Today we welcome Natalie West, a high-performance psychotherapist whose innovative work is forging new paths in treating alcohol dependency. This episode promises to redefine your perspective on the role of nutrition in habit change and offers a fresh understanding of how our earliest experiences and value systems shape our subconscious and our habits.
Discover the often-ignored impact of alcohol on your gut health and energy levels, and why aligning your actions with your personal values is the cornerstone of authentic self-care. Whether you're curious about reshaping your value system or interested in the nutritional tactics that support addiction recovery, Natalie's comprehensive approach intertwines psychotherapy with actionable dietary guidance. This episode isn't just a discussion; it's an invitation to take the first step towards true health and happiness.
LEARN MORE ABOUT NATALIE WEST
Her Web: https://natalieewest.com
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/natalie.e.west
MEG & BELLA
Megan Webb: https://glassfulfilled.com.au
Instagram: @glassfulfilled
Bookclub: https://www.alcoholfreedom.com.au/unwinedbookclub
Isabella Ferguson: https://isabellaferguson.com.au
Instagram: @alcoholandstresswithisabella
Instagram: @kidsandalcohol
Today we welcome Natalie West, a high-performance psychotherapist whose innovative work is forging new paths in treating alcohol dependency. This episode promises to redefine your perspective on the role of nutrition in habit change and offers a fresh understanding of how our earliest experiences and value systems shape our subconscious and our habits.
Discover the often-ignored impact of alcohol on your gut health and energy levels, and why aligning your actions with your personal values is the cornerstone of authentic self-care. Whether you're curious about reshaping your value system or interested in the nutritional tactics that support addiction recovery, Natalie's comprehensive approach intertwines psychotherapy with actionable dietary guidance. This episode isn't just a discussion; it's an invitation to take the first step towards true health and happiness.
LEARN MORE ABOUT NATALIE WEST
Her Web: https://natalieewest.com
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/natalie.e.west
MEG & BELLA
Megan Webb: https://glassfulfilled.com.au
Instagram: @glassfulfilled
Bookclub: https://www.alcoholfreedom.com.au/unwinedbookclub
Isabella Ferguson: https://isabellaferguson.com.au
Instagram: @alcoholandstresswithisabella
Instagram: @kidsandalcohol
Hello Isabella here. I am so glad you tuned in and you're going to be so happy you did too. Our guest, Natalie West, is a leader in her field. She is a clinical psychotherapist, self-image specialist, and she really deals with the power of nutrition psychotherapy really delving into our subconscious beliefs to, I guess, drink less, to move on from alcohol. I've been in this field for a long time and I learned a lot. I learned a lot about how we anchor our behaviors around alcohol externally to deal with internal emotions, and also the power of nutrition, specifically protein and fats, to really address our behaviors around alcohol and to establish healthier behaviors. So I'm glad you're here. This episode is wonderful. Are you trying to drink less alcohol but need some extra motivation? Maybe you've tried moderation but you keep waking up disappointed and hungover.
Speaker 2:Are you curious about sober life? Or maybe you're like us, have been alcohol free for a while and are in it for the long haul. Well, you're in the right place.
Speaker 1:I'm Meg and I'm Bella, and our Not Drinking Today podcast is an invaluable resource to keep you motivated and on track today and beyond.
Speaker 2:We are this naked mind, certified coaches who live in Sydney and love our alcohol free life.
Speaker 1:And last but not least, if you enjoy the content of our podcast, please rate, review, subscribe and share it. It really is integral to getting the podcast out to those that might meet it. So grab a cup and let's get started.
Speaker 1:Today, I'd like to extend a really warm welcome to Natalie West. Natalie West is a high performance psychotherapist, specializing in mental and metabolic health through the power of psychotherapy and nutrition. I cannot wait to hear all about the work that you do, natalie. I know that you work on a range of topics. You're also a sought after speaker, but today, of course, we're going to focus on all the work that you do around alcohol. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you, isabella.
Speaker 3:Amazing. Yeah, I can't wait to have a chat.
Speaker 1:You're probably going to describe the work that you do a whole lot better than I just did, so maybe we should kick off with that. Would you just mind describing what you do and who you work with?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely Thank you. You did a great introduction. Thank you, yeah, so I've been in this field now for 17 years and, yes, as you stated, I'm a high performance psychotherapist, but I do specialize in the mental and metabolic health. So brain, gut access, which a lot of people really don't talk about. We either, in the psychology model, we have our head over here somewhere and then we have our bodies separated.
Speaker 3:But you can't do that. You have to combine both. So what I really help people understand is one that metabolic and mental health go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other, otherwise you'll never solve the piece of the puzzle together. Secondly, the main other part that I really work in as well with that is teaching people one how their minds work, both consciously and unconsciously, understanding rumination of patterns, behaviors, where they come from, and then, secondly, supporting that through that gut, brain access, to get the body and the mind into a new state of being, instead of being programmed into a particular state of being that a lot of people don't have control over due to their programming external environments. But one of the main root causes is value structures.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it's me, so you actually have a very unique specialization there that's able to combine the psychotherapy with all of the other work that we need to do to bolster our system. Can you just would love to hear more about the importance of the gut and the brain in driving all of our behaviors.
Speaker 3:Everything, everything. It's such an intimate part of our relationship that we must really understand and unfortunately we are programmed to have all of our relationships outside of ourselves, not one with ourselves, and that also comes with programming and understanding why we do what we do. So when we talk about the psychology of things, I'll always say to people understand, this is a college element, it's a physiological element and it's a biological element, and those biological elements come from what we put in our mouths, what we hear, what we listen to, what we touch, sense, everything. So that designs our state of being, which I call it. So the gut brain axis is one of those things that you can go and talk about, certain things, whether or not you have an attachment to, whether it's sugar, processed foods, maybe alcohol. Obviously this is the core thing we'll talk about, but the attachment to that there's always a deeper root cause and unfortunately what's not spoken about is the power of nutrition on those attachments.
Speaker 1:No, I definitely need to know more about this. I have long since gotten over my problematic attachment to alcohol, but I have no doubt I have replaced that with sugar. But this is not about me.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the world's biggest club, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:And then I've actually noticed that some of my sugar eating behaviors sort of have mimicked what I used to do with alcohol, when I grab it and hiding it and self soothing with it. I've really just traded one for the other.
Speaker 3:The other thing too. We really have to understand whether or not it's alcohol, sugar, addictive carbohydrate, processed driven foods which, again, we're culturally programmed as children. And I just want to help people really understand when I talk about root cause is one of the most critical points in our lives is between the age of zero to seven, which is what I call our pre cognitive commitment phase. So we have a consciousness and up until the age of about 12, that consciousness doesn't exist. We don't have the ability to analytically think about what's happening within our environment. So by the time you're pretty much seven, your self image and your value structures are set by your environment. You don't own them.
Speaker 3:So anyone in authority to you has literally you know, you're like a little sponge. We absorb everything, we see everything, we hear everything. But also too, we learn through patterns and behaviors around how to use food, how we see alcohol used, even with exercise. So we get that real set of programming very, very young. So, for example, you know, whatever your environment has given you is obviously an extension of your own internal environment. But what I really try to help people understand is what's conscious, what's unconscious, and 95% of what drives people every day is unconscious pattern behaviors that have been Normalized, or familiarity, because, again, our minds love familiarity. You know, you know what it's like when you got a step outside the comfort zone. All your warning bells go off and you're like no, get back in that box.
Speaker 3:So you know that's the power of understanding the mind and you know, every time I work with someone is a better. It's really important for me to let them know that you know one, you're not broken there's nothing wrong with you just don't understand. It's amazing tool that you've got.
Speaker 3:A lot of it's unconscious, but we can change those things into being conscious and that's one of the most emotional states that we need to understand, and Emotional self control, which we don't learn if we're anchored that with food or we're anchored that with things outside of ourselves. That's the problem.
Speaker 1:Ah, we've anchored alcohol or sugar for me outside of ourselves.
Speaker 1:God, this is fascinating. I love it. I mean, look at you just sort of run familiar, I guess work that I do. Yeah, similar to to that is that you know, people have all these unconscious beliefs and behaviors, but these have been informed over the course of their lives by experiences, observations, assumptions, and they're not necessarily true. No, these, these beliefs, need to be tested, or particularly all the ones that tell you that, for example, alcohol is needed, enhances your life in any way, shape or form, because we know that in fact, it does all, it's always does the opposite, correct correct, but one has to have a very strong value structure to understand.
Speaker 3:so you know when I talk about external environment, that's where most of our Emotions, behaviors and patterns are anchored so you know it's the same thing if we have an emotion, we're taught as children you know if you're crying or whatever.
Speaker 3:He's a lollipop, here's some chocolate. You know that's kind of rewarded and soothed through that way as children. So we learn that our emotions, instead of going through them and learning how powerful they are, we go around them and we anchor that those things externally, and normally it's through whether it's the alcohol, drugs, food, whatever it may be. Even exercise can also be a form of an anchor which we learn as a controlling mechanism instead of actually going hold on. All of those external things hold a higher value and I hold over myself. So it's about going internally and restructuring your internal environment, where you are then re anchoring your emotions, yourself, worth yourself, image and all of your own patterns, so that nothing outside of yourself literally holds control over you. So instead of feeling like a little chess piece on a chessboard being moved around by your environment, you stand still, so you're the one that's causing the effect on the way around.
Speaker 3:No matter of pausing, becoming aware and then doing, using various strategies to yeah, tools and strategies to change understand what that looks like, sounds like, feels like, because you know a lot of the time when we're anchoring in a certain external source with someone conscious in that source. We're just in the emotion of, as soon as we're stressed bodies, really chemical reaction. Then we become addicted to that and then we're anchoring it in the same behavior over and over again. That's a very unconscious. So what we're doing we're actually in fact it's what I call a waking state of hypnosis. We're actually hypnotizing ourselves every single time we do it.
Speaker 1:God it's fascinating, would you mind, just for listeners, just giving an overview, that about what you mean by our value system.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So, for example, everyone would know what a value is, as in. You know, if I get you to think about the word relationship for a second right. So when you hear me say the word relationship, where does your mind travel to the first thought that comes up? So for you, isabella, when I say the word relationship, where does your mind travel to first thought? Oh, camaraderie, yep, yep, but it goes outside of yourself, correct? Yes, yeah, immediately, immediately, yeah. So that's literally showing that the relationship anchors. We have all that side of ourselves, right?
Speaker 3:so for example, if I said to you give me three top relationship values that you would find that you would say that you hold dear. What would they be?
Speaker 1:loyalty Loyalty, kindness, honesty, yeah amazing their values, right?
Speaker 3:yeah, now the biggest transition there is to understand hold on. When I hear the word relationship, I must come first, and this is the other thing. A lot of people don't put themselves first because we haven't learned how to do that. But we actually value things externally, as you just said loyalty, honesty and kindness. Right, if I get you to flip that inside and say, hold on, how well do I hold myself to my own values of loyalty, kindness, not a lot probably not a lot tricky psychotherapy stuff right there.
Speaker 3:Now you know how your mind works when it comes to values, right? So it's very common, you know, when I hear people say my whole values of honesty and loyalty and kindness to others, but then I'm like, okay, well, let's look at kindness and what does it look like, sound like, feel like to you, and that doesn't exist.
Speaker 1:A lot of the time, no, no, I'm getting better at it, I have to say certainly getting better at it, particularly with you know. Just disentangling yourself from problematic behaviors is part of that whole exercise of trying to work out who you are. Yes, your sense of self, yes, you know who are we? Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, instead of really going well, I'm a mom, I'm this, I'm that, that's all externalised again. It's about coming back in and understanding the really important values of again. When you have high values, say like honesty. You know, it's like I always say to people at the end of every you know day and night when we this is a process that I go through with my clients it's like I need you to reflect back on the day and actually really ask yourself and hold yourself accountable to. How did I be honest with myself today? What did it look like, sound like, feel like? So you're actually getting the mind to produce, you know, thoughts, feelings, reactions and images, which is self-acknowledgement. Unfortunately, human beings don't self-acknowledge themselves very well either. Hmm, that's a value.
Speaker 1:Oh, that is a value. It's so important I could talk. This needs to be actually probably a whole new topic about values and and finding out who we are and our sense of self, because I think it's fundamentally important for the work that we do around alcohol. What I'd love to kind of move on and I'm going to come back and really touch on this subject, certainly later on Look, if you're regularly drinking alcohol, how does it affect your gut, nutrition, energy levels and health generally?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So, look, I think the thing is what we have to understand. One is what alcohol looks like, sounds like, feels like to each person, because every single person has unique structure where they learn best. And obviously we have society pressures, we have environment, as we said before. So if you've had or grown an open environment where alcohol was used as either a cover or even on a high level of abuse, you know that's really important and trauma comes into that. So what we've got to do is really understand, consciously and unconsciously, what that looks like to that person. Then, secondly, we have to understand that you know what we hear in society, that you know a glass of red wine a day is great for your heart. Well, let's really dig really, really deep into understand that. That's all paid for, you know.
Speaker 3:When we come back to the root causes of things, it is a toxin. It does convert into what we call acetalophthide. So basically, what that does, that's like a conversion process. So it creates a toxic chemical reaction which then affects your brain, which also then is inflammatory to the gut. Secondly, alcohol, when it converts, is just sugar. It's just sugar. So it probably makes sense to people when they have alcohol they'll crave cards, or they'll crave sugar.
Speaker 1:Yes, they tend to go hand in hand.
Speaker 3:They do all the other way around. You know, if you're a social drinker and adverticom is and you have, you know, some carbohydrates or chips and you may not have had an intention to drink, but immediately as soon as you have those really kind of stodgy carbohydrates, you then have a then another pathway connection to go oh, now I feel like a wine or now I feel like a drink. So they go really strongly hand in hand. And again, you know, I think it's just more about really educating self to go. Well, hold on, where is my value being laid out here right now? Yes, so you know, is it in my environment? Do I really, you know, am I more caring about what other people think may feel if I say no? And again, you know, alcohol is just one of those things where we actually it's so strange that we have to justify ourselves as to why we're not doing it.
Speaker 1:I know, I know.
Speaker 3:It's like I said to people you know, if you're C lack and you go out and you don't want to eat gluten because you'll get a huge reaction to it, no one cares, no one says anything. But again we have to come back to understanding your value of self and really regulating those emotional dysregulation. So again, when we also use alcohol to feel better or to feel connected, in effect it's doing the opposite. We're actually taking ourselves further away from the connection because again, you know, we engage in behaviours where we're eating really soggy food that's not good for us. We're probably doing things that we, you know, we wouldn't probably normally say sober. And again, it's value in the value of other people's eyes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, well said, it's reminded me of that statement that I've heard so many people say, which is you know, I never trust a person that doesn't drink, right, yeah, yeah. It's just, it's fascinating that that's part of our yeah, part of our culture and our addiction.
Speaker 3:Well, it's the other side too. It's like, you know, when you say well, you know, thank you, I don't drink. It's oh gosh, you must not be very fun. Then yeah, okay, sure, yeah yeah. If that's your belief, that's yours, I'm not going to loan it, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's really just so ingrained. It is so the importance, then, between the guts and the brain and the brain. So imagine alcohol is impacting the gut. It is, it's every cell, it's every cell.
Speaker 3:You know, if we think about what we call the mitochondria so if I get you to think about little packets of cells and their mitochondria is basically the, the, the furnace of our whole entire being. So what happens is those mitochondria cells need the right energy, and the right energy that comes from those is from what we eat and what we drink. You know, again, it's a direct correlation to how we behave, how we think, how we operate. We are a trillion trillion cell state and if we're giving the cells the wrong information so if you think about food, drinking, all of those things, it's information and messages that we're putting into our body that then the mitochondria can then actually fire and produce from.
Speaker 3:But if it's tainted and the energy is not right, so it's like your cells are wanting to run on 10 cylinders but we're giving it one cylinder fuel and that's what happens. So what then? On top of that, we've got environmental toxins. You know internal toxins, which then kind of make that don't work properly, how energy gets zapped, we feel bad, we end up with, you know, inflammatory markers. You know things like obesity, type two diabetes, increased indepression and anxiety, and it's all relative to exactly what we eat and what we fuel ourselves with.
Speaker 1:God. So if you've really been drinking solidly for a good 20 years of your life, you're likely to have some repercussions then internally to your system. Yeah, yeah. What are some recommendations that you might give to people? And I guess I'm probably honing in on the nutrition aspect, but you're working with both. You're working with both at once, so I don't know your advice. I'm happy for you to talk about both if it crosses over. What are some hot tips that are going to really help you age, your recovery, make it easier, deal with urges and cravings?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so. You know, when we talk about cravings, I'll always go through. There's a couple of pathways. So you know there's physiological cravings and there's psychological cravings, but there's also what I call which is probably a huge percentage of what I work with is heart cravings, Heart.
Speaker 1:Heart, oh, heart, heart. Tell me about those Grappled with that at all Well.
Speaker 3:that basically comes through to understanding that that external value is held in the action that you do and your heart is actually craving you, to hear you and to feel you and value you more than the external anchor.
Speaker 3:So, it's reanchoring your heart space and understanding your own self worth, your own self image and how to build that back up. But you know, the other thing with that, with cravings, is also the fact that we're also led to believe that sometimes you know, oh, we've got it. You know we can't ride through it, we've got to go again around it and give it something else. And that just never works. It's doing the same pattern over and over again. You know every their way to turn cravings off is to feed your body correctly, so that you actually understand the difference between a biological craving, a heart craving, and a psychological craving. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So psychological ones are generally like anchored in association. So, for example, you know if you get in the car to go to work and you know that, you know by the time you get there you're stressed and then all of a sudden your body's going to create that chemical reaction and then you go to go get a coffee and then you go get a donut and then that association of that's a psychological craving, because your body is so anchored in association that that becomes familiar and normal. Same thing with alcohol If you wanting to go out and you've already made a commitment to yourself again that, no, that's not going to happen today, and I always say with my clients it's either now or today, it's not tomorrow, it's not next week, it's not next year, because all we have is now and that's allowing you to be very present. So cravings are again different depending on where they come from and what they look like with each person. However, the one of the most powerful things with all of those three structures that I spoke about is protein and fat. Yes, yes.
Speaker 3:That's exactly what I tell clients to.
Speaker 1:And why is it powerful?
Speaker 3:How's it working internally Well for example, if we talk about the way our body works. So we're either a sugar burner or a fat burner, and most people are sugar burners. So what I would mean by that is most of the food. So what I will call a sad diet. A standard Australian or American diet makes you sad because it doesn't help the mitochondria, because it's basically full of either things like cereals, grains, rice, high processed foods, which then create sugar. So then our insulin goes up and our blood sugar is always changed and they turn your brain on. So what it also does is hit your dopamine centers.
Speaker 3:So, the dopamine is that little kind of fast response that we get and it feels good in the moment, and then that moment is going to disappear pretty quickly, but we then go back for more and more and more, without regulating and earning our dopamine through other ways. Yes, so I always say, well, you know, let's talk about the brain and the mitochondria as what it does with sugar versus what it does with fat. So fat and protein is what our bodies are made of. What is your actually, if you think about it from a breakdown, is like 80% water and 1% carbohydrate, like the nutritional requirement for a human being to thrive. For like in relation to mental and metabolic health, the carbohydrate requirement is zero, so you do not actually require carbohydrates to function.
Speaker 3:And the thing is in the protocol that I use to help people get back in touch with their body is to get them into a really powerful ketosis state. Yeah, so the brain is then operating on fat power instead of sugar power, and fat power is far more long the longevity of that. So you're not going up and down all the time, your moods are great, your clarity is through the roof, your energy is like. You know what I say to people. It's a superhuman version of yourself. You've never felt before. Yes, and then along we go and we get through the transition, and especially with alcohol. Like I see my client, like I've got a client now. She's over 340 days without a drink and we use this protocol and within four weeks she was just like I. Have no desire for that ever again. You know.
Speaker 1:I think this is so fascinating, and even just from my own prior experience, when I am really reducing, if not eliminating well, I never really eliminate carbs I feel so much better I am. My fatigue levels have all but gone. Yes. I'm feeling my mental clarity is switched on and I just feel more powerful.
Speaker 3:You do, isabella. It's so true, and I think this is the thing with any of my clients where I'm working through low carb, even into zero carb in the beginning, to really get that transition. So what happens is I always say if you keep producing the same data, you're going to get the same evidence and the same outcome.
Speaker 3:So what we've got to do is get your state of being into new data. Then it creates new evidence. So when you've got a mindset where we can go and talk about things, and that's great and we need to understand those things. But if we're not getting the body to follow as well, it's a really tough road. You know you're really never going to get that full piece of the puzzle together.
Speaker 1:So you probably would have. Well, your clients would be able to have the benefit of your dual knowledge there. So if you've got a client that's coming to you and just saying, oh, I need to get off alcohol, what would you do? Are you crafting a plan that's both both nutritionally based as well as the work on their values and their cravings and their subconscious beliefs around?
Speaker 3:alcohol, Absolutely. So what we do? We go through a protocol which combines both psychotherapy practices, through things with unconscious self-image, repatting, revaluating values, what works, what doesn't, and actually bringing in and building new value structures so that they can start living internally and then also educating around.
Speaker 1:you know, even shadow self all of those healths that we tend to yeah well, don't want to look at that.
Speaker 3:But food is literally the real root cause of being able to hold that foundation, to be able to get all that work really succinctly working together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I guess, yeah, you do Well you kind of expect that, though, don't you, because you can't just do one session where you can expect that behaviour is going to change particularly quickly.
Speaker 3:Well, no, unfortunately. See, this is a thing too with the. You know, I guess, the industry of the psychology model where you know you can go to therapy and I think you know it's an amazing space for people to land and talk and get out what they need to. However, if you're doing that for five years, 10 years, and you're talking about the same things and you kind of what knuckling change, especially through alcohol, you know, and even also to be really how will fully understand that narrative and language, your mind here's everything. So you know, I'm not a fan of the really kind of old statement of you know, once, now call it, always now call it, really really find that quite damaging, it's not helpful and all I am an addict. That's not helpful either.
Speaker 3:Very disempowering it's basically disempowering up yeah, you do, but unfortunately, like a lot of my clients have been there in that space and they're like something's just not working and I'm like, well, yeah, because you can go and talk about that once a week, but if you're going home and feeding yourself cereal and doughnuts, that's also going to exacerbate the cravings, which then trigger the alcohol reaction.
Speaker 1:It's such a big loop and I'm not a fan of you know, like I said what, knuckling or struggling through it, because those things don't work yeah, I can understand this multi disciplinary approach so well now, because I know that you know the the high car pie sugar diet is going to your blood sugar is going to go up and down, up and down and that plays with your fatigue and your exhaustion and sleeping, which then if you're not sleeping and your cortisol goes up.
Speaker 3:so our cortisol again, with that stress hormone. Yeah, you know, obviously it goes up between two am and four am in the morning just to kind of get us out of bed, right. But as primate, humans were actually meant to use that cortisol because otherwise, if we don't, it gets laid down. Yeah, so also to if you're not sleeping. This is the other factor which people sometimes don't really put together is if you don't sleep really well and then you wake up and then you say have a coffee or whatever and you've got sugar or milk in it, your whole body will crave carbohydrates because the cortisol needs the energy to keep you going. But if you end up understanding that you know how you sleep, also to where your mind travels to before you go to sleep, a lot of the time it's outside of yourself thinking about all the crappy things that happened today and all the things it should have done, should should should?
Speaker 3:we shouldn't should ourselves either, by the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I'm a believer of getting rid of the short really bad energy.
Speaker 3:It's a really heavy word, yeah, you know. Again, it's about being mindful of. Well, how am I going to sleep? Am I in the present moment? Right, I am in the past, because even an hour ago was in the past. Yeah, yeah, even when we wake up in the morning, I mean the future in the past. We've got to get really present and conscious, and cortisol plays a big part in that.
Speaker 1:So you're, you're, you're, you're phoned there looking at the news and scrolling. Directly for bed. Yes, it is. I don't know, didn't even have to mention it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, 45 minutes away from any fake light not good for your cortisol and you know your circadian rhythm. But also to eating. You know, go to eat at least three hours before you go to bed. So and make sure you're fueling yourself with the right level of what I call proper human nutrition.
Speaker 1:Yes, so I don't even know if this is feasible to do, but if you were to explain the ideal Day on the plate, yeah, what would that look?
Speaker 3:like yeah, yeah, so my clients and they come to me. It's, it's literally a very kind of strict protocol for the first two weeks. So literally it will be either into a low carb or zero carb way of eating and a priming process of getting them to meet meat and fat, meat and fat, meat and fat.
Speaker 1:Pretty much you so much, natalie. I'm gosh. I'm putting your number on a speed dial Me and my cherry rips. So I think it probably goes without saying that there are so many benefits to drinking less and I imagine you're promoting that. If you're eliminating alcohol or from your diet, is your system just? How's it recalibrating? How long does it take to recalibrate?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, when we're talking about implementing this kind of nutritional protocol as well, like most of my clients will start to see between two to four weeks when, because ketosis is so powerful, I like I cannot stress enough how amazing it is for the brain and the mind and the body and also to create in that new evidence. So when people actually, you know, again empower themselves to understand hold on, I'm actually doing this, this is, I'm feeling different. So again it opens that window of wow, this is changing, I'm feeling better. And even you know the, the ruminating thoughts and all of those things also start to calm down, funnily enough, yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 3:So it's not very long. Taste buds start to change within about three weeks. So what will happen is, you know, any kind of sugary things? Or even I have a client sort of gone out and they've, you know, went to have a wine or a vodka or something and they put it to their mouth and they're gone. Doesn't taste the same.
Speaker 3:But secondly, the reason for that is because our minds work in frames. So if I get everyone to think about like a movie, and you know how movies are made in frame, so they're made in scenes. So your mind does that every day with what you're doing. So what we've got to do is understand that every single frame that we're in, we have to disrupt that frame and then create a new outcome. So if you've gone out and you've not really been aware of the emotional state that you've been in so for example, when we have an end anchor of choosing alcohol, then we've got to actually step back a little bit and reverse, engineer and go hold on.
Speaker 3:What's the thought feeling here I have right now, whereas my mind traveling, is an internally? Is it externally? Who's involved? Because it's not a way to self. I'll tell you that right now and I'm listening Hold on. How can I actually learn from that to be able to give myself some really amazing self control of my emotion? So then I can actually pass that anchor. But we have to feed the anchor in a different way in the beginning, and that's why I use food, because food becomes a new way of anchoring which then creates a new feeling which then allows you to go.
Speaker 1:I don't want to go away from this feeling beautifully said and immediately I can see how it is really useful. Yeah, yeah, that is fantastic. What, just out of interest? What's your own relationship with alcohol like?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I haven't drunk for a very, very long time. Aha, there you go. Yeah, so you know, I, when I go out, I just have mineral water and I just get some beautiful lime or lemon muddled in the bottom and I'm. I also understand and this is what also helped my clients to understand that's not the connection. When we're using those things as connection, we're there to be present with people and use that as a connection, not the external environment with what that looks like. So, but in the past, though, like before, you know, I've been in this industry.
Speaker 3:I was in a corporate career for around, you know, 20 years, so it was pretty strife with drinking and, you know, all of those kind of things. But also to growing up in a background. You know, my mom, you know, was an alcoholic, so also mental health, and so I've kind of had an exposure quite young and I've also had grandparents that were alcoholics as well. So to me, yeah, it was funny how my role found me. Yeah, you know, I was always really fascinated, but I always a big believer that your purpose finds you, you know exactly when it needs to for the greater good. So, yeah, so I, you know I definitely did have a very, you know, not a healthy relationship with alcohol, especially also to. In my background, I was a bodybuilder as well for many years, and that was all anchored in unconscious negative self image body image.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I ended up with really bad disorder eating patterns from that, but also to then the social aspect of alcohol binge drinking. But it wasn't really until I started my own training and understood whoa. Now I understand what's going on, but nutrition really was for me the key root cause of when I started to go actually hold on. Yeah, and I didn't think about it. Now it's even with clients. They don't, they don't. It's a non void emotion now.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I can see how all of your lived experience with various aspects, from childhood to corporate life, the bodybuilding, body image, nutrition, how it's all just yeah, all come together for you to be able to provide such useful insights for your clients. Yeah Gosh, natalie, what great work you do, thank you. I feel the passion in the work that you do, but also just the extensive knowledge. It's multi disciplinary, isn't it?
Speaker 1:It's just looking at it from all the whole whole person, I know that there are going to be many listeners that are going to want to check out your website and want to get to know a whole lot more about what you do. Where is the best place for them to find you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so either Instagram you can DM me there or just go to my website. So natalieewestcom and I've got a little. Let's start here now. So it's 30 minute for jump on, book it in, have a chat and we can go from there.
Speaker 1:And yeah, that's it's really simple, yeah, highly recommended everybody. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to pop on to not drinking today. Thank you, isabella, it's been a pleasure. Highly valuable information. Thank you, natalie. Thank you.