Incredible Nutrition Interview
I’m totally a fitness guy but when it comes to the nutritional aspects of living healthy, I’m constantly researching and educating myself. Although I’ve come a long way, I still have a lot of work to do! So when Sarah-Jane Bedwell, a registered dietitian and nutrition blogger for Self Magazine, agreed to do an interview with me to discuss nutrition and her book – Schedule Me Skinny – I knew this would be a great learning opportunity!
Within the first minute of our phone conversation, I knew three things: this lady was amazingly nice and a pleasure to talk to, she was incredibly intelligent, and she had a lot of great nutritional knowledge to share! Here is a summary of our conversation. I hope you enjoy it!
First, tell me a little bit about your background?
Sarah-Jane was actually a collegiate cross-country runner with an interest in physiology from an early start. Being a collegiate athlete, Bedwell knew a great deal about fitness which caused her to naturally think she knew a lot about nutrition. She told me,
I thought in order to be a great runner I needed to cut a lot of foods out of my diet and so I cut things like lean-beef and certain types of fats and things like that…
By cutting out so much from her diet, Sarah-Jane learned firsthand some of the effects of an imbalanced diet. Bedwell went on, “Thinking that would make me a leaner, stronger runner and [I] actually become severely anemic.
This means my iron levels were really low and so it actually hurt my running performance and I could not run as long and as fast as I had been able.” After seeing numerous therapists and specialists with no success (I know the feeling), one doctor suggested she have blood work done.
The cause of her muscular weakness turned out to be severe anemia and she was told to see a registered dietitian.
From there the rest is history. She instantly fell in love with it and changed her major the last semester of her senior year as she put it, “I decided to change my major at the last minute and I am glad I did.”
So that led you into blogging and then to becoming an author?
I was curious how she went from being an RD to becoming an author. I wanted to hear about the journey. Her first job out of college as a registered dietitian was at a kidney dialysis clinic which was really hard for her because, “…a lot of the patients are at the end of their lives and it was really sad, especially knowing as a dietitian that the top two courses of kidney failure are uncontrolled diabetes and uncontrolled hypertension and both of those things can be managed through good nutrition and so I really wanted to get on the preventative side of things.”
This caused her to start her own private practice which led her to become a nutritional blogger for Self Magazine and eventually a book deal! Crazy how one thing can lead to another!
Can you tell me a little bit about the book?
The book I was talking about was Schedule Me Skinny! I was really interested in the underlying foundation of this book, how is it different? Sarah-Jane explained,
Tthe book really is all about planning and how just spending 30 minutes once a week, doing a strategic what I call a ‘power plan’.
“You set yourself up for the success for the week and you can reach your goals whether that’s to lose weight or eat healthier or just feel better and more energetic and it really all does come down to planning.”
Sounds great to me, you always need a plan B so you aren’t destroying a bag of Doritos instead. This even includes healthy alternatives you can choose at restaurants when you go out for a night on the town!
Can you give me an example of the strategic power plan?
I was really curious about this and wanted a little further explanation. Sarah-Jane said there are multiple parts to the power plan.
The first part is your grocery list. She said it was all about getting in and out of the grocery store quickly because, “the food marketing institute reports that for every one minute we spend in the store we spend two dollars, so if we can get in and out quicker we are just going to spend less money.” Get in and out! She has devised a plan to do just that!
The second part of the power plan is planning your meals. She said that this takes a little prep time, “we need to chop vegetables in advance, cook quinoa in advance.”
This will really help us on those nights where we are super swamped and don’t want to take 30 minutes to make a healthy meal. She said,
Basically doing some of that pre-prep on the weekend so that on those busy week nights you are just throwing it together, literally.
What is one of the biggest nutrition misunderstandings?
Sarah-Jane did not disappoint, she told me that the biggest misunderstanding these days is that everyone thinks that it takes a lot of time and a lot of money to eat healthy when this simply isn’t true.
“It really is just about knowing the tricks of the trade and I have a whole chapter in the book on grocery shopping that includes tips for saving money on healthy food in the grocery store too.
I have even had a list of my top ten healthy foods for two dollars or less. So that just proves it doesn’t take lots of money or even lots of time to do this.” Knowing that it doesn’t take a lot of time and money and always have a plan B is the main point Sarah-Jane said she wanted to make. By understanding these aspects we can all achieve our nutritional goals!
Where can you be reached?
Bedwell said, “Yeah everybody can get on my Twitter handle is @sarahjaneRD.”
Wrap-Up
This interview was a pleasure to do and I really want to thank Sarah-Jane Bedwell for agreeing once again! She made the whole process so easy (the hardest part was figuring out whether I use “dietitian’ or “dietician”)!
Be sure to check out Schedule Me Skinny at your local book store! It should make for a very interesting, informative read!
Full Transcript
Sarah-Jane Full Interview
Audio Version
- Post-Workout Meal: Getting the Most from Your Workout - January 22, 2024
- 6 Ab Exercises To Blast Your Core - December 17, 2023
- 10 Office Exercises You Can Do To Burn Calories - November 19, 2023
