I sat down with Gemma Clark, a degree-qualified clinical nutritionist lifestyle writer and a health commentator. Gemma started her business, The Sprout Nutrition & Wellness, to create a safe space to find science-backed holistic health and lifestyle advice that you simply can’t get from anyone but an experienced professional.
The Sprout Nutrition & Wellness is built on the idea that any seed we plant has the potential to grow into something pretty amazing. You don’t have to overhaul your lifestyle all at once in order to better yourself. Instead, through her clinical practice in Australia and online, Gemma guides her clients through gradual lifestyle changes to set them up to thrive long-term.
Gemma is taking the guilt out of nutrition, and encourages us to instead, really pay attention to what our body needs. I love her simple ideas to improve our health that don’t include crash dieting and guilt over what we did or didn’t eat. She also has a passion for educating teens on nutrition, and how we can eat FOR our hormones.
This is an exciting and interesting topic on health and simple, easy ways to improve your lifestyle, without all that guilt! Can’t wait for you to hear it. Let’s dive in, friends.
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Gemma’s background has been in journalism and marketing, but she’s always been fascinated by how the body works. She enrolled in education about nutrition and dove in.
Nutrition seems to be a big word.
Nutrition affects us in so many ways. Solid nutrition can help our bodies operate better.
Gemma suffered from PCOS, and has seen reversals in the symptoms, just from improving her nutrition. She has always been driven toward women’s health and hormonal health.
Hormones are like messengers in the body, which are triggered by different nutrients. So, when it comes to hormones, we really need to be in tune with our nutrition and how our bodies work.
Hormonal conditions are affecting women younger and younger, which drove Gemma to the “tween” and teen space, working with young girls on their nutrition as it relates to our hormones.
We can alter the chemicals in our brain, just by improving our nutrition, to help alleviate things like anxiety and depression.
WHERE DO I START?
Be gentle with yourself. Gemma doesn’t have a harsh approach. She even says that if a nutritionist gives you a meal plan they use for everyone, run away! All our bodies are different and we need specific things to make our body work correctly.
“Diet” doesn’t have to be a big, scary thing we do. It really just means saying, “This is what I’m putting into my body to give me the life I want to live.” Sometimes our bodies need the chia seeds and fresh smoothies, and other times it needs the cocktail with a friend and ice cream on the couch.
Your diet should not define you. The foods you eat are not who you are. We put so much pressure on ourselves that it has impact on our life, our hormones and our moods.
It’s important to have a healthy relationship with food. Don’t try to have a massive overhaul. Do small changes like decreasing from six cups of coffee per day, to maybe 5 cups, and slowly wean yourself to less. GOING COLD TURKEY NEVER WORKS.
DOING SOMETHING IS BETTER THAN DOING NOTHING
Diets have a lot of rules. If even one rule looks too hard, we tend to throw the whole thing away. Do a 10 minute walk around the block is better than doing nothing. Start small.
Try to eat the rainbow. Get as many different natural colors into your daily diet as you can. We tend to have a lot of browns, whites and yellows in our diet. Try adding more color, and then take a photo of all of your food for a week. See if you notice the difference!
WHEN THE RESULTS DON’T COME
Gemma encourages us all to throw our scales away! Instead, look for other “non-scale” victories. If changing your body composition is your primary goal, look for things like improvements in our fingernails. Are the stronger, longer, with fewer ridges? Are you getting fewer hangnails? When we’re eating well, these things will show.
Look at your hair: is it stronger, longer, shinier, less greasy?
What about your skin? Do you see improvements in your eczema, rosacea, etc?
Take photos of your progress, in your face, skin, and hair, so you can see those differences, maybe just in a couple of weeks!
If you don’t have a great relationship with your body (as many of us do), you’ll look at the places you hate about your body instead of the areas that are improving.
EATING FOR YOUR HORMONES
When we talk about hormones, we often think of just our menstrual cycle, but it’s so much more.
Gemma recommends the book, The Period Repair Manual, by Lara Briden.
Hormones are made of fats, so our bodies struggle with a trendy, “low fat” diet. Hormones make nutrients work in different ways.
When we’re stressed, our bodies don’t recognize the difference between physical stress and nervous energy stress. So, we go into survival mode. Our bodies think we just need to run and use energy. Our bodies draw sugar into the blood stream, which triggers insulin to compensate and “mop up” the sugar. Then we have sugar crashes and end up on a cycle that keeps us craving sugar and carbs.
Our hormones require nutrients and impact our bodies and how we respond to particular situations. Nutrients and hormones go hand in hand.
Hormone imbalance can present itself in many different ways: feeling tired, adrenal fatigue, period issues, brutal menopause, breakouts, carrying weight in particular areas, etc.
It’s important to understand how your body responds to carbs. Everyone has a threshold for carbohydrate intake. If you are someone who feels really great having a high-carb breakfast, that’s a good sign that your threshold is high. If you feel tired after eating that meal, it’s a sign that your threshold is lower and it’s time to think about incorporating more healthy fat and protein into all of your meals.
MAKE SURE YOU’RE EATING ENOUGH! Eating healthy does not mean eating LESS. We need to be able to eat enough to get the quality nutrition that our bodies require. This looks like eating the RIGHT foods: a whole food-based diet is a great place to start.
Some people need three meals a day, and others need several snacks in between. There is no right and wrong. It’s about how you FEEL.
When deciding what to eat, make sure there’s a good balance of macronutrients: proteins, fats, and carbs.
WHAT TEENS SHOULD BE EATING FOR THEIR HORMONES
Gemma has a special focus on helping teens to eat for their hormones. She recommends to START THEM YOUNG. Hearing young girls speak about the way they think they should be eating made Gemma think that she could really be someone to give them good advice.
Teens need an element of control over what they’re eating. Gemma also encourages them to look less at the way they look and more at how they can love their body.
It’s important to ask how the teens are feeling, and then work in how nutrition can play a role.
If teenagers are going through a lot of stress in high school, there’s a lot of stress involved there. The work that Gemma does is to tell them that it’s not the end of the world if they have a candy bar, and giving a different perspective of how teens are eating.
Teens just want to be heard. They’re tired of being told what to do, and this is an area where we can empower them.
Nutrition and lifestyle work hand in hand. There is a place for medication, but if we get down back to basics, if a teen is experiencing stress or anxiety, there are probably things in their diet that contribute to it.
Nothing is going to change unless you’re willing to put in the work to do it. That goes for teens, moms, adults, everyone!
Tune in to hear Gemma’s best advice about how we can use language to be the ultimate role model for ourselves and the teens in our life.
Connect with Gemma:
Website & blog: www.thesprout.com.au
Facebook: facebook.com/TheSproutAU
Instagram: @thesprout
Email: gemma@thesprout.com.au
