Cellulite, Low Iron, Ice-Cream and How Many Steps Do We Really Need?

how we feel on a day to day basis. A weekly product Chat is a very popular lower calorie ice cream alternative and our listener question we discuss walking. How much should we be walking each day to keep the kilos at bay?

some of these, some of these cereal recommendations. So I'm not a big cereal person, I must admit, I just don't find it gives me. It just doesn't fill me up. So probably one of my favorite breakings just eggs on sourder with some whatever leftover veggies I have in the fridge. This morning I had avocado and toast with some seasing and some garlic and some smoke withprika. So it's just a standard ava on some high fiber toast, and I had a couple of spoons of Greek yogurt with it

to get my protein in. So they're probably the two things I rotate between. And then oats, any any kind of oats, baked oats, overnight oats, like soaking them or just doing like some porridge sort of oats with a bit of protein powder, some cheer or flax seeds and some fruit in the winter months, particularly or it's a bit colder, is something I really really love. So oats and eggs on sourder or probably my two most rotated breakfast options.

breakfast can work quite well. So that's a good take home message, I guess for everyone listening. The more veggies you can slip into your breakfast, even if it's grading some extra zucheti into oats, or if you're having a smoothie blending some spinach leaves or some kale, that all really adds up and adds to that bulk factor of breakfast, and that's probably one of the most common areas I find clients miss in the morning. It's the most common feedback I give on breakfast choices.

talked about when it comes to how do we reduce cellulite. Now, my understanding is that a lot of it is genetic in the sense of the way skin holds onto fat has a large genetic component, and so you can get people who are really quite slim and small, and they can have quite bad solulight, and then you can get larger people who don't have as much. So that's my understanding of it is that a fair caller, absolutely so.

Genet explays a huge role in cellular and as you said, most women have it and men as well, or probably not, as I guess prevalent in men more so and women all get into that in a second. But soulate is one of those conditions that are sort of multifactorial. There's no one reason.

As you mentioned, you can be very slim, very fit, very healthy and still have seilight because there is a large genetic component to it. And with solulight, it's the atapo sites, which are sort of our fat cells which undergo hypertrophy and hyperplasia, which is the cellulite is essentially characterized by these large metabolically stable fat cells that are limits it to our lower body areas, so you don't really see, you know, cellulite on our face or on

our shoulders or anything like that. It's generally down on our thighs and our butt, on our abdomen, that sort of thing. So the dimples that we get with cellulite, and I say we because I have it too, silly, they're due to this herniation of the subcutaneous fat lobduals through the dermal layer. So essentially it's the fibrous collagen that leads to this shortening and ultimately this retraction through the skin, which then causes this depression into the skin.

So in simple terms, fat pushes upwards through these fibrous tissue bands that are connecting the skin to the muscle. This fibrous tissue pulls the skin in and that's what causes that lumpy appearance or to say, like type appearance. So, as you said, a lot of factors are involved in whether or not you get slight. Genetics is a big one. Your sex is a big one. Obviously a lot of females suffer a lot more than males, and lifestyle as well. But if you looked at the exact physiology of why

we develop ceilt. It's just not really understood and we just don't have an answer for it, unfortunately. But what we do know is that it is more common in females than males, and that's because of how as females we have this different distribute of fat, muscle and connective tissue.

So men tend to have this it's almost like a crisscross structure Susie in their tissues, and that explains why with so luded men, it's less likely that the fat cells poke through this criss cross structure in terms of women don't have that criss cross structure in terms of their tissue, and so it's easier for the fat cells to sort of poke through and create that dimpling more like appearance. So I think that's why you or women suffer a lot more than what men do from zeulate.

a better word, that kind of skin sagging. I would say anecdotally, it tends to be exacerbated and the look of that, and that gives I guess good justification to lose weight relatively slowly and in a sustainable way, and ideally in a way that is encouraging more resistance training. And preserving muscle mass, because that means you're less likely to get that very pronounced look of the skin when you've lost weight quickly, So that I guess is justification

for doing it more slowly. There's a little bit of reading around anti inflammatory diets and reducing the appearance of cellulite, so for example, focusing on less that traded fats, less processed fats, more natural fats from nut seeds, oils, oily fish. But I really want to be very clear the chance that's going to reduce the appearance of cellulite, the research just is not there. So yes, it's probably better for

your health. Yes, it's going to be better for your overall health of your cells and the body and a number of other variables, but specifically when it comes to cellulite,

not so likely. And just as an offside, I know we're here to talk about diet and exercise, and I know you've got some specific research looking at trading in a minute, but where I work in Bondai and Sydney, normally I work quite close to one of those laser kind of clinics where you can pay like quite significant sums of money, and one of the areas that they claim to have benefits of is reducing the appearance of cellulite.

the creams, I went through the laser light therapies. So unfortunately, you could probably spend thousands and thousands of dollars and really not come out much better on the other side. But as you mentioned, there is a small amount of

research that a good diet and lifestyle is important. Drinking enough fluid is actually really important as well, and a good amount of exercise, but specific weight training, because from the readings that I was doing Susie, it was sort of hinting that, you know, skin looks smoother and firmer over muscle than it does over fat, So we want to do exercises that help to replace the fat cells with muscle cells essentially, so to make that, say, like

a little bit less noticeable. So eating in a calorie deficit in order to lose a little bit of fat, plus proper strength or weight training was really important in terms of leaning sort of a leaner lifestyle, which if you're going to be a little bit leaner, obviously that appearance of so light is going to be a little bit less. Not having say that it'll ever go away completely, we can never completely get rid of sai light. We just hope to, I guess, reduce down the appearance of it.

And as you mentioned, some days a good fake tan is really really beneficial for us ladies.

their arms. So I guess that's good motivation to get a very specific weights program, resistance training program that really works in the back of the legs and the glutes and those areas where a lot of us do find that when we put our causes on the dimpools are out for everyone to see.

like quite dramatically. And now that I am what are we this week's uzzy, probably twenty eight weeks or something pregnant, I've stopped a lot of I'm still weight training, but it's a lot less in terms of the frequency. I maybe only doing two three sessions a week instead of four or five. The weights and the intensity and the reps have decreased quite a lot, so I'm sort of nearly down to almost body weight stuff with just some

light stuff at the moment. And obviously I've gained quite a lot of fat stores as well to support a healthy pregnancy, which is absolutely fine. We're not complaining about that. But I have noticed that a lot of my cellulite

has returned as well. So I do really think that there's a lot to be said for, you know, living a little bit of a leaner lifestyle, proper weight training and that regular weight training, and as you mentioned, not yo yo dyeting is such as well, because the more that those fat cells expand, think of it almost like a balloon like, it has a hard time sort of contracting continuously over time as well. So I do think that sort of diet and lifestyle plays a little bit

age in genetics and hormone factors as well. Is probably the last one that we didn't mention, because as women approach metopause, they are levels of estrogen decrease, and so does the blood flow to that connective tissue under the skin. And also as we get older, the collagen production decreases and our fat cells become slightly more in large, so all of those things aren't exactly going to be supportive towards cellu light, so I think, and hormone factors definitely

can work against us. And genetics like if you have those genetics, if your mum and your grandma had saylight, chances are you're going to have a tou no matter

how lean or fit or healthy you might be. So it's one of those things where it might just be that we embrace, you know, the best parts of our body and learn to love all of the parts of our body rather than wasting thousands of dollars on light therapies and injectables and creams and that sort of thing as well, and just knowing that, you know, censoring our social media feed zusie, so that we're seeing more real life bodies, because solight is one hundred percent something that

I would probably say. I think the research says eighty to ninety percent of women struggle with So if you've just got constantly airbrush photoshop models on your Instagram page, you're not really doing yourself or your mental health any favors because you're just not you know, you're trying to compare yourself to something that isn't really real or isn't really a great representation of the rest of the population.

or perhaps you're feeling overly fatigued. Something's changed and you notice your body composition isn't as strong as it once was, You're having a lot more difficulty holding onto muscle mass.

I do think that's worthy of investigation because at times it may be indicative of something going on with your estrogen levels, your dhea, which I've spoken about before, which is the precursor to testosterone, and I have noticed with some clients that sometimes when those hormones are low, they have a lot of trouble putting on lean tissue in the gym, and so the underlying hormone condition needs to

be addressed. So if you've noticed a distinct change in your body composition and you're not being able to train or retain muscle tissue like you once did, I do think that is worth looking at too, because that can be indicative of some changes of those underlying hormones, which in turn may impact your ability to get that good muscle and reduce the appearance of any cellu light to So be mindful.

But what's also quite common is iron deficiency. So this is one of these medical conditions that is so common in women. Up to eighteen percent of healthy women have low iron, but it's often not really talked about. It's often something that's kind of just brushed over, like, oh, you're low and iron, that's normal. No, ladies and men,

it's not normal. And research by the University of Western Australia actually showed it was one of these conditions that doctors were actually overlooking because it was sort of something that was just popping up here, there and everywhere, and they weren't really paying too much attention to it. So I think it is a really important discussion that we have today around iron deficiency. So what is it? And you know what causes it and what we can do

about it. So do you want to kick yourself, Susie and tell us a little bit more about why iron is so important in our bodies and why we seem to have such high rates of deficiency.

and just even quite poor mood. And what I found interesting reading one of these studies is that a study found that more than thirty percent of those women affected by low iron levels will also being treated for anxiety and low mood. So there seems to be sometimes we're misdiagnosing potentially a basic nutrient deficiency that's incredibly common and linking at two mental health disturbance because people are feeling so poor and unable to get through their activities without

feeling really constantly tired. And when I'm asking my clients, I'll say to them, if you wake up in the morning and you've slept a decent amount and you still feel tired, I would straightway be getting my iron levels checked.

energy demands are high. But what I see very frequently, and I'm probably guilty of at myself. I'm just about to get an iron check, so I'll share those results because I'm not feeling overly positive about it. What I find is they're having it about once a week. They might indulge in a steak or some lean mince in a spaghetti bolonnaise or burritos once a week, So they're sporadic meat eaters, and so they're trying to eat a

lot more fish and a lot more chicken. Maybe they don't love red meat, but they're not anti at either, so they include it occasionally, but it's not their first go to. And then what happens over time is the body is so trying so hard to absorb that very limited amount of iron or hem iron as it's known, which is the well absorbed form of iron that's found in animal food, that it's just not enough to keep them going in line with all their energy demands, the

menstrual cycle, or their activity levels. So the different for people who are vegetarian or vegan, the body has had to adjust to absorb what we call non hemion from plant sources like grains and legumes, so it's used to doing that. Whereas when you're a sporadic meat eater and you only give the red meat the good stuff that's absorbed, well,

occasionally it's just not enough. So the take home message is, if you don't feel great, and if you had a history of iron deficiency, you might have had a pregnancy, several pregnancies, you're just not feeling yourself. You're moody, you're tired, you're breathless, you're even a bit dizzy, it is time to get a full iron check.

sources like your eggs, your legumes. Every single day, and that will make a massive difference to how you feel, because basically we're constantly running on empty. I see it all the time. I've experienced it. It's a terrible feeling, and it's another one of those quite chronic in our society, but we just overlook it because all of us are feeling tired all the time, and we don't consider actually, hang on, when was the last time I really did sit down and have a steak.

sort of clients who eat red meat. For myself, obviously being a gasteomentrology dietition by sort of trade or background, I used to see a lot of iron deficiency, and a lot of that was in undiagnosed CELIAX, so people who had Celiac disease. Often iron deficiency was one of the big symptoms, sometimes the only symptom that we would see that iron was just bottoming out. They didn't really have any other symptoms until we got them onto an appropriate gluten free dant was when we actually saw the

iron come back up. I also see it in over exercises, particularly runners who do a lot of long distance running, really really low levels of iron, pregnant women, and coffee lovers, because the tannins in tea and coffee. If you constantly drink tea and coffee throughout the day, even if it's decap or herbal tea, that sort of thing, it's the tannins, not the caffeine that actually inhibits the iron absorption. So I think that it's important to reference that there are

two types of iron. You do not have to eat red meat to get iron. Obviously, your hem iron is from your animal based food sources that see what you would call the best or the most easily absorbed type of iron. But your non hem iron is your iron from plant based sources. Yes, the body has to work a little bit harder to absorb it, but it's still

a great sauce. So particularly if you're eating non hem iron based sauces, so from plant foods, think chickpeas, think dried apricots, think even iron fortified tofu really really great vegan sources of iron. But you want to ensure that you're eating that with the vitamin C rich food, because

vitamin C helps to increase the absorption of iron. So say you have chickpeas and a meal, you're having a beautiful chickp salad for lunch, add some oranges into that, or out a squeeze of lemon juice with some extra version olive oil as you're dressing, or say for dinner you're having you know, dark green leafy veggies or another

really great source of iron. In terms of your broccoli and your spinach, put some capsicum or put some tomatoes with that because they're high in vitamin C. They're going to help you to absorb the amount of plant based iron in that meal as well. And then also think of your iron block it. So I mentioned that the tannins and tea and coffee can help to block the absorption of iron. Things like unprocessed brand some of your soy proteins, and also some medications as well, you can

actually block the body's absorption of that iron. So really, if you're somebody who has had low iron in the past, or your sort of borderline, or you're just feeling fatigued and exhausted, you don't like needles, you don't want to

go get a blood test. Make sure you're keeping your tea and coffee I would say ideally at least an hour apart from your main meal, so having like your tea and coffee in between your main meals, particularly at lunch and dinner, because I find that most people will get the bulk of their iron intake from lunch and dinner, So sitting down and having a coffee with lunch and then a cup of tea with dinner isn't the best habit you can get into if you do have low iron,

so really really important to remember out of vitamin cea rich sauce, don't include it with any iron blockers like tea coffee on process brand, and make sure that ASUSI said you're getting in regular amounts of iron throughout the day. Main meals are important, but snacking on things like roasted chickpeas and dried apricots a really really great ways to get in some additional iron from your plant based sources as well.

red meat, it's just the regularity. So we needed quite a small portion seventy to one hundred grams, which is a small palm size, but we do need it three or four times each week, so you're much better to spread it out or as you mentioned, include it with a lunchtime salad a couple of days as well, just to make sure you're giving the body that regular access

to it. And if you're leaning towards a plant based lifestyle, really ticking the box each and every day on an iron rich food at least a couple of meals, and then looking for those ways to enhance it. And absolutely right for big coffee and tea drink, because that's another

big standout that it is a significant blocker. And that's actually also of interest because if you think about a lot of our breads and cereals can be fortified with iron, particularly in the mornings, whole grain cereals, but of course we consume it with milk, which is another blocker from the calcium. So even though I might say it may consume it, it's always going to be better from more of a natural food that it's present in, rather than

adding it into a fortified version. And then in the natural way, we're often not consuming it with the right kind of absorbing food. I'm thinking toast that's fortified with iron, and then you're having it with a coffee of milk, or same with a cereal and milk. So you're right, we're always much better to go back to those naturally rich sauces. And if your preference is for a plant based diet, and that's absolutely no judgment if you choose not to eat red meat or prefer plant based, it's

completely personal decision. But there are certain tricks to it when it comes to making sure you're getting plenty of iron. I usually suggest clients are having iron rich foods at at least two of their three meals a day, whether it's the legums, the eggs, just to be ticking the box and keeping on top. Anecdotally, Yeah, I don't have trouble with iron with my non made eaters. It's always my made eaters, you just don't get enough.

quickly with iron as well. If you are somebody who has an I in efficiency anemia, you may be on tablets. Bear in mind that it can take months for those levels to come up through blood tests, So if you are quite animic, you might actually want to have a discussion with your doctor about having a an infusion. Just if you're feeling crap and you don't have months to wait for that energy to come back, you might actually

want to consider something like an iron infusion. I've had one in the past when my iron was just completely horrendous after I had a really bad bat of Bali belly Susie when I was like twenty twenty one. Couldn't keep anything down or in either either way either end.

deficiency is not normal. It's sort of glossed over and it's really like, oh, you cut a low iron Haha, me too. That's not normal, guys. So really something that you need to investigate. And I actually spoke extensively about this on one of my own podcast episodes with a

leading hematologist, doctor Sanjay Juneja. He is absolutely excellent, and he talks you through what are all the differing reasons for an iron deficiency, why it's not normal, and why we need a reason for being iron defficient, and a lot of the times it's not due to nutrition, it's due to some other sort of medical or disease condition within our bodies. So that's episode eighty four on the Lean Word Nutrition podcast, Give my own Little potty a plug, Susie.

If you guys wanted to learn more about iron deficiency, if you had any friends or family that struggled with it and kind of wanted to get to the bottom of their condition a little bit more, you're.

And whether you're coming off the back of a pregnancy or breastfeeding, these are major risky times that women get depleted, So really urge your obstetrician or whoever's looking after you from a general health perspective to take care of that iron before before they leave you go out of their care, because you don't want to have a new baby and coming out of a pregnancy and going into breastfeeding with low levels of iron. All right, so something a little

bit more upbeat as we're talking about fatigue. Now, we don't feel great, so we thought for our product review. We've had several questions about this product in supermarkets because who doesn't love desserts and ice cream. So the topic we're going to talk about today is Halo Top and we've had several of our listeners requests and information on

this product. Tonight picked birthday cake because if I was going to be choosing a Halo Top flavor, that would be my go to choice, and we thought we'd have a little chat about it in terms of is it really a healthier option? Are these sort of ice cream ice desserts too good to be true? So this was a product that started to come into Australia, I want to say, about three years ago now, and it was a well known brand in the US and it started to be imported here as a significantly lower fat, lower

calorie alternative to full ice cream. And the first thing to kick off this discussion about Halo Top is that a Halo Top dessert is quite different from four ice cream, which has a certain proportion of milk fat. I don't know if the top I think it's eighteen percent milk fat off the top of my head to be actually called ice cream, because there has to be a certain proportion of cream in it. So these tend to be more what we would describe as dessert products in the supermarket.

Now you'll be very reasonably familiar with them.

carbohydrate and sugars. Now, the first ingredients are milk and cream sixty seven percent, but eggs is right up there, as is milk, protein concentrate, a fair wack of sweetness from erythrotol as well as some sugar. And they're quite heavily processed to get the taste and consistency of an ice cream, but obviously much much lower in fat.

clients on there as you would describe soul foods. If this is a soul food for them, absolutely, but it probably wouldn't be my sole food of choice because I tend to go for a less processed product and get the mouth feel and taste of the actual ice cream or chocolate or whatever. They're looking for rather than consume this and think that it's so much better. But I tread carefully because I know these products are quite polarizing, and I know we've got quite a few Halo Top

fans listening. So yes, it's definitely not my first go to when it comes to recommending a healthier dessert. But portions is my biggest concern and the level of processing that comes in them, so definitely not something I would describe as overly healthy. Definitely more of that occasional treat if you can control yourself around that tub.

through a toll on palm oil. Like, I wouldn't actually say it's a healthy product. If you needed a high calorie, hy energy diet, it could probably be quite good because there's you know, a fair whack of protein in there, and if you're going to eat that whole whole tub, the whole little pint of it or whatever you want to call it, it's sort of twenty four grams of sugar and that whole thing. So I wouldn't actually say it's that healthy if you were to go and eat

the whole thing. And I think that that's what the majority of people actually do, suit you know, as you mentioned, And it's not a cheap it's not a cheap option. I think it's I mean, I think it's eight dollars on sale. I think it's normally around twelve dollars. If you're buying it from one of those smaller conveniences or health food stores, I think you're looking at sort of twelve, fourteen,

fifteen dollars for the little thing of it. So call me a sucker, but I'd rather my Ben and Jerry's or my gelato Missine, I thank you very much.

than the equivalent of regular ice cream. So you know, if it's your thing that you really enjoy and you can control yourself and you like it, and maybe it reminds you of being in the States, you know, sure, but as a SAI it's not my first go to. I do think it's pretty processed and very easy to overeat, and that somewhat defeats the purpose given I'm usually working off one or two hundred extra calories per day for clients at the end of the day, as opposed to three four hundred.

of dessert products coming out. If you go into the freezer section, there's yoga varieties of this, and a number of plant based alternatives to ice cream. So I think in line with food processing, they will continue to expand and grow. But I'm a little bit like you. I'm not a natural ice cream eater. In general. It's not my go to, and if I'm with the kids having a more indulgent cone, I'd much rather that indulgent cookies

and cream occasionally. But I do see a group of my clients who are very calorie conscious and like to have something like this that's particularly sweet at night. And indeed it is much lower in calories than the average treat, so if they can use it, it can fit in there.

you know. As you said, of it's something that people genuinely really enjoy and the happy to pay the cost of it, then yeah, it can be I guess, a slightly healthy alternative from a calorie perspective than some of the other ice creams on market as well, but good to have a discussion about it.

who's not eating that entire little tub? So I think it's much better a product in general to keep dessert tubs out of the household, and then when you are going to really indulge, do it that way rather than have them as part of the routine shop each week. Because if it's in the house, of course you can eat it.

what we I guess as health professionals would recommend. But you know, how many steps should we be taking each day for fat loss and for weight control? And I think the bottom line here is Susie, that it really depends on your baseline, and it really depends on how

active you are day to day. If you are someone that is a PE teacher or like a you know, a physical education sport teacher and you spend all day in your feet, or you're a PT who's constantly tracing after clients in the gym all day and during your lunch break you get a bit bored, so then you go for a little walk on the treadmill. Your job is very different to somebody who sits down at a

desk job for eight or nine hours a day. So I think for a lot of my clients, you know, they are those sort of corporate workers of those desktoms. Worker is you know, they do a forty five minute hit session three four times a week. Sadly it's not enough. You know. They always come to me and they say, you know, and I'm signing up to you because my exercise is great. I do enough, I do, you know, three or four forty five sessions a week, it's it's

my nutrition that scrap, and that may be true. But also I think there's a lot of room in terms of exercise for a lot of people when it comes to steps, because steps is something that's significantly underrated from a fat loss perspective. But I really do think it

depends on your baseline. If you're someone who averages I don't know, two three k steps, which is quite normal for a death worker, then just increasing that to five thousand, you know a day on average, is going to do you significant benefit versus trying to aim for ten thousand, which just isn't realistic and you're never going to achieve it, so you don't do it anyway, So it's like you just stay at two thousand. So I think just raising your baseline or you know, my modo has always been

just that ten percent better. Just doing a little bit more or a little bit more each day or each week or each month is really going to serve you much better than aiming for this gold standard number, which feels really overwhelming for a lot of people.

So I don't count that as exercise. And often if I'm starting with a client and I have a look at their pedometer, which may just be on their phone, and they're doing two or three thousand steps per day, I'll describe to them that that is one of the biggest issues is that their body is moving so little through the day. It's not getting through their food, let

alone getting into fat stores. So as a reference point, between eight thousand to ten thousand steps a day is the bare minimum human body should ideally move to keep them relatively weight stable. If the goal is weight loss, you then have to do a whole lot more, and that can come as a big shock. And indeed, like you, I would grade clients up very very slowly, as opposed to go from two thousand a day to sixteen thousand

a day. But over time, the goal is to just reintroduce activity into a very sedentary lifestyle, and so as a starting point, I'll encourage clients to not go for any longer than two hours a day sitting before they make an active attempt to do some movement, particularly after eating. It aids digestion and insulin regulation to be moving after you eat rather than sitting down in front.

right up to about sixteen thousand. Now that's just anecdotal reports in my own experience, but it's because in Australia we're particularly inactive. If you live in cities London, New York, people are doing twenty thirty thousand steps per day because that is part of the commute and that is part of their lifestyle. Don't forget how inactive we are here. We drive everywhere, we tend to park right outside the shops. We live in big suburbs, so we're not doing strip

shopping anymore. All those factors really impact and the same at the moment with many of us not doing a commute as part of our day. So often people will be getting to five six thousand just by getting to work and getting on the train and getting off the bus. And if you're not doing that any day, we really at the moment we really have to look for ways to reintroduce it. So the first thing I would say

is start to monitor. You don't have to go and by an expensive monitoring watch, although you can, because that's great.

requirements for your body. Then on top of that, it's separate if the goal is actually weight loss, so it's a progression. But I think we can be quite honest in a conversation about steps to say that a lot of us are severely inactive, and that is a big reason why a lot of us struggle with our weight.

They didn't have cars. They walked absolutely everywhere a lot of times out you know, great grandparents grew up on farms and like, they were just so incredibly active. So you're right, but I think that hearing something like you know, you need to do sixteen thousand steps of fat loss

is very, very overwhelming. So I actually find that my clients get the most benefit just from ten thousand steps with three to four exercise sessions on top of that a week, so three to four times of hit training or strength training or some sort of you know, gym workouts, plus getting those daily steps in every day. And it doesn't have to be ten thousand every day because to achieve ten thousand steps, if you have a desk job like myself, Susie, that's about an hour and a half

of walking. So I will generally hit my standards about two thousand a day. Like with my desk job, with working from my computer, being on my phone most of the day, I'll start most of my days with a walk. It'll take me about an hour twenty minutes. I'll clock around eight thousand steps. I'll get the other sort of two two and a half thousand throughout my day, and then I'll go to the gym during pregnancy two three

times a week. Usually sort of aim about four sessions on a good week, five sessions a week, and that for myself works really well and for the majority of my clients works really well. But I think it's important to note that we can average that ten thousand steps out across the week. So if during Monday to Friday you're getting five seven thousand, then Saturday Sunday you're getting like fifteen thousand up to twenty thousand, that's wonderful and

that average really does count as well. It doesn't have to be ten thousand every single day. I think, just like our calorie intake, it's sort of based on an average of what we're doing across the week, So I think that that helps to be a little bit less overwhelming. But I really like how you mentioned like try to get fifteen minutes of walking in around breakfast, fifteen minutes around lunch, and fifteen minutes around dinner. And if you are a desk you know worker, utilize some strategies like

get one of those headsets. If you spend a lot of time on the phone on conference calls or waiting for clients or waiting for people to call you back.

Get one of those headsets and pace up and down the corridors at work, or do some laps of your house, or go outside and the fresh air and your lunch break and just the act of going outside, or get you you know, a couple hundred steps anyway, So find ways to get that movement in in terms of we call that incidental exercise, don't we, Susie, So park in the furthest car park away when you go to the supermarket, take the stairs wherever you can. You know, things like airports.

I always laugh when I see people get on those travelators at airports. Honestly, not that anyone's been there at airport in the last two years, but you know they always catch the travelator. I love going to the airport because I had two thousand steps in. Whenever I go to the airport, I don't sit there at the gate and wait for my flight. I'm like lapping around doing some window shopping. I avoid the travel laders like the plague.

I always take the stairs, even with my suitcase. Probably wouldn't do it while I was pregnant, to be fair, but you know, usually like I see airports, there's a great way to hit my ten twenty thousand steps a day. Traveling holidays, that sort of thing. Love being active, hiking, exploring new places. So I think, just find that opportunity within your day to day life. Even when I'm doing

my shopping, suitsie or the aisles have different things. If I'm you know, in Aisle seven, and I'm like, oh crap, I forgot the tin tomatoes two aisles back, I'll go when i'll finish my shopping, you know, across the ten or twelve aisles. Then I'll go all the way back through the different aisles, just to get more steps in. On a Sunday, when I do my meal prep and my shopping, my grocery shopping, go to the farmer's markets,

go to the supermarket. I reckon I can easily get ten thousand steps without any walking in because that's just me being super active that day, walking throughout the shopping center, the shops, the farmers' markets, and then across my kitchen for two plus hours while I'm doing my meal prep. So I think, as much as possible, try to include those steps as part of your incidental activity and you won't notice. I guess how much time it takes up as such.

and look after your body and listen to it. If you're feeling a bit sore on the hips or the knees, just take it easy until your body gets used to that increase in movement. But over time, just by having this conversation you'll see you significant increase your movement and that's only a good thing when it comes to metabolism and weight controllers.

so hot. So just reminded that everyone gets your suns screen in if you're doing more than sort of fifteen twenty minutes out in the sunshine, get a hat on, put some sunny's on. It is sort of getting into that magpie season, so particularly in Australia, protect yourself, protect your eyes, get your sunny's on, get your hat on, get your sun's green on and pop a good poddy in and give it a listen. And go for a long walk on the weekend, particularly outside of that peak

UV sort of rays within the midday sun. Try to do very early morning or a lot later at night, and you'll be protected a little bit better from the sun.

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