Launching Run Well With Tay
An integrated health, fitness, and nutrition coaching practice dedicated to helping women of all ages take control of their health and transform their lives...to truly run "well"
Hello Substack friends, long time no chat!
I admittedly have been taking a brief hiatus from my Substack rambles, as I’ve been channeling my creative energy into launching my very own health coaching business, Run Well With Tay.
TLDR: I didn’t want to use Substack as another form of Instagram with short-form, click-bate content and affiliate links. I love to write and share my thoughts, ideas, and passions with this community, but I felt I was doing myself and my subscribers a disservice by trying to churn out weekly content that was void of real substance. My goal with this Substack is to share my own experiences, learnings, and observations about health, wellness, and fitness-focused topics in hopes that it inspires you to pause and reflect on how these things may be applicable to your daily life, and maybe even help you form new goals, interests, or habits!
SO… to put it simply, I plan to publish a little something new each month to achieve this. Not to try and sell you on anything, but to share my passion for these things, and to, hopefully, ignite a little fire for something new in you too!
The back story of RWWT
Run Well With Tay (“RWWT”) actually started as a pipe dream back in 2019 when I was living in London and had an itch for a passion project that could serve as a creative outlet at a time when I felt unsatisfied and unfulfilled by my corporate job. I was working in financial PR at the time, and while I made some of my closest friends and met so many great mentors during my time in the corporate world, my inner knowing always pulled me towards the world of health and wellness. Around this time, my husband inspired me to start an IG account at the time (formerly @livewellwithtay which is no longer!), where I would share my favorite wellness finds in London.
Between 2018-2020, I spent countless hours of my limited free time trying trying new yoga studios, frequenting Soul Cycle, exploring vegan restaurants (long live Deliciously Ella in Mayfair!), and spending my evenings walking along the river diving deep into health and wellness podcasts. At this point, I had even considered going back to school to become a Registered Dietitian (RD) but was lukewarm on the idea of a career working in a traditional clinical setting.
Fast-forward to 2021 when I discovered the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) Health Coaching program. I admittedly had never heard of a “health coach”, but I felt so convicted in IIN’s philosophy around holistic health through an integrated approach to diet and lifestyle, having experimented with it on myself in attempt to cure my PCOS. More on that story here.
Three years later, and I am truly thrilled to announce the launch of my very own health coaching business, Run Well With Tay. If interested, you can learn more here.
Three things I’ve learned on my own health & wellness journey
I often receive DMs on Instagram about weight loss and running, as I’ve shared some posts about how my body composition has changed over the past few years. And while I do credit some of this to running (because you will inevitably burn a lot of calories running 50+ miles per week!), I credit most of the physical change I’ve experienced to the following three things, which have also, and perhaps more importantly, reaped major benefits on my mental health:
1. Protein is paramount.
I cycled through so many phases of veganism during my teenage years and through my twenties because I thought this type of diet was “healthy” or “trendy”. My husband would always bug me about how I wasn’t eating enough protein, and I would write it off as bro science! Even having learned about this in nutrition school, I refused to accept that my body needed more protein than I was feeding it because I felt generally fine.
But when I started training for my first marathon, I found myself constantly reaching for sugary, ultra processed snacks in between meals or craving cereal as a late night snack before bed. Not to mention the brain fog and energy crashes that would hit me hard every day around 3pm…
Even worse, I had been severely anemic for years and was receiving iron infusions through a hematologist every 6 months to manage my blood iron levels, which is NOT normal.
So I decided I would try the protein thing…and spoiler alert, it changed EVERYTHING! I found myself no longer craving snacks in between meals, and my energy levels were stable throughout the day. Even more impressive, my hair and nails were growing faster and stronger than ever before and my skin was starting to look more vibrant and clear.
Protein is absolutely critical for optimal health, and unless you’ve gone through a similar journey to me, chances are, you’re not eating enough of it. As a general rule of thumb, aim for 1g per pound of goal body weight per day. Your body and mind will thank you!
2. Even the most moderate weight training can dramatically change your body composition.
I admittedly still hate weight training. I wish this weren’t the case, but even after three years, it still feels boring and tedious to me.
Why do I do it? Because I’ve seen massive results in the way my body looks, feels, and performs. My body looks leaner, my running form has improved drastically, my sleep has improved, and I have (so far) managed to avoid injury during my marathon training cycles — all which I credit to strength training.
I started with body weight only because I couldn’t even do a proper squat at the time and slowly built up to using free weights — I’m still working towards the barbell, but that’s a post-marathon goal! Even a very modest dose of good old fashioned squats, lunges, push-ups, dead lifts, and some dumbbell rows will do wonders for you.
If you’re not strength training now, I challenge you to set a goal to do two 30-minute sessions with this combination over the next week. You’ll feel sore afterwards (I still do too), but the more you show up, the more you’ll see results, and human psychology tells us that seeing results motivates you to want more!
3. If you’re not sleeping enough, nothing else matters.
I know everyone always says this, but it’s true. In an era of 5AM morning routines and productivity hacks, we’re all trying to figure out how to get our bodies to do more with less.
But the reality is, no cold plunge, sauna, HIT workout, or daily meditation session can mask lack of sleep. Seriously, no human can thrive on limited sleep, and this has been scientifically proven many times over. The general recommendation is 7-9 hours per night, but this varies based on your age, gender, and lifestyle — spoiler alert… women need more than men because our bodies are doing more without us even realizing!
If you’re interested in this topic, I learned everything I know about sleep from Matt Walker, who is a professor of neuroscience and psychology and founder of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley. This Huberman Lab episode is a good place to start for my sleep-curious friends.
The bottom-line — sleep affects our hormones, immune system, learning and memory, mood, appetite, and weight regulation. So if you’re not sleeping, you’re not going to get very far!
Thanks for reading and following along! I love to hear from you all on the types of topics you like to read about here, so please leave any feedback in the comments and/or DM me on Instagram.
Cheerio for now!
xoxo,
Tay
