Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies
Danielle Cobo: Would you like more sustainable energy? Are you looking for a way to release unwanted weight without counting calories? Are you ready to reclaim your confidence? Burnout is often attributed to poor eating habits and sleep deprivation. Today's guest shares expert advice on how to avoid burnout and boost energy by eating the right food.
Vicki Ralph is a nutrition and hormone specialist who works with people who are feeling. All the time and are struggling with adopting a balanced diet to release extra weight. She teaches them simple ways to eat healthier, gain their energy back, and release unwanted weight without counting calories or starving themselves.
Thanks for joining us today, Vicky. Thank
Vicky Rolfe: you. I'm so excited to be
Danielle Cobo: here. you've been on my show before and I'm very excited to have you return because in the last episode we talked about some of our learning lessons from the pandemic, and you have taken the time through prior to the pandemic, during the pandemic to invest in more education, to be this expert on nutrition hormones and how we can be peak performance in all areas of our life by eating the right.
Vicky Rolfe: Yes. Yes. And that's a very interesting subject and we'll try to do the best today to give you as much as possible.
Danielle Cobo: okay, so let's talk about what foods to eat, because one of the challenges that we run into is we're a busy society. We're constantly on the go, whether we're running to work, we're eating in between meals or in between meetings.
Then we come home, we're trying to scramble to make dinner for the family, and we're constantly on the go. So what are some foods that we can eat that are gonna help boost our energy? And why is it important that we eat these?
Vicky Rolfe: first of all, let me say that it depends what kind of energy you're looking for.
we have to understand that carbs is not bad. carbs is the number one source of energy of your body. whenever you wanna boost energy, automatically you're gonna look for carbs. The problem is that we look for carbs that are fast and easy and are classified as junk food, like chips and highly processed chocolate and stuff like that, which gives us a boost of energy immediately.
But the problem is maybe 30 minutes, an hour later. It crashes, we crash because that energy is just gone and it was just sugar. when we are looking to boost our energy, we are looking to eat something that is more sustainable and will give you energy on the long term. Still carbs, but just a more complex carbs.
So we are looking at something like fruits. Banana is a very good one. Apple, any berri. Any citrus fruit, you can have water with lemon in it and. Most people just put the juice of the lemon in it. You have to put the limit itself in the water because it's really the oil on the peel of the lemon that is beneficial, not just the juice.
So very important to put a piece of the lemon in the water to boost your energy. Anything as well. Beans, lentils, fatty fish, like salmons really good because of the omega tree is gonna help you with the boost of energy. You have the classic coffee as well. Coffee is not bad. overdoing coffee is not a great idea.
and putting too much sugar in your coffee is going do the complete opposite effect. So you're gonna crash an hour later or two hours later, and you're gonna need another coffee to keep going. black coffee is really the best one. If you're not a a coffee drinker, go for green. That has a lot of antioxidant in it, and also dark chocolate.
Natural dark chocolate is really good and I know a lot of people who will be happy about that, right? But dark chocolate is really good for boosting energy. A little piece. Again, everything in moderation, but a little piece of diet
Danielle Cobo: chocolate. we can still drink our coffee, we can still have our chocolate, we can still have our carbs.
It's just all in how we eat it, when we eat it, and how often. All in moderation is what I'm hearing.
Vicky Rolfe: Yes, Yes. The quantities are very important, and also the timing when you eat it
Danielle Cobo: is very important. when is the best time to eat and what are possibly some foods that we want to avoid eating that might do the opposite?
When it comes to our energy,
Vicky Rolfe: you eat when you're hungry normally that's natural process of your body. Your body signals you, you're hungry, you eat. However, in the society we live in, we're so, bombarded by images of food all the time that we don't really, really listen to our body. We go with, Oh, I saw a burger.
I want a burger. But in reality, you're not really hungry. You just saw it and it, it just stimulated you and you wanted, pay attention to what your body is signaling you. You should have a hunger feeling before you eat. That's a normal thing. If you don't feel that hunger feeling, that's probably because you're not hungry.
And instead of going for food, just drink water. the foods to avoid are the highly. Processed food high in sugar, high in starch. That will give you a boost of energy immediately, but will make you crash an hour later
Danielle Cobo: one. Piece of advice that was shared with me that has not only helped in eating and choosing the right foods, but also has cut down my shopping time at the grocery store is just shopping at the outer perimeter of the grocery store.
You've got your produce, you've got your fish, your meats, your eggs, your milks all the way around, and never going down the aisles. I'm much more efficient when it comes to shopping, but I'm also eating everything that's really healthy. It's all of the items that are gonna go in my fridge, never my pantry.
It's almost as if I want my pantry to be kind of. ,
Vicky Rolfe: Yes. But again, when you look at beans and lentils, those are important in your nutrition and those you cannot find in the perimeter. That's true of the grocery store. And it depends also, I mean, it's a good tips because the produce are always on when you enter, the grocery store.
However, in my groceries, If I go with the perimeter at the end of it, it's ice cream, , and processed food. So it's not the good stuff. yes, focus on produce for sure. And, fruits, vegetable, plenty of it. Meat. If you're a meat eater, meat is good. my recommendation is to look for grass fed.
Meat because then you avoid having a lot of chemicals in your meat, even if it's not raised with antibiotic. Most of the time the animals are fed with grains that contain soy. And soy can challenge your body, your hormone, et cetera. We'll talk about it a little later. look for grass fed meat avoid the aisle with the chips and the crackers and all of that stuff for
Danielle Cobo: sure.
I can definitely tell I'm a creature of how, but I only know my own grocery store, . That's how it is. But yeah, it is a matter of just paying attention and ensuring that you're eating the foods that are less processed. Yes. And that's what's gonna help as much. Now as I've mentored, we're always on the go.
We're constantly going from a meeting even, a lot of times we're out at restaurants. We enjoy going out. we enjoy eating. Is there any tips that you can share with us where we. Eat delicious foods at these yummy restaurants or on the go, but without compromising anything that's gonna put weight on or affect our energy in mood levels.
Yes.
Vicky Rolfe: What I tell all of my clients is whenever you're out at a restaurant on the go, make sure that you eat protein. That's very important because that's going to help sustain you feel full when you're eating, so you will not reach out for the dessert that you want, or the junk food that you're looking for.
Protein is one. We can find protein in nuts and seed. I say always have nuts and seeds in your bag. you can have a protein bar in your bag as well. Protein shake if it's something that you can carry. If you're at the restaurant, look for. the meat, or if you are a vegan look for a tofu, for example.
it's a good one with a lot of vegetables. Why vegetables? Because it's going to make you feel full as well, because of the fiber in. the vegetables. protein and fiber are the two things that you want to have when you're at the restaurant or wherever you are.
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Danielle Cobo:
also being mindful of kind of those hidden sugars in some of the meals that we eat at restaurants.
at, Vicky and I were talking earlier and I had shared with her, I had just completely changed our whole household changed our eating habits. My husband's lost a lot of weight. I've lost a lot of weight and we're just eating differently. It's a lifestyle choice, but what we found is the surprising amount of sugar that is.
Salad dressings, ketchup, barbecue sauce, all of these, go-to items that add a lot of flavor, but there's so much sugar in it and that's what adds these unnecessary calories. So we started to gravitate towards, salad dressings like Walden Farms, which has zero calories. Zero sugars.
There's no sugar ketchups that are out there. Uh, this PB two fit peanut butter, which is a powdered peanut butter that you add water to and it's got high in protein, but those little changes can make a big difference. Just like going to a restaurant and putting the salad dressing on the side. And then you adding as much as you want.
Vicky Rolfe: Yes. And you said it well, Danielle is small changes. often we start with, You want to change everything I'm going to change everything and I'm going to throw everything that is in my pantry and I'm going to start anew And that's not the way to go because as you said, it's a lifestyle. one little step at a time, one little change at the time, and eventually you will reap the benefit of those minor changes that you don't think makes a big difference.
But in the long run, it
Danielle Cobo: does. , and you had shared a little bit earlier, you touched on this, but I wanna dive a little bit deeper into how certain foods affect our hormones. Because our hormones change a lot as we age. Yes. And. we just recently had our hormones checked as a family and, looking at as we've aged, how certain hormones have been depleted, whether it's because of our age or it's been high levels of stress, husband that's deployed will contribute towards that as well.
so how can food affect our hormone levels and what might you suggest foods we can eat to help balance ourselves out,
Vicky Rolfe: hormones, Are really interesting and there's a lot there. you have a bunch of hormones in your body, but the most important ones are the estrogen, testosterone, cortisol, and insulin.
Those are the ones that are the most common one that we know, and all of them are affected by stress. And the lifestyle in terms of eating habit that you have. as we age, we produce less hormones. Which is a normal process, but the problem is when we reach a certain age, we think, Oh, it must be just the ose or the menopause and there's nothing I can do about it.
But this is so far from the truth. The first thing to do in rebalancing your hormone is to look at your diet. Food is the number one thing that can rebalance your hormone it depends of which hormone. It depends of the issue you have with the hormone. So it's hard for me to tell you which food specifically because it's a case by case basis, but the basic is less junk food, for sure.
Less sugar, processed food. and go for what we call the whole food. The food that is very. Little processed or not processed at all. And just by doing that, those little changes with time, you will see a difference in your mood. You will see a difference in your energy level. You will see a difference in your weight.
You will lose weight, burn fat, and you will feel more confident in your body. Knowing really what happened, the, the food is the number one thing. We talk often about hormone therapy. Hormone therapy should be the last resource. Because there's so much that can be done prior to boosting yourself with hormone that are natural for your body, then I'm not saying that I'm against hormone therapy or it's bad, but I'm saying before looking for hormone therapy, change your lifestyle first.
Danielle Cobo: All very sound advice, and what I'm hearing from you is it's a lifestyle if you're out there and you're listening and you're feeling tired, exhausted, lethargic, nauseous. I've talked about this on previous episodes where I've talked about, and I'll be going into detail on in my book that's, Scheduled to be released in spring of 2023.
I talk about the weekly body scan in ways that we can prevent burnout, which is standing in front of the mirror every week and looking, is our hair brittle dry thinning? Is it falling out when we look at our skin, is it dry, dull? That's a sign of lack of hydration. You had mentioned drink a lot of water, drink water with lemon in it.
also Are you bloated? Are you nauseous? Are you anxious or is there tension in your shoulders? And I go into the book and I talk about this weekly body scan and really being in tune as to what signals our body is communicating to us when we are burnt out, stressed out. And a lot of that is tied to What foods we can change in our diet to offset any of that, to overcome it, and creating a lifestyle where we don't need to be living in this constant burnout phase. It's making these minor adjustments that you've talked about. Not completely changing our whole life, but these little tweaks in what we eat that can have big outcomes in the long run on the energy that we want in our.
Vicky Rolfe: Yes, there's so much more than just the food, Food is only a part of the story. There's things like sleep is. Especially important, the stress level that you have, your environment, where you live, what's happening around you. All of those are to be taken into consideration when you feel this way, when you feel depleted, when you feel you're about to burn out.
Food is super important, but keep in mind that it's not because you're changing your. And you're still super stressed. You're still not sleeping at night that everything will change by magic. No, It's a group of things. It's a group of change that we call lifestyle that will make a difference for you
Danielle Cobo: and for you.
Listeners are listening right now. There's an episode that we did a couple episodes back where we talked about different ways that you could boost your energy by. Getting better sleep. And we talk about even the, how often you change your mattress, how many hours you need, different ways to, fall asleep faster.
So I invite you to go ahead and to tune into that episode as well. before we end here, what are three expert tips that you wanna share with our listeners today as we wrap up today's episode? What can they do to change their lifestyle that they're looking.
Vicky Rolfe: I just want to remind everybody that there are three things to take into consideration when you really want to see a change in your body and the way that you feel is the three s your surrounding, your stress and your sleep in addition to the food.
But those three, make sure that you pay attention to it as.
Danielle Cobo: thank you so much for joining, and for those of you tuning in also, I'm gonna include a link into the show notes where you can pick up Vicky's book. Go ahead, Vicky, share your book with us today.
Vicky Rolfe: Yes, my book is called What to Eat When You Don't Feel Like Cooking.
It's a available on Amazon worldwide. And it, it's a book that is not just recipes, but it gives you a guideline as to what it means to eat, low gi, high gi, medium gi. If you're diabetic, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I explain that at the beginning of my book, it's a way of eating that helps reduce the sugar and the processed food in your life.
Danielle Cobo: Mm, I have her cookbook. I love it. especially when you're rushing home and trying to figure out what to cook dinner, I'm not one that likes cooking dinner, so it's one of my favorite cookbooks. I invite you guys, definitely order it on Amazon. I'll include it in the show notes and all their
Vicky Rolfe: recipes are there.
Free and refined, sugar free. Woo.
Danielle Cobo: Good. Good. Okay. Well, thanks. and create an intentional day.