Chrysalis Health Coaching

13/08/2026

What healthy folk get up to on a staff outing! Lovely to share my favourite place with my fabulous colleagues!

13/08/2026

So you might think, that as a health coach, I have a perfect diet and always know what my body needs? It's so not true!
I've really struggled this week. 😞
Home after a fabulous weekend of cycling, running, swimming and I've felt utterly and completely wiped out all week.
No energy to do anything apart from go to work.
The thought of cycling home filling me with dread every afternoon.
After work commitments that should be enjoyable, just another thing on my to do list.
Seriously lacking in energy, I reach for sugar and carbs.
Chocolate, energy bars, fizzy drinks, ice lollies, caffeine; anything to get me through the day. (And the evening).
The truth is, it doesn't work.
It never does.
The dip that follows the blood sugar spike just makes you feel worse.
So today, I decided I wasn't going to eat any more sugary s**t. No added sugar at all, not even a matcha latte or a kombucha!
Salad with tofu for lunch. Tofu with salad for tea. Nuts, fruit and raw veg as snacks.
And guess what?
I feel brilliant!
My energy has returned, I'm not falling asleep at 9pm and I'm seriously looking forward to cycling again tomorrow.
If you're tired and lethargic, especially in this heat, turn your back on the sugary s**t, eat some proper food and you too might feel ten times better!

24/06/2026

Too hot for a run? Too hot for the gym? Perfect for an early walk and swim!

22/06/2026

More parkrun tourism with the family! I sometimes feel reluctant to share photos where my upper arms look like this. But then I remind myself that these arms lift weights, swim across lakes, have paddled Norwegian fjords and have powered me from one side of Scotland to the other. Let's hear it from all of us with imperfect arms!

16/06/2026

What have you challenged yourself with this week?

11/06/2026

I wish I'd captured my husband's face as he peered into the pan to see which new vegetable he was going to be eating tonight!

11/06/2026

My go to after a weights workout! This smoothie has 50+ grammes of plant protein. It's thick enough to stand a straw in, and tastes delicious 😋. Let me know if you'd like the recipe!

11/06/2026

Totes inappropes It's only just arrived and I haven't been able to get my hands on it yet! (Don't worry about the stern face....he always looks like that! 🤣

09/06/2026

My favourite protein rich vegan lunch!
Firm tofu scrambled with:
red onion
garlic
turmeric
black pepper
black salt
nutritional yeast
spinach leaves

Salad with:
rocket
lollo rosso
tomatoes
cucumber
avocado
celery
sprouting beans (red and green lentils, adzuki beans, mung beans, peas)
mixed seeds (pumpkin, sesame, sunflower, linseed)
Drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar!

More than 20 plants at once!

08/06/2026

"What does your brain think is normal?" Change the cue to change the habit.....then reinforce it again and again and again and again.

If you need some help with building new habits, get in touch!

It's 9pm. You walk into the kitchen. You're not hungry, not upset, not celebrating. You're just there. And before you've really decided anything, your hand is in the cabinet, eating something you swore you were done with.

The next morning you promise to be more mindful. The next night, it happens again.

We call this self-sabotage, or weak willpower. It's neither. It's a loop.

In a now-famous MIT experiment, rats learned a maze so well their brains went quiet in the middle, staying active only at two points: the cue at the start and the reward at the end. The behavior in between became automatic. Your brain does the same thing. Cue, behavior, reward. Walking into the kitchen is the cue. The snack is the reward. Everything between runs on autopilot.

Here's why this matters for weight. Losing weight doesn't erase your old loops. It just layers a new behavior on top, temporarily. The original cue is still there, waiting. And your brain, built for efficiency, eventually takes the familiar path. People don't slip. Their brains revert to the most practiced version of normal.

The fix isn't erasing the habit. It's keeping the cue and changing what comes next. Walk into the kitchen, pour a glass of water instead. Then reinforce it: "that's more like me." That quiet line is the reward that teaches your brain the loop has changed.

This is part three of a four-part series on why the weight comes back.

Read it below 👇️

Share this with someone who keeps ending up back in the same nightly routine they swore they'd quit.