Simplify your diet
Good as Gold's Podcast EP05
On this episode of the Good as Gold’s Podcast Em and Cal speak to nutritionist and personal trainer, Samantha Smith, about all things food and how you can’t out train a poor diet.
Sam Smith has been involved in the fitness industry since she was 16 and is passionate about working with clients at Gold’s Gym Fyshwick to help transform their lives, especially when it comes to their mindset around nutrition.
For her, ‘healthy’ is a lifestyle.
“Healthy and lifestyle I believe go hand-in-hand. It’s not just one thing or the other. I think that you can be really fit, but not healthy. I think you can look really fit, but not be healthy. Nutrition definitely plays the number one role in being healthy inside and out.”
When working with clients, Sam is hands-on. She doesn’t try to start from scratch with food, instead she works with people so they understand how they can fit good habits into their current lifestyle.
“If they like cereal for instance, or they’re used to meat and veg, what we do is we use that because that’s what they have and we just try to alter it so it gets them better with their goals. So don’t try to recreate everything or recreate the wheel for them, but what I’d rather do is try to adopt these healthier lifestyle principles into their routine.”
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When it comes to calories, macronutrients, protein, carbohydrates and sugars, Sam keeps it as simple as possible and focuses on educating around the basics.
“I feel like it’s been overcomplicated so much. I mean, of course, professional athletes, bodybuilders…of course, they have to look a little bit further, right? But for everyone else outside of that bracket, and that’s a lot of lifestyle clients, just day to day people trying to gain weight, trying to lose weight, it really comes down to calories in versus calories out.”
“Everyone’s going to be different. So for instance, my calories, daily calories to say, make me gain weight might be someone else’s just maintenance. Or it could make them actually lose weight.”
Her goal is to get people to a point where they don’t need to track their food, instead they feel confident to make the right decisions where possible.
Sam can’t stress enough how overall wellbeing is individual for each person. What works for someone, might not have the same results for the next person. For example, a tradie who works outside and trains twice a day won’t have the same water intake requirements as someone who is in air conditioning all day.
“Your normal day to day, I’d say, at least try to get at least two litres of plain water into you if you can.”
And her top tip if you have low energy? Make sure you’re getting enough sleep!
“Our bodies do not know what we need in terms of how to get energy. So usually that’s why we crave carbohydrates, sometimes late at night. I would say if your body is tired, it wants energy. It knows that carbohydrates give you energy, but really, it just needs to sleep.”
Nutrition is key to reaching your health goals, so if you would like to hear more of the gold nuggets surrounding nutrition shared by Sam in our latest episode, subscribe or follow us on Youtube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.