This week Maria and Roisin discuss diets. If you are confused about Keto, perplexed about Paleo and fed up with fasting, welcome to the club. We have both dabbled with the odd diet in the past and tried some real corkers.
This week Maria and Roisin discuss diets. If you are confused about Keto, perplexed about Paleo and fed up with fasting, welcome to the club. We have both dabbled with the odd diet in the past and tried some real corkers.
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Maria: Hi, I'm Maria.
Roisin: And I'm Roisin.
Maria: And welcome to the Fitness Fertility Podcast. This podcast is all about how improving your physical fitness can help support you on your very own fertility journey. I'm a personal trainer who specializes in training women with fertility problems and myself have PCOS and have had two beautiful boys and I'm on a mission to help you do the same.
Roisin: Before we get into it, we will be discussing adult themes such as where do babies come from, pregnancy loss and bereavement. We may also be sweary from time to time. We are optimistic, light-hearted girls, but we know this is a really stressful time for some of our listeners. We respect that. In this week's show, we are discussing the often very confusing issue of diets.
Maria: If you are confused about keto, perplexed about paleo and fed up with fasting, welcome to the club. I do want to take a moment to say that whilst we're going to talk about the pros and cons of each diet in relation to weight loss and fertility, if this is triggering for anyone, please do skip this episode. Roisin, you and I have both dabbled with the odd diet in the past.
Roisin: Yeah, you could say that. Dabbled is an understatement. If you could have stratus of dieters, I think I'd be like semi-pro with ambitions to get into professional leagues. I have tried absolutely every diet going and some of them have been some real corkers. The cabbage soup diet, who thought of that one? What masochist thought of the cabbage soup diet? I mean, that one was so hard-core.
Maria: With the cabbage soup diet, do you actually just eat cabbage soup the whole time? Because I feel for you, but also your family, you know, I can't imagine that that's a good diet for anyone.
Roisin: I think you had to brew up a big old cabbage soup and have it like maybe twice a day. I can't remember exactly the amount, but the consequences for friends and family was enormous.
Maria: Traumatic, I would imagine. Did it actually work?
Roisin: No.
Maria: What happened? Because, okay, it's ridiculous. We're definitely not condoning it, but what actually happened?
Roisin: I started doing it. I bought loads of cabbage. I made lots of soup and then I stopped drinking it because it was vile and external members of my plan were complaining. It's like most diets I have been on;I go in hard and fast. I buy all the food and all of the products and really fill the cupboards with all of that stuff and then I just kind of let it rot. You just go back to eating pizza on a Saturday night and having a big old glass of wine and that's where you always end up. This sounds really sad. I think I went my first diet when I was 12. I first considered reducing my calories in some way when I was 12.
Maria: 12.
Roisin: I've been at this solidly 10 years, Maria
Maria: You started thinking of dieting at 12. I am genuinely taken aback. I think for me it was around 18. That's been a good solid 20 years for me now. 12. What got you thinking at 12? I'm really interested in this. Where did that come from?
Roisin: It came from feeling like I was fat. My body was changing. Suddenly I had these breasts and they were enormous. There's no doubt about it. I came out swinging, so to speak. In my head it was just like monolith, this huge presence in the front of my body. Obviously everything starts to get a little thicker. Your thighs get thicker, your hips are moving apart. People used to refer to it as puppy fat, which just didn't help. I just heard the word fat. In my head I thought, ooh, I should probably do one of those diet things I keep on hearing about. I remember the first one that I tried, which was a couple of years later. Those jars of Slimfast powder that you used to mix with water tasted amazing.
Maria: I thought they tasted gross because they were like crushed vitamin pills to me. I hate that taste.
Roisin: I drank nothing but that for weeks on end. But the thing was I had no measure. I had no scales. I couldn't tell you if it worked or not. I don't think it did. But it was my first steps into dieting. It wasn't effective then. My food management wasn't effective until maybe about five years ago when I actually really changed the way I was thinking about food. Before that, everything was like throwing spaghetti at a wall just hoping something was stick, but nothing ever stuck.
Maria: I completely agree with the spaghetti metaphor. I think honestly that's what everybody does. A big part of this diet culture is its just hope, isn't it? It's the hope that this thing that you try will change your life. For me, whenever I was starting a diet, I felt happiest in the planning stage. So, Roisin, what you were saying about buying in the cabbages, I'm going to start next Monday because it's always a Monday. The happiest you are is in that week beforehand because you feel like you're in control. You know that this massive weight loss is going to change your life forever. It's on its way, but you haven't actually started on the grind yet. So you're in this like happy, almost pre-honeymoon period of feeling good before you actually start this diet. You might stick to it for two weeks, three weeks. Four or five weeks I think is doing pretty well. I have massive respect for anyone that can change the way they eat and maintain that over a long period of time.
Roisin: Maria, just with your psychology head on, what is it with those people that can break that link and create these new food habits and most importantly, make them stick?
Maria : I think there's lots of different things here, but the one that immediately springs to mind is this idea of locus of control. Just to give a very quick summary, very loosely speaking, you can have two types of people. You can have people who have internal locus of control and people who have external locus of control. So if you have internal locus of control, let's imagine that you did really well on an exam. So your thought process behind that is I did really well on that exam because I worked. I did really well, I worked hard and I put the effort in. If you've got external locus of control, whilst you'd be delighted that you did well on the exam, you do not take the credit. You give the credit to, it was the right time of day. You know, I had a really good teacher or I slept really well that night. So when it comes to how you view the world, internal locus of control is massively important. If you want to stick to a diet or a lifestyle, which is a word I prefer, you have to have internal locus of control. When it comes to presidents, prime ministers, anyone that puts themselves forward for an elected position of power, the research has now shown that those people genuinely believe that they can make a difference. You have to believe that you can, that you are in control. You can't just leave it up to the external factors because that would be, oh, I've fallen off the wagon today because someone gave me some sweets at work, so you know, I had a bar of Dairy Milk. That would be external locus of control. Internal locus of control would be, I kindly turned down the chocolate at work today because I'm taking control of what I'm eating because you have to believe you can, otherwise it's not going to work.
Roisin: What if you are bumbling along and you're on your diet and you just, for some reason that you don't understand this may have happened to someone today, I'm asking for a friend. You're bumbling along, you're doing great, you're hitting all your milestones and then suddenly you just find food in your mouth. I think so much about eating is, yes, it's in the head, but it's also emotionally led as well, is it not?
Maria: Oh, 100%. What I would be interested in Roisin, next time you speak to your “friend” would be, and there's no judgment, everybody does this, but what did they think when they find the food in their mouth? This is the interesting bit. Did they think that is not my fault? Who left that chocolate bar out? I was obviously going to eat it. External locus of control. Or did they think, oh my goodness, I just picked that chocolate up and ate it. That was on me. I wonder why. Let's figure it out. Internal locus of control. Now obviously it goes without saying, the latter of those two is the more helpful for long-term change because you need to reflect. This is what I was also going to come on to. We are touching on habits here. To give you a real life example, before Christmas got into the habit of having a little bit of dark chocolate before you and I did the podcast recording, probably because you know I was tired. Now what I've done is I've associated chocolate with this and I had to be consciously aware that I've made that link. For anyone interested this is called classical conditioning. This is Pavlov and his dog is coming in for anyone that knows anything about it. What I now have to do is put barriers in place to stop that happening. I am now sitting here with my herbal tea because I know that my cue is, Roisin and I are recording, I'm going to have a bar of chocolate and I need to break that. But the difference is I have internal locus of control because this is on me. It's not your fault. It's not the computer's fault. It's not the world's fault. It's me. I'm in control.
Roisin: The diet industry sells us on so many different ways to eat food. Different combinations, different times, different amounts. We've gone from everything from no carbs to carbs, to high protein, to high fat, to calories in, calories out. We've done every version and I rarely hear of anyone that can do it for longer than 30 days. I really would hold my hands up to anyone who can keep it up consistently.
Maria: I completely agree.
Roisin: So this is if you live in this external locus of control headspace, what could you do to relieve yourself from there?
Maria: So I'd say just be aware and this is where journaling, which I know you're a massive supporter of, really, really, really comes into its own because the brain can trick itself. So what I would say is just start really simply. Whenever you find yourself in a situation like you've accidentally eaten the chocolate bar, maybe something happens at work, just take 10 seconds to reflect on what just happened. What were the thoughts that you had around that event? Did you take responsibility for it or did you blame everyone in its dog? And that's a massive starting point because the first thing you need to do is identify, do you have more of? I say more of because it's a scale. Do you have more of an internal or an external locus of control? You need to figure it out first. If you don't figure it out, you can't change it. So that's what I would do. Be mindful, journal for a week, think of big things that have happened in the week and just jot them down and just reflect on it. You can always drop me an email and say, this is what happened. What would this suggest? And I love this. You know, this is, this is my dream. I love this work.
Roisin: I fundamentally changed my eating patterns about five years ago when I was just done with that extra half a stone going on every year, you know, that kind of rolling thing that I would battle it off and it'll come back with interest and I'd battle it off and it'll come back with interest and I was just done with it. And I thought I have to do something really differently here. Later on the show, we'll be talking about all the different types of eating plans and everyone will find a home somewhere. What I found a home with is some control the food in the trolley. Don't shop hungry. Always prep. The Apple test, I know we talked about it before. If I'm not hungry enough to have an Apple, I'm not hungry. Food is fuel and therefore you want to put the very best fuel into your system. So lay off on the ultra processed foods. I find that a game changer. Fill that plate with fruit, with veg, with whole grains. Fill yourself up with, with food, real food. Booze. Oh God, booze.
Maria: That's a big one. Booze. Yeah.
Roisin: You got to control the booze. It's not just the booze. It's the next day recovery from the booze. I know we will talk about this later on, but I didn't know it was called intermittent fasting at the time. Five, six years ago, it was called stop eating at seven o'clock.
Maria: Catchy Roisin, catchy. I like it.
Roisin: I don't know why I didn't market that idea as my own. Stop eating at seven o'clock in the evening. And steps, making sure you keep your steps high.
Maria: I'm glad you brought up this idea of eating real food because this links us very nicely into the first; I'm going to call it way of eating. I don't love the word diet for this. I'm going to go for way of eating. The Paleo diet is sometimes referred to as the “Caveman diet”. I like the basic principle behind it. The idea is that you only eat foods that were available to early humans. These foods will bring you the best health. This ties into the idea of gut health, which we've talked about before with the amazing nutritionists we've had on the show. If you're eating the foods that humans were designed to eat, this is how we've survived. Rather than the processed high fat, high salt, high sugar foods, this is what our gut has evolved to do. This is why we are still alive today. And the idea is by not eating these particular types of foods, you are actually damaging your gut because we are not designed for this. You're probably thinking, ah, what types of foods are we looking at here? When you're on the Paleo diet, as they call it, or the Caveman diet, so you're looking at meat and fish, you're looking at eggs, you're looking at nuts and seeds, you've got your fruits, you've got your vegetables, but not corn because that's a grain. And then you've got lots of nice healthy fats and oils. So you've got your coconut oil, which by the way, I love, your olive oil, your avocado oil, really nice healthy fats. And it probably goes without saying, but you really want to avoid the processed food. So try and keep out things like white sugar. So it's basically going back to basics. What did our ancestors eat? Let's eat that. And then hopefully you will feel better overall. The really interesting thing about the Paleo diet is that there's a lot of research out there that says, look, this could be really good for fertility. For the key reasons that if you eat the foods we were designed to eat, that our gut loves, these foods are quite often anti-inflammatory. And anyone who has endometriosis or anyone that just struggles with certain types of foods will know anti-inflammatory is good. We do not want any of our gut and any of our tissues to become inflamed. The other really interesting thing is eating this type of food has been linked to insulin resistance and basically improving your insulin resistance, which massively ties into PCOS. And I think this is absolutely fascinating. When we're trying to link it to fertility, because obviously that's why we're here, there is an argument that says the Paleo diet could, and I am saying could because everybody's different, could help people who have in particular insulin resistant PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and it could help people that really feel the effects of inflammation when they are eating particularly processed foods. And to me, this is genuinely interesting because it goes back to the old adage, you are what you eat. And a lot of this has to do with loving yourself, which I appreciate sounds incredibly cheesy and I know that, but actually it's really true. If you had a best friend who you loved and cared for, you wouldn't want to feed them a load of rubbish. And really you have to see yourself in that way. You have to see yourself as this kind of beautiful human that can achieve these amazing things, but you have to feel right. You are what you eat.
Roisin: It's a really interesting point you were saying about loving yourself. Your skin, your hair, everything improves when your diet improves. It's not just all about pounds and ounces and measuring. It's about beautiful fresh skin, thicker, shiny hair, stronger, better nails, feeling better. When we think of food as not just fuel, but as a medicine for our bodies, it's healing us from the inside. Another good way to know if it's an ultra processed food versus a real food, one comes in a wrapper and one doesn't. Okay. So it tends to be, it tends to be obviously meats come in wrappers and things like that. But when you get the wrapper and you look at the back of the packet and it has 25 ingredients, many of which you don't, can't quite read, that is a highly processed food. It is not going to be good for you once, twice, three times, even 10 times, a hundred times. Yes. But over the course of a lifetime, it's not good. We know as per our Caveman ancestors, they ate food that was fresh, was seasonal.
Maria: And here we are today. I like the simplicity of this. I like the simplicity of if it comes wrapped in a whole load of plastic wrapping, it's probably not good for you. And I also really like the idea that you just said, actually spend a minute looking at the ingredients on the back. If there are a ton of words on there that you've never heard of before that you can't pronounce, that is not good for you. Put it back, find something else. But yeah, I like this. I like the Paleo diet. I think it makes a lot of sense. Sorry to interrupt, but I know that you really want a baby.
Maria (ad): So I want to let you know all about my new training plans for 2023. I know that so many of you are fed up with trying to lower your BMI on your own. You feel confused and overwhelmed with the information around fitness for fertility. My training plans are designed to support you at whatever stage of the journey you're at. Whether you need to lose 12 pounds or more to reach your target BMI, whether you need accountability to support and whether or not you need meal plans to support your healthy eating, head over to fitnessfertility.com forward slash training for fertility to find out more or book in for a free consultation at fitnessfertility.com forward slash free consultation to discuss your own personal fertility needs. And now back to the show.
Roisin: My new rebranded Let's Stop Eating at Seven O’clock diet, intermittent fasting or time restricted eating.
Maria: You're not wrong Roisin, that is basically what it is. Fasting is something again I'm really interested in and I've looked at this a lot over the last couple of years. There are lots of different ways to fast, which basically just means eating at certain times for certain durations. The kind of two key ones, the five two and then there is Roisin's version, which officially is called intermittent or time restricted fasting. And again, this is a really interesting one and I will say from the offset when you look into research on this around fertility, there is mixed research on this. Some people like it, some people don't. It's really important that we're transparent on this podcast. Have a little chat and if you're ever not sure, speak to a nutritionist about this. There is a lot of research around this. The one that I particularly enjoy is this time restricted fasting and there is a huge amount of research on this also in relation to PCOS and insulin resistance as well. So to give you an example, time restricted fasting, the schedule I'm following at the minute is I will start eating at around 11am and I will stop eating at around seven. So I've got an eight-hour window and I just try and eat healthy foods. You know, I don't go mad, I don't really restrict. I'm just mindful and I'm trying to eat a rainbow. I'm trying to have a nice colourful plate of good, solid, healthy, nutritious foods. When it comes to 7pm, I try not to eat for the rest of the evening. And this, both in the research and also anecdotally works for a number of reasons. For me personally, it's the snacking in the evening. So number one, a really shallow reason to be honest with you, but I kind of really, yeah, a really easy to understand reason is it means I'm not scoffing at nine, ten o'clock at night. I'm not tempted with the cheese. I'm not tempted with the chocolate because I've got my cut off. So for me, it saves that evening kind of splurge. But research wise, it's really interesting because your gut needs a break. It needs a little reset. And if you are constantly eating, if you are grazing basically 24 seven, your gut doesn't get any time off. It needs a rest. It needs to kind of clean itself and sort itself out. So this intermittent fasting, having this restricted time period where you can eat, it gives your gut a break and your gut can get going again and be ready for the next day. And I really enjoy this. There has been some links with PCOS. So again, some research has said that it can help with insulin resistance. But again, it is worth speaking to a nutritionist about this. But there is research out there that supports this idea of intermittent fasting. The other thing I really like about it is I don't love calorie counting. But at the end of the day, if you want to lose some weight, then you do need to be aware of what's going in. Usually you will end up eating less calories because you've got an eight hour window. And like I said, if you're just mindful of what you're eating, then you will usually end up eating less calories in that time period. It could be that you're only really dropping 250-300 calories a day. But again, this is the nudge’s we're talking about. To lose a pound a week of fat, very roughly, you need to be dropping about 500 calories a week, roughly. But that's the kind of go to amount.
If by being a bit more mindful of what you're eating in the day, you're around 300 calories a day less, that is going to contribute to really good, healthy, sustainable weight loss, if that's what you need to do. And it's done in a relatively painless way. You know, you're eating nice healthy food, you're being mindful of when you're eating, you're not splurging at night, and quite quickly you'll get into this routine and you'll be dropping maybe 200-300 calories a day without too much stress. I am a massive fan of this.
Roisin: And this is one that really stuck with me. And it's one that apart from holidays and blowouts and stuff like that, it's pretty much a cornerstone. I just do a simple finish by seven in the evening, start again at nine o'clock next morning. Honestly, it's not stressful. I know you want to touch on Keto next. I think I used to always get confused between Keto and paleo to be honest with you.
Maria: When I first came across Keto, I follow a lot of the kind of CrossFit accounts and I read quite a lot of their information, which is a whole other podcast, but a lot of the CrossFitters and a lot of the people that work out in that heavy weight will talk about Keto. So the main difference is the Keto lifestyle, the Keto way of eating, it prioritises fat, then protein and very few carbs. What that means is when you're looking at your Macros, which are your macronutrients, so your fats, your proteins and your carbs, and as I can do on the app with my clients, you can weigh them differently, you can weight them differently. The Keto diet prioritises fat. What you would aim for is to have around 65 to 75% of your daily calories coming from fat. You would then have around 20 to 30% of your daily calories coming from protein, but you would only have about 5% of your daily calories coming from carbs. So it is a low carb, high fat, middle protein way of eating. There is a really high priority placed on fat. You're looking at avocados; you're looking at eggs, burgers, fish, seafood, non-starchy veg. You might be thinking, oh, this sounds amazing, high fat, high protein. The reason for this is, and this is where the name of Keto comes from, the reason for this is that most cells in the body prefer the glucose or the sugar in your blood that comes from carbs. So what happens is when you take the carbs out, any fat that you have stored is broken down into something called ketones, and we then use ketones as fuel. So it's called the Keto diet because the goal is that you reach ketosis. Basically you're using ketones for fuel, not carbs, which is why you lower the carbs. So you're finding a different fuel source. When you're in this ketosis space, if you like, your body will burn fat for energy. A lot of people will drop weight quite quickly on this one.
Roisin: Which of these meal plans would you recommend for fertility or does it really matter?
Maria: The honest answer is I can't answer that question without speaking to individuals because these meal plans vary. People have different medical needs and everybody's different. But for anyone who wants a little bit of a recap on this so that you can decide. So as a recap, the Paleo diet is the Caveman diet where you've got your meat, fish, eggs, basically what you ate when you were out hunting and gathering.
You've then got the option of your fasting, your intermittent fasting, and then you've also got your Keto diet. This is the one that prioritizes fat and protein. All of the plans have their pros. A lot of them will help you manage a healthy BMI, which for so many people is hugely important when it comes to fertility treatment. They're the three options we've talked through today. Get in touch with me and then we would figure out the best way forward.
Roisin: Absolutely. Contact Maria with any concerns you have because she knows what she's talking about. And on my way, is there something on intention setting Sundays? This is such a lovely idea.
Maria: I am so excited about this. And also I did it this week. So what I've started for 2023 is I've now started intention setting Sundays with my clients and I'm actually going to start putting us on Instagram as well. So every Sunday I'm going to put a post up on Insta and I'm going to say, right, let's have it. What are your intentions for the week? So intention setting Sundays are where you take a minute to reflect and to pause. And I'm really keen on emphasising that these changes are not going to happen by themselves. These changes are not going to happen to you by accident. You need to make these changes happen. You need to have internal locus of control and you need to make these changes.
Intention setting Sunday is a way for you to take control. I want to hear from you and from my clients, what workouts are you going to do this week? When are you going to do them? Where are you going to do them? And what are your nutritional goals for the week? A 60 second pause on a Sunday and I want you to write it down. I don't want you to do it in your brain because I promise you, your brain will trick you and also you'll forget. I want you to write it down. Get your journal, get your app, get whatever it is you're using and set explicitly your intentions for the week. And I promise you it works because I did it on Sunday. I've signed up to my own training programme and I've joined the group that my clients are in so there's accountability there. I set my intentions, my intentions for this week where I'm going to work out on Monday and I'm going to work out on Wednesday and I'm going to do workout 1a and workout 1b for my programme.
Woke up on Monday. One of the first thoughts in my head was, is Monday I'm going to work out today. And I made sure that I prioritised my workout over other things that day because I put it in the group and I had set my intentions for the week. I'm really excited about this. So please join me. Intention, setting Sunday, lay it out there and we'll help keep you accountable.
Roisin: Usually around about this time in the show I go, Maria, what will we be speaking about next week? But next week we will be speaking about two different things. From next Tuesday we will be releasing an extra episode. It's a mini-sode called Fertility Focus.
Maria: Yeah, we're releasing Fertility Focus, ridiculously excited about this. I'm doing this because the bottom line is I want you to get pregnant in 2023 or I want you to get to the stage where you can start fertility treatment in 2023. That's why I'm here.
These mini-sodes will have actionable advice which just means things you can go away and do in a really easy to understand format. They're only five or six minutes long. Everything will be related to fertility and it will cover everything from food swaps you can do, ways to maximise your training in the gym. It's only five or six minutes. I just hope it will be a little extra nudge just to help keep you on track as you work on your own journey.
Roisin: And then next Friday we are going to be delving into the amazingly complicated yet hugely important area of…
Maria: Hormones. So the chemical messengers in your blood that make you who you are and unfortunately can really mess up your fertility. So we're going to look at hormones, we're going to look at how training can help hormones and we're just going to delve in and again give you loads of information that will help you on your TTC journey.
Roisin: Yeah, we're finding out more and more they are the secret sauce when it comes to fertility.
Maria: Thank you so much for listening to this week's show. Remember to subscribe to get a shiny new episode each week and please rate, comment and really importantly share with your friends, especially our trying to conceive sisters. You never know who's struggling and they may need that little bit of extra help.
Roisin: This may come as a surprise but we are not doctors. We strongly recommend that you consult your doctor before beginning any exercise or nutrition programme. Get everything checked out first, your safety is our priority.
This has been a Worth A Listen production.