Practical Nutrition with Registered Dietitian and Wellness Coach

Brad Cooper

welcome to the latest episode of the Catalyst Health and wellness coaching podcast. My name is Brad Cooper and I’ll be your host and today’s episode is a nice compliment to the episode we had about two months back with Dr. Holiday Dr Halliday. Took us through the research side of avoiding the food fads, proper nutrition, those kinds of things. Today we have Suzanne Brown with us. She’s a registered Dietitian nutritionist, a wellness coach, and a health fitness specialist, and what Suzanne is going to do is talk about the practical side, how you can take this and apply it into your life or the lives of your clients on a regular basis. Let me tell you a little bit more about Suzanne. I’ve known her for years. She holds degrees in human biology and clinical nutrition and for over 20 years Susanna’s combined traditional nutritional science with modern approaches to weight management and disease prevention to help her clients.

Brad Cooper

She works with sporting groups, corporations, organizations, the employees for those various organizations and individual private clients. She’s appeared on both television and radio and is a published author every day. Suzanne balances are family, work in her own life by indulging unhealthy foods, positive thinking, and daily exercise. She savers every few moment with her husband and two kids by exploring the Sunny Colorado mountains where they live, running and hiking with their bouncy dogs or traveling the world to discover new playgrounds, and you’re going to hear that energy. You’re going to feel that energy is as is chatting with us today. Just to reminder, you can access additional resources including a transcript of this episode at Catalyst Coaching Institute.com. Lot information on the upcoming wellness coach certification in. It’s about two months out at this point, so feel free to reach out to us at results at catalyst coaching institute if you have any questions about that or the retreat this fall. And with that, let’s get on with the latest episode of the Catalyst Health and wellness coaching podcast.

Brad Cooper

Alright, so Suzanne, thank you so much for joining us today. I’m really excited about this. During the introduction, I mentioned that this episode today is really going to be focused on the practical side, which the people listen to them. That’s what they love anyway. They’re coaches or future coaches. They want to know how does this actually apply, how do I use this with my clients and in my own life? So real excited to have you sharing some of that. You’ve been doing this for long time. You have that unique background where you combine the Rd with the wellness coaching. You could do that for 10 plus years, 20 years in total. Talk us through your journey a little bit. How’d you get to where you are today and kind of how do you see the two skill sets fit together?

Suzanne Brown

Sure. Well first, thanks again for having me today. I really am excited to talk with you. Um, and I guess you’re right. I’ve been doing, I’ve been a dietician for over 20 years and a wellness coach for over 10 years now. Um, and honestly back in college, it started there. I was on, I was on a premed track. I thought maybe it’d be a doctor, but I took a basic nutrition course taught by the cross country coach of all people and I was hooked. I was hooked on nutrition from then on, I was fascinated by food and how it would affect your body, how it would give me energy or it could make me go into a slump or power me through a run, you know, so that was super exciting to me as I continue my education. Again, this was 28 years ago. I soon learned about other things in the wellness spectrum too, and even 28 years ago, like the food is functional medicine and the, that they were all starting back then and I graduated college, got my registered Dietitian, um, went on for another two years to do that and then also get a certification from the American College of Sports Medicine because I knew that exercise and activity was a huge part of, again, the wellness movement, you know, things that would fuel our body and make us healthy.

Suzanne Brown

And since then really helping my clients be successful, make coaching them on all those aspects of wellness, which is what we do as long as coaches, you know, not just food but exercise, sleep, emotions, everything. So I’ve loved doing both of those things ever since.

Brad Cooper

I love the way you kind of contextualize that for us because so many folks, and I’m sure I’m stepping on some toes out there somewhere, but focused on, well it’s all about exercise. No, no, no. It’s all about what, you know, it’s all about what you sleep. It’s like people like it. Yes. It’s all of those and we need to, we need to be aware of that. So I love the fact you mentioned that and how funny cross country coach. So it was the cross country coach, was that her background? Was that her focus was a, like a class that she was doing or was it just something she was trying to get better?

Suzanne Brown

No, and actually it was a male cross country coach was a guy and he just pretty much knew about nutrition to help his, his, um, athletes. So I kinda took that twists probably in the whole class and it made us all look at our foods. We were eating in a different way, which as we all know in college, our diets are not

Brad Cooper

interesting. Okay. Well, that’s, that’s probably an encouragement to the coaches to coach know the turn that he created in your life.

Suzanne Brown

Oh yes, definitely. We, we, uh, I met my husband in college too and so he took the class after me I think the next year or something. And so we always joked with him about how we went from eating Rice Krispie treats everyday to actually including things like that. And honestly, like we said, really the wellness coaching that I do and the being a dietician, they just compliment each other. Perfect. Like I always tell people, it’s like, well obviously I food and I love to eat, but it’s like berries in your oatmeal or it’s pairs in your walnuts, spinach salad or something like that, you know, things that like kind of go together. Because as a dietician I have to ask open ended questions of my clients too, just like we do as coaches and I’m not here to tell my clients what to do. I’m here to find out what they need, what they desire, what can help them achieve this outcome that they’re looking for. And it’s just, I’m lucky that I have that added benefit of my rd, that extra education so that I can, I can leave, they can leave me that way, but I can give them a little bit more of. Okay. And then here’s some tips of maybe this is how you can include nutrition or stress reduction or life balance or everything to in order to make their wellness perfect or as perfect. Perfect. Maybe not.

Brad Cooper

Well, okay. So that’s, that’s huge for a lot of listeners are already wellness coaches and they’re trying to decide what kind of, what’s next. And maybe the Rd is a route some of them want to go. So you set the set the tone for that a little bit. How about, you touched on this, but how has your, your wellness coaching background and experience helped you in your RD? Because we also have some RD’s listening that are thinking, should I go back and become a wellness coach to. Can you give them some insight? The answer’s never. Yes for everybody. But for you in particular, have you seen opportunities where, yeah, that, that experience, that training has made me better as an RD.

Suzanne Brown

Oh, sure. Definitely. Like I said with the Other direction too. Um, you know, knowing, knowing how nutrition can affect the body and also as a wellness coach, I think that’s the added benefit that we can bring to our clients is knowing how, how can we help them maintain life balance? How can we help them reduce their stress? How, what tools can we help them use to get more exercise in their day? Um, and I know that we have all wellness coaches in some dietitians, other people listening, but all those facets of wellness, right? We’ve heard so many times, even people who aren’t in our field, they know that you need all those things together in order to be a healthy well person.

Brad Cooper

When I introduced you, I talked about this is going to be all about the practical side and you’ve already introduced this twice of reminding us folks. Yes, nutrition is absolutely key. I spend my Life. But it also sets the tone for these other areas. Life, balance, stress, exercise, performance, all those kinds of things. So thank you for continuing to bring us back to that. It’s such an important reminder that I don’t think coaches here often enough. alright, so, so next one. What are some of the misconceptions and there’s a million of them, so you might have to limit this to four hours, but what are some of the misconceptions about nutrition and weight loss that maybe wellness coaches who are not nutritious, not registered additions, maybe they’ve heard, seen in headlines hop there. Press is covering it, but they really don’t hold up to the evidence based side of the equation.

Suzanne Brown

Well, there’s so many, and I hate to use that word, but fad diets, right? I hate the word diet because it has such a negative connotation and it shouldn’t be our word. Again, food should be fun, should be delicious food. It should be something that’s fueling us and making us feel good. But um, that’s definitely one thing that clients will bring up. And I think as coaches, we just have to listen to the reasoning why a client might want to do that without extra background or education. We’re not their doctor, you know, we’re not gonna be able to tell them why it’s maybe not good for them, but that is something definitely that I think we need to keep up and be aware of what’s happening in the news and that sort of thing. Another, I think a big misconception about nutrition and weight loss that we, me as a wellness coach, I’ve gotten many times and probably other, almost a lot of clients can understand why they’re not losing weight and whether it’s because they’re on a diet or whether it’s because they think they’re exercising enough or that they’re hardly eating or maybe they think, oh, I’m only eating healthy foods.

Suzanne Brown

How am I not losing weight? I think in my background as a dietician that that’s something that I really think is wellness coaches. One way we can kind of lead them to encourage them to keep a good record. Um, it’s super helpful. Um, again, it’s the research goes back to that over and over and over again. No matter what bad diet or way that your client wants to lose weight. Actually keeping track of what they’re eating is the most helpful thing they can do. Sometimes they’re not recalling every little sweet they pick up or every snack or drink. And as we all know, it’s shocking how many drink calories add up. Especially if there’s like soda or coffee drinks with sugar or or even sometimes smoothies. Smoothies are so popular in the last few years. But if you are making a super high calorie smoothie and then you’re not burning off those calories, that’s not healthy for you.

Suzanne Brown

I also like to encourage clients along this same kind of pathway to kind of measure their food portions at least for maybe a few days because unless we’ve all grown up in a chemistry lab or something, you know, It’s surprising how much a cup is or how little to some people. And in some cases along the same lines, some people could be eating too little or they could be eating the wrong ratios of protein, carbs, and fat, which could be stalling their metabolism, preventing them from losing weight. And again, that’s another example of how being a dietician and a wellness coach really do well. Work well together. So you know, for say, if my client says he’s on a very carb restrictive plan hoping for quick weight loss because that’s super popular, right? For people to do so with a food record, want to have them keep that, I can see that their intake is low in fiber, probably lacking some critical nutrients that body needs in order to be healthy. Um, but again, our job is wellness coaches is to help them find what works for them to reach their goals. So if this low carb diet is helping him lose weight and he decreased his blood pressure and his office as a medicine because of his weight loss, then I’m definitely going to support him. But as a dietitian I’m also going to teach him what he’s had to include. What is missing? Like, you know, mono unsaturated fats in avocado versus saturated fats in butter or something of that sort.

Brad Cooper

Beautiful. So let me spin off question. When clients that is going down a route. I like what you said about, okay, I want to make sure that we’re meeting their goal because it’s their life, not mine. So that was that. But you also mentioned very importantly the key medical aspect of what is happening with their blood pressure, what’s happening with her asthma, those kinds of things. So any tips on things that coaches and slash or rds could nudge their clients who might be on a little bit of a weird path but it might be helpful if it’s not causing any, any negative. So do you, do you ask them to see their doctor? Do you use to say hey, you know, have you checked this out? like how do you approach that? Just is still keeping to the context that you gave us is their life but also the context of do no harm. And you’re kind of running the show here too in terms of the nutrient density and those kinds of things. Just any practical suggestions along those lines,

Suzanne Brown

right? Well, especially if they are very largely restrictive eating plan, they either need to be seeing someone like a dietician or seeing their doctor to know what those major nutrients are missing. Also to kind of keep track of, which is wellness coaches. We do usually have access to that keep track of what their lab work is doing. If they’re doing something that’s calorie restrictive, that super high in fat and they’re not choosing the right fat triglycerides in their cholesterol is probably going to go through the roof. If they’re super restrictive and they’re not getting the vitamins and minerals are underneath and they’re probably going to report to you that they’re feeling exhausted all the time or they just can’t get the exercise in because they don’t have the calories for that, so I think exactly what you said. It’s not really our place to tell them what they can or can’t do. Right, but we can definitely manage them and encourage them to make sure they’re getting the medical help that they need if they’re going into this restrictive path.

Brad Cooper

Okay, good. Really good. Thanks for emphasizing that. Okay, so next question is again, current or future health and wellness coaches, what advice would you have for them? If they’re working with an individual who want to improve their or their wanting to manage their weight? So kind of the two hot topics in this area. Any guidance that would not be running them down? If a fad path that you. Again, for the generic I just want to improve my instruction. I’m not super concerned about my weight, I just want to eat better or are both. I want to actually lose weight. So how would you maybe address those two situations differently with some, again, not getting into the weeds, but just some practical advice that the coaches could take away going. Oh, okay. I hadn’t thought about that before.

Suzanne Brown

Right, right. Okay. So definitely managing their weight. I think we could go back to the previous question where we talked about the food record keeping some accurate portion sizes, other things along that line would be finding out what works for your client in the past. Maybe you’ll get a general answer like, oh, I did weight watchers, or oh, I did the keto diet, earl, I did, you know, a high fat plan or something that comes up. I don’t know. I don’t want to name them all off, but then definitely our job as long as coaches, which we’re all trained to do, is definitely to find out the specifics. Okay. So you said, you know, weight watchers was valuable for you. So what are the specifics of weightwatchers that was valuable for, you know, maybe your client was successful when he packed his lunch every day or maybe he was successful when he focuses on only eating fast food once a week or filling half his plate with vegetables or again, we could put the exercise back in there because we know that again, like we talked earlier, that those two are so super entwined, you know, walking 10,000 steps a day or whatever you can do and if your client has never had to focus on their weight or nutrition in the past and this is a great opportunity to help them develop that long-term healthy relationship with food.

Suzanne Brown

Not calling it a diet, you know, just calling it. What kind of healthy changes are you thinking about making? And like we said, there’s some we’ve mentioned before, um, and as well as coaches, we’ve all gone over those increasing their fruit and vegetable intake just that they can take away and don’t bombard them. Right? We don’t want them to say, okay, you need to do 10 things this week. Maybe one, one thing they focus on every week or three things. They focus on every month if you’re only talking to them once a month or something like that. So I think that’s a great thing for people trying to manage their weight. And then for people just to know maybe there isn’t a good place and they just want to kind of improve their nutrition. There’s definitely some of those things along those lines to find out exactly what they want to improve. Are they trying to decrease the amount of fat because they’re worried about heart disease maybe in the future. Are they trying to drink more water because they live in the mountains that are dry? Are they trying to increase their fruits? And vegetables because they’ve heard about all the good benefits. Um, so, so various things like that. Fruits and vegetables are the one, gosh, there’s like a trillion books out there. Right. Um, but that’s definitely something that, gosh, you know, getting more fruits and vegetables in

Brad Cooper

your comment earlier about the smoothie. I’m training enough, I don’t have to be too concerned about the weight side, but the same issue. I was like, when I meet with my wellness coach that, you know, we do a coach, the coach program and said to her, you know what, I’m doing good with the workouts, but I just not get the veggies and fruit. Fruit’s easy. And she said, you know what? Throw it in your smoothie thing but you can’t even tell. You don’t even know. It’s not a concern that those easy tips that you guys come up with. And I’m like, what? Oh, okay.

Suzanne Brown

Especially spinach. Oh my gosh. They’re so easy to hide. Hide everywhere. And if you cook them down, you’ve gotten three servings in a little tiny half a cup serving.

Brad Cooper

Exactly. That’s a good reminder. Okay. So just pulling from your, you know, obviously don’t share names, but have you seen some situations, some, some clients where nutrition is impacted positively, some other area, like they weren’t, they didn’t come to you necessarily for nutritional advice, they came to you for stress or exercise performance or sleep or you know, financial, whatever, and somehow nutrition worked its way in and that seemed to be the catalyst for improvement in these other areas. Any, any fun stories along those lines?

Suzanne Brown

Oh sure. I have a lot of clients who are very sleep deprived and as you know, anyone who’s sleep deprived knows when you’re sleep deprived, you don’t make the best nutrition choices, which can then backfire because you’re maybe eating a lot more unhealthy foods whIch are going to maybe keep you up later or you’re balancing that out with more caffeine, which is to keep you up later and then that interacts with your sleep. Obviously I’m also stressed. Oh my gosh, when we’re stressed, we tend to eat to soothe their emotions. It’s just a human way of living for most people. So yeah, definitely impacted a lot of my clients. I know one person who is just really struggled a lot with anxiety and stress and um, so we tried to come up with a good eating plan for her that focused on food that would mimic the production of serotonin, the happy hormone in the body.

Suzanne Brown

she had foods that were heavy and like b vitamins and food that we’re having. Magnesium, things like salmon and almonds are high in b vitamins and things like spinach and oatmeal and chickpeas. they’re like high in magnesium. So when she focused more of her food, especially during the day when she felt more stressed at night, she was a little better so she could veer off that path. But she really just felt better. He didn’t find like she was stressed at work, although she did. I have to add this into again, we go back to our fastest of wellness. She did definitely add in some deep breathing exercises when she really felt her stress like spike and, you know, again, just taking, you know, two deep breaths and suddenly we realize how much we’re not breathing right where like taking shallow breaths all day. So yeah, so again that definitely the food health, but you know the, we brought another facet of wellness back in there to his distress relief with the breathing.

Brad Cooper

Okay. So recent developments in nutrition that maybe the audience isn’t aware of right now. So just can you hit a few bullet points that you know, here’s, here’s some stuff that maybe you hadn’t seen, maybe weren’t aware of that your clients might bring up or that you need to have in the back of your mind as you’re talking through other things with them

Suzanne Brown

every single day. Right. We have nutrition has appeared, right? I’ve seen, actually you’ve probably seen it. It came out a few months ago about eating a huge amount of protein at night before you go to bed and I knew a lot of people try not to eat before they go to bed and that that’s something that they think can improve your muscle quality in your metabolism. So I have a lot of clients who have been trying that and they’re not waking up super hungry in the morning, which is interesting. It has not worked for other clients and I think that goes back to, I don’t know if we’ve touched on that, but gosh, one thing that works for one person may not work for another person, which is why it’s so important to find out what works for people in the past more. The only thing I can really say is, gosh, every year like us news and world report, national health, they come out with the best diet.

Suzanne Brown

Then again, I hate, I don’t like that word because it’s a negative connotation, but we’ll use it in that sense. Right, and it always goes back to the mediterranean diet or the dash diet and the flexitarian diet. So if people are bringing up, you know, other kind of fad diets, sometimes you can kind of encourage them with the newest research that the mediterranean diet and the dash diet and flexitarian diet, they. They were ranked top for people who actually lost the most amount of weight and maintain weight loss, which is a huge thing for people and for people who don’t know the mediterranean diet, fruits, vegetables, olive oil, the dash diet was created to help people with high blood pressure and it focuses on like fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins and even low fat dairy products. And then the flexitarian diet is a flexible vegetarian diet. So again, it’s very similar to the other two. It focuses on fruits and vegetables, whole grains and like plant based proteins.

Brad Cooper

Thank you. I was going to ask you to give us the one sentence description and you beat me to it so. well it’s funny as you described those had I, and I guess in the transcript will see this, but if we’re to look at how you describe each one of them. did I got it? It’s about a 92 percent overlap between them. The basics continue to work folks. the basics continue to work. so good. Good, good. exactly true. So, so we always love our audience, gets to know you a little bit. So I’m gonna turn it around instead of what are your clients doing or what are some cool stories? How about you, and it doesn’t have to be nutritional base, but is there some area of your own health and wellbeing in any category that you’re working on, you’ve been working on that you’d be willing to share, share with us today and maybe throw out some.

Suzanne Brown

These are some of my struggles and here’s some had been helpful. Oh sure. Um, well you said not nutrition, but I do love food obviously and I love cooking. Um, and it’s, it’s always my focus is I sit there and when I’m out for my run I think about what can I have for lunch today or what kind of new for dinner today. So it is definitely my focus and I love, I eat everything. I eat everything from butter to spinach, right. I’m I the whole spectrum and living at 8,000 feet altitude in the mountains that sometimes cooking things is very frustrating to me. So I’m always playing with my recipes, trying to make them healthy, but I still want them to taste good. And other times I’m trying to just make them work like birthday cake. Oh my gosh. After a zillion flat finally have a recipe for chocolate cake.

Suzanne Brown

That’s amazing. um, and also, you know, you say also life balance. I mean, I think that is probably I share with everyone I definitely have get stressed when I shouldn’t be. And then, you know, I definitely have tools that I’ve used to help me with that. Breathing always worked for me, going out and getting some type of exercise works for me. I take my dogs for a hike or go for a run or do some yoga or know. And I think that’s the greatest thing about being a wellness coach that we all have, is that we all know that there’s so many options out there that we can make work for ourselves. Right? It’s, it always will be a struggle if, like we said before, if we were perfect, that wouldn’t be fun to always be finding something else to do.

Brad Cooper

Nice. Very nice. Well thanks for sharing that with this. So last question, this one’s wide open. Any final tips, comments? You know the audience, you’ve, you’ve been in the audience for 10 to 20 years, depending on which piece we’re focusing on right now. Anything you think of would be helpful. a for the. In fact, let me peel this into two. A for the person who’s thinking about, you know, it kinda liked it. I stumbled across this podcast. I, I kind of liked this idea of a wellness coach. Any advice for them and then part two, any advice for the person who is a wellness coach, they’ve been doing this for awhile, but I don’t know. something to keep their fire going or keep their energy or, or their passion or, or educate whatever that you would say to someone like you who has been doing this for awhile to be able to continue to do a great job going forward. So a, the person that’s pondering it on the fence thinking maybe be the person they’ve been doing this for a year to 15 years. Things that you would say to them in that situation.

Suzanne Brown

I think first for the person on the fence, if it’s something that’s interested you, oh my gosh. Then definitely start taking classes in it or starts, you know, listening to more webinars or things about it because not only will you learn so much that will be helpful to yourself, but it is so wonderful and rewarding to help other people, other people. It really is. I mean, how many times have I had people where it’s life changing when your health is better, when people have more energy and they’re able to do something else. It’s just really amazing and makes you feel good and like you really help the world be a better place. does that make sense?

Brad Cooper

That’s tremendous.

Suzanne Brown

And then I think also the people who have been wellness I think to remember is if we ever get in a rut that there really is no one size fits all for exercise or for the way to eat or for, you know, the way to lose weight. I think we coach sometimes if we found ourselves in a rut where we’re like, oh my gosh, this is the 30th person I’ve, you know, I’ve made a plan for them to drink more water today, or something like that. That could be the case, but the next person will probably be the person that’ll say, no, I’m great with water, but you know, what I really could use help on is heidi knows vegetables in my food and then there’s your new challenge, so there’s always going to be a great challenge out there. That for me at least, keeps me motivated and keeps me excited about what I do.

Brad Cooper

Fantastic. Fantastic. Suzanne, I really appreciate it. Thanks for jumping on and making this definitely a practical focused episode forever.

Suzanne Brown

Great. Well thanks so much for having me.

Brad Cooper

How’s that for practical? She just brought it so good. By the way, if you want to reach out to Suzanne for any kind of follow-up, she said the best route is your website, which is sb, the r, d.com. Sb like Suzanne Brown, t h e r, d like registered dietician.com. On the practical side, if you’d like this kind of thing and you knew the podcast, go back a few episodes. We have got a great lineup of topics where we hit mindfulness, we hit sleep, we had mental health in the same type of approach, very, very practical approach to what you can do in those areas, so you may want to take a peek back at that. Also, if you’re looking for continued education, we’ve had a lot of comments and emails about that lately. We’ve got a new option up there that is approved by the ICHWC, so if you look for can take a peek at that on the website, it’s catalyst coaching institute.com and hopefully there’s something that that is appealing to you.

Brad Cooper

And then for the retreat we’ve mentioned the retreat a couple of times. The momentum for this thing is just taking off, so if you are leaning that way, don’t wait too long. We may trim that date on the early registration simply Because it’s filling up so fast. So take a peek at that if you’d like and if you have any questions, any time on that stuff or anything we talked about today, just anything about your career, whatever, you can always reach out to us. There’s a results@catalystcoachinginstitute.com. Love to chat with you anytime. Thank you. As always, for spreading the word. I understand those of you who subscribe are really helping, kind of boosts it up in the way that iTunes does their stuff, so thank you to all of you who have subscribed. Until next time, let’s all keep working towards better than yesterday, not just for ourselves, but for our clients. Make it a great rest of the day and I’ll look forward to speaking with you soon. On the next episode of the catalyst health and wellness coaching podcast.