TWR 131: An Individualized and Holistic Approach to Nutrition with Mike Millner

One of the most powerful things we can do to begin to make significant changes in our lives is to question the stories that we tell ourselves each day. As children, we absorb the ideas, philosophies, and patterns of those around us, and oftentimes we carry them into adulthood without questioning them. One of the most dangerous things we can do is to trust all of our thoughts as facts without checking in, and thinking, “Where is the evidence to actually back that up?” So many of us are carrying stories about our bodies, and about diets and nutrition that are actually damaging and untrue. Amber’s guest today is here to shake up these ideas and encourage you to question what you have been telling yourself about nutrition and weight loss, and get curious about how it would look to build a nutrition plan around your unique attributes, interests, and lifestyle.

Mike Millner has been a high-level nutrition coach for almost 10 years, and he has a gift for understanding the psychological and physiological needs of his clients, which has led to thousands of success stories. He believes that cookie-cutter nutrition plans don’t work because every person is different. By getting interested in personality psychology, Mike realized that by following generalized nutrition plans, this often means we are fighting an uphill battle because it does not take our personality into account. We hear a lot about weight loss being as simple as “calories in vs. calories out”, but there is much more to the picture. Stress and hormones play a huge role in all of this as well, so following a nutrition plan that is best suited for you, is going to be the key to making it a sustainable lifestyle.

In this episode, Mike and Amber discuss the importance of individualized nutrition approaches because the idea of “eat less, move more” does not take the whole picture into consideration. Our metabolism is a stress barometer, not a calorie calculator, so it reacts to the inputs and outputs of our environment and the stressors in our life. Mike emphasizes that we need to approach nutrition and weight loss holistically to look at our individual needs and preferences.

Key Highlights

• Mike shares about his childhood and seeing his family go through body image issues and constant fad diets and how that affected him
• Mike explains the shift that took place when he went to college and gained a lot of weight quickly which led to a lot of crash diets and unhealthy habits
• Mike’s journey of working with a mentor that transformed his life by encouraging him to work with his own unique attributes and preferences instead of fighting them
• Often times the stress we put on ourselves to eat perfectly is more detrimental than the food we are labeling as “bad”
• Weight loss should be aligned with who you are as a person, so work with someone that helps you to stop fighting yourself in the process

Episode resources:

• Get your own Serenity gummies and discover more CURED Nutrition products at: curednutrition.com and use code AMBER10 for 10% off 
• Amber’s Little Black Dress Bootcamp: ambershaw.com/little-black-dress-bootcamp

Connect with Mike Milner:

Instagram: @coach_mike_milner

Website: neurotypetraining.com

Podcast: Mind Over Macros

Connect with Amber

Instagram: @msambershaw 

TikTok: @msambershaw

Website: ambershaw.com