The Food Medic - S8 E8: Add don’t restrict approach to nutrition with Sohee Lee

Episode Date: August 18, 2022

Our guest is Sohee Lee - founder and head coach at SoheeFit Systems. She has a B.A. in Human Biology, M.S. in Psychology and is currently, pursuing her PhD in sports science. She is also a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and has been coaching in the virtual realm since 2012. You can learn more about her on her Instagram at @soheefit. Topics covered:*sohee’s approach to fitness and how it has evolved *Add don’t restrict approach to nutrition*Pro body autonomy vs anti-diet * “processed foods are unhealthy”*focusing on health behaviours vs body weight*why it’s okay to pivot and change your mindIf you loved this episode make sure to give it a review, rating (hopefully 5 stars) and share it with your friends and family. Thank you to our season sponsor WHOOP. Right now, you can get your first month free when you checkout through join.whoop.com/thefoodmedic@thefoodmedic/www.thefoodmedic.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Food Medic podcast. I'm your host, as always, Dr. Hazel. And today I'm joined by someone who I've followed for a long time on social media and really value her work and contribution in the health and fitness space. Our guest today is Sohee Lee, founder and head coach at Sohee Fit Systems. She has a BA in human biology, MS in psychology, and is currently pursuing her PhD in sports science. She's also a certified strength and conditioning specialist and has been coaching in the virtual realm since 2012. You can learn more about her over on her Instagram at SoHeFit. If you don't follow her already, make sure you do because she produces great videos.

We discuss so many good topics on this, but primarily focus on Sohee's approach to nutrition and fitness, which is all about building healthy behaviors and following the ad, don't restrict approach to nutrition. Sohee draws from her own experience, but also from the people that she coaches every day. Without further ado, here's Sohi. Today's podcast is brought to you by our season sponsor, Whoop. Whoop 4.0 is a 24-7 digital fitness and health coach that provides actionable insights to help you recover faster, train smarter and sleep better. And unlike most other wearables in the sense that it doesn't just tell you what you've done but it tells you what you really need to know. I've been a fan of Whoop for a long time

because it allows me to perform and recover at my best. Each morning when you wake up you get a recovery score from Whoop and this is based on your sleep and other health metrics. That score helps to guide your day and informs you how much strain you're ready to take on. Another reason why I love Whoop is how they're supporting their female members, which you know is super important to me, with features like their menstrual cycle coach. Recently, I've joined Whoop's Women's Performance Collective, along with other researchers and athletes, to better cater for the unique physical and physiological needs of females using their technology. And right now, you can get the first month free when you check out through join.whoop.com slash thefoodmedic.

So I would love to just start out by asking a little bit more about you and your career so far, because you have a really impressive CV. yeah it's really inspiring. Okay so I have been a fitness coach for I would say technically over 10 years officially but I got into fitness myself as a hobby in 2008 so I was 18 years old at the time and so in America you know I was 18 years old at the time. And so in America, I was a senior in high school about to head off to university. And I had been stuck in the, I mean, I'm sure many of us have a similar background, like the very strong, like dying culture mentality and mindset for several years prior to that was raised as a teen being taught over and over that, you know, the skinnier you are, the happier you are, the more popular you are, the better your life is a whole narrative that I'm sure almost every

single one of us can relate to. And so it wasn't until I started lifting weights that I started to very slowly shift my mindset towards exercise, my body and food in general, although I will say that it was several years before I started going down like a truly, truly healthy path, because as many of us can relate to, it went from like trying to not eat anything and do all the cardio to lifting weights, but then you become obsessed with clean eating, and then you know, achieving the fit muscular aesthetic, which in itself can become obsessive and unhealthy. So it was kind of like switching out one unhealthy obsession for another unhealthy obsession. And then it wasn't until my I would say, like early to mid 20s, I started to slowly move away from that, moving away from the mentality that being fit and healthy

is all about willpower and trying harder than everyone else. I had lots of experience working as a client myself with different fitness coaches throughout my college career, being prescribed very rigid meal plans. And if you know anything about the college experience, eating out of a cafeteria dining hall on campus, right, you really don't have much control over what kinds of foods you are served. So try sticking to a meal plan while you're a full-time undergrad student eating out of a dining hall. It was just a disaster over and over. And so I didn't, I was not equipped with any of the

mindset tools, or I don't even think the life's tools to navigate my college experience and still do my fitness without my fitness negatively impacting my quality of life. So I didn't socialize at all. And this is something that to this day, I wish I could go back and redo. I didn't socialize at all. I became a recluse because I didn't know how to live my life while also pursuing fitness. And no one ever taught me these things.

I kind of had to learn on my own over the years. And so as I was finishing up college, I actually was a pre-med. I was pre-med for several years. And I was working in the sports med department at my school. I wanted to become a orthopedic surgeon. Turns out it's just not what I was really interested in. And I had kept like fitness up as a hobby over the years.

And it wasn't until my last year of college, I was like, well, you know what? Let me just try starting up a fitness blog. Because that's the time when everyone, I don't know if, let me just try starting up a fitness blog. Cause that's, that's the time when everyone, I don't know if you remember Hazel, but everyone was blogging at the time. There was no Instagram wasn't big. Like it is now social media isn't quite what it is now is Facebook mostly and fitness blogs. And I had noticed that there were a lot of really well-known men who were blogging. Right. But very, very few women at the time. And so I was like, well, let me just see what I can do. It'll just be for fun, nothing serious. And I want to be able to

talk about topics that I was interested in. And I had become started to become interested in like habits, behavior change, psychology of things, because I was starting to realize there has to be more to this than my not having enough willpower to stick to this fitness plan. So you know, I have my bachelor's degree, master's degree in psychology, studying the to be more to this than my not having enough willpower to stick to this fitness plan. So, you know, I have my bachelor's degree, master's degree in psychology, studying the psychology of eating behavior, studying my, getting my PhD. I published a book five years ago. I'm trying to remember all the things that I've done. Technically got like kettlebell certified long ago. I'm a certified strength and conditioning specialist with distinction through the National Strength and Conditioning Association. I did become certified in as a sports nutritionist six or seven years ago as well. Although I'm currently in the middle of switching organizations.

But yeah, I stay pretty busy with my career and sorry for the rambling, but I'm very, very excited about what I do. I absolutely love my work and I'm really looking forward to chatting today about everything. Amazing. I love how grounded and evidence you are and have always been like ever since I started following you. But one thing I did want to touch on is how your message has evolved. And I assume that's probably come alongside all of the training you've gone through from starting with a bachelor's in biology, moving into psychology, and now into strength and exercise. You've really like targeted all corners and come at health from all aspects,

which is super super helpful and not many people have that wide spectrum of training so um you also in a lot of your reels and posts now you talk about how your message has evolved it's not necessarily always focused on fat loss or weight loss and can you talk a little bit about the evolution of your message and why it's so important for you to kind of reflect on what you were doing and what you're doing now so yes that is something that I'm constantly thinking about like every single day and sometimes I'm like this is exhausting like talking like thinking about this all the time but I do think it is important to you you know, when your beliefs on certain topics change, first of all, I think that's a great thing because it shows that you're learning over time and you're open minded, right, to changing your views in the face of sufficient evidence and whatnot. A lot of this came from my own personal experience, which I have so much of making like every mistake in the book, right, in the first several years of my fitness journey. So a lot of my content is catered towards what do I wish? What is something that I wish I would have known the

first like five, six, seven years of my fitness journey that people were not talking about enough. So that's very much in my mind when I'm like creating content. And so it wasn't until I would say, I don't know, four years ago, that I started seeing more of this anti diet messaging pop up around social media. And then at the time I would, I would say that it was still considered like very novel and different. And you could even say now it's still pretty relatively new, right? The concept. And I remember thinking at the time, what are you talking about? Why, why would it not be healthier for someone to lose body fat? Why would I not be educating people about calories? We have an obesity epidemic. Why is this not like this is what people need.

And I definitely at first I was like, this is absurd. This is this messaging is so absurd. They're way too extreme. I'm not going to listen to them. And it wasn't until one of my friends was visiting. And we were working out together one day. I was like, oh yeah, this other friend of mine says he wants to get healthier by losing like 20, 30 pounds. And she, you know, not even not being aggressive at all. She was just like, I wonder if he could improve his health by not focusing on the weight loss, but rather just emphasizing, you know, healthy behaviors, which is something that I talk a lot about now. And I was like, what do you, huh? What do you, huh? And I was just like, what do you mean? And I kind of just like mumbled something. I'm like, well, this is something you want us to do. So we should let it

happen or whatever. It was just like, I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. And at the time I was like, that was weird. Why would you say that? And I just did not get it right. And again, it took me a while to really come around. And then very slowly after that, I started thinking about more and more. And I was like, what if there, what if she has a point, right? What if there is something to what she's saying? And then, so I started reading and learning more about how the pursuit of fat loss can obviously come with unhealthy behaviors and how you can actually harm your health in the pursuit of becoming healthier or becoming leaner, which is, seems very paradoxical. But, and, and then I started reflecting back on my own personal journey, as well as my own practical experience working with

so many clients over the years. And I was like, we're all these, these were all signs that maybe I hadn't even thought to pay attention to like anxiety over food, obsession with exercise, the feeling of agitation when I feel like I'm going to miss a workout or not be able to do my full workout the way that I had planned. And I was like, oh my God, there is something to this. Right. And so I think I just slowly kind of started to talk about fat loss, a bit less of mess on my platform, talk about calories a bit less. Start talking more about fostering the right mindset, you know, like moving away from the all or nothing mentality, which was what my master's degree was on dichotomous thinking, moving away from perfectionism, which I think can be an ongoing practice for many of us, ongoing lifelong practice, including myself, learning to improve our emotion regulation skills, which as it turns out is very much related to our eating behavior, improving our stress coping mechanisms, addressing lifelong trauma, because a lot of, as it turns out,

a lot of eating struggles oftentimes have nothing to do with food and are very much linked to something that happened in your childhood that stuck with you for decades and decades. Letting go of the need to control the way that your body looks so obsessively and moving away, moving more towards a, maybe a performance school or even some, any like fitness or health goal that would help improve your overall mindset. And so a lot of it came as I was kind of doing all those things with myself in my own life. It was kind of like, you know, hand in hand, which makes sense. Right. And then as that was happening, obviously, I changed.

I started changing the way that I was coaching my clients. I became more and more compassionate over time. I started learning more that coaching and helping people is less about throwing facts at them and less about the knowledge that they have so much as how can you actually help them do the things that they're supposed to do. And a lot of that might even come from simply making them feel heard and helping them get over their own mental barriers and making them feel like you're on the same team as them. And I'm like, man, coaching is

so much less of a science and more of so much more of an art is just over. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, is so much more that. And it is very much a skill set. And I feel like so, yeah, I've been talking lately past several months in particular, I've becoming, I guess, like louder and louder about how my views have changed and how, you know, I'm very pro body autonomy still. And this is something that funnily enough, a lot of people misinterpret, misunderstand my message when I talk about the dangers of fat loss and whatnot. They think that means I think fat loss is evil. And I you should never, you're never allowed to pursue body goals and whatever. That's never. And that's never what I've said. In fact said in fact I've been very explicit about I'm very very pro body autonomy but can we do it in a way where you are very intentional about the behaviors you engage in to get there but also before that do we have a good understanding of why this is so important to you and once we understand why you want to do this does it still make sense to pursue fat loss or whatever your aesthetic goal is? Are there any major red flags that would make me say, Hey, you know what client I don't recommend? I don't recommend fat loss for

you. And here's why. Yeah. And if we're doing that, can we make sure that we're still placing an emphasis on healthy behaviors, because there is there it is possible to do that. And make sure that this pursuit is still adding to your quality of life rather than detracting from it. The healthy behaviors because there is there it is possible to do that um and then make sure that this pursuit is still adding to your quality of life rather than detracting from it um the latter of which i feel like tends to be the default yeah the default path people take yeah so that's where i am now yeah i was going to ask you about that because i think um it's really easy to assume that you are anti-diet from kind of the things that you would talk about online. But I am pretty sure that you spoke about this quite recently and that you have, you know, clients who come to you and may want fat loss or weight loss may be their goal.

And that's not something that you absolutely do not do, but that it's important that they're fully informed of the risks and benefits. So who might be unsuitable to go towards a fat loss goal? Who may you kind of potentially not recommend that they should pursue that? So I would say generally speaking, if someone has a very long history of disordered eating or, or, you know, what I perceive to be disordered eating or nonstop crash dieting to the point where, and this is sadly very common where, and I work mostly with women. So I'll just refer to women here where most of them will say, I don't remember the last time I have not actively tried to diet where, or like the last time I have not actively tried to make myself smaller. And then you go, you know, you ask, how has that gone for you?

And they're like, I've gained weight over the years, but they've, you know, fostered the diet mentality for so long. And so they don't even remember what a healthy relationship with food looks like or feels like they've never, they haven't had that for so, so long. If I feel like the reasons behind why they want to diet do not align with their life values. So, and that's something that not everyone is necessarily knows what their life values are, especially if they haven't really thought about these things before. But a lot of times in the coaching relationship, as you talk with the client like this, have live conversations on Zoom and whatnot, it becomes obvious to you as the coach, oh, these

are the values that you have in your life. For example, I have one client who started with me back in the fall and she did say, oh, I want to pursue fat loss. And we're like, okay, let's work on that. And then several months in, it turns out that she's saying she wants fat loss, but her behaviors actually indicate that she values her social life a lot more and the ability to go out with her friends multiple times a week, have some drinks here and there, eat, you know, fried chicken wings and pizza and not really worry about calories so much.

Right. And so over time, I started to gently bring up, Hey, not really sure if a fat loss is really the thing that you want. It sounds like what's more important to you is maintaining your social life. I think that's the thing that really makes you happy. And you know, that at that point she had developed more trust in me. And she's like, I think you're right. And it turns out that she has simply said she wanted fat loss because that's what she had been taught to want. And that's another, that's another reason. That's another factor that would make me say, I'm not really sure this is for you. Cause I don't really believe that

you want this for yourself. I kind of feel like you're following this out of default. But it can take time for people to even get to that point where they're like, oh yeah, I think you're correct. Or if I feel like, um, they're already very petite or they're very small. Um, and I feel like they're already engaging in some red flag behaviors to maintain their current size. And then they're telling me, oh, I want to be even smaller. Right. That to me is probably one of the trickiest situations to navigate because you have to first get them to let go of the pursuit of fat loss. And that can be terrifying for someone if that's all they've known.

And they're like, wait, you're telling me to stop actively trying to make myself or keep myself tiny, even though they're doing so much exercise and so under eating. And maybe they're occasionally binge eating, and you know, all these things are happening. And they might not necessarily be willing in the beginning to stop doing those things or kind of, you know, slowly move away from that. So that can be a bit of a process. And unfortunately, there are times when even though someone has hired you for your expertise and help, they're simply not ready to hear what you have to say. Right. Like they're refusing to stop all these behaviors and they're refusing to not pursue fat loss

and they just won't budge. And unfortunately, in those cases, I might say, I'm not sure if this coaching relationship is working for me because I don't want I I cannot ethically help you get to this goal that you're saying without loss it's just not I just I think I can't do that and in that in that case I would you know turn them away or refund their money and yeah but that you know I think those would be the three main situations it's such a nuanced conversation when it comes to fat loss and um even nutrition is such a such a nuanced conversation and what's right for one person or in that moment will may not be right for a person in another moment and you tackle a lot of this online especially when it comes to kind of processed foods and the assumption that like

foods are good or good or bad um do you come up against a lot of pushback when you have those conversations because I know you did a real or tiktok with like cheetos for example which oh my gosh yeah well first of all I would say definitely on social media when a post of mine gets more a significant uptick and traction like that like the ones that get millions of views for example like some of my um posts have gotten like three four five one got like over 15 million views and you know when that happens obviously your posts end up reaching an audience that is not familiar with your content. They reach people who are not your target audience and don't probably many of them who don't share the same views as you.

So, yes, when that happens, I definitely get a lot of pushback from people who I feel like my message oftentimes still very much gets misinterpreted. So I'll say things a certain way and they'll be like, oh my God, you're saying this other thing. Right. And I'm like, that's definitely not what I said. Um, and things with processed foods, for example, uh, and you can tell me if you disagree or agree. I think a lot of the mishearing with processed foods, uh, multiple, multiple levels. Right. But the, one of the main things I see over and over is that, ah, I don't think people understand what processed foods even means to begin with. Not everyone, but like a lot of people, right? Because process simply means that refers to any food that has been altered from its natural form. It's not, processed does not mean ice cream bars and chips all the time. Anything washed, chopped, frozen, pre-packaged, those are all processed, canned, frozen, you know, all processed. And so when I say like, yes, all of you, every single one of us, you're eating a lot of processed

foods, but that's not a bad thing because a lot of them are nutrient dense. If you're eating bagged spinach, guess what? That's processed. And a lot of people are like, no, I'm not. Absolutely. I'm like, okay, you're eating like pre-made pasta sauce. Did you make all that on your own? Did you like harvest all your own herbs and dry them out and put them in bottles by yourself? No, you didn't because that's processed. And, um, so I do end up like, you know, addressing how we shouldn't be demonizing processed foods. And even when you say, oh, well, I'm not referring to like, you know, the middleman processed foods. I'm referring to the ultra, ultra processed nutrient devoid foods, my response is always, okay, well, first of all, if that's what you mean, then you should say that. Because when you use processed foods to

refer to that specifically, that's factually inaccurate. So we should be clear with our definitions and accurate with our definitions. And second of all, I would still argue that you never need to demonize those types of foods either. So, you know, ice cream, pizza, all that stuff, they can all and I will always say, over and over, they can all fit as part of a healthy diet. And in fact, I would argue that forbidding foods like that actually leads to a less healthy relationship with food, especially if you start feeling neurotic and stressed over food and whatnot, and you start experiencing guilt when you do eat those foods. So how can we actually learn to incorporate those foods into our diet in a way that you're actually, you know, you're still prioritizing mostly the nutrient dense foods, but you're able to eat the cookies every now and then not feel like eating one means you have to finish off the entire box of cookies and mentally feel okay and have it still add to your quality of

life and you simply move on. That's kind of the middle ground that I try to strike. As far as coaching clients go, usually by the time they start working with me, they've already been following my content for a long time before they, you know, pull the trigger for coaching. And so I have, I don't have to have those conversations as much because they're usually pretty much on board with many things. However, it might be a matter of having conversations about, ah, yes, they know they're still feeling guilty over eating certain foods. They know they shouldn't feel that way. So let's improve upon that. And so they're like, like you know I feel guilty over this how can we not do this and so we'll work together to practice those skills

and improve upon those skills together so really depends on like you know whether they're a paying coaching client or general audience from social media internet space yeah yeah absolutely I think that's such an interesting conversation when it comes to kind of processed foods and I think when someone sees that you're a health coach or a nutrition coach or work in that space they're like almost shocked that you would promote like eating food that comes in a package but you make a really good point in that like now majority of our food comes from packaged and is to some degree processed and it's so convenient and it allows a lot of people to meet their targets of fruit and veg or whole grains and things like that and it's you know it's super needed um but i think it's so easy for someone to see that and then

automatically make the assumption that you're saying it's fine for your whole diet to be made of all these foods and, you know, like to be eating at breakfast, lunch and dinner. And I think that pushing back against that message is really important. What do you feel like you wish you knew when you first started out in that industry? Like what things do you want people to take from your page when they're starting out like when it comes to nutrition and health I would say that many many things but the mentality that a more restrictive uh I put this in heavy quotes cleaner diet is actually not healthier, despite what, I mean, I will say this, I love what I do, I definitely have my moments in my days where I feel very discouraged. And I feel

like nothing that I'm doing is actually making a meaningful difference, because we still see so just a plethora on social media still of the opposite message being preached of, these are all the ingredients and all the food groups you should never eat and they're poison and they're toxic and you read the comments and people there's so many people being like yes you're totally right cereal is poison or whatever they're saying right and I'm like oh my god am I even making any difference like am I just am I taking like one step forward three steps back back? If so, what is the point? I have my moments like that. But I do get enough positive feedback and a lot enough positive message from people

being like, you've changed my life. I'm like, OK, maybe I make it a risk. So I would say, you know, if you go to my bio, you'll see that I've since changed over the past several months. I've changed my tagline in my bio to say, helping you improve your relationship with food, exercise in your body. And that is my main emphasis of all of my content on my on my social media platforms nowadays is that is the main goal. Because for me, I don't really helping people get super lean is not

really something that really interests me anymore, especially if it means your mental health is going to take a hit. To me, if I have helped you get leaner, but I've wrecked your relationship with food and you have extreme body dysmorphia now, I've done you a disservice. That's my take, right? Because as I'm learning, I think, and I'm hoping that I attract an audience whose values align with mine, that your wellbeing and peace of mind, um, is so underrated in health and fitness in general. Um, I would say, I would tell myself young, young, so he, he, and your, so he, that, um, a leaner body is not a healthier body. Um, that doing more workouts is not better that you don't have to't have to be a clean eater. In fact, and I think you did a post on this as well a couple months ago, where you said, you know,

restriction, dietary restriction is actually a predictor of binge eating, where the more, a more rigid mentality towards food and more black and white mentality towards foods, and the more you restrict certain foods is actually going to make it more likely that you overeat and have binge eating episodes. I found that to be very true in my personal life. I've obviously done, read tons of research during my grad school experience and my master's degree was on how dichotomous thinking towards food is very much technically linked to binge eating. So that was something that was very eye-opening for me and um so uh this idea that you have to be working harder and exerting more self-control to be fitter and healthier than

everyone else and somehow that makes you superior to others is just a completely incorrect um i would even say super privileged mindset as i'm learning is a privilege plays a huge role in a lot of the nutritionist information that gets spread around, including the messaging around processed foods. Because if we are demonizing processed foods, we are actually making, we're actually creating more food barriers for people who are, for example, of lower socioeconomic status and are not able to access or afford the unprocessed, higher cost, organic, et cetera, et cetera foods. Some people live in food deserts where they don't have the money or they just need the convenience factor to where they have a bunch of canned goods at home, frozen goods at home. And eating those foods, even if you have canned vegetables and fruits, frozen vegetables and food, eating those things is always going to be so much better than not eating any fruits and vegetables at all in your diet, because someone told you that it's not worth it if you can't have it completely fresh. And there are people who believe that now. And that's that's me. I'm like, that is doing the opposite of what we're supposed to be doing. And so I would say, well-being, maintaining a robust relationship

with food or improving upon it over time is super something that's super important to me. There's actually a good amount of research, which is very alarming, but if you think about it, maybe not so alarming, showing that. So there was a research study, I believe, done in U.S. dietitians and dietetic students that found that 48 or 49 percent of them were had disordered eating or were at risk for disordered eating. There was another more recent study, I believe, in 2020 or 2021, showing that a study of social media users who expressed an interest in health content. They themselves, half of them, had disordered eating or were at risk for disordered eating. So something that I talk about more is how normalized disordered eating has become in our health, fitness, wellness space, where we think that certain behaviors are healthy when, in fact, they're very much disordered. But we've been so kind of taught that, oh, no, no, no, that's good. That's healthy.

When in fact, I'm like, it's not though. It's not. Spending 20 minutes reading a food label is not normal. We shouldn't have to do that. You know, we shouldn't be fear mongering chemicals. We know this like chemicals chemicals everything is made up of chemicals so just because you can't pronounce a certain food just because something is not natural does not mean it's safer does not mean it's not healthy for you and so that kind of my take now

and I you you see I'm sure like you see me posting about these topics over and over and over and I'm hoping that hopefully like slowly over time I can start to kind of change more and more people's minds and get them more on board with this approach and they're like okay now I understand what you're saying I didn't before but now I do yeah yeah that's it's it's so true and I think I mean your background is also grounded in psychology and you've mentioned a couple of times that you know focusing on healthy behaviors um is almost where you've kind of moved your focus to so and i think we talk about that a lot but what are some of the health behaviors that you like to focus on with your clients to remove that focus away from the weight centric approach type goals yeah um okay so this one is

going to sound and i already i always almost always when i talk to a client about this i'm like i know you're probably going to roll your eyes when i bring this up um but one of the best and it sounds so basic one of the best eating behaviors that someone can work on and i say this because one is super effective but two you'd surprised at the number of people who don't do this is simply establishing a regular eating pattern. Right. This is actually one of also one of the best things to do to address binge eating struggles, to address overeating episodes is stop skipping meals, which is very, very common. If, especially if you've been taught, Oh, if you overeat, if you binge just restrict your calories for the next day or the next several days, or like skip meals to make up for the extra calories you ingested. Right. That's the very much the default advice that people give. Unfortunately, a lot of fitness coaches tell their clients this

as well. I've known fitness clients who when their clients are like, Oh, I've been to like, okay, cool. I'm going to cut your calories even lower. And I'm like, yeah. So regular eating pattern. And by this, I mean, usually for most people that ends up being like three to four meals a day, right? Maybe like one or two snacks in there a day. I don't give generalized. So my general advice tends to be pretty broad because the best strategy for each person is obviously going to be a bit different from one person to the next. But let's say someone says they feel best eating three meals and one snack a day. Then I would say, OK, let's talk about approximately what times can you eat those meals? Let's write them down, get specific. Is it 9 a.m., 1 p.m., 6 p.m. with like an evening 8 p.m. snack or something?

Let's write those down and let's make it a goal to hit those meal times and the snack time plus or minus, I don't know, 30 minutes every single day. Can we work to that? And because you'll see that a lot of times people who struggle with, you know, a healthy relationship with food or struggle with weight regulation and so on, they have very erratic eating patterns. One day they don't eat until dinner and then they have like thousands and thousands of calories at dinner. One day they eat eight snacks all day long, but no real meal. And then the next

day to have two meals and it's just very, very, there's no regularity there. So that's one of my favorite things to do is let's just get to a regular eating pattern. And that makes it easier to obviously like regulate your food choices. If you have like physique goals, it can help you regulate your overall energy intake as well. And also it just helps you feel, as you said, more grounded in your nutrition. And then of course, to your body over time, learns to Okay, I'm gonna, I know what to expect at certain times of day, I'm gonna start, you know, feeling hungry around this time, around this time and around this time. So that is one of my favorite things to do. Exercise wise, many, depending on the person, as we know, at least in America, roughly 80% of adults are not exercising regularly. So if it was

someone coming from that direction of like very low levels of physical activity, we would start with what are some small things we can add into your week to kind of gently nudge you in the direction of exercising more regularly every day? Can we start out with two 30 minute lifting sessions per week? Can we do like a Monday, Thursday or Tuesday, Friday kind of schedule? And I can give you a beginner level workout that you can do from home. Can we get you going out for walks a little bit more often? If you're living in an area that has safe walkable areas, which isn't the case for everyone, can we address your sleep? I know that not everyone, it's not an option for many people. For example, you know, busy working moms, that's really not an area that have much wiggle room, but if you do, you know, addressing

sleep is what we call a keystone habit where improving your quality, the amount of quality sleep that you can get has a positive trickle down effect on all the other behaviors in your life. Right? So you want to work on like, what are the dial movers? What are the behaviors we can focus on that's going to move the dial more instead of just being, instead of just saying, I'm going to have you do all these like 10 different habits all at once. I usually focus on one, two, or maybe three dial mover habits at any given time only, usually one or two. So can we do that? If you have a lot of cognitive rigidity, which we know is linked to a lot of like negative life outcomes, can we improve upon adopting a more flexible mindset? And I'll give

you specific things to work on. I might even say, hey, over the next week, here are some specific things that I can have you do. Report back after one week and let me know how that's gone for you. But I will say too that no matter what habit or behavior you are getting your client to do, it is very important that they feel like they have autonomy and they have a say in choosing what that behavior is. Right. And that's why just in general, just the right, the, the, the, the right to choose the right to choose having the body autonomy, autonomy, but also here are like a couple of different habits that we could work on. Which one do you want to do?

Or do you have your own idea? And then we'll have a back and forth conversation there. Instead of me just kind of barking orders at you and not getting any input from you as the client, we need to work together so that you are more likely to be bought in with the process and you're more likely to keep it up and you feel more empowered yeah when you feel like you have a say in what we're doing yeah 100 yeah I think that's a really a really important thing in the kind of coaching client and even patient doctor relationship is to feel like it is a partnership and not just a prescription for you to do these things and tick the boxes and make me feel like I'm doing a good job um so I love that message. I'm conscious we're coming up on time. So I've got three questions that we finish every podcast with. The first one is, what is your number one takeaway from this episode that you

would love everyone to really go home with? Oh, okay. I mean, so many. Okay'm like, okay, which one do I choose? I would say that your mental health and your mindset are just as important components of health as your physical health. And I would even say that if you feel like you're in great physical shape and your diet and exercise are super on point, but your mental health is really struggling, that's still not healthy. I don't know how to word this in a way that I don't want it to sound like doom and gloom, but it is okay. And in fact, I would strongly encourage people to prioritize their mindset and their mental health. In addition to pursuing health behaviors, I believe you can do all those at the same time to fully be healthy. And obviously, ultimately, at the end of the day, what you want to do with your life is your prerogative. So I would never go into like

someone's DMs or whatever and be like, shame on you for what, like, whatever, not eating enough protein or whatever. And that health is very much, there are so many different definitions of health. Health does not look one certain way. And so even your definition of what is a healthy lifestyle for you may change over time as your priorities and your life values change. And that's completely okay. You don't have to be pursuing fat loss or body goals to be a healthy person. And you don't have to be pursuing fat loss or body goals to be a healthy person. And you don't have to be someone who's exercising all the time to be a healthy person. And so I really want to challenge our definition of what we think it means to be healthy.

Yeah, I love that. The second question is, what's the most important lesson you've learned over your career? I'm sure there's been many, many. My stance on many different topics have changed drastically over the years. And I'm sure that in future years, they'll continue to evolve. And I would say, don't be afraid to set your ego aside and be like, you know what? I was wrong about this. And it doesn't mean that I was a bad person, because ultimately, many of us who are in the industry or trying to become healthier versions of ourselves and help other people, we have, I would say like almost all of us, we have genuinely good intentions, right? So it's not something that you have to be ashamed of or anything. It's just a matter of like,

you're not expected to have all the answers right away. And my hope would be that, you know, as we learn more, we can simply like just learn to do better over time. And that's okay. And it's a lifelong learning experience. And I would say like, instead of seeing it as a negative, I think it's really fun. I see that as I can't wait to learn more things. I wonder what I'm going to learn over the next year. I can't wait. I'm very excited for it. And so adopting that like growth mindset, you know's really really key yeah I completely agree with you there and the last one is what's your motto in life I don't have a specific motto that I like repeatedly say um

I would say generally speaking the mindset that I have for my business, for life in general, is that you can always pivot. You can always change your methods. I'm very much, and I've always been this way since I started my business, you know, 10 and a half years ago, was very much a growth mindset. Like, let's try something. It doesn't work. Okay, cool. Now we know what doesn't work. Let's try something different. It's like, just go pivot, go pivot. I have never been the one to kind of stall for very long. Like I don't have a lot of paralysis by analysis, right? I'm like, okay, let's make things something good enough,

get it out the door. And then figure kind of figure things out as we go. And whatever happens with life or your business, you know, I definitely did not think my business would be where it is now. I didn't think I'd be talking about the topics I am now. I thought I'd be like an online coach forever specializing in women's fat loss that I thought that was going to be my, my niche for, for, you know, the rest of my career, obviously it's not the case anymore. And simply just being open-minded to, Oh, you know what? You're probably going to pivot a lot of times throughout your life. And when life happens, when something doesn't go your way, for example one thing that we all experienced was, was like, you know, when the pandemic happened,

right. And then when basically the whole world shut down to two plus years ago, business owners, for example, example you were you had to pivot if you want to say you had to pivot right and not everyone was able to do that um and just it's just an ongoing theme where we have to pivot we have to pivot um i think that's a great motto yeah yeah it's okay to learn to pivot so he yeah don't ever stay stuck on one thing if it means if there's something better say okay cool now we know something better let's do that let's try that let's try that um i'm always trying new things my business is always kind of changing over time not not like erratic right it's very the changes that i make are very intentional they're very

intentional and still very much again grounded in my values values. So I'm never like ping ponging randomly. But it's like, you know, I feel like over time I'm just living in a way that's just, you find different methods, you find better methods, you find more efficient ways to do things. You learn to live more aligned with your values over time in that direction. So, yeah, I'm a big fan of just adopting, adopting a open, flexible mindset where you know and expect you're probably

going to pip it a lot. And that's great. It's a positive thing. That's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your insights today and your experience and your learnings from social media and your career. It's been really interesting. And I know that lots of people will come away with loads from this episode and I'm sure I mean lots of people know who you are anyway but where can people find more of the information that you're putting out? Yeah I'm very easy to find online my username is SoHeFit across every social media platform I would say you know Instagram, TikTok especially as you know I know it's gaining traction all across the board for everyone. Facebook, Twitter, my website is Zohifit.com as well. Um, so those would be just Google my name and you'll, you'll find me.

Thank you so much for your time, Zohif. Hopefully see you in real life at some time in the future. Hopefully soon. Yeah, I would love that. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you loved it, you know what to do. Leave us a review, a rating, hopefully five stars and share it with someone you know will love it too. That's all from me. See you again next time.