his fight weight to his walk around weight varies by like 20 30 kilos and he undergoes these like strenuous weight cuts. And don't get me wrong, they're not. They're obviously very unhealthy for your body, but in his head, mentally. As far as we, that's what sustainability looks like to him the fact that he needs to diet so hard in fight camp and he makes weight and he performs well he's doing very well in the UFC at the moment. If he needs to stuff his face with food to feel like a normal person all that time outside of camp, if that mentally resets him and he's in a good place. And to him we can't really understand what goes on in his head. But if that's what he needs so that he can undergo those fight camps, all power to that person.
Speaker 2:I think you need to. I think you really need to. There's so many. The point I'm trying to make is there's so many things to consider on like a small scale, bigger scale, and it's finding that equilibrium between everything, where you're like I can keep undergoing this process of spending five weeks losing a lot of weight and then outside of camp doing what I need to do, so that I'm mentally prepared for when they come up to me and say, okay, you've got a fight date in six weeks. You're ready to really knuckle down because, as you probably know, in those weeks leading up, that's where you really need to be meticulous and that's where you sacrifice a bit of the balance side of life. You might not be going out for meals because you've got that short term, really specific goal that you want to strive for.
Speaker 1:Thanks for expanding on that. You brought up a couple of really essential points to strive for. Thanks for expanding on that. You brought up a couple of really essential points. And yes, I think we all most of us that are fight fans can visualize that scene, that interview, where patty's just chomping on a pizza and he's like I'd rather be fat and happy.
Speaker 1:I remember that that was me trying to have his real advice but yes, the point of that is, yeah, we're not in his head. Maybe that is sustainable for him, but for the rest of us perhaps not. It's unless you're and again to point out here, that is a professional, paid athlete, that's his actual job. For someone else that's amateur or like if you're fighting more often, because patty and a lot of ufcs are fighting weekly or monthly, like they have like one or two fights a year so they can have these extreme cuts, but for the majority of people listening to this probably not, and so what we're trying to do is minimize those extremes and to sort of, perhaps, instead of having those massive roller coasters, you're just sort of riding and sometimes you hit a little speed bump. That's the visual we want. Let's not go like crashing down 90 degrees and then like coming back up. So, yeah, the fact that it looks different for everyone is the key point there. And as you're putting in the work you said, mentally, emotionally, physically, and that's sustainability, because all of it together is what holistic nutrition is.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right Now. Now I know that you are in the middle of precision nutrition right now and you have obviously shared over the past hour a lot of personal experience. You know some lessons learned the hard way, but your passion for it has always been really obvious. So I know that you are personally working on some. You know future learned the hard way, but your passion for it has always been really obvious so I know that you are personally working on some.
Speaker 1:You know future goals for yourself, including an upcoming guide. What will that include? Share away?
Speaker 2:right, yes, so I have an upcoming guide that I'm writing. It's a very foreign concept to me. I've never done something like it. The reason why I wanted to write the guide I think is important to touch on is with nutrition. There isn't a one-size-fits-all answer to anything and because of that, the analogy I like to use is like if you have an injury, if you google that injury, you could probably find a web page saying that you might die if you really looked hard hard enough for it. Like if, if you really looked hard enough for it, like if you really looked hard enough.
Speaker 2:I'm sure everyone's had the I don't know what this is like. I've got something wrong with me, something hurts and it comes up. You need to go to the hospital. But yeah, the same applies for food. Right, you have all these questions. You have all these questions about nutrition, about what you need to do, and you can find an answer for almost anything, and that's that also plays into the shiny new object syndrome, where I had a problem when I was younger and keto was something that happened to come up on my computer screen and it caught my attention because it's something new. Naturally, as human beings, we're all seeking new, new things to pay attention to. It's only human. Now, what I wanted to do with my guide is essentially write, write a document that fighters can use, or just regular people, and really dissect the very like that first layer of nutrition, basically putting all that information that you find online into this one pot. And then me, from my own personal experience, distinguishing all the slight differences, all the slight obstacles that you might come up against in all those situations, and a prime example being referring to that keto diet in my guide I I am speaking about why carve the king? I'm sure you've had carve the king in terms of energy. If you're trying to do keto and be a fighter and you're undergoing all of this heavy anaerobic exercise throughout the day, it's not conducive. Okay, you want to.
Speaker 2:Let's go through the thought process of someone who might be might be starting muay thai, um, might be a little bit out of shape, and they they go down this route of okay, I want to lose weight, what do I need to do? And keto comes up as an option. Okay, I'm just going to do keto. And then they don't really consider it like, I want to do muay thai and I want to fight this weight. So I'm just going to do keto to lose the weight and then also go to muay thai. But then their muay thai sessions are awful and then they search okay, um, why do I have no energy in my muay thai sessions? What's your carb intake looking like? But I'm doing keto, I can't have carbs. Why can't fats work? And you start fats work.
Speaker 2:You can imagine someone who has zero new knowledge at all. They go down this rabbit hole and instantly they've got 15 different questions about how they can make this goal work for them. Because balancing performance and balancing losing weight is difficult. It's something that you need to find equilibrium between. This is where my guide comes in, because I have gone through this. I know for a fact if you're in X situation, you're going to be given Y and Z as options. Now, if you choose to go down Y, this is probably a better option, and this is why this is probably the better option. A lot of people tend to go down Z, but you can go down, but here is why that isn't the best option to do for this particular situation.
Speaker 2:There is so much to speak about with nutrition. Too many things, too many things like it's the thing that you can constantly learn about and for me, I just wanted people to have to have a document in front of them which they could reference, and it sort of narrows that down a little bit and, I guess, saves a lot of people a lot of time scrolling and, uh, feeling confused. Um, there's a lot more that I can say, but I think you understand the general. The general intention behind the book is really getting people that foundational layer so that they can really start implementing better habits in their life and start feeling better about their training without trying 15 different things that are very time consuming and, for example, in my situation, me trying all these different things actually ended up accumulating into disordered eating. So it's all saving people having to go through those processes and the foundational layer of info which they can build upon themselves hearing your passion about it because I know you're still creating it.
Speaker 1:But just like we started on our call, it's very much you're putting yourself into it, so I appreciate that it sounds like you're making a guide for past you. I couldn't really benefit it, you know, if you could.
Speaker 2:You know that is a very good way to describe it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if we were entering the multiverse and you went and visited Spider-Man version Saks in a different multiverse, you would be like here, young one, read this book. It's a good place to start. One thing that I would love to point out that I really appreciate is the scenarios, because it's like people seeing themselves in this scenario when you understand why, instead of just seeing more information. So hopefully someone listening will just really see themselves in what you're sharing. And, yeah, stay tuned for the guide coming out. And so we do know that I have nutrition coaching and have my own portal To Alex's point.
Speaker 1:There's so much to talk about and we are all here to help each other. Someone may feel a little bit more relatable to you, and that's the point here is that it's camaraderie, because we're all on the same mission. I hope more people, I just want more people to have these resources. So if there's another one that's helping someone, then fantastic. And then where mine differs is I've been doing this now for over a decade and it's very much to dig a little deeper, to really explore some of those questions about yourself, so that one's down in the show notes as well.
Speaker 2:I think it's really important, as you said, is like every person has. Like every person has their own set of experiences to offer with everything that they do, and it's almost like if you're, if you're dealing with someone who's going through something, it's hard to put yourself in the person's shoes. It's hard to put yourself in the person's shoes. For example, I have my own experiences in um, in everything that I've learned about across, let's say, the last three, four years, and I also have how my mentor was at the time, how I dealt with these issues head on, and I think a lot of what the internet offers and that someone who actually has some knowledge to offer regarding nutrition is.
Speaker 2:The internet describes the problem but you can't really resonate with. There's a very plain and simple ones and zero solution. But almost you need that understanding of like right, I understand it's really crappy what you're going through right now, but listen, this is you. It's that point of understanding how you got there, to understand how you got out afterwards and that's the beauty of nutrition is just like there isn't one person that can offer you all the answers. It's very much so like a lot of different people that have so much to share with each other, and then you can pick what applies to you and you get this big cake of advice from, let's say, four different people. All of it great advice, and it's all somehow fit into your life and helped you, and that's. That's what's amazing about it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I'm glad you touched on that. I've just I've worked with so many coaches. I've done so many different things like we, you know, and you know I bring my lens. But that, I think, is the point, is that we all have certain language, like you pointed out, your friend's mom pointed out you weren't familiar with it, and so the more people you work with and the more things you expose yourself to, there's more data you gather it.
Speaker 1:My, at this point in my career, it's not just gathering more information. I'm really about the implementation and really supporting that longevity and sustainability we were talking about. And it's like I have come out the other side now many, many years, through my own versions of disordered eating, that I have such a different lens that I see things and it's so beautiful because you'll keep growing and so well. Like you know, you'll have your guide, which I'm so pumped about, but fully you're going to have another version later. Like as you grow in this industry too, cause I know you're entering like more coaching as well, so as you continue building even more your own knowledge kind of shifts, you have different stuff. Like there's some stuff I used to preach religiously five years ago but now I'm like.
Speaker 1:So it's just really interesting as we all evolve, and I think that's the important portion, especially being on this podcast is that there's constant humility. We're always students for life and we're all here to help each other. That was a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for your vulnerability and for everything you shared, alex, and one last question for you what is one golden nugget or last piece of advice you want to leave with our listeners?
Speaker 2:right, I had, I was having a think about this, uh, earlier. My one. First of all, thank you for having me as well. Amazing first podcast experience, definitely gonna go down in the memories really well. So, yeah, it's been a very pleasurable experience. I'm really nice to chat. Actually, one piece of advice that I would leave the viewers with and this is open to so many different contexts but something that's very apparent in a lot of walks of my life is just to be patient with things and it will all eventually work out if you just keep doing the right small things day by day. And, like I said, that's open for context. It can be. It can be with food, because a lot, of, a lot of the issues that I came across was just wanting to look a certain way in a really short time period, and that lack of patience led me down to bad habits and all spiraling out.
Speaker 1:But yeah, everything that you do, just be patient, do the right things consistently and really give, give things the time to play out love that very important advice applicable to everything, and I had one quote that popped into my head there is no shortcut to any place worth going that's lovely, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:Don't. Don't look for shortcuts.
Speaker 1:Do do the things that you know are right and and wait your time your time will come and your time has come and I'm very excited for seeing your guide and your evolution into more of this nutrition. Thank you for sharing your passion, your story, your time with us and, yeah, catch you next time lovely.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much thank you so much for your attention and for listening to this episode. If anything in the episode was hard for you to hear or perhaps it triggered something in disordered eating or mental health, we strongly encourage you to please seek professional resources, and some of these are listed in the show notes, as well as my nutrition fundamentals course that is included in human first, athlete second portal. Please check everything out in the show notes. Thank you so much for tuning in. Catch you next time. Thanks for watching.
