Thermo Diet Podcast Quarantine Edition Episode 29 - Kitty Blomfeild

In this episode of The Thermo Diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down and talks to Kitty Blomfeild. Learn Kitty's story, how she overcame starving herself everyday and working out for endless hours to eating to satiety and nourishing her body. Learn some new tips on how to do liver, some ways to spice up your carrot salad, and why you should start resistance training! Check it out and let us know what you think!

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Full Transcript

Jayton Miller:
Welcome back to the Thermo Diet podcast. I'm your host, Jayton Miller and I'm here with the lovely Kitty Blomfield. How are you doing Kitty?

Kitty Blomfield:
Yeah, I'm good, thanks. How are you?

Jayton Miller:
Did I say that right, Blomfield?

Kitty Blomfield:
Yeah. It's pronounced Bloomfield, but it's spelled with one O so it's confusing. So you did good, yeah.

Jayton Miller:
Sounds good, sweet. So what's your story, can you give us a kind of quick background of what you do, where you came from?

Kitty Blomfield:
Yeah. So we've got a company or two companies actually. One's NuStrength and I own that with my partner, Craig, who's also my partner in life. And we've got a program, our main program is called WinAtLife, where we teach women how to break free from restrictive diets, restore their metabolisms and build bodies they love. So lose weight, tone up, build muscle. And then I've also got another company called Saturée, which means saturated in French. So my business partner is a nutritionist, Emma. She's called Emma Sgourakis. I always say her name wrong. So she loves that Kitty always pronounce it wrong.

Kitty Blomfield:
And she's a certified nutritionist and we produce a range of metabolically supportive supplements. So we've got Clean Casein. We've got freeze-dried liver tablets. We've got Cascara Sagrada, which you would know about. Gelatin, hydrolyzed gelatin, and we're actually developing skincare. So a range that's got no nasties and all saturated fat, which is taking us a bit longer than we thought. But I guess my backstory, I'm nearly 40. And five years ago I got divorced and I was seeing this therapist and we would always talk about nutrition because for pretty much my whole life, since I was about 19, I just literally starved myself like most women.

Kitty Blomfield:
I think when I was younger, I didn't get sucked into the like diet culture, so I just ate. And when I think about back to those days, when I was a kid, when I was in my early teens, I drank milk. I ate fruit, I ate meat, I ate vegetables. And then, I sort of hit that 17, 18 and I got sucked into the whole diet culture and being skinny. And I just went on this ... God! I tried every diet. I did shake diets. I sold Isagenix for 12 months. I did Keto. I did every protocol of fasting.

Kitty Blomfield:
And I was just a really big binge eater because I would do them for a while, and then I'd lose weight. And it just depended on how long I could stick to them and how good my willpower was. And then eventually, obviously it was sugar cravings would take over and I would end up having these ridiculous epic binges. So I then actually did a couple of fitness camps because I needed an excuse to restrict. And I would look at those women, I would think, oh, they're so tiny. And they're so lean. And they look so happy. So I did a couple of camps and I got down to probably my life's weight was like 54 kilos, but I literally had to starve myself and train seven days a week and do heaps of cardio.

Kitty Blomfield:
And obviously, I just rebounded and my binge eating got worse and worse. I took laxatives. I made myself throw up. And I think, like so many women get sucked into this crazy restrictive diet and I just was on this constant yo-yo. And I felt like my whole life revolved around food and I was just completely obsessed. So I was either dieting and restricting, or I was on the other end of the scale and I was just binge eating. So I got divorced and I was seeing this therapist. And we talk about nutrition and at the time I was working in mining and she said to me, "Kitty, have you ever read any of Ray Patte's work? And have you read any of Emma's work?"

Kitty Blomfield:
And I said, "No." And she's like, "Go and read it," because she said, "Women that have thyroid issues shouldn't eat green vegetables." And I was like, "What do you mean? Like shouldn't everyone eat green vegetables?" I just eat plates and plates of them at every fucking meal basically, which was crazy. I look back now, I think this, oh, what was this all so tasting, this taste blah. And I went away and I read, there's an article. And if you haven't read it, go and read it. It's called Defending Fruit and Other Non-Complex Carbs, it's one that Emma wrote. And I just remember reading it, thinking, holy shit, like this is why I am how I am. Like I felt like I'd stumbled across the holy grail.

Kitty Blomfield:
Like when you're just like the fitness industry has been lying to you, like they're telling me to cut sugar and cut dairy and cut all these things. And here's Emma saying, this is what your body needs. Your cells run off sugar. Like this is why you've binge eating. So I emailed her and I had to work with her because I was just, I need to know what she knows. So I did her popping food bubble program. And then I was just like, this is it. This is it. Like I stopped binge eating. I started sleeping better. My digestion improved. My period improved. So I had all these issues with my period. I had a miscarriage. And at the same time I met Craig, and he taught me how to strength train, because prior to that, I was doing heaps of HIT.

Kitty Blomfield:
I'd get up in the morning fasted, no food. And I'd go into an hour of like circuit type workouts. And then I'd do an hour of HIT training. Two hours I've fasted. And then I just eat no carbs the whole day. And I started eating more, eating more sugar and I learned how to squat and deadlift. And I just fell in love with lifting, and I got into power lifting. And yeah, it just changed my life so much that I left my job in mining and Craig and I opened NuStrength.

Kitty Blomfield:
So initially we had a gym and we did that for three years and then we wanted to expand more and help more women. So I'm really passionate about freeing women because obviously you feel better and you can eat more food and you get off the diet, you're trained, but I think it really changes your whole life. Once you get out of that mentality, you're not focused on food all the time. You can be a better partner. You can chase your dreams like me. Like I left my job in mining and opened this business. I've never done like that before.

Kitty Blomfield:
And yeah, here we are five years later and we sold the gym now, which was probably good timing given everything that's going on. And yeah, we just got the online program. We've got over 500 women in it. We're building out a new app, which will be awesome, like a food tracker. And so we can track all the subjective and objective measures. And yeah, sorry, that was a really long, long story.

Jayton Miller:
No, I like it. Do you think that a lot of these nutritional and lifestyle changes had to do with kind of the perspective shift that you had during that time?

Kitty Blomfield:
Totally, totally. Because I guess previously, like I was trying all these diets like Keto and fasting and all of them cut sugar. A lot of them said to cut sugar and cut calories. And I was always, my goal was I just wanted to lose weight and be skinny. I never ever knew about metabolism and focusing on my health and fixing my digestion. And when I started to read Ray's work, and I worked with Emma and then I did some work with Dodi and Rob, the authors of Coping To Food but we probably know Rob Turner, he's awesome.

Kitty Blomfield:
And I'd worked with Dodi for 12 months. And my focus shifted from eating to be skinny, to eating to improve my health and my metabolism and actually listening to my body. So like if I was hungry, I would eat. If I crave sugar, I knew that it meant that I needed to eat more sugar. And instead of going, look, here is the list of foods that you can and cannot eat. It was about, I want you to eat the foods Kitty and then I want you to measure your temperature, your pulse, your sleep, your digestion, your mood, your energy, look at your menstrual cycle and try and eat to improve those things.

Kitty Blomfield:
And when I did that, not only did I obviously feel better, but combined with the strength training, my physique just completely changed. And now it's really easy for me to maintain the body that I have, only training three days a week and I eat like lots of food and I never feel like I have to like cut sugar or cut anything out, which is just awesome. It's just amazing. But I think you're right. Like it's having that shift in terms of the diet, but also the sugar because I think I was like so anti-sugar, like it was like a religion. Like if people told me to eat sugar, I'd be like, "Nah, there's no way I'm eating sugar." I didn't drink dairy because it had too much sugar. I didn't eat fruit. I made my own almond milk. Like it was crazy.

Jayton Miller:
Wow. So like during this time, whenever you started implementing these different kinds of foods back into your diet, did you have to do it very slowly or did you kind of do it all at once and was there like some weight gain that kind of made you hesitant about it?

Kitty Blomfield:
I think like, I'm the sort of person who goes all in with everything. So like when I met Emma, I go, okay, I'm doing something and I'm just going to go in 100%. So I pretty much just started eating all this sugar and studying all these saturated fat. And I remember when we were like, oh, we're going to start drinking chocolate milk, and we thought it was so radical. And I did actually gain weight because I think a lot of women when they come from that low carb, low sugar diet, their metabolism is at a certain spot. And when you go and add in all this extra sugar and fat, your metabolism isn't optimized yet. So you're not able to burn that many and utilize that many calories, plus I didn't have as much muscle.

Kitty Blomfield:
So I think at my heaviest, I probably got up to like 75 kilos. But saying that too, I wasn't as consistent as I am now. So while I would eat the foods, I remember that Craig and I still would on the weekends go and eat like, what's it? You wouldn't have it over there, but like Nandos. So I'd still be eating some deep fried chips, which had vegetable oil in them. I still drank alcohol, more alcohol back then, like now I just don't drink that much. So I think ... and that's obviously all part of my journey and part of the process, I think gradually over time getting more consistent. And I think all of those things contributed to my weight gain. So some of it was muscle, but some of it was fat as well.

Kitty Blomfield:
But yeah, I think that a lot of women, when they start this process, I think, from what I've seen from just working with thousands of women, that there's two types of women that we tend to work with. Is the ones that have like me been really good at restricting. So we restricted more than we binged. So I was able to sustain a lower body weight, but I was skinny fat. But like I would probably be averaging 1,600 calories a day. And then there's women who binge eat a lot and put on a lot of body fat. So I think, if you're someone who has restricted for a long period of time and you're resting metabolic rate has really slowed down, and if you're going through so many calories in there and saturated fat and sugar, there is the potential that you will gain some body fat. And so I think it really does depend on the person. I think there's no like you're definitely getting gain body fat eating like this when you first start, and you guys probably see the same thing.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So looking back on that time, would you say that the weight that you gained was worth the reward that you received in return as far as like how it felt and kind of the health benefits that you experienced?

Kitty Blomfield:
Yeah. And sometimes, like so often I'll think about it and like women in our program, some of the ones that do gain weight, of course, no one wants to gain weight, but no one wants to get fatter. But I think that obviously by doing that, I was giving my body the nutrients and the energy that it required to heal. So my menstrual cycle normalized. I started to poo every day. Before that I was pretty constipated which was pretty bad. I slept through the night. So I think, and now I'm probably weigh about, I'm going to jump on the scales, this morning, 66 kilos.

Kitty Blomfield:
But I think the fact that I started at higher calories for quite a long period of time when it came time to just, I wanted to lose the body fat, it was quite easy because my calorie base was so high and my metabolism was so good. So all I had to do was just be more consistent and get my macros right. And train consistently and the fat has just come off and now I'm in this really good spot where I can eat a good amount of food, and I have to train three days a week. I just walked my dog, Winston, and I just feel really good and everything's good. My period comes bang on 28. I know that obviously men are listening to this too, but I think for so many women like those hormonal issues is probably a really good sign if things are not functioning as they should be.

Kitty Blomfield:
And for me that was like one of the best indicators because my period was pretty bad. I had a miscarriage, I had polyps removed, had pre-cancerous cells removed and now it's just like comes every 27, 28 days. It's regular. It's pain-free. So to me that's a really good sign that things have balanced out and they're working as they should be.

Jayton Miller:
So that's actually something that we kind of, we see a lot is, a lot of different women have trouble with their PMS symptoms and think that at this point, it's something that's supposed to be normal. And I can't really speak from experience from there, so why would some of those things that they experience, for instance, like excessive cramps and pain and mood swings and things like that, why would some of that stuff not be normal for PMS?

Kitty Blomfield:
Well, I think, like you said, you just think that it's normal because when you go to the doctor, like when I used to go to the doctor, they'd just be like, this is normal. You should just take the pill. This will help you. So like when health professionals and doctors are telling you that it's normal, then of course you're going to think that it's normal. And I think so many, and it was the same with me and women that come into our program, the reason they experience these hormonal issues is because their body has become so estrogen dominant and that is through diet and lifestyles factors. So like the low calorie diets, the low sugar and not enough dairy, and their body's not making enough progesterone to oppose the estrogen.

Kitty Blomfield:
And like one thing that we're always banging on about, I'm sure you do too, is eat the liver. Liver is just got so much vitamin A in it, just 100 grams, which is the smallest amount, has enough, a week's worth of vitamin A and your body uses vitamin A to make its protective steroid hormone, so one of those is progesterone. So not only are women under eating, not getting the nutrients they need, but they're also not making enough progesterone to oppose the estrogen. And then they go and throw in things like the birth control pill, and the Mirena, and HRT. I did it myself for years. I took the pill, because I guess you trust the medical profession to tell you, like you just believe that they're right when they say that, but it's not.

Kitty Blomfield:
You don't have to suffer and you shouldn't. And yet we see it all the time, women come into our program and they're, "Oh God, I'm getting my period. It's terrible. I get so much PMS." And then after a few months of eating the right food, eating consistently, getting sun, doing all the things that we suggest, I see these messages going, "Oh my God, my period just came and I didn't even know, like just came. No bloating, no PMS." So yeah, it's really, it's quite incredible. Even to this day it amazes me the effect that food can have on the body. Like getting the right nutrients in. It's probably the same with you guys.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. One of the other things that I tend to see a lot is people, there's some women that have come to me and asked about hysterectomy or they've had their ovaries completely removed. Have you had experience with that and what are some of the tips that you would give somebody that's going through that?

Kitty Blomfield:
Well, I would ... like, because we've had women in our program too, their doctors have told them to have a hysterectomy. And I would always just encourage them. I mean, obviously like I'm not a doctor. People know that, like you should still seek out medical advice through if there's ... Like who knows what's going on. But try to improve things first with diet and lifestyle. So I think one of the most important things is get enough calories in. So like, oh God, I don't think that women should be eating anything under 2,000 calories a day. And it will really depend on your life and your stress and how active you are.

Kitty Blomfield:
But the women in our program eat probably anywhere between 1,800 up to like 2,500 calories per day. Ensuring that you're getting adequate protein. So a lot of women, I think they just under eat protein and overeat fat, so proteins obviously important for building muscle, but it's also important for your liver to function efficiently. So make sure that you're eating at least a minimum of 90 grams of protein per day. Food you want with lots of good natural sugars. So fruits, juices, sugar from dairy, even having some white sugar. White sugars as you would know, it's just energy, it's not poisonous like everyone is telling you.

Kitty Blomfield:
So if your diet is full of foods that are nutrient dense and easy to digest, having some white sugar is fine. Like I have white sugar in coffee, I have white sugar in my ice cream. I don't have diabetes, I'm not fat. Ensuring that you're getting like liver, liver and oysters, like those two foods are just the best foods. I think they're super foods. So packed with vitamin A, all of your trace minerals. Like I mentioned before, your body uses vitamin A to make progesterone which opposes estrogen.

Kitty Blomfield:
Cutting out all the green vegetables and then nuts and seeds and all that stuff. It's like super hard for your body to digest. Get sun, get sunlight. Dairy, calcium's so important. Stop flogging yourself with cardio. Like cardio is not metabolically supportive. I mean, I'm not saying, like you say you play sport. But I always say to women, look, and I had a message about it before. Train specifically for your goal. So if you're a young man, your goal is to play sport. Obviously, you just need to fuel your body appropriately. Make sure you get enough recovery.

Kitty Blomfield:
But if you're 40 year old woman who has all these hormonal issues, cardio is not your friend. You need to allow your body to rest, strength training to build muscle. So train appropriately and listen to your body. Like I think so many women just flog themselves. Like I was the same, I'd get up every morning, fasted, I'd be exhausted, but I just had this ... It was just ingrained in me that I needed to train every day and I had to train. Whereas now I train three days a week, occasionally four depending on my program. I really look forward to my days where I'm not training, because I like the recovery. And also I know that if I go into the gym and I'm tired, I'm not going to perform at my best, and I'm not going to be able to increase my strength and hit my numbers. So I think that there's a lot of good things that you can do with your diet and lifestyle to improve your hormonal issues.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Another question that I've gotten from some women is whenever it does come to that time of the month, are there any kind of strategies that you use as far as like supplementation or extra sleep or things like that to help prepare you better for that time of the month?

Kitty Blomfield:
I think, I'm sure you guys probably recommend this to a good supplement that we use, but always has to be used on top of the right diet because it's pro-metabolic, and it was speeding up this progesterone. So I don't know if you guys recommend that to clients too. So it's just a natural progesterone supplement made by Ray Patte actually. We buy it off his girlfriend, Catherine, she's lovely. So I've found that in conjunction with the right dietary changes, that can be a real game changer for women. And even though I don't have any menstrual cycle issues, I'll still supplement that from day 15 to 28 of my cycle and I'll use it sporadically if I have like really stressful time or if I feel like I've got a headache coming on, I think extra salt.

Kitty Blomfield:
So adding extra salt into your diet, making sure you're keeping your good like natural sugars high. So drinking extra juice, eating extra fruit, because a lot of women go, I crave sugar, they'll crave sugar. So I think it's just like if they get the good stuff in. Get the orange juice in. Get the fruits. Get some good quality, homemade ice cream. Get sun. But I think, overall, if you're making those changes, then you should be able to get to the point where you're not getting those symptoms anymore. Where it should just turn up and it should be pain-free and you shouldn't feel like you want to rip someone's head off, like I think some women do.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. And you have some amazing recipes especially on YouTube and on your Instagram, stuff like that. What are some of your favorite recipes that you use like every single day or every single week?

Kitty Blomfield:
So fudge. I just love fudge. Like I am like seriously addicted to fudge. I eat every day. Like I've got a few recipes. I've got a plain caramel, I have a white chocolate in a chocolate. And I can probably eat four or five pieces of fudge a day, and it's a real staple. I mean, my diet ice cream, so vanilla ice cream, you don't have to make vanilla. But every week I make ice cream and I have it after dinner every night. It's just incredible and so good to help you sleep. Oh God, we've got so many recipes, but I think those ones are probably the two things that I make consistently because I quite keep my diet quite simple.

Kitty Blomfield:
So like I eat a lot of breakfast will be eggs, cheese, milky coffee with our gelatin new gel sugar. Cheese and fruit, I eat for snacks. Coffee and fudge I eat for snacks. And my lunch is usually some form of protein source and I'll just eat a lot of fresh fruit and then dinner is usually some type of seafood with potato, juice and then ice cream. So I keep it pretty simple just because I like it and it's tasty. At the moment I'm eating, I made this like chicken and prawn paella type risotto. So I'm eating that this week, feeling that, so that's a really good one. So I think yeah, there's just so many amazing, simple, delicious recipes that you can have which have carbs, which you can have. Yeah, if you check out our YouTube channel, it's pretty funny too or I think it's funny. Some people probably don't.

Jayton Miller:
And what's it called?

Kitty Blomfield:
Fucking Easy Food Prep.

Jayton Miller:
Yes, I like it.

Kitty Blomfield:
Because it's simple and easy. A lot of the women we work with, they're moms, they're busy. We do a lot of stuff in this local guide. So you just throw all that in this local guide and you can portion it up, you can freeze it. There really simple recipes. Mel, who's one of my coaches, she's not really a master chef, so we try and just keep it nice flavors like spaghetti bolognese that we serve with rice noodles. Oh God, there's just so many recipes, but check it out. Yeah. You can just pick the ones that you like.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. What are some of the best tips that you would give to somebody who's trying to prep for the week or just kind of have their week organized as far as their food goes to make it as easy as possible?

Kitty Blomfield:
So I always think, and I find that when women start this process, like they over-complicate things and they try and cook up too many fancy recipes. And I think if you're someone who doesn't have a lot of time, then you really need to sacrifice variety because otherwise, if you're trying to plan out meals day to day and you get stuck at the kid's sport or something stressful happens at work, and you just find that you're not prepared and you're going to end up reaching for shitty food. So I like to keep it really simple. So I'll usually just cook one.

Kitty Blomfield:
And I know obviously if you've got a family, they may not want to eat the same thing every night. But if you just think in your head, like going to have a source of protein, then I'm going to have, like, I usually have starchy carbs, so rice or rice noodles or potato, and then throw in some fruit or some juice. So I always sort of just use that principle, but maybe prep once and I'll freeze it and then I'll make my fudge and my ice cream and that's it. And then the rest of my snacks are really easy. So it's cheese, you don't have to prep cheese. Juice, you don't have to prep juice fruit. You don't have to prep fruit, like it's just already there in the fridge.

Kitty Blomfield:
So I think, keep it really simple and easy and always prep food in advance and have some stuff frozen so that if you get caught out, it's really easy. You can just grab some cheese and some juice. You can grab that meal out of the freezer and you can whack it in the microwave, because I find that the women that get the best results and the most successful at this are the ones that prep, and you've just got to do it. Sometimes I'll get to a Sunday thing, can't be fun. So I'm a bit tired, but spend an hour and you can have everything done for the week and you will thank yourself during the week definitely.

Jayton Miller:
Yeah. So you have an awesome liver pate recipe. What do you use in that then?

Kitty Blomfield:
So it's like super easy and it has minimal ingredients. So if I'm having pate, we'll just have it on some nice toasted sourdough. And sometimes over marmalade which is amazing, but at the moment, because I've just can't be bothered to make it. I mean, it's pretty simple and sometimes it's hard to source the good liver. Emma and I have been taking out, we just released our liver capsule, so it's freeze dried liver. So we've been taking those, which is just makes it more easy and convenient, but the pate is beautiful. And if you don't like liver, I think it's a really good way, tasty way to eat it, because I mean really like, who likes liver? Like just fresh plain liver. It's pretty gross. Do you?

Jayton Miller:
I'm pretty good at eating just about anything, so.

Kitty Blomfield:
You're a guy.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely, yeah. But so do you notice that the cooking process tends to kind of degrade it versus eating it closer to like raw in some cases because Danny and like Matt Blackburn, for instance, they like to freeze cubes, raw and then just pop them. And that's something that I can't bring myself to do that personally.

Kitty Blomfield:
Emma and I have had this discussion so many times and obviously the most optimal way of getting it would be you get the cow that's grass fed and you kill it. And then you eat the liver like fresh, raw, right from the cow, but really realistically how many people are going to do that? So I think obviously the more you cook it, the longer you cook it, the longer it's exposed to oxygen, the more that you're right, that it degrades. So I think obviously trying to source it as fresh as we can is always going to be optimal. But then it's also about what you can do consistently and what you can be consistent with.

Kitty Blomfield:
So we've had incredible reviews on our liver tablets, people taking and saying, "Oh, my skin's improved. Like I'm already noticing like sleep's improved, hormonal issues have improved and my temperature and pulse have come up." So obviously that's more processed than fresh, but it's really ease of that. So for you, if you just can't stand the thought of raw liver like that and you like pate, just cook the bloody pate. Eating that every week is going to be so much better than doing nothing. And I think sometimes people can get too caught up in like, "Oh, I can't do it the most optimal way, so I'm not going to do it." And you can absolutely get benefits from pate, if you just cook it or if you take the tablets. So I think, I would recommend finding a way that you can just do it consistently each week.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Another thing that I noticed that you're very adamant about is the carrot salad.

Kitty Blomfield:
Oh yeah, the good old carrot salad.

Jayton Miller:
So what are some of the benefits that you tend to experience with that and what are some of your favorite ways to kind of switch it up whenever it's getting a little boring?

Kitty Blomfield:
So think like the carrot salad, you can go and read more about it from Ray Patte and from Emma. But basically it acts like, this is how I think about it. Like a bit of a scrubber for the intestines. So it helps absorb the excess intrusions and endo-toxins and just keeps it clean and optimized. And I see the women that get the best results, they do the basic things consistently and one of those things is every day having the carrot salad. So one to two carrots are peeled, grated and look, ideally you want to peel it length ways and soak it in water to get rid of the big carotene. But again, I think it's about what can you do consistently. So I just peel it, grate it, like normally with a grater and then one to two teaspoons of coconut oil or olive oil, salt, vinegar or I just eat it plain like that.

Kitty Blomfield:
But I've seen a lot of women in our program, they'll add little bits of feta cheese or some Parmesan cheese. One thing and you probably know who Keith Littlewood is. He's another, yeah he's an awesome guy. Does videos with us, with me for our program. But he sometimes will put garlic, fresh garlic on it too like do that for a week if you're having, you said if you've had any issues with parasites, I'm like, "Oh, that's cool." But yeah, I think, it's best eaten only in between meals. But again it's like, I think, it's always about trying to do what you can consistently and then improve from there.

Kitty Blomfield:
So if you're like fuck, I can only get it in with a meal it's like, well, that's better than doing nothing. So doing that consistently. And then you can work on optimizing and improving things and that's how I've done it. Once I look at where I was four, three years ago to where I am now, and it's been a journey, and it's been a constant journey of improvement, 1% better optimizing to where I am now. And I think so many women and maybe even men, they're like, "Oh, there's too much to learn." Like, "I can't do everything perfectly and I can't be 100% consistent, so I'm just not going to do it at all."

Kitty Blomfield:
But I think you've got to switch that mentality to, maybe I'm just going to change one thing a week and I'm going to stick to that. And then the next week I'm going to do this. And then the next week I'm going to do this because over time all those little 1% things really add up. And in my head I was thinking, oh fuck, I imagine if I just keep doing these small things, imagine where I'll be in 12 months. Imagine where I'll be in two years time rather than, oh fuck it, I can't do it perfectly, so I'm going to do it at all.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So that's one thing that I've always seen is that the more consistent that you are and the healthier the habits are that you build up, the more longer success that you're going to create. So whenever it comes in the form of resistance training, what are some of your favorite ways to remain consistent with that? And then what are some of the things that you pay attention to, to see how your body's reacting to that exercise that you're implementing?

Kitty Blomfield:
I think for me, I fell in love with lifting. As soon as I started to learn how to properly lift with Craig. I remember when he was teaching me how to deadlift and I was like, oh, because he said to me, "I want you to do a rep. I want you to show me how you squat and deadlift. So I did one, he's like, "Put the bar down." So I'd never actually really learned prior to this how to lift correctly. And I didn't realize how much more you could get out of it by having good technique.

Kitty Blomfield:
And I worked for a year with them. He's a really great guy, Thomas Lilly. He's a power lifting coach. I just worked with him for a year just to really refine my deadlift and squat. And it's just amazing how much more now I get out of lifting knowing how to do it properly. So I think for me, it's always been really easy to be consistent with lifting because I just love it. I'm not going to lie. There are days when I think, oh fine. I'm super busy. I don't want to train. Like sometimes I'll tie, because I'm really tired. I don't train because I think it's important to listen to your body. But for me, I think it's quite easy to be consistent.

Kitty Blomfield:
But I guess if you're someone who, look ... I don't know. I think that you are going to get the best results when you love it. When you fall in love with the process. I think when I look at the women in our program who gets the best results, they love lifting. They love the art of the lifting. They've fallen in love with actually getting better at the skill and perhaps maybe some better advice would be, I understand that it's frustrating. It's tough. When I first went back to work with Thomas, I had to unlearn everything that I'd learned. And I had to dull all my weights back and do all these stimulating exercises. And I was like, oh, this is like, the ego took me to the head, like this is so frustrating. I'm never going to get back to where I was, but I shifted my focus.

Kitty Blomfield:
And instead of going, looking at the weights I was lifting, I focused on becoming better at the skill. So I'd go in and I'd be like, I'd always do my stimulating exercises. I'd focus on getting better at them, at really focusing on the technique and over a period of six to 12 months, like it's good now. And also realizing that there's no end to this. But you've got to stop looking like there's an end because there's not. Like even now, I'd say I'm a reasonably advanced with that. I still video my lifts and show them to Craig and he gives me advice. And I'm still trying to improve my technique because I find the improvement part exciting.

Kitty Blomfield:
And when you get that extra rep, you would know when you ... I'm like lifting close now to, it takes a long time for me to progress now, to add more weight and more reps. Like yesterday I was squatting and I'm like, oh, it's taken me like a month just to add another rep to like my, I'm stuck at 107.5, like hopefully next fortnight I'll do three sets of it, but it's like really, really hard. But I think it's like when you actually love the process, that's when it becomes so much easier. Sorry, I don't know if I really answered that question properly, but I think you have to get out of that mindset of, oh fuck, I need to see quick results. I've got a see quick results too. I'm going to be good at lifting. I'm really going to focus on becoming a better lifter and enjoy the skill acquisition and the learning.

Kitty Blomfield:
Because it's like when you do that and there's nothing like, and probably the same thing for guys, but I just find it so impairing being strong as a woman and going to the gym and like when you like [inaudible 00:34:59] on your deadlift or you finally get a few more reps, you're like, fuck yeah. Like, it's the most empowering feeling, it's really rewarding. And it teaches you, I think it teaches you persistence and resilience and how to play the long game because you would know yourself.

Kitty Blomfield:
Like it's not linear with lifting. I've had times where I've gone backwards. I broke my arm squatting, which is a freak accident. And so there was 12 months where I just didn't really like do any squatting, benching or dead lifting. But I never stopped because for me it's a part of my life and it's what I do and I just focused on the exercises I could do. And every session I went in and tried to be a little bit better. And I think as a woman, if you do that, because some women will look at me and go, "I'll never lift the weights to achieve this." Maybe you will, maybe you won't, but it's not about that.

Kitty Blomfield:
It's about finding what you can do and just showing up and being better every session than you were the session before, and you watch one years, two years. It's like, I really feel like it's like when you save money in an account that accrues interest. You start initially like fuck I'm not seeing any results, it's such a slow process. But it's that consistency over time, and it compounds, the interest compounds. All of a sudden you're like, fuck you, like I'm getting better at this. My body's starting to change. And it's about putting that work in initially when you're not seeing the results and keeping going, because the reward is so great.

Kitty Blomfield:
If you really truly build this foundation and you improve your metabolism, you will be free from dumb diets forever. You will wake up every fucking day and you will look in the mirror. I look in the mirror, I'm fuck you, I love my strong body. Not every woman wants to look like me, like I'm pretty odd, but it's hard. You guys just lift the weights and suddenly like become really strong and turn into Annie. But I think, it's just, I believe that every woman should strength train. I think it's just the most empowering and rewarding thing that you can do apart from also helping you be able to [inaudible 00:36:50]. And so I believe it's the way to train to also support your metabolism rather than tear it down and borrow money and going hit the rest of the stuff.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. One of the images that I usually have in my head is looking at it as a road trip and you have gas stations along the way, but you have no end destination. It's just, you have those little objectives that you're hitting along the way, but there's end to it. You just keep on driving.

Kitty Blomfield:
So true. It's so, so true. Yeah. I'll be like 90 in lifting, I'll deadlift until I die.

Jayton Miller:
Yeah, definitely.

Kitty Blomfield:
Probably same as you.

Jayton Miller:
Some of those older power lifters are strong too. Like some of those competitions that they have for them are absolutely crazy.

Kitty Blomfield:
It's crazy. Hey, like there's some of the women too, like, I mean, I'm relatively strong, but like if I was to compete I would be, all those other women would shit all over me, but it's not about that. It's just about, I think you just need to be the best that you can be. And it's you versus you. It's not you versus anyone else. And that's what I really like about it.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So if somebody just can't get to that point to where they can fall in love with the resistance training, what are some of the things that you recommend just to get that movement in and kind of know just get that part of their health in check?

Kitty Blomfield:
I guess if you, do you mean like how they can make themselves do strength training or if they just can't do any strength training at all?

Jayton Miller:
If they just cannot bring themselves to resistance training, what are some of the other forms of movement such as walking or some others you recommend?

Kitty Blomfield:
We always recommend outside of the lifting is active recovery. So get out, get sun, walk, move, play with your kids, kick the footy round, go for a nice swim, go for a bike ride. You don't want to be like smashing yourself and getting really breathless. So I think if you can't ... yeah, or look, I really think that everyone needs to do some form of strength training. Even if it's just at home. If you just get some resistance bands, like Emma, the nutrition coach, she doesn't do any form of heavy lifting, but she just does like body weight, squats, and she's got resistance bands and she does some stuff with that.

Kitty Blomfield:
So just even doing anything. I think it's about going, like, what can I do? And just committing to that. Even if it's three times a week, a half an hour, just do that, Start there, go walking, get sun, all of that's going to be beneficial. And then I think it's just building on that and deciding where you want to take it, and if you're actually truly loved strength training,

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Have you heard of functional patterns with naughty Aguilar?

Kitty Blomfield:
No.

Jayton Miller:
So Nathan Colona and Nicholas Simpson have both pushed me onto this and it's kind of a deep dive that I've taken recently and there's also Thomas Meyer from Anatomy Trains and he talks a lot about myofascial release. And it makes sense to me because we control our skeletal muscle with the periphery of the central nervous system. And then within that, we have the integration of the fascial tissue that's in there. And we get kind of like the knots within the fascial tissue that build up over time as we come into contact with trauma or we experienced stress.

Jayton Miller:
And if we can figure out how to release those adhesion's or those knots within the fascia then we can either tend to lower the amount of cortisol that's being produced because that tension that's built up within the body kind of correct a lot of different imbalances that are seen within the body. And so if you haven't checked out any of that work, I highly recommended, is really interesting.

Kitty Blomfield:
Is it like fascial stretching? Is that what they do is, or is it?

Jayton Miller:
So they don't believe in stretching because basically the way that they look at it is like a plastic bag for instance. Like you keep it any kind of just eventually it's just going to tear or it just keeps elongating. Whereas they believe in mobility, so you can get more mobile by releasing the fascia properly. And it also helps with like calcium deposits and stuff like that within the muscle. And just kind of helps stimulate the lymphatic fluid through the system. They have a certain type of resistance training that they like to do for things like the gait cycle and correcting different imbalances within like running and things like that. I don't know if I'm entirely sold on that part specifically yet to go 100% in with it all the time. But the information on the fascia is really interesting. So I recommend if you're interested in it.

Kitty Blomfield:
I will look at it.

Jayton Miller:
Yes.

Kitty Blomfield:
Well, I think, like we've got this and I don't know if this is relatable, this friend of ours, Jim Bostock, he's a physio and he's not really a physio. Like he does nerve blocks, release nerve blocks. And we often talk to him about stuff like this. And I think, if it works for you and it reduces your pain and it improves your performance in the gym, like why not? And is it working for you?

Jayton Miller:
So far, so I just started his ten week program. And so I'm slowly going through there. I'm extremely sore just because I've been getting after it hard, but it's fun. It's really good. It's kind of one of those things to where you really have to enjoy being in pain.

Kitty Blomfield:
Oh, really.

Jayton Miller:
And to get the benefit out of it. So if you enjoy torturing yourself a little bit then you're up to something.

Kitty Blomfield:
I don't know how much I like torturing myself.

Jayton Miller:
But now, in my mind a lot of the different connections that they make, they make a lot of sense. So Anatomy Trains also, he talks about like the different slings that we have in our body and things like the superficial back line and the different connections that we can have with the different muscles on completely opposite parts of the body. It's really interesting just his kind of take on all of it.

Kitty Blomfield:
Oh, cool. I'll check it out.

Jayton Miller:
Yeah, definitely. So I guess kind of wrapping it up. What are the top five tips that you could give to a woman today to start taking the steps that they need to, in order to start getting into a better state of health?

Kitty Blomfield:
Oh God, I think number one, just stop fucking going down diets. You just got to get off that diet. Yo-Yo train, stop focusing so much on losing weight, and start to, like try and improve your metabolism, and listen to your body. So eat to fuel your body. If you're hungry, eat. Number two, enjoy getting enough protein. I think that's just such a huge thing I see with women. So you can just get at MyFitnessPal account, track your food. You can easily see how much protein you're getting. So 90 grams minimum a day, if you're doing any sort of strength training activity, you probably want to eat a bit more than that. It depends on how much lean mass you've got, but at least 80, 90 grams minimum of protein a day.

Kitty Blomfield:
Three, don't be afraid of sugar. Don't be afraid of sugar. It's changed my life so much. Read that article of Emma's, it'll blow your mind. You'll be like, holy shit, Kitty's right. Emma's right. Start eating more fruit, but to start by having some more fruit in your diet, really right fruit, just eat what digest well for you, try some beautiful pulp free orange juice. It's amazing. I just love orange juice. Do you like orange juice?

Jayton Miller:
Oh yeah. I drink probably a liter and a half of orange juice every single day at least.

Kitty Blomfield:
It's just the best, isn't it?

Jayton Miller:
Yeah, I love it.

Kitty Blomfield:
Every time I get dinner, I'll sit there at lunch and I'll drink my juice, I'm like, I just fucking love juice. It's just amazing. So eat more sugar. Number four, I think stop flogging yourself. Stop flogging yourself with cardio and just getting up and training. And when you're exhausted, because you can't heal when you do that. And look at doing some form of strength training. Just start, it doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be perfect. And five, eat the liver. Seriously, liver is just the best food ever. If you can't eat liver, try the pate. If you don't want to do the pate, try the liver tablets, like that we take. But yeah, it really is just such a amazing, incredible food that I think everyone can benefit from eating. Oh, and the carrot salad. Do the carrot salad. That's another thing. That's six things, but do the carrot and do the liver, yeah.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Sounds good. Well, you heard it from Kitty. Thank you. Make sure to subscribe if you haven't already and get into our Facebook group if you're not in there yet. We have tons of people, absolutely killing it in there and I'll talk to you next time.