The Feed My Health Podcast
Welcome to the Feed My Health Podcast, where we redefine what it means to thrive as a midlife woman.
This is your space to explore sustainable health, balanced nutrition, mindset shifts, and habits that actually fit into real life—kids, careers, and all.
Hosted by Rosalind Tapper, a high-level coach and mentor for women ready to take the lead in their own lives, each episode is packed with expert insights, practical strategies, and inspiring stories to help you feel unstoppable💫
Whether you're navigating perimenopause, balancing family and work, or simply trying to find you again, this podcast will empower you to:
✨ Build a body and mindset you’re proud of
✨ Break free from yo-yo dieting and quick fixes
✨ Balance health with the joys of life, guilt-free
It's time to make yourself a priority without sacrificing what you love. Let's do this together. 💪
🎧 New episodes every Monday. Tune in and take that first step to becoming the leading lady in your life!💫
The Feed My Health Podcast
Why Your Health Investment Matters More Than Your Weekend Splurge with Nic White
So many of us think age is the thing holding us back in our health - but what if it’s actually your greatest strength?
In this episode, I’m joined by Nick White, founder of NW Coaching and creator of Hevolution, to explore how lived experience shapes the way we approach health and life.
Nick shares his journey through male menopause (andropause), the changes men face but rarely talk about, and why creating safe spaces to discuss health is so important. We dive into how our relationship with food evolves over time, and why satisfaction and enjoyment are key to long-term results, not punishment or restriction.
We also unpack why accountability isn’t an expense but an investment in your future self and how the money you already spend on “little extras” could be the very thing holding you back from real change.
If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s too late to turn things around, this episode will remind you: experience isn’t a disadvantage. It’s your superpower.
This week I also launched THE BODY CONFIDENCE CLUB click HERE to get involved!!!
👉 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!)
start would be you kind of introducing yourself what you do, who you are, where you come from okay, so I'm nick white, founder and head coach nw coaching.
Speaker 2:I'm turning 61 this year, so I've got a lot of experience 40 plus years of experience with resistance, training, nutrition, supplementation, physiology all of which have been part and parcel of my life, not just in a sporting sense but in a professional sense as well, and that led me to set up NW Coaching and the new program that I've just launched, which is Hevolution. So my coaching is specifically designed for men like me, because that's who I know best. So men kind of late 30s through to 60s that are going through menopause, andropause, whatever you want to call it, but the hormonal shift, the hormonal changes that men go through and often don't know that they're going through, as I didn't, because I think a lot of people don't think male menopause is a thing. So that's essentially kind of bringing me up to date. But I'm a husband, I'm a father to two children, I'm a business owner, I'm also a full-time employed as well, so I've got a lot of things going on.
Speaker 1:You have indeed A lot of plates spinning, so I've got so many questions already off the back of what you've just said. My first question would be do you feel that your experience and your age in this game if you want to call it a game do you feel that that is a thought in your head? Because I'll tell you why I'm asking this question because I feel like I'm older than most coaches. Most coaches seem to be sort of 20s, obviously doing incredibly well, which is amazing, but I've always been very aware that, oh, I'm like the the honorable.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean and I'm just wondering have you ever experienced feelings like that?
Speaker 2:absolutely, but I don't think that's your detriment or mine. That's. That's your power, because you are working with the people that you know best, because you know yourself so well and you've had the experience you know it's all well and good learning from a textbook, but textbook and life experience are two completely different things. Now, I really respect some of these younger coaches and they are doing amazing work. Respect some of these younger coaches and they are doing amazing work and and because they're growing up with social media and all this stuff, they know exactly. You know how to market themselves to best effect, which is great. Which is perhaps where where you and I struggle, but what we have is that life experience and you know, you've got four kids, I think three, three sorry.
Speaker 2:You've got three kids. I've got two kids. Mine are now almost 19 and almost 21. I think yours probably go from 8 to 19 or something like that, from what I can see from the pictures. So you've gone through what your clients, what your potential clients, are experiencing now. You've been through those struggles.
Speaker 2:You know you started your family at an early age from what I understand, at university you know. So you know what it's like to have all those plates spinning in the air. You know new relationship with kids, with responsibilities for going out, earning money and just making sure everything works. So you know. That gives you experience that a textbook just cannot teach you. So if you're a 25-year-old guy or girl, you know coaching online, working from Bali or Marbella or wherever it is, and you're not attached, or you just have a boyfriend or a girlfriend but you don't have kids and you don't have a kind of nine to five. That's corporate and stressful and you just don't know. So it's kind of it's and this you know.
Speaker 2:For me, I think, well, it's actually a detriment to the younger coaches because they don't fully understand what it is that more mature people, older people, need, that are going through. And if you don't understand that. I think sometimes it could be very hard to shape a program that's going to work for an older lady or an older guy, because you're coming from as a younger coach, you're coming from a point of ideals. You know, surely you must have the time. You know, surely you must have to. You know, but they don't know. You know it's only kind of hypothetical in their head.
Speaker 2:So that's our superpower, that's our strength, and certainly the feedback that I'm getting, and I'm sure that you get, from your client bases. It's so refreshing to speak to somebody that's actually gone through what I'm going through, that's trodden the same path, that understands, and it means that you can talk to them. You know you can talk to them via your social media and they absolutely get what you're saying and they're like shit, this guy knows me better than I do and it's probably the same for you as well. I'm sure you have countless calls with your clients or potential clients that just say that is me, what you wrote on that post last week, or this, that is me and that's why we're speaking now. So, yeah, it's so, so important to have that experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, and I actually think that the older that I get, the more I realize how powerful experience is over, just, for example, with my children. I grew up very much in a family who really valued academia and having a piece of paper for pretty much everything it felt like and my entire validation was me getting these qualifications and having this, that and the other. And I remember when I left university I set up my own I was gonna say club. It wasn't a club private singing tuition and one person out the four years that I ran that asked me what my qualifications were.
Speaker 1:One person yeah and I and I think now, like when I look at my kids, I'm thinking, yeah, I want my kids to be able to have all these opportunities and go to college and stuff like that. And I'm thinking, but actually they're really keen to get out there and experience the world in the working place and they don't need to, don't need to have a piece of paper to be able to achieve all the things they want to achieve.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:You know some of the most successful people I know, and you know some of the you know, globally very successful entrepreneurs and business owners.
Speaker 2:They don't have those qualifications, they don't have O-levels or GCSEs, a level degrees or but they, you know, they have an innate sense of how things work, how people think and how to communicate, and that is stuff that again going back to textbooks and formal education you don't get. That Education doesn't really prepare you for that. Education prepares you to learn this certain set of facts in this certain order. So when it comes to exam time, you can just regurgitate it, paraphrase them, but then I would imagine and I can say thisurgitate it para-faction. But then I would imagine and I can say this from personal experience if six months later somebody wasn't going back to you and say, well, just tell me this again, or even maybe a week later, but ask you facts in a different order or position, in a different way. You just can't rank Because you don't fully understand the subject, you're just learning. You know one, two, three, four, that's it. Regurgitate it, get your exam passed and you're done.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's like they say you learn to drive when you've passed your test. Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, yeah, that's very interesting how do you feel that your health and fitness, career or lifestyle has impacted your children?
Speaker 2:I like to think very positively. You know and this is one of the things that I kind of talk about through my social media is that you know, your kids take cues from you. Even if you think they're not kind of watching and learning from an early, early stage, they're watching, they're taking cues, they're learning behaviours and those patterns of behaviour that they see in their parents are repeated in them as they get older. Yeah, and, and actually what? What? One of my clients that's just jumped on board in in in to evolution is a cousin on my wife's side and he's also a young father. Louis is like a year and a half old now and he's a dev.
Speaker 2:My cousin, he's very hardworking, he's in the financial sector.
Speaker 2:You know, he just picks up food on the go because he's stressed or he doesn't have time and all this kind of stuff and eats all the wrong things and he's kind of let things get out of hand and he knows it.
Speaker 2:So we had a conversation recently about you know, louis, his son, and kind of you know and similar to what I've just said now, and he just said to me he says shit. He said I I didn't think about it that way. You're right, you know, because he, I, he to me, I can see now he's following my behaviours. You know he's doing what I'm doing. So, yeah, if he's seeing me, you know reach for unhealthy food, or you know if he's seeing that I'm not active, if he's, you know all that stuff is going in his head, it's sinking in, you know. So. So, and that was a wake-up call for him and I I it was at a family gathering and I wasn't quote-unquote selling to him. He just turned around to me and said I've got to be on your program because that's me and I need to change and I want better for my son.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really powerful thing, isn't it? And I think when, see, I find that a lot of ladies join Feed my Health because they themselves want the change, and I think that's obviously very, very important, and I don't even think that they realise the knock-on effect that it has, because I certainly didn't. When I started my health journey, it was purely for me. There was no. I wanted to be a role model, but I didn't know what that needed to look like or how it was going to turn out.
Speaker 1:And now I look at my kids and we don't have things in our house that I would say. I'll rephrase that we do have food in our house, but I don't like stock loads of things that aren't particularly great for them, because I would much rather them go for the option that maybe they wouldn't naturally pick, but if they want to have things that are a little bit more like a treat, they now make everything themselves, and so even just thinking about stuff like that, it's them learning how to cook for themselves properly and make things for themselves, and I think that's that is a gift that you can give your children indirectly from like the actual health and fitness yeah, yeah so it's amazing yeah.
Speaker 2:So going back to your original question, because it kind of went off a bit of a tangent, you know, specifically regarding my kids, yeah, I've, I've been into resistance training almost all my life and apart from a 10-year period where I went off the rails, get, got very overweight, very unwell, and then found my way back, but my all my son has ever known really probably actually since he's about 10 because I was still in the kind of midst of my kind of lost years- as it were, you know, when he was very young.
Speaker 2:but he he's always been a swimmer competitively at school, nationally as well. But just recently, and I said, I actually said to him Josh, you know, your swimming is great, but to supplement and complement your swimming, doing some resistance training is probably going to help you, you know, kind of build up your shoulders and back and all that stuff. And Josh is one of those kids that kind of doesn't announce what he's going to do, he just gets on and does it. You know, and also you know he's one of those people that when he sets off on a new adventure and this, we can go right back to when he went to nursery school, when he went to Cubs, when he went to Scouts, when he went to secondary school, when he went to university, he never went to scouts. When he went to secondary school, when he went to university, he never looked back, he never got bloody emotional. It was us that were getting emotional, you know him going off and he's anyway.
Speaker 2:So he started going to the gym and it was a little bit hazard, infrequent to start with, and then I I took him for a couple of sessions and, and that is in, he's just about to start his third year at uni and now he's he's got this wonderful kind of training split. You know he does push, pull legs day off and then push pull legs and he's, he's one. He's kind of like me. You know he's a tick box guy. You know I like, I like to tick things off, I like to and I'm quite I won't like me. You know he's a tick box guy. You know I like to tick things off and I'm quite, I won't say rigid, but you know I've got my routine and I like my routine and it's something that a fashion dog of the years and I know works for me.
Speaker 2:Other people are going to look at it and think Jesus, the guy's mental, he does food prep and that sort of thing. But you know, josh has obviously picked that up for me. So he's the same with his training, very methodical, you know, and we had a family gathering recently and he's been training really, really consistently over the past four months since he'd been home from uni and the change in him is unbelievable and everybody is saying, jesus, what's Joshospin like really? And so, yeah, he's yeah, so long story short. You know he has watched me, seen me, seen what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:You know, he's obviously probably inherited some of my traits genetically, you know, I don't mean just in terms of kind of structure and physique and stuff like that, but I mean just in terms of kind of structure and physique and stuff like that, but I mean the way we're kind of wired and yeah. And so yeah, because of that, I know that I've been doing the right thing. And when he's given the option of crappy fast food, of crappy fast food, overly processed food, versus something that's kind of healthy and nutritious, he goes to a healthy, nutritious stuff almost every time and that that that to me is a win, a massive, massive win 100.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I think is really interesting me at the moment is something I mentioned to you yesterday about because I've got a couple of blokes in my program.
Speaker 1:And one of them sent a comment just completely out of the blue to me and said you know, it's actually really interesting reading through your content because a lot of what you're writing that you're directing at females is a lot of what I've experienced in my life and I think it's really interesting how you know and he gave me loads of scenarios that were very similar, like feeling uncomfortable, you know, taking his top off when he goes on holiday not that women take their tops off when they go on holiday, unless it's that kind of holiday.
Speaker 1:But you know what I mean but I just thought it's so interesting because a lot of the conversations that I have with women are women saying that their husbands don't really understand. Like they'll say to me you know, my husband thinks I look amazing, just as I am. He doesn't really understand. Like they'll say to me you know, my husband thinks I look amazing just as I am. He doesn't really understand why I want to change. And I often wonder how much us women understand how our men are feeling. It's never really a conversation. We just kind of look at them physically to determine how they're feeling about themselves and their bodies. We never sit down with a man and go. So you know, do you know what I mean? And I'd just be really interested to know how you felt when you were maybe at your lowest.
Speaker 2:Oh, ok. Well, I've got pictures on our fridge door in the kitchen of me on holiday. There's one in particular with Josh. He was probably about two and a half. My daughter was about 10 months, almost a year. She was crawling and it was in Malta, so it was hot and we were by the pool. There was Josh with his swimming trunks on, his armbands on, and there's me with a long pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Mm-hmm, I had long shorts on and a t-shirt on because I couldn't bear to look at myself or for anybody to see me without being covered.
Speaker 2:10 years before was standing on stage as a competitive bodybuilder at the British Championships with a tiny pair of trunks on and thousands of people in the audience, and I didn't think twice about it because it was what I did, I was reasonably good at it and I was confident in my skin, and that probably made it feel 10 times worse. I don't know, because I didn't not have that experience that I was then comparing it to. So I just yeah, it's horrible. And not wanting to get, yeah, it's horrible. And not wanting to get changed in changing rooms in front of other guys when I wouldn't have thought about it twice previously. So, yes, yeah, I get that and I've lived that and I've been there and it's shit.
Speaker 1:Do you think that men compare themselves? I'm generalising here, but do you think that men compare themselves to other men?
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, yes, yes, yes, the problem with men is and I think this is something that's quite well documented you know, we're not good at expressing how we feel we put on the front, you know. Know, whether that's because we don't want to look weak to other men or to our families, or we want to stay strong, or or whether it's because we just can't communicate. A lot of stuff is internalized and, yeah, and I think that just that just makes the whole situation for men worse, especially when you delve a little bit deeper and you look into suicide rates, for instance, the number one cause and this is a frightening statistic, the number one cause of death in men under 50 is suicide. It's not heart attack, it's suicide. And when you look at the statistics, you know, but between men and women in adulthood, it's 77 percent of suicide deaths are men. So, and not wanting to turn this into a kind of podcast about kind of suicide, mental health, but you know, I mean that screams out there is a big issue for men. These statistics are specifically for the UK, but I think it's probably mirrored globally. You know it's the problem for men. Men, you know, not being able to express themselves or or or not feeling they've got an avenue which they can go down and and discuss with other men, and that's, that's a big thing. Behind my coaching, you know, is giving men, you know, a safe place, if you will, you know somewhere they can discuss with other men and, you know, and not feel like they're going to be judged. So, yeah, I, you know, for, for, for men, yeah, it's, and and because we, I think the the advantage for women and listen, I'm not saying menopause, you know, I didn't realize until perhaps two years ago when I met somebody called Heather Jackson who has a company called Gen M which is to help people understand about menopause and signaling products in store which support menopause and benefit menopause and signaling products in store which support menopause and benefit menopause in women.
Speaker 2:And I thought menopause was just a couple of years. You're through a couple of years of kind of sweating, hot flushes, blah, blah, blah and on and on and on. It's like 10 years Sometimes, you know, from perimenopause all the way through. So and that's a massive, massive part of your life and a massive shift that you, that the women, have to go through, emotionally, physically, you know, physiologically, kind of every every which way. For men it it's much shorter and you'll have to correct me if I'm wrong on this, ros, but my understanding is that with women it's almost like flicking a switch Almost one day you're just your normal self and the next day you're kind of, I just feel completely different and the hormones change that quickly.
Speaker 2:With men it's slow, it's insidious. It's a 1% drop in testosterone levels annually from around about the age of 30. So, depending on your starting point, by the time you get to 50, you could be almost half of what you were in your prime at 25. And but because the changes are slow and insidious, you kind of because male menopause isn't understood or isn't talked about or is kind of a bit taboo. Women are so much better about talking about themselves, their health, the menopause, and you know, and that's hugely beneficial to women because you know they get it, they understand what they're going through.
Speaker 2:Hrt is an option. It's not to be derided, it's not to be, you know, kind of belittled in any way. But for men it's quite different and because it's not talked about and it to to halt the decline of testosterone, kind of dropping year on year, and kind of restore it to a certain extent with. But testosterone, people think steroids, steroids, taboo, you know.
Speaker 2:So there's that kind of side of things that and it's important for me to help guys and navigate through in a kind of smooth and controlled way to come out on the other side pretty much unscathed and ready to start the next chapter of their life, feeling kind of full of energy, invigorated and and understanding that I think this is a big thing and it's probably the same for women. I guess that you know you can't do at 50 what you can do at 25, whether it's physically or what have you. You know, because so much has changed. But that doesn't mean it's the end, you know. It just means it's the start of a new chapter and there's things that you can do in your 40s, 50s and beyond that you couldn't do when you're in your 20s, you know. So it's understanding that and it's learning to kind of adapt to that shift and take advantage of it.
Speaker 1:I think for women, the issue is that where menopause happens in your life or perimenopause, I should say is typically around the time where women are also going through quite significant changes in their personal lives, in their family lives, and there's a lot of symptoms that we're sort of looking out for, which are the really obvious ones.
Speaker 1:But there are so many symptoms that aren't obvious, that are actually can be tied to other things. So, you know, if you're going through a period of high stress and you start to feel anxious or you start to wake up early in the middle of the night, you would associate that with well, it's because I'm really stressed. You don't see it as the signal. So, like you said about flipping the switch, it is if you're only looking for the really obvious, overly talked about symptoms. But if you're looking at symptoms that could be, could be related to other things, you know it's like that whole, not to kind of make a joke of it but, like you know, if you have a symptom of something and you google it, one out of ten answers will tell you you've got cancer. Right, it's a similar.
Speaker 1:It's a similar kind of situation and I think that that is what gives people who are living a healthy lifestyle an advantage, because if they're looking after their physical, their mental health, they're looking after their sleep routines and all the rest of it, we can actually start to see, okay, what is perimenopause menopause symptom versus what's a lifestyle issue yeah, yeah, absolutely you know.
Speaker 2:But I mean the one thing that I'd add to that you know everything that I should have done through the male menopause, angiopause, whatever we're going to term it I had been doing, you know, through my 20s and early 30s so so I kind of didn't need to learn that, I kind of knew that.
Speaker 2:But because of the way that you know the effect on lowering testosterone has and I would imagine the same when you get the, you know, dropping estrogen and the various other hormones doing their thing with women, you're kind of almost I wouldn't say at the mercy of it, but almost kind of helpless because it puts you in a state where you become demotivated because it affects your mood, you know, because it affects your mood Physiologically, you know the hormonal changes mean that you put on body fat in places that you know five years ago, ten years ago, it never would have happened, you know, and you could have eaten foods and got away with eating certain unhealthy foods and it wouldn't have mattered, and your energy levels back then were higher.
Speaker 2:Now they're not as high. So there's a lot that's going against both women and men in ticking those boxes, doing all those things that are going to get them back to a state of optimal health for that time in their life. And this is one of the things. This is where I think coaching really really comes to the fore. And you know because accountability is everything you know, I think, in life you know whether it's to a partner, with being in a marriage, how you look after your finances, you know your job and all that kind of stuff. You know when you're accountable, you're more productive.
Speaker 1:But do you know what I mean? I'm speaking for myself here, but I felt that I didn't really realise that until I hired my first coach.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You don't realise how much you need accountability and how powerful it is when you have it, and then you take it away and then you go. Ah, now I'm just slowly going back to the, and the thing is, you know all of the things, you know what to do, you know how you should do things, but you just don't do it, it's doing them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, knowing what to do is one thing. Implementing what you know you should do is a completely different thing. When you let's call it an investment because it is an investment, coaching is an investment I don't think it should be looked at as an expense. It's an investment in you, in your health now and in your future health. And you know what I do with a lot of guys that I speak to you know, that are umming and ahhing about coaching is to just go through.
Speaker 2:You know what they would spend their money on in a normal week. So, you know, maybe Friday night, saturday night, out with the boys, you know, with some drinks, with maybe pizza or something like that, a few takeouts during the week Lunchtime they go to Starbucks or Costa and get their coffees and you know, you know, grab food on the go and just kind of do this very simple exercise. Just add up what it is you're spending on that and invariably, what they're spending on that is probably more than what they need to invest in having a coach to support them through and give them accountability and direction and everything that's needed for them to become healthy, and then it's like the penny drops and I think, well, if I can so easily spend my money on stuff that is not helping me, why am I finding it such a struggle to spend less on something that's going to make me healthy?
Speaker 1:I think it's the whole feeling. It's selfish yeah you know these, buying these like bottles of diet coke in the petrol station?
Speaker 2:nobody knows about them. But really, what's more selfish? Is it selfish to look after your health? So you've got energy and you know the clarity of your thoughts and you know everything needed to support your family and help your family grow. So is it more selfish to do that? Or is it actually more selfish just to shovel crap in your face every day, get out of shape, risk your health, not just for now but for you know, 5, 10 and 15 years time, and then you cannot give what you want to give or you should be able to give to your family. So what's really more selfish? You know, I think when you look at it from that point of view, you know taking care of your health is a selfless thing. It's something you're doing for yourself initially, but it's something that you're doing on behalf of you know, for your family, for your family, of this benefit and I think when people start to realize that you know because I the one thing that hit me, Ros, was that I I didn't want to be an unfit parent because I I came late to to being a.
Speaker 2:It wasn't until 40. And that was kind of when I was in the midst of my kind of lost years and, you know, struggling with menopause and understanding who I was and you know what my direction should be and all that stuff. And it is as well as me looking in the mirror and really not liking what I was seeing, but also being cognizant of how negative my thinking was. And not liking what I was thinking, it was the thought of getting to 60, 65, 70, when my kids were having kids and just not being able to be an active grandparent. Just sitting there, the fat guy in the corner doesn't interact with us because he's kind of I didn't want to be that man.
Speaker 1:It's so interesting how you have got that concept in your mind of what you didn't want to have, because you were an older parent, let's say, and it's exactly the same reasons for me when I was a younger parent. It's so interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So when you're in your 30s and you have kids, you've got it all sorted. That must be the sweet spot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, but is ever the perfect time to have kids? Never. It's one of those things, you know. It's like many things in life, I think you can't actually fully prepare for it or understand it until it happens. And it's kind of like when they, you know, when we go on these mentorships, ros, you know, you know, for for our businesses or any business, you know you can spend so much time dotting the i's, crossing the t's, getting everything in place that you feel needs to be in place, and wasting a lot of time in doing that. But the real learning comes in the doing and that's and that's something that I've, I've had to learn because we, we learn by our mistakes, you know, we.
Speaker 2:It's impossible to be perfect in anything. Even if you're, you know, an expert in your field, you still do not know everything. And you know whether it's the 5% or the 10% that you don't know. That is where the magic is and that's where we're always trying, and you know. But the world's moving at a fast pace and technology is improving, our understanding of the world's improving, so there's always new stuff to learn. Um, so, yeah, sometimes, and and and this this is the same for people considering coaching, whether it's for resistance, training and nutrition, whether it's for mindset, whatever their thing is. But we're talking specifically about coaching here for nutrition and training and mindset, all that stuff that we know and love and we're passionate about.
Speaker 2:You've just got to start. You know, so many people know it's certainly the case for guys, because guys when they go into a gym they don't want to look like they don't know what the hell they're doing, because you know they think they're going to be judged. But let me tell you the way that it really is they don't know what the hell they're doing because you know they think they're going to be judged. You know, but let me tell you the way that it really is. You know, when a guy comes into a gym, that's new. You know, experienced guys, experienced lifters like myself they want to help them. They're not there to judge them, they want to help them. It's probably the same, I would imagine, for when a woman first steps into a gym, but it's hugely overwhelming, hugely overwhelming. But you know you. You know you.
Speaker 2:You cannot start, you cannot be an expert on day one. Becoming that expert takes many, many hours of practice and you know, and months and years and all that stuff. But when you get to a position where you feel confident and you're competent and you understand what you're doing, you look back to the person that you were, whether it's two, three, five years ago, whatever and you think, jesus, that is some journey, that is some journey. I didn't know what I was doing, but I'm so glad I made that first step, because without making the first step, obviously you can't make the second, third, fourth steps and you cannot go on that journey. So you kind of you, you just need to let all that stuff go. That's holding you back, because otherwise you'll get 50, 60, 70, and you'll look back and you'll be thinking I've wasted my time, I've wasted my life, I've wasted my opportunities, because you don't get a second chance and we've. You know, our two most valuable assets is our health and the time we have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and interesting because when I sometimes when I'm on social media and I'll share like a snippet of a workout I'm doing that day and then I'll get on a call with somebody who's?
Speaker 1:perhaps seen it and I'll share like a snippet of a workout I'm doing that day. And then I'll get on a call with somebody who's perhaps seen it and they'll say, oh, you know, I'm not, I'm not sure about maybe going into the gym or doing this, that and the other, you know, like that thing that you did on your stories or whatever. And I have to very quickly remind them that that wasn't always my situation and I I can remember very vividly having like these blue dumbbells and all that was all I had, and doing stuff on the floor in my living room, like it was yesterday. And so time does time does go very quickly, it does pass by, but you never really forget, like what people just kind of now see the, the after. They don't see the days of, oh, what does this move do? And oh, and how do you do a bulgarian split squat. And they don't see any of that. And I think I think it would be sorry, go on yeah, no, it's just, but it's a.
Speaker 2:It is something that we see every day, you know. But say, if you're in into football, you know, and you, you look at ronal Messi or whatever, or whatever your sport is, and you say, god, they make it look so easy, it just comes so naturally to them. But yes, but you didn't see when they started out, when they were you know young kids and you've not seen all the time, the dedication, the sacrifice, the not going out when all their friends are going out, the choosing to have, you know, a grilled chicken breast with salad rather than you know, a couple of slices of pizza and a beer. You don't see all of that. So there's all of that huge body of work that you know is underneath what you're seeing on the surface. It's like an iceberg. The mass is at the bottom. So what you see somebody doing now and they make look so easy is only because they put the time and the hard yards in to get there. And you can't get there without starting at ground zero and doing all that stuff.
Speaker 2:But when you learn that stuff even at the very beginning, it's really bloody empowering. Yeah and you can't unlearn it.
Speaker 1:You can't. I think that's the biggest issue that social media has now is that everybody's looking at the final packaged thing. And there was this interview with Jimmy Carr, and I love this interview, I've watched it many times and I'll continue to. But he says everybody wants the end result, but nobody wants the process of getting it. Yeah, and it's so true.
Speaker 2:So so true, yeah, yeah, and social media is so much responsible for that, because it's teaching kids and young adults that they can have it now. You know, we live in a society, in a culture, where delayed gratification isn't a thing. People need to achieve what they want to achieve now, but it's just not possible. But you know, I've got friends, a colleague of mine, you know, and his granddaughter. They live in Norway. His granddaughter is she's 13 or 14. She's absolutely stunning. She is beautiful, you know. I mean, you know she's got a great figure, she's very, very pretty, she's got lovely hair, she's got everything going for her. But because of social media, she thinks she's not good enough, she thinks she's ugly, she thinks she's fat, she thinks she can't, you know, rise to this level that she's seeing, and I know she's not the only one. And so there's many, many kids, you know, teenagers, that need counseling and are havingselling because of you know, they see every day what they're supposed to be. They don't see what's behind that and that's really sad.
Speaker 2:When I grew up that was in the 70s, you know we didn't have any of this stuff, and probably it was in its infancy, when, when you were growing up, ross, so you could just grow up unhindered as a child, you know, and it's not the case now, but it's the same for adults, you know. So you know for 30 and 40-somethings, you know, they're also on social media. They've also got this stuff shoved in their face. This is how you're supposed to be, but it's not real life. And you know, everybody wants to aspire to look a certain way or to be a certain way, and that's fine. That's something that's within all of us, you know. But it's our job as coaches to manage that to the expectation and, you know, to help guide people through. And you know, and and the there are very few people that I've coached that at one point or another have not fallen off the barrel, have not come off the tracks. You know, because nobody can live life perfectly, nobody can tick all the boxes every day, every week, every. You know, because nobody can live life perfectly, nobody can tick all the boxes every day, every week, every month. You know there are going to be bad days, there are going to be bad weeks, but it's learning to get back on track. You know, and also understanding that you know that one meal, that one bad meal, that one bad day, that one lost weekend, whatever it is, that will not undo everything that you've done before. So you just need to park it, put it to one side and get on now, obviously, what you don't want to do as somebody that's looking to kind of improve themselves physically and you know is to do that every bloody weekend. And you know is to do that every bloody weekend. And then you know you've got that work that you've then got to start on a Monday morning to get back to where you left off on a Thursday evening before the weekend started on a Friday. You know, because that's when people are stuck, that's when they're going around in circles and that's when they say, well, I've tried everything, I've done everything, but I kind of don't seem to be making any improvement. Well, the reason that you're not improving is because, if you're having a three-day weekend and many people do people start their weekends on a Friday and they'll congratulate themselves and pat themselves on the back because they've done so well on Monday to Thursday. They've eaten all their meals as they should have done, they've not had alcohol, they've not had this. But the weekend comes and you do the maths. You know, three days of a weekend compared to the four, that's 43% of your week. So if you've got a three-day weekend every weekend, that's almost half of your time. So you can make great progress Monday through Thursday, but then you can undo it all from a Friday onwards. And coming back to accountability that we're talking about, earlier you know, accountability.
Speaker 2:And also, I think something that's very important and something that I'm starting to build is a group, a community, because I think when you have a community, people can see others doing the same thing, others winning. That that helps, that, that that really really helps. But but yeah, so obviously I'm a coach, so I'm going to say things that are very positive and and affirmative about what coaching delivers. But I know from a personal point of view as well, because I've, you know, I, I, you know, I have mentorships I'm part of, I pay for coaches for certain things that I do, you know I get.
Speaker 2:Up until two years ago I couldn't swim. I was so embarrassed about it, I could not swim, but I couldn't teach myself to swim. How am I possibly going to do that? I mean, first of all, you've got to build up the confidence and all that kind of stuff. I needed a coach and I got a coach and I learned to swim, you know, and all of a sudden things kind of click and then I look back now I think, god, I can't believe I couldn't swim, you know, because now's so natural. It's like riding a bike, you know. So when you're thinking about your health and fitness journey, and that's not just for now but that's for, you know, for your future years. You know you need a coach. You're not going to get there Because if you try and do it on your own, you're just going to go round and round and round and round in circles. So there's so much to be said for working with somebody with experience, with knowledge, with understanding, that's done it all before and not just learned out of a textbook.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, when I got my first coach, I was very, very stubborn about it because I was adamant that I knew exactly what to do. Because we do right? Of course we do. But it's the same argument I have with, like, my sister-in-law she's married to a kitchen fitter and she complained endlessly about the fact that their kitchen never got changed because there was never any time to do it. And I think I think that is the key thing, for so for me, like I spent months knowing what to do but doing it like a snail's pace because, I wasn't being accountable to anything, that it was just me thinking I could get away with stuff.
Speaker 1:And you know it won't matter if I miss a couple of thousand steps off today and all the rest of it. As soon as I got a coach, bam done like and I think it's the same with any profession you know, especially when you are in phases of life where you've got jobs and kids and grandkids and all the rest of it, you've got so many other things that you value in your life that you want to pay attention to, quite rightly. And if somebody can make your life easier and you can make your life easier in the area of your health, which is the most important, I would say why aren't you doing it? Like you'll spend thousands going on blooming one week, two week holidays?
Speaker 2:yeah, and coming back to social media, I think again. I think again it's not so helpful. I mean, listen, there's a lot of information out there, but you can get free course after free diet plan after you can get all that stuff and your inbox can be overflowing with emails. You know the things that you subscribe to that are going to tell you how to do this and I'll show you the shortcut for that. Blah, blah, blah, all this stuff, but still you're getting nowhere. You know. But it and and you're going to get nowhere because you're not implementing. And you, you know all that information that you can ingest and store in your head, you know, is absolutely bloody useless. It's a waste of time unless you implement it, and you will not implement it perfectly to start with. You know it just won't happen. So you need that guidance and you need that accountability. And yeah, yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:And, and I think one of the things with with resistance training or weight training, is that I, yeah, I think for many, many years it's been viewed as something that's just for looking good, or, you know, it's just aesthetics, it's just, you know well, why would I want to do that, you know? I mean, look, it's just for that muscle guy or for that that girl who wants to show up on the beach or some. Okay, for some people it is, but it's much, much deeper than that. You know, and I know from my experience it's. You know, looking good is part of it. Emotionally, mentally, it does help. But actually feeling good, feeling comfortable in your own skin and feeling healthy, feeling full of energy, feeling you know that, you know you've, you've got the energy to take on new things and master new things, you know what it that? That is where the real gold lies, you know, in terms of building up your, your, your, your physical health.
Speaker 2:It's not just about the looks, and there's more and more research that's coming out now that is showing how important building skeletal muscle is for prevention against age-related illnesses, even something where you're thinking about, say, maybe a hip fracture, falling over. And I think after a certain age I think it's 65 or 70 if you fall over and you fracture a hip, your life expectancy is 12 months from there. Very few people live longer than five years after a hip fracture. Now, if you're not taking care of your musculoskeletal system, if your legs aren't strong, if your base, your foundation aren't strong, you're more at risk of having a fall. So even just something simple like that and there's so much research that backs that up, and I think that there's there's research from china using twin twins over a 12-year period identical twins what what?
Speaker 2:One of the twins did leg training every day. The other identical twin didn't do any training at all and after 12 years the twin that didn't do any training and no leg training was cognitively impaired. The twin that did the training, cognition was almost perfect. And part of the reason for that is that, you know this is going back, you know, to when we were cavemen and cavewomen and we needed to be strong and our legs strong enough to be able to flee danger. Now, when our brain knows that our legs are strong enough to do that, it works so much better. But if you're not able to do that, your brain is almost thinking I've no need to actually do what I need to do to flee anything because I've got nothing to flee. I've not got the wherewithal, the means to do it. Cognitive decline will speed up.
Speaker 2:So it's not just about looking good, it's about functioning well. You know executive function, your memory and all these things. You know alzheimer's and dementia. You know that they are linked to muscle health and also kind of, you know, insulin and body fat and all that kind of stuff. You know the type of diet that many people have, which is very rich in carbohydrates and simple carbs. It plays into all that stuff. It plays into all that stuff and you may not realize it when you're in your 40s because you kind of still feel okay, but by God, you know, when you get to your 60s and 70s that's when you pay the price, and I think that is where education is so valuable.
Speaker 1:It's not enough just to sort of say to somebody right, eat this. With no explanation, because I would have deemed the crappy, unhealthy food as the treat, the luxury, the thing that I really wanted. And now I look at it and I go. You know I look at the healthy food and I know how valuable that's going to be. That's not to say that I don't enjoy the unhealthy stuff for sure. But it's so interesting how the mindset, as soon as you start actually looking after yourself, how the mindset around what's luxury actually is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's also this kind of misunderstanding amongst people and it's probably down to the marketeers and the food companies and the way they're advertising things. Healthy food isn't boring food. Healthy food isn't bland, it's not tasteless. If you want it to be bland and tasteless, it can be if that's your thing, but it really doesn't have to be. I mean my food. It's delicious. I love it. I absolutely love my food. You know I make it tasty, you know.
Speaker 2:So I'm not eating boring, dry, grilled chicken breasts. No, I'll get chicken thighs, you know, and I'll make them like a jerk rub and put them in the air fryer and it'd be absolutely beautiful. And I do so much stuff like that now and I'm having whole eggs, whereas before I'd have egg whites. And you know this was back when I was bodybuilding. And you know what? I've changed from chicken breast to chicken thighs, I've changed from egg whites to whole eggs, I've changed from not having cheese to having cheese. I've changed from not putting salt on my food to having salt on my food and at almost 61, I feel better than I did 20, 25 years ago. I feel better than I did 20, 25 years ago. I'm in pretty much the same physical shape in terms of body fat levels, now eating what would be considered fatty food back then you know, red meat and I'm talking about ribeye steak as opposed to fillet steak than I was back then. So I'm leaner, I'm healthier, I'm enjoying my food more. It's tasty, it's nutritious, you know, and I'm not punishing myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So part of the education that we have to do, roz, is to let people see, to help them understand, that food can be tasty and nutritious all at the same time, and this is one of the things that I really like about your page and your business it's feed my health.
Speaker 2:It's not starve me to make me healthy, not starve me to make me lean and thin and skinny, and desirable, you know it's feed tasty, if you're not going to enjoy it, it's not going to be sustainable, no, and if it's not sustainable, you're not going to get the results that you, that you, hope to get. But yes, so much has changed in recent years and doing what we do, we understand that, we know that we're part of that. So it's really down to us, it's our responsibility, to kind of spread the gospel as it were.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yes.
Speaker 2:And when people start to do it, they like jesus. I never knew I thought I was gonna have to. You know, eat rye vitas and, you know, just eat salad for the rest of my days. You know, I didn't realize that I could actually have a meal that looks really good, looks appetizing, tastes appetizing. I can still have fat. I thought I'd never be able to have fatty stuff before. No, you actually can. You actually can, and I'll tell you what that kind of fatty cut of meat, you know, is good for you. It's beneficial for you. You know, put some salt on it, put some pepper, season it, you know.
Speaker 2:Cook your. You know my asparagus, you know your. You know my asparagus. You know I cook with olive oil, you know, and I I'm not putting away, you know so. But because the the fats that I have and it obviously depends on the type of fats that you have, you know so I absolutely avoid at all costs Seed oils. You know that type of stuff, you know. So the oils that I would use, that I do use olive oil, I use coconut oil as well. I won't use rapeseed oil or anything like that. You know, but all the fats are naturally contained within foods because Mother Nature put them there for a reason. You know when, when you look at eggs, it's almost a complete food. Yes, it's high fat, but you need that fat, even cholesterol. Cholesterol has been demonized for as long as we can remember, but cholesterol is the building block of your hormones, sex hormones, whether it's testosterone, whether it's estrogen. You know your brain is mostly cholesterol. The myelin sheaths that cover all your nerves, that protect your nerves, are cholesterol.
Speaker 1:You know, cholesterol is not the enemy and the body self-regulates cholesterol yeah and just going back to the whole fat concept, because I think this is more prevalent in women than maybe men, I don't know. But if you were brought up in that era of low fat, everything what I experience is women who will speak to me and say well, I, you know, back in the day I got to this particular size and I felt good, but everyone told me that I looked unwell, I looked unhealthy, I looked gaunt and frail, and I know there's a lot more to it than that. Obviously, we didn't talk about the strength training side of it and all the rest, but they are basically slimming down on some of the most unhealthiest, unbalanced methods known to man and then wondering why their skin looks dull and sallow and they've got no energy. And it's because they were cutting out basically everything that drives their hormones.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And just their vitality.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, yeah, this is the thing I think you know. When people look at you know I want to lose weight. It's not really the weight that you want to lose, it's the body fat that you want to lose. And actually you know, in quite a few cases and you've maybe seen this with some of your, some of the ladies that you work with their weight doesn't shift so much, but the shape can change enormously.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Because part of the key to this and part of the key to being more healthy is changing the body composition. So it's getting body fat levels down to what you'd call or perceive as being a desirable level what you'd call it or perceive as being a desirable level but it's building the muscle tissue up, because that muscle will give you shape, will enhance curves and also, the more muscle tissue you've got, the more lean muscle tissue you've got, the more effectively you burn fat, the higher your metabolism is, the more efficiently you're running, the more mitochondria you have, the more body fat you're burning. You know so. So you know I I think for many years women were almost scared of getting big muscles, and you probably still hear this a lot oh, I don't want to get big. Actually, take takes a lot of work to get big muscle. I'm on gym session and then you know you're. You're there. But you know having more muscle tissue is your best insurance policy bar none for women as well as men, against age-related illness?
Speaker 1:absolutely, yeah, on that note, I'm gonna have to uh love you and leave you it's been fun.
Speaker 2:It's been a great conversation.
Speaker 1:I mean, we can't probably just chat about all this stuff for hours, couldn't we really?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, we. We absolutely could, we could, but I'm I'm getting hungry now and I'm sure you want to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all this it's all this food talk. Well, it's lovely to see you and I really appreciate all of your amazing insights. So thank you so much, and I'm going to leave all of your details below in the description on my podcast and send it to you as well, of course and thanks so much for inviting me on.
Speaker 2:My pleasure it's been great, and I've learned a lot too.
Speaker 1:So thanks for that, I'm glad well, have a wonderful rest of your day.