Part 1: I Quit Sugar....Again? How Sugar Affects Your Mind-Body Health

Your Brain on Sugar

Well, it’s January! Time to jump on the secular bandwagon and give something up for 30 days. If you’re like most people, you’re probably giving up sugar (a.k.a carbs) and alcohol (a.k.a liquid carbs).

Who here has tried to quit sugar & alcohol before?

A few years after I finished having my kids, I was still 20lbs overweight and was struggling with a multitude of health issues. And as part of my New Year’s resolution to lose the weight and get fit again I decided to quit sugar.   Chocolate and chocolate chip cookies were my kryptonite, so logically I thought, “Yup! Let’s start with the hardest of all challenges cuz if I can do this ONE thing – then I will be skinny, fit and I’ll feel good again.”

Well, let me tell you – the struggle was mammoth.  My Sugar Beast was huuuuge and strong. I would finish lunch and it would nag me for a piece of chocolate. I would plop on the couch in the evening ready to Netflix and chill and it would surface beseeching me for a glass of wine or the rest of the chocolate I didn’t eat. I tried to ignore it, but the sugar Beast would cry even louder, unrelenting until I finally gave in. 

And when I did, I felt like crap.  This is how I would talk to myself:

“Cristina- why are you so damn weak-minded? What’s wrong with you? Can’t you see this is making you undesirable & unhappy.  Why can’t you just stop, put your big girl pants on and do what you have to do.”

It wasn’t until I studied to become a nutritionist that I realised that beating the Sugar Beast was not a mind over matter battle.  The Sugar Beast lives in out gut – not our mind.  We just think it lives in our brain because that is where the messages from our gut get translated into language we understand.

In the last decade, an ever-increasing body of research on the brain-gut axis is showing us that our cravings & even our mood, our emotions & our “gut feelings” are largely determined by out gut microbiome. Our gut microbiome is our own personal wellness army composed of trillions of different bacteria - 100,00 times more populous than people on earth.  This microbial army is responsible for safeguarding wellness factors like our immunity and our happiness.  95% of our happy hormone serotonin is metabolised in our gut.  So our gut is not just a digestive organ – but it is our second brain. When spread out, our gut is the size of a basketball court and it is packed with thousands of little sensors & millions of microbes that carry critical information to the rest of the body and give our emotional brain information about our health & wellbeing.

Unfortunately, if your gut’s army has a rogue unit, you need more than willpower to quit sugar & alcohol & take back control of your cravings. 

So – the million dollar question is WHAT DO YOU NEED?

Well, the key success factor for overcoming sugar cravings is to open & optimise your detoxification pathways.  Basically – you have to aim to produce Gold Star Poops.

You see, the quality of our microbial army is reflected in the quality of our bowel movements, which in turn depends directly on the quality of our nutritional intake.

So what is a Gold Star Poop?  Well, it does have some distinct characteristics. For example, it is brown in colour, it looks like sausage with a pointy tail that sinks to the bottom of the bowl.  It’s not messy to wipe clean.  It doesn’t have any food bits in it.  And it is the length of your forearm.  When we poop according to this criteria we empty out the lower bowel to properly detoxify our body and allow a healthy flourishing of the bacterial ecosystem that maintains our immune system & our mental health in good stead.

Pooping like this takes some nutritional dedication, but before we get into those, I would like to share with you how a diet high in sugar & alcohol affect your mind & body health:

·        First – diets high in sugar – and by sugar I don’t just mean the sugar coming in by way of biscuits, added sugar to your coffee, chocolate and wine.  I also include all the sugar come into the body by way of carbohydrates, like bread, pasta, rice, noodles, wraps, fries & chips.  So, if your diet is high in sugars – these sugars will feed a particular subset of bacteria in the gut and help this bacteria flourish.  This is how the Sugar Beast grows and grows and why quitting sugar is not a mind over matter game.  It is a gut game that starts with rebalancing the gut microbiome in order to increase your good bacteria & decrease the bad so that you can take control of what you eat & drink & not have your cravings control you.

·        Second - diets high in sugar & alcohol bog down the liver & demineralizes the body.    When we bog down liver & deplete the body of minerals– we are more prone to constipation.  Plus alcohol is the toxin that goes to the front of the line in liver metabolism.  Your body prioritises getting rid of alcohol and a result, other toxins like air pollutants, pesticides get pushed to the back of the line. 

·        Third – alcohol in particular, raises our stress hormone cortisol & disrupts sleep.  This has a knock-on effect on insulin & makes you more insulin resistant the next day.  Compound more work-related stress to the picture and you quickly find yourself gaining weight around the belly that is impossible to lose.  Moreover, as we age, the blood-brain barrier gets thinner so alcohol hits harder & hangover linger longer compounding issues like brain fog and memory loss.

In the past ten years, data on alcohol consumption shows that women are catching to men.  The alcohol industry specifically targets women in their aim to normalize alcohol consumption and associate it with feeling good, relaxed.  When online school started again in January, a picture of a wine bottle with a pink tag on it that read “pairs well with online school” circulated on social media. 

But here’s the thing.  To our body and our hormones – sugar & alcohol aren’t just delicious flavours or your collection of feel-good memories or the warm fuzzies that you desire after a hard day’s work.  Sugar & alcohol are information.  And if our liver & digestive system are bogged down because they’re busy metabolising sugars & detoxing alcohol – then we will always be destined to lose the mind over matter battle on quitting sugar because our desire for it is not just emotional – it’s physiological, it’s biochemical.

So – how do we change our gut microbiome for the better and get those Gold Star Poops?  Haven’t we come full circle here and back to the “I quit sugar” call? Isn’t that the answer?

Well, here’s what I’ve come to realise after years of clinical practice.  Quitting sugar & alcohol cold turkey is rarely the answer – especially for people who work in high stress environments and very likely, teeter daily on the edge of overwhelm or burnout. 

What does work? Tune in next week for the one mindset hack that will change your relationship with sugar & food forever.

In the meantime, want to work with me to kill you Sugar Beast so that you can reach your wellness goals?

• Sign up to the 30-Day Total Body Reset (starting on January 24th) that I’m doing in collaboration with Amy Aravantinos from Amy A Fitness. We will help your evict the Sugar Beast and lose those Covid 15!

And if the Sugar Beast is giving you brain fog and sabotaging your performance:

• Sign up to the Women. Lead. Now. Masterclass starting on January 25th. This Masterclass was created by leadership coaches Alicia Saint & Heather Haigh and is for women who want to design the leadership vision they want to live into with clarity, confidence, competence & courage. As a guest collaborator, I give you a robust wellness toolkit to support your leadership journey so that you do not burnout in the process.

You can also work with me 1:1. Book me in for a free 15min consult today.

Cristina Tahoces is a nutritional therapist and owner of Thrive Nutrition Practice, a global online wellness business that helps corporate leaders be more physically & mentally resilient to stress. She shared her nutritional approach on the TEDx stage in 2017 as part of the TED Women’s Global Conference. She is a sought-after expert speaker & panelist on burnout, women’s post-natal wellness & metabolic health.

Holiday Overwhelm & Over Indulgence: Top Symptoms & The Best Solutions

Ah, the holidays! The most wonderful time of the year, if you believe the Andy Williams Christmas song. But isn’t it also the most stressful? End of year reporting, assessments, allocating bonuses, finalising year-end projects & next year’s business plans & projections. All this work collides with finding gifts & writing cards for everyone from family to teachers, attending multiple social engagements & prepping for yet another drama-filled family gathering! It’s a recipe for overwhelm & over indulgence all culminating in long list of new year’s resolutions full of promise for new beginnings.

Holiday overwhelm & over indulgence often go together during the holidays - and they cause some pretty nasty symptoms. Here are the top 3 I see and my favourite remedies you can try this holiday season:

REFLUX & ACID INDIGESTION

Stress stops digestion in the bud. Makes sense. When we are under threat, we can’t really let something like hunger override our primal instinct for survival. So, heading to that holiday party straight from work or going to what you know is going to be a drama-filled family gathering is going to shut down production of your digestive juices. Not great news given the onslaught of rich food & booze that follows. So many people suffer from acid reflux, indigestion & gastroesophaegul reflux disorder (GERD) during the holidays. How many of you out there can’t sleep properly after a big holiday meal?

Solution: Pop some digestive enzymes just before you start your meal. It will support your digestive potential, reduce bloating and distention, as well as reduce reflux & GERD. I like using Pure Encapsulations, which are available at top-end health food stores. If you have trouble finding them, get in touch & I’ll give you a 10% discount when you order them online from Fullscript.

THE SUGAR BEAST AWAKENS

As a former sugarholic, I know first-hand how the holidays awaken the Sugar Beast within. How can they not? Betweent the booze, mince pies, pannettone and Toblerone - our consumption of carbohydrates increases dramatically —— AND SO DOES OUR OPPORTUNISTIC GUT BACTERIA. These little critters have a field day during the holidays & proliferate like fiends. As their numbers increase so do our sugar cravings and before the new year begins, our Sugar Beast has fully reclaimed possession of our cravings & our inner critic, relentlessly harrassing us for more sugar whilst calling us weak every time we give in.

Solution: When you get a sugar craving, try drinking a glass of water with the juice of 1/2 a lemon OR have 1 tsp of MCT oil. This will give you both the feeling of satiety plus enough time to pause and make your food choices with intention.

THE NEVER-ENDING HANGOVER

Spoiler alert to all the 20 & 30yr olds reading this. Once you hit 40 - hangovers last for days! And they happen with a lot less booze intake. If your daytime holiday fun is being impacted by the never-ending hangover that just refuses to let go, here’s my favourite tip.

Solution: Take 5g of chlorella two hours before an evening of drinking. This dosage has been to shown to lower the effects of a hangover in 96% of participants. Personally, I take another 5g with my meal; and I make sure to drink a lot of water over the course of the evening to ensure I keep flushing as much as I can out before going to sleep.

Hope these tips and tricks make your holidays a little easier. And if you need more support I’m only every an email away!

Happy holidays!

Cristina

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Cristina Tahoces is a nutritional therapist and owner of Thrive Nutrition Practice, a global online wellness business that helps corporate leaders be more physically & mentally resilient to stress. She shared her nutritional approach on the TEDx stage in 2017 as part of the TED Women’s Global Conference. She is a sought-after expert speaker & panelist on burnout, women’s post-natal wellness & metabolic health.

The Top Health Issues Behind Lost Productivity & What You Can Do About It

The common cold is one of the biggest reasons for calling in sick. But I bet you didn't know that irritable bowel causes just as many sicks days as the common cold.

And what's worse is that unlike the common cold, irritable bowel is a chronic condition that can plague highly stressed, burned out employees 365 days a year, incurring productivity costs even when your employees are present at work.

What other health & wellness issues incur productivity costs due to absenteeism and presenteeism?

• Anxiety & depression: In Canada alone, mental health issues cause 500,000 Canadians to be absent from work every week!

• Adrenal fatigue & exhaustion (aka burnout) which is a big reason behind brain fog.

• Menstrual issues: 20% of women report needing to take a sick day but most of them don't for fear of being seen as weak or simply not having sick days left to take!

• Blood sugar issues caused by stress & stress eating which then impacts focus.

• Bad sleep that leaves people struggling with energy levels.

These are just the top ones that I see on the daily. But productivity costs resulting from absenteeism and presenteeism can be mitigated.

A plan that includes nutritional coaching provides immediate returns because employees and leaders learn best practices & impactful nutritional tips to lower inflammation in the body, regulating blood sugar, improving immunity and supporting cognitive function.

My Wellness Coaching for Resilient Leaders. gives leaders a foundational nutritional program for physical and mental health resilience in a time when stress is going no where but up (just like your company's health claims!)

So, if you feel like you're at work but not really giving it your all - chances are there are quite a lot of people like you, suffering from a bad case of presenteeism.

Check out my Wellness Coaching for Resilient Leaders and reach out today to get you & your team thriving!

Burnout & Brain Fog: To Caffeinate or Not?

Coffee, burnout & brain fog.

Does your office have a coffee machine or provide free coffee during team or client meetings?

If you find you’re at the coffee machine a few times a day, this could be contributing to your brain fog & post-lunch slump in productivity.

Here is how.

Brain fog is characterised by:

• feeling “spacy” or confused.

• feeling fatigued.

• thinking more slowly than usual, and needing more time to complete simple tasks.

• being easily distracted.

• having trouble organizing thoughts or activities.

• forgetfulness, such as forgetting daily tasks or losing a train of thought.

Sounds like you?

If so, maybe you're like the majority of my clients who come to me with brain fog symptoms and tell me that they have drink at least 2-3 cups of coffee a day to clear the brain fog and stay focused.

Is that the best course of action for a person on the road to burnout?

Judge for yourself:

• Coffee stresses out your adrenal glands and accelerates your path to burnout. If you're experiencing brain fog, it's pretty likely that your adrenal glands have been chronically pumping out stress hormones for years and they're tired. As a result, your ability to have a healthy stress response will be compromised. Drinking coffee pushes your already stressed out adrenal glands to make cortisol & give you that energy boost, accelerating your path to burnout.

• Coffee is a diuretic & your body wakes up dehydrated because it's lost 1L of water during sleep. So, really all you're encouraging your body to do is release all the water soluble nutrients like VitC, which are so vital for a healthy stress response and immune function.

• Coffee jitters anyone? That coffee consumption is also making you more susceptible to anxiety because of the double whammy of increasing your cortisol levels and dehydrating the body.

• The acidity in coffee also increases your susceptibility to digestive disorders, mostly notably heartburn & Gastro-Esophaegul Reflux "GERD" (see my previous post for a list of these symptoms). If you're already experiencing digestive upsets related to stress, coffee will definitely exacerbate those, which in turn will lead to nutrient deficiencies & subsequent physical and mental symptoms of distress, including more brain fog!

Unfortunately, the body science is not on the side of coffee for those people who are highly stressed and on the road to burnout.

Coffee is simply masking your symptoms of burnout and accelerating your path there.

But does that mean you have to quit coffee altogether?

What can you & your company do instead to really support your nervous system & fuel your energy levels?

That's what I get into during my Wellness Coaching for Resilient Leaders. Three sessions is all it takes for your leaders and employees to clear the brain fog, increase energy levels, sleep better & be their best selves both at work and at home.

Check out my Wellness Coaching for Resilient Leaders and reach out today to get your people thriving!

A former capital markets banker, Cristina Tahoces is a nutritional therapist and owner of Thrive Nutrition Practice, a global online wellness business that helps corporate leaders be more physically & mentally resilient to stress. She shared her nutritional approach on the TEDx stage in 2017 as part of the TED Women’s Global Conference. She is a sought-after expert speaker & panelist on burnout, women’s post-natal wellness & metabolic health.

Why We Can't Meditate Our Way Back From Burn Out

One of the most common symptoms of stress getting stuck in the body and leading to burnout is digestive upsets. Quite often, digestive upsets and anxiety go hand in hand.

In fact, did you know that:

• Blood sugar disregulation caused by stress, constant grazing and emotional eating can trigger anxiety?

• 40-60% of people who suffer from irritable bowel also experience psychological symptoms like anxiety & depression?

• Food allergies which then lead to digestive upsets play a role in higher levels of social anxiety?

Nutrition plays a massive role in mental health. That’s because 90% of our serotonin is made in out gut! And so when our nutrition & our gut health are suboptimal so is our mental health.

WHY DO OUR LEADERS NEED NUTRITION TO SUPPORT THEIR MENTAL HEALTH?

• Stress & sub-optimal gut health go hand in hand. Any and all symptoms of indigestion, including irritable bowel, bloating, gas, heartburn and gastro-esophageal reflux contribute to procrastination & lack of productivity -- especially after lunch.

• As a nutritionist, I can tell you that digestive disorders like irritable bowel & bloating especially contribute to lack of confidence. When we don't like how we look & feel, we do not want to be seen.

• It is hard to practice compassion & empathy when you yourself are suffering and need relief yourself.

Often when we try to support our mental health, we encourage our leaders to start with meditation, mindfulness, therapy & coaching. These are the obvious go-to’s because we are conditioned to think of mental health as a mind over matter problem.

But I have many clients who can’t meditate because they are too wired - and they’re diet isn’t helping. Strategic, targeted changes in nutrition can be that vital first step needed to enable a regular mindfulness practice.

The reality is that our mental health is largely impacted by our gut health & our gut health is predominantly dictated by what we eat. So if you’re not addressing your nutrition and supporting your gut health, you’re only using half the tools available to you and may experience frustration in your attempts to de-stress.

Burnout and stress carry physical costs that cannot be resolved without nutritional support that can then impact bodily functions like our stress response & the body’s production of neurotransmitters and hormones that govern our mental health.

Check out my Wellness Coaching Program for Resilient Leaders to empower your leaders with tools they need for stress resilience.

Reach out today and let's get you thriving!

A former capital markets banker, Cristina Tahoces is a nutritional therapist and owner of Thrive Nutrition Practice, a global online wellness business that helps corporate leaders be more physically & mentally resilient to stress. She shared her nutritional approach on the TEDx stage in 2017 as part of the TED Women’s Global Conference. She is a sought-after expert speaker & panelist on burnout, women’s post-natal wellness & metabolic health.

How Stress & Indigestion Are Impacting Your Bottom Line & What You Can Do About It

Did you know that stress decreases your digestive potential?

When we are in fight or flight all day long, our body struggles to produce digestive juices, which are only efficiently produced in our parasympathetic rest and digest mode.

THE RESULT:

Bloating, stomach pain, heartburn, indigestion, lots of burping or tooting and - one that rarely gets spoken about -- silent GERD (Gastro-esophageal reflux disease).

GERD manifests itself differently in everyone but these are the most common symptoms:

• Constant lump in your throat that won't clear, so you always feel like you have to clear your throat

• Hoarse voice

• Chronic dry cough

• Nausea

• Excessive salivation

• Bad breath

During Session 1 of my Corporate Wellness Coaching for Leaders, I give leaders the tools they need to improve their digestive potential and reduce symptoms of indigestion - like those mentioned above.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

• Indigestion decreases energy and negatively impacts productivity. The post-lunch slump last on average 3hrs. That is a lot of lost productivity!

• Indigestion leads to nutrient deficiencies that then cause other health risks to manifest over time, e.g. thyroid disease. Do you really want your claims risk to increase?

• Indigestion plus chronic stress leads to irritable bowel. Canada has one of the highest prevalences of irritable bowel in the world! 70% of people say their symptoms interfere with their daily life and 46% of people need to skip work. Another way that stress leads to sick days and more claims costs.

• It is not uncommon for clients who struggle with digestive issues to also struggle with their self-esteem and positivity. That’s no suprise because our gut is a major focal point for the creation of neurotransmitters like serotonin (our happy hormone). So when our digestion & gut health are sub-optimal so is our self-belief in our ability to perform at our highest potential.

If we don't give leaders the tools they need to empower their digestion - you will have more sick days, less productivity and more claims risk.

You will also have leaders who don’t truly believe in their potential. Leaders who don’t truly believe in themselves, don’t take risks. No risk = no growth.

Check out my WELLNESS COACHING PROGRAM FOR RESILIENT LEADERS.

Reach out today and let's get your leaders thriving!

A former capital markets banker, Cristina Tahoces is a nutritional therapist and owner of Thrive Nutrition Practice, a global online wellness business that helps corporate leaders be more physically & mentally resilient to stress. She shared her nutritional approach on the TEDx stage in 2017 as part of the TED Women’s Global Conference. She is a sought-after expert speaker & panelist on burnout, women’s post-natal wellness & metabolic health.

A Roadmap Out of Burnout for Leaders

Burnout: which of your leaders is next?

On October 20th, I will be attending the Women in IT Canada Summit as an expert on their panel discussion on burnout. In the run up to the Summit, various eye-opening reports have been released on the state of employee wellness after almost two years of pandemic life. Our focus on building flexiblity into the workday has created an “always on” culture which in turn, has accelerated overwhelm & burnout in our leaders — mostly our female leaders. Women leaders are shouldering the responsbility of caring for the wellbeing of employees with little to no recognition or reward. And it is no surprise that more are thinking about leaving their role and joining the droves of women who have already bowed out for fear of burning out.

So, at this year’s Women in IT Canada Summit, I will once again, be making the case for “Ox-style leadership” because if this pandemic has proven anything is that we urgently need a human-centric approach to leadership that prioritises wellness.

What is Ox-style leadership?

As it turns out, rather interestingly, we are celebrating the Women in IT Summit in the Year of Ox. In the Chinese zodiac, the Ox is the second in the sequence of all the animals. According to legend, the Jade Emperor proclaimed the order in the zodiac would be decided by the order in which the animals arrived to his party. The Ox was about to be the first to arrive, but the Rat tricked the Ox into giving him a ride. Then, just as they arrived, the sneaky Rat jumped down and landed ahead of the Ox. Thus, the Ox became the second animal.

Poor, reliable, hardworking Ox - toiling from dawn till dusk, never asking for anything in return.  Selfless, kind Ox, tricked by the wiley Rat into losing that top spot in the Zodiac. This story echoes the ethos ingrained in us from a very young age:  in life - leading with a desire to serve & tend to the wellbeing of others never gets us ahead.  It's all about looking out for number one.

This egocentric “survival of the fittest” value-set (which the Rat represents) has defined the corporate leadership model to date. We have applied it time and time again in society, in particular when we try "to fix" women and mothers.  When women & mothers are overworked & exhausted, what do they get as a solution:

Why don't you take some "me-time"?  

Really? Me-time? What - so I can recharge & get fit enough to go and do the same old crap, over and over again?

As we grapple with how to elevate women into corporate leadership roles, it’s time to accept that the existing Rat-dominant corporate culture is broken.  That it forces an unsustainable & utterly depletive mental and physical load on mothers that no massage, no weekend retreat, no candlelit bath or one hour walk in the woods can fix. 

That it is uninspiring, undesirable, and untenable for women to form part of a leadership construct where success, humanity and resiliency cannot co-exist. 

The answer to getting more women in leadership roles - especially post-pandemic - is to change the corporate leadership model from “survival of the fittest” to “no one gets left behind”.

As the pandemic continues to threaten female employment and the great advancements we have made in diversity and inclusion, we are seeing women who have lost their jobs taking longer to begin their job hunt.  We are also seeing women accept institutionalised me-time options and reduce their corporate working hours so that they can cope with their increased caregiving responsibilities. These me-time disruptions in their career are not breaks at all. 

Women leaders often bow out so that they can care for others without burning out. 

They continue their gruelling work in service to their family & community without asking for anything in return and accepting the consequent reduction in pay, perceived professional value, benefits, pension contributions & future financial security. Just like the Ox.

Sounds unfair?

Maybe a day at the spa will help?

Or maybe leadership teams can start codifying policies that allow for performance and resilience. Here are some examples:

• CODIFY RULES TO MITIGATE BURNOUT:

  • Company wide policy for no scheduled meetings or conference calls on Friday afternoon. Or even better, no metings between 5-8pm so women AND men can engage in family care. As a nutritionist, I can tell you that these hours are hell for families - especially during COVID. The majority of mothers are left to organise everything from meals to bedtime on their own and the mental load of having to be the only one to shoulder the planning and execution of family care is isolating, depressing and exhausting.

  • No business emails or travel on the weekends. Solo parenting on the weekends is depleting to the core; it accelerates burnout for both parents and takes a massive toll on weekday productivity.

  • Regular company wide shut downs, where the whole company shuts down for a period of time so that everyone can exhale and switch off without guilt or fear.

  • Invest in wellness programs for leaders to support stress resilience. Never before has the ROI on wellness been so direct. Today’s leaders are struggling to perform because they are physically and mentally burned out; and this state of depletion is putting employee retention and corporate growth at risk. Leadership is an embodied practice. It’s hard to take risks, drive change & growth, inspire dedication & retention when the leader of the team has no energy, is run down & is constantly trying to manage physical & mental symptoms of overwhelm. 63% of leaders don’t make time for their physical wellbeing. Leaders need a core set of self-care skills that they can easily integrate into their day & that have a direct positive impact on their performance. In having these, they can become role models for others and foster a culture that prioritises wellness.

• CODIFY EMPATHY: The report findings are creating momentum for normalising empathy and compassion in the workplace. But to be honest, it is one thing to SAY that we have to be more empathetic. It is quite another to know how to actually PRACTICE empathy. One way to start is to codify some empathy best-practices:

  • Create peer-to-peer support groups so that leaders can share best-practices for how to foster wellness in their teams & learn how to role model kindness & compassion from each other. We know from a recent study by Deloitte and Lifeworks that leaders need more support than ever but that their peer relationships have actually worsened during the pandemic. What better way to foster closer relationships that drive performance by getting leaders together to workshop ideaas on how to be stronger together? Leaders want to be kind. They want to be empathetic. But 58% of CEOs say they struggle with consistently demonstrating empathy in the workplace. Not their fault! They’ve been trained in the “survival of the fittest” leadership model to not show weakness. We have to create & hold space for them to learn from each other and forge a new path where no one gets left behind.

  • Take part in regular “Love & Kindness Guided Meditations”. Sound lala? Think again. To practice empathy, leaders need to tap into feelings like kindness, compassion, vulnerability, curiosity - and yes, even love. In the same way as you’d practice Amy Cuddy’s superwoman pose before a big sales pitch, why not prep the heart to listen and care for others with a “Love & Kindness Guided Meditation”. It’s a type of mindfulness practice whereby you use and repeat phrases that foster feelings of safety, peace, connection & joy. In repeating the phrases, you direct the loving energy behind them to yourself and others. It’s easy, doesn’t take a lot of time and is very effective at taking your nervous system out of “do” mode and into “be” mode so that it is primed to practice empathy.

As you look to support your team out of this burnout crisis we are in, perhaps it’s worth asking yourself:

Am I a Rat or am I an Ox?

Do I perpetuate by inaction the corporate value set of “survival of the fittest” or am I working to ensure that “no one gets left behind”?

Do I pursue profit at the expensive of resilience? Or am I codifying policies in my workplace to ensure that no has to bow out for fear of burnout?

I have a front line seat to the toll that the current corporate leadership culture is taking on the mental and physical health of both men and women. Choose to codify policies that allow for performance and resilience. You’ll solve the burnout & the female leadership crisis in one fell swoop.

Cristina Tahoces is a holistic nutritionist, TEDx speaker and owner of Thrive Nutrition Practice. She helps clients with high stress profiles use food as therapy to support resilience to stress & improve peformance. You can find more information on her Wellness Coaching for Resilient Leaders. Join her newsletter for her latest articles on how to address burnout and support your physical and mental health. Watch her TEDx talk “Sleep Love Poop” and learn how eating with purpose can help you build stress resilience. Contact her at cristina@thrivenutritionpractice.com.

BURNOUT: Using Community & Nutrition to Make an Impact

And so we’re in lockdown again here in Toronto.

COVID and its ingenious variants continue to spread like wildfire. Meanwhile, our mental health crisis grows in parallel, with no vaccine to fix it. One year after our first lockdown, the research on the mental health of Canadians during the pandemic paints an alarming picture of higher rates of reported depression and anxiety, substance abuse and eating disorders. Burnout is here and this is scary part:

WE HAVE NO IDEA HOW BAD IT IS BECAUSE WE’RE NOT REALLY SEEING EACH OTHER.

Yes, we have Zoom, Teams and all kinds of video platforms, but:

• there are filters to hide the dark circles under our eyes and touch up features to make us look brighter;

• we can turn off the video to hide body language of exhaustion, frustration and apathy;

• no one is close enough to know if we’ve showered that day or gone out for some fresh air or had a human break from our multiple screens.

The stats we’re seeing on mental health, they do not capture the totality of how many of us our struggling on a daily basis, oscillating wildly between feeling ok to totally not and back again — each one of these cycles happening at a slightly worse frequency and depleting our reserves.

If you’re in Human Resources or a corporate leader with a team manage and you’re reading this — how do you know how your people are really doing? Do you know how many hours they spend in front of a screen? How many hours they’re sleeping? If they’re showering? Do you know the extent to which they are stressed? And if you don’t - how do you assess your future claims risk?

There is no vaccine for the burnout crisis we are in. The only solution is to build community and learn how, in this new COVID world, we can look out for each other with empathy & compassion. This is a new skill we all need to learn.

That’s why Wednesday, April 7th on International Health Day, I’m giving a talk on “How To Be A Burnout Detective”. I will be sharing how to find out if someone you know is struggling and what you can do to help them. I’m giving this talk as a member of the BNI Business First Chapter in Midtown Toronto. We are a group of entrepreneurs and small business owners who meet weekly to help our respective businesses grow; and if you come - you will meet this wonderful team of people who can also help your business thrive. (Truth be told, belonging to this supportive group of like-minded professionals has really benefited my mental health during the pandemic).

Here’s the link to register!

Or you can email me and I’ll put you on the list and send you the zoom link.

Cristina Tahoces is a holistic nutritionist, TEDx speaker and owner of Thrive Nutrition Practice. She helps clients with high stress profiles use food as therapy to support their physical and mental health. Join her newsletter for her latest articles on how to address burnout and support your physical and mental health. Watch her TEDx talk “Sleep Love Poop” and learn how eating with purpose can help you build stress resilience. Contact her at cristina@thrivenutritionpractice.com.