I'm Katriona Allen. Founder of Nourish Nutrition UK. Here to help.

Does it ever feel like you're going round in circles with your nutrition?

As if everyone around you is finding the perfect plan and achieving their goals?

You begin to wonder, what am I doing wrong?!

The truth is everyone struggles with their health and fitness at some point in their life. Even though we all know deep down that it's good for us, it can be a slog sometimes. Good nutrition supports our overall health, boosts our performance and improves our recovery. Exercise also has endless benefits, it boosts our mood, improves our health, calms our mind and provides us with great opportunities throughout our life.

I'll be honest sport and fitness has been good to me over the years, I've been fortunate enough to have a parent who religiously drove me all over the country to play all the sports I could. Whether it was football, dancing, tennis, karate, swimming, squash, you name it I probably did it.

However, when it comes to nutrition I definitely wasn't the star pupil everyone expects me to be. I was an only child to a single parent who poured every penny into helping me achieve great things, which often meant there wasn't any money left for holidays or Michelin star meals after school. For example, a standard weeknight dinner would be oven chips, baked beans and potato smiles (these were actually AMAZING btw!), with a muller corner for pudding, not exactly a nutritionists ideal plate. We did the best with what we could and I certainly didn't starve.

As I grew up, I became more aware of social media and the influences of the fitness industry weren't all positive. I fell for many scams and quick-fix diets. I bought fat burning supplements, I paid for meal plans and exercise regimes, I downloaded apps for six pack abs. I also believed in myths like you should avoid anything with fat in it because fat is the devil. (P.s. fat is not the devil, just in case you were wondering) And you know what? I'm glad I did. Without making these mistakes I wouldn't have developed the desire to stop other people making these same mistakes just like I did.

Now if I'd started this article telling you I'm a professional athlete who trains multiple times a day, I have a first class degree in Sport Science and I'm a certified nutrition coach you'd probably think, "how on earth is she going to be able to help me? She's nothing like me!". When the reality is, it doesn't matter how many letters you have after your name, it's about connection and being able to relate to an individuals needs, not recite information from a textbook.

Now I'm not saying qualifications don't matter, there are a lot of idiots out there claiming to be something they're not but it's not ALL that matters. Having the guts to just get started and finally do something (and often fail miserably) that's when the magic happens. This was summed up perfectly by Harry Truman (as far as I'm aware...) who said:

"Imperfect action beats perfect inaction every time"

I may have qualifications and I intend to keep learning more and developing my knowledge base at every opportunity I get but I lack experience of working with real people. So I decided to take action.

That's why I chose to launch my new online coaching business, Nourish Nutrition UK. I'm tired of seeing the vast amounts of misinformation about nutrition in the popular media. I wanted to create a business that could allow me to use my passion for nutrition to help real people, see real results.

As a sport science graduate, I have learnt to think critically and use evidence-based research as a foundation for all my coaching. In addition, my Pn1 certification taught me that mindset and behaviour change play a big role in implementing the changes into peoples everyday lives. This combined understanding of the scientific evidence and human behaviour is what makes achieving any nutrition goal possible. I want to help regular people learn about nutrition and understand what works best for them as an individual.

No meal plans and no foods off limits.

So if you're ready to take action and think coaching could be for you, send me a message today at nourishnutritionuk@gmail.com and we can get started.