Just As Well, The Women's Health Podcast - A Kind Approach To Body Transformations

Episode Date: April 29, 2020

Body goals have developed a bad rap of late, haven’t they? Before-and-after transformation pictures have been criticised for suggesting there’s a blueprint for a process that’s wholly individual. If your main workout motivation is to get, say, a tighter waist or sculpted arms, that’s seen as being dated - or, by some, straight up unhealthy. And yet, you’ve told us that changing an aspect of your appearance remains a priority, and many of you are choosing to use this time at home to pursue body goals you haven’t had the time to go after before. So, is it possible to change your body without falling into dangerous patterns of thinking? Yes, says Emilia Thompson. The former bikini fitness competitor, now lecturer in Sport Nutrition at Manchester Metropolitan University, has experienced the toxic side of dieting culture firsthand. Now, she coaches clients on how to reach their own body goals, led by a science-backed, compassionate approach. In this episode, she chats to Senior Editor Roisín Dervish-O'Kane about how to change your body without compromising your mental health.   Topics:    Can a body transformation ever be healthy?  How do you know if you’re in the right mindset to change your body?  What is a process-based approach and how can it help you? What is a calorie-deficit and how does it work?  How to keep compassion front and centre of your goal   Follow Emilia Thompson i on Instagram @emiliathompsonphd Follow Roisín on Instagram @roisin.dervishokane Follow Women's Health on Instagram @womenshealthuk   Offer: You can get six issues of Women’s Health magazine sent direct to your door priced at just £6 for 6 issues. That’s a massive saving of 76% on carefully-curated, award-winning journalism on health, wellness, nutrition, fitness and beauty. All you need to do is go to Hearstmagazines.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello everyone. You're listening to Going for Goal, the weekly women's health podcast with me, Roshin Dervasheh. I hope you're having a good week involving plenty of hand washing and possibly some time away from the news. If this is your first time tuning in, welcome. This show is all about helping you become the health version of yourself, whatever that may mean to you. Each week, I'm joined by a leading health expert or two, and together we give you the tools you need to achieve a specific health goal and make it into a habit. Today we're looking at how people can pursue their body goals in the gym without slipping into unhealthy habits that suck all the joy out of living a health conscious lifestyle.

The women's health team receive hundreds of requests from women within our community who want to use healthy food and movement to alter the way an element of their body looks, whether it's wanting to develop your glutes for a perkyer, more rounded rear, sculpt your upper arms or just lose excess fat that seems to have snuck up around your middle. And if we were all flesh-covered machines, standardised advice about metrics and measuring and macros would probably work, but inconveniently, we're not. We're complicated. We've got minds with emotions and insecurities, and by now we've all heard enough accounts of when fitness journeys are taken to extremes and become anything but healthy. So, how do you train to achieve your body goals in a healthy

way without risking taking things too far and making yourself miserable? Joining me to ponder the question and provide some actionable tips is Amelia Thompson, a lecturer in sport nutrition at Manchester Metropolitan University, with a PhD in exercise physiology. A former bikini fitness athlete she coaches and educates clients online with science, compassion, and she knows some excellent memes. Welcome Amelia. Thank you. I love that introduction. That's my best year, I think.

Fantastic. Oh, and Amelia lent her expertise on body image within the fitness world to women's health research project and body confidence campaign project body love. So, Amelia, there are lots of slashes in your title. Are you a millennial by any chance? Just a little. Yeah. I'm such a cliche, I know. So how did you start doing what you do? I have always been into science. So from my undergraduate degree at university, I was always into science and sports science specifically. And then I kind of carried on my, my training outside of the gym, outside of university, went to the gym, got my personal trainer

qualification and all of my fitness qualifications. And then I went under the Masters in Sports Nutrition and found myself kind of trying to find a way to link the academic side of things with the applied fitness side of things. And really a way to put the evidence base into practice. And at that time, evidence based practice wasn't really spoken about in the fitness industry as much. And so I fell into my PhD because I was in the right place at the right time and continued my study through my PhD

and at the same time I had a lot of male friends and I was based in Loughborough University and that's very male dominated and sport dominated and I started going to the gym with them and lifting weights properly and really fine instructor in my program and fell into

competing. It was just there for me. Somebody mentioned it in and it sounded like something fun to do. I didn't realize the extent of what bodybuilding actually was at the time. But I was looking for a distraction from my PhD. And competing very much offers a very immersive space. It required complete immersion in it. And this is competing in bikini fitness competitions.

In bikini fitness, yes. And it's bodybuilding. So you can imagine it is part of that world. So it is very extreme. And so I competed in bodybuilding for quite a few years at the same time as completing my PhD and then I moved into lecturing and sport nutrition. And people were in that space, but nobody was evidence-based. Nobody talked about the science.

And nobody really at that time did both. I hate to say, put their body out there at that point. That was part of my sport that I did do and talk about science. And so I just kind of fell into fit that niche. And I found as I competed, I found a lot of undercover situations going on that weren't spoken about the kind of dark side of dieting and competing that nobody was authentic about. And for me, I'm quite an authentic person. So I found that I kind of just took that role of I'm going to just overshare and I'm going to tell everyone what actually happens in these situations. And as a result of that, the types of clients that I now work with are tend to be the people who have experienced that kind of darker side of dieting.

want a more balanced approach. It was personal and academic. It kind of just fell together, which was nice. For you, did you ever feel like that that darker side of dieting touched on you or affected you? Yeah, so I've always had an okay relationship with food, not the best, but okay. But food for me was always my emotional crutch, so to speak, and that's been for my whole life, really. and competing brought that out of me more so than anything in my life before because with competing you might diet say for three months more than that potentially

to a very very low body fat and in a very extreme way and I did my first competition and I finished and it was one of the hardest times of my life and nobody had prepared me for that phase because nobody spoke about it and I found that you know I didn't didn't have an eating disorder and it wasn't to that extent but I just had a really distorted relationship with my body and with food and whenever I tried to reach out to people for support with that nobody spoke about it and that's when I started looking into the research behind it to try and get support for myself initially because yeah I did experience it myself to a minor degree

but it does happen a lot more to a major degree so that's that's where you're coming from this issue too with a lot of passion and a lot of perspective um So you're basically at the moment, obviously you lecture as well, but you are kind of in the business of helping people with body goals, helping them achieve them. Do you think that they are still a big motivator when it comes to getting people to start a fitness journey? Yeah, most people have aesthetic goals. And even clients that come to me that want to improve their relationship with food, they always have that caveat at the end that says, I want to improve my relationship with food so that I can drop body fat or so that I can change my body in some way. And often that dissipates over time.

with the work that we do. But generally speaking, yes. And I think it's because that's what we're exposed to in the media and on social media. And people want that gratification, that external validation. And yeah, I think it's still a huge driver. And it can be a good driver in some cases. And in other cases, not so much. That's the point I kind of want to home in on because I think we're so, as I mentioned

in the intro, we've all heard stories of when things have gone too far. and I think we've become very aware that aesthetic goals, in some cases, can be damaging. But how can they be useful in what kind of context? They can be useful if you come at it from approach with a healthy mindset. And generally speaking, people do come at it with a healthy mindset. It's only after a prolonged fixation on this specific body goal, which is one of my most hated phrases of all time. Is it? I hate...

Thanks for agreeing to come on. No, but it's in the fitness industry, specifically, Specifically, the way the context that it's used, especially in the fitness industry, hardcore fitness, is that I can and I need to look like that. And usually this kind of body goal situation is somebody who is pharmacologically enhanced, excessively dieted and is not in a very healthy headspace. But because of the nature of the media and social media, that's not portrayed at all. So it can be a good motivator And I think that at the moment We do have this shift towards

Moving away from dieting And at the extreme ends It's starting to get a little bit demonised And I think that that is an issue in itself We shouldn't be shaming people because they want to change People can change from a place of self-worth and self-compassion And actually self-compassion itself Is not just about accepting where you are right now

But it's also about taking action towards things that you want to do that you feel will improve your happiness. And if that is, you know, getting a bigger bum, you know, that's fine. But I think that removing that kind of end goal as saying that's when I'll be happy, that's when the issue arises. If you say, I will be happy when I reach this goal weight or I will be happy when I have a bigger bum, that's the issue that we have because your happiness doesn't come from any of those external things that comes from the internal.

and that's quite a clear distinction, I think, with people who are going to do it in a healthy way and potentially people that are going to end up in this vicious cycle because once they get a bigger bum, then they might want to drop body fat, and then it's a consistent cycle. Where they have pinned this elusive feeling of being really happy and content on a number or a measurement or whatever. Yeah, and that's when we see those kind of cycles where people might, they'll get closer to their goal weight, which I always try and remove these types of end goals from people

and they get closer and then they'll find that they self-sabotage and kind of go backwards a little bit away from their goals and then go forwards again because they've set this very clear end point and that's a scary process even if you're not aware of it that's quite scary to think what happens when I reach that point

what am I doing with myself when I reach that goal weight? Absolutely. And you've got this huge pressure that says I'm going to be happy there and if you're a couple of kilograms away from your goal weight and you're still not happy do you want to get to that point and realise you're still not happy? and I think people often identify with that kind of external stuff, the body weight or the bottom or whatever it is. And again, that's the issue if they can be comfortable with who they are and then want to change, that's completely fine.

It's just when they are trying to find themselves or their happiness from this external. That's never going to happen. It's never going to work. That's such an important point. And I guess my next question almost feeds into that. I mentioned project body love up top. Do you think someone can love their body but still want to change it? Yes, I absolutely do.

And I'm quite vocal in this actually and I have been for a while from various viewpoints because you can be completely happy and you can be in a place of complete self-love but just think, but I prefer the look of a more muscular physique or that's okay to do that. And I don't think that that should be demonised. And there's this theory called the paradox of change whereby it's, states that people are more able to change when they're more comfortable with who they are at that point. So if you can find a way to find comfort in where you are at that point, it's actually a more natural process and easier to then change and reach those goals. But if you're coming from a place of self-hatred, you find yourself punishing your body through exercise and punishing your body through nutrition.

And that's not a healthy place to be. But I do believe that you can come from a place of self-love. and I've been quite vocal in this. I had cosmetic surgery last year and I was very vocal about it didn't make me love myself anymore at all. It just made situations, some situations easier for me

and that doesn't change myself love and it didn't mean that I didn't love myself before and I think it's really important to know that you can be comfortable and happy but still want to change something aesthetically. That's completely okay. Yeah. And I think that's an important bit of nuance

that I think this conversation really needs. So you've kind of pursued bodyguards before and it's not gone to like a great place. Now you say, would you say in it now you have like a great relationship with food and exercise? Yeah. Yeah, the best ever. What was the shift? How did you get from A to B?

Yeah. So bodybuilding is in general not a healthy sport and there's nobody that can reach that level of extreme leanness and be healthy. It's just impossible. And you were extremely lean. I was extremely lean. I didn't realize it was possible to almost have that many muscles on your stuff.

It's like an anatomical touring. It's incredible. And they're still there. They're just hidden a little bit more now. Yeah, I think with bodybuilding, it was very externally focused. So I was focused on hitting my numbers that I knew that I had to hit with my macros on my training. I was focused on the external validation that came from looking a certain way. getting trophies and winning, that was all very externally focused.

And that's not a healthy place to be because you completely switch off any sort of body-mind congruence that you have going on. You completely switch that off because you can't listen to your internal cues. You have to fight past the point of comfort. And that's, again, not a healthy place to be, but it's necessary for that sport. whereas now it is very much from a place of internal cues so for example now I will if I'm hungry I will eat if I'm full I'll stop eating if I will train really hard

and I will you know log my lifts and follow some progression but I don't ever do anything to the point where I feel like I'm not listening to my body anymore and there's a big shift between that external focus of dieting and the internal focus that I think people with the best relationships with food and their body very much have that internal focus. And not a lot of us have it anymore because we've dieted for so long or we base what we should be doing on other people that we don't trust ourselves anymore.

And that's a big problem. And I think that once you kind of reestablish your trust in yourself and your internal cues, then everything feels a lot easier and it's a lot healthier. And so you've almost gone from this very metric focus. approach to your health and fitness to a much more intuitive one. Absolutely that. And I think there's a whole movement around intuitive eating, which is a bit more extreme. It's a bit more regimented and it's very anti-diet and that's a movement in itself and an

intervention in itself. But just simply eating intuitively, moving intuitively and coming from a place of respect for your body, you can do that with your diet. If you're dieting as well, if you respect your body, then you're doing it from a place of caring. And it's just a much healthier mindset to have when you approach anything, regardless of whether you're dieting or not. How would someone know, okay, right, I want to say if someone has decided that they want to lose, I don't know if you, like an inch or so off their waist or whatever. And they want to diet, but they're thinking, oh God, do I respect my body?

What are some signs that someone is going into that with a mindset that is, that can handle it? at that point. Yeah. Firstly, that they, like we said before, that they're not basing their future happiness on that outcome. Secondly, a really good approach to it is actually looking at a more a more process-based approach rather than that outcome-based approach of saying, I'm going to get healthier or I'm going to change my physique, say, by going to the gym a couple of times a week or tracking my macros or something like that. So something that is process-based rather than outcome base is so, so important and that's a much healthier approach to take

rather than this kind of end point approach. Interesting. Because I've heard before from older male kind of sports scientist basically and sports psychologists basically talking about how goals are so important to be a it's so important to have a thing

and number one thing set in stone but actually well I know personally for me that those process, I haven't always had the best relationship with food either and I think in order for me to kind of feel my way back into being interested in health and fitness again. I've found those process different goals so much more helpful. Yeah, they really, really are.

That's really cool. And again, your process-based goals are going to be different if you're trying to lose body fat versus if you're trying to restore your relationship with food and or health. You know, you can be a lot healthier regardless of your body weight. And so they're very specific to kind of what your goals are. But having those process-based goals is far healthier than having those. kind of outcome-based goals. So at the goal-setting stage, process-driven goals are good.

Where should we be looking for? Because obviously it's so important to be inspired. Like every psychologist will tell you that at the start, but where is it helpful to look for inspiration, and then where is it not? So this is really quite a difficult one because everywhere can be good sources of information and bad sources of information.

Generally it can be, it's about your boundaries and what you choose to look at for inspiration in these spaces. and we can take social media, for example. It's such a classic and easy example, whereby if you follow people who inspire you by being authentic and are very open and honest, then that can be a good source of inspiration for you because you can see what potentially is achievable for you

and you don't have these unrealistic expectations, which a lot of people do have. But if you follow someone who is genetically predisposed to a certain body shape, they are potentially enhanced in some way and they're really unhealthy on the inside but they don't vocalise that then you're really in a bad place of getting inspiration from them

because it's completely dishonest and it's not achievable for what you want to do and we know again social media use is associated with body dissatisfaction so there are some great accounts on social media that are authentic and do put across a really balanced approach but they're few and far between unfortunately

and nowadays our issue is when we have social media we are exposed to a lot more than what we would be if we were just at home and exposed to our siblings and our best friends so we have this really much greater social comparison with social media and a lot of the time it's upward social comparison it's people who we think have who are leaner than us or who have more muscle than us and that can be it can be motivating for some people but it can also be demoralising for some people and a lot of it does come down to your responsibility as a person to filter that and really ask yourself when you're looking at these things, does this actually motivate me? And does it motivate me from a place of inspiration or does it motivate me from a place of I feel demoralised and now I hate myself? And that's a very fine line and you do have to, I am a big advocate for personal responsibility on this because we can't control what other people do, but we can very much control what we expose ourselves to.

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We'd love to talk, business. I had something quite good one time. It was by, I think it was Natasha Devon, who's like a mental health campaigner, and she was saying that she says think about social media the way, like, in the way that you would think about old media. And obviously I love this because I work from a magazine publishing company. But yes, talk about printed things more. And she said that you should think about, like when you go on Instagram,

you should basically think about it like you're walking into W.H. Smith or something. thing. Just because you walk in and there's all these magazines and books on every single topic doesn't mean you have to read them. Like I won't pick up a magazine about, I don't know, World War II or whatever, or like tunnels and tunneling or, you know, there's some, there is something for everyone and you choose what you're interested in. And she was saying that basically it's almost like our brains haven't caught up with that yet. Yeah. On social media, we're just like, wow. Yeah. Consume, consume, consume, consume with absolutely no. discerning. I think that's a really good point that you do need to take a little bit of

responsibility for how you feel. Can you advise how someone can tell, you know, if they see a piece of content, say it's a workout video? What's a good sign that that is motivating them from a positive place as opposed to a negative one? It's very much about actually listening to the voices in your head and actually there's this concept of, it's quite a spiritual concept but it's a very compassionate concept, but it's about the awareness that you are not those voices in your head and you are the awareness

that can hear those voices in your head. And that's a really empowering thing to realize where you know yourself and the people listening have got all these conversations in their head right now and they're talking away and they're thinking about other things. But actually we have the power to say,

I don't want to listen to that right now, just stop. And those conversations will stop because we have the power to do that. And when scrolling social media, this is something I do with clients, I say to them, you know, listen to the voices in your head as you're looking at that picture. What are they saying to you? Are they saying, I should be doing that. I'm not doing enough.

You know, I need to go to the gym now. Are they saying, that looks really interesting. I'm going to try that in the gym tomorrow. They're very, very different approaches. And you can do that with social media. You can do that with magazines, anything at all, because even in magazines, there's going to be parts of it that you think that's fantastic. I want to do that. And parts of it that might be a bit of a trigger for you. And I find it myself with other, with colleagues. as being someone that's self-employed, I have friends that I don't look at their social media because it triggers me to think, I should be working harder. And that's those voices in my head.

And I know that I'm working hard enough. So I just kind of remove that from my space. And so for anybody listening to those voices in their head and being able to kind of just tell them to be quiet is so empowering with so many different concepts, but that is specifically calling them out and saying, what are they saying to me right now? and kind of listening to those.

And then if they are negative, just unfollow or even mute that person if it's a friend and you don't want to insult them. Yeah. Starts a drama. Such as the life that we like. Yeah. So basically, so cultivate this self-awareness about what makes you feel good and what doesn't. It's a really good place to start. Okay, so now let's look at nutrition.

Obviously, it's one of your areas of specialty. And there's the whole abs that are made in the kitchen thing. how important is nutrition when it comes to achieving body goals? Extremely important. Nutrition is extremely important. And when I say nutrition, I don't just mean calorie counting because that's not necessarily good for some people. I mean finding a, if you're weight training, for example,

protein is so important. So you can go to the gym and weight train five times a week, but if you're not meeting, you're getting sufficient protein in your diet, then you are not maximizing your adaptation. to that training. And most of our body goals, at least for the people that I work with, tend to be related to muscle in some way, whether it be building shape or losing body fat. And so there are some basic nutritional habits that are really important. I do think that it's often overcomplicated. And especially in the health and fitness space, people often think that you need to do a lot more

with your nutrition than you really do. And if you're looking to lose body fat, you only really need a calorie deficit and to eat enough protein. And then kind of look at your more health-focused nutrition goals. So making sure that you get essential fat, for example, in your diet, supplementing if you're vegan,

those types of things are important. But it is often over-complicated, but yes, you do need to be mindful of your nutrition. You are never going to, for example, lose body fat if you are not in a calorie deficit. Yeah. And so you do need to be mindful. of that. And the calorie deficit, just to spell it out totally, is that you are burning off more calories than you are taking in. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And can someone, I don't know, can, because calories are funny, aren't they? Because I feel like there was a real time when everyone was logging everything on my fitness pal and there's been a real move away from that. Can someone kind of alter their body composition in favour of less fat and more muscle without monitoring calories that kind of way? Yes. You don't have to

count calories but calories still count and that's kind of the rule to like that. So you can technically, you know, you can eat slightly less. So you can look at me, for example, you can look at these process based goals of saying I'm going to have protein at each meal. Throughout the day and I'm going to have vegetables with each meal and I'm going to look at my portion sizes and make sure half of the plate is vegetables, you know, basic kind of guidelines for meals and potentially lose body fat because you're in a calorie deficit without actually counting. Some people benefit from intermittent fasting techniques, but again, these are for people that have a good relationship with food and are in a healthy space to do that. And that doesn't suit everyone. So there are lots of different ways that you can approach it and it's very dependent on the type of mindset that you have. But most people who are dieting should have a healthy relationship with food in some way, ideally in the first place. So there are different options that you can use. So intermittent fasting portion sizes, saying I'm not. going to snack after dinner. There are such

so many small process-based habits that you can implement. So there's a lot of research around there's a lot of research around dieting in general and dieting we know increases your food preoccupation so you get you think about food a lot more. It increases your body

preoccupation so you're more obsessed with your body. You get these disordered eating habits so that might be missing meals with family and friends for favour of staying at home and being able to count your macros. That's a sign that something is not right with your relationship with food, all the way to the extremes of increasing your risk of binge eating as a result of this really regimented dichotomous thinking and tracking your macros.

So we know that that does happen and the research is there to support that. So you don't ever want anyone to feel that they are so fully attached to tracking their calories and their macros that they then develop these other disordered eating habits. So, And mac codes as well, again, just to be super basic. That's protein, fat and carbs. Exactly, yeah. Okay. So the main constituents of food.

Yeah. Interesting. So if someone's listening to that and is just feeling a little bit awkward and they're kind of cringing in recognition, what would you, if they're being really honest with themselves, maybe they're not where they should be when it comes to their relationship with food. What would you suggest they do to improve that? Good question.

Take a step back, first of all. Especially if they are dieting, take a step back. from dieting and really ask yourself is dieting the right thing for me right now because if you do have this disorder eating the disorder eating then dieting is not the right

thing but also really challenge yourself and look at your habits so for example if you find that actually you have cancelled your weekend plans challenge yourself to then go back and do these things that you've previously kind of stopped yourself from doing and actually

look at your habits and think is this rash and is this healthy for me and really just reassess where you're coming from and I just think taking a step back from dieting is the most important thing at that point and looking at how you can reintroduce health back into your diet little things like well actually a lot of dieters don't eat fruit anymore because of the calories in it

which is just obscene so doing things like right I'm going to especially when we're all talking about the importance of immunity and getting a full spectrum of vitamins it's ridiculous but then when I was competing the first time I think the only fruit I ate was blueberries for three months or something because I didn't want to waste the calories. And that's terrifying and that's a really sad byproduct of diet culture. Very sad. And so things like that.

So saying, you know, if you're somebody that doesn't eat fruit because of the calories, reintroduce basic healthful habits again. So having fruit with a couple of meals a day or looking at, again, something that's lacking a lot with people who diet to the extreme is essential fat intake. We know that we need fat. It's essential. We can't make it. But they don't eat oily fish because it's too calorie dense. Feed in something we were talking about on the podcast. We had Kimberly Wilson on and she was talking about eating for mental health.

Oh, she's great. And how important those things are. And because it's so, if that's the problem, isn't it? If we reduce food down to, on the one hand, the numbers and then on the one hand, this good and bad binary, you miss out on all these other. Yeah. And I call that, that, what you were. saying there about that very dichotomous bracketing of food

is so important regardless of your goals. Practicing food neutrality is so important. So not classing foods as good and bad or cheat meals or any sort of negative and positive connotations with food and it's very hard in this environment where foods are advertised to us

as like halo foods and health foods and you know it's very important not to do that regardless of what you're doing at the moment of your nutrition because that dichotomous thinking does increase your risk of disorder eating and it does increase your risk of binge eating and that evidence is there

so regardless of whether you have a meal that's not in your macros it's not a cheap meal it's just a meal and removing that self-talk is so important. We've talked a lot about nutrition but just quickly on fitness does that same logic kind of apply

like to almost thinking I don't know if you're so rigid on thinking about what you are going to do as your workouts like this is a good workout because I've burnt 800 plus calories this isn't because I've just done a gentle yoga class. I don't think the evidence is there for that as such, but it would make complete sense whereby if you go to a yoga class and you, which is fantastic for mental health,

and especially if it's incorporate some meditation in there, and then you come away thinking, well, I only burn 200 calories in that class. That's not very good. That's obviously, again, that's dichotomous thinking and we want to remove that as much as we can. And actually, one of the best things you can do is remove the kind of focus on expenditure of training. I just think that's so detrimental. You go to lift weights to build muscle or you go to yoga to improve your mindfulness or

your flexibility. Whatever your reason, you don't go to burn calories. You only burn something like 10% I think it is of your daily calories in the gym. If you're lucky, everything else happens outside of the gym. So just focus on your normal life and just use those times to

actually enjoy and use it as a experience to grow in some way rather than using it as an experience to burn off something that you ate, which is the worst mindset that you can have. Yeah. Again, sucking the joy out of something that should be so fun. Yeah, absolutely. And food is fun. And food is fun. And training should be fun. Okay, I think we're almost out of time.

If there's one thing you'd like listeners to take away from this about how they can really go for these body goals without slipping into unhealthy habits, what would it be? It would be to come at it from a place of self-compassion. So self-compassion involves taking action. Should you need to take action, it involves being comfortable with where you are right now, and it also involves the awareness that you are not your thoughts, and it also involves being mindful.

And that's what self-compassion is. So if you incorporate all of those things into your thoughts around your nutrition and your training, I think that you set yourself up to be in a good place. Brilliant. All right, Amelia, thank you so much for coming on. That's a fascinating discussion. Thank you for having me.