Kirsty Knight:
Hello, my friends. Welcome to this episode of the podcast, where I’m going to be talking to the fabulous Katie Bradbury, who is a registered nurse and nutritional therapist who’s going to be talking to you today about nutrition for high performance. So high performance to me and to her pretty much means mental clarity, focus and energy. So the things that business owners and anyone who needs to get shit done during the day pretty much need to get them through that day. So please introduce yourself. Thank you so much for being here. Katie, tell us how you started this work or got into this, and also share something a little bit unusual about you that you don’t tell everyone.
Katy Bradbury:
Hello. Thanks for having me. I’m actually I’m very glad that you said get shit done in the title there because I forgot to ask you whether it’s clean or whether there’s occasional. So you’ve answered that question for me, which is great. Not that I’m potty mouthed, but good to know. But yeah, I’m Katie, and as you said, I’m a nurse by background and my career now is mostly in my nutritional therapy practice. I kind of weave a bit of everything in. I’ve got a background in evolutionary anthropology, so I always see things through an evolutionary lens.
Katy Bradbury:
And I’ve done a lot of stuff around behavior change in my former career in public health, and now I pretty much practice largely one to one. And my focus is predominantly on female health, hormones, fertility, perimenopause, those kind of things. And I think what drove me to start my business and leave the NHS behind was just a deep frustration that I couldn’t give the kind of care that I wanted to give people. And that in conventional healthcare models, everything operates in silos. All of the systems in the body are almost looked at. A reproductive system is just looked at in the context of a reproductive system and nothing else. And even I used to be a gynecology nurse, and if someone had anything else going on, it’d be like, oh, well, we need to call the blood doctor, we need to call the gastroenterologist, we need to call the this doctor. And it just really deeply, deeply frustrated me that human beings were not seen as whole people.
Katy Bradbury:
And really that’s what drives my practice today, is that notion that if you’re a person, then you’re a whole person. And you’re not just an organ system, and you’re not even just a collection of organ systems. You’re a person with a life. Right. And we need to take all of those things into account when we’re addressing your health.
Kirsty Knight:
Love it. Okay. And then share something a little bit unusual about you. I’m laughing because I had to ask you this before we started recording, and I’m looking forward to the response.
Katy Bradbury:
So you asked me for my party trick. It’s not a party trick. It’s just weird. The only thing I could think of that’s vaguely unusual about me is that I do have a bit of cartilage in my nose, but it’s very soft. My nose is just so squishy for me, it’s a comfort thing. If I’m nervous, you’ll see me sitting and squishing my nose because it’s just so, like, soft and squishy. Comfort blanket. And the same with my ears.
Katy Bradbury:
Like, I can fold my ears into, like, three my cartilage is just so soft, it’s weird.
Kirsty Knight:
Oh, my goodness. I love that so much. I love that you have, like, a handmade with you all the time. Stress ball.
Katy Bradbury:
Yes, exactly.
Kirsty Knight:
I love it. I have the opposite. I was laughing because I have the opposite. I have, like, too much cartilage in my nose, which is why it’s, like, very rigid and it catches the light. I hate it. I’d much rather have a soft word like yours, but I love it.
Katy Bradbury:
There you go.
Kirsty Knight:
There’s a bit of something personal about you. Thank you for sharing that. Okay. All right. Fabulous. So let’s dive in. So one of the first things we wanted to talk about was how confusing it is about what the hell we should be eating and what is good for us and what is not. And I would say I’m pretty health conscious, and so is my other half.
Kirsty Knight:
And so whenever we hear something is good for us, we’re like, oh, something’s good for us. So then we’re always steering towards that. And then you read something that is, like, completely the opposite. This is not good for you. You should not do that. And it’s so confusing. So talk to us a little bit about that.
Katy Bradbury:
Yeah, right. Actually, you just made me think of a funny story yesterday. My husband loves listening to podcasts, and he’s always got some kind of hyper focus going on right now. And at the moment, he’s all about he’s trying to bulk up a little bit. And so he’s spending a lot of energy and investment on kind of what he can do to put on some muscle mass. And he came down yesterday and he was like, oh, yeah, I was just listening to this thing. And did you know that eating loads of different colored vegetables helps to keep you looking younger? And I was like, you’re talking to your nutritionist wife who feeds you about twelve different types of different colored vegetables every day. So yeah, I did.
Kirsty Knight:
I love that. Just living in his own little world.
Katy Bradbury:
Yeah, totally. But yeah, absolutely. It’s confusing and I think that if you’re trying to be health conscious or focus on what you can or what you should be eating or drinking for whatever your goals might be, then you start looking around. And most of us, let’s face this, most of us look around the internet. And that could be through podcasts, it could be through social media accounts or blogs or whoever it is that we respect or some people even go archaic and read a book every now and then. The messages are wildly different wherever you look as to what we should be doing. And even if you look at the official sources and you look at okay, if you looked at here in the UK, the government eat well plate and you compare that to say, the eat well plate in Canada, if you sit those two side by side, they are pretty different. And these are know, culturally similar nations who have got different guidance on their official eat well plate advice.
Katy Bradbury:
For the record, I’m much more in line with the Canadian eat well plate than I am the UK eat well plate. I think that if we all ate according to the UK eat well plate, we’d all be at risk of diabetes. Frankly, aren’t we all diabetes, right? Probably because we’re all following the eat well plate. But no, it’s very difficult to get reliable information and the truth of the matter is a each body is different and so there is a huge amount of individual difference here and so we do need to take that into account. But B, it’s so easy. I know that we all look for science and evidence based and literature to back up what we’re saying, but you can pretty much find a study to back up whatever your opinion is, right? And so if you’re like a plant based vegan advocate, then it’s very easy to go away and find a load of literature on that. And if you’re like a carnivore diet kind of person, then it’s very easy to go and find a load of literature on that. And so whatever your opinion is, then you can substantiate it in any way that you want.
Katy Bradbury:
And this is the world that we live in. So it is confusing. And I guess what I want to do today here is just bring it back to a few really basic principles. Because in that overwhelm, which probably if you’re a business owner, there’s enough bloody overwhelm in your life as it is. Let’s just try and simplify a little bit and just come back down, bring it back down to a few really basic principles that we can start thinking about.
Kirsty Knight:
Love it. Okay, so tell us, what are those basic principles?
Katy Bradbury:
Yeah, first of all, I wanted to just talk about what the three macronutrients are, because a lot of people stare at me blankly when I talk about the three macronutrients are. And even you and I had to confirm what they are at the start of.
Kirsty Knight:
We had a pop quiz. I felt very stupid. I got one of them right, or maybe two.
Katy Bradbury:
Eventually you did. You got there in the end. You got there in the end. And so, yeah. Do you want to tell me? You tell me what they are, Kirsty. Go on.
Kirsty Knight:
Okay. Proteins.
Katy Bradbury:
Yes.
Kirsty Knight:
Or protein. Carbs. And then fats.
Katy Bradbury:
Yes. Absolutely. And what that means, essentially, is they’re called the macronutrients because they are the three overarching nutrients. So nutrients are divided into macronutrients and micronutrients. So micronutrients are more referring to vitamins and minerals and plant constituents like polyphenols, antioxidants, all of these kind of things. So micronutrients are teeny tiny, but macronutrients, every single food can be broken down into macronutrients. And this is why, if you look at food packaging, then it tell you how much protein, how much fat and how much carbohydrate is in this product. Okay? So it’s not so much that every food is either one or the other, but every food contains more or less a degree of those things.
Katy Bradbury:
And there are food groups that are predominantly protein and predominantly fat and predominantly carbohydrates. So what I wanted to do first of all today is just say that, first of all, everything that you eat is going to fall in some way under those three categories. And as a general bit of guidance in the UK, and of course, this is different for everybody because there are some people that might need to do the opposite of this. But as a general rule of thumb, the way that most of us eat here in the UK and in the Western world at large is a bit high on the carbohydrates. So we tend to base our meals around carbohydrates. By the way, sugar is a carbohydrate. So carbohydrates, there are different types of carbs. Sugar is what we call a simple carbohydrate, which means that it’s broken down.
Katy Bradbury:
All carbohydrates do is ultimately break down into sugar in the bloodstream. That’s the role of a carbohydrate because it gives us energy. So sugar is like the most basic simple form of carbohydrate because it’s already entering your body in its simple form. But other forms of carbohydrate, eventually they’ll go through a process, but eventually they’ll get broken down into glucose in the bloodstream, which is sugar. So carbohydrates, we tend to be a nation of carbohydrate lovers. And that’s fine. I’m not anti carbohydrate. I think that carbohydrate absolutely has a role to play.
Katy Bradbury:
But we’re very attached to carbohydrates and we will base most of our meals around the carbohydrate. Right, so what are you having for dinner? I’m having pasta, I’m having noodles, whatever it might be. I’m having baked potato. And so we tend to refer to what we’re eating as the carbohydrate part of it and everything else is a bit of a side note. Whereas actually, probably what we’d be better off doing is focusing a little bit more on some of the other two macronutrients, which are the protein and also the fat. But most of us tend to be eating not enough protein and the wrong kind of fat. So fat is really important, but a lot of people are scared of fat and think that fat is bad.
Kirsty Knight:
I love fat and probably the fat that I’m eating is probably not the healthy fat. I like pork, crackling, that kind of fat, animal fat.
Katy Bradbury:
Tell me. Very tasty. Yeah. Okay, so I want to talk about that because fat, I think, is widely misunderstood. And when I talk about the wrong kind of fat, loads of people feel guilty about eating animal fat, right? And it’s because it’s been drilled into us since the 1970s where it all came out that saturated fat is bad for your health and drives cholesterol up and is contributing to cardiovascular disease. And that messaging has not changed. That messaging is old, it’s outdated, and we know better. Now, I will touch on the saturated fat, which is mostly animal fats, in a second.
Katy Bradbury:
But when I talk about we’re eating the wrong kind of fats, the type of fats that I’m thinking of are highly refined fats that are so like the kind of fats that you would find in processed food, ultra processed food in the supermarket, right? So the kind of fats that you would find in cakes, biscuits, pastries, those kind of fats, right? Because they’re fats that have been their constitution has changed, their molecular structure has changed in a way to try and make them shelf stable for a very long time. And so actually, those fats are rancid before they even reach your plate. And what that means for your body is that they are highly inflammatory in nature and they’re not doing anything good for your body. So fats can be really inflammatory or they can actually be potently anti inflammatory. And so if we look at the other end of the spectrum on the anti inflammatory side, those like gold standard, wonderful for you type of fats are omega three S. So omega three come from oily fish. And I always use the acronym Smash to talk about oily fish. So that’s Sardines Mackerel, anchovies the other s, which I can’t remember right now.
Katy Bradbury:
And suddenly enough you’re just talking about someone who forgot their thing the other day. And there’s me.
Kirsty Knight:
I seeded it. I created that reality.
Katy Bradbury:
Yeah, you totally did.
Kirsty Knight:
You can come back when you remember the other S. Salmon.
Katy Bradbury:
Salmon, yeah, exactly.
Kirsty Knight:
There we go. The only fish I could think of for beginning we left. And I used to do marine biology, so that doesn’t say much.
Katy Bradbury:
Yeah, so those omega three is from oily fish and also from some nuts. So walnuts are really nice and high in omega three, and seeds like flaxseed. Like flaxseed, as far as I’m concerned, is the food of the gods. There’s so much good about flaxseed. So that’s the other end of the spectrum. But then we’ve got fats that come from extra virgin olive oil is wonderful. And again, if we look at cultures around the world that use a lot of extra virgin olive oil, they’re living a long time. Right.
Kirsty Knight:
Can I ask a question about that?
Katy Bradbury:
Yes. Okay.
Kirsty Knight:
Is that only if it’s just straight out of the bottle. What if you fry it?
Katy Bradbury:
Really good question.
Kirsty Knight:
Olive oil?
Katy Bradbury:
Yes. No, I’m really, really glad you asked that question because it’s an important one. And actually, even since I studied nutrition and I graduated from nutrition school in 2016, and even since then, the messaging has changed. So the research has updated since then. So what I was taught in nutrition school is that extra virgin olive oil should only be used cold. Now, what we know since then, there’s been a big metaanalysis of this, and what it found is that the antiinflammatory effects of extra virgin olive oil are so potent that even if you’re using it to heat, it’s still by far the best oil to cook with.
Kirsty Knight:
Oh, amazing. Oh, good. That makes me feel so much better.
Katy Bradbury:
And it’s far better to cook with extra virgin olive oil than it is to cook with regular olive oil, because regular olive oil I’m not going to get into food labeling today. But that’s a podcast in its own right. But food labeling is incredibly deceptive, and food marketing is incredibly deceptive. What you get when you’re buying an olive oil most of the time is only a very small percent actual olive oil, and it’s a mix of other oils. It’s usually been heat treated again to try and make it shelf stable, which means that it’s already pro inflammatory by the time it reaches your cupboard. It’s very misleading. So olive oil in the bin? Extra virgin olive oil, yes. Do everything with it.
Katy Bradbury:
Have it cold, warm, however you like it.
Kirsty Knight:
Washing it, bathing it.
Katy Bradbury:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s 100% yeah.
Kirsty Knight:
Wait, what does extra virgin mean? Just that it is that and that alone, it’s on its own.
Katy Bradbury:
It’s a combination. The marketing laws around calling yourself extra virgin olive oil are just a lot stricter. And so, yes, first of all, it is just the olive oil. Secondly, it’s a type. It’s like the olives are at a certain stage in their life when they’re actually processed and b. Usually again, you can get blended extra virgin olive oil, but if you can get it from a single source, so like an extra virgin olive oil that’s just from Greece or just from Spain, then that’s great. And more often than not, they’ve been cold pressed rather than heat treated as well. And so again, they’ve got that kind of they’re not going to last as long, but they’re a lot better for you.
Katy Bradbury:
And as long as you’re keeping it in a cool dark cupboard, then you’re okay. Absolutely. Extra virgin olive oil for cooking, butter for cooking. Absolutely fine, because butter is pretty stable. And then even things like dripping and lard and those traditional cooking methods, yes, they’re saturated fat. And we need to be cautious about going overboard on the saturated fat. And when I say saturated fat, it’s largely fats that come from animal produce. But if we think about it, like, ultimately one of the biggest things that I’m going to teach you today as a take home message is eat foods that are as close as possible to their natural state.
Katy Bradbury:
Right. So if it grew in the ground, great. And if it came from an animal, that’s okay with me. I think humans have again, with that evolutionary picture, humans evolved to eat animal products. We are omnivorous by nature. Right. And that is how we evolved. We eat a combination of plant and animal foods.
Katy Bradbury:
Now, that’s not to say that if you don’t eat animal foods, it doesn’t mean to say that you can’t get by. But I’m going to be honest with you. It is harder. Like you’re more likely to be deficient in certain nutrients if you only eat plant foods than you are if you eat a combination. It’s going back to some of those more traditional cooking methods of like yeah, those solid fats. That’s all right as long as you’re not dousing your food in.
Kirsty Knight:
That just having a plate full of crackling, nothing else. No, that’s true. Okay. Yeah, because I try to eat a balanced meal with some protein, some carbs, some veggies, always veggies fit into the carb bracket then. Yeah.
Katy Bradbury:
When I said at the beginning, most of us are eating either too much carbs or the wrong type of carbs, that’s what I mean. So for me, I think firmly believes that carbohydrates have a place in our diet. I think people who go really low carb or carnivorous or Atkins or these kind of things, again, you’re much more likely to get into a nutrient deficiency if you do that because what the plant foods have to offer, and specifically the vegetables, is the micronutrients. Right. So I mentioned that at the start in terms of the vitamins and minerals. Well, yes, animal products do contain vitamins and minerals, like especially your B vitamins. But the plant foods are there to give that real range of vitamins and minerals and antioxidants and antioxidants are potently, powerful for energy, for longevity, for reproductive health. So we do need to focus on that balance.
Katy Bradbury:
Right. As you say, veggies do contain a little bit of protein because they were once living things, and so they’re made from genes just like the rest of us. And genes are made up of amino acids, which form protein. So veggies do contain a little bit of protein, but mostly they would be falling under your carbohydrate quota. But when I talk about the different types of carbs, veggies will mostly be like fiber, right? Because veggies are fibrous in nature, you have to chew them. And so fiber is a far, far better or higher fiber foods are far better than things on the opposite end of the carbohydrate spectrum, which is your sugary foods, your cereals, your toast, your pastas, your rice and those kind of things that we choose, would you say?
Kirsty Knight:
So I’ve recently switched to basically I have a meal arrangement with my mother. She lives just down the road from me. So a couple of nights a week I cook for ourselves and my parents. And then a couple of nights a week she does like double the amount and then drops it off to us. So it’s amazing. Saves me having to cook every night of the week, clean up. So efficiency, I know, but she’s just actually been diagnosed with pre diabetic and she also had like reflux issues. So we were already on some kind of weird and wacky diet trying to not provoke her reflux or good or whatever it was.
Kirsty Knight:
And now we’re on like, okay, now we’ve got to eliminate even more. So I’ve recently switched to instead of white rice. Brown rice? Yeah, instead of well, and actually I’m also gluten intolerant I’m oversharing now, but essentially so I’ve cut out a lot of those things and I’m going for more whole grain but gluten free and things like that. Why is that better? Because it’s still carb. Yeah, like brown rice is still a carb. Why is that better than the white rice?
Katy Bradbury:
The reason it’s better is because of the fiber content. And so brown rice is higher in fiber because essentially when a carbohydrate is white so like, if it’s white bread or white pasta or white rice, then it’s been altered. So it’s come away from its natural and it’s been stripped of the fiber component and it’s kind of very easy to produce that type of carbohydrate. And it’s also tasty. We enjoy that because again, if we look at evolutionary terms, I always see things through evolutionary lens and human beings will prioritize high sugar foods and high fat foods. We have a taste preference for those foods. Because of times when we did live in times of relative food scarcity or periods of food scarcity, it made sense that we would gorge on the honey when we came if we came across a tree full of honey, we’d gorge on that. We could eat like 6000 calories in one sitting, but then that would see us through.
Katy Bradbury:
But now we can eat 6000 calories in one sitting and then still eat 3000 calories a few hours later. Right. So we have those taste preferences. So if you enjoy those foods and you love sugary foods or you love fatty foods, don’t feel bad about that. That’s how we’re programmed. It’s not about so many of us feel guilt and shame around our food preferences and what we enjoy, but it’s like stripping it down to our biological mechanisms. It makes sense that we’ve got a preference for those foods because they taste.
Kirsty Knight:
I love that you said that. I say similar things about doing easy tasks and scrolling and things like that, doing things that you know aren’t useful for the long term of your business and all the rest of it. But your brain is wired to look for easy things and to conserve energy and to get little hits of dopamine. And so it is just doing its job and trying to keep you alive and trying to avoid feeling discomfort. And so like the two with food and with how you run your day, it’s like totally normal. And what we’re actually trying to do is almost beat evolution here, go against what we are programmed to do intentionally and choose better choices for ourselves food wise, better choices for ourselves in our day, which is hard. It’s like challenging to keep going with.
Katy Bradbury:
You know, you touch on something really important there Kirsty, that I want to come on to, but I just want to finish answering your question first because you are specifically about the differences between white rice and brown rice and those kind of foods. And so that’s essentially what it is, is that it’s had the fiber stripped away from it. And what that means for our body is that when we consume those foods, then we get the faster release and so they turn to glucose, they turn to sugar more quickly into our bloodstream. So for your mum who’s pre diabetic, that makes a difference because what we want is for it to be a slower release. So when we think about lots of us have heard the term slow release, right? It’s often used again on food labeling. Slow release, that’s better as far as blood glucose is concerned because what we want to try and avoid is this peak of blood sugar because what goes up must go down. And if it goes down, then you’re in trouble because that’s when you get the cravings and that’s when you look for your next sugary or refined carbohydrate hit to get you back up again. So that kind of leads me into the blood sugar cycle, I guess, which is really my biggest hint and my biggest tip.
Katy Bradbury:
It’s not really a hint, I’m telling you exactly what it is. I’m not alluding to it. It’s a tip. It’s a big fat tip that is around managing blood glucose levels and this blood sugar roller coaster that we find ourselves in. Now, a lot of people find when they think of blood sugars, they think of that, they think of diabetes. Well, I’m not diabetic or I’m not pre diabetic. Like, why do I need to worry about that? But actually it is gaining a lot of traction now with things know, I’m thinking about popular culture here, but people like the whole Zoe study thing, that’s gaining a lot of traction now. And they talk a lot about blood glucose levels.
Katy Bradbury:
Blood sugars and the glucose goddess as well. If you’ve heard of her, she’s massive on Instagram now. She’s written books. The message is getting out there now. Yeah, it’s a great name. So if you don’t follow the Glucose Goddess do, because she talks about this every single day. And so she hammers the message home. But it’s really about if our blood glucose levels, our blood sugars become imbalanced.
Katy Bradbury:
And they can become imbalanced without you being diabetic, because essentially what we want our blood sugars to look like is they will go up and down when we eat. That’s natural, okay? Because there’s going to be glucose entering the bloodstream. But what we want is for your pancreas, which releases insulin in response to glucose. We want that to be really well managed. And I’m sure you’ve probably spoken about the notion of homeostasis before in terms of or maybe around those principles of like, the body wants to be in perfect balance, right? And so there are things in the body where homeostasis talks about our there are things in the body that need to be really tightly regulated, and those things include our thermo regulation. So our temperature has to be within certain bounds, the PH, so the acid levels of our blood needs to be within a very tight framework. So 7.35 to 7.45, like our oxygen levels in our bloodstream, they need to be kept very regulated. And our blood glucose levels are one of those things.
Katy Bradbury:
They need to be kept within tight regulation because otherwise we die, right? It’s as simple as that. This is one of the mechanisms that our body has to keep us alive. And so, ideally, we want our blood glucose levels to undulate gently through the day, right? So we eat they might go up a bit, they’ll go down a bit, and you just think about it as like rolling hills in the countryside. What a lot of us end up doing is we eat a food, our blood sugars rise perhaps more steeply than they should, and once they do that, they’re going to drop more rapidly as well because that’s just the way it goes. And that’s when we get caught in these blood sugar roller coasters, literally, of going up and down and up and down and up and down through the day. And when we’re at that point, we’re caught in a cycle because we’re reliant on those carbohydrate rich foods. So if you’ve ever had the feeling of thinking, I know I should probably have something healthy right now, but all I want to do is ram a chocolate bar into my mouth and you think of something healthy and you’re like, okay, I’m hungry. I’m definitely hungry.
Katy Bradbury:
I should probably have i. Don’t know this piece of fish and some vegetables, but actually what I really want is like just a massive piece of toast. That’s a very real feeling. And that’s because your blood glucose levels have dropped and they’re telling you, we’re in red alert here, we need to pick back up again quickly. And that carbohydrate food, that is the thing that’s going to get you there. And by proxy, when we’re talking about the brain like you just were, it gives you that dopamine hit as well. So we love it hits our reward centers. We love carbohydrates.
Katy Bradbury:
We’re designed to love carbohydrates, right? So it fires us off on all cylinders, it gives us an energy boost, it hits the dopamine centers, and when we feel really fucking good for about half an hour until our blood glucose levels start to drop again. And this is why loads of people say, because I talk about breakfast a lot and I’m going to talk about breakfast in a minute, loads of people say to me, katie, if I have breakfast, I feel hungry again an hour later, so I’d rather just not have breakfast. And loads of people say that, and it’s not because you’re having breakfast that’s the problem. It’s because you’re having carbohydrates for breakfast. And so you’re getting into this blood sugar roller coaster, right? And for me, we all have different levels of sensitivity to this. And for me, I’m very sensitive to carbohydrates and I’m prone to blood sugar imbalances. And so even if I have what’s deemed as a healthy breakfast, if I have porridge for breakfast, my blood sugar drop within an hour. I thought oats were good.
Katy Bradbury:
Yeah, they dropped. Oh, no.
Kirsty Knight:
I wasn’t having breakfast for a while and that was fine. I actually didn’t feel like I needed it at all. I was just having lunch and dinner, partly because I recognized that my breakfast was quite sugary. And, yeah, I’d have tons of fruit and stuff in it, but then it’s almost like when I eat sugary foods, or particularly if I do have a period of time, usually mine is around hormones, like where I will have chocolate and things like that. It’s almost like my desire for those kinds of foods goes through the roof. So if I start the day with chocolate, not that I very often do this, but if I start the day with chocolate oh, yeah, I’m craving sweet things all day, so it’s almost like setting myself up for failure right out of the gate.
Katy Bradbury:
Yeah.
Kirsty Knight:
Right.
Katy Bradbury:
You’re on the blood sugar roller coaster. Yeah. Whereas if you would have, like, eggs and bacon for breakfast and then chocolate roller coaster.
Kirsty Knight:
Okay, all right, well, tell me this, because this might not be relevant to everyone, but I have an egg intolerance, so I could not have eggs and bacon for breakfast, and I don’t feel like eating more heavier foods. Like a full English breakfast to me, even without the eggs I’m like. I just do not fancy that at all. So I like my oatmeal or oat porridge or whatever with fruit, and I do put a bit of yogurt in and some nuts and things, and I tend not to have crashes, I tend not to feel hungry until lunchtime with that. But that is porridge.
Katy Bradbury:
Yeah. This is where individual variation is key, right? Some people are more and less sensitive to carbohydrates, so there are certain body types and metabolic compositions that depend on things like your genetics and all sorts of other things that mean that you might be more able to tolerate a carbohydrate rich meal than others. But the key is and this is partly what I wanted to say when we were talking about the difference between white and brown rice, for example, is that, yeah, brown rice is better because it’s got the fiber. So it’s going to be slightly slower release and it’s got more micronutrients, it’s got more vitamins and minerals in there because it hasn’t been stripped of that. But side by side, if you were to eat just a plate of plain rice with nothing else and just have a plate of brown rice or a plate of white rice, there wouldn’t be a huge amount of difference in your blood glucose levels, because it’s what you pair your carbohydrates with that is really important. There would be a small difference, for sure, but the really important thing is the balance that we have of carbohydrates compared to other foods. And the key thing there is protein, right? So loads of us would benefit from having and as a general rule of thumb, and again, it depends on your personal constitution, it depends on what your goals are, on whether you have hormone imbalances, whether you want to lose weight or gain weight or whatever it might be. But if I could break an eating style into a generic plate of kind of what most people would benefit from eating, it would be a quarter of the plate starchy carbohydrates.
Katy Bradbury:
So starchy carbohydrates could be your rice, your pasta, your bread products, your potatoes, your sweet potatoes. It could also include starchy vegetables like carrot, parsnips, beetroot, those kind of like root vegetables. So a quarter of the plate might look like that. So most of us have got like half a plate or more of carbohydrates at the moment, but for some people, they’d benefit from even less than a quarter of the plate that so if you were sensitive to blood sugar imbalances or you had certain hormone imbalances, then it might be even less for you. For some people, they might need more. There are certain circumstances where more might be needed, but generally, no more than a quarter of the plate of the starchy carbs and a quarter of the plate of protein. So generally speaking, that would be a really good hand sized portion of protein and then half the plate of non starchy vegetables. So non starchy vegetables would be your leafy greens, your cruciferous veggies, like broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cab, cabbage, those kind of foods, your Mediterranean veg, like courgette and obajin and fennel and those kind of foods.
Katy Bradbury:
So anything you know what I mean by starchy, actually, because I think I.
Kirsty Knight:
Was looking at vegetables as just like vegetables, like all vegetables, very good for you. And I guess they are in terms of, like, nutrients and vitamins and things like that. But definitely if you’re looking at okay, the starchy vegetables count as a carbohydrate, then you wouldn’t have a quarter of the plate of mashed potato or whatever, and then some carrots and parsnips and other starchy things and beetroot and all of that stuff. I guess you would be like, right, this is counting. So you could literally swap out the potato for the carrots and all the rest of it, and that would be sufficient. And I don’t think I’ve ever thought of it like that.
Katy Bradbury:
Yeah, absolutely. So when we’re having that abundance of vegetables, I mean, people sometimes make me laugh when they’re like, oh, yeah, I eat my veggies. All right, yeah. What do you have? Oh, yeah, well, I have carrots, potatoes, and peas. And it’s like, okay, well, yeah, that’s fine. They came from the ground. Great. But the carrots and potatoes, they’re both very starchy.
Katy Bradbury:
And peas aren’t a vegetable, they’re a legume. So, yes, they’ve got micronutrients, and they do have protein.
Kirsty Knight:
Peas are lovely. Yeah, I mean, I actually do like vegetables, and I probably do eat more than a lot of people just because I get bored of the same veg. And so I like to have a lot of different veg, but I definitely did not think about it in terms of I should be swapping out my carb portion for that. That’s so interesting. Okay, so tell me then if you’re doing this proportion, and you’re looking at your meals like this for breakfast, dinner, lunch, breakfast, lunch, dinner, this is the key, you’re saying, to avoiding the roller coaster of the glucose dips, the blood glucose sugar dips. And that has an impact on your performance, that has an impact on your focus, that has an impact on how tired you feel, your energy, all of those things more than anything else.
Katy Bradbury:
Yeah, 100%. Again, something that you and I were talking about at the start of the show is this 03:00 slump that people get that’s like the typical thing, the mid afternoon energy slump. And for some people, that presents as fatigue, tiredness. For some people, that presents as distraction. You’re losing focus. Yeah, absolutely. And there can be a frustration born around that, right. Because it’s like, oh, well, I’ve only got a couple of hours left of the working day.
Katy Bradbury:
I should be on form now. And actually, for me, I haven’t had that 03:00 slump for years. That’s not a thing for me. And it’s because I know how to manage it. And it’s what I do at the start of the day primarily because what you break your fast with in the morning matters for the rest of the day. Because if you spike your blood glucose levels in the morning, just like I said before, what goes up must go down. And no matter what you do in the rest of the day, there’s going to be an element of blood sugar dysregulation for that day. Now, the wonderful thing about it is that we have an opportunity to reset this every single day.
Katy Bradbury:
Because unless you’re a shift worker or an insomniac, which I know a lot of people are, but most of us are sleeping overnight and waking up having fasted for 1012 hours. And it’s a chance then every morning when you wake up, it’s a chance to reset that and think, okay, how am I going to keep my blood sugar stable today? And therefore keep my energy stable, keep my concentration. I love that.
Kirsty Knight:
I was thinking about it for me a while back, I recognized that because a lot of people, we said this before, a lot of people will minimize, cut back on sleep. And I noticed for me, and probably for most people, even if I try to squeeze more hours in into the day and I sacrifice my sleep, I’m not actually any more productive. In fact, I’m way less because I’m just so tired, my brain isn’t functioning. And then aside from sleep, even if I’ve had the sleep, if my energy probably from lack of exercise and lack, or lack of getting outside and a lack of not eating well throughout the day, then for sure I’m not productive, I’m not actually getting things done. And then of course, bringing it back to the mindset of just feeling like crap and miserable, not feeling top of the world, feeling negative about stuff that’s very hard to be productive in that headspace too. So I think that this is like a core pillar of those three things sleep, diet, exercise and mindset that you need in order to ensure that actually you are getting the most out of your day and just setting yourself up for success rather than setting yourself up for failure every day and then wondering why you can’t focus and why you’re not getting things done. And then beating yourself up.
Katy Bradbury:
Yeah, absolutely, that’s really important. I think that you’ve said that and all of those pillars because they are all pillars. And I think what’s really interesting is that between each of those pillars there’s interplay, those pillars interact with one another as well. So the example you gave of if you have a bad night’s sleep, well, we know that if you have one bad night’s sleep, then your hunger and appetite hormones are the wrong way around the next day. And so you’re more likely to be hungry and reach for those carbohydrate rich foods. Your cortisol is going to be higher, which is your stress hormone. And again cortisol in itself will imbalance your blood sugars without taking anything you eat into account. If you’re having a high cortisol day or moment then as part of that physiology glucose is released.
Katy Bradbury:
Right. Because it’s the fight or flight response and your body is getting ready to fight or flight, to fight or to run. And so you’re primed and ready for that. And so that causes blood sugar imbalances. So it impacts your decision making, it impacts your blood glucose levels. And same like if you’re having a bad mindset day or a day where your sense of self worth is low or you are feeling kind of shame around things, then you’re more likely to make food choices that don’t serve you and then feel bad about it and that then ties into each other. So they all interconnect and all interplay.
Kirsty Knight:
So helpful. Okay, so the last thing we wanted to talk about was just around what you would recommend people to do if they want to take more control of their own health. If maybe they are noticing that they are not as productive as they want to be and they are not getting things done. They struggle with focus, maybe struggle with energy slumps. What would you recommend first step for them to do? Yeah.
Katy Bradbury:
So I think that, first of all, taking a look at what you’re eating for sure, right. Having a real think about what your plate looks like and addressing redressing some of those imbalances. And that doesn’t mean you have to like I hate a lot of things. I get on my high horse about a lot of things, but I hate when people are on a health kick and on a diet. Because if you were to look at this and say, oh gosh, right, I’m going to completely overhaul everything and I’m going to do it starting from tomorrow and change my whole life, great. But that level of motivation is not going to keep you going for very long. Okay? So it’s far, far better to just have a think and just troubleshoot and just say, okay, incrementally, what can I do, what could I do tomorrow to just make one shift in this direction? Because that’s when you create sustainable change. Because I don’t want you to do this for a couple of days and then give up because it feels too hard because it’s so different to what you do now.
Katy Bradbury:
I’d much rather you say, okay, well look, maybe tomorrow I can look at increasing my protein. And again it’s far better to think about what you can put in than what you need to take away. Right. Because automatically I guarantee if you focus on putting more protein into your diet and more non starchy vegetables into your diet, you’re going to need the carbohydrates less. Whereas if you say, right, I need to cut my carbohydrates, then you’re in that restrictive mindset from day one. First of all, just take incremental steps. Focus on what you can add in, first of all, rather than what you can take away. And some hints around that, especially at breakfast time, because you mentioned the porridge thing and the fact that actually you’re intolerant to eggs and a savory breakfast doesn’t feel that good for you.
Katy Bradbury:
There are so many ways in which you can add protein to your breakfast and they look like I mean, if we use porridge as an example, like Greek yogurt is a really good way. So Greek yogurt is strained in a way to be higher in protein. So that’s a great way to get more protein. I’m not a massive fan of protein powders because a lot of them are heavily processed and have additives. But there are some protein powders out there that are quite helpful and kind of nutritious. So adding in a scoop of protein powder can be helpful if you’re not someone who’s intolerant to eggs. Even adding an egg into your porridge. I know, but you do not know.
Katy Bradbury:
Everyone is always pleasantly surprised.
Kirsty Knight:
I’m going to tell my partner about that. He is going to be amazed by that. He’s always looking at adding more protein in, and he loves eggs.
Katy Bradbury:
Yes, seriously, you do not notice, especially if you’re making it on the pan and you just crack it in and you just keep stirring it. Because you don’t have scrambled egg in your porridge, that’s not a good idea. So if you’re doing it in the microwave, it’s a bit harder to get right. But if you’re doing it on the pan, you just put it in and you keep stirring. And genuinely, it just makes it taste a bit creamier.
Kirsty Knight:
Take your word for it. I won’t be testing that one.
Katy Bradbury:
Collagen. So I really like collagen for adding extra protein because it doesn’t really taste of anything. So you can add it into porridge, you can add it into your coffee, you can add it into smoothies, if you like smoothies. So collagen is a really nice way of getting more protein in. And then things like nuts and seeds, like black seed. Even if you add avocado into something, maybe not porridge. Why not?
Kirsty Knight:
You’re adding an egg smoothie.
Katy Bradbury:
Avocado.
Kirsty Knight:
You could start a new trend. Avocado egg porridge.
Katy Bradbury:
I’ve totally lost you now, haven’t I, Kirsty? You’re never having me back.
Kirsty Knight:
I love it. Yeah, okay. All right.
Katy Bradbury:
Just thinking of those. And also one thing that we didn’t speak about in the proportion thing is the fat piece. And so making sure, asking yourself, have I got some healthy fats in this meal? And that could look like a sprinkling of nuts or a sprinkling of seeds, like chia seeds, flaxseed, which, by the way, if you use ground flaxseed, always keep it in the fridge and not the cupboard because it’s such a volatile oil that it will go rancid once it’s open. It oxidizes really quickly.
Kirsty Knight:
So welcome.
Katy Bradbury:
Keep it in the fridge. And then other things would be like, yeah, your avocados and your extra virgin olive oil and these kind of things. Don’t shy away from the fats. Like, always ask yourself whether there are some fats in the meal, because there should be, because fats are the backbone of our hormones. Like hormones need fats to be able to be produced, just like neurotransmitters need protein to be able to be produced. These things are they’re not just kind of like to haves these are deep rooted constituents of our physiology. And then in terms of taking things into your own hands, then I think you always need to be asking the question, like, is there some kind of underlying reason for this? Right? And so this is where I’m at in my practice, is the asking the questions. I don’t take anything at face value.
Katy Bradbury:
Yes, there are habits and behaviors that we can all be doing to try and improve our health and that’s in a lot of ways universal. It’s not rocket science, but in terms of, okay, well, actually, why is this person feeling like that? Probably we need to start ruling out some underlying causes. And I really love using blood work in my practice, so I do blood work on all of my new clients coming through the door. And again, it’s so accessible now. Like, there are companies out there that you can use. You don’t need to be working with a practitioner. It can be helpful to do that because you’ve got someone to interpret it, but you don’t have to. And you can use a company book in for a comprehensive blood test that looks at a full cholesterol panel.
Katy Bradbury:
Your liver function, your kidney function, a full blood count, your thyroid, your sex hormones, your cortisol, your nutrients, like your iron, your vitamin D, your B twelve, your Folate, and that tells you just so much. Then you’ve got a map of all of the systems in your body and it might be, oh, okay, well, I’ve got an underlying thyroid issue and that’s making me so tired and I didn’t realize. And it will tell you about your blood sugars as well, so it can really help you to identify. Okay, these are now some of the specifics that I know I need to work on, not everybody else. And so if you start to ask the questions and start to think, well, what are the core underlying drivers for me and my body and my health? Then the blood doesn’t lie. The blood tells us what’s going on. You can look at all of the different systems to actually see where you need to.
Kirsty Knight:
I think that’s great advice. I think taking back control of our health and being more interested in it and not just relying on Google and just guessing, being informed at every level is always going to be the best thing we can do for ourselves. Yeah. I love mean, this year, particularly for me, health has always been one of my priorities. But this year I’ve decided I really needed to really put it first. And I think that the more I do that, the more I recognize that having a good, solid foundation of health is the most important thing that you need. It ripples into every other area of your life. You can have great relationships and a good job and be earning money.
Kirsty Knight:
And if you feel like shit, it doesn’t really matter. Like, emotionally, your emotional health, your mental health and your physical health are the most important things that you can do. And then from that, everything else can be built. But without those as, like, the right, and without those as, like, the core foundation, like, existing yeah. You just don’t enjoy life as much when you’re feeling like crap and you’re not as productive and you’re not achieving your goals and you’re not creating the life that you want. So thank you so much.
Katy Bradbury:
Yeah. And how many of us have it as an afterthought, right, of like, oh, well, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to build my business now, and then I’ll focus on my house. But actually, it doesn’t work like that. I mean, it can work like that.
Kirsty Knight:
Absolutely. And I think my messaging has changed towards this over the years, for sure. I was very much a hustler to be like, oh, when I get there, like, financial freedom first and then time freedom, then I can have time for all these extra things. And I totally have flipped that around in my own life now to be like, okay, time freedom is super important for me so that I can do exercise, so that I’ve got time to do things that look after me, so that I’ve got time for my family and my friends and things like that. And I’m going to be building my financial empire alongside it rather than doing that first at the expense of my health. And it doesn’t have to be like, you’ve put it in such a way that has really made it quite simple and easy. So thank you so much for that because it doesn’t have to be a minefield that is like, oh, my God, I’ve got to spend hours and hours and hours in the kitchen trying to make myself eat. Well, it can be as simple as just making sure that you have the proportions right night and being a bit more intentional about it.
Katy Bradbury:
Yeah. And it is so simple. It’s just a matter of when you go shopping, buy a shit ton of vegetables, have them in the fridge, right? Because you open the fridge and you see the vegetables. And that could be anything as simple as I mean, over the summer, like, it’s salads, right? Salads are just so easy to make. And then when the weather gets a bit cooler. I tend to just chop a load of vegetables up, stick some olive oil and salt on, and throw them in the oven for 20 minutes, and then you’ve got a really nutritious meal. So buy the protein. Make sure you’ve always got protein in the fridge.
Katy Bradbury:
Make sure you’ve always got vegetables in the fridge. And have things in the cupboard to kind of see you through, like tinned fish and precooked lentils. And if you tolerate dairy, okay, have, like, feta cheese in the fridge because that lasts for a while. So those kind of provisions if they’re there, when you I sort of restrict.
Kirsty Knight:
How much access I have to sugary foods and things because I don’t buy them. So I make that decision at the supermarket before I even get to the supermarket, of, like, I’m buying healthy stuff over that. And my other half does eat chocolate and sweet things, and I tell him to keep it in a secret cupboard so that it’s not I just want to make my life easier because actually, I don’t want to be eating that all the time. And I like it as a treat occasionally, and that’s how I want to keep it. So I just make it easy for myself by making those choices ahead of time.
Katy Bradbury:
Yeah, absolutely. And if you do that and you’re doing that the majority of the time, then you can go out for dinner with friends and enjoy a dessert, and you can go to the cinema and enjoy some popcorn or ice cream or whatever your flavor of the day is, you know what I mean? And know that you’re doing it in a way where you’re still nourishing your body the rest of the time. Yeah, that’s been amazing.
Kirsty Knight:
I’ll probably talk to you for the rest of the day, but anyway, you got to go. Thank you so much for coming on. Please let my listeners know how they can find you if they wanted to get some extra help on this, if they want to follow you and learn more about all the things that you share.
Katy Bradbury:
Yes. Mostly I hang around on Instagram, so I’m Instagram.com Katie. And that’s Katie with a Y. So K-A-T-Y bradbury health. So K-A-T-Y-B-R-A-D-B-U-R-Y health. And I mostly talk about hormonal stuff on Instagram. So there’s a lot of fertility stuff on there. There’s quite a bit of perimenopause stuff on there, but a lot of the time it’s just me.
Kirsty Knight:
About what you should be eating?
Katy Bradbury:
About all the things no, not about what you should be eating. About things that about the healthcare system and food marketing and all these other things. Love it.
Kirsty Knight:
Okay, thank you so much for coming on and sharing. I think this has been super helpful for everyone. Yeah. And I will see you all next weekend.
Kirsty Knight:
If you enjoyed listening to this podcast and you are serious about getting back in control of your time yet you have not yet mastered your calendar. Make sure you download my free Time Blocking 101 guide. This will give you a really good foundation on which to build your own time system that works for you. The easiest way to get this is to go to my Instagram page at Kirsty Knight coaching. That’s K-I-R-S-T-Y-K-N-I-G-H-T coaching. And click the link in my bio for it.
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