The Feed My Health Podcast

Metabolism, Wine, and Evening Cravings: Your Nutrition Questions Answered

• Rosalind Tapper

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If you’ve ever felt like nutrition is one giant maze of conflicting advice, this episode is for you.

I’m cutting through the noise and answering the questions you actually care about—without the fluff, without the fads, and without the all-or-nothing rules that keep you stuck.

Here’s what we dig into:

  • Is your metabolism really slowing down, or is something else going on?
  • Why protein and strength training matter more than you realise (especially in midlife).
  • The 3 main reasons behind nighttime snacking (and how to finally stop the cycle).
  • Can you really lose weight while still enjoying wine and chocolate?
  • The truth about carbs and belly fat (it’s not what you’ve been told).
  • How to cook family meals that don’t derail your progress.
  • The simple shift that will stop you from “starting over” every Monday.

This is nutrition that fits your life, not the other way around. No extremes, no nonsense, just practical steps that work in the real world.

✨ And if you’re READY to go one step further and kickstart your health and fitness journey to become a happier, healthier you… then you’ll love THE CONFIDENCE KICKSTART.

It’s my free Telegram group where you’ll get instant access to HIGHLY valuable training that will put you 200 steps ahead of the rest. A total no-brainer.

Click HERE to join and binge listen to all the content—you’ll want to go back to it again and again!




👉 We don’t just help you lose weight - we help you keep it off for good. If you’re serious about breaking free from quick fixes, my team and I will transform your daily habits so your results last a lifetime.

JOIN Feed My Health Today!

✨ Not ready to dive all the way in yet? That’s okay.
If you know something has to change but you’re not quite ready for the full programme, I’ve created two simple ways to step into my world and start building momentum:

🌸 The Confidence Kickstart (FREE Telegram Group)
This is your safe space to get inspired, learn bite-sized mindset strategies, and start feeling more in control of your health and body again. It’s where you’ll get practical tools, motivation, and a taste of what’s possible for you when you stop putting yourself last.

🔥 The Body Confidence Club (£22 right now)
If you’re ready to do more than just watch from the sidelines and want to start implementing real changes, this is your next step. Inside you’ll get structured guidance, simple actions to follow, and the accountability to finally follow through. (The price will be increasing soon, so now is the best time to jump in!)

Speaker 1:

So today I'm going to be answering your questions that you dropped in the question box for me on Instagram and the theme was purely nutrition. Now we've had some really specific nutrition questions and also some questions around kind of habits and things to do with nutrition, but not specific to like specific foods, if that makes sense. So I'm not going to read these in any particular order, it's just literally how I've screenshotted them on my phone. But we're going to get stuck right in and I hope you enjoy this episode. If you do enjoy this episode, it would be amazing if you could give it a bit of a rate, a bit of a share, and I also wanted to mention something as well. In fact, I'll save that for later on in the episode, because I want to give you a lots and lots of value first of all and give you what you came for, right.

Speaker 1:

So the first question I'm going to read is I feel like my metabolism has slowed down. How do I speed it back up? Fantastic, fantastic question. And do you know? What's interesting about this is that metabolism was never something that I really considered being an issue when I was in my dieting phase of life, and it's certainly become a bit of a buzzword, if I'm honest. Now, metabolism is, of course, a real thing, right, it's kind of like the engine of the body, if you will. But I think what tends to happen with certain processes or words in the dieting and the health industry is that people kind of jump on them and then run with them. So now everybody in midlife especially feels like, oh, the reason why I'm struggling is because of metabolism. And yes, there are lots and lots of scientific reasons why that could be a thing. But I also want you to kind of look outside of what you're hearing and the noise that you're seeing on social media and ask yourself the question, you know, is it really to do with my metabolism or actually could it be something else? Could it be to do with my habits? Have my habits changed? Has my lifestyle changed? In the time that I've experienced challenge with my weight? What else has changed in my life? And typically it's those things that are the problem, and it's not always the metabolism. Now, there are nuances to this and this is where it's really, really valuable. If you think it could be a potential metabolism problem, you actually get expert help.

Speaker 1:

We've had clients who have come to us like typically, 80 of our clients have come to us, our clients that feel the same way. They feel that their metabolism has slowed down. But when we've actually worked with the one-to-one, we've built routines, systems, habits, a lifestyle around how they want to live and the results they want to have. We've actually established it's got nothing to do with metabolism and everything to do with all of those other things. However, there are some clients that come through and it is everything to do with metabolism and it's typically those clients who have been dieting religiously for like the majority of their life and not and I don't mean dieting in the sense of, you know, they diet for a couple of days and then they go and binge like four days of the week because in that situation, whilst mentally you feel like you're dieting, scientifically or not, because you're still overeating, right, so you're not dieting most of your life. But what I mean by dieting most of your life is you are under eating intentionally most of the time. So when or you know people that do things like shakes you know they're really drastically slashing their calories, really, really low, and they do that for a significant amount of time. Similarly, people who are in a fat loss phase, in a really, really healthy way, they will also see their metabolism downregulate Now that's the technical phrasing, right, downregulate. It's not about slowing it down as such, but I feel like slowing it down makes it seem more understandable, so we're going to go with that terminology for now. So, when your metabolism slows down, this happens for lots of different factors and, like I said, it's when you've been dieting for a long, long time, intentionally dieting for a long, long time, through restrictive methods, yo-yo dieting and stuff like that Alexa's talking to me but also in combination with lots of things such as not attempting to hold on to your muscle mass, not eating foods that will help you to hold on to your muscle mass.

Speaker 1:

So the trend at the moment is Pilates. Now, pilates is a great thing for stress management, mobility, etc. But it's not the thing that we need to be doing most of the time. The thing that we need to be doing most of the time is strength training and we need to be prioritizing protein. Those two things alone. If you do those things every single not every single day, because I'm not saying you should strength train every single day but if you prioritize protein every single day and you strength trained consistently each week, you would see a massive improvement in your metabolism straight away. But it takes time. Muscle takes time to build, like years and years and years. So you don't need to panic about getting bulky. If you've never strength trained before or you want to ramp it up a little bit, you don't need to panic about that. If you're a female, you are not genetically predispositioned to actually gain the muscle that would make you look bulky.

Speaker 1:

But if you feel like your metabolism has slowed down, I want you to assess your lifestyle as a whole. First of all, what does a typical day look like for me? What does a typical day look like for me? What does a typical week look like for me? What does a typical month look like for me? And over the time that I've been struggling with my weight, what changes have happened? What lifestyle changes have happened? Because they are really going to be the main factors. So the next question is I start the day really well, but by 8 pm I'm raiding the cupboards. How do I stop evening snacking?

Speaker 1:

The reason why a lot of people raid the cupboards is because they've either not eaten enough during the day. They've not eaten enough of the right things during the day, or the things that they are eating, feel quite restrictive. So that's three reasons why that happens. If you're also reading the cupboards, it's usually a sign of an emotional problem, so it can be a soothing issue. So, if you think about emotional eating or emotional drinking, the issue isn't emotional eating or emotional drinking. That is actually the symptom of a bigger problem, and the bigger problem is usually the emotion that we're trying to avoid feeling or expressing or dealing with, and that's a similar situation with raiding cupboards.

Speaker 1:

Now again, everybody is very, very different and this is why you need to actually work with somebody who understands and can dissect this and give you strategies to help, regardless of what the situation is, find those blind spots for you, because it can be a lot of different factors and, without really diving deeper into your specific situation, it's very hard for me to give you the actual, definite answer. But it can be any one of those things and it could be two of those things, it could be all of those things and for you listening to this now, what I would say is start with one of those things, address it and then test it for a couple of weeks and then, if nothing's changed, try the next thing. Test it for a couple of weeks. So when I say to you, potentially it's to do with the fact that you're not eating enough in the day, try and increase what you're eating and see if that helps. If it doesn't help, try and increase the amount or the quality or the types of foods that you're having and see if that helps. And then, if you do all of those two things, you look at your emotions. Look at how you're feeling in the moment when you're raiding the cupboards. Are you feeling stressed? Have you had a long day? Are you self soothing? So it's really a case of like trial and error. But if you want to actually understand and correct this faster and save yourself a lot of time, then I would definitely seek help with that.

Speaker 1:

Is it possible to oh, is it really possible, sorry, to lose weight without giving up wine and chocolate 100%? You could actually lose weight. Lose wine. You could actually lose weight only eating wine and chocolate if that was your thing. Genuinely to lose weight, you need to eat less than you, than your body actually needs in order to maintain its current weight. It's as simple as that now, if you eat certain foods, if you drink wine and you eat chocolate and that's all you ever did. I appreciate that that's not what your question asked, but I'm just using that as an extreme example. There are going to be lots of reasons why it's going to be very hard for you to maintain that and lose that weight. And without going into the specifics too much, because I don't really want to, maybe it's an episode for another time. You'll have to let me know but if you are a frequent alcohol drinker and you're trying to lose weight, yes, you can try and cram it into your calorie targets and you might start. You know, you might be able to see some kind of changes. But when there's alcohol in your system, your body shuts off it's fat burning. So, yes, you can lose weight and it's more to do with energy in, energy out. That is a fact. That is a scientific fact. It doesn't matter who tells you any different like that is a scientific fact. But what I would say is, if wine and chocolate is something that is really, really high up on your list of I absolutely love this, I really value it, value is the key word and I really want to make sure that they are included in my week Then what actually has to happen is learning how to include it in your week and also determine whether you know you're not wanting to give up wine because you really love it versus I don't know how to have a life without it Two very, very different situations. So, in answer to your question yes, it is.

Speaker 1:

Do I need to cut carbs completely if I want to lose belly fat? Absolutely not, and I think if you did that, you would really struggle. Not only would you struggle to lose belly fat, but you would struggle genuinely in life to show up as the best version of yourself. Carbohydrates are absolutely essential. They are your body's key source of energy. That's what your body runs on. Now, with any food, whether it is a carb, a fat, a protein, whatever anything that you have too much of is going to cause you to gain weight. So we put carbs on a pedestal, and the reason why people think that cutting carbs is going to help you is because when you eat carbohydrate and again, I'm not going to go too sciencey on this, because I appreciate that not everyone really cares about the science, but if you do, let me know you actually store more water when you eat carbohydrate. So when you cut carbohydrate, guess what happens? You lose the water that is stored with the carbohydrate. So that's what people typically see when they lose weight and especially, you know, when they start doing things like drinking shakes and keto diet and all the rest of it. Because you're eating less carbohydrate, it makes sense that you would lose quite a significant amount of weight because you're also losing water. So you're not necessarily losing body fat, you're losing water weight and that's why people think that that's the route to go down.

Speaker 1:

But, honestly, a balance of all of the macronutrients carbohydrates, fats, protein you absolutely need in your diet every single day to be successful. We don't cut anything out At Feed my Health. Cutting stuff out is absolutely like illegal, absolutely illegal. Are protein shakes necessary or can I get enough protein from real food? Well, first of all, protein shakes ie buying protein powder is a real food. So we need to lose this whole concept of like real food versus not real food. Like it is a real food. It is derived from food product. It is a real food. It has just been packaged in such a way to make it convenient for you. So we need to just kind of lose that terminology for a second. And no, they are not necessary, but they are flipping helpful, because the majority of people under eat protein.

Speaker 1:

Even if you're really aware of how much protein you need, it is incredibly challenging to ensure that you hit that target every single day, unless you are, like, hyper focused on it, and I believe everybody should be hyper focused on it, because it's one of the most important things that you can do for your health past, present and future. So it's just something that we should all be getting very, very obsessed about unapologetically. But it is really difficult because we have been conditioned to have all of our meals revolve around carbohydrates. So if you think about, like jacket, potato, beans and cheese, spaghetti, bolognese, beans on toast, everything is very carb focused. And yes, like I've said before, we need carbohydrates. But because we've all been brought up thinking just about carbohydrate meals, it's very difficult and very abnormal it feels to think about. Okay, well, now actually we need to be prioritizing protein. And how can we do that?

Speaker 1:

And so in the early days, when you start to prioritize protein, having something in there that is super simple, super cheap, quick and easy to bridge the gap between what you're currently eating and what you need to eat is a godsend. It is like the best thing that was ever invented. So and you might say to yourself, oh, it's expensive. Actually, per gram protein powder is much, much cheaper than going out and buying a chicken breast or whatever else. And people are spending a lot of money now on protein products that have maybe one or two grams of extra protein in than the standard version, or the things that are like really, really high in protein, like a protein yogurt, spending a lot of money on that. And actually you know then saying, well, I can't afford the protein powder. It's like, well, actually, that's much cheaper per gram. So, no, it isn't necessary, but I think it would be a very, I think it would be a benefit for everybody, especially on those days when you know you're perhaps busy, something comes up, an emergency to have that to fall back on as your plan B would be a really, really smart thing to do.

Speaker 1:

I see so many different diets keto, fasting, slimming world. How do I know what's right for me? What's right for you, is going to be the thing that you can stick to every single day, you enjoy every single day and it's getting you a result. I am quite anti. Well, you know this right. I'm very, very against all of those things and this comes from a person who's done all of those things. So I've done them, I've experienced them. I've spoken to at this point, probably thousands and thousands of people who have also done them and experienced them, and I can hand on heart say that maybe one or two people in the people that I'm speaking to have experienced a great result, but have seen all of their hard work go to waste when they stopped doing those things and that's the critical thing is that they stopped doing it, which says it wasn't fun, it wasn't enjoyable and it wasn't sustainable, because if it was, it would have been something that they were still doing today.

Speaker 1:

So it's not that you there is a one thing that is right for you, but what we need to be thinking less so is what's the fix versus like, what's the thing that I value to do every single day? Hopefully, that makes sense. So, for example, I know that I need to eat protein every single day, and I need to eat the adequate amount of protein every single day, regardless of whether I'm trying to lose weight, maintain weight, gain weight or whatever. That is just something that I need to do. Similarly, I know that I need to include carbohydrates. I need to include fats, I need to exercise, I need to get enough sleep and that needs to be something that I do year round. And so, when you think about the initial I want to lose weight situation, what we need to be looking at is what can I do to lose the weight? But then what can I continue doing once I've lost the weight, to enable me to maintain the weight, eat a good amount of food and not ever have to think about going on a diet again?

Speaker 1:

Okay, now, I'm not saying that you won't have to maybe trim down a little bit for something you know I'm not saying that but I'm talking like negligible, like one to two pounds. What we do at Feed my Health is, when a client gets towards the end of the maintenance mastery phase, we put put them, we establish what their weight window is, and this is a range of weight that they are super, super happy sitting in, because it's not realistic to say like I want to get to nine stone and then expect to stay nine stone for the rest of your life, because that's not how weight works. So if you give yourself a little bit of a weight window that's realistic and everybody's going to be very, very different, then you're giving yourself flexibility within within structure, if that makes sense. So, yes, I feel like I've just gone on a bit of a tangent there. So so I personally feel that keto, fasting and slimming world are not for everybody. For the majority of people, they are not going to work. But what is going to work is a thing that you can do 365 days a year, whether you're on holiday, whether it's Christmas, whether you're losing weight or whether you're maintaining weight. Simple as that.

Speaker 1:

Let's have a look. I'm just going to drink my coffee while I select the next question how can I stay on track when my family eats totally different to me? So again, I would need a bit more detail about this. But why are your family eating differently to you? Let's reverse back to the previous question. If you're doing keto, then this is a situation where you would be eating differently to your family, unless all of your family was doing keto with you. And is that fair to ask your family to do keto with you? Is that realistic to ask your family to do keto with you? So the only times let's let's move health, dietary health situations out of the equation for a second, the only time that you, in my opinion, should ever be eating differently from your family is if you, from a health standpoint, need to, because if you didn't, you would die right.

Speaker 1:

I don't believe in making separate meals from your family unless you have a dietary problem or a very specific goal, that is, you know something that you are really working very, very hard to achieve. Let's say you're prepping for a photo shoot or you are walking on stage in a bikini to be judged right every other time, like the rest of the time. If you are focusing on weight loss, if you're focusing on weight maintenance and you're focusing on maintaining that, then why aren't we eating the same foods as our family? Also, what message are you sending to your family by eating something different? So I wouldn't say that if you're eating the same as your family, you're needing to even think about staying on track. What I would say is, if you are eating the same meals as your family, bear in mind that you probably don't need the same amount of food as your family. I don't need the same amount of food as my three teenagers and my husband. I don't but you naturally, when you make meals, people naturally will portion it out. Especially when kids get older, they'll naturally portion it out and divide exactly like four portions by four, but I don't need as much food as my husband and that's where people, I think, struggle a little bit. So, yes, eat the same as your family. Why aren't you eating the same as your family? Do that? How do I stop starting over every Monday or the next day? Simple Decide. You're not going to Literally decide.

Speaker 1:

Every change in your life happens with a simple decision. When you decide to stop doing something that isn't serving you, you change course, you change the route, you change the path that you're going in, and when you go down a different, a different path, maybe one you've never been down before, you will get results that you've never got before. This was actually a pivotal moment in my health journey when, on a Friday, I would have had such a long week looking after the kids, working, blah, blah, blah, restricting myself, eating salad, all the rest, and then on a Friday, it'd be like, oh, I just want to relax, I'm shattered, I just want something to make me feel good. So we'd probably order like an Indian or something like that. And so in my mindset I was thinking oh, I've ruined my diet. What I'll do is I'll think, screw it. Saturday and Sunday we're all together, we want to go out, we want to maybe have Sunday roast, whatever. I'll start again on monday.

Speaker 1:

And I remember, I distinctly remember this moment because it's literally the most profound moment in my life. I remember sitting on the sofa going, but what if I had this indian? And tomorrow I had a healthy breakfast? And I just didn't think so did, because we also got into the habit of creating these traditions for our kids where we would make pancakes, so we'd have pancakes, like I think every Sunday, or every Saturday we'd have bananas on them, like syrup on them, like my kids absolutely loved it.

Speaker 1:

But I would treat the weekend like it was a celebration, like we were celebrating something, every single meal, and I would go so far the opposite way of somebody who was trying to improve their health and lose weight that I would just go into this effort, mentality and when you make a decision that actually I can enjoy this meal, this Indian takeaway or this meal out or whatever it might be for you, and then my next decision is going to be one that aligns with my longer term project, I myself, suddenly you don't become a person that starts over every Monday. You've chosen not to be, and that's the critical thing is that you get to choose. There's no magic button that you're going to be able to press it's. You have to choose what your next step is going to be, and only you can do that. Let's do one more, and only you can do that. Let's do one more. What's the one thing that actually makes the biggest difference for midlife women? The one thing. The one thing.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I feel like we still need to go on the nutrition framework, because that was the whole purpose of this podcast episode. However, there are so many things that I think are bigger than the nutrition piece. Actually, whilst I'm saying that, because this is a relevant point in the podcast, to mention this, I have just created a free group on Telegram called the Confidence Kickstart. Now this group, completely free, is going to house some really incredible trainings that for anybody who is ready to get back in control of their health and their body and their fitness, I'm going to be dropping in loads of trainings that perhaps you haven't thought about before that will single-handedly change how you see yourself, your results, and help you to take action and kickstart your confidence. Now these are going to be absolutely like amazing trainings.

Speaker 1:

I am pouring my heart and soul into the information that I'm going to be absolutely like amazing trainings. I am pouring my heart and soul into the information that I'm going to give you, and it's all completely free. So, even if you're on a journey right now, even if you are outside of your journey, maintaining or whatever these things are going to be really great, because a lot of the information that I'm sharing is actually stuff that I've learned or like figured out, you know, a decade later, after my transformation, right? So they're going to be valuable for every single person. So I would strongly recommend that you jump inside and listen to the trainings and really get immersed and take action on what I teach you because, honestly, like one of the trainings alone can has the power to change your life massively.

Speaker 1:

So, with all that being said, I'm not going to tackle this question with what I actually think is the makes the biggest difference, because I don't believe it is a nutrition thing, but I am going to talk to this as if it were. So the one thing that will actually make the biggest difference for a midlife woman when it comes to nutrition is to. I don't want to go down the protein road, because I feel like that's so overdone and everybody knows they need to eat more protein. Okay, here's the thing. Actually, I'm going to go down the protein road because it is so important. However, I'm going to tell you something that perhaps you don't realize the older you get, the more protein you need. So if I think about my 18-year-old self and somebody had said to me, oh, we need to start having more protein, I would have immediately thought, oh well, protein is for people that want to go to the gym and like gain muscle. I would have immediately associated protein with that. Not true, not true. One little bit Protein is the building blocks of your body.

Speaker 1:

You absolutely need it. The majority of your body is made from protein. So you imagine you don't give your body enough protein. What's going to happen, right? So this is the thing that I want you to know is, when you start out on your journey of learning about protein and learning how much you need, I want you to think about the fact that, depending on what goal you're working on and depending on the age that you are, will determine the protein amount that you need. There isn't a generic number, it's very individual and once you tap into the individualist I don't even know if that's a word concept that's when things change for you. To put it it simply, if I use the analogy of like the workouts right. When I used to do generic workouts, so I'd follow like a generic workout app or I'd follow a YouTube video or something like that yes, I was moving my body and yes, I was being active and yes, that was all great and so much better than sitting on the sofa like a broccoli. But when I started to actually do workouts that were created for me and my body, that's when I started to see better results faster. So it's the same thing with protein. It's the same thing with any lifestyle habit or nutritional habit that you want to start implementing.

Speaker 1:

If you actually figure out what it is that you need not Sandra down the road, but you and you actually start doing it consistently, you will see the biggest difference. So, first of all, get comfortable with the fact that you're probably under eating protein significantly. Get comfortable with the fact that as you get older, you will need to increase the amount of protein that you eat. So if you're suddenly going oh my God, I'm eating 40 grams of protein a day and I actually need, let's just say, 140 grams of protein a day. Get comfortable with the fact that when you're maybe 10 years older, you might need more. Get comfortable with the fact that if you are in a fat loss phase and you're not in a maintenance phase, you're going to need more protein. Get comfortable with that. So all of this to say need protein, you need to eat more of it, and the amount that you need is probably not what you think and will continue to change. And if you need more help with that, you know where I am, because that's what we do, that's what we specialize in Bespoke health, fitness training, lifestyle mindset, the lot, and we're bloody good at it. And if you stick to what we ask you to do follow that blueprint oh my god, your life will change forever.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, I'm gonna leave it there because I've come. I'm conscious that it's going on too long now, but thank you so much to everybody who submitted questions. I haven't answered them all because this podcast would be literally a year long, but I hope that this has been helpful. I'm going to drop some more information in the show notes below. I'm also going to drop the link to the Confidence Kickstart group if you would like to join that? I think you pretty much should, because it's a no-brainer, it doesn't cost you a single penny, and I hope that you've enjoyed this episode.