What Busy Mom Entrepreneurs Actually Need to Know About Food with Hillary Ervin

Laura sits down with registered dietitian Hillary Ervin for a refreshingly honest conversation about nutrition, body image, motherhood, and the pressure women feel to “do it all perfectly.”

Together, they reflect on their shared history in the early online fitness industry, the harmful extremes many women were taught in the name of health, and how nutrition and wellness can look very different in a busy season of motherhood and entrepreneurship.

This episode is full of practical, compassionate advice for women who are tired of all-or-nothing thinking around food and movement and want a more realistic, sustainable approach to caring for themselves.

In this episode you will hear:

00:00 – Laura introduces registered dietitian Hillary Ervin

01:24 – Reflecting on their early online fitness industry experiences

04:33 – Motherhood, changing priorities, and how quickly life shifts

05:44 – The harmful “thin at all costs” mentality many women experienced

07:56 – What women actually need to know about protein intake

09:48 – Looking back at restrictive dieting culture and “protein fluff”

12:19 – Why trying to recreate your old body often creates frustration

15:13 – Why nutrition can feel harder than movement in motherhood

16:33 – The mental load of feeding yourself and your family

19:34 – Realistic nutrition strategies for busy moms

20:52 – Setting lower, more achievable expectations around food

24:11 – Letting go of perfection around meals and cooking

28:46 – Why nutrition doesn’t need to be complicated

30:54 – Focus on the basics before worrying about the “perfect” diet

33:36 – Why extreme challenges rarely create lasting results

34:42 – “Doing less” and being more patient often works better

Hillary's Links:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dietitian.hillary/

Website: https://www.nutritionunbound.com/

Join This Mother Means Business : www.thismothermeansbusiness.com

Laura's Links:
• Website
• Laura's Instagram
• LJSocial Instagram 
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Pinterest
• TikTok

Transcript

Laura Sinclair (00:03.282)
Welcome back to another episode of This Mother Means Business. Today's episode is going to be a fun one. I have the incredible Hilary Ervin with me. I've known Hilary for a very long time. Hilary is one of the few people in my online world that knows me from like before I even owned a gym, which is really, really exciting. So we're not talking about that on the show today. That would be a whole other episode that you and I did not plan for. But we had the shared experience of starting our online business in the same

Hillary Ervin (00:26.381)
you

Laura Sinclair (00:32.988)
company and now we do very different things and we're going to talk about it, which I cannot wait. But Hillary is an incredible registered dietitian. Hillary, welcome to this Mother Means business.

Hillary Ervin (00:41.944)
Thank you, Laura. I'm so glad to be here. It's been a long time coming with a lot of fun scheduling adjustments, so I'm really glad to be here.

Laura Sinclair (00:51.676)
Do ever think about like old versions of yourself? Cause I love to do this. Like, could you imagine the version of ourself how many years ago now? Like 10 years ago, like saying to ourselves, Hey, one day you and I are going to record a podcast episode. We'll have, we'll be mothers. We'll be doing completely different work. And you're doing similar work, but way better than you were doing before.

And we're gonna talk about it. Like, I think if we had said that to ourselves 10 years ago, we would have been like, there's no way any of that's gonna happen.

Hillary Ervin (01:24.69)
I would have never imagined talking on a podcast or even really showing myself in my face to the public, other than what I was encouraged to show at that time, like myself in communicating and connecting this way. Can't imagine that.

Laura Sinclair (01:34.577)
Yes.

Laura Sinclair (01:40.219)
Yes.

Laura Sinclair (01:45.018)
No, Hillary and I survived some shared trauma. Let's just put it that way. This is not what this episode is about, but Hillary and I have some shared trauma from a terrible leadership experience that we had when we were working for somebody else. And look at us now, both working for ourselves. We did it. We did. We did. We were part of a company that started in 2015 that was like before online business was online business. And it was as terrible as you can imagine. But we are here to talk about

Hillary Ervin (02:00.182)
We did it and we learned a lot of what not to do and here we are.

Laura Sinclair (02:14.212)
you and your journey and shed some light on some of the things that you've learned because you stayed in the same industry. I ran as far away as I could possibly, but you bettered yourself and you do it differently. So I know you and our listeners might be meeting you for the first time. So are you open to introducing yourself?

Hillary Ervin (02:31.662)
Yes. So I'm Hillary. I'm a registered dietitian and I started my path towards becoming a registered dietitian largely from some of the experiences that Laura and I had during our time together. And I wanted to learn more and learn the ins and outs and the science and the how to, and really expand on my knowledge because I loved

working with people and I loved nutrition, but I just needed to know more and spend more time learning. So I went back to school around the time that you and I were working.

um together in the 2015-2017 kind of time frame and earned another degree as a registered dietitian and I now own my business nutrition unbound and I'm going on six years of having this business which is incredible to say I started it in 2020 in May of 2020 and I work with women I love working with

women who have goals outside of the day-to-day where maybe they want to change their body composition or learn how to just eat for themselves versus whatever is on Instagram or TikTok at the time and use nutrition as a vehicle to do all of the other things in life that they want to do.

And to add to that, one of the really important things for me is reminding whoever I work with and also making sure the space that I create is one where it is okay to want to change your body. And it's also totally fine if you don't want to and you have other goals. You don't have to be shamed into one choice or the other. So that's a little bit about me.

Laura Sinclair (04:33.254)
I love that. And she's a mom. an adorable daughter. She's so cute. So sh-

Hillary Ervin (04:37.07)
I have a three-year-old and she is very she's very fun and boisterous and adventurous so we are always on the go.

Laura Sinclair (04:49.712)
I have issues three now. Nothing marks the pass of time quite like a child. You can't appreciate, you don't appreciate it before. I think you have kids and then you realize how quickly it actually passes.

Hillary Ervin (05:02.314)
It is so wild because you think that you have all this time and then you look at them and they're becoming these like people who can talk and have wants and goals and they're their own little person and it's time goes by really fast.

Laura Sinclair (05:18.706)
I mean, my daughter is gonna be nine this year, which feels insane. That feels like an insane thing. Nine, we're talking about like girl stuff and periods and hormones. And like, we're having to have these very real conversations. She doesn't have hers yet, but I know it's probably coming because it's coming way sooner for girls now than it ever did when we were girls, but gosh, it does. It happens so fast. It's so, so fast that it's crazy. It's totally crazy.

Hillary Ervin (05:42.446)
Thank you.

Laura Sinclair (05:44.006)
I know, it's crazy. I wanna talk about something that you just mentioned though. You were talking about bodies and I was sort of, as we were reflecting about our journey together and I think about our time nutrition coaching in the fitness space, doing macros and it was like, there was one goal. It was like be as thin and small as possible. And I would love to meet everyone that I coached and just apologize and give them a hug and say, I'm so sorry for starving you. But.

Food is so much more than that. And I know a lot of our listeners are moms, or most of our listeners are moms. If you're listening to show and you're not a mom, I'm not sure why you're listening to this. But a lot of us go through big body changes when we have children. And I meet a lot of women that say, you know, I just want to lose weight. And so I'm going to do that by starving myself or just not eating enough. But we know that that's not actually effective. And certainly as entrepreneurs, that shows up in lots of different ways. Is that fair?

Hillary Ervin (06:36.629)
Absolutely, you're spot on.

Laura Sinclair (06:39.122)
So there's a lot, feel like protein is the big trend right now. It's like, I mean, I'm sort of perimenopausal-ish, but it feels like everywhere you talked about TikTok and social media, it feels like everywhere is like protein, protein this, protein that. So can you give us the real, the dietician's take on why every menopausal woman, perimenopausal woman needs to be eating protein in all things at all times? Is that actually true? Tell us more.

Hillary Ervin (07:04.682)
I appreciate protein has had its moment and there's been more discussions around how protein is important and why we should care about it because I think for a good chunk of time there was the association of protein and being really bulky or like getting really big if you eat too much and that can be really intimidating especially for women who don't want to have that.

Laura Sinclair (07:08.849)
is

Hillary Ervin (07:31.328)
appearance or that aesthetic you don't want to get bulky. So there's that shying away from it. And I love that there is more discussion around protein. However, I also don't, I don't think that you need to have protein soda or protein popcorn or whatever product is out and available because protein-ifying everything

Laura Sinclair (07:48.178)
chips.

Hillary Ervin (07:56.802)
can really take the joy out of the food. tends to not taste really great. And there's a lot of other nutrients to come into play. So protein for women in general, it is really helpful because it gives you the nutrition for like your muscles to either stay their same size or to grow so they're not getting smaller. And especially as we age and as we get older, want muscles, we want our bones to be strong, we want to

have the nutrition so that things are not breaking down in our body. And it's also too much of a good thing can still be too much. So when I think about protein and how much should we be eating, a good general recommendation that is not flashy or exciting is to have a

try to have a palm sized protein in each meal. And again, I know that's not super fun, but that is effective. And it'll help you to get kind of like the baseline of what would be supportive for you. Bonus, if you can add in protein to a snack or other times in the day, that can kind of help increase it a little bit, but it doesn't need to be in every single thing that you eat. And it's okay to buy the regular chips.

or the regular soda or insert protein product that's available right now. You can eat the real deal if that's what we want to call those other products.

Laura Sinclair (09:25.031)
Yeah.

Laura Sinclair (09:34.172)
No, I love that. It's protein soda. I don't think I've seen that here. That must be an American thing. We don't have that in Canada. That's why.

Hillary Ervin (09:40.02)
It is, I recently received a photo of protein soda and I just, I have not tried it. I don't think that I want to because I just can't imagine it tastes very good.

Laura Sinclair (09:48.05)
No. No, I remember when, you know, in 2016, so when we were the height of, you doing what we were doing, and I was about the size of my pinky finger and weighing and measuring every single thing that I ate and not licking the spoon. It was a lot of like protein fluff. Remember that? You would take like the protein powder and like xanthan gum, I think, and like whip it together. Like, and I had the worst gastro from this, but it didn't matter.

because my calorie, like it's so wild to think about that version of myself. Do you want to interject?

Hillary Ervin (10:24.018)
I was going to tell you I vividly remember that combination and now knowing that xanthan gum creates so much GI stress when you consume it, the amount that we did, I feel so bad for our digestive systems in general because it made a lot of food you could eat and then you didn't want to eat because your stomach hurt and that's really not okay in so many different ways.

Laura Sinclair (10:50.738)
Really not okay. Really not okay. And I'm gonna get vulnerable for second because when I think sometimes about that version of myself in 2016 with no children, working for where we were working, working out for hours a day, eating protein fluff in xanthan gum, and then I was on paper the fittest I've ever been in my life. Like I had a six pack, I was itty bitty. And now fast forward 10 years, I'm a mom, I have two kids.

and I have a business and I serve my clients and the podcasts and we're running events and all these things are happening. And I've had moments like little windows where I'd be like, I'm gonna track my macros again. And then I do it and then I feel like I fail and I hate it. Or I'm like, I'm so tired. I don't wanna actually weigh and measure this. I'm just gonna have what's already in the fridge even though that doesn't hit my macros. And I have been telling myself, food related, that I'm like, I just don't have discipline to do this anymore. I'm not the same.

as I was and I'm sure that you see this a lot with the women that come to you, even though I'm a person that eats pretty well, I have the information, I exercise a lot, like I live a very active life, my body's just not the same. And sure, there are days where I'm like, I would love to go back to my 2020, 2016 body, less the xanthan gum, certainly. But I do, I tell myself that the story is like, I'm just not disciplined enough in that area of my life.

And I'd be curious to know what your take is on this. Help me, Hillary.

Hillary Ervin (12:19.816)
I think that this is such a really, it's a really important conversation to have, especially for women. And this can be, it can be body composition related, or it can be career or related to so many other things outside of body and food. But the expectation of ourselves to mirror a version of us in a very different time of life with

We had very different schedules. Our bodies were younger. We had a lot of just our

our points of focus were far different and trying to mirror that into what life is like right now is not realistic. And even though we can logically understand that there can be that part in our brain that tells us, well, if you just try a little bit harder, if you are a little more disciplined, if you don't eat this cookie or if you weigh all of your food, then that'll get you moving forward and you can get back to

you were at that time. And we can appreciate during those times, I mean, we arguably looked really healthy. And we're probably like, our bodies looked to be goals, right? But at what cost? And I think that the idea of becoming more disciplined in this season of life,

actually moves us farther away from the direction that we want to go in because we can't go backwards to begin with. And becoming more disciplined takes away from us being present in the moment now. And quite frankly, we're not going to get that same result as we did the first time.

Hillary Ervin (14:15.266)
And often I see in working with women, the more restriction and the more, the higher our expectations are of ourselves to do certain things, the more difficult it becomes because we have more rigidity around our thinking and we allow ourselves less flexibility or we're less likely to ask for help because we want to be disciplined. We want to do it like we did before and it creates a really difficult cycle.

to break out of where if we maybe take lessons we learned from the past or from previous experiences where we met said goals, we take that knowledge and then see how we can apply it to life now, we're likely to be a lot more successful because we can actually do things that are realistic for today versus 10 years ago, no kids, lot more time, very different life.

Laura Sinclair (15:13.574)
Yeah, no, I love that. That's so insightful. And I'm as I'm sitting here listening to you talk, I'm like, okay, I was able to do that with exercise. I think about, you know, what I used to define as being a good workout, like as a CrossFit gym owner, and someone that you know, wanted to can was like relatively competitive and CrossFit. It was like, if I wasn't dead on the puddle on the floor after like that wasn't an acceptable workout. And now that I'm almost 40, and my body does not desire any of that. And I know I had

Hashimoto's disease at one point, which I was able to reverse by doing things like reformer Pilates and chilling out. And so I was able to do that with working out, but nutrition, feels like this piece that feels harder and maybe it's because it's like, it's such an everyday thing rather than whereas working out, it's like I'm moving my body is moving my body, but eating is not eating, you know, like am I making sense?

Hillary Ervin (16:07.37)
Absolutely. this is something like, it's a great point because we have to eat every single day for the rest of our lives. And we're having to think about, you know, for most of us breakfast, lunch, dinner. And then if we have kiddos who have very particular food preferences, we have to like figure out are, you know, are our kiddos going to eat this?

Laura Sinclair (16:24.754)
for everyone else.

Hillary Ervin (16:33.848)
Do we have events at night that are going to impact dinner? There's so many more, just so much more we have to think about. And that makes it so challenging. And in addition to that, I think a lot of people in general, like the start of the day feels good.

you wake up, you have a great breakfast, maybe you're like quote unquote using like really strong air quotes right now, you're being good. And then as the day goes on, it becomes more difficult. And then by the time you get to the evening when you're unwinding, that's when you feel like you really need to be like more disciplined and try harder.

And it's also really difficult to do that because maybe you haven't eaten enough during the day because you've been trying to be good and you've been making choices all day long for whatever areas of life. So your capacity and your mental bandwidth to care is so much lower in the evening. So if you go into the evening,

without having eaten very much over the day and you are mentally tired, that makes it so difficult to then make the choices that you're going to feel good about and you're more likely to eat more than you're comfortable with or have more sweets or baked goods or whatever food that you might be trying to have less of, you end up having more because of all of these kind of conditions coming together to create this perfect storm.

form.

Laura Sinclair (18:12.454)
Yeah. I mean, I can certainly see myself in some of that experience. certainly like having worked with, know, I'm sitting here thinking about the 200 some odd people that you you worked with, we'd be working with back in the day, I think that like, that is very true in a lot of women's experience, certainly entrepreneurial moms, you know, we joke about like toast, crust, not being breakfast, and are many people skipping breakfast, I personally lunch is a meal that I really struggle with. Because if I don't have something

ready to go in the mic that I can just microwave often in like in certain seasons of my business and certainly right now, making time for a lunch break is hard for me. But breakfast I'm usually great at but I know lunch is my downfall. If I don't eat a good lunch, then yes, I'm going to be into what is the easiest thing to put in my mouth right now might be this cookie is a real chance that it is. I love that you name that I'd love to talk about

ways that we can avoid that. Like what are things that we can do to better resource ourselves? And I know one of the things that I love about you and your work and having had the pleasure of working with you on your business, I get to know this intimately and having known you for so long is, we started in this space that was so restrictive where I, you know, I remember, gosh, this is so terrible to even say aloud, but listen, we're here on the show. We're to do it. It would be like, well, I'm sorry you didn't hit your goals this week. I can't help you do better. And once you hit your goals, then we'll, we'll check in. Like that was a very

real thing that happened a lot. Like we were both taught to do that. Like there's a that makes me want to throw up having said it like could you imagine but and it was so restrictive and it was so like you either do it or you don't and I know you've moved so far away from that and I think a lot of women and certainly having worked in a gym and environment like I have walked with a lot of women alongside their own fitness journeys is sometimes it just feels like so impossible like I could never do it because it's too hard. It's too restrictive so

Give us some things that we can do that are going to feel like maybe foundational things that any idiot can do. Any super busy mom, like I'm saying any idiot, I'm like laughing at myself in this process as I refer to myself as the idiot. But anyone that's busy that like has a lot of things on their plate could make possible.

Hillary Ervin (20:22.604)
I want to start by sharing, I know all the things to do and I have all this knowledge and it is still really difficult for me. Lunch is very challenging because I get wrapped up in what I'm doing and I'm like, okay, five more minutes and then I'll go eat five more minutes. And then all of sudden it, an immense amount of time has passed and then I feel like garbage and it's, it's really difficult. So if you forget to eat lunch.

Laura Sinclair (20:34.354)
which is hard.

Hillary Ervin (20:52.706)
You're okay. We're going to figure out how to not skip lunch as often. And I think that's the good segue is that it's not going to be, you you wake up tomorrow and whatever challenges that you're having with nutrition and eating, they're all going to be fixed if you do these three things.

if you expect that of yourself, then you're probably setting yourself up for failure. So one of the things that I really like to do is to set realistic expectations. So that you think about like what your ideal is or what you think you should be doing and then bring that down. So for me, maybe that would have...

know that would look like eating making sure I'm eating lunch three out of the the five days of the week and then the other two maybe it's a snack or I have a cheese stick and some crackers it's not

my preferred and it's not the ideal, but I'm still eating something and I'm getting the practice in those other days. So setting the bar lower and that also is really helpful because then you can see what's working and what's not working and you can make those adjustments versus going out trying for every single day and one thing goes wrong and it kind of feels like a wash.

So set the bar a little lower. Set your expectations of yourself to be ones that you can meet and have those wins and build confidence. The other thing that I know my clients and people around me hear all the time is that convenience foods can be nutrient rich and they are A-okay. There are so many great options, especially in the US, we have a plethora of different ready-made options that

Laura Sinclair (22:41.234)
Canadians drive to Trader Joe's because you guys have some. We don't have that.

Hillary Ervin (22:45.294)
.

Trader Joe's had disco ball planters, so just if you're in the line.

But Trader Joe's, they have so many pre-made options. You have to go across the border to get them. And you, of course, there is some trade-off. You're not going to get like the perfect meal, but you can find ingredients that you feel good about and you can find your protein. You can find your fiber, fruits, veggies. All of these foods can come in a frozen meal. can prepare, you can buy frozen veggies. You can buy frozen potatoes, rice.

Is it always the most like fresh option? Not necessarily. And it still can check all of those important nutrition boxes and that can at the very minimum get you some momentum and you can build momentum and find what meals you like, what meals you don't like.

what convenience foods you do or don't like. I could very easily live off of cooking things from just frozen foods and that tends to be one of my go-to approaches because they're not going to go into the back of the fridge and be lost forever. The veggies are going to be good when you take them out. You can have that predictability and there's less

Hillary Ervin (24:11.276)
There's less urgency in times of needing to cook certain foods. So knowing convenience foods are okay, I think can be a huge stress relief because it's okay if you don't prepare everything from scratch. If that's your goal and you want to get there, awesome, cool. It's okay if not there right now. The other thing that I think is important to know is your meals don't have to be beautiful.

I know on social media we see really, just really gorgeous meals that are plated really well and they're colorful and they just look like you're eating at a restaurant. And I think for most of us, that's not the reality. My meals tend to pretty ugly. My sister has told me several times that she would prefer not to see the ugly food that I'm cooking because it doesn't look good at all.

and adjusting the expectations that your meals need to look a certain way can also be really freeing. Of course, there is something to having a meal that's presented nicely and if you have the capacity or the time to do that, by all means, go for it. But it's also okay if you have a bowl of random food that tastes good, that also works.

So I the overarching theme here is that it is okay if it doesn't look like you think it should. And you also don't have to have everything from scratch or fresh, or you want to spend hours in the kitchen. I don't like cooking at all. And that's often something I think people are surprised of, given my profession. I don't cook hardly ever. My husband does most of our cooking because

I'm not very great at it and I don't enjoy it. So you can have these convenience foods which I utilize so they can be the air fryer quickly or can throw them in oven really quickly and not have a lot of skill or time spent cooking either. Because I think a lot of us don't have a lot of time to be cooking and doing dishes and convenience options and finding ways you can take shortcuts really helps with that as well.

Laura Sinclair (26:21.914)
I love that the air fryer is the most amazing tool. You know what else I got that I was just listening to talk about? So I love salad. Like I actually genuinely love salad. I hate making salad because it's like so much chopping. You know I finally bought? I bought one of those chopper boxes. You know, the ones that are all on social media where you like open the lid, you put in the piece and you push it out. I just got it two weeks ago. Hillary, it is my favorite thing ever. And we talk about convenience. I'm obsessed with it.

Hillary Ervin (26:47.893)
I love

Hillary Ervin (26:51.814)
I love the chopper and I thought it was going to be just another gadget that took up space. You can chop so much in those and they're very strong.

Laura Sinclair (26:56.718)
No. It is.

I mean, they're so strong. And I made a salad in like the shortest amount of time. I couldn't believe it. I am obsessed with it now. And I've been back to eating big salads. even find myself craving vegetables, which this is all from this chopper box that I got. I was the same. I've been watching them on TikTok and on social media for years. Remember when there was that big like cucumber salad trend on TikTok? Everyone was making cucumber salads.

people were using their mandolins. I avoided that one. didn't get the mandolin. Although I think my chopper comes with a mandolin attachment. But I've been looking at these salads. was like, need to buy one of these and I never have. I just did it. And I'm like, man, this is convenience salad. It's convenient salad.

Hillary Ervin (27:42.638)
Yeah. And it's a great point of the convenience factor and how just like one little tool, especially if you can make things fun or whimsical, adding like the fun to those, like getting a cute dish, I found corning ware at the thrift store recently.

Laura Sinclair (27:55.668)
it's so fun.

Laura Sinclair (28:03.035)
on

Hillary Ervin (28:03.862)
And I was very excited to cook and store food in there because it felt very nostalgic for me. And those things can seem so silly, but if it makes you excited and you look forward to using it, I think it's worth it.

Laura Sinclair (28:19.218)
It was totally worth it. I say hi, yeah, every time I close it. it's the best. I don't know. It's the most satisfying thing. But I do think, like with anything, you have to find ways to enjoy it. I get a kick out of this chow-sauce chopper. Someone else might get a kick out of the air fryer. But I remember when we were, back in the days when I was being relatively restricted by microwavable rice cups, which are very expensive now that I have children. I'm like, those are really expensive.

Hillary Ervin (28:43.939)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Sinclair (28:46.29)
But like, yes, frozen vegetables, things that are super easy. It doesn't have to be complicated. I do think that like knowledge is power when it comes to nutrition, though. I think some people don't know what is a protein. Like I think about my parents, like, is a carrot a protein? No, a carrot's a carb. Well, no, carbs are bad for you. Carrot is still a carb. So, you know, it's so interesting. I do think that like, as we with anything, I think that we all should have a baseline knowledge.

of things that impact our lives and our businesses the same way that you should understand how your tech stack works. You probably should understand what you're putting in your body, especially as we try to optimize our lives as people that take on a ton of things. But I love how you just make it simple. Like it doesn't have to be gourmet. It doesn't have to be overly complicated. It can be easy once you kind of understand what the fundamental blocks of the whole thing look like.

Hillary Ervin (29:38.636)
Yeah, and I think doing less is more, and that probably applies to so much. With nutrition, I know that there can be so many different rabbit holes around different nutrients, or this is good and this is bad. while those things are maybe areas you want to look at and you can explore them in the future, making changes to those really like...

Laura Sinclair (29:45.264)
so much.

Hillary Ervin (30:05.646)
I don't want say small, these really, I'm trying to think of the right word for it. So you're going have to edit it. I'm trying to think, making changes to, I'm going to backtrack. So you're editing, sorry. Okay, sorry, thank you. I'm going go back.

Laura Sinclair (30:12.933)
Okay, make another note.

Laura Sinclair (30:20.978)
Just pause so everyone knows where I edited out.

Hillary Ervin (30:29.838)
So I'm trying to talk about making changes to these very hyper-focused in the weeds. I'm sorry? Okay, sorry. This is all, just my book jump out. I'm gonna start now. Making changes to these really in the weeds of things, like fine-tune details. You can do that at some point.

Laura Sinclair (30:35.11)
Like not hyper-exciting.

No, you go. got it. You got it. Go.

Hillary Ervin (30:54.146)
But you can't get there if you're not doing the core basics of what you need to do with being able to eat. You can't worry about the micronutrients or these really small details if you're not eating and you don't have a system to have meals or to grocery shop.

Those are the big ticket items to take care of. And then as you learn and as you build capacity, if you want to go down different rabbit holes by all means, go learn. You have to have that good foundation before you do that. I'm sure we can all think of different areas of any business where people. Yeah.

Laura Sinclair (31:33.028)
I mean, I'm yeah, I'm sitting here thinking about business, like, please don't spend so much time learning how to use Claude, please just learn how to actually run your business effectively first, and then you can add it if you want. But that feels that's how it feels online right now. It's like, I got Claude to do this for me. Okay, but do you have actual business foundations? Like, is there real architecture in your business? Or are we just spending our time playing with Claude? So I get it. Same thing.

Hillary Ervin (31:55.022)
Or do you know how to check if Claude or AI is correct? Do you know enough to know if they're right?

Laura Sinclair (32:00.754)
That's a whole other episode. But I think it's so interesting to me, like when we have when we talk about some of these like bigger concepts, like it all so much of it is life. Right? Like we all want to think about there's a meme or an image that's an old one that's been around. It's like a guy that's like at the bottom step and he's like just wants to get to the top step. So he's like taking his basically doing the splits and like he's trying to skip all of these steps that are so essential for

building a solid foundation of everything. And I think we are, are in a society where we want everything yesterday. We want six pack abs without doing any of the work right now. We want billion dollar businesses without, while also working five hours and spending our whole days lounging by the beach. Like these are all things that we desire, but there aren't, there are like things that have to be in place for that to happen. Those are not, does require work, does require effort and like.

but it starts with having a really solid foundation. We cannot build houses from the roof.

Hillary Ervin (33:03.68)
Yeah, exactly. And if you try to do all of the advanced things or if you try to skip the steps, you'll probably find yourself back at the start because you skipped all of the steps and you didn't actually build something that you can keep with because

I think most of us at some point either did or we saw someone do a 30 day type of challenge.

Laura Sinclair (33:33.05)
or most of our clients that we're talking about in 2015, you know, that we did these things to that did not have any real foundations.

Hillary Ervin (33:36.79)
Yes. Where exactly you dive right in, you do all of the things because you know it's for a set amount of time. There is an end date and you're making these changes, but they're not doable. You usually don't know why you're changing things the way that you are. And then when you get to that end date, well,

Laura Sinclair (33:57.141)
and

Hillary Ervin (34:01.624)
really just go right back to where you were, or you're in a place that is even more uncomfortable because you're now kind of, bouncing between different extremes. And that's really defeating. And then it makes you feel like you need to be more, more extreme or try harder or be more disciplined. And then it's this, it's just a cycle that...

really hard to be in and it's exhausting and you feel frustrated with yourself most of the time whereas doing less and being more patient which is hard actually moves you to your goals faster in the long run.

Laura Sinclair (34:42.652)
Do less. You heard it. Do less. I mean, there's so many, I need to hear that. Do less. Okay. I can do that. Thank you, Hillary. Hillary, how can our listeners learn more about you and connect with you and learn about how to work with you?

Hillary Ervin (34:54.688)
You can find me on Instagram. That's where I'm going to be the most active. My Instagram handle is dietitian.hillary or you can find me on the internet at www.nutritionunbound.com. Those are the two places that I'm easiest to find. If you have questions or you just want to say hi, you're welcome to send me a DM.

It's me there. I'm the human behind it all. So I love talking nutrition and I love answering questions. You'll probably get a long-winded answer if you ask me something because I like nuance and details, but that's probably what you'll get from me. Hopefully that southern accent that I don't know what that was that just came out. Hopefully that was the put because I don't know where that came from. With that, that is where you can find me and

I love chatting and connecting with people.

Laura Sinclair (35:55.09)
Amazing. We'll make sure we put all those links in the show notes so you can learn more about Hillary. And certainly if you're a busy mom who wants some support in eating properly and not with someone who's going to make you starve. It's not 2015 anymore. We're not doing that. We are not doing that. Make sure you connect with Hillary. I know her heart on how she works with her clients and she will over deliver. She absolutely will. She absolutely will. Hillary, thank you so much for being here and sharing your magic with our listeners. You're welcome. Thank you for listening.

Hillary Ervin (36:18.53)
thing.

Thank you.

Laura Sinclair (36:24.444)
We'll see you on the next episode.