Hello!

I hope you've had a nice January. Mine has been very quiet but I feel like it's time to start living again so I wanted to share an important update with you...

As you know, my mission for the past 15 years has been to get to the bottom of why we find it so hard to exercise regularly and stick to healthy eating; even with the best programmes, we tend to find a way to self-sabotage. Those of you who’ve been with me all this time know that, little by little, I’ve been digging deeper and deeper, led by my own experience and my desire to be free of diet mentality and the need to try to control myself.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been immersing myself in learning to understand what us humans are made of and what drives our behaviour. I’ve studied the nervous system, psychology and emotional wellbeing, spiritual wellbeing, society, culture, technology, lifestyles, etc, while also going deeper and deeper in my own healing – especially healing my nervous system which, like most people’s, was pretty shattered after years of ongoing stress.

I ended up with an overwhelming amount of knowledge that I’ve struggled to communicate and apply in my work because it’s just so much information that spans so many different areas.

I knew I wanted to completely take my focus away from fitness and diet/weight loss alone because it is very clear to me that making changes on that level alone does not work. Adding a little mindset work is not enough either - it does not actually start in the mind, did you know that? However, I didn’t know how to make that move without completely dismissing diet and exercise because they are not completely unimportant either, especially knowing how detrimental to health things like diets high in ultra-processed foods are.

Last week, I finally saw very clearly how to move forward: the idea of a clear “layers of health” framework that takes into consideration everything that impacts our lives and wellbeing these days, both mental and physical. Within this framework, I can incorporate everything I know, from the nervous system to the food industry, modern lifestyles, as well as diet and exercise.

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FEEL GOOD LAYERS OF WELLBEING MODEL

It starts with the state of your nervous system at the bottom, followed by emotional wellbeing and your connection with your authentic self. These three form the foundation – the root of any imbalance further up (eg binge eating, lack of motivation) is always here.

In the middle, we have your physical body and its rhythms, including things like menstruation, (peri-)menopause, sleep, etc. Next is your lifestyle and the pace of your life – the more obvious things like work/life balance. At the very top, the last two layers are diet and movement.

The last two layers are about behaviours and the five layers preceding them are what drive behaviour. What this means is that any problems on the level of the last two layers are just symptoms – signals that something is out of balance further down.

For example, if you feel like I can never stick to a diet or I cannot stop eating all the things I said I wouldn’t eat… the way to approach this is not by trying to force yourself harder or find another diet, but by going deeper. If your nervous system doesn’t feel safe enough to relax, that’s going to lead to food cravings. The same is true for emotions you’re not dealing with properly. Physical imbalances, such as hormonal imbalances, and lifestyle imbalances, such as a lack of joy, are also a huge cause of comfort eating.

Outside of these layers, we also need to consider a lot of external factors like society, culture (especially “dopamine culture” and diet culture), the processed food industry, the diet and fitness industries, relationships, socio-economic factors, technology (such as social media), and so on. This is where the real problem often originates because all of these external factors place stresses and demands on us which can lead to imbalances in our system and show up as issues in the top two layers.

You need to see yourself as delicate flowers: If the flower (you) is wilting, you first need to nourish the roots and make sure you’re planted in an environment that supports your wellbeing. It’s only when you feel safe and good about yourself and in your body that taking good care of yourself with diet and exercise becomes possible - and it becomes easy.

This framework isn’t totally new. It builds on two principles I’ve talked about for the past two years:

• Feeling good – safe and supported – in our bodies is key
• Connection – with your body, your emotions, and your authentic (inner) self

Some of my further principles include:

• Behaviour is an expression, not a cause (eg we don’t look at binge eating as problematic behaviour that is “bad for you” and try to fix it in isolation; it's a symptom of an imbalance deeper down, a coping mechanism, an attempt to comfort or soothe yourself)
• It’s about balance, not optimisation – balance in life and in your whole system. Health is an expression of that balance. Attempts to optimise one small area of life often create imbalances in other areas.

MY COACHING WORK – CHANGES

This framework isn’t actually going to hugely change my work. Those of you who have done coaching with me before know that a lot of these factors tend to come up in coaching anyway. What it does do is put some structure around it – mainly for me – so that I can be more efficient and get even better long term results with my clients.

What is very clear, though, is that I will no longer run programmes such as WalkFit or any weight loss courses, although I will still use elements of these with my coaching clients as an add-on. E.g. WalkFit is an excellent way to start exercising but it has to be done with the deeper foundational work for it to lead to lasting behavioural changes.

My work will no longer address questions such as “what/how should I eat?” or “how should I move?” before addressing what’s happening on the deeper layers. I truly believe that healthy eating and movement come to us naturally when we’re balanced and feel good about ourselves/in our bides. Yes, there may be some fine-tuning on these two top layers too, and maybe some education on what is healthy eating and how to start exercising, but this is not the real problem.

For now at least, I won't run any group courses because this work is highly individual, and I want people to get results, so working one-to-one feels like the best option for now. I may do some workshops later on, just as a general introduction.

I will continue to share in my WhatsApp group, so please join me there. For now, I’ll also post on Instagram, although I’m hoping there’ll come a day soon when I can stop using social media altogether – we’ll see.

Please do drop me an email. I genuinely love getting replies to my newsletters so if you have any questions or comments, let me know.

I’ll be sharing more soon.

Tina x