Food Fatigue: Cutting Through The Confusion

Is Keto the best approach? Should you really be fasting? Will a Green Smoothie transform your skin? Everyday we are constantly bombarded with health advice and (mis) information. It's no wonder we often end up feeling really confused about what to put on our actual plate!

It's time to forget what the influencers are telling you, and tune into real health for yourself. Let's cut through the Food Fatigue and listen to our own hunger cues, enjoy good food and focus on satisfaction and energy. 

This season is all about the evolution of you, exploring growth, change and what it means to step into the next version of yourself. 

Cassie Davenport is a experienced and degree qualified naturopath and nutritionist, Cassie is passionate about co-creating achievable and sustainable solutions with her clients. Her approach involves combining the latest evidence based research with traditional herbal medicine methods and believes small changes can create a big impact.

If you loved this episode, follow Cassie on Instagram HERE for more, and HERE to learn more about working with Cassie one-to-one.

The information shared in this episode is general in nature and is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitute for personalised medical, nutritional or therapeutic advice. Cassie is not responsible for any actions taken based on the content of this episode. Always consult a qualified health professional before making changes to your health, diet or lifestyle. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Your plate should support your life and not complicate it. Life ebbs and flows, and the woman you are now is not the woman that you were when you were 25. And this is not about better eating. It's really about better living. And health does not live in extremes, it lives in foundations. Having awareness to know what you desire and crave at any season is such important information we need to lean into so that we can fuel ourselves properly. Welcome to In with Cassie. I'm Cassie Davenport, your host, naturopath and clinical nutritionist. This season is all about the evolution of food. Let's jump into today's episode. It's reintroducing yourself to food and figuring out what to put on your plate because the food noise is real. And I don't know how or when it started. I feel like Instagram has a lot to answer for with the picture perfect meals that were sort of all the rage like 10 years ago. And if you're somebody who likes to take a photo of the most perfect meal, absolutely no shame. I love looking at a picture of beautiful food as well. But I know for a lot of women, food has become like another job, another task, another performance, another thing to get right. And it's exhausting. And if we layer that with the fire hydrant of information that's coming at us around, you know, protein, creatine, fiber, supplements, fasting, gluten-free, dairy-free, the list goes on. All of this creates what I like to call food fatigue. And I think we've all felt this from time to time. It's where you know you're hungry, but you have no idea what you want. Or when you're overwhelmed by all of the nutritionist advice that is out there. You eat the same meals out of convenience, but you also feel flat and frustrated and you don't really know how to mix it up, but it's just become comfortable and routine. For a lot of women, especially mums, I'm gonna say, food has become around logistics. We lose our spark and our inspiration around food, and it just becomes another task. I first want you all to know this is not laziness. This is not a lack of discipline. You have not fallen off the bandwagon. This is food fatigue. And the thing about sitting with women in clinic is that I have discovered the thing about food fatigue is that it's rarely about food in isolation. There are usually some big contributing factors to this state. Your cognitive overload, because deciding what's healthy and what fits the family and what you actually have time to create once you get home at four o'clock or finish work, whatever it may be, that all adds up and it's exhausting. And then you've got the nutrition noise. Do we choose keto? Are we fasting? Are we fueling? Are we doing supplements? Are we doing trends? The trends. If I have a dollar for every woman I've heard in clinic say, you know, I saw this fat-burning smoothie, or I saw the perfect balanced recipe smoothie on TikTok or Instagram or wherever it was. And they're making it and they're hungry again in an hour, or they're making it and they don't really even like it, but they're going to continue to drink it because this is what an influencer said is the perfect morning breakfast. I would be such a wealthy practitioner if I had a dollar for every time I heard somebody say that. So the trends can really set us off track. Another huge factor is just chronic stress and depletion. You're tired, you're torched out, you're running on empty, appetite cues get blunted and confused. Also thinking of what to make for dinner while cleaning up from breakfast, if you've been there, like it's exhausting. So if we just add in then and layer it, if you were born in the 80s or 90s, I think everyone at least had a touch of this to some extent, some of us more than others. But if you then add in a history of dieting and restriction, the rigidity around food or the beliefs that we hold around that, it can be such a slippery slope. The rules around dieting can create a lot of mental fatigue in and of themselves. And I've definitely time and time again seen eating be turned into a full-time job with zero flexibility. And then for women, if we just layer that again with our good old hormones that fluctuate throughout the month, where we have low energy at times, but our hormones also definitely play into changing of appetite and craving and motivation. It's no wonder we're confused and exhausted and no idea what to put on our plate. So let's go back to basics. I'm gonna walk you through your food foundations. And the best part about these food foundations is that they're specific to you. You get to choose, they're tailored to you and your plate. So if you're listening now or you're driving or walking, you can come back to it. But get a piece of paper or start a note on your phone and you can write some of these down. You can always pause and come back to it too. Number one in my food foundations is what do you actually like to eat? First things first, what do you like? What in and you can have categories. So like I usually start with vegetables, starchy vegetables, fruit, proteins, fats. Make a list and write down what all of the vegetables that you like mushroom, capsicum, broccoli, cauliflower, egg plaid, carrot, zucchini, starchy vegetables like your pumpkin, sweet potato, plain potatoes, fruits. Like I like berries and bananas and oranges and kiwi fruit and strawberries and mango and passion fruit and banana. And then when we're talking about protein, I'm talking essentially about anything comes from an animal bar your vegetarian protein. So any meats that come from your turkey, fish, beef, chicken, lamb, um, eggs, yogurt, cheese, and then all of your vegetarian sauces, your beans, legumes, nuts, seeds can sort of fall into that category as well. They kind of layer over with fats. So then your healthy fats are going to be your oils, avocados, olives, things like that. When I'm working with a client in clinic, after their first session, everybody gets a take-home copy of this massive list of foods that I have in put into categories. And their first task is to go home and just cross out anything that they do not like. And I don't usually like to work in in backwards modes in terms of I like to include all of the things you do like rather than the things that you don't like. But in this instance, I've just made one big list of all of the foods, and you get to go in and cross everything off that you don't want because then we have like a starting point. We have a list of foods that you like to eat. We've got a green list. So the second thing I usually get people to write down is what flavor of foods do you like? And this ebbs and flows and changes. This is not set in stone, but you know, you can name two or three things. What flavors do you like? Do you like Mexican? Do you like Asian? Do you like Middle Eastern? I've just gone through a Moroccan phase. I'm definitely leaning more back into the Italian now. My littlest love is lasagna obsessed at the moment. We make it and he says, dis nice, dis nice. So I am making at least one lasagna a week at the moment for him. So we're definitely leaning back into our Italian phase. This is your inspiration, inviting you to get curious about what you enjoy, what you desire when it comes to food. Let's start there. Create a list of foods and flavors that you actually enjoy. And then your number three foundation is actually building your plate. So this is where we start to play around with macro and micronutrients, and this can be quite nuanced with different people depending on your goals. So if you want to support body composition, if you want to lean out, if you want to have more muscle, the balance changes ever so slightly. But also the right balance will just change depending on what season of life you're in, your stress load and your capacity as well. So just being mindful of that. And this is this is probably the step where if you have, if you're in a particularly tricky season or if you have a very specific goal in mind around body composition, this is where it can be really useful to jump in and get some support around this and figuring out how we actually build your plate to really support you. But in my opinion, the big ones are going to be, and this is what I usually go through, well, I do go through with my clients. For me, and this is my opinion, but protein and fiber for me share, share a podium. Choosing your protein, this is your anchor. It's going to balance your blood sugar levels, it's going to support your energy production, it's going to keep you feeling fuller for longer. So when choosing the amount of protein that you need to have, it's done based on your body weight, so how much you weigh. And I usually get my clients to have about 1.2 grams of protein per day per body kilo. So say I was somebody who was weighing 75 kilos. I'd want them to have 90 grams of protein a day. And then ideally, we'd like to split that up over three meals, so not having like one big chunk of protein in the evening. So then we're looking at having 30 grams of protein for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You can do 25 or 20 if you're going to have really high protein snacks as well. But generally speaking, that's what I'm looking at when I'm trying to work out how much protein somebody needs. Obviously, that is going to change if you've got different body composition and different goals. I want you to think of protein, as I said, as your anchor. It's going to balance those blood sugar levels. It's going to support energy production. It's going to keep you fuller for longer. It's going to have all of those nice elements to it. The next thing is, and this should take up about half of your plate. This is where your colours come in. And if you've worked with me in clinic before, you know I harp on about this like a broken record. I'm always telling people, make sure you have your three colors with each meal. And the reason why I get people to have three colours is because it ticks a lot of boxes. It's ticking the fiber box, it's ticking the micronutrient box with our vitamins and minerals. And it's also just a really good way to feed all of your gut bacteria and things like that. So nourishment, fiber, keeping you full for longer as well. Fiber's great for that. It's also supporting all of those detoxification pathways and moving things out and making sure you have nice healthy bowel movements as well. Veggies are essential. So your three colors with each meal, and this should be taking up a big portion of your plate. You can have then choosing a starchy veggie or a carb for your energy levels. This is really going to support mood, hormones, nervous system, all of that. And then we've got your touch of fats. It's going to help you absorb some nutrients and feel satiated, plus, it just tastes really nice. Then we add in the fun. So the flavors, the dressings, the herbs, the spices, the crunchy, the creaminess, the warmth. If you're craving warmth, then how do we make this warm for you? The food you like should be informing how you build your plate. Create a menu that works for you. And this is something I do all of the time with my one-on-one clients. And then the next foundation, I think, is the step that is often, I often see missed, that it's so essential, particularly if you're somebody who is coming back home to yourself and you're trying to rebuild trust with your body. It's about awareness and collecting information. So after you've eaten a meal, I invite you to get curious and ask, was I looking forward to that meal? Like, was I excited to eat it? You know, when you go to a restaurant, you're looking at all of the things and you're really excited, like we should feel that with most of our meals. Did I enjoy it? Was I satiated? Or was it routine? Because a lot of the times I see people, you know, maybe choking down a smoothie that they don't really like, that they're not looking forward to, that they didn't enjoy because they wanted something warm. Um, and then they're hungry again in an hour. So it's not ticking any of these boxes when we check in with ourselves. Was I satisfied? And how long did it carry me for? And what I mean by that was how long until I was hungry again? Because that's really going to inform how we critique those macronutrients. Ideally, we want you to be feeling full for at least three to four hours after you've eaten a meal before you're really getting hungry again and need that next meal. Don't really like people going longer than that four-hour window. It starts to mess with your blood sugar levels. But yeah, a good three to four hour window between meals is ideal. Your plate should support your life and not complicate it. So this is not about perfect, it's about consistency in my book. And consistency will beat intensity every day of the week. So none of this is set in stone. If you're feeling like you need to reset, start the process again. So life ebbs and flows, and the woman you are now is not the woman that you were when you were 25. The woman I was at 25 is certainly not the woman I am now. And there's no way I could feel my body the same way. I've changed and ebbed and flowed. I've had two pregnancies, I've birthed two incredible children, I've had the luxury of having enough milk supply to feed them both for two years. If I was still eating what I ate at 25, I would be severely undernourished. So the next foundation is checking in with what season are you in? And as women, we go through so many seasons of life, each asking something different from us. Hormonal changes. If we just look at hormonal changes, you've got puberty, preconception, coming off contraception, fertility planning, pregnancy, postpartum, breastfeeding, perimenopause, menopause. There's the life and identity changes, whether you've become a mother or you're returning to work or you're adjusting to being a stay-home mom, or you're a solo parent, you might be navigating a separation or rebuilding yourself after burnout. These seasons change your capacity and it's about finding what works for you during these times. If you're going through a high emotional state or a nervous system reset, whether you're on high alert or in survival mode or healing or building or feeling disconnected from your body, your nervous system sets the tone for digestion, appetite, and energy. So your nutritional needs and desires around food will shift. It's completely normal, it's biology. Knowing what you like and having awareness to know what you desire and crave any season is such important information we need to lean into so that we can fuel ourselves properly. So this is when it comes to do you want something simple? Do you just want repetitive meals that you can change out some of the colors for? Are you creating craving warmth or comfort? Are you needing convenience and flexibility? Are you enjoying being creative in the kitchen and you want a bit more variety at the moment? None of these are wrong. And you don't need to eat one way for the rest of your life. That's the beauty of it. We get to decide, we get to change, we get to evolve and choose the foods that meet us in the season that we're in. And this is not about better eating, it's really about better living. And health does not live in extremes, it lives in foundations. You're allowed to evolve and go at your own pace and do it in your own way. If your body has evolved, your nutrition needs to as well. So I hope these foundations help you. Please like. If this, if you think there is a friend or someone you know who would benefit from this conversation, please forward this episode on. This helps me immensely to get the message out there. If you actually have a topic that you would like me to talk about, please head over to my Instagram page and slide on into my DMs. They're always open. My handle is Cassie Davenport underscore naturopath. If this lands for you and you're feeling like you're in a tricky season or you would like some extra support, you don't have to figure all of this out on your own. I offer one-on-one consultations and you're welcome to email me for a free discovery call to see if I'm the right fit for you. But thank you so much for being here and being a part of this little community. And if no one has told you today, nourishment is meant to support you, not exhaust you. Your nutritional needs need to change with your season, and that's not inconsistency, that's evolution.