How I beat morning sickness!

Morning sickness playing you up?

Don't you think it's weird how they call it morning sickness when it can happen any time of day? I know mine was worse in the afternoon and early evening, when I would hit my tired points. I also suffered really badly in the middle of the night.

The last thing I wanted to do then, when I got home from work was cook dinner. If I did manage it, more than likely it would be somthing less than substantial like porridge, or an egg on toast as I wasn't prepared for it! I also started to grab at sugary quick fix snacks that would give me a temporary sugar rush then leave me feeling exhausted, moody and even more nauseated. To add to all this, more than a few times I found myself skipping dinner altogether and feeling 10 times worse later on in the night and the next morning.

Thankfully I soon realised that these bad habits were by large causing a lot of the nausea and sickness I was feeling. My blood sugar was all over the place what with bouts of starving myself followed by huge hits of sugar, sending my insulin into huge spikes and troughs. I also realised that I was just asking for trouble with my erratic eating as I was doing all the right things to create an insulin resistance in myself as well as putting my baby's development at risk.

It was time for a major change and quick style! For years I had implemented the Elimination plan with all my clients, both prenatal and postnatal and had amazing results, now I got to experience it in pregnancy myself.

Elimination is all about eating from only whole and natural food sources and eliminating all foods that are toxic or denatured by processing and manufacture. There is no counting calories or cutting out food groups so there's no need to worry about whether you'll be getting a balance of nutrients - as long as you eat from a wide variety of all natural wholefood sources, you'll be supplying your body and your baby with foods that are jam-packed with high quality nutrients. Not only that but eating the Elimination way and avoiding all toxins means that your body will get rid of any excess water and surplus fat that it is holding onto, (that is non-essential to your pregnancy). What more could you ask for from a pregnancy nutrition plan?

Well within days my sickness and fatigue had stabilised and within one week, it had disappeared altogether. I believe this was largely due to cutting out all added and refined sugars as when I finished the 30 day Elimination plan and introduced sugar back into my diet, the sickness returned with a vengeance. Needless to say, I didn't make this mistake again!

OK so I know you're gonna be asking what the nutrition plan entails. In order to clean out your system and get ot working at peak performance you need to cut out all denatured, manufactured and artificial foods. These are:

Alcohol

Wheat Products (including soups, sauces and other products that use wheat as a thickener)

Processed dairy (milk and cheese - you CAN still have eggs, live yoghurt and real butter)

Processed foods - anything with non-natural ingredients (i.e. something you can't pronounce on the label or ingredients with numbers in)

Sugar - in all forms including honey

Microwaves (as they alter the structure of food cells)

Caffeine

That's it. So all you should be left with are foods that are whole, unaltered and natural in source, i.e. your food should either come from the ground, swim in a river or sea, walk on land or fly in the sky!

In my Complete Pregnancy Support System, I take you through a complete 30 day nutrition plan to help you detox your diet and free your body from toxins safely and gradually. It is important to note that if you attempt to detox your diet too quickly you will suffer with detox symptoms which include headaches, nausea and flu-like symptoms.

As with any change in your diet you should always check with your physician and pregnancy care team first. This post is for information purposes only and is not intended to replace advice given by your medical practitioner, registered dietician or nutritionist.

The one week quitter!

A few weeks ago I had a client quit, after just 6 days. Now it's a rare occurance to have a client quit and especially so early on in the programme. Not because I'm blowing my own trumpet about how great a trainer I am, but because the consultation process usually weeds them out so they don't start in the first place.

Without going into too much detail the consultation process we use here at the studios really gets down to the core of a person's motivation and commitment and if they're not willing to give 100% then we don't accept them as a client.

Anyway, so here was this great client, raring to go and all fired up. I gave her strict advice on the nutrition, training, hydration, sleep cycles and homework that she would have to do for the next 30 days and she was ready to give it her all.

And she did!

For 6 days.

I had a message over the holiday weekend saying she was struggling and when I saw her the following week she told me the programme wasn't working for her and she wanted to quit.

Why?

Well in her mind she had a very good reason. She'd been trying really hard, eating everything she was supposed to, doing her homework and training with me, (we had almost 2 sessions), but she hadn't lost any weight. To add to the distress, she'd put on 1cm.

Now 6 days is no time to be able to assess anything. Detoxing the body can have many different effects and cause varying symptoms in the first 10 days. If you do find you are feeling bloated there are several things that may be causing this.

Possible causes of initial bloating during detox

Bloating due to the initial reaction to toxins being released
Hormonal fluctuations - particularly if there are existing hormonal imbalances or sensitivties
Initial water retention due to release of toxic load into the body's extracellular environment
Hydration levels
Food sensitivity - in particular: raw food, higher fibre foods, new foods
Lack of sleep
Altered glucose sensitivity
Stressor reponse

The list goes on..

So what I'm saying is, with any change in lifestyle you need to give your body time to adjust and settle. The body is a cybernetic organism. That means there are many different systems that work synergistically. If any one, (or all) of these systems undergo a dramatic change it will affect the entire balance of the body. So not only do you need time to clean the body up you also need time for it to rebalance and settle into it's new routine.

This will take a minimum of 10 days to clean up and at least 30 days to adequately assess how the body is responding to different stressors, be they exercise, diet, rest, hydration, hormonal....

So please, don't be too impatient when starting something positive. 6 days of a new lifestyle may seem like an age to you, but think of it in relative terms. If you've been putting rubbish into your body for months/years then even 30 days is a very small comparison.