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Nutrition and Movement for Better Sleep with Lisa Franz
31 Plays9 months ago
We know nutrition plays a big role in how we feel throughout the day — but how does what we eat impact our sleep? Discover practical, real-life tips for meal planning, bedtime snacks, and movement routines that fit everyday habits and contribute to better sleep. Not everything that's good for your body in the daytime is good for your body at night.
Lisa Franz is an online nutrition coach, podcaster, and owner of Nutrition Coaching and Life. Connect with Lisa online:
IG @nutritioncoachingandlife
web: www.nutritioncoachingandlife.com
Podcast: The Nutrition and Life Podcast
YouTube @nutritioncoachingandlife
In this episode:
- Nutritionally, what do our bodies need to sleep well?
- Recognizing the impact of stress on our sleep
- Foods to avoid for a good night's rest
- Bedtime snacks you won't regret eating
- Applying "all things in moderation"
- Best practices for daily movement
- Forming habits that last
- Transformative mindsets, one step at a time
Connect with us at SuenoLabs.com. We're currently looking for contributors and podcast guests!
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Transcript
Food and Sleep: Overlooked Connections
00:00:00
Speaker
Many people make New Year's resolutions related to food, in some sense, right? Maybe it's trying to eat healthier, maybe it's trying to eat a little bit less to lose some weight, maybe it's paying more attention to your macros or your protein or something like that, but we don't always think about how food impacts sleep.
00:00:21
Speaker
Specifically, from a nutrition standpoint, what does the body need to sleep well? Whether that's the types of foods we're eating, when we're eating them, should we have bedtime snacks or no? What's a better lunch food? What's a better dinner food? And how can we make these decisions day in and day out without completely overthinking our meal planning?
Meet Lisa Franz: Nutrition Coach
00:00:41
Speaker
Well, tonight I have the privilege of talking to somebody who is really knowledgeable in this area and shares my own philosophy that we should take all things in moderation. Really, nothing is off the table. But it's really about having a health strategy for thinking not just about food, but also activity, sleep schedule, and mindset throughout the day.
00:01:09
Speaker
Tonight, I talk to nutrition coach Lisa Franz. We discuss nutrition, movement, and routines for better days and better sleep at night. I'm Jimmy Leonard. This is Swenio Labs.
00:01:33
Speaker
Lisa Franz, welcome to Swenio Labs. How are you today? Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk to you about all things ah sleep and nutrition and fitness lifestyle related things. Yeah, I know. You do so many interesting things. I thought that would actually be a good place to start. Tell us a little bit about your background, what led you to become a nutrition coach, how you got into what you're doing today.
00:01:56
Speaker
Awesome. Yeah. So and my name is Lisa Franz. I'm the owner and operator of a company called Nutrition Coaching and Life, where we basically help people lose body fat, gain muscle, improve their relationship with food and anything that's kind of really um health related ah when it comes to nutrition and training.
Diet Struggles and Discoveries
00:02:14
Speaker
And the reason I got into it, Jimmy, is because I personally struggled with finding out how I should be eating in order to look the way that I wanted to look. And so I went through various different diets, like a paleo diet, low fat, low carb, whatever I tried it and just always felt super restricted and never really had the outcome that I wanted to. And eventually, thankfully, I learned about calorie balance and how with just the right quantity of food and the right distribution of carbs and protein and fats, we can
00:02:49
Speaker
Technically eat anything that we want or make anything fit as long as that distribution is correct and so i personally felt what i now call like food freedom through that method because i just didn't feel like. There was anything that was off limits anymore it allowed me to like travel it' and and enjoy the food that way it allowed me to have some of my grandma's cake it allowed me.
00:03:12
Speaker
So you know all these kind of life related things and so I've made it my mission ever since to teach others that um life doesn't have to be ah and either I can look the way that I want or I can live the life
Cultural Food Practices and Lifestyle Impacts
00:03:26
Speaker
that I want. It can be both as long as we go about it in a kind of strategic way and understand our food and our bodies a lot better. So that's what we do um with my company and and I mentioned to you before we started recording.
00:03:41
Speaker
I am from Germany, actually. I haven't lived there in about 15 years. I moved to New Zealand for 10 years, 2009 to 2019. And then for the last six years, um I've been a digital nomad. So I ah explore different countries and the last few years I've spent mostly in Latin America, I've kind of grown a liking to the culture here and learning spanish and all of that and of course being able to try all the different foods and in the various cultures is just a wonderful bonus. That's fantastic. man there's There's so much to go back to there. So I think just because you've lived in so many places, I actually want to ask a question about that. So as you grew up in different cultures, lived in different cultures, your digital nomad now,
00:04:27
Speaker
Does this seem like it's a a worldwide phenomenon where people are wondering how can I look the way I want but still live the life that I want versus being restricted to maybe like Western culture or something like that?
00:04:42
Speaker
That's a really great question. ah Yeah, I do think that it's a little bit more pronounced in in our Western cultures where, well, A, we have a lot of stress in the sense of lot working long hours, and and on top of that, we still want to be a little bit social. We're able to travel more and all these things, whereas in countries that are perhaps a little bit more traditional,
00:05:06
Speaker
A, their lifestyle is probably a bit more active, B, they tend to stay a bit more in their communities, maybe venturing out a little bit, but not quite as much. And like, for instance, here in Latin America, what I do always um see as well, while they work hard, they also equally value their free time and work is not really the main center of their lives. It's much more the family life and and maybe even religion or something like that. That's also what I kind of saw more in countries like Indonesia or Thailand where yeah, work takes up a large amount of time, but it's not so much the focus. And so I do think that having a high stress life and very individualistic career driven kind of life has made it more difficult for us to have a
00:05:54
Speaker
ah a good body composition or healthy body composition. um And at the same time, because the stress is so high, we have the desire to make our free time count even more type of thing.
Food Choices and Sleep Quality
00:06:05
Speaker
And so that's when people overdrink or binge eat or just feel like they need to like really um do something crazy ah ah in order to feel like they're compensating for the hard hours that they put in at work.
00:06:20
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And i I think some of that work mindset is part of why so many of us have kind of a toxic relationship with food is is because we kind of treat it the same way as like, I have to meet a certain goal, or ah it can become overly obsessive with counting carbs or counting calories or, or even um the way we think about goals sometimes, you know, thinking about weight loss can can be so intense of like, I i need to lose 10 pounds in two weeks. And like, there's such a hard deadline on it. Instead of starting with, I want to feel healthier, I want to feel better about myself, I want to make better choices. um it It just becomes
00:06:58
Speaker
almost like the same mindset as your boss saying, I have to have this by next Friday. and is There's a similar, similar stress to it. And I think that's probably why a lot of people struggle so much. Well, yeah, absolutely. Like you put that in such a great way. And I think on top of that, though, because work is so stressful, we're looking for more or less easy ways to get ourselves to feel better, to like have that little dopamine hit or something like that. And food is such an easily accessible way where it feels like you're just de-stressing a little bit, but obviously not in a healthy way. It's not like going for a walk or doing a little bit of meditation. It's like you ate that muffin. Okay, cool. It might feel better for like half an hour or an hour, but then you're getting a crash and um all that's going to help now is with is with coffee. And then after the coffee, you're having another crash because you need to keep keep on producing and you cannot really be like in the moment, enjoying that moment. It's more about getting through the workday. So I think,
00:07:57
Speaker
everything piled together, it's certainly not making it easy for us. Yeah, that makes sense. So since we're talking about coffees and muffins, um, so there's, there's so much that we could talk about with what we eat during the day. A lot of what we talk about at Swinier Labs has to do with the nighttime. So it's our sleep. And I thought that would be an interesting angle that we could take here. So of course, what we eat impacts our energy throughout the day. It's, as you mentioned, you know, if we're steady or for crashing, all of these different things, but it also really impacts our sleep.
00:08:31
Speaker
So I wondered if you could speak to that from a nutrition standpoint, what does the body need to sleep well? oh ah Yeah, great, a great place to start there and several pointers. So first of all,
00:08:46
Speaker
We don't want to be too full or feeling too full and we also don't want to be too hungry in order to have a good night's sleep. So it, of course, depends a lot on how large your dinner is. But let's say like a, quote unquote, standard dinner um portion, ah we we want to have at least an hour and a half, maybe two or even three before bedtime. Three would be better if it's like a proper sized meal.
00:09:10
Speaker
And um then I would actually prefer that three hours before going to bed and then maybe having like a smaller snack an hour, hour and a half before bed. And just something like here, it's really, really important the size when I say snack, I mean, like a hundred calories, not like, you know, your tub of ice cream. So ah the the quality and the quantity plays a big role, but let's say you're going to sleep at 10.
00:09:36
Speaker
having a dinner at 6 or maybe 7 and then maybe 8, 8.30 a smaller snack, a sort of dessert type thing, um which could be some low-fat Greek yogurt with a little bit of fruit or low-fat Greek yogurt with with some nuts or so, nothing that is too hard to digest. And I think that plays a really, really big role when we're talking about what we're going to eat at that time. And so we want to avoid things that are super difficult to digest. Of course, the really heavy things, like really greasy, yeah really spicy, that's more of a no.
00:10:12
Speaker
On top of that though like especially people that i have worked with sometimes they are um super health conscious and really really you know they eat a ton of salads a ton of ah beans and christopher's vegetables and so on. That's actually not that great right before bed either.
00:10:27
Speaker
because they're so hard to break down so your body is gonna be busy breaking that down and not so able to focus on drifting off to sleep so i i always say like raw vegetables or christmas vegetables and so on they're amazing but maybe shift the more towards your lunch.
00:10:43
Speaker
Things are harder to digest lunchtime that tends to be the time when our digestive tract is most active functioning the best morning still kind of like getting into gear and evening sort of switching out of gear so if we're in the evening we have things. ah Vegetables that are easier to digest like dark leafy greens bell peppers mushrooms and zucchini that sort of stuff way way way easier to break down.
00:11:07
Speaker
Another mistake I often see people, especially very health conscious people make is um thinking that carbs at night are bad for you. For some reason someone started that old rumor of like ah in the evening no carbs or no eating after five o'clock or whatever it might be.
00:11:22
Speaker
and And that's actually also not true because it's been shown that high quality carbs actually help our body relax they help us drift off to sleep better so that's sometimes why if we have a very high carb meal in our lunchtime. Like an hour later we feel like oh i want to take a nap.
00:11:39
Speaker
Of course, that all comes to do with the quantity and I'm not saying you should have you know a huge bowl of pasta, but if you have ah if you want to include some carbs into your diet, then I usually say like evening time is actually the best time or around your workout, also a great time, but evening time is actually a really, really good time because it's going to help your body with that relaxation, with that switching off from work and so on. so something like sweet potatoes regular potatoes white rice that's wonderful at night paired with a high quality protein source whether that might be ah some chicken breast or eggs or anything along those lines some fish and that would be a wonderful meal if we have these easy to digest vegetables a high quality carb source.
Food's Role in Sleep Disruption and Restoration
00:12:23
Speaker
and a high quality protein source and you're just gonna do something really good for your body and i'm size wise i mean that's hard to say very very person dependent on how active you are dependent on that as well but i think if we kind of go but with that guideline of having a,
00:12:40
Speaker
Good quality car good quality protein source usually the fat sort of takes care of itself if we add um a little bit of oil in the cooking process or and you know maybe you can add some avocado or some other high quality fat source to it as well and and that would be a very good pre bed meal.
00:12:57
Speaker
Yeah, I love all the practical suggestions there. I think this is maybe one of the first times I've ever heard someone say that there's a time of day you shouldn't eat raw vegetables. That's a really interesting perspective. Not saying that we should cut it out completely. You know, don't don't take that sound bite out of context for sure. Lisa, I'm wondering if somebody is like maybe struggling a little bit in this area, what are going to be some of the symptoms they see? So maybe that's trouble falling asleep, maybe it's acid reflux or whatever you want to answer that.
00:13:27
Speaker
So yeah, I mean, i I do see that with clients that I started working with that, not so much the not falling asleep. I think oftentimes people fall asleep pretty easily or they quote unquote medicate with things like ah alcohol or whatever. But in the end, and I'm sure if you've spoken about this on your podcast before that alcohol does sometimes make us feel more sleepy, but it just certainly does not lead to the same quality of sleep. So I'm someone I advise against it in general. I'm not to say that every now and then you can't have a drink but um you know should not be your regular bedtime routine. and That's one thing then just in general drinking and eating too close to bedtime another one where both people work very late you know i i get it it's difficult if you work until eight pm and you wanna. Have a good sized meal before going to bed and but that is a little bit tricky as well in those instances i would say something super easy to digest more like a smoothie or so.
00:14:24
Speaker
is gonna be helpful if you have to have something and you're just like I'm starving I need to get something in but I need to go to bed in like an hour time and something like that would probably be better and and then other things where people just underestimate the power and again I'm sure you've spoken about the numerous times on here is just having coffee way too late having things that contain caffeine as well as so like you have a block of dark chocolate or something like that or even some people are not aware of the fact that green tea also has um is is also someone stimulating or i'm just overall too too large of a meal is probably the most um common thing that i see it and then that resulting into.
00:15:04
Speaker
getting up several times at night or just tossing and turning because your body is still so busy digesting that you don't get into that deep sleep and you wake up in the morning feeling groggy and just like, oh, I can still feel that like a like a stone in my stomach. And so that's really a big one. I do often also see people under eating throughout the day. And that over time, I mean, it's just your body is not going to feel safe. your but If you are constantly in a calorie deficit,
00:15:31
Speaker
The message is kind of like, hey, we need to be on high alert. And um therefore, I cannot switch off properly. And um that is resulting in like very light sleep or inability to go back to sleep. So so especially people that car out cut out carbs completely or just too little carbs for the amount of stress that life throws at them. and Some easy solutions there really are just like incorporating higher quality carb sources, even in like oats in the morning.
00:16:01
Speaker
you know some more complex cards carbs in your lunch and then the great quality carb sources that we spoke in the evening or more fruit that can actually really help. I have seen that numerous times if people um just eat way too little carbs or way too little food all together. um But yeah, I would say it very much depends on where someone is starting off from. And then also because I do work um ah or work on physical training with people as well. So sometimes if we exercise too late at night,
00:16:31
Speaker
um That can kind of interfere with the sleep that way as well number one we don't really know like how do i eat that if i train from like. Eight to nine and i want to go to sleep at ten should i still eat something after my training to help the training you technically should but at the same time you know it's gonna interfere with the sleep so.
00:16:47
Speaker
And yeah it's that's certainly not ideal we want to kind of shift that to a little bit earlier in the day if possible and hydration wise as i was saying that's a big one too i'm ah definitely an advocate for and advocate for drinking enough so for most people that's gonna be at least sort of.
00:17:04
Speaker
80 to 100 ounces per day. But ah sometimes we forget about it for the first half of the day and then like five, 6pm hits and we're like, Oh crap, I still need a drink, um you know, 60 ounces. And um then that means we need to go up and get up and pee three times at night. Also not great because your bladder or your body's so busy like getting the stuff out. So I actually almost like to say like, Hey,
00:17:28
Speaker
Can we stop drinking and anything um at five or six o'clock and trying to have the majority of our liquids earlier in the day? Yeah, that makes sense. And I think that it's good to consider both perspectives. And part of that is something that I can get on a soapbox about. But it's really just this idea of reframing what sleep is for, kind of like how at the beginning of the episode, you were talking about changing our relationship with food. You know, if we think about those nights when you sleep really well, you know, what happens, you know, we, you might go to bed with a lot on your mind, and, you know, maybe you have really really vivid dreams, maybe you don't, but oftentimes you wake up in the morning and you just sort of feel better about life because while you're sleeping, your brain is is taking those thoughts and it's sorting those memories and it's kind of figuring out how to solve some of these problems. And then even, you know, with your muscles as well, if you had been training or doing something the day, maybe your feet are sore from walking around, you go to sleep. And if it's a good night's sleep, you wake up in the morning and you're feeling better because part of what your body is doing is resting and restoring. So we can think about that.
00:18:32
Speaker
you you You mentioned the example of too much caffeine. and you know if you're If you're keeping your body awake, it's hard for it to do those things. But then if you have something that's more of a depressant, like alcohol, you're taking away your body's ability to do some of those restorative things. Because when your brain is turned off or your whole body is kind of shut down, it's not doing that healing it needs either. So I think there's definitely a connection there. If you aren't giving your body the fuel to do the things it needs to be doing when it's sleeping, which in this case would be eating too little,
00:19:00
Speaker
a lot of those really good things and why we sleep in the first place aren't happening. And now you're just lying on a mattress for eight hours, but you aren't really getting the benefit from it. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, we can help that even it help can help our body body even further with um like what we're eating. I was already kind of talking about like how easy or hard to digest, but there are certain foods and maybe you have spoken about this before on that podcast. I'm not sure, but there are certain things that can help us a little bit more with like,
00:19:30
Speaker
serotonin release so therefore relaxation or the GABA release in our brain which also helps us with sleep and um certain things like tryptophan so and an amino acid for instance that it's often referred to as like the amino acid that's mostly in turkey and that's why we feel so sleepy on Thanksgiving after eating turkey I would say it's more due to the high food quantity that we consume on food.
00:19:54
Speaker
um But just generally speaking in poultry we can find that amino acid and that is helpful for inducing sleep and when it comes to other things. That help with serotonin production i was already mentioning some of the carbs for instance and but just overall things that um are helpful would be things like.
00:20:12
Speaker
I'm salmon or other omega three containing things and then we can also as as we were talking about tea earlier on and like chamomile and chamomile extract and that is certainly helpful blueberries and things like sweet potatoes i mentioned or just. the regular potatoes as well because of the potassium in them. So there are certain things that we can eat that are kind of like conducive to sleep. Now, when we're talking about like refined sugars and and um just the more processed things in general, again, like my philosophy really is not everything in moderation. I'm not someone to demonize anything. But if we have a very high sugar food item before going to sleep, it's probably going to spike our insulin throughout the night, and that's causing us to wake up. And that's not
Balancing Exercise and Relaxation for Sleep
00:21:00
Speaker
a good thing. If you want to have your, you know, your cookie or your donut every now and then, then maybe make that a part of your afternoon, um a Sunday afternoon routine when it doesn't matter that you're a little bit more sleepy, um you don't have to work, and and it's just something that you enjoy. It's far away enough from from your sleep not to interfere with that. So just a caution on the refined sugars there.
00:21:28
Speaker
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00:21:42
Speaker
So you started talking about doing exercises or training before bed and and how that can be a little bit of a dangerous game if you're working out too late. But on the flip side, I know many people experience that doing some kind of yoga or stretching can be really calming before bed. So I wonder if there is kind of like how we were saying some foods are are good earlier in the day, some foods are good later in the day.
00:22:05
Speaker
Are there things that we could say about exercise where some are better to do earlier and some are actually really great to do in that hour before bed? I mean, just generally speaking, getting enough physical activity is certainly um so shown or has shown so many times that it's so advantageous for just better sleep in general than if you don't exercise at all. And I think most of us can relate to that or have experience with that. If you have traveled anywhere and you sat in the car all day long, you're kind of feeling like ah sluggish and tired, but you're you're not going to get a great quality sleep because you haven't really done anything all day. right If you go for a nice walk, ideally even something outside, fresh air, um you get that daylight exposure. I'm sure that's also something that you talk about and when it comes to sleep, and that's certainly something good. and Yeah, I'm a big advocate of
00:22:57
Speaker
strength training in higher intensity exercise as well so like going for a run or anything like that. um But probably more before five pm i would say that's probably of course depending when someone wants to go to bed but let's just say even if you go to bed at nine or a ten.
00:23:12
Speaker
um If you can manage to fit that higher intensity more alertness sort of inducing um exercise and before that in the morning is probably in my opinion the best time when your cortisol is just naturally high and you have ah a big drive ideally if you got a good night's sleep and but anytime of the day as long as you're able to fit that into your schedule is gonna be good.
00:23:36
Speaker
and but yeah I would say ideally before five maybe six pm and now those more down regulatory or sort of um relaxation inducing exercises for sure ah yoga of course also depends on the kind of yoga you don't want to do any kind of like hatha or am a hot yoga or so which is also kind of more alertness and inducing.
00:23:58
Speaker
But yeah, something like yin yoga or even just a nice stretch, meditation for sure. I'm a big fan. Um, even any kind of like foam rolling or like whatever. This is super, super person dependent. I always say when it comes to down regulatory practices, there's really no like one size fits all. Someone's going to say like, this is super, super boring. I need something else. And for them, you know, ah more yoga is going to, yeah yoga is going to be better than meditation.
00:24:25
Speaker
But yeah, anything that you find helps you calm down, helps you switch off is going to be a good practice. Even if it's just five, 10 minutes and sort of connecting with your body. ah There's also something called NSDR or well, I guess Andrew Huberman has coined it as that, which stands for non-sleep deep rest kind of practice, which is essentially a yoga nidra practice where we just check in with our bodies. So you basically just lie there.
00:24:52
Speaker
Kind of a meditation and you scan through your body's like, okay, how am my I feeling feeling? It could also be, um, Interchanged with, uh, it's like an activation and deactivation sort of technique where you tense in your calf muscle and then you relax it. And then you tense your hands and then you relax it. And it's just kind of like gets the body to switch off that muscular tension. So any of that is going to be helpful, whatever you enjoy doing.
00:25:17
Speaker
This might sound kind of weird, but somebody explained it to me once. If if you're meditating, you can imagine your body is like a ah jello mold and it's slowly filling up from your toes to the top of your head. But it it just, that analogy helps me to think like, okay, let's let's start with feet. You know, the feet are filling up. I'm focused on the feet. And then like you said, move up to the calf and you kind of like move up. I'm just thinking about each part of yourself exactly in order.
00:25:40
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And sometimes we don't even know where we're storing that tension from the day you might get to your, your shoulders and your neck and you realize like, Oh, wow, I've been sitting in front of the screen all day long. I'm so tense there. I'm holding all my tension between my shoulder
Lisa's Podcast and Sustainable Health Habits
00:25:54
Speaker
blades. And that gives you the opportunity to well mentally connect with it or maybe use like mobility ball or put on a heat patch or Make sure you go to the sun of the next day so you can relax a little bit so it gives us an entry point into how we can i'm just switch off and get a better sleep from a physiological perspective as well.
00:26:13
Speaker
So Lisa, I wanted to make sure that we also had a chance to mention here, um among the many things you do, you have a podcast as well. So the Nutrition and Life podcast, two very narrow topics, right? Anything about nutrition, yeah anything about life? I mean, what it what do you tend to to cover here? What do you like to talk about the most?
00:26:33
Speaker
And so yeah, I mean with the nutrition life ah podcast, I started it initially two and a half years ago, almost more as like a client resource, because most clients tend to ask the same questions in the sense where similar questions, at least like, ah, um, you know, I, I, I tend to stress eat on the, on Thursdays, because by that time my stress has piled up from the week earlier on or.
00:26:55
Speaker
um How much protein should i actually eat is vegan protein just as good as animal source protein and you know similar questions that might be floating around our heads and so that's why i started it and initially i mostly had so episodes where where i was really talking and primarily about the main strategies for.
00:27:14
Speaker
fat loss for and muscle gain and just in general also mindset strategies because I do think it's so important to have when it comes to all of that, when it comes to sleep routines, when it comes to ah and training or nutrition to have a long-term mindset. and Also to know that it's um you know what whatever we change it should become part of your lifestyle it should become part of your new identity it's not something where i'm gonna fix my sleep for the next six weeks and then i'm gonna go back to how i was sleeping or behaving the time before that's like that's just doesn't make any sense at all why would that have any effect on your sleep long term and the same.
00:27:52
Speaker
applies to nutrition or training right like if you do a six week crash diet and then you just go back to what you were doing beforehand why would that have any long term success it doesn't so i think developing a long term mindset when it comes to all of that and it not just that but also I'm someone who's so big on self-development and like self-improvement in general. So I love talking about philosophies like stoicism, like, you know, when life throws something at us, which inevitably it will for all of us at some point, like how do we handle that? Not just from a um nutrition and training perspective, but also mentally, like how can we turn any kind of setback, any kind of obstacle in our way into something that's actually accelerating or helping our growth rather.
00:28:38
Speaker
And then again yeah how do we fit the nutrition around that right like if your mom is in the hospital and you need to be by her side for the next week or so essentially like. How can you still make somewhat decent choices when it comes to your food and not just eating out of the vending machine for the next seven days because then not just not just are you gonna feel crappy but you're also not gonna be able to show up.
00:29:01
Speaker
as best as possible for your mom, for your family at home, you're going to feel super cranky and it's just going to snowball from there. So like how can we optimize any sort of ah situation? That's kind of what I love talking about by now. I do also invite guests on my shows where I interview you know a specialist on creatine, a specialist on and sleep trackers or something like that as well, actually.
00:29:26
Speaker
and because i think ah we can always learn from other people especially if they have a ah certain area of expertise and that's kind of how i i have evolved the podcast since then but yeah as you said it's certainly not a narrow field so it gives me a lot of opportunity to talk about various things for example how i handle nutrition or advise people handle nutrition when they travel when they When we go through the holidays like now we were just mid january but yeah what's the best way to approach your health and nutrition goals not just in january but also from november through to january first so you um that's kind of like yeah a big part of it as well.
00:30:07
Speaker
So I'll put you on the spot a little bit then with if somebody's thinking, how do I form long term habits? What are some good tips or your best pieces of advice just to get started?
00:30:20
Speaker
I love it. So I do think a big part of it is not to bite off more than you can chew straight away. So making the habits, um, small and actually, um, sustainable and is something that you can be consistent with is probably the first thing. So, I mean, just to you, to with your example, or with regards to sleep measure, you probably speak about similar things to maybe not to say, Oh, tomorrow I'm going to sleep two hours more and I'm going to go to bed at,
00:30:49
Speaker
ah nine instead of eleven but maybe okay let's see how we can get ten minutes more for the next. Two weeks and then build on that and the same ah applies with nutrition right you're not gonna say. Tomorrow from tomorrow i'm not going to eat any processed food anymore i'm gonna completely change my nutrition that hardly ever really last instead how can i maybe for the next week try to and incorporate more vegetables into all my meals okay that's my one goal after that maybe saying okay how can i.
00:31:17
Speaker
add more protein to my diet. And I think that's the other part. We often think about what am I not allowed to have anymore? And what, what do I need to stop doing? And while of course, there's a lot of merit to that when it comes to stopping habits that are not very conducive to health at all, but just generally speaking, I think it's much more helpful to think about what do I want to add in instead? Cause it puts a more positive spin on things. So again, when it comes to sleep,
00:31:44
Speaker
maybe rather than thinking oh I need to put the screens away at this time and I can't do that anymore and i I'm not allowed to have this. Putting a positive spin on it in the sense of, okay, how can I add in that meditation that we were talking about? How can I add in some daylight exposure within the first 90 minutes of waking so that I'm resetting my circadian rhythm? like All these things, if we think of the adding in, it all sounds automatically, it sounds much more positive.
00:32:12
Speaker
um And then eventually, I think the other ah the other thing that's really important when when even just doing any kind of change is thinking about it more in the sense of what kind of person do I want to become? So also, like to the point of sleep, I'm going to become the person who makes sleep a priority, and full stop. Not just short term, but if you tell yourself that, even if you don't believe it initially, you're going to change your relationship with whatever it is you're going to chi two two two to attack so when it comes to the nutrition for example saying to yourself. I'm becoming the person that makes the help healthier choices i'm becoming the person who can in fact just have one cookie and it's enough it doesn't have to be the whole bag. um i So so if you tell yourself that more and more with mantras or just even visualization or.
00:33:04
Speaker
how you speak with yourself. I think that's a great way to shift your identity because and the research is very clear that if we um if we just want to change things um for a certain period of time, but in our minds, we're staying the same person.
Identity and Health Goals
00:33:19
Speaker
We're continuing to hang out with the same people. We're continuing to engage in the same things. It's just it's just not going to work if you keep on ah drinking with the same people and you know you you can't become the healthiest version of yourself at the same time.
00:33:32
Speaker
That's so important. and you know You mentioned tying it into like a New Year's resolution. I think we see that with fitness a lot as somebody will well do you like the couch to 5K program, but it really just becomes couch to 5K to couch because like you you know you work toward this one Morning where you you do this one thing and then it it kind of falls off and it just how different is it to instead. Have that that mantra the mindset of of thinking i'm gonna add this into my routine it's not gonna be. Not that is wrong to to train for a particular thing but like it instead of just saying it's gonna be this one time thing it's just gonna become gradually part of who i am and part of what i do and part of what i prioritize.
00:34:10
Speaker
I think i think a short shorter term things like that, they can be great to milestones or can be great incentives and motivators. like For instance, I think the couch to 5K is actually a great um setup or structure. But that person who starts that would be much better off saying, I'm going to become a runner runner in 2025. I'm becoming a runner. And to become that runner,
00:34:32
Speaker
The first step I'm going to do is to work on that couch to 5K. And then once I've completed that, I'm going to continue with my running and maybe I'm going to set a goal for a 10K at the end of the year or, you know, for 2026 or so, but it's going to become part of your identity. And with that also then visualizing and thinking about, okay, what would a runner choose on a day-to-day basis? Would they go out to the bar with their friends?
00:34:58
Speaker
add ten p.m. even though they were meant to go to running meeting the next morning at six am probably not they would probably say like hey guys let's meet up on saturday instead and um throw some balls around in the park or so and or what what what would they eat the night before they have their their run training right so once you have a clear picture of the identity that that person um wants to become then it makes everything else kind of more logical Well, Lisa,
Nutritional Tips Recap and Where to Find More
00:35:27
Speaker
we covered a lot here. Is there anything that we haven't had a chance to mention that you wanted to talk about? To just recap it a little bit for the listener when it comes to nutritional practices and that might be helpful for sleep, and it would be kind of working the way back backwards, not eating too close to bedtime, but also not going to bed hungry. Making sure that the meals that we have before bedtime are somewhat easy to digest and mostly contain
00:35:55
Speaker
protein, healthy fats, and high quality carbs. um So not something that's really hard to digest, maybe leaving the beans and the crisp, ferrous vegetables and so on for your lunchtime and in the evening, focusing on and things that are more easy to absorb and high quality carbs sources would be things like potatoes, sweet potatoes, and rice, maybe a little bit of fruit, but saving the more processed high sugar items for ah the occasional time.
00:36:23
Speaker
and And also making sure we're not drinking too close to bedtime, so ideally cutting off the hydration at 5, 6 p.m. um caffeine earlier than that, of course, if we're having any caffeine at all. Maybe looking into, okay, what specific foods could I cook to help with sleep, such as salmon, sweet potatoes, blueberries, that sort of stuff. um And then when it comes to quantity overall, also making sure we're eating enough throughout the day to fuel our body so that our body's not in a constant fear of energy need.
00:36:53
Speaker
And and the at the same time, and also making sure we're eating enough carbs all all in all, but again, more in the evening than throughout the day. So that was kind of some of the main things. I would also say that um supplements can be quite helpful when it comes to eating with sleep. So something like a magnesium, something like omega-3, if you're not a fish person, or even if you're a fish person, just once a week or so is not going to do it. So I would say adding in an omega-3 can be helpful in any case.
00:37:20
Speaker
um For some other people it might also be things like zinc um to help out with just general stress management with the body some adaptogens like ashwagandha can be helpful as well. And just exploring that avenue a little bit can be in my opinion and quite helpful if we're not covering all our bases with nutritional needs.
00:37:41
Speaker
um But yeah, apart from that, adding in good quality exercise, ideally before 5, 6 p.m. and and then maybe some more down regulatory practices in the evening. I love it.
00:37:53
Speaker
Lisa, where can listeners go to learn more about you and all of the great nutrition and life coaching that you do? um Of course. So I'm most active on Instagram where you can find me as nutrition coaching and life. And that's also the name of the website, nutritioncoachingandlife.com. And the podcast, as you mentioned, is the nutrition and life podcast. I'm also on LinkedIn. And so any of those platforms, we also have some nice freebies on our website, such as um seven steps to healthy hormones or the toned body template or so. So people, if you're listening and youre and you liked some of my content, then please go check it out and just drop me a message maybe as well on on Instagram saying that you listened to me and Jimmy, and I always like hearing how people find me. Well, Lisa Franz, thank you so much. It's been so fun. My pleasure.
00:38:46
Speaker
Swinyolabs is a show about sleep, memory, and dreams. For more content, visit our blog at Swinyolabs.com and connect with us to learn more about how you can share your story related to brain health and the daily habits that help us to rest and live better.
00:39:04
Speaker
Thanks for joining. We'll be back soon.