Sarah: Okay. Yes. If you call delivering nutrition segments on Channel 7 nationwide famous. Yes, I am. I would be, then. I’ve been on Channel 7 since July 2018. I’m resident nutritionist at Weekend Sunrise, and I also appear on a regular basis at Sunrise presenting four-minute nutrition segments, showcasing studies… We do lots of stuff. Whatever’s trending, weight loss, detoxing, lots of stuff. So we always come up with different content every week. We have these fabulous podiums and, yeah, it’s great. I look at my role at Channel 7 as an open consultation, so it’s a fabulous platform to get some really great nutritional information out to the general public in all parts of the country. And I enjoy presenting. So yeah, it’s great. And they’re all lovely out there too at Channel 7 so… Yes.

Andrew: That’s great. So it’s not like “Morning Wars.”

Sarah: No. Well, not for me. No, and definitely not there. They’re all really lovely and it’s great. I mean, I do research, so I’ll research a lot of the content that I wanna showcase and what I feel is important and what I feel that’s trending as well as…yeah, definitely, like I mentioned, some recent studies.

Andrew: Well, today we’re gonna be talking about body composition, what that’s got to do with weight management, weight loss. But also we’re gonna be discovering a little bit of a new way of doing things, a little bit of a flare on a sort of on an old concept. So I think first we have to talk about what is healthy weight loss?

Sarah: Look, this is something… I mean, I’ve been…obviously, one of my areas of expertise as a practitioner is healthy weight loss. And so much of what I talk about and what I believe in in the nutrition space is taking care of the body with healthy weight loss. And I think my motivator in obviously writing my book and doing a few other things is the fact that I disagree with rapid weight loss. And to me, healthy weight loss is about preserving body fluid. It’s about preserving muscle mass, but it’s about actually reducing fat off the body. So it’s finding the dietary guidelines to be able to reduce fat without doing anything hardcore, like keto diet and that kind of stuff.

So, I mean, there is an extended version to this answer, and I think, you know, when you look at people dieting over periods of time when they yoyo diet and they end up with osteosarcopenic obesity with all that kind of muscle loss, and that’s the kind of stuff which to me is unhealthy dieting. So yeah, to me, healthy dieting is getting rid of the inflammatory condition that is adipose tissue in abundance on the human body, but, at the same time, really taking care of the human body.

Andrew: I’ve spoken to Professor Dom D’Agostino about the keto diet, keto nutrition, and there’s a few things that he speaks about that seems to be different from the standard take of keto diet. And that is that, you know, everybody’s got their own level is one. So experts in this who are really committed to the keto nutrition, they find their niche with regards to how many carbs they can have. But, you know, I do also take that, you know, the original keto diet is now the modified keto diet because the original keto diet was just so hard to stick to. You have to be a nutritionist to work it properly.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So look, the keto diet, it’s the…that classic keto diet that you’re talking about, that was like 90% fats and that is about 6% proteins and I think it’s about 4% carbohydrate. Whilst it does actually reduce body fat, what I find with those kind of diets and what I’ve seen clinically is I get patients who have been doing those diets for around two years and they come in with really elevated cholesterol. So you’ve got all of these things that whilst it does work with getting fat off people, you get people left with heart disease. And that’s the problem with that classic keto diet. And that’s what I disagree with.

I don’t think anyone should do those kind of diets for any more than six months if they do, do them, but it’s that elevated hormones that happen with that, that support of fibre in the gut and it’s definitely the elevated cholesterol, which is what I thought about a lot when I came out with the 10:10 diet, was to really factor in all those kind of things that was the keto diet and what I wanted to do differently from it. And just in reference to carbohydrates…

Andrew: So you also…

Sarah: I’m sorry. Yeah, just back on that note about carbohydrates, I too do agree that every single person will have a different level of carbohydrate that will put them into a ketogenic state. Now, there is a guideline that says it’s around 100, under 100 grams a day. What I kind of see is around 30 to 50 grams a day if carbohydrates. So in my program, I allow for fruit in my program and I allow some legumes in my program and I’ll look at things like chia seeds. And I look at getting carbohydrates in a different way so it’s still healthy weight loss.

But, yeah, I agree, everyone has a different point where they can feel themselves going in… There is no one size fits all, but my general guideline would be between 30 and 50 grams of carbohydrate a day. I find that when people sit around 100, I don’t think they will be in ketosis. And all I can say is, and I can only answer that honestly from what I’ve seen in my own clinic when I do body composition and I look at the program that I’ve given my patients and I can see whether or not they’re in ketosis or not just by the readings. And what I do find is it’s around 30 to 50 grams a day. But it’s also finding…

Andrew: Okay, got you.

Sarah: …you know, those healthy carbohydrates. Yes.

Andrew: Yeah. And just to solidify, if you like cement, the word healthy weight loss, you know, I’ve spoken to too many people…indeed, I lost a friend years ago to bulimia. And so you mentioned rapid weight loss, but there’s also the risk of being addicted to the weight loss paradigm, the dieting paradigm, and that sort of thing. So do you help to lead people through this about healthy foods and, you know, eating to a healthy body composition?

Sarah: Absolutely. I talk about this all the time. Look, that whole thing about rapid weight loss, people do get addicted to the feeling of being in a ketogenic state, I see that. They get results, they get that clarity of mind that they’re in because they’ve removed common allergens like gluten and things like that from these keto diets. So they do have sharper thinking. They do feel better. They do have more energy because they’re effectively dining in and they’re getting all the fat energy as well as they’re getting their external energy too.

I don’t find that when people are in a ketogenic state, it can lead to binging because they generally if they’re truly in ketosis, they won’t be hungry. I do find that that binging can come with other diets where there is a higher allowance of carbohydrate and a higher amount of glucose going, it will increase more of ghrelin, and then that can lead more to binging.

But look, the whole bulimia thing is an eating disorder is devastating. I do treat a lot of teenage girls who I appeal to as a practitioner because of my media role. And one of the first things I do with all of them is make sure they have breakfast and protein with each meal, just to teach them healthy times of eating. But also, I mean, my biggest belief is, I believe in getting weight off people and I believe in keeping it off for life. I wanna get people off that yoyo and the merry go around of being on weight loss programs. I had to learn this from a very young age.

So I used to be in the modelling industry in my early 20s and I saw people have incredibly unhealthy relationships with food. Now, being Greek, growing up on a Mediterranean diet, I have never had an unhealthy relationship with food, but I’ve always eaten till I was 80% full. And I’ve always had respect for my body. And I’ve always had breakfast, I’ve always had carbohydrates, I’ve never really eaten a lot at nighttime. And I’ve got a healthy relationship with food and that’s what I’m teaching people.

First part is to get the weight off, but the whole way through the weight loss journey, I talk to people about nutritional deficiencies, I talk to them about a holistic approach to health and wellness, to appreciation of food, to understanding how the human body works, all that interplay that goes on for that holistic result and just getting complex into the human body and how it works. And I talk to my patients about ghrelin levels and leptin levels. And I talk to them about sleep. I talk to them about emotional relationships with food. I’ll do role play with them when they come in and they give themselves a food title. I’m an emotional eater, I’m a boredom eater, I’m a stress eater. We do a bit of psychology around that.

And one of my biggest things I find in the weight loss journey as just as a practitioner…and I find this fascinating in initial consultations because patients will walk in and they will sit there and they will give themselves a title. And I always say to people, “You love to give yourself a title of doing something or a behaviour because you are giving yourself permission to do it.” So I’m about breaking down all of those kind of associations people have with food and relationships with food, calling people out on that so that when they do move forward in life and they do get to their goal weight, and they’re doing maintenance, they’re not going to emotional, bored, or stress eat.

And so when people say to me…or they might even go, “I’m a foodie,” and I’ll say back to them, “Well, I’d love to call myself a foodie. I’d love to call myself an emotional eater or a boredom eater because I’ve given myself permission.” But the other one thing I find interesting about the psychology in weight loss is when people just go…they’ll say things like, “I’m really fatigued. And because of the fatigue, I really need to have some peanut butter on toast at 4:00.” And I’ll say, “Well, no, your cortisol levels have dipped at 4:00. You really don’t need that. But instead of saying, I need that, I often get people to say, I’m gonna own it that I fancy it. Instead of saying, it’s because of the fatigue. Do you know what I mean with that one? That part of…

Andrew: Yeah.

Sarah: That part of not owning relationships with food. So yes, developing that healthy mindset on the weight loss journey and understanding that is so important for keeping weight off for life. Because you can do a program and if you don’t break down behaviour and mentor in those associations, it’s not a long-term solution.

Andrew: There’s really good research on this. The successful diets that keep weight off for longer in all instances work on the psychology or…in all instances. And those that don’t never are successful. You mentioned something there about the tiredness. And you and I were speaking off-camera earlier about, you know, this age of COVID 19 and lockdowns, and now we are seeing PTSI, I’m gonna call it, not PTSD. Thank you, Petrea King. So it’s posttraumatic stress injury, something that can be recovered from. But…

Sarah: Oh, yes.

Andrew: But, you know, people have got heightened cortisol, extended stress levels, things like that. You talk about tiredness and you talk about time, the two biggest roadblocks to weight loss. What are the other ones that you come across, the major ones that people have hurdles with?

Sarah: Oh, okay. So sleep, sleep, lack of sleep. I mean, I know where you mentioned tiredness, but I’m just gonna talk about one of the biggest ones I see is people who don’t sleep that seven to eight hours a night. And if you look at the studies and research, people that do get that healthy sleep cycle will end up fat burning a lot more than those who do the four to six hours even they’ll end up burning…they get that cortisol and they’ll end up dumping more muscle for energy. And that’s that kind of thing.

Other roadblocks are…oh, I see lots of roadblocks. So another roadblock can be your family members and relationships. That’s an interesting one that people don’t really think of. Yes. So partners, feeding kids, being a mother and someone who organizes meals is an interesting one. So talking to people about… I mean, how many times I can’t tell you where I’ve heard people say, “Look, it’s just so hard at night to feed the kids or wait for the husband to come home and have dinner.” Partners are an interesting one. And this is probably something unusual, but there’s the women that, like, wanna lose the weight, but there’s the husband that comes home that wants the wife to drink wine with him every night because that’s what they do as a couple. But so you’ve got this to deal with. So that’s another interesting roadblock.

Menstrual cycle. Yeah, I’m gonna bring that one in. That can be a roadblock because, you know, the patient can just be doing so well, they’re just humming away nicely then, of course, the progesterone hits and then there’s the PMS and the bloating. And then they see the scale go like that around the… And I’m like, “No, it’s just fluid weight. It’s just fluid weight.” That’s another interesting roadblock. So I’ve just gotta talk to people about understanding how the fluid retention that can go with the menstrual cycle is another very interesting one.

Deficiencies. So I get all of my patients to look at things when I start weight loss to do what are your iron levels like? Because if people don’t have sufficient iron levels, they are tired and compliance is poor. What’s your vitamin D like? So I get people… So those are the two biggest ones I look at is vitamin D as well because lack of vitamin D is linked to lower energy. So getting on top of mineral deficiencies are something that I… And doing a big blood test first, just to make sure that there’s nothing else going on, which is going to hinder the process as well.

Other ones are self-sabotage. This is a roadblock because people will get so close to their goal. And I’ve seen people, beautiful women who have needed to, and I can think of like three in my clinic right now, really pretty ladies who…like beautiful faces, aesthetically stunning, they’ve put on, you know, I’m 30-ish kilos in life, so these women are sitting over the 100-kilo mark, and they need to get into a healthy weight range. So they need to lose 30-plus kilos. And they lose the weight, they become more attractive. They get more attention from males. They’re not used to it. They feel uncomfortable and they’ll sabotage. And it’s interesting they sabotage because they become uncomfortable. That’s an interesting one because I’ve got right, all of a sudden… And these are people that are probably shy ordinarily, and being overweight just made them blend into society and all of a sudden not.

So then I have to explain to them that this isn’t about looks, this is about health. So it’s about getting on top of health. It’s really important. Alcohol, is another roadblock. One of the best things I hear is people say, “Oh, no, I don’t drink alcohol.” And I’m like, “Oh, okay. Phew” Because it’s… I mean, at the end of the day, look, I love a drink. I drink once or twice a week, I own it. I enjoy it. I’m a realist. And I include alcohol in my weight loss program because I want people to be compliant at 90% of the program and not do it at all. So yeah, getting people just to really get on top of alcohol is really important. But just that’s a

Andrew: But, again, it’s got to do with relationships, hasn’t it? You know, you can have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol or a healthy relationship with alcohol. If you look at the Mediterranean diet, indeed, you know, the Greeks and the Italians, particularly they…you know, wine is good. It’s something that’s social, but it’s not something you drink till you’re, you know, inebriated and it’s taking over your…

Sarah: Well, it’s the biggest drinking.

Andrew: …life and your relationships.

Sarah: Yeah. It’s the big… So when I do get binge drinkers I just say, I actually, now I’m… People who would do the two to three with dinner, that’s completely fine. That’s not a problem. And that’s part of a healthy relationship, as you mentioned with alcohol. But the patients I do get that do, do a bottle or two or they binge, or they do a bottle a day I just say to them, “Moving forward, we need to just cut it out. We just cut it out for about a month and then we’ll readdress it in a healthy way.”

So I always get them to do that. So that’s another interesting. What else did I…? So meal… Oh yeah. Little things here that not doing your meal prep is a roadblock. Not having a food journal is a roadblock. That disorganization. The key to success is weight loss is having a food journal, having it ready, and having your meal prep done.

And I always say to people, “Know what you’re eating and have the food there on a…” You know, I do three days in advance. And when you’ve got that and you pack your food, then there’s no reason why you need to make a poor choice or you get hungry and just end up grabbing something because the growling’s too much, and you’re hungry and you haven’t eaten all day. Because if you don’t prep properly, then you’ll end up overeating at night because you’re too hungry and it’ll derail you. And so I always say to people, have your food done three days in advance. Sundays and Thursdays, my favourite meal prep days.

Andrew: Now, you’ve mentioned ghrelin a few times and, this is an orexigenic hormone, which causes hunger if you like. And it comes in waves. So…

Sarah: Correct.

Andrew: …I find this is such an interesting hormone because I am one of these people. I have been at the fridge at midnight, this was years ago, but I have been at the fridge at midnight gnawing on a chicken leg and I can…

Sarah: Stop.

Andrew: …still remember plainly that I had a choice in the next few seconds of taking a breath or keeping eating. And I kept eating until I was gasping for air. It was an amazingly overriding, powerful drive. And yet…you can obviously see I’m not perfect at this yet, but what I find is that if you can accept the wave, that it comes in wave and that it won’t last, the hunger pang, if you like, won’t last, particularly if you’re busy, that you can get over it. Is that one of the things that you teach people when you’re talking about…?

Sarah: Yes.

Andrew: …healthy body composition and also a range?

Sarah: Yes. Okay. So ghrelin, like you, I find this hormone completely fascinating because it can derail the most intelligent of people. Because people start to get anxiety, “I’m hungry. I’m hungry” and then they… But they’re… I mean, what I find fascinating about this hormone is it is so strong and it is so powerful and if we didn’t have it, we wouldn’t eat. So I talk to my patients a lot about, yes, we are educated people. We have this hormone to keep us alive. It is really important. Now, it’s going to hit you and it’s gonna last…if you time it for about five minutes, then it will go away again and it will come back again.

Now, you’re educated enough to know that you’re getting food in an hour or two at whatever the mealtime is on the diet. So you’re educated enough to know that that’s going to happen. So you can thank your body for having this amazing hormone. This is what I say to my patients. “Thank you for keeping me alive. I’m educated. I appreciate that.” And what was interesting… And then I just explain to them just to understand that to not get hungry, not to get anxious about it. It is a magnificent hormone that we need to keep us alive. And as I said, if we didn’t have it, we just wouldn’t eat.

But long time ago, when I was just really studying…you know, I’ve always ginny pigged my own body on different things and I wanted to work out when I was getting those ghrelin surges. So when I was a nutrition student, which is a long time ago, I wrote down every time I had a surge of hunger. And I worked out that my body… So this is when I was trying to learn about the set point theory and I wanted to understand the setpoint, right? So trying to learn about that, I thought, okay, I’m gonna see what happens to my body.

And I worked out that at 8:45, 12:45, 4:00, and around 8:00 pm, so every four hours, my body gives me a surge of ghrelin, which I found quite fascinating. So, yeah, it was interesting because I don’t eat conventionally. I have a different style of eating, a little bit more like the blue zones, which I’ve been doing for a long time, but that’s my own personal eating plan. And I do really love the blue zone diet. And I do live a lot like that. But it was interesting because my ghrelin surges are… But then it was understanding the ghrelin surging at around 8:00 pm, that was actually melatonin coming in, which was looking for some serotonin, which was looking for some carbohydrates. So that was a bit of a different one.

So, yes. I’ve digressed, but, yes, explaining to people and understanding how magnificent the human body is, but you’re smart enough. We’re not what we were 60,000 years ago, you know, living in caves and probably eating some game and some berries and we didn’t know when we were gonna eat again, so we didn’t have that need to kind of really satisfy the ghrelin. But yeah, people still… And once I teach people that, they get it. They’re like, “Okay, good. I get that now.” And they don’t get that, “I’m hungry.”

Andrew: One of the things I’m picking up from you is that you teach people acceptance about the body, about the supposed bad things, if you like, you know, the hunger pangs and all that sort of thing. So it really does take your patients on a journey through, you know, where they’re usually berating themselves internally to accepting themselves, accepting themselves as a human who has physiological requirements to survive, but also, you just need to tweak things to a healthy notion. Let’s talk a little bit about the 10:10 diet because, you know, we’ve seen the 5:2 diet, we’ve seen the Israeli army diet, the CSIRO diet, the keto nutrition we spoke about, the zone diet, which was something that interested me because I used to preach about the zone is sort of like kind of diet.

But take us through what the 10:10 diet is and how you teach people to manipulate their carbs, protein, and fats, and indeed teach them about what they are.

Sarah: Look, so the 10:10 diet is my creation. It comes off years and years of being a practitioner and understanding there is so many different elements to it. So I’ll go through, first of all, what 10:10 stands for. So that’s 10 kilos in 10 weeks, the healthy way. So I truly believe that healthy weight loss is about… I mean, look, this is to explain that a little bit more, if you look at on average, how long does it take for a human body to lose fat in a week, right? So if you look at the first two weeks of a weight loss program, people will lose probably around three to four kilos up to five, if they’ve got a lot of weight to lose. And a lot of that is that glycogen and that draws in that fluid.

So you’ve got a lot of fluid that goes. So I’ve kind of worked out that people doing my program, which is a healthy diet that puts you into a ketogenic state will lose between three-quarters of a kilo to 1.2 kilos a week of fat. So that’s part of why it’s 10 kilos in 10 weeks. But also, look, research shows that for people to change life habits, they need to be doing something for 66 days. So the first sort of two weeks of the program are getting… And so I’m about changing people’s lives. I’m about getting off the merry ground and getting on with your life. And that’s so much about really what I encourage people to do. And so the first sort of two weeks, or what 10 days of the program are just getting into the flow and getting into a ketogenic state.

The reason why I’ve picked the first kind of week and a half to not do any of the intermittent fasting that I include was because I find that it takes the average person between sort of four and nine days to drop into that ketosis where you get that headache and then you can feel that you’re in the fat burn. And then… So in the second, third, and fourth week, I teach people intermittent fasting. Now, I look at it as a 600 calorie day. I allow 500 calories for food, but I allow 100 calories for beverages because, let’s face it, so many people need their coffee and coffees have milk and milk has calories. I know. So that’s kind of where I… Cheers. So people kind of getting into that flow.

All the food on my program is delicious. It’s fresh. It’s got so much flavour to it. I’ve got legumes in there, I include fruit in my program. I believe in healthy weight loss, I believe in a balanced diet. So it doesn’t include carbohydrates because that just won’t allow the fat burn that I want. Now, I find that people around the four-week mark, so they’re all motivated and it’s all kind of going really well and then that’s usually around the four to six-week mark, I’ve seen clinically people generally have a plateau. Now, in the 10:10 diet for weeks five and six I just changed the whole gear of it to a two-week detox. And the reason why I put that detox in there was to check… Because 10 weeks is a long time to kind of do the same thing.

It’s more of a stop, reflect. The detox is a time for you. It’s a change of the menu. It’s about reassessing. It’s about your values, what you’re doing, and what your goals are. And then the last four weeks are just accelerated weight loss, where we do 2, 600 calorie days a week to get that last sort of four kilos off. But I think usually if you look around weight loss programs and you look at the success of them, people will generally drop off them around the four to six-week mark. Generally, when a plateau comes in or they’ve had that big success in the beginning and they think, oh, it’s easy. And that’s why I wanted that. And I also find that as people…as mothers, as employees, as husbands, or whatever, we always seem to think of other people before we think of ourselves and that detox is really to be kind to yourself.

I kind of wrote in the 10:10 diet, go to a gallery, do a dance class, be really kind to yourself, treat yourself how you would treat a friend. And so, but, you know… And I talk to them a lot and then… Because it’s hard, you’re putting your… When the human body’s in deficit, you know, you’re putting your body in deficit to take weight off. I don’t know anyone that loves weight loss. I mean, there’s people that do love, do enjoy the journey and they do get addicted to the scale going down. But generally, it’s…I want people to just have a lot of… I just want people to be their best self and I wanna teach them a lot of elements. So that’s the foundation of the 10:10, and that’s, you know, understanding the psychology. There’s so much more to it. I’ve just tried to bullet point it.

Andrew: Yeah, but you’ve answered basically my next question. And that was…we’ve spoken about the plateau before, but there’s also these physiological blockages to weight loss, you know, and you mentioned inflammation prior…previously you mentioned cortisol. We’ve spoken about the hormones, you know, the hunger hormones that govern our lives. But this sort of changing things up so that you’re actually doing a detox might actually help address all three of those things indeed more.

Sarah: Oh, correct. So they’re what I call non-scale victories. So I love all that. So all of those… Like, so there is so much more. Like, people look at weight loss as the aesthetics, and I’m like, you can’t look at weight loss as the aesthetics… And I love getting people…go and do your blood test in the beginning and let’s do your bloods again. And you look at your fasting glucose, just have a look at how… Look at your cholesterol, look at your triglycerides, look at your LDLs, like, all of those things, look at your CRP, ESR, all of that comes down and there are those wonderful non-scale victories, lowering your risk of disease, lowering your inflammation. Like, they’re just a few of the non-scale victories.

I mean, other non-scale victories, of course, you know, are wonderful things like putting on clothes that fit you, doing up zippers, you know, losing inches, being more mobile, sleeping better, less sweating, just feeling confident. Putting on some swimwear. There are loads of non-scale victories, but yeah, from that health perspective, I always say to people, you’ve actually changed the course of your menopause, you’ve changed the course of your aging, you’ve lowered your risk of disease, you’ve lowered your risk of ever being on pharmaceutical medication. Not that I’ve got a problem with them, they do have a place, but if people don’t really address that and then, you know, they go through life changes, the higher risk of things like osteoporosis and heart disease and all that stuff that comes with inflammation and arthritis, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, all that stuff. So I mean, I could go…

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely.

Sarah: I could just go on and on and on. I do write about all these.

Andrew: And they’re scaleable victories.

Sarah: Yeah. Yes. And then, yeah… So I mean… And I think that they are what’s more important than anything is those non-scale victories. And I’ll say to them, you could be riding a bike at 70, instead of being on a zimmer frame. Instead of spending your life, you know, 65-plus at what I call the trifecta of the GP, the specialist, and the pharmacist, and then you get… I see older people doing that and I’m like, if you just got the weight off, had a healthy relationship with food, and got on with your life, you would be a lot more active with grandchildren and a lot better… It’s that health span that we talk about a lot versus lifespan. And just… I want healthspan and I want to get the weight off people, teach them maintenance for healthspan. Anyway, so we can go on about lifespan and healthspan…

Andrew: I’ve spoken to a longevity expert and he was talking about living healthy 100years. Forgive me for the joke but I remember saying to my son, “Just get me to 85, but if I’m in pain or if I’ve got a sinister disease, knock me off.” And he said, “Don’t worry, dad, you’ve got a target painted on your back well ahead of that date.” But I love your approach. I just have one last question.

We’ve spoken about, you know, ketosis, that requires measurement, we’ve spoken about body composition, that requires measurement, you know, fasting insulin, fasting sugars, all of this sort of thing. So how much is involved in continual measurement and indeed measurement of food intake? Like, for instance, my son’s got an app that he just scans a food, like, a soup or something like that bang, and it calculates his daily caloric sort of intake and what he’s got left. Do you use those or do you use others to educate people about the food?

Sarah: Yeah. So that’s so interesting. So I get asked this question a lot and people kind of wanna know, I mean, because there are so many apps out there, there are so many things that break down your macros, break down your calories, break down that. For me, food’s a celebration. For me, food is part of life. I am not any… I’m Greek, come on. Like, I would hate to be spending my day, with no disrespect, and this is my personal opinion going, what are my macro splits? What’s my vitamin intake here? What’s this here? Like, of course, I know as a clinical nutritionist. I know all that stuff anyway. But what I teach people to do is to use their hands when they understand portion control. You know, there’s your protein, there are your fats, just there are your nuts, you know, or three flattened fingers or just three cup handfuls of salad and vegetables.

So I get people to do things more… I try and teach people more of a visual because I want them to be able…to be in a position where they go to restaurants or buffets or travel and a bigger scope of life… And I want them to be able to just sort of look at things and go, oh yeah, that’s enough protein for me. Oh yeah, I’ve got a good serving of veggie. Oh, that’s great… You know, I want people to be able to do that themselves without focusing on an app or focusing on things like that. Now, those apps and things like that have got a place to a point, but learn it and put it away and get on with your life. Like, does that…

And so in my 10:10 program, I won’t do macro splits. The only time I ever do calories is on a 600 day because I want people just to kind of learn things. And the only times I talk about calories a lot in the clinic is… There are two places I’ll talk about calories in the clinic. And one of them is when I’m bringing people off a keto way of thinking. So where we pick foods that are really high in fibre, low… And I’ll give you any… So if you pick food… For weight loss, I encourage berries and I encourage dark fruit because they’re high fibre, low cal, low carb. But then when I’m pulling people off these diets because… I love bananas, but they’re high carbohydrate. But I say to people, look, a medium-sized banana is the same calorie as a boiled egg that you have been eating in your salads because that’s part of healthy weight loss, but it’s the same calories.

And so I’ll only use calories when I’m trying to give perspective to get people into a healthy mindset with food. So that’s the only time I will bring calories in, but outside of that, I’m so much more about learning it, getting on with your life. Don’t get me wrong, I do have people that love the apps and I find it more of a male thing. So I’ve got my male patients that come in and I’ll say, “Where’s your diet diary?” And they’ll show me their diet diary and it will be some kind of app that’s got every breakdown. So that’s great. Okay. If that works for you, 100% I’m all for whatever works. But in the long run, you know, get on with your life and kinda, you know, be able to do more of a visual.

And as I said, just using your hand as a guide… And I write about that in the book as well, just understanding that relationship. Because as I said, food’s about is a celebration and something that I think once you get portion control and just understand a healthy, balanced diet, what a healthy, balanced plate looks like and what is your basic nutrient intake for the day should be, moving forward, you know, knowing when to eat carbohydrates in the earlier part of the day, just that kind of understanding, then you can sort of getting on with life a bit.

Andrew: I love what you’re teaching people about…

Andrew: …embracing even those things that we treat badly. Yeah. It’s wonderful work you’re doing, Sarah. So obviously the 10:10 diet…

Sarah: Thank you.

Andrew: And so now, what is it? It’s living a healthy weight loss. Forgive me, can you tell us the correct title?

Sarah: So it’s called The 10:10 diet and it’s “10 kilos in 10 weeks, The Healthy Way.” Yes.

Andrew: The healthy way. Thank you so much.

Sarah: It also has stars on there.

Andrew: So… You go.

Sarah: Sorry. It also has a “By Australia’s favourite nutritionist,” which is very cute. So it’s my little star on the bottom of it.

Andrew: Sarah, well done.

Sarah: I’m really proud of it.

Andrew: But I love how you take… Say again, sorry.

Sarah: Sorry. I just was gonna say, I’m just really proud of it because I really feel like I’m in a space on my own here and I really just, from the bottom of my heart, I just wanna educate people and I want people just to… And I really wanna… Because I think education is key and I want people just to really learn so many elements that come in. And I’m a realist and… Learn that healthy balance, develop a healthy relationship with food because I’ve always had one and I’ve been the same way outside of having babies since I was 18. And that’s just because I’ve got a healthy relationship with food anyway.

Andrew: Well, hopefully, we can help a hell of a lot more people to have a healthy relationship with food. Sarah, you’ve done a wonderful job. And thanks for taking us through all of those different points, those parts of the big puzzle of maintaining a healthy body composition as we move forward in our lives and get on with it. Thank you so much for joining us on Wellness by Designs today.

Sarah: Thank you so much for having me. I’ve really enjoyed chatting with you. From the bottom of my heart, it’s been wonderful. And again, thank you.

Andrew: It’s been an absolute pleasure. And remember, thank you for joining us today. And you can find all the other podcasts and the show notes on the Designs for Health website. I’m Andrew Whitfield-Cook. This is “Wellness by Designs.”