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Show notes
Nicole Eichinger has been a registered dietitian for 12 years who has been meeting with and supporting her clients virtually for the past 6 years with nutrition counseling sessions as well as some online courses. She specializes in helping exhausted professionals feel like themselves again by using food as medicine. Nicole talks about how she manages her work-from-home life as well as her own anxiety and stress levels by making time for herself, prioritizing healthy sleep patterns, being aware of inflammation in her body, knowing her limits when it comes to balancing her family and business responsibilities, and using food as medicine in her own life. April and Nicole took some time to talk about how hiring a virtual assistant can be helpful with reducing the stress and workload of a small business owner but how there can be a transition period, with the idea of handing over some control a potential stress in itself. Nicole also talks about how she has embraced several social media platforms and has found recent success with Tik Tok. She also gives a lot of credit to her recent increase in traffic and referrals to using GoSite in the past few months. She has her own podcast called Nutrition's My Life Podcast where she talks about topics such as thyroid and digestive health.
You can learn more about Nicole and Nutrition's My Life in the following places:
Website: https://www.nutritionsmylife.com
Facebook page: Nutrition's My Life at www.facebook.com/nutritionsmylife
Facebook group: Healthy Foods and Healing Habits www.facebook.com/groups/nutritionsmylife
Transcript
April Malone 0:01
Hello, hello. My name is April Malone, and I'm with Yes, I Work From Home, and this is the podcast. Today, I have Nicole Eichinger with me. Nicole, did I say it right?
Nicole Eichinger 0:11
Yes.
April Malone 0:13
Nicole is a registered dietitian, and she's been working from home for several years now. And it looks like you have a little bit of a variety in your past as far as what you've done as a registered dietician; it looks like you've worked in pediatrics and then a few other things. Nicole, why don't you go ahead and just introduce yourself and let us know what you're up to now?
Nicole Eichinger 0:33
Yeah, absolutely. Hi, y'all. I'm Nicole. Like she said, I'm a registered dietitian, and I have been one for about 13 years now. Like you said, I started my career actually as a neonatal ICU dietitian, where I grew babies for a living, and that's kind of--it was so fun. It was my most rewarding job for sure. Then I ended up having my own babies, and working 60-hour weeks was kind of unrealistic. So the only part-time job I could find was in dialysis, and I saw a part of the healthcare system that I didn't appreciate. It was very money driven and kind of left a bad taste in my mouth in addition to, at that time after having my kiddos, I had a lot of my own health struggles, and I was not getting the help and guidance I was needing from my doctor. So I kind of just took my health into my own hands and realized that this is something that many other people can do as well, and so I started my own business, Nutrition's My Life, and have been helping women now who are just exhausted and just not feeling like themselves, and I teach them how to get food as medicine into their body, how to trust food again, how to have a better relationship with food, and how to actually repair the body finding that root cause and get to the bottom of what's going on instead of this just Band-Aid fix that many, many people just are doing, you know, like, "Oh, let me just do keto," or "Let me try to cut the calories," or "Let me just take this medicine," and it just ends up, you know, kind of driving them into a worse place. And so I kind of help them crawl out of their dark time and kind of be empowered again to take back control of their life.
April Malone 2:26
Awesome. This is good stuff. And it sounds as though you specialize working with professional women or just professionals?
Nicole Eichinger 2:34
It tends to be just women. I do have like four or five gentlemen, but I have nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists; I had a couple doctors; I had counselors like psychotherapists; I have lots of teachers, lots and lots of teachers. So yeah, I tend to get the hard working--not that anyone else isn't hard working--but that's just kind of, you know, the people that are just a little bit extra stressed. And then I, of course, have the moms, you know, tons and tons of moms because that's a huge, huge trauma to our bodies a lot of times is birth, and then we have the, "Okay, now I have--This is my life now taking care of all these you know, kids and juggling, you know, like finding my own identity, you know, throughout this like mom stage," and so you know, I definitely say like a stay-at-home mom is a working mom, right?
April Malone 3:32
Oh yeah.
Nicole Eichinger 3:33
So yeah, I have the gamut of professionals.
April Malone 3:37
Oh, I hear you. My body definitely took a toll in lots of different ways, and you know, people talk about their hair falling out and, you know, things that are caused from stress and also, you know, probably just hormonal imbalances and things that happen after you've grown a baby in your body. It's hard stuff. What about--it says here that you have a podcast as well?
Nicole Eichinger 3:59
Yes, yes I have--it's the Nutrition's My Life podcast, and that's something I started, gosh, it's been almost about two years maybe? I don't know actually. I don't know how long it's been.
April Malone 4:12
How many episodes do you have?
Nicole Eichinger 4:14
Sixty-five was just recorded yesterday, and it's been fantastic. And honestly, since I partnered up with GoSite and then started doing TikToks, my podcast has just been tripled; actually last month it tripled the listeners.
April Malone 4:34
Wow.
Nicole Eichinger 4:35
Yeah, it just like blew up.
April Malone 4:38
Tell me more.
Nicole Eichinger 4:40
Honestly, it was my GoSite got me to a better place for people to find me, and then TikTok, just for some reason, it's working fantastic. Who knew?
April Malone 4:51
Wow, yeah. I mean, I've heard through the rumor mill that that's the place to be right now. I maybe have an account, but I don't think I've ever tried it yet.
Nicole Eichinger 5:00
Yeah, and I've only been like maybe a month and a half into TikTok.
April Malone 5:03
Okay.
Nicole Eichinger 5:04
And like the last maybe 10 clients of mine have been from TikTok.
April Malone 5:08
What.
Nicole Eichinger 5:09
Yeah, it's like my--the crazy part too is how many parents like 60, 70-year-old parents are like telling their 30, 40-year-old children about me, you know, from TikTok, and I've gotten a lot of referrals that way as well. So it's just weird like who I'm reaching, you know?
April Malone 5:28
Who knew? That's so cool. Now, you are seeing clients, and you're working from home. Tell us how that works. What does that look like for you?
Nicole Eichinger 5:38
Well, sometimes it's like what I'm doing right now, sitting on the floor in my son's bedroom because my husband now with COVID is working from home, right?
April Malone 5:49
Right. That's mine too.
Nicole Eichinger 5:50
Yeah, so it's a balance. So what I've learned that I need to do is I chunk out time for myself in the morning because anxiety is one of those nasty Gremlins that's been with me almost my whole life, and so I have half a thyroid, and so I have to be very careful with my stress levels, and so I take some time for myself in the morning. And then what I end up doing from there is I will see my clients anywhere from 7am, because I am a 5:30 a.m. waker-upper.
April Malone 6:24
Wow, well that works for you if you're on the West Coast because then you can still see your clients at a normal hour on the East Coast.
Nicole Eichinger 6:30
Yeah, it's been great. So I wake up early, have my time for myself, and then from 7 to 11 I'll see clients, then my kids are in school three hours in person, so depending on--I mean, the 7-to-11 schedule in the morning is also a lot of juggling. Okay, checking in on my first grader, checking in on my third grader, they're coming to me with questions. "Mom, did I do this right?" or like I just got right before I recorded this, "Mom, how do I spell 70?" You know.
April Malone 7:02
When you say they're in person, do you mean that they literally physically go to school, or are they doing online school?
Nicole Eichinger 7:07
Both. They're in a hybrid.
April Malone 7:09
Okay.
Nicole Eichinger 7:10
So they do part online and part in person, so only three hours a day in person.
April Malone 7:16
And you have to shuttle them to school, or is there bus service for them?
Nicole Eichinger 7:19
Nope, that's me. I take them to school; then I have like 2-1/2 hours basically to I'll see clients then, or I will be working on a blog, or I record my podcast, or I'm sending emails, or I'm helping, you know, my clients; you know, I give them the opportunity to email me in between sessions as well. I don't like to leave people high and dry; I want to be there to support them.
April Malone 7:46
That's awesome. Yeah, we have our kids in online school, and it's in and out of meetings all day long, and we have our Echo Dot is like every, you know, 45 minutes it's like, you know, "You have a class in two minutes," or "So-and-so has a class in five minutes." And it tries to give them that, you know, lead time to get into their classes, but I'm telling you, it's a full-time job even just coordinating that.
Nicole Eichinger 8:12
Oh yeah.
April Malone 8:12
Like, I literally thought that I would have more time during the day, and I had to change my work schedule so I could basically just help my kids while they were supposed to be taking classes with their teachers, you know, and their teachers are basically being asked to do the impossible and not only manage a classroom full of children, but also the online students. And so there's a lot of different variations of hybrid, so I always have to ask for clarification like, "What does hybrid mean for you?" It could be like every other day or three days on, two days off or, you know, like my kids' teachers both at the same time.
Nicole Eichinger 8:25
Yeah, that's crazy.
April Malone 8:36
But it leaves a lot on us. So like my kindergartner is only in class for 30 minutes a day, and then she's just like all over the place, you know. She's learning; she's watching the videos that the teachers assigned; we're doing the worksheets, but basically everything falls on me. Like her teacher basically takes her for 30 minutes and that was like when I got my shower today.
Nicole Eichinger 9:08
Yeah, exactly.
April Malone 9:12
I put my shirt on backwards. I mean, it's that kind of day. It's still on backwards.
Nicole Eichinger 9:17
That's alright. It's alright. It happens. I mean, we ended up having to switch schools because of COVID because my kids were in a dual-language program, so they were--it was actually my son who was in kindergarten last year--was 90% Spanish and only 10% English, and my husband's the Colombian; I'm not. I took a little bit of Spanish in my middle school and high school, but now it's not there. Yeah so I was just, when COVID when the pandemic lockdown all really just came in, that's where it was overwhelming. I was just crying a lot and like trying to be like, "Alright, I don't want to be a mean mom, but like you have to try to take responsibility for some of your things." You know? I keep track of all of this and my business and the house and, you know, my mental health, so we ended up moving to a different town so that way we could have more space, that way the kids could have a backyard because we were in an apartment at the time. And so yeah, we've done a whole crazy--I even found a desk recently on the side of the curb, and like it's a cool old fashioned like one that has like the, I don't know--it's just a really cool old desk. So I'm refinishing that, and I'm going to make my office in the garage. So you know, we're doing what we have to do, you know, I guess my motto lately is, "I'm doing the best I can with what I have."
April Malone 10:43
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And desks actually have been really hard to find this year because so many people are working from home or doing school from home; like they've been sold out, like everywhere. So if you found one on the side of the road, that's like a miracle.
Nicole Eichinger 10:56
Oh, yeah. No, it was like the old writing desk, you know, with the whole cool, like old fashioned key. It's just really cool--I'm like this is great. I'm gonna look it up online. It's like $1600, I'm like--
April Malone 11:06
Are you sure they weren't trying to like sell it?
Nicole Eichinger 11:09
No, they were just giving it away, like I got it for free. It was fantastic.
April Malone 11:12
Wow. We got a Christmas tree off the side of the road, and that's what we're using. Every month, our neighborhood has like a bulk trash pickup, and I had gotten our minivan the day before, and we had three kids across the backseat of a Toyota Corolla for several years, and then we finally got the minivan. And like the next day, I drove by, and there was a fully decorated Christmas tree on the side of the road, like with lights on it and bulbs like all over the whole thing, like they had just basically taken it out of the living room and set it on the curb. And it was kind of a narrow profile Christmas tree, and I was like, "You know what, our new house is so small; we can't handle the big, huge one that our other neighbors had given us." We don't buy trees; we just use other people's trees, apparently. And I just opened up my trunk, and I just shoved the whole thing in, and it was off we go.
Nicole Eichinger 12:02
Right? Wow, I am all about the, you know, those finds and just re-using things and finding ways to make it your own. And that's what this project--actually I have a bench now in the backyard that I did the same. On Facebook, there's Buy Nothing groups. Amazing. I mean, you swap things all the time. You can--I get clothes. And it's just, it's amazing. You know, like all these free--
April Malone 12:25
I need to find those groups.
Nicole Eichinger 12:27
Yeah, and it's for your neighborhood, so they're neighborhood specific. So yeah, Buy Nothing. It's amazing. I've been using it for years now.
April Malone 12:34
I will look for these now.
Nicole Eichinger 12:35
And so I ended up getting a bench recently, but the cool part is, and the reason why I'm mentioning it in this, I strongly, strongly believe that if you're working from home, we need to have some separation of work and your, you know, home life, and part of that home life needs to be something stress reduction. And I'm a big, big fan of projects because they have an end result so that way you can get that gratification, that self-satisfaction and like that feel good that you were desperately needing right now in this time, a lot of heaviness, and so those projects for me are part of what's keeping me sane, so I can run my business and do everything that I need to do.
April Malone 13:16
Right. And stress reduction is going to look different for everybody.
Nicole Eichinger 13:18
Correct, yeah. Yeah. It's just something that lights me up. I love manual labor, and so that's one of those things that I'm hopefully--I'm looking for a virtual assistant so that way I can like have them do some of that busy work for me to open up some of my time so I can do more stress reduction and stuff to actually help balance my life out a little bit better.
April Malone 13:42
Right. I actually just this week talked with an old coworker from when I was a transcriptionist, and I was like, "So I have been transcribing my own podcast transcripts." And you know, we talk for 45 minutes, sometimes an hour; the other day, I think, my last one was an hour and 10 minutes. And I really, really value having that transcript for not only like the hearing impaired who might want to, you know, just read the transcript but also for the people who, you know, maybe don't want to watch the video or listen to the audio and just want to skim through and, you know, get the gold from, you know, just reading it quickly. And because I was a transcriptionist, I really care about how it looks, and so I was doing it myself, and I was struggling with--I have some chronic pain issues, some chronic back, and I've had some car accidents in the past, not my fault, you know what I mean? But like just we've been T-boned a couple of times and just different things. And so every once in a while, I'll go through like a chronic period where I'm having to go to the chiropractor twice a week and, you know, go to massage therapy--not for fun, but for like literal therapy--because I can't function otherwise, and that gets expensive really fast.
Nicole Eichinger 14:54
It does.
April Malone 14:54
And the last week and a half or so, I had struggled with headaches and things like that, and I usually am trying to always figure out, "Is it the caffeine," like I'm trying to wean myself off coffee. "Is it the sugar that I consumed because it was a holiday," or whatever like that, or "Did I sleep wrong?" Like there's probably 10 different reasons I get headaches, and I can't always figure out why. Well, I gave myself a break from typing the transcripts, and I do use a voice recognition software to help me get, you know, 90% of it, and then I spend, you know, a few hours cleaning it all up because it's not perfect, and I didn't do it. I'm a little behind. And I told someone the other day, I'm like, "I just feel really good, and I can't even figure out why." And then I said, "Oh, I haven't been typing those transcripts." And I was a trained transcriptionist, and you know, I have an ergonomic setup, and I know a lot of the correct things and, you know, tools and things to make it easier and faster and everything. But it was, you know, a time suck and trying to manage the kids and their school and trying to keep up with this, and then the stress of not being caught up I think was catching up with me too. And I talked with a friend, and she's gonna help me out. She has a job that has some downtime, while she's just waiting for things to come in and come through, down the pipe I guess you could say, and during that time, she has the flexibility of, you know, doing something else, and so she's gonna help me out. And I'm, like, relieved on so many levels, because I'm like, "Not only am I going to probably be able to save the money that I've been spending on my chiropractor just to pay her," but it's also the time.
Nicole Eichinger 16:32
Yeah.
April Malone 16:32
The time that I was spending on that. So--
Nicole Eichinger 16:35
Well, let me ask you this. The thing that I--this is just the anxiety talking in me because anxiety is a control thing, right?--I have been just so scared to like release that control to someone else.
April Malone 16:49
Yeah.
Nicole Eichinger 16:50
How do you do that?
April Malone 16:52
So I hired--I have a virtual assistant that has been with me since June, and it's one of those things that's like, like we were talking before we started recording, it's hard to know when it's the right time; like I probably hired my virtual assistant on the early end, like before this business is--I haven't released any products yet, like there's not money right now. Like I actually have a bunch of things in the works, but right now, this is just a free service. But I'm paying for this virtual assistant, and I love him, and I don't want to lose him, and he's doing my video editing and helping with social media and all these things. But the place I hired him through is called Outsourced Doers, and this lady, Grace Lever, she has started a business in the Philippines, and so it's cool. Davao City doesn't get very many of the natural disasters like you'll see, like all the typhoons and hurricanes coming through, and they seem to get like the lesser end of the very worst storms, and it's a big university town, and so there's a lot of just really qualified people there. And I hired my assistant through this company, and they train them for, I want to say, a month, and they make them like learn 150 different tasks, and they have them sit all these different exams, and then at the end, if you pass the exams, you can be hired; if not, you're let go. And during that four weeks while they're training those people, they're actually taking some time and training us as well. They call us the "founders," and it just means, like it's basically teaching us how to pass off a task, and I haven't done it well every time. Like you're supposed to say like, "This is why I need it done," to give them like the motivation of why it's important, and you know, "This is how long I expect it might take you. How long do you think it'll take?" And, you know, there's just like a little process of how you basically pass off work. And we use Basecamp with the to-do lists, and then they actually have like a team leader that gives them some accountability and extra training, and for instance, I got an email last night saying that I could have my virtual assistant trained in LinkedIn, and they'll send them through like a seminar. Anyway, the control thing is a real thing, and I was just talking with my assistant last night actually; I was driving, and I had my headset on and was just chatting with him as I was driving and was just saying, "Gosh," you know, "We've really gone through the--I don't know--the process of me trying to relinquish some things." Like there's some things that I've been very picky about, and when we first did these first couple episodes for my podcast, we were heavily editing, you know, out all of the "ums" and "uhs," or like one of my early episodes, there was a very slight echo; I think the person I was interviewing, the headset might have been like leaking into the microphone from the earpiece to the mouthpiece, and so there's just a little bit of an echo of my voice coming through, and we were working really, really, really hard to clean it up, and then one day I was like, "We don't have time for that." And I need to be able to just say, "Let's not worry so much about those like nitpicky things," or I was getting, you know, pretty nitpicky--the poor guy--and at some point, you know, he's like, "Hey, I got this," you know, "Don't worry," you know, "I'll put it together, and you can just give me the yay or nay." And sometimes I'll just have him even draft like a social media post, and it's not really his job to do copywriting, but his English is amazing. And so he can draft it, and I'll just be like, "I'm gonna make a couple of tweaks." And, you know, or maybe I'll suggest some different hashtags or something like that and just give it the thumbs up and thumbs down, and he'll just go ahead and take care of it. So it's definitely a process, and I recommend just coming into it like maybe they won't do everything exactly, exactly the same way that you would, but what really matters is your time more important than it looking like--I like commas, and so I usually add in more commas than most people do. When I hired my friend the other day to help out with transcribing the transcript, she was trained by the same company that I was, and so I know that she'll put the commas in the same places that I will. So I think with anything when you hire someone, it's important to make sure that there's going to be a good personality fit. Actually, that's one of the things that they had us do in our founders training for this outsourced company that I'm using; they actually had me go through a personality test and like--I'll see if I can find the name of it, it was--
Nicole Eichinger 21:40
Well I'm totally going to look up this Outsourced Doers like after we get off of this.
April Malone 21:38
I can hook you up. They actually very recently started expanding the company a little bit more rapidly, and they really train them well. Of course, there's gonna be like, you know, a fit, and they do a really good like matching thing where they--they matched me very well, like they knew that it was important to me that the person that I had on my team is good with video editing, and photography; those are important things to me. I was a photographer in a past life, and that was going to be something I would need help with as far as--I like taking the pictures, but I don't like editing them or the social media stuff, and then also just the English. Because I teach English, that's something that is important to me, and it's helpful. The guy that I have on my team, his English is really good, and that's not always the case, but some people have different skills. And like I said, that's not their job to do the copywriting, but he has been able to help me with some of like the basic editing or even making suggestions, and sometimes I'm like, "Thank you. Thank you. That was a great suggestion." Sometimes I'll be like, "Mmm, thanks, but no thanks. I'm gonna go with my original plan." So I think it's just a balance of finding like that fit, and my assistant's gonna listen to this entire podcast episode; he's gonna hear me talking about him, but I love it. I mean, it's really nice to have some things that you can pass off. Sometimes I will be working alongside him and getting stuff done; sometimes we'll do a Zoom every day and like work through some things and like I'll be even watching his screen as he's doing some things, and I'll be like, "yes" or "no," like when we're designing like the logo and things, and then there'll be weeks that I won't talk to him at all for like two weeks, and he'll just have like a checklist of things. Like we talked about last night, when we do these episodes, I had a checklist of about seven things that we usually do as far as like the video and, you know, the transcript and then also like uploading it into the RSS feed for the podcast and also the YouTube and then getting the transcript into YouTube to be like my subtitles. And then you know, there's the social media art, and then there's the social media posts. And then so we added about five more items to each episode that, you know, steps to do, and then it would be like emailing the person who--this is something that we fell behind in. When I record an episode with you, once we publish it, I should be sending you an email to say, "Hey, here's your link to the episode," you know, and we just fell behind in that along with the transcripts, and now that we're not spending as much time on the actual video editing, we will have more time to catch up on like, "Here's the link and here's the art that we're using. You can share it as well if you want with your people." So I guess it's just a matter of kind of maybe give yourself a month or two to kind of fall into that rhythm with your hire, you know, to get to know each other. Actually the company, the Outsourced Doers company, they shared my personality results with my assistant so that he would have a little bit of an idea of what he's working with, and it is a relationship. And like this company that I use, I think you pay upfront, like a couple months, and then after that it's no contract. So you can just go month by month, and if it's not a good fit, they'll swap one out for you if you need--
Nicole Eichinger 25:17
That's awesome.
April Malone 25:17
--if you just say, "That's not gonna work out," you know, for whatever reason; "I need a different skill set," maybe they could bring someone else in. But you know, you lose some time; like it took a month or two for us to establish our rapport and kind of get something started. I would hate to lose that relationship that, you know, we've built, so hanging on.
Nicole Eichinger 25:40
Yeah, you know, and when you're saying some of these things, I'm like, "Dude." When I record my podcast, there's no editing at all. I do not edit. Like randomly, there's been a couple when like the kids jump in or say something, you know, and I'm like... but for me, what I've found is that it's better just to have it out there than be perfect, you know, with it.
April Malone 26:03
Right.
Nicole Eichinger 26:03
And so that's one of the things that I've found, actually, that a lot of people, like they'll tell me like, "Oh, I found you on your podcast, and I love it," and I'm like, "That's awesome because I don't do--I just record it, and I have an intro clip, and I just meld them together, and then boom, that's it." And so you're giving me all these ideas. I'm like, "Oh, I should probably transcribe for people that are hearing impaired, and I didn't think about that," you know?
April Malone 26:25
But it's a time commitment, and it's a money commitment because you can pay someone like at Rev, but it's like $1 or $1.25 a minute per audio thing. I use Otter, otter.ai--and I can put the links into the show notes; we're talking about all these things, might as well put the links in too--but it gets some of the work done, but it doesn't get all of that work done, and it does--it's a commitment, so it just depends on, you know, will you or your assistant have that time to add that extra feature. It is a feature. We are definitely bringing the editing down a notch. As far as--well, one thing that I learned is that I say, "um," "uh," "right," "so," "you know," and "anyway," and all these different things so, so, so much, and having to transcribe my very own podcast definitely helped me become a little bit more aware of some of my patterns, also how I interrupt people, or how much I nod my head and say, "right," "uh huh," you know while they're talking, it helped me--
Nicole Eichinger 27:26
As I'm nodding my head right now I'm going, "Mhmm, yeah."
April Malone 27:28
I watch myself on like super speed sometimes, like 2x, just to, you know, listen really quick and make sure that the transcript is accurate or something like that, and I can see myself like on the video like nodding like I'm a little bird, you know; I'm bobbing my head, but yeah, I think that just being authentic and natural sounding is more important than it being polished. If I was goona do like my 3-minute intro, I might worry more about sounding, you know, great or, you know, I might spend two days editing a 3-minute clip if it was really, really important. But if it's gonna be an hour-long podcast, there's just not enough time; I can't hire a team of eight people, you know, to do every single aspect of my business right now. So let's talk about stress and how it affects inflammation and how inflammation can be helped out by food.
Nicole Eichinger 28:15
Oh, yeah, absolutely. So when it comes to stress, you're right; stress definitely is a precursor for inflammation, and so that's why I was saying like having projects, doing something. So one of the things that like I had mentioned earlier is having a morning routine because if I don't have that morning routine, my stress level is extremely high, and this is something the more I, you know, listen to like Tony Robbins or anyone else who is, you know, great in their business, that's what they do as well. I'm like, "Alright," and everyone's going to have a different morning routine for sure, you know, depending on what lights them up and what they're needing, but that's one of those things that I strongly believe that if you don't have a morning routine--and especially if we can get it outside, that's going to be the best thing because just 20 minutes a day of direct sunlight into your eyes, and if you can do it the first thing in the morning, can actually help reduce anxiety a little bit longer if you have depression, and so that direct sunlight is crucial. And what it'll do also is it sets you up for 16 hours later for your melatonin to be released to help you sleep better at night. And so if we sleep better and we have better restorative sleep, we have less inflammation in us and less stress the next day, so it's all definitely intertwined and interconnected because, like you had said, that stress is just a, you know--and the thing about stress is that there's three different kinds of stress. There's emotional stress; there's physical stress; and then there's chemical stress. So we can't forget about--most people are aware of the emotional and the physical stress, but the chemical stress is something that many, many people are just, you know, like I've seen a lot of, like my clients are a lot of professionals, like we said, and they're looking for kind of trying something that's low fat, low calorie, right. And when we eat all these processed foods, that's a chemical stress to our body.
April Malone 30:11
So the Splenda and the fat replacements and the sugar replacements?
Nicole Eichinger 30:15
Yes, even just preservatives in general. Our cereals we have to be aware of; there's something in it called TBHQ you know, and that's something that's very, you know, carcinogenic. And so there's little things like just being aware because part of what happens with us when we're stressed is that our cortisol level can be affected, and some people end up having like a flatline cortisol where they're actually so low. Sometimes it's excessive; it usually goes extremely, extremely high, and then you kind of burn it all out, and then you like go low, and a lot of people that have--you know if you have a cortisol issue--typically is because we carry our fat in the abdominal; it's called visceral fat. So that's usually a cortisol stress issue. Also, I see it frequently when you wake up around 3 or 4 in the morning, that's typically the cortisol like, "Oh my gosh, I used up everything all throughout the day; I need to like pump these more"--because cortisol is what naturally wakes us up in the morning. We have a natural rise, but sometimes our bodies are a little bit too ahead of the game because we burned through everything the day before, so if we get up, you know, at that 3 or 4, and then I also see the 2 to 4pm crash when that cortisol is all used up.
April Malone 31:32
Now, you're speaking to someone who has worked nights for 12 years, and so my circadian rhythm and everything is really jacked up, to put it mildly, just because, you know, I've really messed around, like it's almost like I have jet lag; I think I was talking to someone last night. I feel like I have jet lag almost every day or every week because of, you know, like my switches, and so you're talking about nutrition, but you're also talking a lot about sleep.
Nicole Eichinger 31:59
Yes, yes. Yeah, sleep and just in general, like when it comes to nutrition our bodies--I want you to think about like our body like a car, right. And so if we're driving 70 miles down the highway, and we're trying to do a repair on the car, we're going to get burned; we're going to crash; it's just not going to work. And so there's so many factors that come into actually our health, and so part of what we need to do, as far as our nutrition goes, if we don't calm that car down, slow it down, cool it off, you're just going to have expensive poop. That food that you're eating is just going to go right through you.
April Malone 32:36
Right.
Nicole Eichinger 32:36
Because what happens physiologically when we are stressed our cortisol, actually our blood--excuse me--our blood gets shunted from our intestines, and that goes to our muscles because we're supposed to be a fight or flight, right? We're gonna go fight that bear that's in front of us, or we're gonna run away from it. And so that blood flow, if we're staying in a high state of stress, that blood flow is not in your digestive tract to actually help digest your food properly, and then a lot of people end up getting lots of bad bacteria taking over versus the beneficial bacteria, and it just kind of has this what's called dysbiosis, and that's the first step before that leaky gut and all this other, you know, issues that kind of arise so--
April Malone 33:17
Right.
Nicole Eichinger 33:18
--we can't talk nutrition without talking about the mindset, your sleep, and everything because it's all interconnected.
April Malone 33:25
Right. And I think that I've probably gone through the whole gamut with some of these definitions, maybe didn't always put a name on everything, but I definitely find that I do better when I reduce the inflammation by--
Nicole Eichinger 33:41
For sure.
April Malone 33:41
--controlling my food, taking down actually coffee. I am currently drinking one-third of a cup of coffee; I was up to about two cups a day, two like mugs like probably more like four or five cups. I'm literally measuring out my coffee because I know that my anxiety like kind of peeks his ugly head out, you know, when I'm drinking too much caffeine. The first time that I ever had an energy drink--it was either a Monster or Red Bull; I don't know which one I tried--the next day, I thought I had a UTI, and I felt, you know, very jittery, but I also felt really sick and like had all of those symptoms of like maybe what I would have if I had a UTI. I went in, and they're like, "No, you don't have a UTI," and I realized it probably was that freaking energy drink I had, and so it affects me in multiple, you know, bad ways, and I've learned that my relationship with caffeine definitely is a big one. So my chiropractor the other day, he's like, "You know, sometimes I notice that your adjustments aren't sticking, and sometimes I think that people that struggle with this might have like an adrenal imbalance or adrenal chronic something," you know, and he's like, "You really need to cool it on that caffeine," and I'm like, "I'm trying. I'm way down." You know; he's like, "You might need to cut it out completely." And do you want to speak to that at all?
Nicole Eichinger 34:57
Yeah, absolutely. I actually went through a few years ago where I cut out caffeine for three months completely. That was no chocolate, no tea, no nothing, you know actually no coffee. And what I found is I replaced it with a tumeric latte, so now what I like to do is, I mean I add maybe 2 to 3 ounces of coffee--like I'd mentioned earlier, my husband's Colombian--
April Malone 35:21
Oh yeah, yeah.
Nicole Eichinger 35:21
--meaning he's a coffee like guru, you know, like they love their coffee.
April Malone 35:26
Yep.
Nicole Eichinger 35:26
And so that's something that I like when he makes it. I'm like, "Oh, I love the smell of it." But I also realized, you know, my knee is my inflammation indicator. I had torn 4 ligaments when I was in high school, and I'm bone-on-bone, you know; I have osteoarthritis in it.
April Malone 35:41
Wow.
Nicole Eichinger 35:41
So if I don't drink my tumeric latte, my knee is like, "Okay, you have some inflammation going on." So I had my--
April Malone 35:41
Wow, so that's like your little canary.
Nicole Eichinger 35:52
It is. It is definitely the canary in the mind. And I end up using tumeric; I use cinnamon. And with turmeric, you need some fat and some pepper to help the absorption.
April Malone 36:04
Okay.
Nicole Eichinger 36:05
And then cinnamon, ginger, and I use some medicinal mushrooms that have been shown to, actually they block the inflammation pathway, so it's something called beta glucagon that are in that those mushrooms that actually block the inflammatory pathways, and so I add those in and--
April Malone 36:23
Is it like a powder?
Nicole Eichinger 36:25
It's a powder yeah; they also have them in capsules too, but I don't like pill burden. I take a lot of supplements, so if I can get something in food form, I will totally do that first.
April Malone 36:38
I don't like mushrooms, but...
Nicole Eichinger 36:40
Oh, you don't taste it.
April Malone 36:42
Yeah, I was gonna say if it's like a powder or a capsule then that probably wouldn't be a big deal.
Nicole Eichinger 36:46
And it's only a 1/4 teaspoon, so it's a minute, small amounts. And it's just yeah, and I have tons of clients too like, "I don't like mushrooms. I don't like mushrooms." I'm like "You're not gonna taste this." It's not a mushroom flavor; it's just a powder, and it's such a small amount that it's just not that big of a deal. But if we have all this caffeine, like you said, you definitely are gonna kind of shoot out those adrenals where they're just going to be working too hard, not to mention also your digestive tract. So if we're more stressed, a lot of us get the "ewies" you know, like we just have that like, "Oh my gosh, I get nervous. I have to go to the bathroom," right. And so that can actually disrupt your healthy gut flora because we have an ecosystem in our digestive tract, right, so we have to feed those healthy bacteria because we should have, as an adult, about 3 to 5 pounds of beneficial bacteria.
April Malone 37:44
Wow.
Nicole Eichinger 37:44
So if we're not feeding them and keeping that environment proper, then our gut wall starts to suffer and a lot of processes, hormonal imbalances can start to happen because we do a lot of our hormone cleaning and attachment within the gut wall lining. And so if we have damage to that because of stress or because of the caffeine, you know, overuse causing, you know, you to have diarrhea or just wipe everything out, right, we can definitely be setting us up for inflammation and also more anxiety and more stress because we have a nerve that actually attaches from the gut to our brain; we have a brain-gut access, and so our gut hears what our mind is thinking.
April Malone 38:32
Oh, wow.
Nicole Eichinger 38:32
And it's just crazy that if we're constantly worried about this or too stressed out, we're gonna have, like you said, more inflammation, more pain, more--you know, you have chances of having mood swings, anxiety, weight gain, autoimmune disorders, and also all these--you know, cancer. I can just keep going on and on and on.
April Malone 38:52
Well, let me confess when I feel cruddie, like when my body doesn't feel great, guess what I do?
Nicole Eichinger 39:00
What's that?
April Malone 39:00
I eat crappy food. I eat the junk. I go to the cheap chocolate even, you know, and I'm sure it's just a cycle because then it's just compounding.
Nicole Eichinger 39:11
That's an emotional, that's the emotional stress. So if you start to notice like, "Oh, I'm going to that," that's an emotional like, "I need to figure out what's going on." And I'm a huge fan of chocolate. I think all foods fit into a healthy lifestyle. The cool part is that once you start to introduce--it's like a step. I tackle the mindset at the same time as I tackle the gut. Those are usually the first two things that we focus on. And then once you start to increase these foods, and you know like my client on Monday, she's like, "I crave vegetables now." She's like "I was eating ice cream so much. I crave vegetables now," and yeah. So she went on a trip this weekend; she came back, and she was like, "I didn't feel like S-H-I-T," you know? She didn't feel horrible from this trip, and she normally would have, and it's because I had these tools in place. She's like, "I still wasn't 100% like I was at home, so I still feel off, but I could still put my rings on," you know.
April Malone 40:14
Right.
Nicole Eichinger 40:14
Her first--at two weeks, she was like, "My rings fit my fingers, again. My rings fit my fingers again," right. Just two weeks of working with me. And those little things are just, you know, make a big difference to someone who's not feeling that well, so it really does. Once your gut goes from that bad bacteria to the healthy bacteria and we kind of flop those around, you don't have those cravings as often as you do with the bad bacteria.
April Malone 40:41
You can kind of change your taste buds. I know--haha I said "wike,"--when I've done like a detox, you know, and got off the caffeine, like you said, for three months; I might have even been off of it longer, and I was working night shift.
Nicole Eichinger 40:54
Right.
April Malone 40:55
And it doesn't seem like you normally could go off of caffeine when you work nights, but actually, it helped regulate my energy level quite a bit, and it was good. I felt--I didn't have the super highs and lows of that fatigue and then the jittery, and I just felt more even. And then you bring down the sugar, and I think I went off of sugar for several months, too. I lost 50 pounds that year.
Nicole Eichinger 41:16
Wow.
April Malone 41:17
I gained it all back. This was a few years ago.
Nicole Eichinger 41:20
Well I'm guessing that you were very restrictive with what you were doing back then, right?
April Malone 41:27
It was--I didn't really love the diet that I was doing, but I did like how I felt. And so it's kind of a trade off; sometimes you trade the satisfaction of eating the foods that, you know, are delicious versus just feeling great.
Nicole Eichinger 41:44
I'm gonna stop you right there because it doesn't have to be that way, and that's the thing. Yeah, that's the thing that so many of us are just like, not to say brainwashed, but we almost are like, right? Like you have to cut calories; you have to do a detox; you have to try this diet; this is the only one to work. In reality, most of what we're doing is we're taking foods away; we're eliminating an entire food group, or we're doing all of this. What I've found is if we start to focus on adding in foods; I like to say "Crowd out the bad with the good." Keep doing what you're doing and just enhance it.
April Malone 42:18
Right.
Nicole Eichinger 42:19
Find ways to add in, you know, color into your meals, and then eventually, you'll crowd out that bad stuff, and you don't want to have it. So you're just slowly weaning out the bad, and you still have, you know, I like to follow like an 80%-90% rule, like 80/20; you know, 80% of the time you're doing, you know, good with your food, but then 20% of the time, you need soul food.
April Malone 42:41
Right.
Nicole Eichinger 42:41
Food that like hits home that like, you know, reminds you of like Mom or, you know, something. Whatever it is, you have to have that wiggle room and that balance of all of that, and I'm not saying a cheat day; I'm saying incorporate that into your normal day. Like if you ate pizza one night, okay. Next day, we're just gonna eat, you know, the way that makes you feel better, and if you want to have tacos, we can make it in a way where it's going to be healthy and helpful for you.
April Malone 43:10
I've learned a few things along the way. I had a coach for a little while, who--she was helping me just be a little bit more aware. Like when I ate that ice cream, "Oh, the next morning, you have a headache. Hmm," you know, or "You felt really stiff? What did you eat last night that might have affected how you felt the next day?" I had never made those correlations, and so now like when I'm thinking, "Should I have a glass of wine," I have to think "Do I want to feel like crud in the morning?" You know, is it going to be worth it? And sometimes it is worth it, and sometimes it's not. Another thing is, like your client said, I have discovered that some vegetables can taste delicious, like for instance, roasted--when I was on my sugar fast for a few months--roasted brussels sprouts, and I never thought that brussels sprouts like, as a kid like they just sounded like the most disgusting thing, and I'm telling people, I'm like, "They could taste like candy." If you roast them, you know, and they kind of start to carmelize a little bit? Oh my goodness. It's like popping, you know, candy into my mouth; it's amazing. With some roasted--my mother-in-law makes a really good, I think it's carrots and some like maybe--it's just a little mix of some vegetables, but the brussel sprouts are like the candy in there; it's so good. So yeah, it's like all of a sudden your taste buds can change over time, and I like that.
Nicole Eichinger 44:33
It is. It's so cool. It is so cool. I love food.
April Malone 44:36
There's definitely like the sugar withdrawal; I think, you know, it takes a little time to like retrain yourself again. Nicole, if someone wanted to work with you, what would they find? What would you--what kind of services do you offer?
Nicole Eichinger 44:51
That's great. Yeah, I actually have a couple self-paced courses; one of them actually currently is on a flash sale til Friday, so only a couple more days til the 20th. But I have a Healthy Thyroid Program, and then I have a Mind Your Gut program, and they're 4 weeks each, and it's all--like it's everything that you need to know to heal and improve your thyroid or your gut health. And I walk you step-by-step just like I would if you were a one-on-one client with me. And I do it a little bit different with my one-on-one clients, so I have like a one-hour session; I have one-month packages, two-month packages. And I typically recommend mostly, especially if you have like multiple health issues or you feel like you're a little bit more complex, a month is really ideal, and what we do is we have an our initial session, and on that session, I say like, "From the time you wake up in the morning, to the time you go to sleep, let's go through your day; let's go through your pooping, your habits, your you know sleep routine, every little thing," and we kind of go through and just kind of see the big picture of what's really going on. And then, after that hour, I send a nutrition recap email, which is like my brain dump, and it's basically like your healthiest day; like in a perfect world, this is what we would be doing. And I break it into that morning routine, the day routine, and then the evening routine, and then I even break it down even further with food, and then I break it down into habits within those sections. And then at the end of the email, I say like for thyroid--just because that's what I specialize in is thyroid and gut health--these are the foods, and these are the tools and supplements that are helpful for thyroid, so that way you can see how all of these things that are helpful can be spread throughout your day and it not be overwhelming. I'll provide meal plans sometimes, you know, antianxiety guides, whatever it is that they're needing. I've made tons of handouts and tons of things over the years to really help my clients. And then, like I kind of mentioned before, I don't like to leave them high and dry because I'm a health worrier myself, and I remember how lost and confused I felt when I started off my journey, and so I provide them, you know, with a 30-minute follow-up the following week so we can tweak things and really kind of hone in "What worked for you? What didn't? Let's talk about a few things," and then I give them like a week of implementation, kind of like spread their wings, "Let's see how you do on your own," but you can still email me in between; you can still contact me so that way we can make sure that you're getting the guidance that you're needing. And then on week four, we make sure that "Okay, how are you feeling with this?" Some people need to go another month; some people are like, "Psh. I got this, like you set me up for like success, and I know my routes to go from here on out." And so it's just really, like I said, I customize everything for them because we're all different.
April Malone 47:54
Yeah. So it sounds like a very holistic approach.
Nicole Eichinger 47:57
Correct.
April Malone 47:58
Not just food and supplements or something like that. Do you incorporate supplements as part of your routine? Do people have to buy a certain like package or program to do that with you?
Nicole Eichinger 48:12
No, I have some supplements that I am associated with, but it doesn't mean that everyone needs those supplements, right? And so, like I said, I customize everything based on what they're needing, so I just send recommendations like, "Hey, I've used this one before with a couple clients; you might like this," and they're just little things could make a difference. So one supplement can have, you know, five different things on it, but then the other supplement only has four out of those five, and they're almost the same, but I wouldn't give them to the same person, right? So they're just--you have to be really careful, so I am also trained in medical nutritional therapy, meaning that I can interpret labs and, you know, read them and base, you know, my guidance on that. So I do sometimes also, you know, talk with--there's a lot of dietitians and health professionals that are like, "I have this at-home thing that you can buy this package and do all these labs with me," but I'm not that dietician. I'm a "Let me talk with your doctor, and let's lower these labs because this is a team approach." We all need to be included into this, so I communicate with physicians and everyone to make sure that everyone's on the same page and they understand. Sometimes I send them my notes depending on what's going on. You know, someone recently there was a self-harm comment, and so that was sent to someone else, you know. So I just make sure that I have the person's best interests at heart no matter what's going on. So I don't want to--I hate it when people try to gouge me, so I'm not that person.
April Malone 49:49
Can you just for everyone, for me too, can you kind of tell me what the difference is between a nutritionist versus a dietitian versus a registered dietitian.
Nicole Eichinger 49:58
Correct, yeah.
April Malone 49:59
Is there two or there different levels there?
Nicole Eichinger 50:01
Yeah, a dietitian and registered dietitian are almost the same. The dietitian has gone through and at least had a Bachelor's degree in nutritional science or food in science or whatever they want to title it per college. But then the difference between a dietitian and a registered dietitian is I had to also go through an internship--it was a year-long internship; I had to pass a national registration exam; and then I also have to keep up yearly--well, every five years, and it's also within yearly and all this continuing education, and so that's kind of my background and training. A nutritionist, however, can be someone who takes an online course. A nutritionist can be that person who has a bachelor's degree but has never practiced, so nutritionist can actually mean anything.
April Malone 51:05
Okay.
Nicole Eichinger 51:05
And so it's very--like some health coaches will call themselves a nutritionist, and I have had a good handful of clients come to me from those just with them not knowing what they're doing, and they just really screw them up, you know. I'm like "Oh that shouldn't have happened. Oh this is a medicine, like drug interaction, like you shouldn't have taken this," you know, like all these little things that if you're not trained on it, you can actually do a lot of harm in someone than good. And so yeah, it's definitely murky waters, basically, that we're walking in with a lot of this online space; I guess, I should say, in the nutrition world.
April Malone 51:49
Right. And then working from home, we have access to our kitchen, which can be good or it can be bad.
Nicole Eichinger 51:57
Yes.
April Malone 51:58
Do you work with many people who work from home, or is there usually kind of a mix?
Nicole Eichinger 52:02
Yeah, it's definitely a mix, especially right now with this pandemic, you know. Since I do see a lot of health professionals as my clients, you know, they're still working in the hospitals a lot of them or in their clinics. There are still a handful though that are at home and working, so it just depends. I mean, there's a challenge either way, you know. A lot of them are skipping meals when they're not working, you know, from home, or even the ones working from home, they tend to be like, "Oh, I forgot to eat."
April Malone 52:36
Oh, yeah, absolutely. You can be so focused sometimes or so distracted; either way, it can make you forget to eat sometimes.
Nicole Eichinger 52:43
Yes, or you know, like with us. We're teachers; we're businesswomen; we're taking care of the house; we're doing all of these things, and so the time just kind of comes where you're like, "Oh, no. I haven't done anything. I haven't eaten," like that. So yeah, no matter if you're at home or working away, preparing, have an idea. Like you said, like the roasted like brussel sprouts--like I'm a big huge, huge fan of put everything on a sheet pan, and put it in the oven.
April Malone 53:12
Yep.
Nicole Eichinger 53:12
Put it in the oven, and you know, walk away. Get done what you need to get done and come back to it. I don't like the standing over the stove, taking all this time, like--I enjoy that when I have time, but most days, I don't have time for that.
April Malone 53:24
My husband is the one who really enjoys the process of cooking; I enjoy the process of eating. And so when I cook, it's usually more functional, or I'll do things in bigger batches, and so we can like freeze some, which just means that another day I don't have to cook, but it's still a wholesome meal.
Nicole Eichinger 53:42
Correct.
April Malone 53:43
He enjoys like, he's more likely to be tinkering in the kitchen and trying new recipes. As a family, we like to watch Alton Brown. It's funny because we actually just purchased another season--he's got his Good Eats: Reloaded--and even our 5-year-old enjoys watching these cooking shows. And obviously, you know, sometimes they have healthy food, and sometimes not so much, but I just like it that my children are learning about being in the kitchen and that it can be fun, and it can be, you know, educational--you know, they're learning math and science and chemistry and everything, and so...
Nicole Eichinger 54:17
Yeah, my kids are excelling in math, and I definitely attribute that to being in the kitchen since they were, you know, able to hold a spoon.
Nicole Eichinger 54:25
Also as far as like, you know, you don't want to have like us have our own health journeys and then our kids are such picky eaters, right, so getting them in the kitchen--and that's something I come across a lot of times too is that battle, that dinnertime battle--
April Malone 54:38
We have that.
Nicole Eichinger 54:38
--or cooking multiple meals, right? I'm like, "Don't cook multiple meals," you know. That's something that's so helpful as just getting them in the kitchen, letting them get used to food. Sometimes it's just it's scary because I don't know what it looks like, right? Exposure. Exposure. Exposure.
April Malone 54:56
Yeah, yeah. I have a child who's especially picky and has been vegetarian since she was about 6, and we're not, so you're talking about the multiple meals. It's hard sometimes, like when you have a kid; she's always had a difficult time eating, even as an infant like as a newborn; like there's just always been something going on with that--a lip tie versus, you know, aversions versus, you know, upset. And she probably has--they say that she's one step away from celiac, and so we've had to do some major household, you know, diet changes as far as like, you know, what we have access to and what we don't have access to, just to make that whole journey a little easier. But oh my goodness, like the whole, you know, separate meals thing is a thing, and I think it has to do with personalities and parenting styles, and you know, every family dynamic--sorry--is gonna be a little bit different.
Nicole Eichinger 55:49
Absolutely.
April Malone 55:49
Yeah. So if people want to find you, where would they find you?
Nicole Eichinger 55:55
Nutritionsmylife.com. I hang out a lot on TikTok lately. I've been loving TikTok; that's been fun, so I'm actually @nicoledietitian there. I am @nutritionsmylife on Instagram, Nutrition's My Life on Facebook. So you can kind of find me all over the place. I'm trying to keep up with Pinterest, and now I see that you're doing all your transcription and putting it into YouTube. I'm like--
April Malone 56:18
You wanna add something else?
April Malone 56:24
You don't have to have it all. But I mean, I'm not really present right now on a lot of the places you just mentioned. I'd like to, you know, work my way into that, but you have to know your limits too.
Nicole Eichinger 56:35
Yeah. Well, I have my Facebook group that I mainly nurture, and that's it. It's Healthy Foods and Healing Habits, and that one has just been fun because I like to just do like free like challenges in there, or I'll just come on and do like a good 20-minute education, you know, training. And it's just a good like little hub where people can just, you know, have comfort and know this is nutrition and, you know, lifestyle, like guidance. But Instagram used to be my favorite until TikTok came over, and I'm like "Oh TikTok's so awesome."
April Malone 57:12
New shiny object. Is your Facebook group available just to your clients, or is it an open group for...
Nicole Eichinger 57:17
Everyone.
April Malone 57:18
Anyone? A free group then.
Nicole Eichinger 57:20
Yes.
April Malone 57:20
Okay. So if you have anything you want to share to kind of wrap things up--I usually ask this. If there's something that you think that might be especially helpful for someone who's new to working from home or got thrust into it unexpectedly, from your standpoint as far as nutrition and--we might have to have a part two of this because I have so many more questions I just want to fire at you right now--but just to kind of wrap things up, what would you say would be like your number one for people who work from home and are trying to juggle the work, life, food, wellness, wholeness picture, what would you do? I really messed that up.
Nicole Eichinger 57:59
I get what you're asking for. For sure. I mean, because there's so many things, right? I could say something like the tool, like I said, about GoSite; that thing's been huge. I could say the morning routine, that's huge. But if we're talking specifically just food to help out, honestly, is like you said make too much. I make too much, is always having some sort of an easy go-to something. So I'll, a lot of times, just do like a boiled pot of rice or quinoa or some sort of grain, and then I'll roast all my veggies or a protein if I'm having a protein; a lot of times we don't do--we'll just do beans. And I'll just make like a--Pinterest calls them Buddha bowls--I call them, you know, veggie bowls or rice bowls, whatever you want to call them, quinoa bowls. But I just toss things on, add an avocado, drizzle a little bit of something, cilantro, done, eat it, you know out the door. So just having those go-to recipes that you know that are easy, that are gonna fill you up, and then also last.
April Malone 59:08
Right yeah. I definitely find that I make the best choices if I already have something ready to go that I know is a healthy choice. And when I don't have something ready to go, that's what I am most likely to eyeball the convenience food or be tempted to order a pizza or something like that.
Nicole Eichinger 59:25
Or just--yeah, I hear a lot of people just like "or I'll just like skip," you know.
April Malone 59:29
Yeah, that too.
Nicole Eichinger 59:29
"I don't know what to eat, so I'll just skip and I'll just keep going" or "I'll have, you know, a soda or something and just gum." I'm like, "Alright, feed something," and if that's you, well that's another tip: grab a handful of nuts, grab some berries or a banana or an apple, pair that with those nute. Those nuts are gonna be stress reducing; that fruit is gonna give you a little bit of fuel, and just at least do that versus skipping a meal.
April Malone 59:52
Right.
Nicole Eichinger 59:53
If you're not gonna eat a full meal, at least feed your body a little bit of something so that way, you know, you can't--you don't put gas in the car, you don't go. So I don't want you to burn out by the end of the day or by the end of the week and not be able to focus on your business.
April Malone 1:00:07
Like I said, I feel like I could probably just go another hour with you. And I think that we're gonna have to continue this conversation. Now, for those of our listeners who might be watching the YouTube, I can't actually see Nicole right now; I'm not sure if the video feed will come through. For some reason, we had a little bit of a glitch, but she can see herself, so I'm not sure if we'll have video. But Nicole, I enjoyed watching your little intro video on your website. And again, what was your website one more time?
Nicole Eichinger 1:00:35
Yes, it's nutritionsmylife.com.
April Malone 1:00:37
And that's a really great way to access everything, I think, that you do.
Nicole Eichinger 1:00:40
Correct.
April Malone 1:00:40
Find your sessions and your freebies and things like that.
Nicole Eichinger 1:00:45
My podcast, my blog, everything's on there.
April Malone 1:00:47
It's all hosted there. Well thank you so much. I think we're gonna have to just resume this conversation in the near future. Thank you so much, Nicole, for coming. This is April Malone with Yes, I Work From Home, and we'll catch you next time.
Nicole Eichinger 1:01:02
Thank you, bye.