Catherine Dean Coaching

MY FIVE TOP TIPS TO HELP YOU STAY HEALTHY THIS CHRISTMAS

I’m Catherine from Catherine Dean Coaching. I’m a Nutrition & Lifestyle Coach who works with women that are ready to ditch diets, have more energy and feel better. My approach to health and wellbeing isn’t about quick fixes or fad diets. It’s about helping you to create healthy habits that fit around your busy life, make a real difference and, most importantly, last in the long term.

Is it possible to enjoy Christmas and stay healthy?

This is a great question that I’ve been asked more than a few times! I think most of us would agree that Christmas is a time to eat, drink and be merry but, that doesn’t mean we have to forget about our health. It is absolutely possible to indulge in Christmas treats while still maintaining a healthy lifestyle and in this article I’m going to share my top tips to help you to do exactly that.

Taking a more balanced approach to our food and drink over Christmas can mean you wrap up the festive season feeling healthy and energised and instead of tired and bloated. Taking this approach can also help you to move away from the all or nothing dieting mentality, where a month of overindulgence is often followed by a month of dieting and deprivation.

IT’S WHAT YOU DO CONSISTENTLY NOT OCCASIONALLY THAT MATTERS

This is so important to remember any time, but particularly at this time of year. A day or two of eating and drinking is not going to ruin an otherwise healthy lifestyle. Health isn’t just about what you eat. Eating vegetables and other nutritious foods is, of course, an important part of a healthy diet, but it’s not all that matters. Your mental, physical and emotional health are all important too. Food isn’t just fuel, it has emotional and social connections for so many of us and this is especially true at this time of year. It’s also important to remember that when we deprive ourselves of foods we really want or that we’ve labelled as “bad”, we can end up craving those foods, which later leads to overeating, which in turn can cause feelings of guilt or regret. When we just let ourselves have the foods we want and eat them without feeling guilty, we’re much less likely to overeat. So, eat the foods you want, enjoy them and move on without guilt. Remember, it’s what you do consistently not occasionally that matters.

1Have A Protein Packed Breakfast When we start the day with a sugary or high-carb breakfast, such as chocolate or bucks fizz with breakfast on Christmas Day (no judgement, I have done this before!), we can set ourselves off on what’s known as the blood sugar roller coaster. When we eat foods that are high in sugar or starchy carbs, our blood sugar levels increase quickly and then drop quickly. This can lead to a slump in energy levels and is likely to have us reaching for more sugary or starchy snacks as a pick me up. When we eat foods that contain protein our blood sugar levels rise more slowly and less steeply (eating food that contains fat can also slow down the rise in blood sugar). Starting the day with a balanced breakfast, that includes protein, can therefore help to keep your blood sugar balanced, support your energy levels and reduce your sugar cravings. Omelette with added veggies (or tofu scramble if you’re vegan) is great if you’re looking for a quick and easy savoury breakfast. You could also try overnight oats made with yoghurt, fruit, nuts and/or seeds for a sweeter option that will keep you feeling satisfied and fuller for longer.

2Fill 50% Of Your Plate With Veg This is one of the simplest, but most effective tips I give my weight loss clients. Most vegetables and fruits are low energy density foods. The energy density of a food is the amount of calories per gram of food. Lower energy density foods provide fewer calories per gram of food and higher energy density foods contain more calories per gram of food. Low energy density foods, like vegetables, tend to be high in water content and fibre.

Eating low energy density foods can help us to eat less calories without reducing our portion sizes, so you’re not left feeling hungry. Foods that are high in fibre can also help us to feel fuller for longer and support our gut health. When making meals, including your Christmas dinner, try to make sure that 50% of your plate is made up of vegetables. You can do this at buffets too, fill half your plate with salads, carrot sticks or any other veg first.

3Get Plenty Of Sleep It’s easy to get out of a sleep routine when we’re not working, but watching Netflix until late at night can affect the quantity and quality of our sleep. Our sleep affects many aspects of our health, including our appetite. When we’re tired or sleep deprived our body produces more of the hormone ghrelin, the hormone that makes us feel hungry and produces less of the amount of the hormone leptin, responsible for helping us to feel full after eating. As much as possible over the Christmas period, try to go to bed and wake up at the same time as usual.

4Be Mindful Of Your Alcohol Intake Over two thirds of drinkers in the UK drink more than they usually would over the festive period, according to a 2019 study by DrinkAware. It can be easy to forget about the calories and sugar content of our drinks and focus on the calories in food, but it is definitely something to be aware of. There’s 7 calories per gram of alcohol, compared to 4 calories per gram of food for carbohydrates and protein, so the calories we get from our drinks can add up. Alcohol also affects our inhibitions, meaning we’re likely to snack more, and can negatively affect the quality of our sleep. I’m not recommending that you go teetotal over Christmas but being more mindful of your alcohol intake can make a difference.

A FEW TIPS TO HELP YOU ENJOY YOUR FESTIVE TIPPLE WITHOUT OVERDOING IT:

• Drink a glass of water or soft drink in between each alcoholic drink

• Have something to eat before your first alcoholic drink

• Make sure you have at least a few alcohol-free days over the festive period.

5Enjoy A Guilt Free Christmas If you do overindulge don’t waste time feeling guilty afterwards, think you need to skip meals the next day or do a juice detox in the New Year. This is not necessary. Instead, simply aim to get back on track as soon as you can. Focus on drinking more water, moving your body more regularly and eating less processed foods. Our bodies are fantastic at detoxing without any special diets or juices and these things can all help to support that process. It’s what you do consistently not occasionally that makes the biggest difference to your health and, in my opinion, stressing over the occasional indulgence can actually be worse for us than just enjoying our food. Last Christmas wasn’t the festive season many of us hoped it would be, with limits on the number of people we could celebrate with. This year, more than ever, enjoying quality time with loved ones should be our number one priority. So eat, drink and be merry. Follow the tips in this article to help you do exactly that without feeling the need to detox or diet once the New Year rolls around.

If you’re ready to ditch diets, feel less stressed and have more energy my coaching packages could be exactly what you’re looking for. My holistic approach to weight loss is perfect for you if you’re fed up of fad diets and want to create healthy habits that last in the long-term.

To find out how fully personalised nutrition and lifestyle coaching could help you to achieve your weight loss goals, head to my website:

www.catherinedeancoaching.co.uk

If you’ve enjoyed reading this article, keep an eye out for more advice from me in future editions of Lancashire Magazine. I’ll be joining you every month throughout 2021.

You can also email me if you have any nutrition and lifestyle questions you’d like me to answer in future columns: info@catherinedeancoaching.co.uk

Funny how a memory can surface that just seems to explain your experiences in life.

It happens a lot when I have been working one to one with clients. Earlier this week I was speaking with client about how deep ingrained patterns with money that can hold us back in our businesses, in our careers, in fact in any area of our lives. What’s really interesting is that it’s rarely obvious how these patterns are created.

As we were exploring her patterns and discussing what she would prefer instead, a memory popped into my head of an executive of an organisation I had previously worked with. A fair and competent guy who had been treated so badly that it cost him his career and mental wellbeing. And somewhere, the thought struck me, “bad things always happen to good people”. Wow. Was this a belief that I had held after witnessing his demise? After sitting with it for a while, I realised that the origin of the belief creation actually came from my childhood, and I had “inherited” it from my family.

It reminds me of when I really wanted a pair of those iconic work boots. I remember asking my mother, when I was around twelve or thirteen, could I have a pair? Her immediate response was no. And as a petulant teen in my best whiny hard done-to voice, I asked “Why not? All the girls at school are wearing them”. “Nice girls don’t wear them.” And right there and then I coded into my psyche that nice girls don’t…

What my mum probably wanted to say was that we couldn’t afford them at that time as a single parent family, whilst we had everything we needed, the luxuries of life weren’t readily accessible to us. For her, that was shortened to a simple no, probably as part of her own money story. As that young person I took that nice girl statement to mean that I had to be a bad girl to have nice things in life. Can you imagine how that played out? I became driven by “I want it, I’m having it and I’ll work incredibly hard to pay for it!”

Around this same time in my childhood, I became fascinated with human behaviour and the things www.lancmag.com people say and do. It led me to start seeing people as problems to solve. It’s no surprise then that I ended up heading towards mathematics and computer programming as my initial career of choice. After graduating, I also stepped into the world of teaching mathematics and IT to adults part-time alongside my day job of computer analyst programmer.

I loved computers; they were easy to code and perform as you needed them too. It was the people involved that were the major challenge. I discovered that I had an aptitude for engaging them and leading them in the direction they needed to go, even if they couldn’t see it for themselves.

Post serious life-changing burnout in 2014, after running my own transformation consultancy at full tilt for many years, my body finally gave up on my drive to be superwoman. I started a project. I called it Minerva after the Roman Goddess of trade, strategy, craft and war. I couldn’t work in the way I had previously and doing a full day’s work would lay me out for a week. Yet as you can imagine, I needed something to occupy myself.

It started with a personal development meeting for women. Having used behaviour and language profiling for building high performing teams and functions within my transformation work, I noticed that for a lot of the women in the room, their body language wasn’t consistent with their spoken language.

What I came to understand through my explorations was, that the majority of people don’t do change easily and don’t actually hold what I now term a “true vision” for their lives. They are on the treadmill of life, following the expectations of their families, their cultures, their education and society as a whole. Doing what they do, until they retire and die. And sadly, it’s also true for the majority of entrepreneurs and business owners.

And whilst traditional research will tell you that businesses fail due to a lack of viable market or running out of cash; the underlying reason comes down to not holding a “true vision”. For women, this is more pertinent than men. As women, 30 or so years ago, we followed the dogma that we could have it all. Yet in our roles as mothers, wives, carers, we have put ourselves at the bottom of the pile. Having it all it is just too exhausting.

Recently, I was working with a coach who had hit burnout. She was struggling to find her mojo and get things moving again. Having been in business for ten years, she knew what to do and how to find and retain clients. When I asked her what she truly desired for herself in life – not her family or what she thought she should be doing – she was stumped.

I want it, I’m having it and I’ll work incredibly hard to pay for it!

It became obvious to her why she struggled to move herself forward.

I recall standing in a high-end department store sometime in 2016 staring at a beautiful colourful blouse, having a similar struggle myself with focus, when an insight struck me. “I’m not broken, people are not broken.” Thus, we are not problems to solve. All my personal development training and the qualifications I had undertaken operate from the perspective of treating people as if they were problems to solve. Now, I know if a computer isn’t performing as expected, then there is probably a rogue line of code in there stopping it functioning as we want it to. We know what results we want from the computer; we just have to do a simple recode to change its behaviour. The computer was never broken.

There’s a metaphor I heard a few years ago; people are born brilliant diamonds and they are just covered in the horse poo of life; someone comes along and pours nail varnish over the dung pile. It sets and we believe that this is who we are. A pile of stuff that needs to be shifted.

I experienced this in my own life, being driven to always achieve more because my own personal horse poo had me believe that I “wasn’t good enough” or “worthy enough” to have what I had. Until my body and thus my business failed.

Think about those people who win the lottery, one day they have a modest income and a certain lifestyle and then suddenly they have millions at their disposal. They go on a spending spree and then they have nothing – they end up back where they started. Their horse poo and nail polish of life has them unconsciously believing that’s where they belong.

It’s not just lottery winners that are stuck in self-destructive dream killing loops. Yo-yo dieting is another classic example – you head towards your goal weight on a diet; you may even reach it – and yet you end up back where you started and maybe a bit worse. It’s the same for relationships and behaviours with money.

It’s been scientifically shown how stress and anxiety can create illness in the body, but the real root cause is not external conditions it’s how we respond to these conditions, it’s our internal coding which is usually based on our childhood experiences. I now know that I unconsciously created my life changing burnout to stop me continuing the way I had been. I also know that this is an experience and behaviour that I had integrated into my own horse poo from older members of my family.

I’m now working on a new project “I would love to have that but…” and how all that stuff after the but gets in the way of having what we desire in life. I chose Blackpool as the location for my project scoping photo shoot. It has poignant memories for me.

Going back to my childhood once again, when I was probably around 10 years old and my sister just 5 years old. On a late autumn evening after we had finished eating, mum instructed us to go and get changed into warm clothes and put on our big coats. It was weird because we would normally have had a bath and got changed into our PJs to watch telly before going to bed. We left the house with me and ‘our kid’ baffled and a bit anxious on where we were going. Had mum finally followed through on her threats to give us away for being naughty? It turns out that we were going on a tour. We nervously stepped onto a minibus full of mum’s friends and their kids; spirits where high - yet me and my sister must have looked like rabbits caught in a car’s headlights. Everyone else knew where they were going, me and my little sister didn’t have a clue. Mum had thought it would be a nice surprise.

It turns out that we were heading to the Blackpool Illuminations! As, we travelled under the bright lights our fears melted to innocent wonder.

I am sure mum could never imagine how her behaviour to create a nice surprise for us had instilled in me the absolute need to always know where I am going. I am quite sure this is why I was always outcome focused when doing my transformation work!

As I underwent my recovery from burnout, it became very apparent that I would never be able to operate a business in the way I had previously

done. I am so blessed to have a caring husband who gave me the time and space to re-invent myself through a number of iterations.

Inspired by the thought that we are not broken, when I encountered the Magnetic Mind approach it felt like I had finally connected with people who got what I already understood. I loved the approach so much, and it fitted so well with my MINERVA findings that I certified in it during 2020. This approach is so different and is based on leading edge scientific knowledge, yet the results can seem so fantastical. And what I truly love is that we don’t need to know what formed that horse poo! We just do the simple recode, just as I used to do with computers.

Like a significant number of people, the events of 2020/2021 have had an impact. We saw many businesses, some long established names amongst them, go under. People have lost their livelihoods, homes and loved ones. Yet, there are people who were able to adapt and have amazing growth in their businesses, who started promising new relationships and those who took the opportunity to change careers.

For me, as someone who preferred in person events, I am loving the balance and potential with working both in person in my office in Leyland as well as online using my Money Breakthrough and Magnetic Mind Coaching. As I write this, I have worked this week with people in Melbourne and Sydney as well as California. My own true vision has me travelling the world doing the work I love doing, serving and supporting people to create their own true vision. Who knew a childhood fascination with people and their behaviours would lead to a creating a business where everything I do feels like fun!

www.magnetisesuccesscoach.com Tel: 01772 382 982 transform@mirandachristopher.com

Stroke Survivors in the North West Shape Stroke Research to Rebuild Lives

The Stroke Association, the UK’s leading stroke charity, is announcing the top 10 priorities for stroke research, uncovered by a rigorous study involving stroke survivors, their carers and health and social care professionals in stroke.

The charity’s new report - the first UK-wide project to map research priorities across the entire stroke care and treatment pathway - reveals where research can address the issues holding stroke survivors back from rebuilding their lives after a devastating stroke.

There are over 100,000 strokes in the UK every year, and there are now over 1.3 million stroke survivors in the UK[1,2]. However, according to the most recent figures from the UK Medical Research Council[3], only £30m of public and charity health research spending goes on stroke. This equates to less than £25 per stroke survivor per year compared to £161 per person living with cancer[4] .

Jen Gardner, Associate Director of the Stroke Association in the North

West said: “One in five people will have a stroke in their lifetime. Stroke happens in the brain, the control centre for who we are and what we can do. Every stroke is unique because the brain is so complex and stroke can happen in any part of it. This means there are as many different impacts of stroke as there are stroke survivors, posing a huge challenge for research.

“Despite major breakthroughs over the last 10 years, we now know where there are significant blind spots in treatment and care. These are holding people back from rebuilding their lives. With the number of people having strokes set to rise – it’s predicted that the number of stroke survivors aged 45 and over could rise to 1.4 million in 2025, and 2.1 million in 2035[5] , we must act now and invest in the research that will make the biggest difference to the lives of people affected by stroke.”

Over 1,400 people affected by stroke and professionals in stroke took part in the project, which was carried out in partnership with the James Lind Alliance (JLA), as well as individuals and organisations representing stroke patients, carers and professionals in stroke.

The Stroke Association is sharing the findings as part of its new report “Shaping Stroke Research to Rebuild Lives: The Stroke Priority Setting Partnership results for investment.” The report sets the agenda for stroke research and identifies the areas that most urgently need investment. There are two lists of 10 priority areas: the first in stroke prevention and acute care, and the second in rehabilitation and longterm care, ranked in order of importance.

The top priorities in each list are:

• Interventions to stop stroke. Stroke strikes every 5 minutes in the UK, but we know that most (8090%) strokes are preventable[1,6]. We need increased investment in research so people can avoid the devastating effects of stroke in the first place. • Understanding of, and treatment for mental and emotional problems. Three quarters of stroke survivors experience a change in their mental health[7], we need research so that people can overcome significant effects such as anxiety and depression after stroke.

Dr Rubina Ahmed, Director of Research and Policy at

the Stroke Association, said: “Charities like ours need to look for new ways to help stroke survivors with emotional, mental and communication problems. Establishing what research will make the biggest difference to stroke survivors and those caring for them is just the first step. Stroke research is severely underfunded. Just £1 in every £100 of public and charity spend in health research is on stroke and this just isn’t enough to solve the big and complex issues caused by stroke.

“The stroke funding crisis has been worsened by the coronavirus (Covid 19) pandemic, which has had a devastating impact on our income, halving the charity’s research budget. Stroke research is at risk, which means recoveries are at risk too. Your support can fund the research that will lead to breakthroughs in treatment and care. If you can, please donate so that we can make sure more stroke survivors can rebuild their lives after stroke.

“We would like to thank everyone who took part in this project: stroke survivors, their carers, professionals in stroke, the James Lind Alliance, the Steering Group members and our partners. By having your say for stroke, you have helped to shape stroke research to rebuild lives.”

Over the past 30 years the Stroke Association has played a crucial role in supporting stroke research in the UK. By establishing these priorities our charity can support the research that can make the biggest difference to the lives of people affected by stroke.

Find out how stroke research helps rebuild lives at:

stroke.org.uk/rebuildinglives or to donate, please visit: stroke.org.uk/savingresearch To read the full list of priorities and the report visit: www.stroke.org.uk/psp

ABOUT THE STROKE ASSOCIATION

Stroke strikes every five minutes in the UK and it changes lives in an instant. The Stroke Association is a charity working across the UK to support people to rebuild their lives after stroke. We believe that everyone deserves to live the best life they can after stroke. From local support services and groups, to online information and support, anyone affected by stroke can visit stroke.org.uk or call our dedicated Stroke Helpline on 0303 3033 100 to find out about support available locally.

Our specialist support, research and campaigning are only possible with the courage and determination of the stroke community and the generosity of our supporters. With more donations and support, we can help rebuild even more lives.

YOU CAN FOLLOW US ON: T @TheStrokeAssoc | F @TheStrokeAssociation I @thestrokeassociation

REFERENCES:

[1] Sentinel Stroke National Audit

Programme (SSNAP) and Scottish Stroke

Care Audit (SSCA) [2] England (NHS Digital); Scotland (ISD);

Wales (StatsWales); Northern Ireland (DoH) [3] UK Clinical Research Collaboration, UK

Health Research Analysis 2018, 2020

https://hrcsonline.net/reports/analysisreports/uk-healthresearch-analysis-2018/ [4] Macmillian Cancer Support, Statistic fact sheet https://www.macmillan.org. uk/_images/cancer-statistics-factsheet_ tcm9-260514.pdf [5] The Future Incidence, Prevalance and

Costs of Stroke in the UK. Age and

Aging 2020: 49:277-282. [6] Global and regional effects of potentially modifiable risk factors associated with acute stroke in 32 countries (INTERSTROKE): a casecontrol study 2016: 388:761-75 [7] Stroke Association, Lived Experience of stroke: Chapter 1 – Hidden effects of stroke. https://www.stroke.org.uk/livedexperience-of-strokereport/chapter-1hidden-effects-of-stroke