The Uneducated PT Podcast - Borrowed Body With Sky Hill - Ep 133

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

In this episode, I sit down with Sky Elizabeth Hill — a coach with over a decade of experience helping women transform not just their bodies, but their self-belief, their confidence, and their relationship with food and movement. We explore the deeper layers of body image, how the fitness industry shapes the way women see themselves, and what Sky has learned from ten years of coaching real women through real struggles. This conversation goes beyond training and nutrition. It's about identity, self-worth, and the small but powerful mindset shifts that ripple into every area of life.If you’re a woman navigating body image, a coach working with women, or someone curious about the psychology behind confidence and change — this episode is a must-listen.

Hello and welcome to the uneducated PT podcast with me, your host, Carlo Rourke. The goal of this podcast is to bring on interest and knowledgeable people from all walks of life, learn a little something from each conversation and for you, the listener, just learn something from each episode. So don't forget to subscribe to the channel, press the box below, show some support, and I'll see you on the next episode. Okay, welcome back to the uneducated PT podcast. This is episode 1-33 and we have a very special guest on,

someone that I had the pleasure of speaking with on stage. a couple of weeks ago in Limerick and she absolutely blew me away I thought she was unbelievable so we're going to talk about a couple of the things that you spoke about on stage and kind of deep dive into that as well Sky so do you mind just introducing yourself

to the listeners just tell them a little bit about how you kind of entered the fitness industry yeah amazing thank you so much for having me on by the way you also blew me away I loved your talk I mean I couldn't hear half of what you're saying because you were talking so fast I had that problem anytime I go to Manchester or something or if I'm doing a talk for Lewis I always have to remind myself okay you're not in Ireland slow down when you're speaking

yeah and there's a lot of crossover I guess with what you were speaking about and what we're going to chat about today but just so everyone can learn a little bit about me my name is sky I've been within the fitness industry for just over a decade coming up to 11 years now so started out as a personal trainer. My actual journey into the fitness industry is probably not the same as a lot of other people's. I never had a passion for sport or fitness when I was younger. I actually hated it. Very self-conscious, wasn't a sporty person. Almost like kind of rebelled against it as well. Spent a lot of my teenage years, in hindsight now I can see that I probably just didn't know what I wanted to do with my life or where my strengths lied. I just kind of knew that I was a bit

of a clown and that I could make people laugh and that I was very social and outgoing which went hand in hand with going out and partying and ruining your life all the time so yeah I didn't know what I wanted to do when I left school I did some A levels I ended up signing up to go to uni again just like this opportunity is here everyone else is doing it

I might as well do it for all the wrong reasons ended up dropping out so that was another kind of oh fuck I'm just a big failure what am I doing with my life went travelling for a while working with my friend abroad and whilst I was away I ended up breaking my hip and I was only 21 at the time so that was a kind of a what on earth is going on why is a 21 year old broken her hip so

Are you saying that you were out drunk and you fell over and smashed your hip up? Basically it's not even as bad as that so I was on like a kid's scooter you know that little push scooters Yeah. I was on one of those. And I don't know if you, in Greece, you know, the drains in the road are like really big.

Yeah. So I kind of went into a drain and it just like something happens. You know, and there's like a pain and I was like, oh, I can't put my weight on my hip. So it's like, we kind of laughed and joked and I was like, oh God, I've done something stupid, but never in a million years that I think I've broken my hip. But it just didn't get better, didn't get better. Obviously, I had no health insurance. So flew back to the UK

And went and got it checked out And they were like, We don't think it's going to be anything broken Like you're 21 You look healthy to us But just in case we'll do an x-ray And then they did an x-ray They were like, no, you've broken your hip

You've snapped your femur at the top So I became like this medical marvel And they put it down to the fact That when we chatted about my lifestyle They said you've given yourself Like early onset osteoporosis Like brittle bones Yeah

Because of your lifestyle how you're not sleeping very well. You know, you drink alcohol nearly every day. Yeah. Diet is terrible. You don't do any exercise, all this stuff. And you've just basically made a mess of yourself. You know, that wasn't their word.

They're basically saying you've aged yourself 80 years being on the session. Right? 21, 21 years old. So for me, that was like a, okay, sort your shit out. What are you doing? Yeah. So after that, went through, I had to have surgery. I had to have a plate fitted.

my leg, moved back in with my dad. It was so funny. I remember my dad had to like sit me on a chair in the shower and I was in my bikini and he's helping me like wash my hair and get in and out. It was so funny. So when I got to a point where I was like off my crutches walking, I made a promise. I was like I'm going to start going to the gym and exercising. Like I need to to support my bones. And it was it was from a total health perspective. Isn't that so funny though that you're 21 and you're doing what people probably end up doing like like I have I have members now who come into the gym at like 60 years of age their first time training and they're coming because they're worried about not having independence in their later years you're you're literally experienced

that at 21 yeah 100% and and I'm sure you've you've experienced this yourself or you've had it with clients when you start exercising then you're more motivated to make good food choices and then you just feel completely different. Like I remember thinking, oh my God, you don't realize how shit you feel until you feel better. Yes. Your mood, my mental health, clarity, like energy levels. And I remember thinking like, if I could bottle this up

and give this to people, I would. And I was like, well, you can. You can go into the fitness industry and you can help people to do this. So I really came into the fitness industry from that angle. Like this is great for your mental and physical health. health. Like I used to be the person who hated exercise. I didn't feel at home in the gym. If I can do it, anyone can do it. And that was my kind of take on it. And then as I got more exposed to other people in the fitness industry, I saw that people were doing bodybuilding and it was very much

about how you looked. And I kind of went down that path. And I think it's quite common when you're new to the industry. You feel like a bit of an imposter. You're like, oh, but I don't know enough. And people have got all these different qualifications and knowledge and maybe if I look a certain way, people will take me really seriously. And that just kind of led me down a bit of a very different path in terms of the sort of behaviours you have to embody when you're working on appearance and everything becomes all about your appearance. So I developed a lot of disordered eating habits, disorder exercise habits. I had body dysmorphia and I came away from that a very different person and a very different coach. And yeah, again, feeling very lost and not really,

not really sure who I was in the industry where I stood. And so on embarking on the journey to kind of heal myself, I guess, again, I went through the whole process of there's going to be other people out there that feel like this. And I want to get them back to the place of just doing this for health. And it's okay if you want to change your body composition, you want to look a bit different, but it shouldn't be the sole focus of why you eat and exercise in a certain way. And that's really where I am now, I guess. So I wouldn't change any part of it. It's all, some of it is hysterical. Some of it is ridiculous. Some of it's quite dark, but it's brought me to where I am now. And it's where I studied to be nutritionist about six years ago and now very much help other women that are struggling with, you know, disorder eating, emotional eating, and stuck in these cycles of yo-yo dieting and really trying to get them back to a place of health and operating from a really nourished and well-fed place. So yeah, that's my story. There's loads I want to go into there of things you touch on, but I suppose before I forget to even go in it. It's funny the fact that you often see

like the common tread is people go, people enter the fitness industry because they want to look a certain way. It's very much aesthetic based and eventually they might find their feet and then focus on, oh, well, actually, you know, I actually feel good and now I'm focusing on performance more and that's motivating me more and that can that can help improve people's relationship with their body and relationship with food and all that sorts but it's funny you went in with health being the main focus and then you enter the fitness industry and then the fitness industry tells you then you need to look a certain way so it's funny the way the fitness industry isn't really about fitness but a lot of the times it's about you know how you look and that changed the kind

of the motivations for you 100% one of the things that I used to say in some of my talks is like we need to put the health back in health and fitness because it's not there for a lot of the industry and certainly when I started to look at the research into disordered eating and the research that they've done on like fitness influences and content creators like a lot of these people are exhibiting like disorder eating and even eating disorder criteria and and yet it's paraded around as discipline and and there's a lot of things in the fitness industry and I I don't hold any contempt against these people because that was me I was the one that was posting their selfies and, you know, I am fitness and this is what I do and you should do this.

And, you know, all the like miserable looking cauliflower pizzas and all that shit. I was doing that. And at that time, that was what I knew. And I was like, this is what works. I'm going to share this. So for me, I do meet a lot of the fitness industry with empathy of there is so much pressure to look a certain way. But we're in a position of power, right? We have so much influence on people's day-to-day health, well-being fitness.

We also have the power to really break someone's relationship with food or with their body. Like, I, again, my bodybuilding coach, some of the shit that she had me doing, she was just doing her job. I paid her to put me into a bodybuilding show. But, you know, looking back, I'm like, she could have told me anything. She could have told me to eat cardboard and I'd have done it. Yeah. Because that's what I thought it took.

And when we don't take responsibility for our own relationship, food and our body image that can trickle down and that's the dangerous place that i think i i see a lot of people stuck in at the moment in the fitness industry it's funny because you could even have a decent relationship with food going into the fitness industry but then the fitness industry tells you that this is what you need to look like or this is what you need to achieve to be taken seriously whether that's you need to do a photo shoot or you need to do a bodybuilding prep or like whatever it is like it's it it can look like different things now it changes all the time but it's like you need to do X to be taken serious and that can come with consequences of unhealthy

behaviours. Yeah, absolutely. There's very much a big message around you need to walk the walk, you need to talk the talk, you know, you have to look like you train. It's like, what does that even look like? Because if you look at athletes, they're all different shapes and sizes. They're all different body compositions, but you don't look at them and go, that's not an athlete, because they have more body fat than this person. Or they're not an athlete. Or they're not an athlete. because they have less body fat than this person but when it comes to the fitness industry we are so stuck in this mindset

of looking at bodybuilders as the pinnacle because most of our information trickled down from the bodybuilding forums over time before we really had social media and I think we really need to unpick this like what you look like is who you are or what kind of coach you are and make it more about what are your values as a person

and what behaviours do you embody? Because if I'm trying to encourage people to be well-fed and nourish themselves and exercise for fun, then that's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to focus on having a six-pack because that doesn't align with my values. And it's okay if you do have an aesthetic, you know, value yourself.

But that doesn't mean that everybody else has to have that. Yeah, absolutely. One thing you also touched on earlier was that you didn't have, like you didn't play sport or you didn't feel like you were sporty or fitness related at all when you're younger and did you have any like bad because i see i've spoken to a couple of trainers who would have been in obviously it's not the norm a lot of people who get into the fitness industry are already into fitness and then they think because i'm into fitness that's going to make me a great coach and there's a whole different rather we can go down that but but there is there is a common thread of

some trainers that i know who like they they were never into sport or And then they had this limited belief that that was never into them. It might have been because of a bad experience or so on and so forth. And then they didn't realize that, oh, well, I can still make a great career out of fitness. And they find the gym and they fall in love with it and so on and so forth. Like, did you have any bad experiences when you're younger that kind of created that belief that you weren't ever going to be part of the fitness industry? Because I know you play you, you, you're, I was looking at your training and like you train. and tense you do you you do cross foot you do jihitsu as well don't you yeah so it's really funny

like in my 30s i've kind of gone like full circle i'm like every sport like if i'm someone who's not in the fitness or not in the sport and i look at your page i'm thinking that girl like that girl is you know she's it she's the she's the package of what fitness is yeah so i think what it was when i was younger and and i guess we sometimes see this play out is for girls it's just not cool sometimes to unless you've done sport from a very young age it's not cool it's uncomfortable the uniform's awful like i think it was a bit of an egotistical thing and also i i never was very good at being rubbish at something like you have to be shit at something to get better yeah true and i'd grown up with with my parents split and i grew up with my mom and i think growing up

with my mom as a single mom trying to just keep a roof over my head i always said to why did you never like put me into any sports when i was younger she was like i did sky i took you to to all these different things and you just came out and you hated it and you were crying she was like, I don't have the energy

all the time when I'm a single mom to be forcing you to go to clubs that I can barely afford anyway when you're telling me you don't want to be there she said so I did try and my dad

he would do certain things with me like he taught me to like he would take me to snowboarding lessons skiing lessons like I had quite a really privileged life with him on his side but when it came to like day and day out

I just didn't have role models in my life sport. My mum is not a sports person. There's no one in my family that's into sports. So I think I didn't have that person to be like, oh, sports amazing and I want to do what they do. Couple that with the fact that I was trying to be a bit of a cool kid, you know, being shit as it doesn't lend itself to being cool. So I think I just, I told myself this story that like that's just not for me. Like the girls that I'm friends with, they've done it for years. They're really good, but not me. And it wasn't until getting into the gym. And it probably not

over the past six years I've really put myself into different situations because I really love the community side of it so I'm now one of those people who I don't like training on my own in the gym actually like I'll do it if I have to but I've gone on a bit of a try everything

and see what you like I love to do Jiu-Jitsu I fell in love with it so much and also from just like an empowering kind of self-defense it's nice to know that I could put someone to sleep if I wanted to crossfit my husband knows a crossfit gym so again like it's just a great community i don't know if i would stick with crossfit if it wasn't such an amazing community that i'm part of

well that's that's the that's the beauty of crossfit isn't it like anytime i go away somewhere where let's say i'm in a city where i don't know anyone or i'm like on holidays or somewhere it's like you got to a crossfit gym like people will talk to you automatically you'll meet friends straight away it's great like that yeah it's a very similar in jiu jiu jitsu as well like We can go on holiday and I'll be like, okay, where's the nearest jiu-jitsu gym? Send the message, they're like, yep, come down. So same with running. Like, when I broke my hip, I was told I couldn't run.

And I think the message was more like you probably shouldn't run for a while until you're healthy again. But I'd taken that as like, I'm not going to be able to run because I had a bit of a limp, I had a bit of an imbalance that continued. It became like more of a mental thing than an actual physical thing. So I just again told myself, like, you're not a real. runner. You're rubbish at running. You can't run. So a couple of years ago, everyone from the gym was doing a 5K run. I went and did it and I was like, actually, this is pretty cool. A bit of running wouldn't hurt. It's a bit of fitness. So then me and my friend were doing some short runs together.

And she was like, we should just fucking do a marathon. And I was like, yeah, fuck it. So we did, we signed up to Paris Marathon and we gave ourselves a year and we did a half marathon halfway through. And that just kind of stuck. And then that obviously lent itself into high rock. So I think think if you come to my page, you look, you're like, oh my God, she's constantly doing stuff. But it's really like it. I'm just going to go with what I enjoy and I'm just going to do it. I like to do, I don't like to be boxed into one thing. I don't want to put all my eggs into CrossFit or to High Rocks or to Jiu-Jitsu. Because again, we talk about aesthetics, but I know a lot of people that tie their identity to performance as well. And they get really down about not PB in their half marathon or they're not getting better at their CrossFit skills.

and I feel like that's, I feel like that's getting bigger and bigger now because everyone's sharing their like their Strava runs or their high rocks race time and it's like like nothing seems to be good enough now and everything needs to be like grander and grander. Absolutely. Like I'm actually really average at all of these things but I'm okay with that because I enjoy it. And I think it's just for me it's variety and I just very much believe again if I want to encourage other women to go and do things I've never done before and go and try things that they don't think they are capable of. I need to do that myself as well. That's one of my values. Like go out and try these things. So yeah. I think it's great. Like I see that in the gym myself. It's like we'll have

people who will say things like they'll just straight away say things like, oh, I'm not like if we're organising like a 5K group race or we're, you know, a high rocks event or triper or like anything, whatever it is like a big, big hike. It's like, oh, I'm not a runner. And a lot of people mistake, not liking something to actually, they're just, they had the fear of not being able to do it. 100%. It's the same thing that I had at school, right? I'm not a runner because I don't want to go through the discomfort of it being difficult

and feeling like I'm rubbish. And again, that's an ego thing, but you have to be shared something to get better. And everybody's a beginner, but we get caught up and looking at the people that aren't beginners, not realizing, like, there's going to be, you know, if you come to my husband's gym, what you might see on social media is all the people that are really great that share everything they're doing. But for all those, there's a big chunk of people that are beginners and they're still new to it and they're still learning. So there's a place for you anywhere. I think community is such a huge part of it. But even if you don't have a community

and you're running on your own or you're training on your own, I think it's connecting with what that gives you back in life and in resilience and in energy and clarity and all those things are should be placed on the the highest scale of importance that I want to look a certain way. Yeah, there's such a, there's such a crossover between them like little milestone moments of whether it is a 5k or walking into the gym for the first time or lifting your heaviest weight. And it's like going from that, oh, I can't do that. I'm not a gym person. I'm not this person.

I'm not fitness, whatever it is. And then you do it. And then you're like, oh, actually, maybe I am. And then you take on the next challenge and you take on the next challenge. And I don't know if it's the same with you. Obviously, I know you do a lot of public speaking and stuff like that. that but I would never dream of getting up on stage and doing something like that probably if I didn't build the confidence of other like small moments of like walking into the gym for the

first time or going to into a class by myself or like all them little things they really do build up and they ripple into other areas of your life that you can't even see just yet. A hundred percent like I don't know if you put this but I've got lots of clients that are so successful in their careers or they're like really really driven with. family and they can, you know, make all these things happen. And then they're like, but for me, I can't do it. And I think exercise teaches you that you can make promises and you can keep them to yourself and you can push the limits of what you thought were possible. And that builds true confidence. Like, it kills me when I see coaches that they promote their business. Like, I help you

lose 10 kilo of stubborn belly fat and build unstoppable confidence. I'm like, well, they're not very confident if it's, if it's hinged upon them losing 10 kilos. Because body's, change if they if they gain weight again they're not confident anymore whereas if you focus on the things that you do day in day out you know going out for that run when it's cold and you didn't want to getting up early in the morning to go to that class or turning up at the end of a really busy shitty day and doing that thing that's just for you that builds confidence because you're you're telling yourself I matter and that does like you said it has a ripple effect into every area you walk into a room and you're like no I can do shit this is hard I'm uncomfortable but I've been

here before tell me a little bit more about a body image for those listening who might not understand it and may just think if i you know if i lose weight i'm going to improve my body body image if i change my body then i improve my body image so i suppose with the with the people that you help and how you help help them could you just describe that a little bit to the to the listeners and maybe touch on you know what does what does healthy body image look like what does unhealthy body image look like and just give them more of an idea. Yeah, that's a great question. It's such a big topic. I think for me when I started to look into people's relationship with food and what drives certain behaviors, a lot of

it is tied to our body image and how we feel about our bodies, right? And that can be both positive and negative. I think the key thing for me is when we say body image, people assume it's about the way that you look and it's not about the way that you look. There are kind of four key components of this, right? You've got the cognitive side of this. This is the way that you think about your body, right? So an example might be, or if I was leaner, I would be more attractive or I would be more successful. Then you've got like behavioral component of body image. So the things that you do in relation to how you think you look. So if you don't like your body, then maybe you don't go into photos. You don't like being in photos or posing for photos or you won't wear certain clothes. Like I've

I've got clients that are like, oh, I couldn't possibly wear shorts. I couldn't possibly wear like short sleeve tops. And then you've got like perceptual. So this is like the actual way that you see yourself when you look into a mirror. And this is not always accurate. And this is something I really struggled with when I was bodybuilding is and I have all these old photos and videos on my phone. And I would like take these videos and be pinching like skin and be like, I still have bits

to lose. And at the time, genuinely thinking like that's. bits of fat that I need to lose and I look at them now and I'm like there is nothing on me and that's how your perception can change over time. It's like you get so normalised to see in something or you see something that's not accurate but then you fixate on it. And so it's just like perception of oh I'm not lean enough or I need a flatter stomach or I need bigger biceps or you know whatever it is like when we look at male body image it's more around like not being big enough. For women it's not being small enough. It's funny isn't it? Like you see even in the research now that

like body image and men is is like hugely jumping up where we would associate it with a female issue only but like it's it's something that's really prevalent in men absolutely so we've now even got like body dysmorphia and then muscle dysmorphia which is this category of it and so you've got cognitive you've got behaviour you've got perceptual then you've got your effective so this is the way that you feel like how it makes you feel so I feel ashamed I feel disgusted about the way that I look and all of these things are your body image and a really kind of

I guess like a big moment of realisation for me was when I was at my leanist I wasn't confident I was obsessed it was like I'd created this prison for myself like I was constantly body checking I was constantly taking photos

constant looking at the mirror I was like I was obsessed with how I looked but I was never happy with how I looked with how I looked. I was still really self-conscious and constantly worried about like, I need to keep this body or else. And that's not confidence, right? So you can change your body and still have like a very poor body image. You still kind of will have these beliefs of I'm not, I'm not lean enough or I'm not big enough or you might still have these behaviors that keep you in like a really toxic cycle. And likewise, I've had clients that have come to me

feeling, you know, these certain ways about their body and being like, I, I want to change my body. But whenever I think about any time in my life, even when I was younger and I was, you know, I wasn't a smaller body. I still wasn't happy. So it makes me think that actually it's something up here. And when you work on taking care of your body and respecting it and doing things that nourish you and help you kind of explore who you are, you can actually feel better about your body because you know you're taking care of it. So there isn't this guarantee that if you change your body, you'll feel better. Sometimes you can change your body and then your confidence sits on that. Like I made this prison for myself or if I didn't look this way, then I wasn't worthy

and my whole world fell apart and it became my identity. And in the other hand, sometimes we don't like our bodies because we know we're not doing what feels good for them. We're not moving them regularly. We're not eating the right things. Maybe we're not dealing with our emotions and that's causing us to have different behaviours with food that is impacting our body in that way. So it's about looking at how you live. So body image is really like the way that you think and feel about your body and that might not always be very accurate. So some signs that you might maybe have like a bit of a negative body or some components of like a negative body image are things like constantly being dissatisfied with your body, like talking about being dissatisfied. A lot of my

clients say that they, when they work on the body image, they go spend time with like the women in their family are older generations and there's a lot of that talk and over-evaluation of weight in shape is a big one so placing a lot of emphasis on being a certain weight, being obsessed with weighing this amount on the scales. I've actually noticed in my partner if his weight goes down on the scales

that impacts his body image. It's like, oh, my weight's going down and for women it's like, oh my weight's going up, I must be gaining weight, I'm getting fat, like we have this real fear of gaining weight in our society. And just in terms of your husband there, do you think that is a, why that's becoming more prevalent as well

is this kind of a distorted view via social media that everyone's bigger, everyone's a gym shark model, everyone's, you know, ride it up to the gills and look in a certain way and has the best lighting and the best filters. And you even see in like, you know, you know, boys would obviously, when they're younger, they'd watch, you know, action heroes and, like, they would have a certain physique. And now that physique is like three times the size of what it was in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s. Yeah, definitely. I mean, he's quite level-headed most of the time.

Like, he always says, this is, this body is borrowed, and at some point I'll give it back and I'll start to get old and I'll get smaller. And that's the way that life is, body's shame. That's a great. That's a great saying, actually. I really love that. Yeah. Yeah. So I think in his head, it's more like if I'm smaller my performance would be as great and there is an element of he he does a lot of work on social media and i think that again can become problematic not for him but for other people when you are tying your image to then well brands won't work with me if i don't look a certain way but i think for him it's definitely like a mental thing of if my weight goes down have i lost muscle i'm not as strong so then it like mentally impacts his performance yeah and a lot of a lot of people

who do focus on performance also suffer with with body image issues like sports stars and that's really prevalent isn't it yeah and I think what what often can happen especially now that like performance is becoming like it's like the new cool kid on the block right we've gone from bodybuilding to like oh I'm doing a sub three hour marathon I'm doing a high rocks I'm I'm doing turf games crossfit whatever everyone's kind of like I've got these big performance goals and I think the uptake of exercise is amazing is brilliant but what I think has happened is a lot of people who were controlling food and their weight through aesthetics have now found, oh, but if I do it through performance, not as obvious.

Yeah. People, I'm lean and I'm in shape because I train so hard when they're actually using that exercise and that excessive intense exercise as a means to kind of burn off calories. Yeah, I see that as well. And I used to always say, like, one of the pieces of advice I used always say was like, especially someone who was dissatisfied with how they looked was, well, focus on performance over aesthetics that will put you in a healthier mindset.

But at the same time, that's not necessarily true. Yeah, it can be just as problematic, I think. I think what we have to do is just like detangle ourselves from any of these things. Like ourselves and who we are and what we do, that worth is not contingent on if we're performing well or if we look a certain way. And it's hard because there's so many pervasive messages at the minute, you know, you go online and you're seeing the top 1% of everything, right?

You're seeing the fitness models. You're seeing the sub three-hour marathons. If you ever go to a, like, what I loved about going to my first high rocks is all I ever see online is the top athletes, the world class, the elite 15. When you actually go to a race, there are people that are clearly just doing this for the first time and only time. that it's something that's given them a purpose to start training a bit more. There's elderly people. There's people doing it with their 70-year-old dads. Like, that to me, that's amazing. So we need to remember that what you see online is not representative of the general population anyway. But you're right, it is problematic. And if we look at some of the stats, it's like one in three people use exercise to justify food.

Two in five people feel guilty if they can't exercise. One in three people, sorry, one in six people will still. exercise if they're injured. It's like this problematic attachment to I must exercise because they're using it as a means to control their body shape and weight. That's a really good point. I think that that's something to emphasize as well is that like if someone is very dissatisfied with their body, it's, I think coaches and trainers often think like that their biggest job. And so a lot of time it is to get people from doing nothing to doing something and getting to the gym and stuff like that but on the opposite side of that spectrum it's like people who are excessively exercising and

they don't realize you like you try to get them to rest and they and they ignore it like that's probably a big sign that okay there's some there's some underlying issue here that isn't really just about health and exercise 100% like if you start to notice you know some of the key things that um i would think of like red flags is exactly that like you're doing more training than you've program for them. I had a client once who, well, she was a member at the gym that I worked at but she came to my classes, but she actually joined a different gym so that we didn't know that she was training multiple times because we had kind of had conversations like we're a little bit concerned. You know, her body shape was drastically changing. And these are really

sensitive conversations to have, right, but I'm going on often a little tangent now. Whenever we talk about mental health, right, what do we say? We say, don't, don't just ignore the elephant in the room. If you think someone's struggling with something, you're better off saying something and showing that you care than saying nothing. And like when we talk about body image, this is on a spectrum. You can go from just like day to day having a bit of like, oh, feel a bit, nah, don't like my body, to all the way on the other side, you've got body dysmorphia that lives within an eating disorder. And eating disorders are fatal. Like somebody dies every 52 minutes from an eating disorder. So whilst it can be a light topic to talk about and it's an important topic, like it

really is important because if we don't address these things or understand the signs, someone could potentially go to that other side of the spectrum. And I think our job really is to try and nourish people back to the right side of health and fitness. That makes sense. Yeah. And that's such an important point that you touched on there is that like you, like body image can be just, yeah, you feel meh. Like I don't. And I think there's probably also like sometimes a pressure on people to be like, oh yeah, love your body. You know, always, you're always going to love your body. And like, that's not realistic for a lot of people. No, no.

I think, you know, being neutral, I don't think you should aim just to be neutral. I think that's like a bit of a mere place to live. I think you should have days where you're like, oh my God, love my outfit, love my hair, everything's vibing. But to go from, I'm disgusted by the way that I look, because society tells me I'm disgusting, to being like, oh, I love my body, I'm a queen, I'm gorgeous,

like so unrealistic. It's got to be like, you just have to decenter your appearance. You just think about it less. and it's not about being positive. It's about, you know, tipping the balance of having more neutral and sometimes positive days and not always negative,

but you are going to have those days. And I think the key thing about understanding that you are at a more stable place with your body image is that when these days happen, which they will, if you're tired, if you are exhausted, you know, even an event that's triggered you, someone might make a comment, a family member, you're at a party, you see a photo and you're like,

oh, God, is that what I look like? all these little micro things are going to happen and make you feel threatened in your body but the key thing to know that you have a relatively stable body image is that you don't then feel the act that feel the need to go and act on them you're not like right 1200 calories tomorrow

extra cardio I'm not eating breakfast like you don't then spiral into all these unhelpful behaviours you can acknowledge I feel a bit shit so I'm going to do some things that make me feel better I'm going to wear clothes that I feel comfortable in or I'm going to stay off social media today because I don't need to feed into it so you're going to have those days and there'll be a million different reasons why

but the key is it doesn't change your behaviours that are good for you that show that you care and respect for your body and you can care and respect for your body any shape, weight or size and you absolutely should like it's not just certain you know accepted bodies that should be treated well is anybody everybody what I wrote down there was like the approach matters and I think whether we're talking about in terms of performance or in terms of aesthetics like whether you want to lose weight or whether you want to go for a performance goal and also look a certain way doing that and the approach matters and just like you said it's like not going down the route of unhealthy behaviours because you feel a certain way and like that could look like over training and not

recovering it could look like going on excessively low calories for a long period of time um yeah so I suppose when it comes down to it, like, because people will be listening to this and maybe be like, well, you know, I could have bad body image if I'm focusing on performance. I've got a bad body image if I'm focusing on aesthetics. What am I supposed to do here? Yeah, I think really trying to evaluate what's important.

I think when you're stuck in this cycle of like disordered thoughts, behaviours maybe, or, you know, you're picking up things from other people online, it takes us away from what really matters. and it takes us out of the present moment. It kind of like strips us of joy. So I think finding ways to bring that back into your life. So evaluating what are my values?

What's important to me? I get all my clients to do this. We look at the big list of values. We pick out 10. And then I say, okay, give me your top five from them. And they'll give me five. And it might be, you know, family. It might be health.

It might be connection. It might be community. It might be aspirations. I go, okay, now you write me two actions for each of those that you do day and day out or you want to do day and day out that show you you are living in your values and then they write them down and they kind of become like our goals yeah these are goals we're not aiming for this marathon time or this way we're aiming for these habits day to day yeah like i suppose if you value family right if that's one of your main values and yet you're going on

uh you know a really restrictive diet and your family are asking you to come out for us like it's your brother's birthday or you know your mom has this big celebration or like it's or you just want to sit around at the kitchen table and have some cake and a cup of tea and it's like you're refusing all that for this goal that you have but now you're actually not living in alignment with the values of you know being around your family because you're so focused on calories exactly and you know what these values can coexist so it's not to be like oh throw everything out the window If my value is health, but my value is also connection, if my friends say to me, we're going to go out on the weekends,

we're going to do a bit of a pub crawl, you know, we're going to have some brunch. And in my head, I'm thinking, I really want to see these girls. I don't want to drink. I can value both. I can go out and value connection, and I can also value health by maybe I'll just have one or two

and I'll drive, or maybe I'll just, you know, not drink at all. So you can value, sorry, you can kind of play, into those values and that feels better than thinking I should do this, I can't do this, I can't do that. Again, it's like your choices, the things that you do, whether it's a performance goal, whether you do have a bit of a body composition goal, if the behaviors that you're using to get there don't feel empowering or like they're positively feeding into your life, then they probably need to be addressed. That's why I'd be similar to you in terms of I love training with people or in a group as well because it hits two in my

values it's like i value health but i also value you know people and connection and community so i'm getting all of them things from doing the one behavior and i feel grateful yeah and i think we don't think about that enough sometimes i'll ask people about their values and they're like i've never have to think about this but i don't even know and i'm like exactly we we take in so much information we taking so many opinions from other people especially online we forget to ask what do i want what works for me i don't want to be a gym bro that gets up at 4 a m and has a cold shower Some people might love that. Some people are like, that is absolutely my thing,

and I fucking love it. Like, my thing is resilience, and if I start my day with something hard, I'm living in my value, brilliant. But for other people, it might not be, and they might value calm and peace, and actually having a slow morning where they just get up and have a cup of tea

and have a chat to their partnering kids and do the school run, that's them living in their value. But when we're constantly trying to keep up with, well, they do this and they do that, and they said do this, there's so much, it just takes you further and further away from what do you want,

to do and really that's at the core of it like what feels good for you like how can you live out your values in a way that feels empowering and I really would encourage people to to focus on that I think if you're really struggling at the moment looking at what behaviors are keeping you stuck is a big one so I have a client at the moment who was weighing herself every day and body checking but like taking a lot of photos and posting them online and we had a bit of a discussion around it like how does that actually make you feel when you do those things? And she was like, it doesn't actually make me feel that good.

I feel pressure. I feel like I have to step on the scales every day and that will dictate my mood. So we just kind of tested it out. I said, why don't we just try not weighing ourselves this week and see how you feel? Like it's not a pass or fail.

You don't have to not do it every day. It's just let us explore and get curious. And lo and behold, mood was different because she wasn't getting that feedback. I said about that taking photos, how about you just go and do your workout, and you don't take a photo of yourself this time, lo and behold, she's enjoying it.

She's chill. She's not thinking about her body so much. She's actually thinking about the work that she's doing. So I think you have to explore the individual things that maybe are keeping you stuck. It might be excessively tracking your food. It might be excessively doing lots of steps. I've got another client who we're looking at like reducing her overall steps

because she's sacrificing sleep to go and do this thing to try and control her body. So it's difficult and I'm not ever going to say it's easy, but there has to be a little bit of self-awareness of what's keeping you stuck and then picking out these little things to try and just day by day, do less and pick out the things that are good for you and in line with your values and do those more. And you will start to feel better and it will become easier to do those things.

Do you think people fall into that trap of, not a trap, but they're constantly weighing themselves or they're constantly tracking their food or they're constantly trying to hit that step goal that they've plucked out of their arse and it's essentially like if you are trying to have that conversation to get them to do less or maybe not track at all there's a lot of fear that comes with that.

100%. Anxiety, fear. You got to think about what it is for them. It's a safety net. They've built that up as like, this is like how I stay in control. It's such a paradox because you're not in control at all. These behaviours are controlling you.

So giving up that control is terrifying and I've got clients at the minute that are like they are struggling but it's about meeting it with compassion and curiosity and thinking about the bigger picture like you have to give up some of that control to put yourself back in the driving seat and if you need to do that in baby steps most people do it's like you might gradually stop tracking certain things like stop tracking your sauces or your snacks or your condiments and then over time you might reduce that the same with steps because what you have is this fear of like I'm going to gain weight I'm going to be huge, I'm going to be massive.

So not only are you trying to unpick the fat phobia that lives there, that that's the worst thing in the world, but you're also trying to prove to yourself that that doesn't happen. Like you can eat 50 calories over your target, and it's not going to mean that you wake up the next day, seven stone heavier. So you're building up that trust with yourself again, that you don't have to be so controlled.

You're also unpicking the belief that you have to stay this weight in shape to be happy. You absolutely don't. So there's kind of just elements that are at work. lot of there's a lot of like psychological like things that you have to dive into there it's like okay i'm trying to get down to a certain way i'm trying to control my weight and it's like why are you trying to do that because i'm trying to control my weight but why it's so i don't gain some way and and what happens if you do it's like oh well then i won't be accepted i won't be loved i won't like and you're you're essentially you're working with a a lot of emotions that people have you know

maybe pushed pushing underneath and I'm actually dealing with I'd say does that take does that take a lot out of you and like if you're dealing with people um on a regular basis where you're really like you're it's not surface level uh you know give someone a calorie goal give someone steps give someone a workout plan and off you go I'll see you later it's really like working on on these core beliefs that they've had from whether it's childhood someone telling them that they're not good enough, society saying that they're unlovable unless they're, you know, 66 KG. Like, it's a lot working with people trying to kind of unpick them beliefs that they've built up. Yeah, absolutely. And there is a fine line. Like, there has been a few people that I just, you know,

end up saying, I think this is out of my scope of practice now. And I think this is something that you probably should explore in therapy. But there's definitely things that we can do to push people along. Like, I use a lot of journaling prompts with my clients. They get them to reflect on certain things. We use a lot of reframing. So all these negative thoughts that come up for them, I get them to write them down and then reframe it as if you're talking to somebody else with a positive or something more neutral at least. So because that's a big driver as well, like this really harsh self-criticism that can keep you stuck. So there is a lot of that that goes on. But I think for me over time, I've just to develop this kind of idea that I'm like the compassion

giver. I'm the little cheerleader in the corner that believes in them. So you know, there is a lot of emotion and negativity from their side, but I just kind of meet that with like this, this like over kind of optimistic and positive compassion and curiosity. And I think that's the piece that's missing for a lot of people if they're not able to come at this from a non-judgmental curious place. So it's a firm and a lot of like, you're not broken. You're not, you know, out of the ordinary.

You're not unfixable. All this stuff you've developed as like habits and safety nets and you know I totally understand the fear but on the other side of this is so much more life and joy and I'm going to compassionately you know support the shit out of you and so you start doing it for yourself and that's basically what I see my job as is like I'm going to be the number one fan and believer of you until you start to build confidence and the belief that actually yeah I can do this and this is a good thing for me yeah because like when we're thinking about ourselves like once our emotional brain comes out we're never going to see things

clearly it doesn't matter who you are there's no one i don't care how logical your brain is um we all have our blind spots and set to have someone to kind of you know take a more neutral view of your situation it's very very beneficial 100% like i think a lot of our part of of a of coaching like our job is really we're just giving people permission to do the things that they know they should be doing or they know that they want to do. A lot of people, you know, why do they get a coach? Because they don't know which way to go. They're second guessing themselves all the time.

And I think people come to me and expect me to give them like, this is what you need to do step by step. And I'm like, okay, what do you want to do? What feels right for you? Like, let's explore these different options. And I'm always constantly throwing it back to them. Like, you're the expert on you. What do you think?

I can give you some ideas and guide you in certain directions. But this is all your decision. And that's what we're going to. work on together and it's really giving them permission to like be the kind of the driver in their own life rather than being the passenger that's looking outwards all of the time for validation for information you know it's the reason why people are like I know what to do I just can't do it you have to have someone that gives you permission to like you make the decision that's best for you that's a that's a very common phrase isn't I know what to do I just can't

seem to do it and so essentially what you're saying is I'm stuck right now yeah it's like exactly that's it like I'm just stuck like my emotional brain is an overdrive and I cannot access that that curious compassionate side of me and that's where the coach comes in like okay I'll be the curious compassionate side for you like why do you think this is happening why do you think you want to do this like you said you got to start to dive deeper into what's people always come with these habits that they want to drop right I want to stop doing this thing I'm like okay why do you do it and they're like oh um I've got a client at the minute who nighttime eats and she's like, I'm so fucked off with myself.

I hate that I do this. It pisses me off. And I'm like, okay, instead of trying to stop nighttime eating, why do you think you do it? Well, I did go to bed quite hungry. I'm like, okay, do you think it's driven by hunger then maybe? Yeah, probably. What could you do that would maybe help that? I could maybe have a snack before bed.

I'm like, let's try it. Next week. That's you. That's you essentially turning the notch on for the logical brain of, okay, what's going on? Because otherwise people just end up straining the trap of, oh, I've over it. Oh, I need more willpower. I'll try again tomorrow. Oh, I need more willpower.

Oh, now I feel guilt. Now I feel judgment. Oh, I'll try again. And it's just a, it's just a repeated cycle then. Yeah. Instead of seeing it as like, this behavior is a symptom of something that's going on. Like, it's telling me something. What is it telling me?

You just focus on like, this is bad. I must stop it without thinking, well, how? Like, what's driving it? And I think that can be the same for a lot of things. If there's a behavior you want to. put in place and you're really struggling to do it. Why is that? Is there something within your control there or is it actually out of your control? Then you need to manage your expectations. I wanted to talk a little bit more about where this comes from. Like where this body dissatisfaction

that a lot of women and men have these days. And I know you touched on obviously social media and media in general being a big contributor to this but you also spoke on even you know going back to the family home and maybe generational dieting and do all them things influence body dissatisfaction in people as well yeah i think like your immediate surrounding especially when you're young your parents beliefs cultural beliefs things that i maybe said to you at school by you know caregivers, coaches, teachers, peers, you take that all on board and that becomes your belief about the world and how you view the world. It's really interesting when I talk to people that have quite negative body image and they're judging themselves, I kind of mirror that to them

like, well, then you must judge other people the same way. And when they think about it deep down, they do. They do judge. I'm like, you must do because you can't hold yourself to a different level. And some people say that they don't, but I'm like you do because you've built up a belief that this body is bad, this body is good. If you gain weight, you've let yourself go and it's bad. But if you lose weight, it doesn't matter how you've done it, that's good. So it's all these messages that we pick up on as we grow up. We see what our parents do with food. We see how like moms talk to dads, dads talk to moms, you know, co-workers talk to each other. And the things that I said to us about our bodies as we're growing up, you know, I'm sure there's different people

that have different insecurities about their body like at school, the lads all used to call me thunder thighs because I had big thighs and I grew up being like, I want smaller legs, you know, all these things that you pick up. And then you have the media, you have Disney films with these gorgeous tiny princesses with perfect hair and big eyes. And then the villains are always like in bigger bodies

and they have certain characteristics. So you're constantly bombarded with this idea of like that's good. this is bad. We just live in a very fat-phobic world. And I don't think we take into account that there's so many factors that go into how our bodies look, like genetically,

socioeconomically, you know, your access to different things, to fitness, to healthy foods, your finances, your mental health, all these things play a part.

And we cannot possibly tell the state of someone's mental or physical health purely by looking at their body. I know plenty of people that are in healthy weight bodies that have terrible behaviors, terrible, don't exercise, don't eat well, drink load, smoke. And then I have people that live in larger bodies that are fit as fiddles. You know, so it's really unpicking like these stereotypes in the beliefs that we've got

and holding a bit of a mirror to yourself of if you saw this body on the street, what would you think? Yeah, that genetic thing is such a good point as well because it even falls into the trap of like, let's say people on social media, looking at someone's body and this person could be genetically gifted and then they say okay well what that what does that person do because if I follow what that person does I might hopefully look a little bit more like them 100% and that's just not the way it is like that that is one of the big problems with you know like the what I eat in a day post the the kind of the body checks the different photos because all you're seeing is a very small snapshot you don't have the context and

I always think about this in my experience because what I I posted online, you didn't see what I was doing behind closed doors. You didn't see me getting up and doing an hour on the stairmaster in the morning. You didn't see me eating like 13 to 1400 calories, having like eight black coffees a day just to keep myself awake. You didn't see me shivering cold. I didn't tell you any of that. So when you're looking at this person and you're seeing a little bit of their training,

a little bit of what they eat, or even their what I eat in a day, which might not even be what they eat, you don't have any of the context, like, what is their job like, what's their stress levels like what their finances like do they live at home do they have you know support that you don't have there's just honestly no point comparing yourself to something you don't have all the context and even if you do even if you've got a friend and you're like but my friend does this and this and this it's a waste of energy you can only focus on you and what your situation is what you want what your capacity is otherwise you just go round and round circles just comparisons and not feeling good enough and that doesn't lend itself to motivating behavior yeah and i suppose as well you could look at

that person with that great physique and all right there is envy there i would love to look like them i want to do whatever they're doing to look like them and like you touched on there when you said perceptional it's like well that could that person could be really really lean they could look great but again like you said they could feel awful inside and you could essentially probably be a lot happier than they are but you're never going to know that 100% it's like that saying you know if we all threw our problems into a pile in the middle, you'd probably grab your own back. And sometimes, yeah, that's what I feel like,

you know, if we were to all put our behaviours day today in the middle and go, okay, which ones do you want? We'll probably go, oh, fuck that, I'll have mine back. Thank you. I don't want me doing what you're doing. And I think that's been very comforting to me to be like, I'm happy with how I live my life. And if I'm feeling jealousy or comparison towards someone else,

that's usually a sign that what I'm doing is not making me happy. and that's the only thing that I can control. I can't control what they do. I can't control their genetics. If I don't have the capacity to live like them, then what is the point in being jealous or comparing to them? Usually if I'm frustrated or if I'm feeling a certain way, then I need to look inward.

I need to look at my own behaviours in day-to-day and see what changes I can make there because somewhere I'm not living within my values, then that's the frustration. My body's not the problem. They're not the problem. It's how I'm living. Very true.

And 10 years coaching in the fitness industry, nearly 11 years, do you think that the fitness industry currently stands as a net positive or a net negative in regards to body image and society? Oh, it's really difficult, you know, because I was having this conversation with my husband. Like, we know so many amazing coaches that are not on social media. They're brilliant. They just work in their gyms and their local communities. So I don't think social media fitness industry, is always representative of the amazing work that goes on and what people do.

You know, as much as there is exposure to a lot of bullshit and the way that the algorithm is designed, it kind of favours like the out there stuff and they're aesthetically pleasing. But it can also amplify some really great stuff. So I don't want to be like, oh, you know, doom and gloom, social media is bad, but I do think you can rotate responsibility

to what you expose yourself to. So if you do follow someone and then, their content doesn't really resonate with you or when you see their stuff it does make you feel a bit crappy like you can just remove that like there's an element of personal responsibility of like why is that triggering me in a certain

way but there's also like I just don't need to see it you know I've been thinking about this myself and I would agree it's like it's not dichotomous thinking where it's either good or bad of course it's a mix and I've been thinking about like the landscape of social media in regards to people

people's perceptions of physiques and stuff like that and obviously like now we have the air where you know people can use waste filters and they can use AI to look completely different and look very brushed but then I'm also thinking obviously that's unhealthy it's unhealthy for for kids to be seeing that and and like we should obviously be calling that out and trying to change us or or holding platforms to responsibility with that but I also see a lot of like people wanting for like raw unfiltered stuff on social media as well so i i think that kind of perfect curated thing um while it's harmful i don't necessarily think that it's something that we're really long for i think

people are are also longing for like messy unfiltered unperfect people you know who can go on around in like bad lighting and stuff like that um so i kind of have my i kind of i kind of don't know i haven't really formed my thoughts on whether we're getting worse with social media or not in regards to that. Yeah, I think my big concern is not necessary. Like you said, we're adults. Like we have a level of media literacy where we can see something like that, that's angles, that's lighting, that might be edited.

Like it would be great if people had to be held to account and say like AI edited or Photoshop, whatever. But for me, it's the young people that don't know that. And I think what we actually need to be focused on is maybe more about protecting them. and educating them because they're the ones that are impressionable and more and more

we're seeing like girls even before they're teenagers being concerned with their bodies being concerned with their body shapes trying to be thick there's some serious data on self-harm in like 13 to 16 year olds

and it's like frightening where like from 2010 like it's doubled and I'm like oh that's something that needs to be addressed straight away if you can't drive a car you can't drink alcohol you can't do all these different things until you're 18 why can we not remove social media or you know the things that they're exposed to i know it's

really difficult i don't even know where to start with doing that but you know they're so impressionable and if we don't trust them with cars and alcohol why the fuck do we trust them or not trust them but why would we expose them to social media yeah and you can even use the point that okay well kids will still probably drink underage anyway but that doesn't mean we should make illegal for them. At least make it harder for them because then they know there's a dangerous element to it. Yes.

They know that they're doing something that is potentially harmful or you know at the minute with my steps on his 9 we don't let him on YouTube he wants to watch kid stuff but it flicks through the algorithm and then there's like the next thing is some video where there's a kid ranting and swearing

so he knows that it's for adults he knows that it's not for him so he stopped asking to go on it now or he knows that if he goes on it, one of us has to be, like, present. So it's the same kind of thing. Like, he has an awareness of this is for adults. It's not for children. It's kind of inappropriate.

So the same goes for social media. It's such a big topic. Like, I would love to try and, like, you know, impact that in some way. Because I think it's less about what we're the kind of victims of is the years of models and magazines and media. but now there's this whole of a world that they're going to be impacted by and they're impacted by it so much sooner

so yeah I think if you can keep your kids off social media off like Snapchat you know not using filters like using filters changes your perception like I used to use filters on all about four years ago I stopped using filters because it was making me feel bad about myself

when I looked in the mirror without the filter I was like oh God is that how I look because I have this so I think we need to really protect the younger generation from all of that. Yeah, because I think you're absolutely right. When I think about it in that regard, it's like, it's, you know, if eating disorders and body dysmorphia was prevalent, like, there's no way that it won't continue to be on the

rise if you're going to continue to give access to these kind of, I call them phones, but they're not phones. There's some supercomputers in their hands. Yeah, they are. They're just mini computers. Yeah. Like, we should go back to the day of, like, you get a Blackberry. and speak.

You can just like taking each other on your Blackberry Messenger and you can text your mates and you can ring them and say I'm going to be at the park

in 10 minutes but like the apps and all the other stuff I'm just like I just don't think it's good. Reflections on coaching. So what are some of the biggest lessons you've learned

from a decade of coaching women? I think coaching is not what a lot of people do. I think a lot of people dictate. There's a pressure on the coach to have all the answers and give all the answers and know everything and that's not I don't think that's your job the client that comes to you I always say they are the expert on them you might have three people that come to you in the very same position so for example I have three

women that have PCOS and they are suffering with their symptoms and they're suffering with their behaviours with nutrition all three of them will have different contexts in which that impacts them so I can't give them blanket recommendations I have to understand them as individuals, how does this show up for you? What are your barriers personally? And I think coaching is about exploring things together and coming up with putting puzzle pieces together and guiding someone to, to be, you know, have more self-efficacy rather than being dependent on an external source all the time. And you have to get very confident in the fact that you won't always have the answer and you're not supposed to. You have to get confident in, like,

I actually don't know the answer to that. But I probably know someone who does or I know a place I can go and help you find some information. Too many coaches try and, you know, put so much pressure themselves to be the expert in everything and have every answer. And then when the client's frustrated, they're frustrated, why aren't they getting this and why can't they do this? And let's explore it together. And I think that's what coaching is. It's exploring, right? We want to get you from here to here. And there's 10 different ways we could do this, but we need to make it fit. You know, if someone starts a plan and they just can't do it, consider that the plan is the problem and not the person.

That's very true because a lot of our coaches will be just like, okay, well, just try harder next week. Yeah, this is the plan. Do it. Like, why can't you do it? And that was definitely me in the beginning. I was like, it works for me. Why is it not working for you?

So the client is the expert on the client is one of my biggest ones. And think of coaching, like exploring, ask more questions. The more questions you ask, the deeper understanding you'll have. The deeper understanding you have, the more you can guide that person towards where it is, want to go and that would be like a real big kind of involvement of my my style of coaching and I also think when you said there even about like not being not wanting to be the expert or not having to be the expert in everything I think one of the one great sign I think of a coach who's confident in their skills is being willing to refer out as much as possible absolutely yeah I think um yeah

you whether you have people that you work alongside like I have a dietitian that I will refer people to, you know, having like a therapist or psychologist that you can refer to or work alongside. Yeah. And, you know, nobody's an expert. Like, I actually have started to see people call themselves expert. And when people say it about me, I'm a little bit like, oh, I'm still learning there's so much to learn. The more that I, the more that I learn, the more that I realize I don't know. And whilst I am gaining a breadth of experience, and I do have a lot of knowledge in certain areas, I'm, there's still so much to learn. And I don't. That's that humility, I take. is what makes someone a good coach?

100%. The minute you start calling yourself an expert or, well, I know there are some experts on there, they've earned the right to call them experts, but like the minute you think that you know what you're doing, you'll probably stop trying to learn or you'll make mistakes, yeah. 100%. It's a partnership, you know.

People, I'm the authority. I'm like, you have the experience and you have the qualifications, but you don't need to be the authority. You can be the guidance. you can be the teammate and again like you're the cheerleader until they believe in themselves so yeah is there any um anything around body image that you've changed your mind on over the last 10 years um i think maybe like the body positivity stuff that's out there i don't necessarily agree with because i think it's still centering around image

And there's a lot of people that are maybe capitalizing on, like, positive body image and just wear the shorts. And it's just like still people in socially acceptable bodies, pinching skin and being like, oh, I've got roles as well. Did you notice, sorry to interrupt you, but did you notice, it's kind of gone now, but the trend maybe like four or five years ago when it was like these kind of fitness models who looked great. But then they weren't getting the engagement for being good looking. So then they were getting the engagement for like calling out their insecurities and saying, oh, look, I have cellular here and here. and like they they look like and i i know it's like um you know anyone can feel insecure and it doesn't matter what weight you are or how you look everyone that has their insecurities and they have a right to express their insecurities and that's great and stuff like that but it also felt like all right

you're the honest for engaged not because you're struggling yeah it feels it feels condescending and look like you can i know people that have built a follow or a brand around being a plus size person, then they went on a journey to lose weight for fertility and they got absolutely ripped to shreds by their community. And I think we just have to let go of the fact that, like, people have body autonomy. They can do what they want.

They can look how they want and that's nothing to do with us. We can't assume that it's good or it's bad. What someone does with their body, if it feels empowering and it's good for them, it's good for them. I don't think that we should place so much emphasis on how someone looks and we have to be aware of our own language you know like i really don't make comments about my client's bodies in a in an aesthetic way unless you know they're like oh i'm going out tonight and i'm wearing this dress for the first iron ages okay i'm obviously going to tell them

that they look amazing because they likely do but i'm never going to like oh you lost weight well done that's amazing to carry on i'll be like the behaviors that you've been working on that you wanted to put in they're clearly you know they're clearly there and that's great you're putting lots of effort in but it's not really the weight loss that's important it's the behaviour so we as a kind of society need to make less comments about other people's bodies because it's none of our fucking business yeah that's so true it's something that i try to do a lot of times if like a member will come into me and they've like i never want to dismiss the fact that they're happy that they lost five kilos or they lost 10 kilos but yeah but then i'm like that's great

you know what you deserve that you deserve to be happy because you've been working so hard you've been consistent than the gym and I tried to kind of reflect the work that they've done rather than the outcome. Exactly. Yeah. Last question. What do you wish every woman knew about her body regardless of age or background? Listen, like you're only going to get one. You're only going to get one body. When you're 70 and you're looking back, you're going to be so frustrated that you spent so much time hating it, punishing it, trying to carve it into something that, you know, fits whatever is trendy at the minute. I think you really need to focus on, like, taking care of and respecting it.

Bodies are going to change. They're supposed to. You're not going to fit into the clothes that you wore when you were 18. When you're 60, you're not going to fit into the clothes that you wore when you were 30. I think we really need to make peace with our bodies and focus on living in a way that just gives us the most amount of joy. like we are on this fucking spinning rock for like the blink of an eye and I would just hate to think of people wasting any more time than they need to hating themselves rather than taking care of

themselves so yeah that would be my kind of key point that's a great point I think more people need to spend time with with elderly people people in their 70s and 80s and realize the last thing they're worried about is is how they look now because they know that their their time is is near the end and they're not going to spend a hazing themselves. Yeah, I saw one last thing to finish on, because I saw this popped up yesterday, it reminded me, but it was actually a guy that had come out and said that he'd been addicted to taking steroids,

and this was on his journey to stop, and he was like, I'm trying to do this educationally. Like, I've been in a really bad place with my body image, and I've not been doing things that are good for me. But he shared a quote that said, if the person you love most in the world gave you their body to look after for two years, and you knew after two years you had to give it back,

how would you treat it? And it's like, that's how you should, that's how you should be treating yourself. Yeah, that's so good. I'm going to leave it on that. Sky, where can people go to follow the work that you do? Amazing. You can find me at my website,

which is sky Elizabeth coaching.com. You can find me on Instagram as Sky Elizabeth Nutrition. And I also have a podcast, which is Our Society Nutrition Podcast, and that's on Spotify. Actually, last question that I have to ask because I read this. So Sky Elizabeth,

Elizabeth isn't your, your surname, it's your middle name, but no one can pronounce your surname. Go on, what is it? It's Asquith, but I'm actually married now, so it's Hill. Okay, right, okay. I would have got Sky Asquit. Did I say that right? Honestly, people just say it so wrong. But now Sky Hill, I feel like it sounds like something out of a fairy tale.

It's good. I like it. I like it. Sky, it's been an absolute pleasure. This has been the Uneducated PD Podcast with Sky, episode 133 if you've enjoyed this episode make sure you share it make sure you subscribe and make sure you go and follow the work that sky does because she's absolutely brilliant sky thank you for today thank you thanks for watching if you like that episode and you want to see more content like this make sure you're subscribed and i'll see you on the next one