High Performance without giving up Booze or Chocolate with Tim Goodman E8
September 7, 2021
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In this episode, we welcome Tim Goodman from Food Flexibility. We talk about nutrition and how you can still eat what you want AND get the important nutrients your body needs. We discuss water intake and how it can quickly improve your performance. And we go into more detail on exercise and movement and what we want to do now so we can truly enjoy our retirement and create high performance now.
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Get to know Tim Goodman
Tim helps people with full-on jobs to show up energised and well fuelled so they can perform to their fullest potential at home, at work, on the pitch and in the gym without giving up booze or chocolate.
His clients are no longer their 20-year-old selves, they are busy with work, family and social commitments which means they don’t get away with eating whatever they like anymore. But they still want to show their friends and your family that you don’t have to accept being ‘past it’ after you hit 30!
The best part is that it’s not a restrictive diet – his clients learn how to fit in the foods they love in a way that suits their own lifestyle. This way they maintain their progress for life!
Connect with Tim
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Let’s start with energy. How do you help your clients to have more energy in their lives?
So I work as a nutrition coach. Obviously, lots of people exercise to maybe lose weight and have a bit more energy, but most of the stuff I do is the food to support that. And the first thing for everyone, especially if we’ve got busy jobs and want higher performance, is hydration. And we definitely talk about sleep. I try and get them drinking a little bit more. That doesn’t just have water. Coffee counts as long as it’s not shots of espresso one after the other. And it’s just like fueling themselves properly.
So eating really good food alongside all of the other nice stuff that we all enjoy, like the cookies and crisps and biscuits, whatever we like to, but making sure there’s enough of the good stuff so that they’re firing on all cylinders. They’ve got all the nutrients, their body wants and needs just to help them thrive a bit better. And as soon as they start to have a bit more energy, there’s this really cool little spiral that goes alongside that. They get a bit more energetic, they do a bit more. Maybe they perform a bit better at work.
Do you have any recent client success stories that you can tell us more about how somebody went from low energy to high energy and increased their performance?
One of my recent clients in the last lockdown, however many we’ve had over the past few months and years, I started working with him, just after Christmas. And he’s got really high powered job, two young children, life is busy, trying to work from home. I’m sure people can sympathize with that. He’d done different diet programs in the past that had been a bit restrictive but this time around we got him into drinking his water, having really decent, substantial meals and then he said his energy really improved, which impacted work, family life, it just made things a lot easier. And he stopped reaching for the quick fix of a coffee or some chocolate or something sweet and having that caffeine or sugar rush and crash.
Quite often we can under fuel ourselves a little bit. So breakfast is a great example. It’s really simple to grab some cereal, maybe a pastry or something and a coffee. And it’s not really about throwing that out the window. It’s like, okay, well that thing’s easy, what other things are easy?
Could we add something to that? Could we have a bit of something like a Greek yogurt on the side to give it some protein and that help add our energy better? It helps it digest more slowly. And gradually as we start doing those things, then you find you’re not quite as hungry. Don’t need to snack as often and you get a taste for the good stuff. So the more healthy food you eat, the more it becomes a bit more normal and you actually start to enjoy it.
Ah, that’s interesting. I really love that about realizing that the good stuff that helps you might actually like then start to taste good or you have a craving for it because your body really wants it. Right? But I guess, you have to start doing it but I love what you said is you don’t have to force it. You don’t have to swap it. Just add something to the thing that you’re already doing.
I think that it’s much more attractive psychologically to say something else as well rather than… And then what you find out is actually, you’re quite full from having that more wholesome thing.
So why is it so difficult for people to make these changes themselves?
Every single answer you could possibly want is on the internet now. Some of those sources are more credible than others, but you’re completely right. All the answers out there, but I think you can’t often see for yourself from your own perspective, barriers might be in the way of that. It could be something as simple as how you’ve got your kitchen set up, and how you eat your meals. So in terms of the kitchen setup, a really common one is people say, I just can’t stop having my 10:00 AM biscuit.
Well, okay, so what happens at 10:00 AM? We’ll always have a coffee break at 10:00 AM. So I go to the coffee machine, I turn it on and I grab a biscuit because of the jars on top of the coffee machine.
So it can be as simple as saying, let’s put that somewhere else because the reason you grabbed the biscuit is it’s this pre-programmed habit. Automatically, as you make the coffee, you grab the biscuit. So if you break that habit loop by putting the biscuits somewhere else, it becomes a lot easier to abstain from that. The other example is lots of people aren’t really aware of sometimes maybe how quickly and how distracted they eat.
The classic example which you would think people would have stopped doing in lockdown with lots of homeworking is eating your lunch at your desk or you’re answering emails and things but that’s not great for your digestion. And when you’re not paying attention to any one particular thing you’re doing, you’re probably not doing a great job of your emails because you’re half-focused on eating. And you’re also not letting your body realize whether you are full because you’re multitasking.
What would you advise people that do want to feel better in their own skin?
So from a sort of nutrition standpoint is to just keep things as simple as you possibly can. If we are a little bit dehydrated, we lose concentration. We just feel more tired. Those two things make everything else so much more difficult. So even exercise is more difficult because you get fatigued quicker. If you’re not hydrated. You’re working harder because you’re not firing on all cylinders.
Then it’s about simply related to eating at the table, eating very slowly. So try to put your cutlery down between bites. If someone is there have a conversation with them and what you want to try to build up to maybe that meal lasting for 20 minutes. Now that can be a really big jump for some people. So let’s say you eat it in three at the moment to can you eat to five, see how you feel. Can you get it to 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10? And what happens there when we eat really slowly is that we just digest our food better. We feel fuller. And at that point, you might not need to make many more changes because you’re not reaching for those quick sugary snacks to keep you full up.
If you’ve got to that point and you’re still not there, then maybe it’s about all of the things you probably know already, fruits, vegetables, less processed foods, but also remembering that it’s okay to have pizza or a burger as well. It’s about moderation, but it’s about making those foods filling and nutritious at the same time.
What is a good number that you should be drinking per day?
It depends on how big you are. So the bigger you are, the more water you need. You can get really sciencey on it. But the best way to know is when you go for a pee it should be clear. It shouldn’t be crisp but it should be a very light colour. And that’s when will you know you’ve had enough to drink. Some people struggle just that they probably know that already. They just struggle with actual remembering to get enough in.
In the morning make it the first thing that you do to have a tumbler of water. Let’s say you have that before you have a coffee.
How can we leverage nutrition for high performance?
One of those things is eating minimally processed food is going to get you to maintain your weight nicely, which is going to help you in a lot of ways. Having a full spectrum of fruits and vegetables in your diet is the best way to get all of your vitamins and minerals and the nutrients that you need. And if you’re always underfed on all of those nutrients, like all the different minerals, then you’re just not going to be operating optimally.
If you look at something like an athlete’s diet, they will always be eating all of that stuff. And they’ll have lots and lots of fruits and vegetables because they’re very active and they’re just burning through all of those nutrients all of the time. And they want that extra 1% to keep them focused. So it is about the quality of your food as much as anything else. And sometimes that sounds a bit difficult because people think they need to go all the way to just having fruits, vegetables, really. Clean food.
Heavily processed food is quite devoid of nutrients but it’s really, really easy to overeat. So whilst I don’t like the phrase good or bad with foods, it is really easy to overeat and it doesn’t have many of those nutrients. So once you’ve done that and you’re full up on that type of food, it’s going to be really difficult for you to go and grab an apple because it doesn’t taste as nice because you’ve had all that salty, sweet food.
I like to get a lot of my clients to think, right, even if I have that process thing, I have a side of vegetables with it. I need that side of vegetables first. Even if I don’t like them and you probably do this with a child. Right? You’d say like, eat your vegetables first then you’d have the nicest thing afterwards.
So make that bargain with yourself because you still get to have the thing that you’re craving but try and be a bit more of a grownup about it and say, look, I want to feel better to say this is going to be good for me. Pick the ones that you like, and don’t keep eating the same vegetables that you don’t like. There will be one that you like, but just make that habit of putting them as the important part of the meal rather than the rest of the stuff that goes alongside it.
What is your personal journey been with nutrition? How do you eat now versus maybe in your past?
In the past, as a young guy, I didn’t really eat very well. I think lots of people can resonate with that. I probably didn’t even get away with it at the time. It wasn’t super sporty as a kid. Throughout university probably had the stereotypical student diet, lots of processed stuff but then as I came to the end of university, I was actually dating a dietician at the time she was a student dietitian. And she just pointed out to me that the reason that they ask, in the UK, you to eat five portions of fruit and vegetable a day, it dramatically reduces your risk of all of the worst types of cancer.
For whatever reason, that really rang an alarm bell. I better start eating my five a day and I didn’t change anything else. I just did that thing. And that helped. Then I went away to New Zealand backpacking on my own which meant I didn’t have a lot of money. I went to the grocery store all the time and bought all of the cheap stuff, which was fruits and vegetables. So I broke that university habit.
And then I think I came back with a completely different mindset around it. I started getting better and better at physical activity and that just spiralled. And then we went a bit too far the other way.
I started training too hard, and not eating enough. I then studied nutrition just because I was so interested in it.
So I had a few mental battles to get over, but as soon as I managed to eat more, my physical performance just really unlocked. And I think as I stand here at 39, I’m the fastest and strongest I’ve ever been. So it can be, well, 20 ideas to get to that stage, but it’s really been worth it.
What happened to make you go, no, something’s not quite right here?
I think it partly was coaching. So when I was doing my nutrition course, the guy running it ran a, he called it a gains club, gym-based strength program. So that was an eye-opener that you actually have to train really hard to put muscle on, which I’ve been struggling with for a while. And he said, everybody, has this realization. If you think you’re not training hard enough, you probably aren’t. But you’ve also got to feel that.
And so I was asking lots of questions because I was studying his nutrition course and he basically turned around and said, dude, just eat a little bit more. You have to gain muscle, just eat a bit more. I kept eating a bit more.
And I was like, wow, I’ve just literally gained that 20% of performance that I didn’t know I could have just from actually fueling myself which seems really stupid. But you kind of have to experience it for yourself. Even as a coach recently, I worked with a lady who’s training for the London marathon. She kind of had the same journey that I’ve just described. So I could really resonate with her. And I said to her, look, I promise you, you won’t put on weight. You won’t get fat doing this.
You’ve already said to me, that you spent lots of time in the gym. You really want to get a great marathon time. If those things are truly important to you, you’re sabotaging all of that by not eating enough. And the worst thing that could happen is for a couple of weeks, you eat a little bit too much. You put on a tiny bit of fat with how active you are that will just disappear within a week or so it’s not a big deal. You just got to give it a go. And then there was one morning she woke up, she did her run and smashed it. She looks at all her measurements and looks at herself and she was like, you know what? I look better.
Why is moving our bodies so important and how does it impact our life on a daily basis if we don’t do it?
The first thing to say is that as human beings, we’re designed to move, we’re not designed to be sat on a chair or computer and I think we probably will resonate with that we’ll probably understand that the fact. It’s just important… I mean, even culturally, lots of cultures express their feelings with dance. It’s just kind of how human beings have evolved to do stuff. And I always think of it as the case of you use it or you lose it.
So you might look at say a toddler and how easy they can get up and down from the floor. How easily they can get into a full squat. But even as an adult that is still possible, but you’ve got to keep using it. And I think a lot of people think, well, I’ve got this to do. I’ve got that to do. And there’s no reason at the moment necessarily to keep working at it. But then if you look towards maybe your retirement. And actually do the things today, I was looking at retirement planning and they said like, well, the predicted age that you might die is like 91?
I’m born in like 1982. That’s just based on my date of birth. That’s not based on anything else.
If you think let’s say, I think my UK retirement age is maybe 63 or something.
A long time where you can be doing stuff where that investment in making sure that you move a little bit every day really pays off because there’s plenty of people who retire go into a little bit of a health and would love to do lots of things and you can’t do anymore. So sometimes it’s about having that motivation.
How can people best start to bring more movement into their busy lives?
I would imagine if you were really honest with yourself that you spend some time procrastinating. Regardless of how busy you are. Sometimes the busier we get, the more we procrastinate because it just gets tough. So where are those gaps and how can you make the habit of doing some exercise, easy and attractive.
So how to make it easy. In my office. I’m sitting down now, but I’ve got a stand-up desk. What I find with mine is I don’t use it when it’s down clearly. So what I try and do is start the day. I lift my stand-up desk up. I get up in the morning, make coffee and start making breakfast. I’ll come into the office, and lift the desk up so that when I start work, it’s already set up. So it’s an effort to put it down. Until I get tired and then I’ll sit down.
In my office, I’ve got all of my resistance bands to do all my various exercises for my bad shoulder and all these things but I have to walk past them every time I walk out the door. I could choose to see it every time I go to the bathroom.
I could choose to take a five-minute walk around the block on my lunch break. Or after each call, I could walk to the bottom of the garden and back up again if I’ve got a garden. If I wanted to, I could do some squats by the castle while it’s boiling, is that same habit stacking technique. And like none of these things on their own add up to a lot. But it’s all about the intent of doing them. The more you do that and the more you start to associate with being a person that stays active in their home office.
I guess the final one is lots of people on Zoom calls all day. Those people on the phone all day because we’re all remote working. There is no reason you cannot stand up while you’re on a phone call. None whatsoever. I think even on a video call, lots of my clients challenged me on this, I can’t stand up because we’ve got videos on all day. The times I’ve done that with my work colleagues, they’ve actually asked me about all about my standing desk and went away and bought one for themselves.
So how do you train now but how has your journey been in the area of training?
I started off with my university mates. One of them was into fitness, so we used to go running. We used to do these sun banks and the set and it was all great fun at the time. And I got a bit more into high performance at my second training at the gym. I got braver with that, did circuit training and I really enjoyed it. Because when I got that energy, I could then push myself a little bit harder and I really saw it as a physical improvement. I went from not being able to single press up to be able to do 20, which was quite a big thing at the time because I was pretty embarrassed as a guy not to do a single press up.
And after that, I kind of got the confidence from working with those circuit training instructors to go into use the gym. Even for a guy, it can be quite an intimidating environment, weights and things. I don’t know how to use them and am just a bit lost. And I kind of fell in love with it then because I really, really enjoyed being able to challenge myself by lifting a few weights.
And then these days I’m actually working with my personal trainer that I use. We’ve done lots of work on strength performance in sports and sprinting. And he’s really into strong man training. And he’s pushing me outside of my comfort zone to lift up.
Yeah. It really tough, but it’s really like reconnected me to doing something different with my training. So it just made it exciting again. And all of these skills are really transferable. So when I’m in the garden, moving soil around and stuff, it’s sort of stuff that I’m like getting myself to be able to do. So as I get older, hopefully, I’ll still be able to keep doing it.
What role does mindset play in your work with your clients to help them with high performance?
I’d say it’s the most important factor to increase your performance. I think we talked already about people have the answers everywhere on the internet about what to eat. So it’s not about knowledge. It’s all about mindset. Fundamentally, why do you want to do that thing in the first place?
So for me, I think I already talked about it, as we age, I also want to be able to move. I want to be able to enjoy my retirement. If we’re lucky enough to have a family, I’m not going to be a young dad. So I’m going to need to be fit and able to look after that family if we have one. And those things are way more important than, oh, right, well, my mate ran a 5k in this particular time I think I should probably try and get somewhere near that time. That’s kind of cool, but is that really?
If you’re not really attached to that thing, how much effort and time you’re going to put into it because when there’s a real reason to do that or likely to do it and then the other aspects of mindset is just understanding all of the other things that are getting in your way in stressful situations that could lead to eating differently, under-eating, overeating and getting to bed on time is also a mindset thing.
If you’re watching Netflix, it’s always going to be really tempting to watch an extra one. That’s the mindset thing. Right? Do you need that? Do you need that time to unwind or do you need to take other steps in your life to unwind enough that you can go to bed at a proper time? Be less tired in the morning and be more effective for the rest of the day. And that’s a big mindset shift to work on as well.
That’s true. Willpower just doesn’t sustain. Does it?
No, it will never last. A lot of people come to me and say, I’ve lost my willpower. I actually need some more willpower, willpower, willpower. Well, it kind of exists, but it doesn’t really, it doesn’t sustain, as you said, because the thing that will make you get up at six o’clock in the morning to go for an hour-long run if that’s what you enjoy, is because that’s what you enjoy doing and you enjoy doing it because it gives you some benefit.
So it’s a mental clarity thing and it’s your kind of meditation time. It’s your time out of the house before you have a long day at work. Those are all good reasons to do it. The other good reasons are the long-term ones. So again, talking about what does this look like in 30 years’ time? Is this an investment in my future? Because when we see it that way, it does become, you don’t need the willpower. You still might not want to do it, but you’ve got a real clear reason for why. It’s kind of like going to work. If you’ve got a job where you don’t love it, you’re not going to walk in on a Monday morning and say, I resigned without having a plan. You’ve got to pay your bills. Right?
Do you have any affirmations or statements that help you to high performance?
I guess I didn’t until recently. I’ve done a little business course for my nutrition business and their mantra was what would this look like if it was easy. I’m a massive over-thinker. And I literally had written at the top of my whiteboard still that like big letters.
So before we’re closing off, I have a question for you. If I would ask you to contribute to a book, what would be the one contribution that you would give to that book?
I would say do less to deliver more. I think maybe over the last month I’ve been working quite hard and lots of different little projects and not really getting anywhere. And I did actually have a deadline to do something. And that reminded me that just do one thing, get it done then move on to the next thing because otherwise, you’ve got this scattergun approach, nothing gets done.
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