There’s a moment in almost every consultation I do where the person across from me says some version of the same sentence:

‘I know what to do, I just can’t eat well.’

They say it like a confession.

Like they’re admitting something shameful about their character.

And then they wait for me to tell them what they already know - eat more protein, prep your meals, cut down on the snacking.

But I’ve stopped hearing that sentence as a statement about food. I hear it as a statement about everything else.

I’ve been doing this for over a decade now.

And I can tell you: the person who ‘can’t eat well’ is not failing at food. They are standing under five fire hoses, all blasting at full pressure, all day, every day - and someone has told them the problem is that they’re wet.

These are five external systems.

Each of these have their own internal logic, each one independently degrades your capacity to make good food choices. And they don’t just add up, they multiply. They interact in ways that make the combined effect far worse than any one of them alone.

Most nutrition advice ignores all five.

It focuses entirely on the water on the ground - what you ate, how much, what time - and never looks up at what’s pouring onto you.

Let me show you the hoses.

Hose 1: Modern Work

Modern work doesn’t just make you tired. It depletes the specific brain structures responsible for impulse control and deliberate decision-making.

Your prefrontal cortex - the part of your brain that says ‘maybe not the biscuits’ handles both your work decisions and your food decisions, it’s essentially the same hardware and same finite resources. By the time you’ve navigated a day of emails, meetings, decisions, politics, and the low-level anxiety of never quite being on top of everything, that hardware is struggling to keep up.

The challenge for most people is that it’s running on empty at exactly the moment most food decisions happen. I can’t think of a single person I’ve worked with who is bingeing at 9am. The wheels come off at 2pm, or 4pm or 9pm, at the end of the working day when the cognitive tank is dry.

The person who eats well at breakfast and badly at dinner is the same person, but they’re just using a brain that’s in two different states of depletion.

84% of knowledge workers work overtime, and a study of UK adults last year found 91% experienced high or extreme stress in the past year. 1 in 3 of us doing desk-based jobs find it hard to eat well because of time constraints - but I would argue that it isn’t time, it’s bandwidth. The time is there, the capacity to use that time ‘for good’ has gone.

Every time our phone pings while we work, it takes an average of 23 minutes for us to refocus - 10% of our working year, lost to refocusing. Every refocus draining the resources that you’ll need later when you’re standing in the kitchen wondering what to eat.

Work is the first fire hose. And it’s running before we’ve made most of our food choices.

Hose 2: Tech and Digital Life

Your phone isn’t just a distraction at work, but it’s also the infrastructure that allows every other fire hose to reach you. We pick up our phones hundreds of times per day, and spend 6-7 hours on them. We process roughly 74GB of data per day, with less than 1% of it reaching our conscious awareness. The other 99% is noise, but our brain still has to filter this out. The mere presence of your smartphone - face down, silent and no notifications - can reduce your working memory. The brain allocates resources to not checking it, and those resources are then unavailable for other tasks.

It also acts as a vessel for the other external forces that affect our food choices - work reaches us through emails and messages, influencers are on our feed, food delivery apps are on our home screens - and the constant attention-switching keeps our prefrontal cortex in a state of permanent partial depletion where we’re never fully offline.

UK users spend 49 approximately hours per month on TikTok alone - the equivalent of a full working week. TikTok is designed where a constant-swiper could watch 1000 videos in an hour, each one with a micro-demand on your attention. Each one leaves you with less cognitive bandwidth than before.

Yet we’re still told the issue is ‘you haven’t meal prepped’

Tech is the second fire hose, as well as the pipe that connects all the others.

Hose 3: The Food Environment

If the first two hoses deplete your brain, the third one catches the depleted version of you and makes overconsumption the path of least resistance.

The food industry has spent decades engineering friction out of overconsumption and friction into healthy choices. I don’t say this as a conspiracist, merely as someone who is interested in business and can see that this is clearly the smart business choice.

The mechanics of friction are everywhere once you see them:

• Sharing bags remove the pause of unwrapping. You eat 44% more crisps from a sharing bag than from individually wrapped portions.

• Larger containers increase consumption by 151%.

• Online food orders are 35% larger than in-person orders - because the social friction of a human watching you order is removed.

• 95% of purchase decisions are subconscious.

Meanwhile, healthy food costs more than twice as much per calorie as ultra-processed food, a gap that is widening considerably. The economics push in the same direction as the design, and will likely only be slowed down by indirect intervention (such as GLP-1 use).

Hose 4: The Wellness Industry

I think this is the one that is the cause of most of my professional anger.

As I’ve argued above - we’re overwhelmed, depleted and provided a food environment that nudges us towards less nutritious choices. We don’t feel good about this, and many will seek for help to know how to change their personal circumstances.

The platform we choose for our help-seeking is the most entertaining and informative one we can find - which happens to be social media.

What do we find?

Contradictory information, served at industrial scale, by people with financial incentives to keep you confused. A study identified 53 nutrition ‘super-spreaders’ - the most influential voices in the online nutrition space.

96% had financial incentives tied to their content, 59% had no nutrition qualifications at all. The top earners make up to £100,000 per month.

They’ve figured out that fear drives engagement, while balanced content generates sod-all. The algorithm rewards panic, not nuance - and so the content that reaches you isn’t designed to help you, it’s designed to engage you. The most engaging thing in nutrition is telling someone that something they eat is going to kill them.

The result is two toxic exits - and both make the problem worse.

Exit 1: The orthorexia pipeline. A study found that 49% of people who follow health accounts on Instagram showed symptoms of orthorexia - obsessive restriction and anxiety around food - compared to less than 1% of the general population. The content that’s supposed to help you eat better is making you eat worse, just in a different direction.

Exit 2: Nutrition backlash. Other people exposed to enough contradictory advice don’t search harder for the truth, they just give up. They reject all nutrition advice - including the stuff that’s actually useful. Research shows that people with the highest backlash scores significantly reduce their fruit and vegetable consumption. Learning more made them eat worse.

And here’s the cruellest twist: the person stressing about whether their spinach has oxalates is spiking their cortisol - which is probably more metabolically damaging than the oxalates ever were.The wellness industry doesn’t just fail to help. It actively manufactures the anxiety that drives the problem.

The fourth fire hose sells you an umbrella with a hole in it.

Hose 5: Everyday Life - The Structural Floor

This is the fire hose most nutrition advice pretends doesn’t exist.

Before work depletes you, before tech fragments you, before the food environment catches you, before the wellness industry confuses you - there’s the structural reality of our life. The socioeconomics of food that make ‘eating well’ a genuine challenge for so many.

The poorest 20% of UK households would need to spend nearly 50% of their disposable income to afford the government’s recommended diet. For families with children, that rises to 70%. The wealthiest fifth? 11%.

Healthy food costs over twice as much per calorie as ultra-processed food. And that gap is growing - healthy food prices are rising at nearly double the rate of UPF prices. Ultra-processed food intake increases linearly with food insecurity severity. This isn’t the sort of thing you can willpower your way out of.

I want to be honest about where I sit on this. Most of my clients have the structural basics covered - they have income, time, and kitchen access. Individual nutrition coaching is, by and large, for those with the disposable income to be able to prioritise it. My argument is that even with those advantages, the other four hoses still defeat most people’s food choices. But it would be dishonest to talk about food systems without acknowledging that for many people, this fifth hose - the structural floor - is the binding constraint. Everything I’ve described above is layered on top of an already impossible situation.

A person working two jobs, commuting 90 minutes, with two children and £50 left after rent doesn’t need a meal plan or a sodding mindfulness app. They need a different structural reality. Most nutrition advice - including the well-meaning kind - implicitly assumes a baseline of time, money, kitchen access, and cognitive bandwidth that millions of people don’t have.

Where the Hoses Meet

These aren’t five separate problems, but five systems feeding into the same bottleneck: your finite brain.

Work drains your cognitive capacity, tech fragments what’s left. The food environment catches your depleted brain with friction-free overconsumption, creating guilt that the wellness industry monetises. And everyday life sets the baseline of how much capacity you had to begin with.

But the real damage happens where they interact:

• Work stress → more phone use → more targeted food ads → more impulse purchases

• Cost pressure → more UPF → health anxiety → wellness content → more confusion → more stress

• Tech fragmentation → worse work performance → longer hours → less recovery → worse food choices

• Food guilt → seek information → encounter contradictions → more anxiety → more emotional eating

Each hose makes the others worse - The person inside the system experiences it as one thing - ‘I just can’t eat well’ - but there’s nothing ‘just’ about it. Five interlocking systems are producing that output.

Telling them to try harder is like telling someone standing under five fire hoses to stay dry.

Now What?

I’m not going to pretend the answer is simple. If it were, the problem wouldn’t exist at this scale.

But I will say this: the first step is to stop blaming yourself for being wet.

The person who eats well at breakfast and badly at dinner is not weak. The person who orders Deliveroo after a brutal day is not lazy. They’re operating with corroded hardware - a prefrontal cortex that’s been hammered by work, fragmented by tech, and caught by an environment designed to exploit exactly that state.

Food is the symptom, the system is the cause - but the individual does have agency within that.

However, just because some people can eat well if they try hard enough, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look at the systems driving food intake, how they interact and how they converge on one finite brain. Without exploring these systems, we will keep handing people meal plans and wondering why nothing changes.

The wellness industry has a business model problem it rarely talks about.

Treating the root cause creates people who no longer need you, whereas treating symptoms creates recurring clients.

And when the symptom is evening eating, or lack of motivation, or the feeling that something is perpetually off - there’s a very deep catalogue of programmes, protocols, and transformation packages available to help.

None of them ask the question that actually matters.

What is the behaviour doing for you?

Not ‘why are you doing it’ in a blame-y kind of way, but more a,

‘I know I don’t want to do this, but I can’t seem to stop’, sense.

Functionally: what need is this behaviour meeting?

Because behaviour doesn’t emerge from nowhere. Eating biscuits at 9pm while standing in front of the fridge doesn’t happen in a vacuum. For most people, the thing they’re treating probably isn’t the thing that’s wrong.

As an example, I have a client who lost over 10kg, having struggled for years with weight loss and convinced herself it was just something she couldn’t do.

Although we obviously made some changes to her food, she always cited a different behaviour as the reason that she lost weight this time.

She took up knitting.

In the evenings, instead of ending up in front of the fridge with her phone, she had something to do with her hands, something creative that required just enough focus to quiet the cognitive noise left over from a switched-on, fully-loaded day.

The evening eating faded, and the 10kg came off. The eating had been doing something for her - but when knitting started doing it instead, the eating became unnecessary.

The Six Drives Modern Life Suppresses

There’s a pattern in the research, and in my consultation - that explains our struggles with food better than ‘ultra-processing’ and ‘willpower’ ever will.

When fundamental human drives get suppressed, this shows up as a completely different problem (that people will try and fix with a solution that doesn’t target the problem).

1. Creativity suppressed → resentment, low-grade distress

When we don’t have the space in our lives to be creative. That can create low-level restlessness and a vague dissatisfaction with a feeling that something is off, but we just can’t name what that thing is. That doesn’t have to be something artistic. It can be whether we have licence to be creative with problem-solving at work, or with how we communicate to people, or how we show up with a certain hobby, whatever that.

I think it’s the person who gave up painting when they got a real job and got really busy, or the parent who used to enjoy writing but hasn’t done it in years. They don’t say, ‘I miss being creative.’ They come to me saying, ‘I eat rubbish every evening and I’m not really sure why.’ It’s that their frustration has no outlet, so they use food for it.

2. Play suppressed → inability to feel pleasure

Play activates reward circuits in a way that passively consuming on social media doesn’t. If those circuits go unused long enough, they start to atrophy slightly, and we do feel this sense of anhedonia, an inability to feel sustained pleasure. When that capacity erodes, the lowest effort pleasure sources available are normally food, specifically the energy dense kind that requires no engagement or no real attention from us at all. It’s simple behaviours that are very easy to repeat.

3. Emotion suppressed → compulsive numbing

It’s not a coincidence that evening eating that maybe starts around 8 o’clock, when the rest of the house goes quiet, often doesn’t have hunger as part of it whatsoever. It’s the first moment all day when the emotions that we’ve been outrunning finally catch up with us, and rather than sit with those emotions, we turn to food because eating again is immediate, available, and it works for a few minutes for a lot of people.

4. Boredom suppressed → imagination death

When was the last time you felt genuinely bored? Not to be confused with tiredness, scrolling, half-watching something not interesting whilst on your phone. Actually bored - with nothing to do and nowhere to put your attention. Most people (myself included) can’t remember.

Boredom is the door your brain walks through to reach imagination and reflection. But we’ve bricked up every door, from queuing at a coffee shop, to going to the toilet, to the 30 seconds it takes to wait for the kettle to boil. You feel stuck, but can’t explain what you would rather be doing instead. What you’re lacking is the empty space where the answer would surface. Without ever entering that space, you can’t imagine anything richer than what you already have. You can’t miss a life that you’ve never experienced, even in your mind. So the scroll continues and the fridge stays more interesting than anything else at 9 o’clock at night.

5. Stillness suppressed → performative wellness

Ice baths, cold plunges, breath work, recovery. Although some of these things have genuine physiological benefit, they’re all activities that fill you with a sensation. They leave no room for unstructured stillness because recovery has become something that we do, and we are constantly sold alternatives that feel like stillness but aren’t.

Sitting still, doing nothing and seeing what surfaces is the one recovery method that nobody’s selling because it’s free and it’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t photograph well for Instagram. So we keep our recovery routines whilst avoiding the stillness that would tell us why we needed to be recovering in the first place. The discomfort of that avoidance builds up with nowhere to go and usually ends up in the kitchen.

6. Challenge suppressed → the quiet disease of under-living

There’s a version of all of this that doesn’t look like a problem at all. Someone shows up, they function, they do their job, they pay their bills, keep the plates spinning. But nothing in their life is designed to make them want to feel better or have more energy. So why would they eat as if it matters?

There’s an ancient word for this, acedia. A sluggishness of the soul when your life doesn’t arouse your strong passions.

Plenty of people would not identify as burnt out or depressed, but it would be fair to say there’s a mismatch between the life they’re living and the life that would fully engage them. While they cycle through solutions to their nutrition like meal prep or ordering meals online or macro tracking, nothing changes - because what they actually need is a life that’s so full of purpose and meaning, that they feel they don’t have chance to track, and they eat well because of the energy they need to make the most of their purposeful life.

What This Means for How You Think About Food Behaviour

What happens is, as an industry, we treat the output as the problem. People are overeating, they’re eating foods that we wouldn’t necessarily recommend in quantities that we certainly wouldn’t describe as healthful. They are missing out on key nutrients and the benefits of those nutrients and those foods. But we’re essentially trying to treat a fever without asking what is it that’s caused it and what is the infection.

I’m not saying that nutrition support is useless. Eating patterns sometimes are about the food environment. Practical changes definitely do help. But if we only ever work at the level of food, if ‘eat more protein and meal prep on Sundays’ is the beginning and the end of the intervention, we’re treating the output of a system without ever looking at the system that was producing it.

When I suggested that that person should take up knitting, I didn’t think it was going to be magic. I just thought it would restore something that their evening eating had been substituting for. And when that thing came back, the substitute they were using became unnecessary.

The Question Worth Starting With

When we ask, How do I fix this behaviour?’ It’s important to ask which drive was suppressed to produce it. If we restore that input, the degraded output often resolves itself. Not always, and not perfectly, not without any other intervention whatsoever. But it’s a question that’s almost never asked, and when we start asking it, we can see the pattern everywhere.

We are running at cognitive capacity with no slack in the system for the drives that actually sustain us, and then we wonder why we end up in front of the fridge at 9pm.

Our food is the last domino, and everything else is upstream.

You’ve been performing competently since Monday morning - but that competence is costly. You’ve context-switched between tasks roughly every 10 minutes, you’ve made hundreds of micro-decisions - how should I phrase this, should I push back on that, how should I read this ambiguous message, what should I prioritise next? You’ve circled back where appropriate, doubled down on key metrics, pretended to give a toss about someone else’s OKRs.

And after ALL of that - someone (your partner, a friend, a nutritionist, a coach, your own brain) - has the audacity to suggest a salad?!

You order a pizza - a 12-inch cajun chicken pizza with a side of wedges and garlic bread. After demolishing all of the above, you’ll feel something complicated about it afterwards. It was nice in the moment (not incredible, but alright) - yet maybe later tonight, maybe over the weekend - you’ll return to the question of,

‘Why can’t I just be more consistent?’

Although this makes sense, it’s the wrong question.

What your brain is actually doing?

Your prefrontal cortex (PFC) is the bit that runs the version of you that makes deliberate, long-term decisions. It’s what lets you choose the salad or not send the reactive email or resist a second glass of wine on a Tuesday evening. Chronic stress causes the neural connections in the PFC to retract, while the connections of the amygdala (threat-detection system) grow. So we become more prone to threat-detection than rational thought processes.

On top of this, the PFC fatigues across the day, which explains why we turn to food in the evening - the brain that has been working hard all day to suppress impulses, manage decisions and inhibit the amygdala, is depleted. We’re then left staring at a pizza menu, feeling like we’re choosing freely, yet making decisions at a fraction of our capacity.

When that happens, your limbic system - older, faster, built for immediate need rather than long-term strategy - takes over. It isn’t interested in your nutrition goals or your Monday intentions. It’s interested in what works right now.

This depletion is making conscious choice harder when it comes to food. However, it’s also worth noting that we’ve not had much choice at all during the week. So, what happens when there’s a collision between the inability to make reasoned choices, and we reach the first point of the week where we feel like we actually have the power to make a choice?

The role of agency

Think about what your week actually looked like. Calendar managed by others’ meeting invitations. Expectations of ‘always on’ synchronous communication, the requirement of the brain to maintain constant surveillance on new messages as they arrive. Work shaped by processes, approvals, priorities that are not entirely your own, or not ones you agree with. If you’re among the 84% of UK desk workers who regularly work overtime, or the 44% who feel pressure to be always online, the number of genuinely autonomous choices you made - decisions answerable to no one, made without justification - might be close to zero.

Food is different. Timing, composition, portion, occasion, whether to cook or order - all of it is genuinely yours. No approval required from higher ups, no KPIs, no justifications.

Choosing the pizza isn’t always about pizza, sometimes it’s about finally being able to have a choice in something. When someone suggests the salad at this specific moment, it doesn’t land as a food recommendation. It lands as the colonisation of the last unclaimed territory. And the rage which might seem disproportionate to any reasonable reading of the situation, is proportionate to exactly that. Research on psychological reactance shows that when freedom is perceived as restricted, people don’t just resist but actively defend their freedom.

‘But couldn’t they choose something nourishing and still feel agency?’

Probably not, because this isn’t a food decision but a freedom one. The content of the choice is almost irrelevant, it is the unmanaged act of choosing that is the key.

The trap

The cruelty of this situation is that the foods that serve this drive for agency, obviously tend to not be the most nutritious choices - they’re calorie dense, high fat, high salt and / or high sugar. They’re not necessarily optimal for our digestion, they don’t tend to promote a great night’s sleep, they might pair well with alcohol which brings it’s own recovery issues. Which means that Monday starts, and we feel more depleted than we did when we finished on Friday.

The Depletion-Agency Loop:

1. Sustained cognitive depletion makes food the last available lever of genuine agency

2. Using food as the lever deepens the depletion cycle

3. Deeper depletion makes food a more powerful lever

4. Back to step 1.

The right question

This is why so many interventions fail before they start. When the PFC is depleted, it craves certainty - so we sell people exactly that. Here’s a plan, here’s some rules, here’s some comfy structure for you. The brain assumes that the moment it’s in - feeling unstoppable, motivated and ready to change - will persevere forever, because the overwhelmed brain is not good at evaluating long-term consequences. It takes just a few days for life to collide with this plan in a messy-yet-predictable way, and the person to be back at square one.

Adding food rules to a depleted, over-managed life doesn’t break the depletion-agency loop, it takes it deeper and makes it less flexible.

More rules → more cognitive load and more management required → deeper depletion → stronger drive to flex our agency by eating whatever.

So the question isn’t ‘What should I eat on a Friday night?’ but ‘What is making Friday night the only moment I feel like I have a genuine choice?’

You can’t ‘do this, not that’ your way out of this trap, as that will only further the problem. Restoring agency means pushing ourselves further up the list of priorities, ‘putting our own oxygen mask first’, and other trite well-being cliches. That might mean blocking two hours midweek that nobody can put a meeting in. It might mean leaving your phone in another room after 6pm so your brain stops running surveillance.

It might mean a Wednesday evening where you do something with your hands - cook, climb, draw, build - something with no KPIs and no right answer. It might mean quitting the thing you keep doing out of obligation that quietly costs you more than you admit. This can reduce the psychological pressure that lands on food at 7pm by restoring genuine, unconstrained choice somewhere else in the week first.

Until we have an understanding of how our modern lives drive overwhelm and stress, how that alters the function of the brain, and how the altered brain interacts with the modern food environment? The brain will continue to do exactly what it evolved to do.

The assumption that we just need more knowledge to produce improved nutrition behaviour and health outcomes is as pervasive as it is wrong. I actually think a few years ago this didn’t matter all that much, because the information just bounced off people - they didn’t really register it, and it didn’t influence their behaviour.

I think that’s changed though - I don’t know if that change is because of the sheer weight of the information. Or that it’s almost exclusively delivered via an app that’s optimised for keeping attention, consumed on a device that is tailor made to maximise our time on it.

Probably both.

When we combine the sheer volume of information with the finding that only 2% of TikTok nutrition content aligns with public health guidelines, it’s easy to see how we are both drowning in nutrition information, and not finding that it’s helping.

What frustrates me further, is the vast majority of the information is obsessing over what the food should be - the level of processing, which macronutrient matters most, the calorie content, the impact on blood sugar, or the gut - now, it’s all about fibre content.

But all of this discourse misses an important step that happens before all of this.

The Wrong Variable

The nutrition conversation – from ultra-processed food debates to macronutrient values to clean eating to gut microbiome optimisation – is almost entirely oriented around the properties of food. What’s in it, the impact on the body - and my least favourite phrase, ‘healthy swaps’

Which leaves me wondering about a question that always bounces around in my brain, but has either been lost in the deluge of nutrition information, or was maybe never part of the conversation to begin with;

Did we forget that eating food is a behaviour?

I argued recently that this startling omission in the debate around food is a consequence of who is having the nutrition conversations in the mainstream. These conversations are predominantly from people who are not nutritionists, and therefore have never worked 1-1 with someone on behaviour change around their nutrition. Or they are nutritionists, but they’ve books out that are about fibre - not about changing behaviour. So everything they’re discussing is about the properties of food, not why we eat them.

For me? I think the behaviour side is both more interesting, but also a more impactful conversation to have if we want to change behaviour.

Yes biscuits are made to be easier to eat - but what state is the person in when they reach for them? What happened in the six hours before they opened the cupboard?

What were they actually looking for?

Increasingly, I have clients who can talk in detail about additives, and what they’re for. They know of the existence of the gut-brain axis, why RCTs are important in nutrition and what the different types of fibre are and where to find them.

They still couldn’t tell you (or themselves) why they ate an entire packet of biscuits at 9pm on a Tuesday.

We’re obsessed with what people eat. We spend almost no time looking at why.

Food Is a Vehicle, Not a Destination

For lots of people, they crave the state change that food delivers for them, as much as they crave the food itself.

James Clear articulates this in Atomic Habits - the habit is a vehicle, never the destination. The person reaching for biscuits at 9pm isn’t craving sugar, even if that’s how they feel. They’re reaching for 15 minutes where they don’t have to think about anything else. When your brain is after something that reliably delivers sensation in an otherwise flat evening, food is the best option - it’s a source of reward at the end of a day that offered little.

Food is the cheapest, fastest, most socially acceptable, lowest-friction tool for emotional regulation that most people have access to.

The vehicle is interchangeable. For the same person across the lifespan, the vehicle might change from crisps to wine, the emotion that triggers how they feel might move from frustration to worry. But the function of the behaviour itself hasn’t varied. One study suggested that 1 in 2 knowledge workers engaged in emotional eating on a weekly basis, another found over half of office workers reported eating ‘junk food’ in direct response to workplace stress.

Stress and palatable food both release endogenous opioids – the relief is physiological. This is also why I think the ‘food addiction’ framing misses the point slightly, as people squabble over whether we are addicted to sugar, or high fat, or a combination of the two - whereas I think it’s more likely that if an addiction is present, it’s an addiction to eating - to the feeling that we get from eating, or to what eating gives us - comfort, numbing, agency.

It could almost be framed as function addiction. And the function is entirely rational given the context people are operating in.

Is Branding the Smoking Gun

If this sounds speculative, consider who has spent the most money figuring it out. Food companies don’t market on nutritional properties. It’s not even that common for them to market on taste at all - they market on emotional function, on what the food will do to how you feel, rather than to your body.

KitKat and Snickers positioned food as ways to take a break, or to change their emotional state to a more socially acceptable one. McDonalds adverts are always of cute family moments like taking grandad out for a burger, not the reality of stumbling into the restaurant half cut at 1am to shovel in something to mop up the copious amounts of premium lager you’ve just consumed.

Snacking prevalence among adults rose significantly from the 70s to the early 2000s, and it’s hard to imagine that was because people became more hungry, or because the foods got so much more addictive - the most likely explanation is an industry that became exceptionally good at matching products to emotional states and embedding that association in culture.

Their marketing budgets are a multi-billion-pound annual confirmation of the mechanism. If food properties were the primary driver, they’d advertise and compete on taste. They don’t.

A Lab Answer to a Lived Question

And yet – the most frequently cited evidence that ‘the food itself is the problem’ comes from research that strips out the mechanism entirely. Kevin Hall’s NIH metabolic ward study is rigorous, genuinely important work. Participants ate approximately 500 more calories per day on an ultra-processed diet. It’s the most-cited piece of evidence in the UPF conversation.

What it couldn’t measure: the decision to go to the shop. What state you were in when you reached for something. What the six hours before that moment looked like. Whether the food was serving as reward, escape, or the one domain of the day where you actually felt some control.

Hall answered: ‘Do people eat more of this food when it’s handed to them in a controlled environment?’ The answer seems to be yes.

That is not the question that matters for the person eating a takeaway at 9pm on a Tuesday after six meetings, a commute, and a day that demanded everything. Studies show that we eat more when stressed by cognitive tasks like remembering 7 numbers at one time - it’s almost impossible to quantify the impact of chronic life stress on our food choices, but it’s certainly not possible to do so in a metabolic ward with no emotional context.

The question that almost nobody in nutrition is asking: Why did you go looking for it?

Agency, Numbing, and the Behaviours Nobody Names

When researchers have actually asked that question, the answers are rarely about taste.

A 2015 study found that a major driver of junk food consumption among unemployed young people wasn’t depression or cost – it was agency. When people feel controlled, directionless, with limited ownership over their days, making ‘bad’ food choices becomes one of the few available domains of autonomous decision-making. 63% of survey respondents in related research agreed: they sometimes do things they know aren’t good for them just to feel in control.

Eating ‘well’ is, for many people, yet another domain where someone is telling them what to do. The choosing is the important bit, the food is just the vehicle for the choice. Which is why I think content like ‘healthy swaps for your baked beans’ and other privilege nonsense don’t land - because they don’t solve a problem for someone.

If the driver is emotional and contextual, then so is the intervention. Maybe the most radical thing the nutrition industry could do right now isn’t produce better information, but to produce better questions.

Steering people away from only asking ‘What should I eat’, but getting them to think ‘When you don’t eat how you know you should, what led to those decisions’.

Someone I spoke with last week tried to improve their nutrition, to match the focus they had on increasing their training.

They mentioned that they were thinking of increasing their protein intake. However, they then read that too much protein wasn’t necessarily the best idea for their health. Plus, they heard that carbs were going to help with their performance, so they shifted to looking into more carbohydrates, and how they could improve their intake.

But then they were told that they shouldn’t eat too many carbohydrates because it makes them gain weight, would cause spikes in blood sugar and insulin, and would actually make them perform worse.

So they came to me completely stuck, afraid to commit to anything because everything they were going to try and change was invalidated within seconds via social media and advice online. That isn’t an edge case, this is just nothing new.

This is the norm for people now.

What we assume happens

The model that nutrition advice operates on looks something like this:

New research emerges → Experts update their recommendations → People adjust their eating → Gradual improvement over time

It’s a rational model. It assumes we’re all optimising machines, calmly recalibrating based on the latest evidence.

It also makes an interesting assumption that people disseminating information on social media are doing so because it’s evidence-based, or that they’ve even considered that there is evidence

Or, even more cynically - That they’re even trying to help people in the first place.

Here’s what actually happens:

Social media is an attention game → Influencers create fear around a certain type of food or eating, to drive attention → People try and follow all the different advice → Whiplash, then paralysis → No change at all

The assumption is that each piece of new information that people receive, helps them to fine-tune their approach slightly. The reality is that each reversal teaches them their previous efforts were wrong.

So they stop making efforts.

Why this creates paralysis, not optimisation

The reason why this way of approaching information leads to paralysis in the first place. There are three different mechanisms at play:

Trust works like a bank account.

Every time advice conflicts, making a withdrawal from the trust account. Carbohydrates are bad, then they’re good, then they’re bad again. Protein is good, no it’s killing us, no it is good, no we don’t need protein-containing foods, no supplements are bad.

Eventually the account hits zero. At that point, even genuinely good advice gets ignored. I think a lot of nutritionists are missing is that the current surge in interest around fibre and, ‘Oh no, we need to be increasing our fibre intakes, not enough people hit that fibre target’ is true, but it either leads to ‘fibremaxxing’ (or other weird practices), or paralysis,. Paralysis happens because there’s no trust left in what people should do - We are trying to withdraw from an account that is completely empty.

People are thinking - ‘I’ve heard it all before - Why would this time be different?’

Binary framing creates winner-take-all thinking.

Either the advice and information, or the criticism and the ‘stay away from this’, advice - it’s always completely binary. There is no framing that allows for good enough. So when someone learns the food they’ve been prioritised and it’s now bad, they don’t think, “I’ll moderate it.” They’ll think, “I’ve got this wrong again, I need to completely stop eating this.”

Learned helplessness is a rational response.

When we repeatedly try and do something and all we get is information that we are doing the wrong thing, the logical move is eventually to give up because no matter what we try, we can’t win.

When the brain engages in this, it quickly realises that’s not a great use of resources.

The person stuck between protein and carbs isn’t indecisive, they’ve just become aware that whatever they choose, it’s not going to be right. Their action leads to invalidation, and at least inaction protects them from being wrong again.

The harder acknowledgment

People say that scientists need to make their mind up about what’s good and what’s bad, and that’s nonsense.

Because science hasn’t changed a great deal over the past few years, and it’s not the scientists that are communicating things to us anyway. What is happening is how it’s getting communicated (or ignored) as the things are being communicated.

Scientists changing their minds is not a problem at all - the problem is that scientists are having absolutely no say, and instead you’re getting someone on social media saying, ‘eating this is killing you and your family.’

What would actually help

The constant frustration I have, not only with the industry, but with the people who are actually working to try and improve it; is that they design information and advice for attention rather than for what would help make humans change.

They think that platforms like social media are designed for attention. Therefore, they need to grab attention by being more controversial, when actually there are better ways. It just takes a bit more work and is a bit harder.

We need to think about context. We need to think about showing people how to think about their food and their information and what they need to know, rather than trying to out-shout other people.

Even the people who do know what they’re on about on social media are just shouting, ‘This person’s an idiot, you should listen to me instead,” which, amusingly, is exactly what someone who didn’t know what they’re on about would say to persuade you.

So it’s still impossible for the user to actually determine who knows what they’re on about and who’s telling them lies.

It’s down to giving people permission to just be good enough. I obviously want people to eat healthy. That is my job. That is my goal. But I don’t want people to be perfect or feel like they need to be perfect or wonder why they can’t be perfect because all that does is make them not eat as well.

What I told the person who asked

You’re not confused because you’re bad at this, the way the game is currently played is set up to make you feel more confused, it’s designed to move the target.

Every time you tried something, you were doing exactly what you were supposed to do. The problem isn’t that you couldn’t stick with it. The problem is that ‘it’ kept changing.

The question isn’t ‘What should I eat and avoid eating?’

The question is ‘What does eating well enough look like for my actual life - regardless of what the next headline says?’

Because here’s what I know for sure: the person who eats pretty well most of the time and doesn’t stress about it?

Will always be better off than the person who chases perfect, and becomes so paralysed by conflicting advice that they stop trying altogether.

Good enough isn’t ‘settling for less’, it’s actually a radical decision to do what’s best for you in 2026.

If you are someone who really tries to meal prep their food, this situation might sound familiar to you.

You’ve weighed all your food out on a Sunday, you’ve portioned it into identical containers, you did the things you were supposed to do, and it worked for the whole week.The next week you did it again, and it worked again.

Then by week three, you were starting to get a little bit fed up. You did it, but there were a couple of times where you decided to have something else rather than the meal you’d prepped, and it stayed in the freezer or went sad in the fridge.

Then by week four, you blew it up.

Not a small ‘I’m just going to have a takeaway instead of this,’ you did a full demolition job where you had three days of eating like someone who had given up on the idea that they would have a tomorrow.

If you’ve been here before, you probably already have a story about why that happened.

You lack discipline, you get complacent, you self-sabotage.

I’ve heard this story thousands of times, and I’m not sure that I believe it.

What I think happens to people is their world goes really, really quiet

And they don’t like it.

The world that stopped speaking

The sociologist Hartmut Rosa has a theory about modern life that I have been thinking about for a while now.

Rosa argues that the driving force of modernity is making the world available: controllable, predictable, optimised. We spent centuries building systems to remove uncertainty from human existence (which makes sense because humans really don’t like uncertainty.)

So we regulate the temperature in our rooms, we schedule our sleep and track it on an app, we weigh out our food and review the macronutrient content of it every single day. We’re more in control of our environment than any generation in history.

But that control comes at a cost. When we control everything, the world stops speaking to us.

We lose what he calls resonance; this sense that life is a dialogue, not a monologue. That the world can surprise us, challenge us, move us in ways we didn’t plan for. A resonant experience is one where you are genuinely affected by something outside of yourself, and where the outcome isn’t predetermined. A controlled experience is one where you’ve already decided how it should go and you are simply executing.

For so long now, we’ve optimised for the second, and we are starting to feel suffocated by it.

What does a mute life feel like?

Think about your meal prep container: chicken, rice, broccoli, weighed, measured, the same as yesterday’s, identical to tomorrow’s. It’s fine from a nutrition perspective, optimal perhaps. It might hit your macros, it might give you the right micronutrients, it might be exactly what online personal trainers are telling you that you should eat.

It’s also mute.

It offers no resonance, no surprise, no dialogue, no intrigue, no interest, nothing. You already know exactly what it will taste like before you open it. You already know exactly how it’s going to smell before you open it. You know how you’ll feel eating it.

There is nothing for you to discover.

Compare that to a meal you didn’t plan: a restaurant that someone’s recommended, a recipe that you’ve tried on a whim, something your mum made that you hadn’t eaten in years that you’ve tried to replicate. Those meals speak to you. They create an experience you could not have predicted.

Your meal prep container doesn’t leave you a great deal. It’s a binary, logistical approach to food. It’s reducing your relationship with food to administration, which we’ve been told is what we should be doing.

The trap of total control

Where it becomes a problem is that the same industry that sold you the mute meal, also sold you the belief that you can engineer your way out of any of your problems.

There’s an app for sleep, an app for steps, an app for macros, a wearable for stress, recovery, heart rate variability, readiness. Everything is trackable if you want it to be, which means that everything is controllable…

Which means that everything is your fault.

Didn’t lose weight? You’ve tracked wrong. Still tired? You’ve optimised wrong. Binge on a Thursday? You had the data in the app. What excuse do you have?

I call this the burden of agency.

When you believe you control everything, you become responsible for everything. There’s no room for circumstance, psychology, no room for life just sometimes happening.

Every failure has a guilty party, and it’s you. It’s the ‘Where there’s a blame, there’s a claim’ mindset from 20 years ago, applied to your food.

Research from the Health and Safety Executive shows that 25% of UK workers feel their job has negatively impacted their mental health. Among those with excessive workload, that rises to 69%. We’re already cognitively depleted before we even think about food, and the wellness industry is begging us to try and apply even more control.

No pleasure, no mercy

So if we add all of this up, we’ve been sold a version of healthy eating that requires us to remove everything that makes eating feel like anything at all. Spontaneity, surprise, resonance all have to be excluded.

And you’ve been told you have total control over the outcome, which means when it inevitably fails, which in my experience of working with thousands of people it does, that’s also on you.

So there’s no pleasure in your life whatsoever, there’s no mercy when it goes wrong, just you, your Tupperware, and faux-accountability.

And then we wonder why people blow it all up and sabotage.

Sabotage as a protection mechanism

Although I won’t dive into the whole science of self-sabotage right now, we can view it as a protection mechanism from our brain, which then helps us make total sense of why we do it.

When we fall off plan that was technically working, we are trying to make our mute world speak again. Our brain is protecting us from the chronic boredom and misery that that way of life has produced for us. It is your psyche screaming for resonance, for something that feels like anything, for a meal that finally talks back to you.

I’ve worked with people who, before they met me, had done everything right. The numbers were moving and their plan was working for them, and yet they still blew it up - because they designed every ounce of joy, intrigue, and randomness out of their food, thinking that’s what control required. It made them more miserable.

So they pushed back, they fell off, they binged, they became more miserable. It’s not because there’s something inherently wrong with those people, it’s because of the way that they went about trying to change.

What does this actually mean for you?

I’m not saying that prepping your meals is bad or evil. I’m not saying that tracking doesn’t work, and I’m not saying that this happens to every single person who does any of the behaviours that I’ve already mentioned.

I’m saying that if it’s something you struggle with, consider whether conflating control with health has worked for you. They’re not the same thing. A life with no room for spontaneity isn’t disciplined; it is emotionally impoverished, and it is going to feel that way until you do something about it.

A relationship with food that leaves no space for surprise, pleasure, or genuine experience isn’t heroic because of clean eating; it’s an emotional starvation.

So consider whether the question isn’t, ‘Why do I keep self-sabotaging?’ and whether the question is, ‘What would a plan look like that I wouldn’t need to escape from?’

There’s a well-documented phenomenon in gambling research that highlights an uncomfortable truth about human behaviour. Games with faster speeds of play are consistently preferred and rated as more exciting by all gamblers. Problem gamblers show particular attention to rapid wagering.

The faster the game, the tighter the grip it has on them.

Machine gambling creates what researchers call ‘the zone’ - a dissociative state where the cybernetic loop between player and machine becomes so tight that speed itself becomes the objective, not winning. Gamblers increase betting speed until individual risks blur into continuous momentum. The outcome of any single bet becomes irrelevant. What matters is maintaining the flow. Gamblers even admit that they lose hands they would have won when playing poker, because they start to optimise for speed and continuous action, instead of winning. The doing becomes the reward, completely decoupled from any outcome.

Yet, when gamblers are forced to pause for just five seconds between events, problem gamblers don’t persist any longer than non-problem gamblers. The dissociative state is fragile. It requires unbroken momentum to sustain itself. Introduce a gap - even a small one - and the spell breaks.

Not to compare well-being to addiction, but I do think there’s some really interesting parallels in how we’re now being told to ‘switch off’. The social mediafication of well-being means that every facet of looking after oneself is now up for optimisation, every part of your self-care is an opportunity to signal just how fucking wellness you are.

I think about what ‘recovery’ looks like in wellness culture. It’s doing. Ice baths at 5am. Saunas. Low intensity steady state exercise. Specific nutrition ‘protocols’. These practices get framed as confronting discomfort, building resilience, training mental toughness, optimising recovery, changing the nervous system.

But it’s all doing. Which is exactly what the attraction of these behaviours is.

An ice bath is three to five minutes where you’re fully occupied with sensation. No room for an unstructured moment. No confrontation with whatever you might be avoiding. You emerge feeling like you’ve accomplished something because you endured something.

This is a substitution, not a confrontation. Trading the harder discomfort - unstructured presence with yourself - for an easier one: an uncomfortable physical sensation, but one with a clear endpoint. The ice bath looks like facing difficulty, but it’s actually a socially acceptable way to avoid the difficulty that stillness would surface.

The wellness culture also handily provides the justification. It’s ‘nervous system optimisation’. In fact, the language of optimisation makes our avoidance invisible, even virtuous. The person who sits quietly for twenty minutes is doing nothing (and is by extension, lazy.) The person who sits in freezing water for three minutes is doing ‘the work’.

But they’re solving the same problem as the person who fills every gap with podcasts, who can’t sit in a waiting room without a phone, who needs background noise to fall asleep. The ice bath enthusiast just gets more credit for it.

Well-being has become a verb, not a noun.

And the gambling research suggests something darker - it’s not that people prefer doing, to stillness - it’s that continuous doing creates a dissociative state that prevents access to whatever stillness would reveal. The zone isn’t a side effect - it’s the point. It’s stopping us from having to pause and confront how we’re actually feeling, or even why we feel the need to always be ‘on’.

When someone builds an entire wellness routine around high-stimulus activities - cold exposure, intense exercise, elaborate nutrition protocols - are they building resilience? Or are they building an elaborate infrastructure for avoiding themselves? The ‘optimisation argument’ makes the question impossible to ask.

How can someone doing hard things every morning be running away from anything?

We’ve mistaken resilience as the ability to withstand self-imposed hardship, when often it’s the capacity to be present without any sort of intensity, or to allow external intensity in without blocking it out. To sit in an unstructured moment without reaching for stimulus. To let discomfort surface without immediately managing it.

The five-second pause that breaks the gambler’s trance would break many wellness routines too. Not because the activities aren’t beneficial - a lot of them are, a lot of the time - but because the structure serves the same function as the slot machine’s endless spin; continuous momentum that prevents reflection. Our inability to pause creates the ‘always on’ mentality that undermines us at mealtimes - where that pause becomes essential for intentional choice, intentional eating, intentional stopping.

If you’re like the majority of the population, you will chalk this up as a ‘discipline’ or ‘motivation’ problem. If you’re particularly self-critical, you might bemoan your ‘laziness’ or ‘greediness’.

But most people won’t step back and truly think about WHY they’ve chosen another episode doom-eating late at night, despite it being evident that there’s not really any need for food.

You probably didn’t even choose. You used the biscuits to cope with - or shut off from - the stress and overwhelm from your working day and more generally your modern life.

Modern living is grabbing hold of our headspace, tightening it’s grip and leaving us either using food to cope with the overwhelm, or as a small source of joy in an otherwise hectic life. Research demonstrates that 25% of UK workers (approximately 8.5 million people) feel their job has harmed their mental health, with 69% of those with excessive workloads reporting negative mental health impacts.

The modern workplace has created an ‘always-on’ culture where 44% of UK workers feel pressure to appear continuously available online.

To top it off, when you inevitably turn to food as a means of getting through the mental and physical fatigue, society has convinced you that that’s your fault. And between the systemic forces and the societal focus on individual responsibility, they’re creating a stress loop that occurs indefinitely.

Here’s a simple 3-step example of how this works.

Step 1: Modern life makes overeating likely

Our current working leads to what I would describe as ‘cognitive corrosion’.

Mindless hours plugged in online. Burnout, overwhelm, stress. Nothing so serious as to seek help or diagnosis, but certainly an overarching feeling of mental exhaustion.

Most people don’t know how to work in a way that isn’t incredibly draining. Plus, they don’t have coping mechanisms for the stress that builds throughout the day. So they turn to food. Not because of discipline or willpower but because that’s what they’ve always done when their brain feels full.

Being plugged in 24/7 is just grabbing the dial in your brain and turning it up several notches. Your capacity to think about food - let alone make careful choices about it - evaporates.

The people who struggle with all-or-nothing eating often have incredibly busy brains. For some people, they’ve always had that busy brain. For others, it’s a recent phenomenon, a requirement to keep up with work, parenthood, house, family, friends, socials, trying to exercise.

When you try to change food in that environment, there’s no headspace left to think about it properly.

Step 2: Society convinces you it’s all your fault

Here’s the cruel bit: society has spent decades hammering home the personal responsibility message.

Your food choices are supposedly about individual motivation, discipline, ‘wanting it bad enough’, ‘caring about your health’. This messaging might have been reinforced by parents, partners, or just your own self-talk over the years. It’s incredibly difficult to shake.

So now, every time you eat ‘something bad’, you feel guilt or shame. Not because the behaviour is actually harmful - you’re not committing mass genocide, you’re eating some Hobnobs - but because you’ve been taught it represents a moral failing.

‘Great. I’ll add me failing with food AGAIN to the list of things to worry about.’

Step 3: The indefinite loop

This is where it gets messy.

The overwhelm of feeling personally responsible - of feeling ‘a little bit shit’ that you can’t stay on top of your food choices - doesn’t happen in isolation.

It stacks on top of your current overwhelm and stress from everything else in your life.

More stress makes you reach for food to cope.

More food to cope creates more guilt.

More guilt creates more stress.

More stress...

See where this goes?

This drives eating for comfort. Or, more commonly, it drives the ‘fuck it, I’m no good at this, I may as well just eat whatever’ mentality.

Which creates more guilt and shame, which drives more stress, which drives...

Unchecked, this loop can run indefinitely.

The real work

Until we solve for headspace and coping mechanisms as well as food choices, you’re always going to struggle. The scale of cognitive overload is staggering: 36% of workers report cognitive weariness, 32% experience emotional exhaustion, and 44% report physical fatigue - a 38% increase post-pandemic.

Not from a lack of discipline, but a system that is all about ‘fixing’ the individual, whilst ignoring the forces that are actively working against them.

The overwhelm isn’t inevitable, the guilt isn’t deserved and the loop isn’t permanent. But you can’t think your way out of it by white-knuckling through another meal plan, or ‘working harder’ or ‘trying to be good’

The question isn’t ‘Why can’t I stick to this?’

The question is ‘What needs to change so sticking to this becomes possible

‘Have a break, have a KitKat’

JWT’s Donald Gilles wrote these words in 1957, as part of a genius campaign.

Rowntree’s had observed factory workers taking short breaks with chocolate bars in the 1920s. Instead of selling chocolate as a treat, they positioned it as functionally necessary for breaks themselves.

The genius was associating their product with the natural human need for breaks during work, then making the product inseparable from that need. The campaign initially reflected ‘elevenses’ - the 11am tea break common to British factories - but expanded to become culturally synonymous with any abbreviation of daily tasks.

Mars followed two years later with ‘A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play’ - running that campaign for 37 years. Not a treat, but fuel for life. Essential nourishment for daily activities.

This is situational marketing at its finest:

Identify a natural human need (rest, breaks, rhythm).

Insert your product as the solution.

Wait.

The prevalence of ‘snacking’

The data shows it worked.

In the US, snacking prevalence increased from 71% to 97% between 1977 and 2006.

Snacks went from 18% to 24% of total daily calories.

By 2007-2008, 90% of US adults were snacking daily.

Before the 1960s, snacking between meals was relatively uncommon.

An account from one Australian woman recalls:

‘In the 1970s the ads for snacks, such as the ‘Milky Bar Kid’ or ‘A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play’... although how this ‘help’ was achieved by a sugar-laden snack, with arguable nutritional benefits and enough sugar to make rest only effective when the sugar-rush finished, is difficult to fathom.’

Someone from the UK observed:

“I am from the post-war generation and can distinctly remember when you were at the dinner table you had to eat everything that was on the plate... We had three meals a day and rarely were we allowed to eat between meals. Snacks were not thought of - in fact, it was just the opposite.”

Snacks are relatively new as a concept, and they’ve been pushed forward by brands to target a key part of our human physiology - the afternoon dip.

The afternoon dip

Your brain feels foggy at 2pm. Your focus drifts.

You’re even aware that you’re not necessarily hungry, but you reach for chocolate because you know you lack ‘energy’

The afternoon dip is actually biological, and occurs whether we’ve had lunch or not.

There’s some individual variation in this, but most people experience two natural alertness drops every 24 hours, one between 2-4am when we’re asleep, and another between 1-3pm when we’re at work feeling like shit.

The food industry identified this natural human biological rhythms and behaviour, then inserted their products as solutions to problems that weren’t actually problems.

People are aware of their snacking issue at this time, that they struggle to stay away from chocolate, biscuits, sweets. But they’re also conscious that they want to make sure they don’t get this afternoon dip and therefore they want to know what healthy snacks they can turn to instead.

If we need sugar to avoid this afternoon dip and to have more energy, then where can we get it from?

The food = energy myth

Obviously to some extent food does provide energy, but it provides energy in a ‘This is what is needed to allow the body to perform normal body functions’ kinda way. Respiration, muscle maintenance, bone turnover, immune function, etc. It does not provide energy in a, ‘I’ve just had a double espresso’ kinda way.

The ‘food gives us short-term energy’ trope is a myth. The belief that sugar causes hyperactivity was scientifically debunked over 30 years ago, and has been disproven since. In fact, a 2019 review found that not only did sugar not improve mood, but it actually increased fatigue from 0-30 minutes after consumption, and decreased alertness from 31-60 minutes after consumption.

Interestingly, parents who believe sugar affects behaviour are more likely to perceive their children as hyperactive when they think their child has consumed sugar, even when the child’s had a placebo. I think we see this in adults as well, in that they tell us that, ‘Oh yeah, this gives me a boost’, when it doesn’t - but the belief that it does is what’s actually giving them any sort of relief.

So what is actually happening with our afternoon snack?

What is actually happening in this scenario is this.

We have worked from 9am-2pm, often without a break at lunch.

And this is really tiring.

Your brain does not work for five hours non-stop at the same capacity as when it starts.

So we feel crap.

And what sugar does is it momentarily makes us feel good. It takes away some of that feeling and distracts us from, ‘I feel really shit’.

And then when we get back into work, we still probably feel the same, but we haven’t got the distraction, which is why we end up feeling worse afterwards.

What we’ve believed to be a sugar high than a sugar crash is really just,

‘I was feeling bad before, I distracted myself from feeling bad, the distraction went, and now I still feel bad.’

The solution?

To work in a way that lends itself to how our brain works rather than fighting against it.

• Revisiting our work:rest ratios at work.

• Working in something close to 60-120 minute blocks, with breaks in between (preferably that allow for >5 minutes of movement, even if that is a short walk).

• Time away from our screens

• A filling and nutritious breakfast and lunch before 2pm, so that we’re not reaching peak afternoon slump AND feeling starving

• Changing how we work so that more cognitively demanding work is done when we have more focus, and less demanding work is done during the afternoon slump

A lot of people are like this. They’ve checked their phone 50 times before lunch. They are at work and they’ve context-switched between three different projects, answered 52 emails, sat through two Zoom calls that could have been a message, and in between that, they’ve switched several times from their laptop to their phone back to their laptop.

Yet when all of this happens, we get to 18:00, we make a sub-optimal choice with our food for our evening meal (and the rest of the night).

And then we have a fitness industry that drives into us that we have a problem with willpower or we have a wellness industry that blames the ultra-processed food that we’re eating.We have incredibly privileged influencers online telling us we all have the same 24 hours in a day.

They are all pointing at some of the symptoms while missing the underlying problem that people are facing.

In 2025, for the vast majority of people who feel like they know what to do, they just can’t do it. Their problem is a cognitive capacity problem.

It is being unable to free up the headspace to act in a way that we want to, even though we have the best intentions.

So, how does this happen?

We run ourselves like machines

I’ve had hundreds of calls with people from all backgrounds, some of them incredibly successful, who are absolutely baffled at the fact that they cannot run their brain like a machine.

We even speak about ourselves like we’re machines. We use phrases like, ‘I have no bandwidth’, ‘I’ve crashed’. I think that if humans had the ability to turn themselves off and on again to reboot, most people would take it.

The reality is we’re not machines. Machines deliver the same output from nine o’clock till five o’clock. They don’t lose 23 minutes of focus after every single task switch. They don’t experience a 10-point drop in their function from heavy multitasking, which is the equivalent of losing a night’s sleep.

Humans do.

The average adult checks their phone an astonishing 352 times per day. They switch tasks every 10 minutes. They face 160 digital distractions per week. And every time we shift our context, that is an incredible drain on our cognitive reserves.

Not only that, but it’s one of the biggest costs to our economy as a workforce, estimated to cost $450 billion annually. And workers actually lose up to 10% of their year just refocusing after they’ve switched tasks or become distracted.

And then if we also consider how 84% of UK desk workers regularly work overtime and 68% work weekends when not scheduled to.

Even if we did have some physical time left, how are we supposed to have cognitive capacity for deliberate food choices?

To highlight this, let’s look at two examples

The gap between two people’s nutrition isn’t discipline

Example 1

Marie has a nine-to-five job that is hybrid where she works from home three days a week and is at home two days per week.

She works nine to five and as soon as five o’clock comes around, she closes her laptop lid and does not think about work until the following morning.

She has a husband who also works from home, so they take it in turns to handle work, the logistics around the school run and when her husband picks up the children from school she goes from work to the gym or for a run to help her de-stress and compartmentalise the day.

When she comes back she is feeling fresh and ready to tackle the evening.

She makes a meal that is nutritious and enjoyed by all of the family and then helps the kids with their homework before putting them to bed and settling down with a good book until bedtime.

Example 2

Colin also works a nine-to-five, however, he normally starts by 7.30 at the latest to get ahead of all of his emails and communications.

He juggles three projects on his own, which should be supported by another member of staff, but they left and were not replaced. He fields over 150 emails per day and often works until 6.30, 7 o’clock to tick off everything that he’s meant to do.

By the time that he finishes work at seven o’clock, he will put in a ready meal, have a bottle of beer to de-stress, and will have Netflix on in the background while he scrolls on social media until he eventually drags himself to bed at 11 o’clock.

He hasn’t exercised in over a year because he struggles to find the time and the motivation and feels like he needs to have more energy before he can commit to going to the gym.

Between these two people is not willpower, it is cognitive capacity. It’s not about whether they are disciplined or have willpower, it’s that one person never really has to rely on willpower and one person doesn’t have the cognitive capacity to even consider what they should be eating.

This is the capacity gap.

Why nutrition solutions keep failing

The issue that people who are low on cognitive capacity experience is they will try and make food changes. They will try and food prep or eat healthy, remove sugar, increase their protein, add more fibre.

And this might work for a day or two, but over time it requires significant thought, particularly because it’s a new habit that they’ve not really done before. That means that not only are they at their absolute ceiling when it comes to their cognitive capacity, they’re piling things on in the hope that that’s going to make them feel better.

And it doesn’t.

It ends up overwhelming them, which means that they turn to food as a way of coping and then feel guilt, shame, overeat, and then carry on in this cycle.

It can sometimes explain why techniques for emotional eating, such as journaling, mindfulness, eating slowly, don’t work as well for these people because they are being deployed in the context of someone who is really struggling to create mental space. Meal plans and recipe collections don’t really cut it either because they still require a lot of cognitive effort.

You’re asking someone who is running on complete empty to make five more decisions about what ingredients to buy, when to prep them, how to cook them.

The anti-UPF crowd don’t realise that eating these foods is a symptom of this problem, it’s not the problem itself. There are ways that people can change their food habits that have nothing to do with food.

Breaking up the work day with short walks of two to five minutes can help promote blood flow to the brain but also just create space away from work for them to de-stress, decouple from work and to recover.

People hit arbitrary step goals because they’re thinking about the calories expended, but no one is really considering the mental space that is created by walking that actually reduces that energy intake because of the way that it creates cognitive capacity for people.

What this means for behaviour change

Two-thirds of the UK workforce are in desk-based roles. This means they’re constantly context-switching, juggling tasks, and they’re bored out of their mind by endless and needless Zoom calls.

Their cognitive reserves are depleted before they even think about food. And until we manage how busy the brain feels, how many things we’re juggling at once, feeling in charge of our food choices is always going to feel elusive.

So although there is a role for learning more about nutrition (and often unlearning most of what the internet has taught us), nutrition education doesn’t work on its own.

It needs to be combined with:

• Aligning our working day with when our brain is at its best, where possible

• Taking regular breaks and knowing that productivity isn’t time sat in front of a laptop

• Planning and preparing foods in ways that reduce decision fatigue, not add to it

• Using movement throughout the day to provide headspace and reduce overwhelmed overeating instead of using it to burn calories

• Deploying tools for emotional eating alongside addressing the capacity deficit.

In 2025, we should be looking well beyond discipline as a way of solving the way that we eat, particularly when it is actually a capacity problem. We’re optimising for the wrong variable.

The people who you think have more willpower just have more cognitive headroom.

So you need to think about what’s one way that you can lighten yours.

My biggest fear in life is not fulfilling my potential. It scares me more than anything else on this planet, and dwarfs any other common phobias.

How could a tiny money spider – that looks more like a Pixar character than a predator – be anywhere near as terrifying as the prospect of being on this planet for 70-odd years and not making the most of it?

I'm taking mild arachnophobia over crippling existential dread, every single time.

The difficulty with fear of unfulfilled potential? It's not entirely villainous. Some days, my internal drill sergeant demands excellence, and I am able to rise to that challenge. I solve problems like I see off coffee - with alarming ease, followed by moderate-high anxiety. My thoughts race ahead of my actions, leaving me perpetually frustrated with any pace slower than breakneck.

This fear whispers (okay, sometimes screams) that mediocrity is not an option.

It's why I'm drawn to work that matters, why I gamble such a large part of my identity on my work and the ideas I share, and subsequently maybe why sharing on social media can sometimes feel quite anxiety-inducing.

It’s also my biggest saboteur.

Previously, the fear handcuffed me. The thing with the need for perpetual motion, is that when left unchecked - it can mean that you fear starting anything

'What if I get stuck?'

'What if I finish it and it's crap?'

'... What will I do when it's finished?!'

For years, I'd tolerate discomfort like it was a toxic roommate I couldn't evict. Opportunities would knock, and I'd peek through the peephole, then pretend I wasn't home. Whether it was in my career, relationships, businesses, or even my own fitness journey - I became an expert at maintaining the status quo, and not moving an inch outside my comfort bubble.

I'd avoid responsibility, opportunity and unfamiliarity like they were door to door salesmen.

It's something I've done a lot of work on, and I'm now happy to report that I've built systems, found ways and dialled in my brain until it danced to the ‘get it done, then do more’ mantra of my subconscious.

This has led to me doing many more cool things, and building many things that appease both my professional curiosity and my mortgage provider.

However.

The inability to do anything has been replaced with a new, equally insidious tendency.

As soon as I don't feel like I've got something to be moving on? My brain becomes panicked.

I feel unable to sit with myself, switch off or just 'be' (I often laugh at this advice, because of just how alien it feels to me).

This tendency does make weekends where I've 'not got much on' the hardest part of my week - I sit at home, and my brain provides a list of potential activities that I could do.

My brain becomes a never-ending slot machine, spinning through possibilities but never landing on anything real. I'm feeding it my peace of mind, hoping for a purpose that never arrives.

I realise that I'm over 500 words into this piece, and in danger of treading the line between informative and vulnerable with the grace of a drunkard imitating the Cirque de Soleil outside Temple Bar.

The reason I bang on about myself is to highlight a key cycle I find myself stuck in - avoidance.

For now we can forget about where my own particular flavour of avoidance was cooked up, and instead discuss how avoidance can show up in every parts of our lives.

Avoidant behaviour typically emerges as a sophisticated survival mechanism. It's not a character flaw (no matter what my brain tells me), but a protective strategy developed at key parts of our lives.

Avoidance often takes root in childhood, sprouting from unpredictable environments or situations where failure felt catastrophic. It becomes our brain's default survival strategy, whispering that seductive lie: "If you don't try, you can't fail."

The brain, brilliant at pattern recognition, creates a shortcut: uncertainty equals threat, so non-action becomes the safest response.

In nutrition, we see it with repeated failures when it comes to diet. People get scared of trying again, because they've failed before - and each failure cuts slightly deeper.

The wounds of avoidance cut both ways.

There's the external pressure - those well-meaning but piercing questions from friends and family: "I thought you were on a diet?"

But there's also the deeper, internal damage. Each abandoned attempt bleeds into other areas of life, creating a pattern of retreat that feels impossible to break.

I've worked with countless self-identified people pleasers on their relationship with food. These are often highly capable individuals who can recite nutrition facts like a textbook. They've been on every diet imaginable and could probably teach a masterclass on what "should" work. Yet they remain stuck, perpetually puzzled by the gap between their knowledge and their ability to follow through.

Even when they move away from diets, and onto something more sustainable - they seem to self-sabotage, get in their own way and perform nutritional harakiri.

The reason? Avoidance.

Trying something new is scary, sticking with something new is scary, sitting with the scales maybe-moving-maybe-not is scary.

They avoid the fear by retreating to patterns that feel unhelpful, but are actually incredibly comfortable - old diets, old eating patterns, old self-talk.

These people may also struggle to stand up for themselves, to avoid confrontation.

They might avoid other scenarios within their life, for the same reasons.

Fear, begets fear, begets fear.

Which leads me to discuss the solution - action.

When I coach people who present like this, I have to think about what I need and what I value in my own coaches.

I know that I love planning, pontificating and pondering on why I am the way I am

I love to think deeply about why I'm not doing the thing, conclude that I'm only a few things away from doing so.

I resolve to try again in a few days / weeks / months

And repeat this cycle indefinitely.

I need nudging towards little behaviours that move me towards the thing, almost without me knowing.

Right now for me, that's leaving my phone out of my room, leaving it on a different floor at weekends

And actually scheduling in fun things to do at home at the weekend (Spontaneous, I know).

If you're someone who knows you have a tendency to avoid the things that you actually truly really want?

(Presuming you've not avoided the end of this article…)

How small can you start?

How can you almost sneak behaviours past yourself?

It doesn’t really matter how you coax, cajole or convince yourself to get things done.

It doesn’t really matter what benefit you sell yourself on, on any given day.

What does matter? Is that you do it.

Because over time, you begin to build a bank of evidence that you ARE the sort of person who does the thing you want to do

And that’s a great start

Then when you start putting multiple 'things' together?

You shift your whole identity to being someone who DOES what they say they're going to, and becomes who they want to be.

I'm on that journey right now

I've shifted from not doing to doing

I know I need to swing the pendulum back a bit to 'not doing', and being good at doing when I need to, and not doing when I don't need to

I’m confident I’ll get there, with time.

And the way I will get there?

Is by continuing to consistently drop small coins in the wishing well for the person I want to become.

Remember when the most frustrating thing about nutrition advice was those clickbait headlines promising miracle weight loss solutions? You know the ones:

"Lose 10lbs in 10 days with this ONE weird trick!"

"The celebrity-approved method that melts fat while you sleep!"

These are the kinds of headlines that dominated the nutrition space for years.

Us industry professionals would often lament that people were drawn to fad diets because they were "sexier" and more revolutionary than sound nutrition advice.

But something fundamental has changed.

The problem isn't that good nutrition advice isn't sexy enough anymore.

It's that it's not scary enough.

While social media has revolutionised the distribution of evidence-based nutrition content, it's created a disturbing dilemma: content creators must often choose between being genuinely helpful and growing their audience.

The path to virality? Fear.

This may be a false dichotomy to an extent, as there are some excellent people doing both. But even the evidence-based creators who simultaneously have a large audience, increasingly are amassing their following by doing ‘call out’ videos of the people putting out misinformation. It appears to be harder and harder to reach more people with a balanced, considered viewpoint when it comes to nutrition.

And that’s problematic.

It isn’t just that the fear-based nutrition content is often inaccurate and unhelpful. It’s that it is piling more pressure and fear on top of an overwhelmed, frazzled population who are then seeing these crazy nutrition practices as ‘another thing they have to try and carry’

Consider the modern human experience: Most people are already living in a constant state of fight-or-flight. Daily life has become a juggling act of:

• Work deadlines

• Family responsibilities

• Financial pressures

• Relationship maintenance

• Constant news alerts and notifications

The human brain is already scanning for threats all day, every day. Then comes modern nutrition advice:

"This food is KILLING people!"

"The toxins in everyone's kitchen are making them fat!"

"You’re eating the wrong type of yoghurt!"

It's the equivalent of telling someone who's juggling chainsaws that they're doing it wrong

(And that their juggling technique is also probably damaging their gut health.)

This fear-based nutrition advice isn't creating the fight-or-flight response – it's amplifying an existing one. It's throwing petrol on an already raging fire. Brains that are already exhausted from modern life's constant alerts now have one more thing to panic about.

The cycle plays out predictably:

1. A person tries the new scary diet

2. Their overloaded brain can't sustain another source of stress

3. They crash

4. They give up

5. They feel like a failure

6. They turn to food to self-soothe

7. They experience changes in body composition / energy / health that they don’t like, and resolve to change

8. They become primed for the next fear-based solution that promises salvation

("This one weird trick will fix everything!

And unlike the last 37 weird tricks, this one ACTUALLY works!")

Here's the thing: I've watched this play out in real time. Not just on social media feeds, but in the eyes of every client who sits across from me, shoulders tense, voice apologetic, telling me they "just can't get it right." More and more people aren't just confused about nutrition - they're exhausted by it.

This explains why so many people are now bouncing between not just different diets, but between whole diet identities. People are becoming increasingly wed to carnivore, or keto, or ‘gut healing’ or whatever extreme, unhelpful fear-driven solution is being sold that day.

The irony? While the fundamentals of good nutrition remain largely unchanged, the world around us has transformed dramatically. The challenge isn't teaching people what to eat - it's helping them navigate food choices in an increasingly chaotic environment.

Take ultra-processed foods, nutrition's current boogeyman. People don't typically overeat these foods because they lack information. They reach for them when stressed and overwhelmed. And what creates stress and overwhelm?

The very fear-based messaging aiming to prevent their consumption.

As a nutrition professional watching this transformation of the industry, the concern is growing. The shift from ‘this will help’ to this will harm’ messaging hasn't improved public health – it's just created more anxiety around eating. I don’t believe this does, or will - translate to a meaningful change in people’s nutrition behaviours.

So where does the nutrition industry go from here?

Perhaps it's time to acknowledge that we've lost the plot. That somewhere between the pursuit of optimal health and the business of content creation, something fundamental has been forgotten: food isn't just fuel, it's part of being human. It's connection, culture, comfort, and yes - sometimes it's just lunch.

The solution isn't more fear - it's less noise. Less pressure. Less constant vigilance about what might be secretly destroying people's health. The path forward isn't through more rules or restrictions, but through creating space for people to rebuild trust in their own bodies and decisions.

Good nutrition is devastatingly simple: it shouldn't feel like another full-time job. It shouldn't add to the weight of modern living. And perhaps most importantly, it should never require living in fear of the next meal.

The greatest service nutrition professionals can offer isn't another list of foods to fear - it's permission to step out of the endless cycle of nutritional anxiety altogether.

After 10 years as a nutritionist, I've come to a startling realisation: the biggest obstacle to healthy eating often has nothing to do with food. It's the invisible weight my clients carry before they ever step into my virtual office - a weight that has nothing to do with calories or kilos.

The ‘try hard, find it difficult, overeat, give up’ cycle is not uncommon for people. The fact is that when we start a diet, we put it to the top of the list as a ‘priority’. This feels right in the moment - ‘This goal is important to me, therefore it should come before anything else’.

But this naturally doesn’t last - because as much as the gymfluencers expect it to, and as much as we say it should - Our food (at least in the short-term), does not come before responsibilities like work, parenting, paying bills and the rest of the demands on our energy.

So then we not only stop caring about the ‘diet’ that we had committed to, but we also use food as a crutch to help us deal with the difficult feelings and emotions. All of the above is just one example of why the answer rarely lies in changing what's in our pantry. The real solution isn't found in another diet book or meal plan. Instead, it's buried beneath layers of expectations, commitments, and the invisible weight we carry around every day.

The Invisible Backpack

Having worked with thousands of people over the past decade, I've noticed something that rarely makes it into nutrition research: we're all carrying around an invisible backpack of "shoulds" and expectations.

Our switched-on, plugged-in lifestyles don't just create busy schedules - they create the sensation that dropping any single ball could bring the whole structure crashing down. These are the stories that play on repeat in our minds, the endless loop of expectations we've internalised.

I'm not immune to this weight. As a nutritionist, the voice in my head insists I should be the perfect example: eating flawlessly, training consistently, running multiple successful businesses, while being an ever-present partner, son, and friend. The irony isn't lost on me that I've built a career helping others manage their relationship with food, while sometimes struggling with these same pressures myself.

I share these personal examples because I know that so many people I work with have their own versions in their head, and will relate to that. I also know that for them, just as for me - these things aren't true. I'm doing fine. Some would argue more than fine.

But try telling my brain that.

Because these aren't just thoughts - These are M&S thoughts, with hand-reared internalised beliefs, served in a rich gravy of our own unrealistic expectations of ourselves.

They're weights we carry, each one adding another pound to that invisible backpack we haul around every day.

The Hierarchy of Priorities

When that invisible backpack gets too heavy, our brains make ruthless decisions about what to keep and what to drop. It's survival mode dressed in business casual: the deadline that's due tomorrow wins over the meal prep that would be "nice to do." The urgent email gets answered while the healthy lunch gets replaced by whatever's quickest.

It's not that we don't care about our nutrition - it's that our brains are masterful at triaging immediate threats. Missing a work deadline has instant consequences. Disappointing family creates immediate emotional pain. But choosing takeout over a home-cooked meal? That's a problem that feels distant and abstract, even as it compounds day after day.

This isn't about willpower or knowledge. It's about cognitive bandwidth. When we're carrying too much, something has to give - and our food choices often bear the brunt of that mental overflow.

When Science Catches Up to Experience

Studies show that working more than 40 hours per week strongly correlates with perceived "lack of time" for healthy eating. But if we were to analyse it more deeply, it's not actually about time. People working long hours often do have the minutes in their day for meal preparation - what they lack is mental bandwidth.

This distinction becomes even clearer in burnout research. Women experiencing workplace burnout show significantly higher rates of emotional and uncontrolled eating compared to their peers. Even more telling: while those without burnout could gradually improve their eating habits over time, those carrying the weight of burnout showed almost no improvement, regardless of their nutritional knowledge or intentions.

The path to sustainable eating habits often has less to do with what's on our plates and more to do with what's on our minds.

The Weight of the Solution

After a decade of watching this pattern repeat, I've come to a somewhat uncomfortable conclusion for someone in my profession: the solution to our eating habits might not be found in nutrition advice at all. The fitness industry's relentless focus on meal plans and macros misses something fundamental about human nature - we don't make food choices in a vacuum, we make them under the weight of everything else we're carrying.

This isn't just philosophical musing. It has practical implications for how we think about nutrition and weight management. When clients come to me looking for meal plans, I often find myself first asking about their invisible backpack - what expectations are they hauling around? What "shoulds" are they struggling under?

The irony isn't lost on me that in writing about the weight of expectations, I risk adding yet another "should" to people's mental load. But perhaps that's exactly why this perspective matters: it gives us permission to acknowledge that sometimes, the healthiest choice isn't adding another healthy habit - it's learning to set down some of the weight we're already carrying.

In the end, maybe that's the most valuable insight from my years of practice: sustainable change rarely comes from piling more onto our already full plates. It comes from understanding that our relationship with food is inextricably linked to the weight of everything else we're carrying.

Most people think about food and our lives like a one-way street

Some people eat badly, and feel bad

Why?

'Greed', 'laziness', 'don't know what to do', 'not motivated'

But our food and our lives have a bidirectional relationship.

Yes, the way we eat affects our energy levels and how we engage with the world.

But just as critically, the way we live dictates how we eat.

It’s not just that ultra-processed foods are easier to grab or that our food environment has shifted. That’s a factor, but it’s rarely the whole story.

Stress. Overwhelm. Boredom.

The need for reward, joy, or even meaning.

Our food habits are symptoms of deeper voids in our lives.

When we address just the food

“I’ll eat less chocolate”

We focus on the symptom, not the problem.

Treating bullet wounds with sticking plasters

Imagine you’ve been shot in the leg. Blood is pouring out. The pain is searing. Something has to be done - fast.

A medic arrives, nods seriously, and hands you…

a Peppa Pig plaster.

“That should sort it,” they say. Then they leave.

Absurd, right?

Yet this is what the “war on nutrition” looks like.

We’re treating bullet wounds with sticking plasters, addressing symptoms while ignoring the causes of the damage.

The Battlefield of Modern Life

In today’s world, there are shooters everywhere.

Some bombard us with deprecating mortar shells, aimed squarely at our self-worth:

‘You’re not enough’

‘Look like this to be worth anything’,

'Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’

Others spray us with machine-gun fire of fearmongering:

• Bread? Poison.

• Dairy? Dangerous.

• Breakfast cereal? A “silent killer.”

Caught in this endless assault, we’re left overwhelmed and vulnerable.

Our chaotic lives - demanding jobs, emotional strains, and lack of self-care - make us easy targets.

We want to take care of ourselves and be healthy.

But the confusion and exhaustion leave us unsure where to start.

It becomes unbearable.

Eventually, we’re hit.

A stray bullet wounds us, and the bleeding starts.

The wound?

Our relationship with food.

We cut out foods, obsess over packaging, and label certain ingredients as “bad.”

We overeat, restrict, feel guilty, and repeat the cycle.

The bleeding costs us time, energy, and emotional well-being.

It rarely heals.

Treatment Options

There are different ways to treat our wounds, but they’re not equally effective.

Sticking Plasters

Superficial solutions we’re constantly sold

High-protein recipes

Calorie calculators

Rigid meal plans

Detoxes

30-day transformations.

Some of these changes help, but none address the real issue.

Bandages

Learning to cook healthier meals.

Joining a gym.

Starting to journal.

These positive actions slow the bleeding, but don’t fix the damage.

Surgery

The real solution comes from looking at life holistically - addressing the root cause.

This means learning to cope with stress, control overwhelm, and find joy and challenge in life outside of work.

Reducing the need to turn to food for comfort, reward, or meaning.

The role I play?

Me?

I’m the peacemaker

I work with a lot of young athletes aged 16–21 to stop the war before it reaches them. Prevention is always better than the cure.

But I also work a lot with people like you, already on the frontlines.

The best I can do is arm you with the tools to navigate the battlefield, avoid future wounds, and repair the ones you’ve endured.

When it comes to feeling in control of our nutrition, there are 2 'Cs'.

One is the elusive thing that we strive for…

One is the frustrating thing we get stuck in…

Consistency vs Cycles

'I just need to be more consistent'

This is the number one thing that I hear from people in consultations

And it always comes as a slight surprise to them, when I completely disagree.

Two reasons why:

1) There's not really any such thing as consistency

Certainly not as a behaviour that we can 'do'

Consistency is doing things we want to do, more often than not

(I say more often than not because it's not about always doing the right thing - that's called perfection, which doesn't exist. And the unsuccessful pursuit of perfection often is the reason people 'fall off the wagon')

So if we can't achieve 'consistency', what can we do?

2) Overcome individual barriers and obstacles

When we boil down consistency, it's just about making lots and lots of correct 'micro choices'

So instead of looking at 'how can I be more consistent'

We need to think 'How can I try and shift the needle when it comes to making the right decision more often than not?'

With food alone, we make 226 decisions per day on average

(What should I have for this meal? Should I get something from home or the shop?Shall I order a takeaway? What side should I have? What am I trying to achieve? How hungry am I? How should I cook it? etc etc)

That feels like a LOT to change

But you've got to think that most of the time we make pretty standard, healthful choices

The times where we don't?

There are themes

Patterns that we notice about why we're not able to stick to the plan that we set out at the start of the day, week, month or 'diet'

It could be 'I always find myself turning to food at 2:30pm when I'm bored at work - I can't stay out of the biscuit cupboard!'

Or maybe 'I get too hungry, so much so that I'll see off a whole family sized bag of crisps while the dinner is on, then eat all my dinner!'

Even 'I'm good until I sit in front of the TV at 8pm - then one chocolate becomes two, and before you know it I've eaten a whole bag of Minstrels and moved on to the ice cream'.

These are Cycles of Behaviour that most people will resonate with, and be desperate to change.

These cycles persist not through lack of desire or effort when changing

But through making the wrong changes

The reason I call them 'Cycles of Hell'

Is that they're normally unintentionally self-inflicted

And they're normally self-perpetuating

3 common Cycles of Hell

1) Hunger - Restrict Cycle

2) The All or Nothing Cycle

3) Uncertainty / Control Cycle

1) Hunger - Restrict Cycle

In this cycle, the individual will start off with 'good intentions'

Limited / no breakfast, just coffee

Small salad for lunch

But then hunger + boredom = snacks

Chocolate and biscuits at 2pm/3pm

Get home and snack again before Dinner

Normal dinner

But the floodgates really open

This cycle then feeds itself because it's completed with frustration, anger and resolving to 'be good' the next day

More restriction, more hunger

More extreme food in the evening

The restriction feeds the cycle, the cycle feeds the desire for restriction

2) All or Nothing Cycle

This is a version of the same cycle, but on a larger scale

Start a new 'plan'

Plan is very rigid and restrictive

It's impossible to stick to it for more than a week or two

Eventually falls apart, leads to fk it mode

Which then feeds into the belief that 'I'm an all or nothing person'

Therefore meaning that;

a) The next diet will be harder, because it's starting with a limiting belief

b) The next plan will definitely already begin with something more restrictive than the first.

3) Uncertainty / Control Cycle

Our brain does not like uncertainty

It's uncomfortable

We're also well trained at avoiding discomfort - any emotion that doesn't feel good

And we're glued to our TV, smart phones

Or off to the fridge

Given the amount of uncertainty we face in our lives - with work, career, family

Not to mention the bombardment of media due to smartphones

Which means for the first time in our lives we're plugged into despair and misery 24/7, even if that pain is on the other side of the world

In the moment, we turn to food to provide certainty in how we feel

'I eat this - I feel good' is the surest bet we can face in modern life

Interestingly, we also see this search for certainty within diets

'I'm doing the things I should be doing, I'm not sure if it's working or not as weight hasn't budged for a week or two'

The certainty of failing in that moment feels better than the uncertainty of not knowing - so we 'self-sabotage'

When we do self-sabotage, we then move away from our goals

Which leaves us thinking 'Will I ever get to X weight / dress size / other goal'

Creating uncertainty, which then...

These are just 3 common Cycles of Hell

There are tonnes of others

Generally?

People are stuck in 3

Instead of trying to change every single one of our 226 food decisions per day, as is often the case

Focusing on the key 3 cycles

And how to stop feeding them?

Would make nutrition much simpler.

Coaching 100s of people in knowledge work jobs over the past 2 years has taught me one thing.

We're overwhelmed.

The context is different

Some people work completely remotely, some hybrid, some back in the office

People have different roles - product, project, content, HR, software, customer services, coaches

Varying levels of management responsibility

Children, no children

Married, in a relationship, single

So if it's not 'a thing' causing the overwhelm

What is it?

Two types of overwhelm in modern knowledge work

Existential Overwhelm

This is the overwhelm that we feel when our life is lacking direction

It might be that we're not sure where we want to go

Or it could be that we do know where we want our life to go - but it isn't there yet.

We've inadvertently built a life that doesn't align with our values, interests, goals

The things that really make us feel alive

This isn't something that happens overnight, or is even intentional

It's often just a series of micro-decisions that we make

A slight adjustment of the rudder of our life-boat that ever so gently steers us off our intended voyage path.

Often these decisions are made with an 'It's ok for now, I won't do this forever it's just a short-term thing'

Yet the uncomfortable truth is that the more of these decisions that we make, and the longer we leave them without change? The harder it is to return to the path that we had dreamed of.

Sound a bit big picture? Well, I did describe it as 'existential overwhelm!'

But the 'symptoms' will be far more familiar

- Regularly feeling 'meh' - not good or bad, just indifferent

- Work dragging out, simple tasks taking much longer to complete

- Sunday dread about Monday work

- Lack of motivation for personal development

- Job(s) we used to find rewarding now feel repetitive

The level of intensity with this feeling will change from person to person, depending on their context

Existential overwhelm also has a bi-directional link to the second type of overwhelm…

Internal Overwhelm

This is what I would describe as having a 'busy head'.

Brain working at 100mph, all of the time

Cognitive engine of a Bugatti Veyron, mental brakes of a golf buggy.

We feel like there are one million different things we need to do

Everyone in our life is asking for something, telling us something, piling our proverbial plate with high-calorie problems

The sort we feel compelled to consume, but we know don't make us feel good

Most people have a basic way of managing their lives

To-do lists, calendars, notes on rogue pieces of kitchen roll

Basic stuff.

This can be ok, if the stream of inputs is akin to a couple of raindrops gently falling from a window sill

But when the life admin comes thick and fast, resembling a fast flowing river with a strong undercurrent?

Trying to manage that without the right systems is like trying to stop the water by holding out a sieve.

We’re not catching much.

This then means that our brain is relied upon to handle all of the information that we're supposed to be managing at one time

Given that the role of our memory is more about helping us accurately predict the future, than it is about inch perfect recall?

It's inevitable that things fall through the cracks, and we start missing bits

The temporary dam we built with our to-do list and '3 important tasks for the day'

Is not strong enough to stop the flow.

The link between the two

There's often (but not always) a link between the two types of overwhelm, that can go either way.

It's true that we can feel very at peace with the direction we're in, but not manage well day to day

It's also true that we can breeze through the day in complete control, but still not shake the feeling of 'meh'

But often, we exist somewhere on the 'Clarity - Overwhelm' spectrum with both forms.

Our inability to be clear on our direction, act in alignment with our values and understand what might be holding us back from achieving what we want

Means that we get sloppy with managing our day to day tasks, or with the behaviours that can help us manage our energy to get our work done (exercise, sleep, nutrition, stress management)

But also if we are messy in our day to day lives, and struggling to cope with the demands

We don't actually have time to check-in with whether what we're doing aligns with the life we want to chase.

Which can make it easier for those 'micro-decisions' to be taken from a place of stress and overwhelm, rather than intention and clarity.

In future blogs I'll discuss ways that we can help manage our overwhelm

But for now?

Take 10 minutes to consider how you're feeling.

And decide whether any 'mehness' recently is big picture management

Or day-to-day coping.

One of the great misconceptions about behaviour change

Is the idea that we can shame ourselves into making a change

This isn't true

(Certainly not for changes that we want to stick in the long-term)

I often have conversations with people who want to change a variety of behaviours across different well-being and performance areas.

What interests me is that people really struggle to make the connection between the pieces of language that they use.

I'll hear very common 'what I need' statements from people:

- I just need a kick up the arse

- I just need someone to slap things out of my hand / force me to do something

- I just need to be more strict and have more rules

I'll also hear how not doing the things they set out to do

Leads to shame, guilt and self-criticism.

I'm firmly of the belief that until people make the link between these two ways of speaking to ourselves, they're never going to make a change that is sustainable and will last long-term.

They get stuck in The Shame Cycle.

The Shame Cycle, looks a bit like this:

- We set unrealistic expectations of what we should be able to achieve, often based on the pursuit of self-esteem (comparison to where others are at, or how 'good' they are at making the same change)

- We have a limiting belief that we should feel bad if we're not perfect when it comes to sustaining change, because we think that tells us something about our character (That might be that we're lazy, inconsistent, greedy etc. Often things we were told as children)

- We 'fail' once with the change, because changing something new always involves an element or failure (trial and error does require error, after all)

- We feel ashamed that we're not able to make changes, especially because we think that our latest failure is 'proof' that we are all the horrible things we've told ourselves we are. 'See, I told you I was lazy and had no willpower!'

- As health-seeking behaviours are acts of love and self-care, we don't do them consistently because we've spent the previous time period making ourselves feel unworthy of positive thought, feeling or change

- We move further away from our goals, until we get to a point where we feel the need to change again. We start it by being horrible about ourselves 'I hate how I look, how I feel, I live like such a mess', and start the cycle again.

As Brené Brown says, 'Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging'

And that's exactly where we get to when it comes to change

We back ourselves into a shame corner, we feel that intense pain

Unable to act in our own best interests, because we've yet again convinced ourselves we don't deserve it.

The good news?

Is that there is a chance to intervene at each part of the cycle. Things we can do include:

- Setting more realistic expectations

- Challenging our limiting beliefs, and asking ourselves 'Is this definitely true?'

- Acknowledge that failure is part of learning new behaviours

- Be compassionate to ourselves in when struggling with change

- Continue to show up and work on the behaviour, even when we've not managed to change before.

People who feel ashamed when they fail CAN change

But in order to do so, they need to acknowledge that shame probably can't be a big part of that picture.

One question I've been grappling with recently

(More for my own self-development, rather than the development of mankind... That's slightly above my pay grade).

We have access to more information than ever - but are we learning more?

Again, I don't mean to ask 'Are we pushing the limits of human performance?' on a species level.

But your average Joe / Joanne.

Are they learning more?

Developing more?

Having greater insights than before?

Based on what I am seeing in my coaching work, speaking to 30-40+ people per week.

Probably not.

In his brilliant essay, 'Why we stopped making Einsteins', Erik Hoel discussed one of the most depressing facts about humanity this century

We've essentially been handed free access to the entirety of knowledge - and it hasn't triggered a golden age.

You could argue that we have too many sources to learn from now

I agree to an extent that there's certainly informational overwhelm,

There's infinite choice when it comes to what to read, watch and listen to.

As Rory Sutherland reminds us when it comes to marketing - if we give people too many choices, then they sometimes don't make a choice at all.

(There's also the issue of whether the sources we're choosing are actually educating us - or whether they're ultra-processed information)

I would suggest that there's a greater issue contributing to our lack of personal development.

How we use our time.

If we take a step back and think about learning more generally - it requires a few things.

Intelligence itself, is not fixed at birth.

The fire of cognitive development can burn for years, providing it is sustained with the kindling of learning opportunity and the oxygen source that is 'space to process'.

Learning itself involves patience, preparedness and practice - it develops with effort.

There are many theories on what it takes to improve our knowledge and understanding, but there seems to be consensus on some aspects that are important universally.

One is the Generation Effect

Information is better remembered and understood if it's actively created from one's own mind, rather than simply read in a passive way

(A real kick in the teeth for the double speed podcast whilst washing up and chatting to our partner about putting the bin out... brigade).

I also really like Chris Sparks' view, that knowledge is only useful as a force multiplier. Knowledge X Action = Results.

This will be dependent on the type of learning we're doing, but for a lot of people outside of academia, the goal isn't just 'learning to know'

We're learning to improve, which requires us to action our learnings.

We might read a book on leadership, in order to allow us to have difficult conversations with our teams.

We might watch a YouTube video on systems we can use to improve our focus and get more work done.

We could use an app like Duolingo to learn a language to help us on an upcoming work trip.

So we can see that the process of learning, requires time and effort - it has to be intentional and active. It is not enough to passively highlight big bits of text, or copy and paste ideas into a Word document.

Not only does it require active processing, but we then need to cement our learning and develop our own frame of reference. We can do this by intentionally applying what we've discovered to our own context.

We're not currently doing this.

We lack the time

We lack the energy

We lack these things, not because they're not available to us

But because of how we currently use them

(No - I'm not saying it's solely down to any individual writing this.

I'm not saying that we all have the same 24 hours in the day

I AM saying that we don't do a good job of optimising within our constraints).

This is particularly true when we work from home

Many of us tumble out of bed and head immediately to the corporate start line

There's no time for a cognitive warm up, a little brain (and/or body) limbering

Or even to follow Dolly's advice, and pour ourselves a cup of ambition.

People used to spend commuting time listening to podcasts, reading books or daydreaming

(the diffuse mode of the brain being truly excellent for creative problem solving)

We now start work an hour earlier than before, to 'get ahead'

We are glued to the screen for 10 hours per day, pausing only to check the time and realise "it's 1:30pm already?!"

Before shovelling in a sandwich with one hand, whilst using our other hand to 'just circle back to the previous email'

A large part of the day is spent working synchronously with others on video calls and meetings - our brain kidnapped by thoughts like;

'How many years does Colin need to learn how to unmute on Teams',

'Didn't Tim have that soup stain on his shirt yesterday, too?'

'Do I always look this tired'

When we DO try and learn - it has to be on life's terms, not ours.

Podcasts are put on double speed, or used for background noise.

Books are read before bed only, and even then,

'Only fiction because I struggle to concentrate on other stuff before bed'.

We engage with information, but we don't learn anything from it

While this might not be making us stupid - it's certainly not making us any brighter.

Scientists pointed out the promise of neuroplasticity in adults, and our ability to learn as we age

(previously presumed to be a child-only phenomenon)

Before society swiftly robbed us of this glorious opportunity to mould our brains.

By normalising soul-destroying knowledge work jobs

Where time spent replying to Slack messages and email, is valued over time spent looking out the window, or at a book.

If this sounds like a cynical, broad generalisation?

Congrats, you eagle-eyed critic. That's what it is.

But I see it in the people I coach - and it's not through a lack of desire, motivation or even effort.

Companies need to understand that their people want to learn.

They value career progression, education and development. They're just not finding the time, energy and attention to do so.

We have power to change as individuals, too.

It might be trying to push the boundaries on how long we need to respond to things for, to maximise time spent without distraction.

It could be ignoring smart phones after 7pm, and picking up a book.

Taking time between waking up and working to get outside for a morning walk with a podcast on

Planning 3-5 key tasks for the day and ensuring they get done, reducing overwhelm and cognitive fatigue.

Fitting movement in to our day, rather than hoping we remember / feel like it when we're finished with work

When we start to become intentional with our time, it does three things:

It frees up time to do the things that give us more energy - better nutrition, better movement, better sleep habits

It also frees up time for more of the things that give us life. Hobbies, connections, play

Most importantly, for this article - it gives us space to learn.

Not just time for taking in information

But time for our brain to pull apart this information, knead it like cerebal Play-Doh

Before squishing it together to form original insight

I'll end with the obvious

If we want to maximise learning and personal development?

We need to design our lives to prioritise it.

Share Charlie’s Substack

Candles in the bath

Yoga

Meditation

Grounding

No, this isn't;

'Name activities Charlie could do that would make his two older brothers piss themselves laughing at him'

These are all things that we're told by the fluffy Instagram community, are self-care.

(It's worth noting that although I describe these people as 'fluffy'

They're no worse than the Instagram bros

Who might see self-care as another leg day and an extra minute in the cold plunge).

I take issue with modern-day self-care prescriptions, for a couple of reasons.

The first reason, is it kind of feels very Westernised.

Not in the sense that it's different to Eastern self-care recommendations

(I couldn't even claim to know what they'd be, or if they'd differ).

But I think self-care recommendations are kind of dished out like medication.

'You're feeling fatigued? Swap out your current treatment of an evening run, for a light yoga session to reduce tiredness'

'Patient has been feeling stress for 2 weeks, therefore the appropriate dose of 15 minutes in a hot bath was prescribed'

'Having reported with signs of acute overwhelm. 10 minutes of mindfulness meditation was administered.'

It all feels very clinical.

You've presented in this way, the treatment involves a course of a self-care activity.

Your symptoms improve, you go on your way.

It's all very structured, very organised, very 'everything put into boxes'.

Which when considering the complexity of the human condition

The incomprehensible number of physical, mental and social variables that can contribute to us feeling 'a bit meh'.

Generic recommendations of 'things to do', don't really acknowledge the true messyness of people.

That's not me suggesting these activities are NOT self-care - for a lot of people, they absolutely are!

But it's the generic recommendation of these things that doesn't quite sit right.

The other thing that doesn't feel quite right

Is the assumption that self-care is just about doing nice things that can help us feel better when we feel shit.

In her book 'How to Do the Work', Nicole LePera discusses how the phrase self-care has got a bad rep recently

Primarily because of the above - it's been commodified and used as an example of self-indulgence.

When it's always occurred to me that one of the best ways we can care for ourselves, at times.

Is to take care of the problem that's making us feel shit in the first place.

(Which when you think of it like this, does not sound or feel very self-indulgent).

I'll admit this will completely depend on what you feel is driving your need for self-care.

If you're grieving the loss of a loved one, or you're struggling with a situation at work.

It's not in your control, so actually just finding time to do things that make you feel better is a really solid suggestion.

But sometimes - if you know the problem?

Dealing with the problem is the answer.

Last week, for example.

I was slightly overwhelmed / bemused / frustrated at the amount of work I had on

(Don't tell me to complain to my boss, as he's actually writing this article - and he will NOT be happy to hear complaints...)

You know what doing yoga, meditation or having a bath would have done?

Made me feel worse.

It would have given me space to ruminate on all the open loops I had open in my head, that were contributing to my brain itch.

What did I do?

I didn't do the gym session that I planned to do.

I worked solidly for the whole day, later than I normally would.

Until my workload was under better control

And I had a clear plan and priority list for everything that was on the horizon over the next few weeks.

(Including consciously putting back something I'd been planning to do for a while for work).

Is that traditional self-care?

Maybe not.

Did it help me care for myself?

Fuck yeah.

I felt so much better and more in charge of things

It helped more than any amount of time standing in the grass with my shoes off could have done.

This is very much in line with Kristen Neff's concept of 'Fierce Self-Compassion'

Where self-compassion feels a bit soft, fluffy and 'woo' for some people (it isn't)

Fierce self-compassion is about giving yourself what you need.

And at that time? I needed to work.

Which brings me on to point 3.

Self-care can be counter intuitive.

It can be things that actually wouldn't be great for us long-term, if continued.

Or would 'objectively' not be the healthiest choice.

I gave the example of how actually skipping the gym and working for longer was an act of self-care for me, on a given day.

But on another day - when I was avoiding the gym because I didn't want to go, and then using work as an excuse for doing that?

It wouldn't be self-care.

It goes to show that self-care activities aren't this objective shopping list of things you need to do.

It's a context-dependent way of being, with the fundamental goal of doing what's best for you.

A fantastic example of this came from my client Lisa this week.

Who is feeling a bit tired this week

Because she didn't prioritise sleep as much as she normally would have done for a couple of days.

The reason being that she wanted to see aurora borealis in the UK.

So she sat outside with friends, drank hot tea and watched the Northern Lights.

Now, traditional self-care would prioritise sleep.

But how can you tell me that doing something like this with people you care about, isn't self-care?

What isn't necessarily the best self-care choice from an objective perspective.

Or what would be the best for you if you repeated it over the long-term.

Can sometimes be the best self-care activity in a given moment, to help you with where you're at there and then.

I'll finish by admitting that the whole thread of the article intentionally) highlights one more mistake we make with self-care.

Everything I've mentioned is very 'self-care as a response to problems'

But if we wait until we feel like crap before 'doing self-care'

That's actually not self-care.

In the same way that calling out the RAC to look at your broken down car

Isn't you looking after your car,

If the reason it's broken down is that you ignored the check engine light for 3 weeks.

To summarise, self-care is what you and your body need in a given moment.

As is always the case when it comes to health and well-being, one person's medicine is another person's poison.

Exercise is phenomenal self-care - we're taking care of our physical, mental and sometimes social health.

But I've worked with athletes who are chronic undereaters and overexercisers

Where 'just a quick run around the block' is about as far from self-care as they could get.

Taking time away from work to recharge and relax is often sound self-care advice.

But I've worked with individuals who are 4 hours of solid, uninterrupted work away from peace of mind.

Those people should probably see blocking out everything and doing some work, as self-care.

We need to consider that the devil is in the detail, but also in the dose.

A nice break with a good cup of coffee is good for the soul.

Unless I'm only breaking from work to have my 6th cup of caffeine, because I momentarily lost the ability to hear colours, and I want to bring that back.

I will leave you with a final thought.

Knowing what the right self-care is, and what dose we require?

Is reliant on us having a good relationship with ourselves and our body.

People who don't have this - they ruminate over negative thoughts about themselves, their achievements or their own body?

Find self-care tricky.

They might, as in the example above, 'exercise for self-care' - but that self-care is about making their body smaller, not doing what is best for it.

They might be 'having a well-deserved break from work'

But actually just procrastinating because fear that if they actually put their work out - then people will realise what a fraud they are.

Fundamentally, self-care is about understanding our own needs

It's being able to see through our own bullshit, and be open and honest about what we really need.

Even if that isn't an Instagrammable shopping list of activities

And the very thing we need, doesn't fit with societal norms of self-care.

After all, the clue is in the name 'self-care'.

For a long time I've been interested in coaching, and interpretations of the word coaching

I think that's led in part by working in the fitness world and the corporate world

Where the term 'coaching' is used very loosely.

In the fitness industry - 'coaching' often means receiving a workout plan and some macro numbers

And then having to muddle through, troubleshooting any issues with minimal support.

In the corporate world, coaching seems to be the word for shoehorning clients into a 'process'

Typically that's a very narrow, rigid set of steps that solved the coach's own problems way back when.

Before they had a lightbulb moment, and packaged those steps up as a solution for everyone else's woes (as well as a boost for their bank account.)

In reality, coaching is neither of these things.

A definition that resonates with me

(following an extensive 37 second Google research)

'To help a person change in the way they wish and helping them go in the direction they want to go.'

I feel like this acknowledges the fluidity and unique nature of coaching.

Yes, we all have our ways of thinking about things, and our own way of translating those to the individual in front of us.

It's also true that if we're working in fields with an evidence-base

(for me, nutrition and cognitive performance both have good evidence on best practice)

Then there's going to be an element of,

'These are things that would be good for you, almost regardless of your circumstances'

But it's the individualisation to the person in front of us, that is truly what coaching is about.

In this article, I want to talk about the less discussed, and (in my view) more challenging part of the coaching relationship.

Being coached.

Being the coachee requires an openness

A level of self-awareness

Almost a removal of ego

To be able to sit in front of another human being and lay bare your insecurities and insufficiencies.

It's something I've previously taken for granted as a coach, but I now regularly remind myself of when working with people.

People are messy.

However, people don't like being messy.

The brain likes certainty, categories and things in their boxes.

It doesn't like uncertainty, chaos and disorder.

In my experience, it also doesn't like showing other people the mess.

Rather than being open about the fact that we are all complicated, messy, clueless beings

Bumbling along trying to make sense of the world.

We shy away from this reality (and from sharing this with anyone).

We post-rationalise reasons why 'Now isn't the right time to get some help'.

'Work is a bit busy'

'I've got a few things coming up, maybe in a few months'

'I've got that holiday in July, I'll start after that'

An example would be a common mindset when it comes to nutrition

'Life is just really busy at the moment. I just need things to quiet down for 12 weeks so that I can really focus and commit to making changes'

When I hear this, I do feel duty-bound to remind people that 'quieting down' doesn't happen in our life from 14 onwards.

Maybe until about 70

(Even then, there's no guarantee that life will 'slow down' - most people this age report feeling the exact opposite!)

Plus, it's not when we feel we've got 'everything together' that change is hard - it's when it feels like life is happening to us, rather than for us.

These are the times our changes are truly 'stress-tested'

This is why I'm convinced that the times where life is really lifeing, is the BEST time to have a coach for the things we're struggling with.

There's an element of,

'Well if I can do these things now, when life is chaos? That's pretty good evidence to myself that I'll be able to do them in the future, when life gets a bit quieter.’

Although I think there's certainly an element whereby people do want a bit more 'space' to make change.

They (maybe fairly) feel like they would like a bit more time and capacity to focus on making changes, as they feel this would be easier

I do also think there's something more uncomfortable at play here.

We're having to show the messy side of ourselves to people - and we don't like that.

I always think that being coached is kind of like having someone around your house.

You don't have any issue with people coming around when you've done the cleaning and tidying, and everything looks and is where it should be.

It's the times where your place is cluttered, messy and unclean - that's when we don't want to show anyone.

I think this highlights the intimacy that is required for coaching.

In the house analogy, coaches aren't just friends.

We have lots of friends who we'd show around our house, but we'd probably tidy for first.

The coaching relationship is almost more intimate than this.

Coaches aren't just people who'd you'd accept into your house.

They're that friend you're so open with, that you know you could not only invite them over when it's messy

But they'll help you tidy up, too.

There's another way that coaches are like really good friends

They should be happy to tell you that your house is a mess, and it would help if you sorted your shit out.

This is hard for you, as the coachee - for two reasons:

1) You need to make sure you've not got a 'Yes man', who's just telling you what you want to hear

2) You have to be open to criticism and constructive feedback, as part of the process.

I must admit, I've been dreadful at both in the past.

I've been the 'Yes man', afraid to challenge clients on their behaviours, beliefs or commitment to their own goals

I've worked with 'Yes men', feeling like them affirming my thoughts was getting me somewhere

(when in reality, if my thoughts were that good, I wouldn't be struggling with the problem I wanted help with!)

In my past (and present), I've also struggled with criticism, too.

Both of these points are things I've had to work on.

I am now much better at separating criticism of my work, or external things

And not seeing it as criticism of me

I'm also better at challenging other people to challenge me on things

(I've even previously had instances where I've asked someone a question to check whether they're happy to say 'No' to me, to ensure that they're happy to challenge me.)

Being coached (not parented or babysat, coached) is tough.

So I thought I'd share my top 8 things that we can to ensure we're ready to be coached.

As well as tips on finding the right coach.

Be Open to Feedback

It's crucial that we are able to listen to criticism.

It's also key that we can detach what that criticism says about what we did, from what it means about us as people.

Feedback from a coach that we didn't follow a plan, build the right habits, focus on the right things

Isn't a character assassination - it's a useful way of getting us to think about what we need to do to move towards our goals

There's certainly some responsibility for the coach to provide feedback in the right way, but also for us to interpret that in the right way.

Set Clear Goals

Knowing what you want to achieve from coaching is incredibly important.

This doesn't (and shouldn't!) be just about metrics - I want to lose X amount of weight, run 10km in Y time

Or be able to work Z amount of hours before I feel tired.

It's more than that - it's thinking about how you to want to be, what your values are - and how working with a coach on parts of your life will align with these things.

If I see someone who values having energy to play with their kids

But they start working with a bodybuilding coach, and eating 1200kcals per day?

That's not aligned.

Communicate Effectively

There's certainly a tendency for people to only want to discuss certain things with a coach, or not be completely honest about their behaviour.

If we go back to our house analogy - this is like just inviting them into the one clean room in the house

When in reality you've got all of the stuff from that room, stuffed into a cupboard with a door that's ready to burst!

You've decided to work with your coach for a reason - you like how they think, you admire their ability to coach, you know they can help you with the things you're struggling with.

Don't hamstring them by not giving them the full picture.

As I'll often say to people when they start working with me, 'I can only coach what I see'. So if you don't communicate that you're struggling, or need help? I can't do my job.

Stay Committed

The person you work with will have a process, strategy or roadmap for how they work with people.

You didn't hire the coach to tell them what you think you should do, the changes you think you should make, or what's worked for you before.

Yes, coaching is a collaboration - but in order to collaborate, you have to let them have input.

So listen to what they have to say, put the strategies they've given you into place, and give them time and patience to allow them to succeed.

I didn't used to be a good coachee for this reason. I didn't apply myself properly to what I was told to do, and I didn't give it time to work.

Now, if I'm working with someone?

I've got a mindset where I almost want to prove to them that what they're saying doesn't work.

So I commit fully to doing everything they say for 3 months

If it doesn't work? I can say if I've tried and truly given it my all?

And if it DOES work? I've got great results.

Be open to the idea that change is possible

This maybe sounds a tad obvious - especially if you've signed up and paid someone to help you.

But I've certainly experienced people asking for coaching, without actually believing that they can change.

Again - it's something I've done in the past. Asked for support with my business, but deep down harbouring a belief that it was beyond help.

I'm not saying you have to be convinced you'll definitely achieve a certain goal

Or even that you will.

You do, however - need to be at least curious and open to the idea that you could change something.

If you're adamant you can't?

The best coach in the world won't be able to help you, if you're not willing to change.

Check Credentials and Experience

This one isn't a particularly common thing in the fitness industry.

But checking that the person who is working with you, is both qualified and experienced...

(And the next bit is important...)

To a level that is aligned with the level of your goal.

If you're new to health and fitness, and you just want to be shown the basics of how machines work and some exercises to get you started?

Someone who's just got their Personal Training qualification with little experience will be able to help you!

But if you're looking to change your food habits, and you want not just to improve your nutrition knowledge but also to stop some self-sabotaging behaviours that get in your way?

Consider whether someone who's done an 8 week course is going to be able to support you.

That's not to say that they won't!

But I think back to my own practice at points in my career and education.

Out of my degree, out of my masters, in my first job, my first year of business and then where I am now, 8 years on.

I wouldn't have known how to even start working with the clients I do now, even 4-5 years ago.

So relevant qualification AND expertise / experience is important.

Once you lose trust that the person in front of you can help you - it's really difficult to get that back.

Ensure There Is Chemistry

You don't have to be the bestest pals.

BUT - I do think 'Could I go for a coffee / beer with this person' is a really nice guideline for choosing a coach.

Although this theory is not validated in the science - I do think there's something to be said for this.

It means that you're comfortable with this person's views, communication style, approach

Them as a person.

I've made really good friends through my work as a coach.

But I've also worked with loads of people who I haven't stayed in touch with, but would have happily been able to sit and chat to them for an hour.

If you feel like this would be a struggle with the person you want to work with, then consider reassessing your choice.

Assess Their Approach and Philosophy

Make sure their coaching philosophy aligns with your values and goals.

If I wanted to improve my general health and fitness, to be able to run around with my kids and have more energy at work?

I wouldn't work with a bodybuilding coach.

Similarly, if I wanted to build a multi-billion SAAS company?

I'm probably not setting up appointments with a careers counsellor.

It's obvious stuff, but it's one of the biggest mistakes that I see people make when choosing a coach.

Their transformations being impressive - does not mean that you should want that transformation, or that they're right for you.

Don't be put off!

In short - there's a lot of information on why coaching is challenging, and how helping people to change their behaviour is tough.

But I think less is said about the difficulties of opening ourselves up to being coached.

Now - the above is not meant to dissuade anyone reading it from actually engaging in coaching.

Having the right coach help us at the right time with the right problem, can be absolutely transformative.

But for the best results, it pays to take a little bit of time before engaging to ensure that we're ready to be coached.

And that we've found the right person.

I hope these steps will help you get started.