You Are Nourished

Holidays should be a time for relaxation. Escaping the rigmarole of daily life and treating yourself to a much-needed break. For so many of us though, we can end up spending the whole time worrying about what we look like, what people will think of us, and what we should or shouldn’t eat. 

What if you could go on holiday without the crash dieting beforehand? What if you could enjoy being somewhere new and trying new flavours that satisfy you? What if you could be present and soak up all the wonderful experiences you’ve been so looking forward to enjoying?

Today I want to help you stop wasting your hard-earned holidays worrying about things that are really not important. I talk about how it’s possible to have food freedom even on holiday. It’s not easy, and it does take time, but in this episode, I share my top tips on changes you can start implementing right away to help you shed the diet mentality and work towards healthier habits and behaviours.

“You are going to miss out on so many amazing opportunities in life if you spend them worrying about your body and about food the entire time.” 

- Lauren Gayfer

In This Episode:

• Understand how crash dieting before a holiday adds to the stress you feel during a holiday.
• Reassess what’s important about holidays and understand how diet culture keeps you stuck in an unhealthy cycle.
• Learn different tools that will empower you to develop a new healthier mindset.
• Discover strategies that will help you to nourish your body rather than punish it.
• Find out how you can honour your hunger even when on holiday.
• Follow my simple tips to avoid going overboard at the breakfast buffet.

Resources:

Today’s episode brings us to the end of my four-part series on reasons why you might be struggling to lose weight. Today I am talking about a subject that I have first-hand experience of, which is an underactive thyroid.

Thyroid symptoms can affect us in so many different ways which can make it hard to get a correct diagnosis and work out the treatment you need – it certainly took a considerable amount of time for me to get the help I needed. When visiting the doctor, you may end up with a short-term solution to one of the symptoms (such as constipation, low mood, or weight gain) but that’s not dealing with the long-term root cause. 

It is really complex which is why I want to share my experience of what I went through so you can get the help you may need. In this episode, I explain what to look out for, how to get a diagnosis, and the potential need for medication. I also share my diet and lifestyle tips that I find help to successfully manage my condition.

“Thyroid issues can often be misdiagnosed because your thyroid hormone is responsible for so many different processes inside the body.” 

- Lauren Gayfer

In This Episode:

• Learn the surprising ways thyroid issues can affect us which make it so hard to diagnose.
• Understand some simple science to give you the confidence to ask for investigation into the root cause of your symptoms.
• Learn about my own journey with getting the right diagnosis and finding a treatment that worked for me.
• Discover changes I made to my diet that helped me manage my underactive thyroid.
• Try some simple lifestyle tips that can help improve your overall health.

Resources mentioned:

We’re continuing our four-part series on reasons why you might be struggling to lose weight, by looking at inflammation. And this week I am joined by my first-ever podcast guest expert! Emily Niswanger, a Functional Dietitian from Anywhere Nutrition – who is an expert in all things to do with inflammation – joins me all the way from Minnesota!

Now, when we think of inflammation, we tend to think of conditions where you can obviously see or feel the inflammation, like arthritis, for example, where you would experience persistent pain. Many of us don’t realise that we can also have internal inflammation that goes on inside our bodies that we just don’t see. Do you suffer from digestive issues like bloating? Do you lack energy all the time? Do you find it hard to concentrate and forget things a lot? These are all indicators of chronic inflammation!

In this episode, Emily helps us delve into what inflammation is, why it can make weight loss difficult, and shares lots of ideas on changes you can make to your diet and lifestyle to reduce inflammation.

“If you are struggling with inflammation in the body, no amount of dieting or exercise is going to help unless we deal with this root cause first.” 

- Lauren Gayfer

 In This Episode:

• Learn about different types of inflammation and how inflammation can prevent you from losing weight.
• Discover the role nutrition plays in exacerbating inflammation and how to look out for hidden ingredients in shop-bought products.
• Understand the importance of finding a healthy and sustainable balance with what you eat and how letting go of perfectionism will help reduce both stress and inflammation.
• Learn how different lifestyle factors can increase inflammation including some surprising things you think would have the opposite effect.
• Get top tips on healthier habits you can try to help reduce inflammation.

 Resources mentioned:

Stress is our body's way of reacting to feeling under pressure. We enter the fight or flight response where our bodies go into life-saving mode to make us stay and fight or run away to escape danger. Originally this would have been vital to help us survive being attacked, whereas these days, we’re in much less life-threatening situations! Unfortunately, our bodies can’t tell the difference between cheating death in the claws of a predator to dealing with a stressful email! If we’re not actually in physical danger, the processes going on inside our body to make us fight or flight can actually lead to weight gain and difficulties in losing weight.

Today is the second in a four-part series talking about what might be going on in your body to cause you to struggle to lose weight. In this episode, I explain how our stressful modern lifestyles are damaging our health, and I share my top 5 tips to help you lead a more stress-free life.

“So many health conditions can be traced back to stress.” 

- Lauren Gayfer

In This Episode:

• Learn the impact stress has on the body.
• Understand that the body cannot differentiate between different types of stress.
• Discover what the stress hormone cortisol does to blood sugar levels and how this causes cravings.
• Understand the importance of dealing with the underlying issue of stress.
• Learn about my own struggle with stress and weight loss after having my first child.
• Find out my top 5 tips for reducing cortisol and managing stress better.

Resources mentioned:

We can eat healthily and exercise regularly, yet still find that we can’t lose weight. What’s important to realise is that weight loss is not as simple as calories in versus calories out. Our bodies carry out countless functions every day that are intricately linked, so it should be no surprise that there may be other things going on in the body that might prevent weight loss. Having the sole focus on weight loss can leave us feeling frustrated and demoralised as well as making conditions worse. If we take a more holistic view around improving our health, we can get to the root of any issues and treat the underlying condition.

Today is the first in a four-part series talking about what might be going on in your body to cause you to struggle to lose weight. In this episode, I explain three of the most common health conditions that can make it hard to shift weight and why concentrating on weight loss can make these conditions worse.

“When you are making changes to your diet and to your habits and behaviours, it's really important to start with health first.” 

- Lauren Gayfer

In This Episode:

• Discover why there is no one size fits all when it comes to losing weight.
• Learn three of the most common underlying reasons for having difficulty in shifting weight.
• Find out how these three conditions are impacting your body.
• Realise that diets are a stress on the body making health conditions worse.
• Understand the importance of taking a holistic approach to health.
• Discover that focusing on changing habits and behaviours for health rather than weight loss will lead to more success.

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