Transcript
Speaker: Made on Zencaster. The all-in-one podcasting platform really does make making podcasts so easy. All the details are in the description. Hello and welcome to Fit for My Age, the health and well-being podcast from Abysida.
Speaker: I am your host, Michael Millward. to Today, I am talking to Samantha Williams, about an holistic lifestyle approach to nutrition.
Speaker: Samantha is based between the United Kingdom and Thailand. If you plan to visit anywhere in the United Kingdom or Thailand, do as I would do and make your travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club because that is where you can access trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, holidays and all sorts of other travel related purchases.
Speaker: You will find a link in the description. Now that I've paid the rent, it is time to make this episode of Fit For My Age. That will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
Speaker: Very importantly on Fit For My Age, we don't tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think. Hello Samantha. hi how are you? I am extremely well, thank you very much. I had Greek yogurt and berries for breakfast, which I think might impress you a little bit.
Speaker: That is very good, yeah. Well done. Brilliant. Yeah, it's similar to what i had, actually. It is the right sort of thing to have, I think. Yeah, absolutely. all this swift stuff But we'll find out more about that after we find out some more about you. So please could we start by just giving a little bit a little bit of background about who Samantha Williams is and how you came to be a nutritionist.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. um just want to say thank you for having me on the show as well. Pleasure. I basically was a ah science teacher. That was my my previous career. i was a biologist and that job took me took to Bangkok. um I decided to work at an international school. That was in 2017. That led me into COVID, which we all experienced in various different ways. And it was during that time that I was living in Bangkok on my own, you know obviously very isolated,
Speaker: And it basically led me to sort of observe my own behavior around food, which i already knew was not very healthy. I was kind of restricting and and living a lot of the diet culture rules, I guess, that I'd learned over my life. One thing that had happened to my health was that my my menstrual cycle was really all over the place because I was doing a lot of exercise and not eating properly. And I sought help from the traditional Western-style medicine, I guess, to go to the doctor, get a blood test with a prescription. i went Off I went, feeling a little bit kind of not really looked after, I guess.
Speaker: I took one of the progesterone tablets and felt awful. And so I decided to look for a different route. And it took me to see an Ayurvedic doctor, basically somebody whose ethos is rooted in Indian medicine. Ayurvedic medicine is 5,000 years old, based on an individual's makeup. So doshas, it's called, which is to do with the different kind of elements that your body is made up of.
Speaker: I went to this consultation and she sat down and really asked me a lot of questions about my life, not just about my diet, but about other things going on in my life as well. And it was really the first time that I felt held and supported in that way. and And I kept sort of came away from there feeling like I'd actually found somebody that cared. And she gave me a program, two weeks worth of dietary and lifestyle changes. She'd given me different recipes to use, advised me on the types of foods to eat, the types of movements and activities I should be doing. She gave me some breath work. Yeah, which all kind of was very aligned with who I am, because i I'm also a yoga teacher as well. And, you know, I'm sort of very spiritual as well. So doing all these things just felt right.
Speaker: Within two weeks, like I went through this huge transformation, like my body just felt completely different. The hormonal imbalance doesn't just affect you physically, you know, you feel sort of sluggish and tired and things, but it also affects you mentally as well. Makes you feel depressed, makes you feel like almost disassociated with your body in a strange way, and also feel very low. so i kind of all these symptoms just disappeared.
Speaker: basically within two weeks of me following this plan. And I just thought to myself, why are we not helping people like this? Why why are we not giving people advice on lifestyle changes that are going to impact them long term and actually be really effective at actually curing whatever the problem that they have? I'd already been wanting to leave teaching, you know, and I i wanted to kind of do something different. And it kind of just forced me to go in that direction, really direction. And I did a vegan diploma, just ah a level three diploma online, just to see if it was something that i was interested in that was in vegan nutrition. And then i I applied to do a master's in the university of Surrey in the UK. And I studied a master's there and human nutrition and became a nutritionist. So that was kind of all happened in 2020, 2021. And then started to work with clients, went back to the to Thailand and worked in a healing center there. with people who were coming to do a detox.
Speaker: And they very much were coming with multiple different ailments and and, you know, symptoms and things all kind of related to either burnout, stress, not prioritizing their health. um And yeah, that just kind of spurred me on to continue to set myself up on my own, really.
Speaker: Healing center that you worked in has actually been featured on TV. That's right. It was um a program called The Retreat. And Nick Knowles went there and actually did the detox in the detox center that I was working at.
Speaker: Yeah. So if anybody's interested to to have a look, then look for that on Netflix. You're a celebrity then as well. I am. Right. Brilliant. When you set up by yourself, you set up a business called naturalnut.co.uk. And when I first saw that, I thought we'd be talking about the nut shop, but it's much more than that, isn't it? It is. Yeah. But why call it natural nut in the first place? Well, I actually originally called my business Wholesome Soul um when i was when I was first sort of setting it up.
Speaker: But I just felt like it wasn't really representing what I was doing. I'm very much about using food and lifestyle changes to naturally enhance your body your body and your life, you know, and your health.
Speaker: I also did ah an intuitive eating coaching course. I sort of focused a bit more on that side of things because the people I was talking to, you know, they were having so many problems with their relationship with food, which is actually what I've come to realize is the root cause of most people's problems and with their health, if it's dietary related anyway.
Speaker: And so that was much more focusing on that kind of psychological side. What I realized is that I'd moved a bit away from the the science and the the nutritional side. which is something that I feel very passionate about. You know, I've always been a scientist, i studied biology in my undergrad and then nutrition. So I wanted to kind of move back towards that. Natural nutrition is actually what my business is called.
Speaker: Natural Nut is just my my website address because natural nutrition was not available. So me and my partner were like, well, why don't just call Natural Nut? People like notice it a bit more. And yeah, so that that's where it came from. And I do encourage my clients to eat a lot of nuts because they're very nutritious and very good.
Speaker: They are. They've got also got a lot of calories in a lot of nuts as well, but it's you get a lot of nutrition. After all, i suppose part of the reason for that is the nut is the the thing from which the tree grows. yeah So it's going to be packed full of all sorts of nutrients.
Speaker: Exactly. Your comment then about calories is quite interesting because... This is what we've kind of been fed by the diet industry. And, you know, this idea of calories is what matters, but it's really not, I mean, it is relevant obviously, but it's where your calories are coming from that is so important. You know, not all calories are are created equal. You can get the same number of calories from an ultra processed diet or from a whole food diet, but the ultra processed diet is gonna make you feel unwell. It's gonna change your metabolism. It's gonna change your brain. So way more complicated than just looking at calories.
Speaker: One of the things that you mentioned was that your work, before you start telling people what to eat, you have to first of all identify what type of relationship they have with food.
Speaker: You made the comment that lots of people don't have a very constructive relationship with food. Well, i'm wondering about my own relationship with food now. yeah Why is it that people have an unhealthy relationship with food? Yeah, that's a really, really interesting question. And there's multiple things that cause that. If we look at how we behave and like where our behaviors come from, about 90%, in fact, potentially more than 90% of our behaviors are driven by our subconscious mind. which is programmed during maybe more than seven, but the first seven years of life are really, really important for for conditioning us in our brains. And whatever you've experienced and seen around food as a young person is then going to be driving your behaviours, which you now have as an adult.
Speaker: So is that why people who are under stress will go looking for what you might call nursery food, the food when things were great, when they had a nice, peaceful life yeah as a child, yeah they will go looking for what some people call nursery food as a means of um reassurance, comfort. Comfort food is the other way which is described as well.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. So if you're in a stressful period of time in your life, feeling lonely, if you're feeling actually any emotion that is uncomfortable, then you're likely, if you're unaware anyway, you're likely to reach for food, which is comforting. You know, if you think about a baby when it's born,
Speaker: One of the first things the mother does is feed it And so that association between comfort and food is developed very early on in life. The same kind of route as where the behavior around things like smoking and alcohol consumption come from, because it's It's putting something in the mouth. It's that kind of behavioral association that we have. So it's a very difficult thing to to change quickly, but it's not impossible.
Speaker: One of the things I do with my clients is I get them to just become aware of that initially. What are you feeling that you don't want to feel? Because food is a distraction. Food, alcohol, smoking, all of these things, eating disorders, you know, all of these things are...
Speaker: are rooted in this this kind of wanting to distract yourself from something that is going on underneath the surface. You might not even know what that is. In fact, quite often you won't know what that is because, you know, if you've been emotionally eating for,
Speaker: the last 20 years of your life, because that's what you did when you were younger and that food makes you feel comfort and security, then yeah, then you're going to reach for that. and And it's just looking at when that is happening. So one of the things i I coach my clients to do is to identify the difference between physical hunger and emotional hunger, you know, because they're similar, but physical hunger is satisfied with food, emotional hunger isn't.
Speaker: So you can eat emotionally, Keep eating, keep eating, keep eating. And you never fill that that gap. you You never feel satisfied by the food. So it's important to be aware that that's the first step. With children, one of the things that we do is use food as a reward. You've been good. There's chocolate. There's ice cream. yeah yeah And so when we feel that we've done something that is deserving of a reward as an adult, we look for cakes, chocolate yeah as food, things that aren't necessarily that good for us. No.
Speaker: And at the same sort of time, when we're feeling down, even just down, not not as far as depressed, just down, we will look for those things that we remember it subconsciously, perhaps, as being the things that were about good times. So when you're feeling down, you look for the chocolate bar.
Speaker: But even after you've had the chocolate bar, like you say, emotional hunger is not... relieved by food. So even after you've had the chocolate bar, you're going to want another chocolate bar. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. and And that is also, you know, like I mentioned about the conditioning, you know, that is also part of it. You know, that's part of what's driving the behavior is we we use food to celebrate. We use food to commiserate. You know, you go to a wedding, it's it's a massive meal. You go to a birthday party, it's a cake. You know, all of these associations are valid and and there's nothing wrong with those.
Speaker: the The problem comes really when people are using food to manage their emotions. Like that's the only coping strategy that they have. There's lots of ways you can manage stress. There's lots of ways you can manage feeling low, feeling lonely, feeling depleting, sadness, like whatever it is. There's other ways to manage that. And I'm not saying that you can't use food sometimes, but if that is the only coping strategy you have,
Speaker: that is when it can become bad for your health. Because, you know, we are now surrounded by an abundance of ultra processed foods, we're finding out more and more and more how really damaging they are for metabolic health, which is an area of nutrition that I also specialize in.
Speaker: We have this massive growing rates of obesity, not just in adults, but in children as well. This is all part of the of the issue is people don't know people are not aware. And so that's one of my My goal is, if you like, is to raise awareness around this.
Speaker: I agree with you about people not being aware. but I also sort of think like, is it true? Are people really not aware? Or is it that people are aware, but just choose not to be consciously aware? They know that if they feed their children chocolate bars, crisps, that that is not going to be good for them. but it's the easy option. yeah When I go to the supermarket early doors, the supermarket is next to a secondary school. I know that there will be children, teenagers wandering around and they will be buying family-sized bars of chocolate and family-sized bags of crisps to take into school.
Speaker: yeah I'm sure they know that that's not really a good idea, but there's something about us psychologically which says, so what? Yeah, yeah. and And also these foods are designed to be, very very pleasurable when you're young you have this very kind of i'm invincible sort of mindset in a way oh it's not going to happen to me or you know i've got loads of time in my life you know that kind of thing so teenagers are actually one of the worstly affected with by this really yeah yeah you know you're right it's it is schools are actually targeted you know they're targeted by fast food outlets because they know that children will go there after school and spend their money at it's definitely um
Speaker: In the north of England, it's worse because there's areas of social deprivation are higher. There's actually more fast food outlets up there. So it's even targeting areas where the social deprivation, lower incomes, maybe like a lower level of education.
Speaker: and want to just go to go back to what you said. I think there are a lot of people that actually just don't know. They've grown up with their parents eating those foods, which to be fair, like 20, 30 years ago were not as bad as they are now because now they are made with ingredients that are not like actual food. You know, they're kind of waste products from other food processes.
Speaker: I think there is just a big lack of knowledge. Big food, big pharma, they don't want people to know because then people have got power. You know, they can go, actually, this knowledge now that i have is enough for me to want to stop and I'm going to change something and do something different. And that's not ideal for the industry because people don't make as much money out of health.
Speaker: They make money out of sickness and they make money out of you know, sickness being maintained as well. It can be seen, I suppose, as it's all the wheels working together. But at the end of the day, yeah we end up less healthy than we could be. Yeah, absolutely. Because of our dietary choices, our exercise choices.
Speaker: When I've looked at naturalnut.co.uk, it's sort of talking about where your approach, which is about a combination of all the different aspects of lifestyle and lifestyle. nutrition to create a healthier lifestyle based on nutrition and I suppose the the old adage you know rubbish in rubbish out yes is something that applies to our diet to our nutrition if we don't get the right nutrients we won't be able to live a life that is healthy or even able to fulfill our full potential because There are limitations on what our bodies and even our brains, I suppose, will allow us to do because it's not being fed properly.
Speaker: But you talk about creating a solution that is a combination of science, psychology and spirituality. Tell me a little bit about how you bring everything together. Yeah, sure. the Science element really is is about educating people differently.
Speaker: Not just about food, but about their own bodies as well and how their bodies work, what the body will do in response to different different nutrients. I work with a lot of people who have type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes,
Speaker: ah insulin resistance. um And so I educate them about what that is, like, what is their body doing? Why have they got this particular condition? Then I also educate them about the types of foods they can eat, which will, you know, help them to manage that without medication, because a lot of my clients don't want a lifetime of medication. That's the kind of spiritual, sorry, the science element, which is, i guess, my original background, really teaching, you know, it's still part of what I do. There's a psychology side, which really stems from my own experience of having an eating disorder and going through a recovery for that. But also from learning about intuitive eating and becoming an intuitive eating coach, which is looking at your relationship with your body, your relationship with food, the root causes of where those behaviors or patterns have come from and understanding ways to to change those as well. And it takes around 66 days to form a new habit. That's the kind of um sort of around 60 to 66. That's the the common thinking. I help my clients to do that over over the the three months or more that i work with them.
Speaker: And then the spirituality side for me, like I said before, I'm a yoga teacher and power of the mind is is huge. I think we massively underestimate it. If we can tap into our own bodies, if we can connect with our own bodies on a deeper level, This is also part of the intuitive eating paradigm as well is this sensitivity. So having a sensitivity in your body, interception it's called, it's like the the sixth sense or the seventh sense, which is to be able to feel what what your body is is telling you. so you eat a particular food, how do you feel?
Speaker: do you feel good? do you feel, um you know, do you feel sick? do you you know Do you feel energized? Do you feel nourished? kind of using that as your guide. So rather than listening to the mental chatter that's in your head, which has been, you know, conditioned over over your lifetime from all the external messages, you learn to become interceptive, which is to listen to your own body and and use that as your guide instead. Spirituality side is also linked to meditation because, you know, you are the authority on your own body in your own life. And actually, a lot of the things in the modern world remove that from us. we We become distracted and disconnected. So coming back to ourselves, coming back to a connection with our own body and mind is is really important. And, you know, things like visualization and yeah, and and kind of having that that deeper awareness is is what the spirituality side is.
Speaker: So the science part, is the actual food itself yeah and understanding the nutrients in the food and the impact that those will have from a scientific perspective. You need enough iron, you need enough vitamin C, vitamin D, yeah understanding what you're going to eat. yeah The psychology side is almost understanding the messages that you get from outside. So seeing the advertisement for the chocolate, for the alcohol, for the fast food and being able say, yeah, I've noticed the advert. I understand what the product is and i understand everything.
Speaker: the science part of the product as well so you can then make a much more informed decision about what it is that you are going to eat rather than simply one that might just be based on convenience or price or the amount of time that you have to prepare it it's like yeah if I eat that meal then ah don't have to cook anything. I don't have to spend money on gas or electricity. I don't have to do much washing up afterwards.
Speaker: These are things, but you you're and starting to understand because of your knowledge of the science of food, you're starting to understand the messages that you get from outside. But even when you understand your needs for food and the messages that you get from outside, the spirituality side of things is understanding because you connect with your body's reactions to the food that you eat and not everything I suppose has the same impact on everyone in the same way.
Speaker: Yeah absolutely you know we we're all having a very individual experience and that doesn't change when we're eating food you know we we are impacted in different ways you know if if anybody out there's ever worn a CGM or continuous glucose monitor and you've compared it to somebody else's measurements, you'll know that it's completely different. So my partner and I both wore one. It's a thing you wear on your sort tricep on the back of your arm and and it's got a little needle it goes in and it measures your blood sugar level continuously. So you can eat a meal. And for me, I was sitting with my partner, we ate the same meal and you know his response was different to mine. We're all physiologically unique.
Speaker: This is one of the problems with diet culture in the diet industry is that it treats us all the same. And that, you know, this this particular diet or restrictive way of eating or only eat these foods, you know, that's going to work for everybody and give you this magic bullet result that you want. But it isn't.
Speaker: So there's no point in someone sort of saying, so-and-so has lost this amount of weight, I should be able to do the same because our bodies are all different and we will all have that different reaction to the foods that we eat. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, that's a classic thing that people do. I'll They tried that diet and it worked for them. So therefore it's going to work for me. But your your body shape and size is dependent on so many factors. You've got to take in multiple things into consideration when you're looking at wanting to change the way that you live your life and your health and everything. That's one of the the great things about working with a healthcare practitioner, nutritionist or dietitian is that you you get like a more personalized
Speaker: approach and get coached in how to to live the like the healthiest life for you that suits your body and your lifestyle because that's another thing to take into consideration you know not everybody has the same work hours not everybody has the same kitchen equipment you know it's it's a huge thing so there's multiple factors to look at and in order to provide like a holistic and personalized service that's that's what what i do you know i look at all aspects of somebody's lifestyle and figure out a way for them to find health in their lives.
Speaker: And health comes from all sorts of factors, like you say, the diet that we have, the food that we eat, gender, race, ethnicity, all sorts of different things impact our association with food, yeah some of which we have no control over at all because it's just programmed into us. yeah But other aspects of it yeah we can control. But like you said at the start, the the main point is to to start to understand.
Speaker: Yeah. To actually get to know your body. yeah That's one of the reasons why I started Fit for My Age. It's like you said, teenagers are indestructible. And we all go through that sort of stage. And then we go through the stage where we've got our own money and we can eat whatever we like, whenever we like. Yeah. And then you end up with a job where you're traveling a lot. So you're eating at strange hours in lots of restaurants and hotels. And you realize you don't know as much as you think you knew about food and the nutrition that it provides for your body. And yet we seem to accept, I think, the consequences of not knowing about nutrition and nutrition on an individual level rather than, like you say on this, this solution is going to work for everyone. yeah It clearly isn't.
Speaker: Clearly isn't. Absolutely. And I think that's that example that you just gave there is is absolutely the the situation that most of the people I work with have been in. And and it's almost like they've they've kind of sacrificed their health for a lifestyle that they think is the right way to live, because that's how we've all been conditioned to think. We prioritize often, and and actually this is really common, we prioritize work and the the chasing of that kind of like ambition and and money and everything else for our health. And then you get to like your 40s or 50s and you start to gain a lot of weight or you have some some other like high high blood pressure or something. And this is your body saying, I can't keep doing this anymore without there being something going wrong. And it's really sad that we, most people wait until they're sick to get help.
Speaker: You know, they don't go actually... I need to maybe change something now, you know, earlier on. Luckily, you know, the body's very adaptable and it's very capable of healing itself. And that's another thing that I teach about really is that bodies have a huge capacity for healing. And we have unfortunately forgotten that, you know, living in the culture that we live in and the way our healthcare system is and everything, you know, we think that if we get sick, we have to go and see someone else and we have to get help like that. But actually there are a lot of things that we can do as individuals to help ourselves and It strikes me that the biggest challenge people many people will face is overcoming the conditioning that says career, family, wealth accumulation, yeah rather than yeah are you healthy, are you happy, then do the other Yeah, exactly. That's it. It's very interesting, really very interesting. Samantha, really do appreciate the time that you've spent with me today. It's great. My pleasure. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Speaker: Thank you. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida. And in this episode of Fit for My Age, I have been having a conversation with the nutritionist, Samantha Williams.
Speaker: You can find out more about both of us at abasida.co.uk. I must remember to thank the team at matchmaker.fm for introducing me to Samantha. If you're a podcaster looking for interesting guests, or if, like Samantha, you have something very interesting to say, matchmaker.fm is where matches of great hosts and great guests are made, and great podcasts are hatched.
Speaker: There's a link to matchmaker.fm and an author code in the description. At Fit for My Age, our aim is proactive positive aging. Knowing the risks early is an important part of maintaining good health.
Speaker: That is why we recommend the annual health test from York Test. York Test provides an assessment of 39 different health markers. The annual health test is conducted by an experienced phlebotomist who will complete a full blood draw at your home or workplace.
Speaker: Hospital standard tests are carried out at a UKAS accredited and CQC compliant laboratory. You can access your easy to understand results and guidance to help you make effective lifestyle changes anytime via your secure personal Wellness Hub account.
Speaker: There is a link and a discount code in the description. which means that the description is well worth reading. I'm sure you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of Fit For My Age as much as Samantha and I have enjoyed making it.
Speaker: So please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
Speaker: Until the next episode of Fit for My Age, thank you for listening, and goodbye.
