When Jarrod Boyle tipped the scales during his teenage years, he not only lost the weight but found his life's calling in the process. His transformation from a teenager struggling with body image to a passionate dietitian is more than just inspiring—it's a roadmap for anyone looking to make a lasting change. In our candid conversation, Jarrod opens up about the pressures that shape our dietary choices and how the path to a healthy metabolism is often counterintuitively marked by eating enough, not less.
Embarking on a journey toward better health can seem daunting, but it's the small, consistent steps that build to a grand stride over time. Jarrod and I dissect the vital importance of hydration, balanced meals, and the joy of not giving up that glass of wine or the occasional chocolate that keeps us sane. We challenge the allure of extreme diets, advocating instead for sustainable habits that add richness to life, rather than just subtract pounds. Tune in and learn how to cultivate a lifestyle where health and happiness walk hand in hand.
Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to this podcast and share with a friend. If you would like to know more about my services, please message at fueledbyleo@gmail.com
When Jarrod Boyle tipped the scales during his teenage years, he not only lost the weight but found his life's calling in the process. His transformation from a teenager struggling with body image to a passionate dietitian is more than just inspiring—it's a roadmap for anyone looking to make a lasting change. In our candid conversation, Jarrod opens up about the pressures that shape our dietary choices and how the path to a healthy metabolism is often counterintuitively marked by eating enough, not less.
Embarking on a journey toward better health can seem daunting, but it's the small, consistent steps that build to a grand stride over time. Jarrod and I dissect the vital importance of hydration, balanced meals, and the joy of not giving up that glass of wine or the occasional chocolate that keeps us sane. We challenge the allure of extreme diets, advocating instead for sustainable habits that add richness to life, rather than just subtract pounds. Tune in and learn how to cultivate a lifestyle where health and happiness walk hand in hand.
Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to this podcast and share with a friend. If you would like to know more about my services, please message at fueledbyleo@gmail.com
Hey, hey, welcome back to another episode in the Simple Nutrition Insights Podcast. I am your host, leonie Lacampos, registered dietitian, and today with me I have a guest, a colleague of mine who's also a dietitian, gerard Boyle, and so I'm excited to talk about metabolism and everything about nutrition. So thank you so much for accepting to do this interview with me.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely. It's going to be a fun time. Good afternoon, I'm really happy to be here. This is the second one I've ever done, so we'll see how fun, how much fun, we have.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, Awesome, Lots of fun. So, yeah, let's. Let's maybe start with, like, introducing yourself, right. I know I had another colleague of mine who's also a male dietitian and we were talking about the percentage right of male dietitians in the field, which is not very high, and so I think it's important for the listeners to know right like where the decision of becoming a dietitian and what led you to choose that career.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely. I don't know the percentage, but, yeah, I'm sure it's insanely low. And I started out well when I was a teen. I was overweight. I had no confidence, no self-esteem, it was just non-existent. And to be even doing something like this, thinking of doing that at that time, I would be pooping my pants right now just being able to talk about my journey or what I do now. And so I said, hey, I got to make something happen. I got to lose some weight so I could start to feel better about myself. I wasn't even concerned with feeling better physically at that age you know that's not something that really crosses your mind just yet but I lost the weight. I lost 50 pounds, and I was 16 at this time, maybe 17.
Speaker 2:
And I did it the completely wrong way. I ate a thousand calories a day. I try to work out every day or do something active every day, and you know that that definitely was not boosting my metabolism. And I learned that sense. And at that point I realized, okay, now I feel good about myself, I have a new outlook on life, but I know I don't feel good physically like I should. So I didn't even know I did anything wrong.
Speaker 2:
I did some research, I found out what a dietitian was and from there that set me on the journey of. I know I need to help other people feel this good mentally and learn how to do it the right way physically so I can have the whole overarching approach to it. And I didn't even know what a dietitian was at that point. Then I learned. I went to college for it Youngstown State University, where I'm from and ever since then, right when I graduated, I went to college for it Youngstown State University, where I'm from and ever since then, right when I graduated, I opened a practice and I've just been growing it ever since. It's been three years now, so it's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, thank you for sharing that. Just so many questions come to mind, right, just thinking about the weight loss at the age of 16 and like what that looks like and, as you mentioned, by doing it, obviously essentially the unhealthy way. But we know as dietitians that body image, these teenage years, right, it's huge, and so there's not a lot of education that I see as to let's do it in a healthy way. And now, with social media, even more, I can imagine these crazy things that teens are doing because they're wanting to look better, because, it is true, it's all about the looks.
Speaker 1:
At that age, we don't care about health, we don't care about long term, we care about the now, but that's when we establish healthy habits, right, and so I can imagine, right, all the things that you went through at that age trying to look a certain way, and so I think it's you know great that you're sharing that as well. We'll probably do another episode, hopefully, on like the effect of, you know, thinking about weight loss at that age and how much that affected you. But I want to stay focused on, like today's topic, right, which is how to boost your metabolism. So, before we go into that. Right. Maybe let's talk about what are some of the things that we know as dietitians that affect our metabolism. First of all, what is our metabolism?
Speaker 2:
Okay, yeah. So I guess I'll usually define that with clients as the process of whatever you're taking in your body and breaking that down to create energy or to create some kind of reaction to fuel you, whether it's, you know, with activity that you're doing, or just the thinking process or what your body goes through to keep yourself alive.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, thank you for describing that, and so now we can ask right, what are some of the things that affect our metabolism?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think my number one favorite and I don't know about you, I'm sure you do, but I see this all the time. I see nobody's eating enough, nobody's getting enough food and and that's going to really hurt your the speed of the optimization of your metabolism. So our first thing when we bring people in, we say you know what's your daily habits look like when it comes to food, and we just start that conversation and we always find you know they're skipping breakfast or maybe they're working through lunch or dinner's rushed and they don't get enough. And then they have some snacks at night and the body's not getting that fuel that it needs, so it's not running on enough gas.
Speaker 1:
Right, yeah, that is such a great point. Right of not eating enough. Even more if weight loss is a goal, right, they think, because obviously diet society has said, in order for you to lose weight, you have to eat less. Right or not eat, which is wrong. Yeah, we know that as dietitians. Right, that's wrong, of course, because our body is still functioning right, our body still needs fuel to do just the daily things that we need to do, but more so for weight loss, right. And so if we're not eating enough, right, that affects our metabolism. So, yeah, thank you for mentioning that. Any other factors that you know that also affect our metabolism?
Speaker 2:
I think another favorite of ours at our practice and all of our dietitians will help people see this and we have a visual sometimes of how much muscle we have on our bodies has such a huge effect on how well our metabolism runs, and we like to tell everybody hey, there is a way that you can eat more and move less and still be able to make progress, especially with weight loss, because most of the people we're helping want to lose some weight, whether're able to stimulate some muscle growth and that helps us burn more calories at rest, which is effectively, you know, boosting our metabolism.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, great segue, right, and to like okay, now that we know what metabolism is and now that we know what affects our metabolism, how can we boost it? Right, and we're not selling anything here, so don't jump out of your chair, we're not selling any products here. But, as dietitians, what are some of the things that you know? And you mentioned one already, right, the muscle building that can boost our metabolism or help our metabolism.
Speaker 2:
Definitely. And when it comes to muscle building, you know we break down what that looks like and that's, you know, making sure we're maybe moving, lifting some weights, doing some strength training or even walking. You know that's going to help stimulate our muscles to grow that protein, and we got to just make sure that we're having a little bit at every meal, so we're constantly feeding our body with that. I think that's important for a lot of things, not just the metabolism, but staying full, you know, feeling satisfied, that's huge.
Speaker 1:
Right, exactly, I love. I love that you mentioned that about building some, some muscle. Right, and, just like you said, walking a lot of the times. Same thing when I talk to my patients, right, like I don't want to go to the gym, and you know, my answer is that you don't have to go to the gym, right? Let's start with walking right.
Speaker 2:
There's always a way. Yeah, and just you know, walking five minutes compared to walking no minutes is going to get those muscles working, and then we can go to 10 minutes from there.
Speaker 1:
If you do that every day, you're making a lot of progress, right? Yeah, I love that. You know the simplicity of it, right, and making it work for the client or for the patient, right, like going at their own pace, because we know that that's what's going to work long-term and that is going to be sustainable. So we talked about the protein. Right, we talked about the muscle building. What other things come to mind when it comes to boosting our metabolism?
Speaker 2:
My next one. I really love water. I think water's underrated when it comes to the metabolism because you know the way our blood works. It's used as a vehicle to transport the nutrients and get everything where it needs to go to our organs, things in our muscles, things like that. So getting that water helps the flow of the blood and if the blood's flowing better, that protein's getting to the muscles a little faster. Or, you know, the carbs are getting to your liver after a workout, your muscles after a workout. You're gaining that energy level back.
Speaker 2:
Your body can focus on the big things like repairing everything and optimizing everything. So getting enough water just helps with so much, and it helps us not even necessarily avoid things that may not support our goals, but it keeps us full and satisfied, just like protein does. So I think on any kind of journey, you have to enjoy that journey or you're not going to stick with it. And water, protein, eating enough all these things can help you do that. So every day you wake up, you're excited to be working towards your goals, because it's something you can do every day. It's not some crazy thing. It's not eating a thousand calories every day. There's not some crazy thing. It's not, you know, eating a thousand calories every day. There's a realistic aspect to it, like you said.
Speaker 1:
Right, awesome. Yeah, like you said, water is underrated, right, there's not a lot of focus on let's just drink water, right, and we do have some clients, right, even for myself that you know I hate water or like I can drink, you know I don't know a gallon of water or whatever. You know things they've seen. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
For your clients, like what are some of the tips that you give them to help them increase their water intake?
Speaker 2:
It cut out just at the end a little bit, but did you say what are the tips to help increase some water? Yeah, okay. So this will always definitely depend on the client. I have some clients who really like numbers, and so we'll focus on certain things with them. Or some people who just like having a really cool bottle. You know, maybe it's a bright yellow bottle. They like to look at it, it gets them excited. Or they put stickers on it of companies that they support and like, or, you know, maybe it has a little picture of their family on it, something like that, and just seeing that and associating water with something positive can be a huge help.
Speaker 2:
And then, maybe for my people that really like numbers, I say, well, hey, maybe our goal right now is 90 ounces a day. What if we break that down and say let's get 30 ounces with every meal that we have, or even 15 ounces before, 15 ounces after, and we do that for every meal and we hit our 90. And then saying, okay, 15 ounces, that seems a little more realistic than 90, because that big number is scary at first, but we can always break it down and I have some people they love numbers, so we might say hey, you're up for 16 hours a day, maybe you have about five to six ounces every hour and they really like that because it's so achievable. You know, that's a couple sips every hour and we can really make that happen. So it feels empowering to know you can take it sip by sip or bite by bite to reach any goal, but water is always a big one.
Speaker 1:
I love that and that's um. That's your company name, right yeah?
Speaker 1:
One bite at a time, Awesome, yeah, and it's so realistic, right. I think, um, like you said, you have different clients right, that that required different ways of helping them achieve those goals, and I think that it's important to know that we're not going to just do one size fits all right, we know that that doesn't work, so really individualizing each client's journey right helps them to achieve their goals Awesome. So what other things would you suggest in terms of boosting metabolism and just helping someone in general right to just achieve their goals, their nutrition goals?
Speaker 2:
I think, specifically for the metabolism. This is a little more advanced and I don't really even bring it up to clients until they're eating enough and they're exercising and they're drinking their water, getting their protein, all those things. But I would say, if we can make sure we're timing our meals evenly throughout the day and just saying, hey, let's start with three meals, and then maybe we can get a snack in before or after that workout, that would be huge. But usually that that comes a lot later down the road and I don't really start there because I don't want anyone to feel like they're stuck on an eating schedule or a water drinking schedule, because that gets a little too strict and we're all about having fun on the journey, because if you're not having fun, you're not going to do the things that need done. So we have to have those visuals, we have to have that excitement, and taking it slow and saying, hey, three meals a day, let's start there, can take us really, really far and make us a lot of progress us a lot of progress.
Speaker 1:
All right, yeah, awesome. Thank you for sharing that. So just recapping, right, in order for us to help boost our metabolism, we mentioned eating enough right, eating your protein, exercising, drinking your water right. Essentially, those are the basics and you can see, right, you can hear that we're not saying add this and add that and try these other expensive things, because we have to start with the basics. That's what's going to help long term.
Speaker 2:
They will take you really really far. And I'm just like you. I'm not trying to add anything that anyone hasn't heard of, and I'm also a big thing that we do is we're trying to make sure we don't take anything away that you're already doing, because if someone comes in and says, hey, you know, I'd like to have a glass of wine at night, I'm not going to say, hey, it's day one. You cannot do that while you're here, you know, or they're not coming back. So we got to make sure we're fitting in those things that people enjoy, but also adding enough of the simple things that keep their body functioning at the best level that it can.
Speaker 1:
Right, such a great point. Right, because I feel that sometimes clients come in to see us, right, and they're already having that mentality of like so are you going to take away my chocolate right? Or take away XYZ, and we're like no, take away my chocolate right. Or take away what xyz, and we're like no, like we're here to help you, you know, add more nutrients right, to get you to that point where you feel better and you have more energy, and I think I really love that. Um, you know about that individualization right, and really getting to know that client. Um, because, like you said, if we're restricting, restricting or saying no, no, no, no, no, they they're never coming back Right, but then they're going to try something, maybe dangerous or really extreme, that we know that is also not going to help them. So, yeah, that's great that you do that with your clients.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's a much more positive experience and if we can turn anything into a positive experience, they're going to want to keep coming back and they're going to keep making that progress, because it takes a while. It's not going to be achieved in one meeting or two meetings, or one month or two months, and we have to build it slowly by, you know, block by block, making sure we're adding on what we need when we need it and not just throwing all these things at you and saying, hey, we'll see you in three months.
Speaker 1:
Right, yeah, absolutely. We know that healthy habits don't happen overnight. They take months, right Sometimes years, to really establish those strong goals that we can continue to do right, but, yeah, I love that. You know. It's not like oh yeah, here, you came to see me today. Well, yeah, let's come back in three months. Right, we lose them. Usually we lose them by then.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and in that time they've tried, you know, all kinds of unsafe things that are just damaging their metabolism more. I see it all the time the crash diets, the packaged meals they get in the mail that are, you know a thousand calories for the day, and they're making tons of results on the scale, but that doesn't mean results in health and a lot of people think those two things are always linked and that's very far from the truth, I feel.
Speaker 1:
Oh my gosh. Yeah, that is absolutely correct. Right, because you could be losing weight. Right, that number on the scale can be changing. But are we really optimizing our health? Right? Are we really helping our bodies?
Speaker 1:
right, because we know that once we stop that plan right, like once we stop eating those a thousand calories or whatever amount of calories eating those a thousand calories or whatever amount of calories you're under eating Right. And there hasn't been that education or that follow up plan, like, what am I going to do now? Right, now that I'm done with whatever these plan that I'm doing? Usually there's not nothing after that, right. So, as humans, we go back to what we know, right, we go back to our old habits and then we already know what's going to happen, right.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and we're going to come back.
Speaker 2:
Definitely. And my, my million dollar question if someone's talking to me and they're saying, hey, I'm trying this, I've, I've cut out all fruits and all carbs and I, and then I'm like, well, well, why are you doing that? You know, have you, have you really looked into why that might be the best idea? And they say, well, I don't know, but I lost 15 pounds and they're kind of, you know, they're proud of that and I want them to be proud of the results. But then the million dollar question is what happens when you're at your goal weight Do you just never have a fruit again? You know what? What happens next? And we always want to think about that long-term outcome, because it's not just the short-term weight loss. It's definitely achievable, but to keep it off, that's where the real success is found to definitely mention that right.
Speaker 1:
That, yeah, we might feel desperate, right? Maybe because we tried so many things and they work short period of time. And then you know again, we go back to these old habits and now it's not working right. But you have to go to the professional, right. You have to go to the expert. We went to school for that, right. We did an internship 12 plus hours 1200 hours plus of internship right. We did an internship 12 plus hours 1200 hours plus of internship right To prepare us to be the food and nutrition experts, and so we definitely know what we're talking about. So you know, reaching out to that professional to really help you it's going to save you tons of money, right and time, but also it can help you with your overall health and wellbeing right.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely. It's an investment and you're going to spend time with us, you're going to spend money, you're going to put in effort but, like you said, it's going to save you. We've saved people years of heartbreak and those feelings of failure, of trying all these things and ending up still coming to us anyway. We have people, when they come in, they say, hey, I've been trying to lose weight for 20 years. And that breaks my heart when I hear that I'm I'm 25, they've almost been trying to lose weight as long as I've been alive. And you know, a year from them seeing us, they're getting that success that they've always wanted. And that's like that's why I do it, because we can help someone change their life. And then they change their whole household's lives. They, they're eating more fruit, they're drinking more water, they're spending more quality time together going on walks. You know it's so inspirational, it's just so rewarding to be able to do that.
Speaker 1:
Right, yeah, and it's also, you know, in a safe, in a safe way, right, in a positive way, without doing these wild things. So that is wonderful, right, that you feel that way for sure. So any final thoughts, right, that you want to provide to the listeners? And then also, where can they find you, where can they go and like reach out to you?
Speaker 2:
Absolutely. I think the best way would be checking out our company's page on Instagram. It's just RD, like registered dietitian, and then J-Rod R-D-J-R-O-D. That's just like a little nickname for myself, and if I could leave everybody with one tip, I would say we just went over a lot of things and I think you should. If you're listening to this, you should pick one thing and try to get just a little bit better at it. If you're drinking 30 ounces of water every day, try to drink 35 and then just go from there. These things don't have to be mastered in a year, in two years. It can take as much time as you need, because you're always on that journey, getting better, and that's the success. When you're in the mode where you're always trying to get better, you are better and there's really no finish line. So don't think you do all these things and everything's great, because it'll keep changing, but as long as you keep changing with it, you're going to do awesome.
Speaker 1:
Mic drop, nothing else. I don't need to say anything else. Yeah, awesome, no problem, and then I'll add all that in the show notes. Right, how they can contact you, your website and your Instagram page too. So, that way you know if someone wants to reach out, but you have locations right In different areas right, and then you can also do telehealth Is that right? Or virtual appointments? Absolutely yeah, can also do telehealth, is that right? Or virtual appointments?
Speaker 2:
Absolutely. Yeah, we'll do telehealth across the country. We have offices in Boardman Ohio, youngstown Ohio, bessemer, pa, and then we both partner with Formation Florida in Tampa, which I love, so we're around and we're also available through a phone or FaceTime appointment. We're happy to do anything to make sure that you're feeling your best.
Speaker 1:
Very nice. Well, thank you so much for doing this interview with me. I really appreciate it To the listeners. Follow those steps like one tip right, and so you'll see a difference. But thank you so much again, and I'll talk to you soon. So all right, everybody, I will see you in another episode. Bye, bye.