97- Eat Smart, Feel Strong: Nutrition Hacks for Women on the Go

Kat, host of the MilesFromHerView podcast powered by KatFit Strength, explains why feeling wiped out and having no appetite at the end of the day are often stress-and-fueling issues rather than laziness or lack of discipline. Using a client case study ("Diane," an early-40s project manager juggling work, kids, and a parent in declining health), she explains how chronic stress and inconsistent eating can suppress or scramble hunger cues, lead to undereating during the day, blood sugar crashes, and overeating at night.

00:00 Running on Empty

00:50 Show Intro

01:38 Winter Check In

02:14 Diane Case Study

05:10 Stress and Hunger Signals

06:35 Supplements vs Foundation

08:39 800 Gram Baseline

11:41 Add Dont Subtract

13:21 High Demand Seasons

15:23 Do This Today

16:43 Wrap Up and Subscribe

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Transcript

0:00

have you ever been completely wiped out at the end of the day, and you know you should eat something, but nothing sounds good, and you don't have the energy to figure it out? that's not a discipline. That's not a discipline problem. That's not a laziness problem. That's what happens when your body has been running on stress all day and hasn't had a consistent fuel and hasn't had consistent fuel to work with. Today we're gonna be talking about what actually happens to your body when you are running on empty, and why the answer is almost never what the wellness industry wants to sell you. We're gonna be talking about a surprisingly simple framework that I use with almost every client, and by the end of the episode you'll have three concrete, concrete things you can do today, not next week, but today.

kat 0:50

Welcome to MilesFromHerView, the podcast powered by KatFit Strength, where busy women like you find practical solutions to fuel your fitness journey with authenticity and resilience. I'm Kat, your host, a mom of two active boys, a business owner, and an ultra marathon runner and a strength trainer in her forties with nearly two decades of experience. I'm here to help you cut through the noise of fads, hacks, and quick fixes. This is a space where we celebrate womanhood and motherhood. All while building strength and resilience and reconnecting with you from a place of self-compassion and worthiness. Whether you're lacing up your running shoes to go out for a run, driving your kids to practice or squeezing in a moment for yourself, I'm right here in the trenches with you. Let's dive in.

1:38

Welcome back to MilesFromHerView. I'm Kat, your host, and hopefully by the time this episode is released, there's no more snow on the ground if you're in the Northeast, you understand. We have been getting a lot of snow this winter. I am in the Philadelphia area in Southeast Pennsylvania, and it has been a. So cold and so snowy. You've probably heard me talk about that on the podcast. If you've listened to other episodes that have been released in January and earlier in February. So today we're gonna be talking about fueling your body and how to create a system, a simple system to set yourself up for success without overhauling your entire diet. So I had a client, and we're gonna change out the name, we're gonna use the name Diane, and her career is a project manager and she's in her early forties. She's juggling a demanding job and two kids and a parent that has, is. In declining health, and she came to me because she was exhausted all the time and she couldn't figure out why. She knew she needed to eat better for months, and she had cut out sugar, added a stack of supplements, tried different workouts, downloaded the track tracking app, and she just continued to feel terrible. She found she could maintain the routine for a week and then something would happen and then she wouldn't work out. Would wind up eating sugar again. Forget to take the SU supplements. Then she, things would calm down and she would remember to take the supplements, cut out sugar. She would track her food and then do her workouts, and it just seemed like. Something always threw her off that proverbial track and she could never get it figured out. The problem wasn't that she needed more rules, it was that she'd been trying to fix a fuel problem with restriction. And when you're under chronic stress for days or in a season that comes from, I'm gonna start with a client case study to dive into this topic. It might resonate with you. So I had a client and her name has been changed. We're gonna use Diane. She's a project manager in her early forties, juggling a demanding job, two kids and a parent in declining health. And she came to me because she was exhausted all the time. Wanted to prioritize her health, her nutrition, as well as her fitness build and strength training and mobility and a cardio routine so that she in her demanding schedule. What she had, she was already trying to implement some things and she had tried eating better for months and working out. She cut out sugar, she added a stack of supplements. She even downloaded a tracking app. She was trying to stick to free workouts that she had found on YouTube and other places, and she still felt terrible. And the problem wasn't that she needed more rules. It was she'd been trying to fix a fuel problem with restriction. So let's dive a little bit deeper into Diane's situation. And it's not gonna be just solely focusing on Diane, but we're gonna pull back out and I'm gonna give you some tangible takeaways that you can implement today. So exhaustion doesn't just make you tired, it actually changes how your body reads hunger. And when you're under chronic stress, the kind that comes from long hours emotional load and not enough sleep, your body's hunger signals get suppressed or scrambled. You might not feel hungry at noon, even though you haven't eaten since 7:00 AM or maybe you haven't eaten at all that day. And then at 4:00 PM your blood sugar crashes and suddenly everything in the vending machine or in your pantry looks like a reasonable decision. And this is exactly what was happening with Diane. She wasn't overeating, she was undereating during the day and then overcorrecting at night because her body was so desperate. Her body was desperately trying to catch up. She thought she had a willpower problem. What she actually had was an unstable fuel pattern. The fix here is not stricter schedule or more self-discipline. It's understanding that your body needs consistent input throughout the day to keep your energy, mood and focus stable. So input is the food. You need food throughout the day to keep your energy, mood and focus stable. So think of it like a car with a slow gas leak. You can keep driving. But you're going to stall at the worst possible time. So the goal isn't a perfect diet. The goal is stable fuel. And I'm gonna push back on something that comes up with clients constantly, and maybe for yourself is in the wellness world. The loud message says, if you're tired, you need more. More adaptigen, more green powders, more collagen, more of something in a pouch or a capsule. Typically that comes with a high price tag, and I understand why that message is so appealing, especially when you're exhausted. You just want someone to hand you the solution. But the reality here is supplements are not the foundation of health. They're a finishing layer and finishing layers don't hold up when the foundation is not there. So I've worked with clients who were spending over$200 a month on supplements and still crashing every afternoon. When we looked at what they were actually eating, they were skipping breakfast, eating a, a small lunch in the afternoon and drinking coffee to stay upright because they felt so tired and no amount of supplements is going to fix that, what we needed to put in there for lasting change. So. How I coach my clients is from. My own nutrition background is from Precision Nutrition, and the research that is behind them is lasting change in energy, body composition, and health comes from repeatable daily habits, not from products. So if you're not sleeping, not eating consistently, and running on. Stress hormones, your cortisol is your stress hormone all day. Adding supplements to that picture is like just putting a nice pillow, a nice throw pillow on a broken couch. So before you buy anything else, ask yourself three questions. Am I eating at consistent intervals? Is the quality of most of my meals reasonable? Am I getting enough sleep most nights? And if the answer is. To any of these is no. That's where you start. Let's dive into some practical tips in how you can put together more of a nutrient dense meal or fuel intake for yourself. The goal is not perfection. Here. I want, I stress that enough. The goal is not perfection with this. The goal is to ensure that we're getting an. As much nutrient dense foods in as possible. So a practical way in how I start to do this with my clients is we're looking at something called like the 800 gram baseline. The idea is simple. It's. To aim for roughly 800 grams of fruits and vegetables per day as a starting foundation for your nutrition. That's it. No macros, no food logging in the app, no rules on what you can eat. So picture yourself. So now before you picture yourself weighing salads in your kitchen and only ever eating vegetables and fruits, let me put it into context. A medium apple. So just about a medium sized apple is about 180 grams. A large handful of spinach is around 30 grams, and a cup of cherry tomatoes is about 150 grams. So you're not eating a mountain of food, you're just trying to weave produce into meals that you're already eating. To simplify it a little bit more. What I have my clients focusing on in the beginning is before we even get to 800 grams, is at every meal. No matter what time of day it is, add a fruit or a vegetable. And here's why it works so well with people who are busy and exhausted. It gives you something to add. So like I said, just add something, not something to take away, which matters more than most people realize psychologically. Second. When you're eating more fiber and micronutrients, you feel fuller more consistently, which means fewer energy crashes. Third, over time, you naturally start crowding out the low nutrient stuff because, not because you banned it, but because you are just not hungry for it. So again. A little bit of a case study here. One of my clients is a nurse who works long shifts. If you're a nurse out there, you know how long the shifts are and ate most of her meals on the go, some grapes to her lunch bag every day. That's it, that those were her two choices. I didn't say you had to pick only vegetables or only fruits. I said, just add fruits or vegetables, and that's where she started. She added a banana and some grapes within two weeks. She told me her afternoon energy was noticeably more stable, not because of some dramatic overhaul, but because she started adding something simple and consistent now with this theme, another one that I really, really enjoy that built on it is add, don't subtract. And I think this is an area where a lot of people are missing. When most of us decide that we want to eat better, the instinct is to start with subtraction. No more of this, and cut back on that. And stop eating. The other thing, and that approach might work for a small chunk of time, but when life gets really hard or until you are stressed and tired, someone brings donuts into a meeting and there you are having a donut, and then the guilt and shame starts to build from there. Restriction fails under pressure, but adding tends to stick. Here's what this looks like in practice. Instead of, I'm going, I'm not going to eat chips anymore. It's, I'm going to add a piece of fruit to my afternoon stack snack Instead of, I need to stop skipping breakfast, it's, I am going to pack a Greek yogurt. In my lunch bag to eat for breakfast at the office. Instead of overhauling your dinner, it's adding a vegetable to whatever. You are already making this. The reason this works isn't just behavioral. It's neurological. When you're experiencing small wins early, your brain starts associating that behavior with success and you are more likely to repeat it. I've seen this with client after client. The ones who try to change everything at once, usually burn out by week three. The ones who start adding one thing and doing it consistently, those are the ones who are still going six months later to over a year start where you can succeed and then build from there. And I wanna talk to anyone who is in what I call high demand season of life. So remember Diane at the beginning. She is what I would consider an high demand season of life, you know, demanding job, young kids, aging parents, or all three at once. So chasing perfect nutrition during a season like this. Is very unrealistic and I'd argue it is the wrong goal entirely. I had a client who came to me after her mom's health started declining. She was flying back and forth and managing her own household and trying to hold it all together at work. She felt guilty about not eating better. She was convinced, like I've seen so many times. That if she just had more discipline, she would feel better and could prioritize her health. What I told her was this, the goal right now is not optimal. The goal is functional, stable blood sugar. So your energy doesn't. Crater in the middle of the day, enough protein and produce to support your immune system and recovery. And enough flexibility that you can stay consistent even when the wheat completely falls apart because it will. So we implemented the two strategies above ADD at every meal. I just told her, add a fruit or vegetable drink water. Focus on yourself. We need to keep it simple. So perfection isn't available in seasons like this, and we shouldn't be striving for perfection in every season. But in lower seasons, when the demand is a little lower, you can tweak things. You can experiment with different recipes, you can play with you can play with meal prepping. We wanna keep that consistency there when we're in a season of high demand, even if it's at 70% or 50% and 70% consistency over six months will do you far more for your health than perfection at two weeks followed by giving up entirely. All right, so I've given you those two actionable, tangible tips, and I just want you to pick one because. One thing done consistently is worth more than two things or 10 things abandoned by Thursday. Option one, add one, serving or fruit. Add one serving of fruit or vegetables to your next meal, not your whole week, just your next meal. It could be a handful of spinach in your eggs. An apple at lunch or carrots on the side. Just one thing. Option two. If you know exhaustion is causing you to skip your first meal, set out something tonight that requires zero effort in the morning, a yogurt, a banana, a handful of nuts. Make the decision now so you don't have to make it when you're half asleep, and for a bonus, one, look at your next meal and ask one question. A vegetable, a fruit, or a protein. Not dramatically different, just slightly better. So pick one, do it today. That's the whole assignment. I cannot say this enough. You don't have to overhaul your entire life to feel better. You don't need a new program or a new supplement stack or a new version of yourself who wakes up at 5:00 AM and meal preps on Sundays. You just need to make the next meal a little more supportive than the last one. That's it for today. Thank you so much for being here. I'm looking forward to. Seeing grass again and for spring to finally, finally come to the northeast.

kat 16:54

Thank you for tuning in to MilesFromHerView, powered by KatFit Strength. If this podcast inspires you, don't keep it for yourself. Hit follow or subscribe to stay updated on the new episodes, and leave us a review to help more women and moms discover this space. Your feedback fuels this podcast and I'd love to hear what's working for you or what topics you want to dive into Next. You can connect with me on Instagram at KatFit or share this episode. Road with a friend who is ready to embrace her strength. Remember, fitness isn't about perfection. It's about showing up for yourself and finding strength in every step of your journey. Until next time, keep moving forward one mile at a time.