So I got to ask the other day, why do you think you get so many questions about food on your podcast?
And I think the answer is pretty simple. We all like to eat. We don't all like to exercise necessarily. Some of us do, some of us don't. That's okay, there's no judgment here, but we all like to eat. So then I.
Thought, who in my life outside of my incredible wife helps me eat yummier food? And one person popped into my mind. It's not the owner of the local pizza shop down the road. It is the new head of Nutrition Wholesome by Sarah As. She is known around the country and different parts of the world, and I'm thrilled that she'll be joining us. That's coming up next on the Woodlife, and then she's going to stick around to answer some of your nutrition questions.
You've spoken a few times about the benefits of intermittent fasting. With my job, I'm finding it really challenging to fit all the meals in and I regularly end up missing the second meal or the lunch meal. Is it better to stick to intermittent fasting even though I know I won't get that second meal in at least a couple of times a week or is it better to stick to a more traditional twelve hour window.
So I believe that beans, legumes, lentils, pulses, etc. Play a really important part in a healthy, well rounded diet. However, as we know, this food group can cause us a little wind or discomfort in the tummy. So my question is how much should we be consuming at a time and how often should we be incorporating this food group into our diet.
Hey, Sam, just want to know are hydro light's okay to have on a regular basis.
She'll answer those questions a little bit later on the show.
But it's an episode for the food is It's going to be a tasty one, and strap yourselves in and let's get into it.
This is the Woodline.
So our guest today, as I alluded to earlier, is someone that I am spending more and more time with and becoming very good friends with.
It is none other than Sarah Pound.
But most of you that do know her will know her as wholesome by Sarah, Welcome to the WOODLFE. But I want you to tell everybody your story because it's a really interesting story to not how you became the head of nutrition at twenty eight, which you are now, but how you came to be wholesome by Sarah and what your background is in food and nutrition.
Sure.
So I have a catering business that I've had for eight years now and loved so so much of that, but basically COVID hit and stopped everything. So I actually was pregnant with my second daughter during that time, so that was kind of even though it was really stressful, So I was worried about the stress on my body and the pregnancy, but that was kind of a nice thing to focus on because I wasn't out at events
and doing all that sort of stuff. I knew I had to do something for my mind and to focus on and to sort of get me out of the stop start and will we ever get.
Back to what I love doing.
So I thought, I'm going to start filming recipes and I'm going to put them up on my catering page and just see what happens. And loved it, like loved filming, love putting it all together. And then I came to this kind of crossroads where I was like, we're about to open back up catering wise, and I've got a year and a half of backlogged events to kind of get through.
But I really like this recipe thing that I've kind of been doing.
So chatted with my husband and my sister who was with us at the time, and said, oh my god, I really want to start this Wholesome by Sarah. And they're like, oh yeah, but you've got lots going on with the caterine. They're like, just do it, and I was like, yep, I'm just going to do it. I'll work it out.
I'm going I can hear the passion that you have about food. I mean, the fact that you did this for your own mind and for your own purpose.
You know.
I really wanted to sort of get back to basics day with healthy diet and what makes healthy food tasty. So what's your definition of a healthy diet?
You know?
And when you hear things like protein and calcium and itand's inconsole and the list goes on, what do you think blends together best to an inverted commerce give us a good balanced diet?
So balance for me, the first thing that kind of comes to my mind is no restriction. And that's just really we live in a diet culture society that you know, was around when we were young and kids and what we saw in magazines and TV, and you know, carbs are bad and you need to be a size six, and this is plasted everywhere on every kind of thing, and it's just created such an issue with food and what's healthy and what should I eat and all of that.
So when I think about balance, I think about no restriction. There should be no foods that are off limit. And I think for a lot of people that would be really hard to hear, because for me that's the way I live. I have chocolate in the house, I have a bottle of wine in the corner, I have whatever, and I do not restrict. It's all for me about looking across your whole day, across your whole week, and
you can have whatever you like in certain amounts. I kind of go to lots of different nutritionis that I love talk about the ninety ten rule where ninety percent of the time and this is.
How I feel about balance.
You're eating those really good foods and vegetables. For me is a massive one which I can go into. But you're sort of looking at your three meals a day and you know, snacks in between, but you're looking at having veggies at every meal if you can perhaps not breakfast but enjoy meat, enjoy whatever you like. But you've just got to look at it from a moderation perspective and not you know, you don't need to have a two undergramd steak or equivalent on your plate every single night kind of thing.
So balance for me is no restriction.
It's including lots of colorful, different fruits and veggies in your diet. It's including meat if you want, and then for me, it's sort of enjoying what you want to enjoy.
But just not going to over the top with any of it.
I think the ninety ten years a really good one.
I mean, you said, just before, you know, it used to be no carbs, and then I think back to my home economic days, which is probably where I first ever saw the nutritional pyramid. But that was carbs sixty percent, proteen thirty percent, fats and sugars or oils at ten percent. You know, it was ingrained in my mind. And then twenty years later or even ten years later, I was
at university and it was still sort of around. And then five years after I was at Uni, there was this big I know of what we've gone too hard on cubs for too long, and we're just such an extreme society. Yeah, it's like and that this is the problem because society is so extreme and things have to be marketed as extreme to get.
Results and all this kind of stuff.
It's very easy to fall into the trap of that is a total no. No, I can't have that, or that is all I should be eating. And that's just not the way it is. I mean, there are some things that haven't changed, and that's good. You don't eat real food, eat lots of vegetables. Now, it's often not what we want to hear because it's not sexy, it's not going to make me ripped in two minutes, it's you know whatever, But it's true and it stood the test of time and it will always stand the test
of time. And you know, whether you're vegetarian, vegan, or you do eat meat, it doesn't matter. If the foundation of particularly like you said, lunch and dinner is from a vegetable source, you sort of can't go wrong.
No, but it's greens and grains.
So here you say that a lot, and I think if people are sort of going greens grains.
And protein, greens grains, and protein.
If that's your lunch and your dinner, you cannot go away exactly.
You can fill your plate with whatever you want, but there is a sort of very general guideline I won't say rule because that comes back to restriction, but that you know within your plate, you have half of that plate filled with lots of veggies in whatever form. That is a quarter of your plate filled with your lean protein, and that doesn't have to be meat. It can be legumes, chickpeat, anything like that that's going to give you the protein.
And then a quarter of your plate with your sort of grains, your sort of slow releasing carbohydrates if you can. So it's more things like your brown rice or your sweet potatoes or something like that. And if you go by that roughly as a guideline for mainly lunch and dinner because breakfast is a little bit different, you really can't go wrong. And within those vegies years, you know you'll often hear and this is the same with kids a little bit as well, because kids and veggies can
be hard work. But you know, go for the rainbow. So the more color you can include, and that comes down to what it's going to do in your body.
So your different veggies offer the color that they are.
Offer different nutrients in forms of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, that's kind of thing. And the more variety you're getting in your color, the more that you're putting into your body, which yeah, then in turn helps with all different things. But your main ones are your heart disease, your Type two diabetes, your cardiovascular health, that kind of thing.
Yeah, love it.
So if you're listening along and you're thinking, that just scares me, you know, And I always get things back to a fitness analogy because that's sort of where I come from. But if I if I was chatting to someone, I was like, all you're going to do is exercise for you know, every day, you're just going to move your body for thirty minutes a day, and the last time they did a work that was five years ago.
They're going to have a bad reaction to that advice because it's.
Going to feel so far away from where they currently are, and it's going to give them anxiety and it's all going to feel too hard and they're probably not even going to try it. Yeah, And then I hear you talk about the veggies, and I know from my experience working with people, A lot of people the last veggie they ate outside of a potato was in nineteen eighty nine. Yeah, and it's you know, and I'm being extreme to make
my point, but it's often the case. But the good news is you don't have to go to every lunch and dinner is a rainbow veggie.
No no, no, no, no.
No superstar meal tomorrow.
Yeah, the rainbow thing's great if you love veggies, because I love veggies, but if exactly right, if you're just starting out, absolutely one is better than none. So and with my girls and their dinner and whatever, I'll serve up broccoli three times a week because I know they love it. I know they'll eat it well. They love it this month. It might be very different next month. But as long as you're getting something in there, that's a big one for me. Because veggies.
I feel like a lot of people don't like veggies because of how they were cooked when we were kids.
Do you often remember sitting there just chewing on a piece of broccoli and it took you four thousand choes to get it down your.
Throat and the way they were positioned, Yeah, they are a punishment you sit up and you finish everything on your plate to eat vegetables.
And you just created this negative connotation in from a.
Very young age that oh, I don't like vegetables at all.
And that's why as soon as you could choose not to have them, you know, becoming an adult and whatever, it's like, why would I choose to eat them? They just taste gross because of how they were cooked when I was a kid and I was forced to eat
them every single night. So veggies, I will always be a big one for this, but they can be incredible and it is about just trying different ways in a pan, roasting them, baking them in the microwave is a quick one, in water, all different ways, use different sauces with them, that kind of thing, until you kind of find what you like. And it's I feel like I could convince anyone that they love veggies. You just got to experiment
with them a little bit and be open minded. Don't go in going oh my god, I hate these kind of thing. Just have a play and you'll find something that you like.
So so you just said there's a number of ways you can do them, and that all comes very naturally to you.
Yes, what I don't want is for period. Oh yeah, you know, I don't really know how to bake things.
You know, what are some practical tips that someone could actually do tomorrow by following your advice to make veggies make anything, but predominantly ye make veggies taste better.
I also think, just because you know we're coming into colder weather and you know winters on the horizon, one thing I will do not every Sunday, because you know, you don't want to dedicate your Sundays all the time
to meal planning. But I'll literally throw whatever I've got left in the fridge, so pumpkin, sweet potato, whatever veggies you like, chop them up, throw them on a roasting tray, drizzle with some extra virgin olive oil, season them, or put some spices or whatever spice you might like.
But you can just do some examples. What are your favorites?
My favorite I love sort of like ground cool and coriander kind of thing, sort of moroccany flavors, and I'll just sprinkle that on there. There's also little ones that you can get from the supermarket that are like mixed ones, so like a Mexican or a roast vegetable cars exactly yep, and then just you know, smush them all together, put them in for half an hour or whatever, and then
I just have them in the fridge. For I work from home a lot of days, I will literally throw in some salad lees, put them in at a cheese, at a nut and that kind of thing, and that's lunch. So there is that I think roasting vegetables is, and not even though traditional roast you know, with pumpkin and potatoes are beautiful, but I mean even roasting things like cauliflower.
If you haven't tried. This sounds really simple, but if you haven't tried roasted cauliflower, just break it all apart, put it on a roasting trade, drizzle with extra virgin olive, or put it in for like forty minutes until it gets all like golden ee and crispy, and season with a little bit of salt and just eat that. And I know not everyone's going to like it, but I could eat a full cauliflower head like that. So just even experimenting in different ways. My girls and I love
Asian flavors. So another thing we'll do is in a pant rather than just having always your normal standard flavors that you go back to any kind of Asian veggies. So your snow peas, your broccoli, your broccolini, your bock choi choice, any of them.
Can cut them all up roughly and throw them in a pan.
If you wanted to put in some garlic and ginger, you could, but you can skip that and pop it in with some either extra virgin olive oil or sess Me oil and get it going for a few minutes, and then some soy sauce literally drizzled in the last thirty seconds.
So you can't see this because you're out going for a walk or driving along.
But Sarah's cooking.
She've got my hand on.
She's saw having the vegetables and she's shaking her head. She's sprinkling the cajuns vioses on the roasting Trategi's putting it in the ove.
I'm trying not to laugh. I'm fussing myself. It's actually quite fun, and she's she's just taken me through a few people taking demonstration.
But this is why I wanted to get you on the on the show, and why I hope you'll come on regularly. As much as we all need nutrition education, and I think you'll be able to fulfill that for people wonderfully, and helping people cook better is just so powerful because we can all do it. We've all got this obsession with cooking shows, we've all got this obsession with food, but a lot of us still find it
too overwhelming and don't know where to start. So I think these practical little cooking tips with the demonstrations, demonstrations, don't don't get you, don't charge any extra for the demo is a wonderful thing to be able to provide to our wood Life listeners. And so one thing we get a lot of questions on is I guess in a taking things out of their diet that perhaps once in there, you know. And the I think two that probably jumped to mind the most frequently are milk, cow's milk and gluten.
You know, got to go gluten free, you got to go dairy free or.
At least drink some kind of milk, substitute different type of milk, you know, and milk, oat milk, whatever it might be. Let's start with those two because I'm sure we'll get more of those questions down the track. But what are your thoughts on taking these things out of our diet. Are you for it against it? What do you think?
So, especially with both of those, As much as it might be a little bit of an annoying answer, but I think this comes down to personal choice and how you feel. So I still I mean, I love soy milk, but I also drink full cream cow's milk. Again, it comes down to what you need in a day of your calcium needs. As long as you're not having, you know, four glasses of milk a day and overdoing it kind of thing, Having normal cow's milk is absolutely fine. It's got a lot of putine calcium in there that you
do need throughout the day. So that's probably a personal choice. People, you know, if they're going with oat or soil or whatever it might be, how they feel after it.
I guess yes, right, And.
So it's hard to give a response that oh no, no, no, no, you should you shouldn't touch full cream milk because not at all. It still has you know, a good amount of protein, calcium, whatever else. And that's that's the same with gluten. So obviously with gluten intolerance, you have full celiacs who you know would have been diagnosed with Celiac disease and they can become very sick from eating gluten.
So that's where that all started.
And then there's sort of the in between of a gluten intolerance or a feeling a bit of discomfort after eating gluten, and that's probably why those people steer clear of gluten, you know, in pasta, in different things like that. In terms of is it good or bad, it's it's not at all bad, especially if you're having any moderation. It acts as a bit of a binder as you
eat it, so there's nothing bad about gluten. Again, this has been one of those phasings where you know, it's, oh, I feel better after eating gluten free and it's gone a bit nuts. So people have then, you know, gone towards that way. It's amazing for people who actually have Celiac disease that it's you know, offering them a past a choice or whatever choice of bread choice with it. You know that they still get to eat. But no, gluten is not bad for cream, milk is not bad.
Yeah, we've got a couple of questions from our Woodlife listeners. Can you just hang around and we're going to we're going to shoot those at you, okay, sir, So we do this little segment Woodlife listeners ring in with their questions. We've put together some of the nutrition questions that have come in over the last couple of weeks, knowing that you're coming in today, and our first question is from Lisa. Hi.
Sam, You've spoken a few times about the benefits of intermittent fasting, and although I find it really easy to only eat within an eight hour window, with my job, I'm finding it really challenging to fit all the meals in and I regularly end up missing the second meal or the lunch meal. My question is is it better to stick to intermittent fasting even though I know I won't get that second meal in at least a couple of times a week, or is it better to stick
to a more traditional twelve hour window. Looking forward to your advice, Thank you.
That's a really good question, isn't it.
So what's more important keeping the window or getting the three meals in? I'm not going to answer because I've got an opinion, but.
Yeah, so you have to know what you think.
I am of the opinion that if you've got your window of eight hours and you're getting your two meals in in that window, and you're not feeling hungry in between, then that's fine. I would have actually suggested that whatever.
I don't know what the two meals are, whether it's breakfast and lunch or lunch and dinner, but if you could split one of the meals so you're only really preparing the one and it's not taking you more time to do the second, then you could have sort of it up into two smaller meals and still have the
same amount of food within that eight hour window. But if it's working for you and you're not feeling hungry in between, then I would go with that, and I wouldn't worry about introducing the third meal.
Yeah, I think we can worry about the numbers so much. It's like eight our window. What if that was nine hours? We know what, It's not going to make any difference. Yes, what would make a difference is if you're depriving yourself of enough nutrients and enough calories, and in the two meal option that you're choosing, you're only eating six hundred calories because they're tidy little meals. That's a concern, yes, But like you say, if you're full, then you're probably fine.
If you're absolutely starving, we'll definitely eat the third meal and don't worry about breaking the window exactly.
And I think that's really good advice.
And I feel like that comes back to another thing I love, is more intuitive eating, where it sort of flips diet culture and everything on its head. So it's very hard to get into the headspace, but it is about listening to your body more and your hunger Q and you know, don't just eat at breakfast, lunch, and dinner because we're meant to, or don't have a snack at eleven am and three pm because that's what's normal.
It is about kind of trying to strip all that back.
And get familiar with your own body and eat when you actually feel hungry and try and eat, you know, the better choices, rather than I should just be doing that because I'm told to be doing that.
Love it.
Hi Sam Shelley here. So I believe that beans, legumes, lentils, pulses, et cetera play a really important part in a healthy, well rounded diet. However, as we know, this food group can cause us a little wind or discomfort in the tummy. So my question is how much should we be consuming at a time and how often should we be incorporating this food group into our diet?
Thanks, what a great question. That's so true. We all know the bean jokes totally keep thrown around. How much is too much?
And what's the best way to get more of that type of food into your into your diet without getting too gassy?
Yes, absolutely so, no one likes to, you know, have lentils for lunch and then go out for dinner and.
Passing wind at the table.
I was gonna say, but yeah, so it's with this. Legumes are part of obviously a healthy diet, but it comes within those those veggies and legumes serve so you know, they say five a day sort of thing, but legumes might only make up one of those parts. So something like a half a cup at your meal time is enough. So if you're cooking them from scratch, so from a packet, and also when you're using canned lentils or chippeas or whatever, it's really a good good idea is to rinse them
really well before you use them. Often in the brine in it's very thick, clean, yes, and there'll be a bit of sort of indigestible carbohydrate within that liquid that can sometimes sort of be hard to digest, and that's
what causes the gas. So giving them a really really good rinse before you use them, both canned and packet, and also if you're cooking them, So if you're cooking them from a packet, you can cook them a little bit longer until they're quite soft and mushy, and that will mean it's easier for your body to break them down and you'll have less sort of fluculence while doing that. The other good thing about rinsing you canned ones is there's sometimes some extra sort of sodium and whatever in
the liquid that also washes that. But you do that, and you could always strip it back and just start with introducing it again, you know, to a quarter of a carp half a carpet at one of your meals, and see how you go throughout that.
And it's often the case that we've gone from that almost being non existent in our diet to then hearing correctly leg yims they're.
So underrated, they're so great, and it's all true. Yeah, but then you go from zero to one hundred.
You're like, I've goneating them to having them every meal, and of course your body is getting all you know, you just you introduce these things in small quantities.
And build gradually.
Yeah, hey, Sam, just want to know, are hydrolyte's okay to have on a regular basis.
In terms of hydroltes, So look, they are safe to sort of take daily, but I wouldn't recommend doing that if you're kind of the whole point of a hydrolde is to basically refill your body with some minerals that you may have lost through different things like dehydration, vomiting, if you're excessively sweating because of the heat or exercise or whatever. So if you're losing that much because of one of those reasons, absolutely there's a reason to have
one get you back to ground zero. Absolutely, But if you're every day, if you're trying to drinking, you know, they say, however, many liters and glasses of water today, eight glasses of water a day, It's quite tricky to reach that all the time. But if you're aiming to try and get there and eating a kind of well rounded diet, then no, you don't need to be having a hydrolyte every day.
It's one of those things you know, we get I don't know not on them necessarily, but it tastes good or icy poles or hid like drinks when we're sick.
I was about to say, they definitely have a place.
Especially fixing kids, and they're not you know, you can give them to newborns, so they're not you know, if you can obviously in different doses.
But they're not a strong thing.
But I just think they're not needed if you're drinking enough water throughout the day. Another thing you might do is, you know, fill your water bottle with I love Miss Chew, which is just a Vietnamese place in Melbourne, but their water is always has mint leaves and cucumber and it's just got a nice little flavor to it. So it's like if you just want water, you know, sometimes water
can seem quite boring. If you add some berries or some blueberries, strawberries, whatever you like, some mint leaves, some cucumber, it can just jazz up your water a little bit to make it a bit more enticing to drink.
See, that's been amazing. Thank you so so much. Thank to everybody that's sending their questions. I'll wait to get.
Your feedback before I officially invite Sarah back. I think it's going to be good, check that first. If you never hear from me again. Sarah, it's been wonderful knowing you and thanks for.
Coming on the Goodlife, Thanks for having me and of course anyone listening.
If you do have any questions, there's a link in the show notes you can send Sarah and I.
A little voice message. Would love to hear from you, so give it a go.