#111 🖕 This Year I Told Winter Depression to F*** Off!

What's up and welcome back to the Talking Nutrition Podcast. Today I wanted to dive into something funny I caught myself messaging my girlfriend. I said, hey, do you want to go look at the sun on Sunday? To give you a little context here, I live in Northern Norway in the Arctic or above the Arctic Circle in Tromsø, I'm just pouring myself some tea if you don't mind, which is a place where we do not have any sunlight for two months. The sun does not rise for two months straight. We're going to see our son again in a couple of days from now. Recording this on Thursday, January 18th. It'll be up in a couple of days. And it's really something that makes you appreciate the little things in life. And I wanted to kind of keep this episode short, as you know, we are doing the mini episodes on Thursdays, but. Basically this year I kinda said fuck you to winter depression. I've seen a lot of people struggle around me. And that's not even like, where I live we have no sun, like actually no sunlight for two months straight. But I also see people in Europe, people in the US, clients, friends, family members, I see people struggle during winter. And what do you want to call it, you know, winter depression or whatever it is. A lot of it is mindset related and a lot of it is avoidable. Is that a word? Avoidable? You know what I mean. You can avoid it. Now, obviously I'm recording this like right after the winter time. So it's a bit late maybe, but I mostly just want to talk about the fact that you always have full control of like how you're going to feel through your actions. And I think we need to flip it always. It's not that we are in a terrible space, you know, mentally wise, like, it's not that we are not doing good enough to take action for our goals or that we are too busy, that we're too overwhelmed, depressed, whatever you want to call it. It's not, no, we, we have these actions we can still take to make us feel better. We can manage our stress. And I know guys, stress management is like this big buzzword, but we got to manage the stress. How do we do that? By taking action. It's simple as that. You do not feel too overwhelmed. You do not feel too depressed to do something that is good for you. It's more difficult, but you are not the victim here. Now, I have nothing. I have no notes for this episode. No nothing, no outline, whatever. So you'll probably hear me go back and forth between the sun and the winter and whatever it is. But this time of the year always makes me reflect on winter. And the last couple of days before we will be seeing the sun again, which is right now, basically, it always makes me think like, Oh shit, like it's a huge difference. Like even now, because obviously, right? No sunlight doesn't mean no daylight. There's a little bit of Twilight usually in the morning. And right now, our days are getting like 15 minutes, like longer, like every day. So you can imagine it's a, it's a rapid change, you see, This time of the year, I always feel like almost like this energy boost where it's all of a sudden is like you feel alive again. And I don't want to be too poetic here, but like I really mean that like I can't describe this. I think only people living here or similar areas will understand to where we just had darkness for two months. And now that light's coming back and on Sunday, we're going to make a point of like driving out to like the south point of this island. We're going to sit at the beach and we're going to watch the sun. which is just gonna come over the mountains for a little bit and it's gonna go back down again. And we're gonna be there and people are gonna have bonfires and last time we went last year, people were drinking in the morning with music and shit, you know? It's like 11 in the morning, just about. But it's something weird. It's something like, I can't explain this. Obviously, I'm not from here. I'm not from Norway, I'm from Holland. So I never experienced this before moving here. But like... That feeling of having just two months of darkness and then now finally getting that energy back. It's such a good feeling. It really makes you feel alive again, but also makes you reflect. And this year I can say for the first time, so I moved to Norway in 2017. So this was my fourth Polar Night, fifth? Anyway, it doesn't matter. I've had a few. But I can say for the first time now. that I didn't let that winter depression get the best of me. By focusing on what was within my control. And that was taking care of my nutrition, taking care of my workouts, hitting my steps, doing my cardio, managing my stress. Because I haven't felt this good energy-wise, fitness-wise, cardio-wise, I haven't looked at this good muscle and lean-ness-wise in a long time. throughout that winter period where I felt like shit the last years. And I can say that because every time around this time in a year, I noticed I was like, oh, I was I was not in a good spot. I was really not in a good spot. Like sometimes worse than other times. And there was one time where our cat was actually, you know, she disappeared for two and a half weeks. We were looking for her and that was kind of like the last drop for me. But no, all joking aside, like I don't like to use the word depressed. But I definitely, you know, I was not in a great spot for like most of the winters. I can say that, you know. But like this year was different. Because I told myself, you know what, like this winter, like I'm gonna take care of my shit again. I know that there are things, objectively speaking, that are good for me. And hey, you know what, like maybe that darkness is still gonna impact me. And obviously I felt more tired, right? It does feel like an evening, like all day long. So you do notice. But I took action and I made the best of it. And you know what, like I can tell you like the difference was massive. And I'm sharing this with you to show you like, hey, you can actually do something currently as shitty as you may be feeling and get to a better place. And right. Appreciate also those little things. It's even funny too. Like you like it's, it's so like, that's why I recorded this episode. Now I caught myself this week messaging my girlfriend saying, Hey, do you want to go look at the sun? It's like those little things. You know what I mean? You take things for granted. I think. as well. And we really shouldn't. And we really should realize that there's so many things we can do, even if we don't feel like it's the right time right now. And I'm recording this because we're almost we're heading into February. Like how are you really doing right now with your fitness goals? How are you actually showing up? Like are you able to lose the weight or build a muscle, whatever it is, because I know for a fact that you, you know, on New Year's or whatever it was that last week of the year, maybe the first you sat down and you set a goal for yourself and you said, you know what? This time is going to be different. This time I'm going to make it happen. And guess what? There's a nine out of 10, sorry, eight out of 10 chance that you who's listening to this podcast has already filled the New Year's resolution. And that's based on research. Eight out of 10 people right now have already failed, which is massive. If that's not you, I want to encourage you to keep going. Because here's the thing, again, I can promise you this. It's not how shitty you feel or how demotivated you feel or how little willpower you think you have. And we talked about willpower last episode, right? No, it's how well are you showing up? How well are you doing the things that you know are going to lead to the goals that you want to achieve over time? Do you maybe need some help from someone? Are you hitting your steps? Are you tracking your food? Are you open to learn from nutrition? Those kind of things. Did you make that same mistake again? Like diving into 2024, trying to do this whole strict diet and like all these kinds of different things at the same time? Or are you going in with a different approach right now? Because again, there's different ways to go about it. I just don't think like jumping in and trying to do everything all at once is the right way to do it. Because that's at least not what we do with our clients. And that's what usually people do before they join us. And we change that after sometimes decades and decades of struggling. So I just wanted to check in on you and kind of see like where you're at, you know? And I wanted to see like how winter has affected you and how you're feeling in terms of energy and mood or whatever it is. Because let me tell you this, like it doesn't have to decide where you're gonna be in a few months, basically. It doesn't have to. your current like stress levels or where you're at emotionally, mentally, right? Physically, like it doesn't have anything to say about the actions that you take. So I want you to take action today and decide for yourself, like what that's going to be. Cause here's the thing, two things, you either know exactly what to do and you're just going to get to doing it. Even if you don't feel like it, or you do not know what to do. and then you're gonna have to reach out to someone who does. If you want to, that could be me. I'm happy to either offer a free call, which I'll link in the show notes. You can get a free consultation with me. No strings attached. Like the call is actually free. Like you're not like binded to then sign up for coaching. However, if that's what you want to do, I'm amazing. Or right, if you're not looking for that, you can also even DM me with a quick question, or you can reach out to any other coach who would take action on this stuff, right? Take action on this stuff. Because you can make the most out of your situation, no matter where you are at, no matter where the sun goes for two months or how you feel. There's actions within your control that you can take. And you can do something about your current state. Again, there's two ways you can go about this. You can do it on your own. If you know what to do, do it. If you do not know it, reach out, whether it's me or someone else. I know this was a bit of a... 10 minute rant maybe, a quick one. But I wanted to share this, cause you do have it in you. Just stop feeling sorry for yourself. It's not worth it. It's what I did. I felt like shit a couple of winters. Every January I was like, yo, I was like not in a good place. This winter, I can say, I changed that. I went into winter knowing, hey, it's gonna be dark, but I'm gonna make the most out of it. So go into your journey with that mindset. I can't change the fact that it's dark during winter, but I can change what I do during that period of time to still make the most of it. And you can do that too. Make sense? Thanks again for listening to my mini rant. I'll be back on Monday. If you enjoyed the show, feel free to drop me a quick five-star rating Spotify or Apple. And otherwise, I'll talk to you on Monday. See you.